I’m a planner. I make lists to make lists. I plan being spontaneous. You get the idea. I am a bit of a control freak who found my natural outlet through being a project manager. Never mind ‘there is nothing like a deadline’ – ‘there is nothing but a deadline!’ Actually that’s just a part of me and I believe that this was an extreme response to being admonished for daydreaming, in class more regularly than at home. But that’s another story for another post.
So I have a very fixed way of prepping my posts, drafting and redrafting throughout the week. Printing out on Thursday – (equivalent of Friday in the Middle East) – letting it marinade on Friday and Saturday and doing my final polish late Saturday and publishing on Sunday.
Last week that did not happen for a number of reasons. So now I was sent into a spiral of self condemnation and doubt and it’s taken me until today to let it all go and post what will be a stream of consciousness barely revised.
Why? Because I am troubled. Over a week ago a friend of mine got into a situation that is so specific to this area in which we live in that it may as well be happening on another planet. This event crowded my mind so much that every time I tried to write on the topic I had planned , his plight kept coming back to mind.
But I know I can’t write about it and that bothers me. Because now that we’re into the week before carnival – yes in Venice, Rio and New Orleans but of course above all else Trinidad and Tobago – I can’t help feeling like I’m letting the side down.
For a unique aspect of Trinidad carnival is the calypso – no not the party soca tracks but the ‘true’ calypso – of social commentary in which freedom of speech is gilded. I also think of the fact for 20 or so years I lived in the country that gave the world Spitting Image, Have I Got News For You and The Office.
But as an economic migrant who has 2 dependents, I must be wary, so now I think of it as my ‘1st lost post’ – as I’m sure there will be many more.
Off now to start prepping next week’s post because I have an image of an organized and in control person to uphold and this rant of consciousness and winging it, is deliciously seductive to a closet ‘leave it to the last minute daydreamer’.
Does freedom of speech come at a price? Is it a price worth paying?