Fragments of the Quiet Mind

Some days don’t arrive. They repeat . Like the ghost of a bell you’re not sure you heard, but still check the window for. You wake up, and the sky is already tired. The clock ticks not forward, but sideways . You open your inbox and find nothing but yesterday trying to start a conversation. There is coffee, but it tastes like memory. There is noise, but it hums in the key of gone. And somewhere in that long stretch of artificial light and recycled air, you think of someone. Or no one. Or someone who used to be no one until their absence took shape. You wonder— Did they ever sit in a day like this, where everything feels like it’s happened already, but differently? Would they remember you, not in the headline moments, but in the filler scenes— the hallway pause, the lunch alone, the rain that didn’t quite fall? Maybe you were just a whisper in the acoustics of their life. Still, whispers carry when the world is quiet enough.

It was 3:17 PM when I realized I wasn’t tired—I was just bored. I had no one to blame. Not the deadlines. Not the caffeine crash. Not even the algorithm. Just me. Sitting there. Staring at a blinking cursor that wasn’t judging me, but it also wasn’t applauding. It just blinked. Patiently. Indifferently. Like it knew I’d try to run. So I did what I always do. Opened another tab. Made another cup of coffee I didn’t want. Pretended I needed to check something. I scrolled. I organized files I’d never open again. I looked productive. But all I was really doing was hiding—from a silence I had no excuse not to face. I used to think the opposite of burnout was inspiration. That if I could just land on the right idea, feel that electric pull toward something meaningful, I’d be okay. I didn’t realize I was skipping the part where nothing happens. The quiet middle. The unsponsored, unposted moment where you have to sit in your own skin without any applause for existing. Burnout, at least, mak...

It hit me in the middle of a Tuesday, eating reheated sinigang beside a cracked window and a dying plant I no longer had the guilt to water. The sun had that lazy 3PM slant, and for once, I didn’t feel the need to conquer anything. No new goal. No side hustle. No "next big thing." Just soup, soft silence, and the soft rot of my once-capitalized ambition. Once upon a time, I was starving for more—more recognition, more meaning, more numbers that moved up. I used to equate stillness with failure. Rest with regression. I wore burnout like a badge. I treated exhaustion like proof of my importance. They don’t tell you that ambition, unchecked, is just a prettier name for self-erasure. You wake up one day and realize you’ve been chasing a version of yourself that exists only in PowerPoint slides and LinkedIn bios. The cult of “potential” doesn’t believe in sabbath. It demands worship. Metrics. Motion. A productivity app for your soul. But what if I told you the most rebelli...

I didn’t notice when loneliness stopped feeling like a stranger. It was the night I sat alone in a coffee shop at closing time, the dim hum of the espresso machine and the scrape of chairs the only company. At first, that silence felt like an empty room, cold and echoing with absence. But somewhere between the second sip and the last flicker of neon outside, something shifted. Loneliness stopped knocking. It pulled up a chair. You realize it’s not about filling the void but sitting with it—an awkward dinner guest who doesn’t talk much but teaches you to listen. We live in a world terrified of being alone, as if silence is a punishment. But solitude is not a cage; it’s a mirror, reflecting parts of yourself you never bothered to meet. In that reflection, you find a strange comfort—the steady rhythm of your own breath, the unspoken stories waiting beneath the surface. And the twist? Loneliness isn’t the enemy you thought it was. It’s the familiar face in a crowd that never quite get...

It’s raining and I’m sitting in a bus going somewhere—somewhere vague enough to feel like progress but familiar enough to make me question if I’m just looping through life on autopilot. The windows are fogged, people are half-asleep or pretending to be, and outside, the rain politely ruins everyone’s plans. I glance at the umbrella tucked beside my seat. It's smug today. Useful. Fulfilled. Finally, it gets to do its one job. No more sulking in dark corners of my bag like some emotionally neglected sidekick. Today, it’s a hero. Rain? Bring it. Wind? Let’s tango. But then I wonder: What about the days it never gets opened? Three sunny days in a row, I still carried it like a nervous habit—just in case the sky changed its mind. And on those days, did it feel... betrayed? Like it wore its best water-resistant outfit for nothing? Like it practiced its unfolding motion all night and then got ghosted by the clouds? Do umbrellas spiral into existential crises when the weather app lies?...

Hope works best in the morning. It’s a new day, fresh start, new beginning – hoping that the rest of the day be filled with life.  It’s inexplicably soothing to sit for a couple of minutes and stare at the morning scene, how a once dead atmosphere is slowly being filled with life.  The change of immobility to dynamism – from death to life. It’s like this stargazer lily that I have, it’s amazingly epic to see the buds start to bloom. It’s the same case when I open a new document in my laptop as I wake up. As I stare at this meaningless blank page, I let my heart flow and do its art (if I may call my writing an art).  The words reverberate and stumble with one another, seducing my mind, intoxicating the very core of my being and I notice my jaws doing their usual involuntary movement. The only sound I'm hearing is the clickety clacks and tickety tacks of the keyboard – fueling my heart with warm fires of passion in this cold weather, dripping blood from my spirit, resurgi...

“They told me to follow my passion... I met myself.” Desire. It is the myth that drives us, the silent commander whispering in our ears, promising that with its pursuit, we will find ourselves, or at least, something greater than our current selves. In truth, it is a pilgrimage—the search not for glory, nor for destination, but for the inevitable unraveling of what we believe we desire. I have wandered these paths myself. The road is slick with promises, paved with assumptions, and lined with false guides who declare, “Follow your passion, and you will find fulfillment.” Yet, each step I took, every inch closer to what I thought would fulfill me, led me to a chasm where nothing could breathe. The pursuit of passion is a paradox, for what I once thought would liberate me only bound me tighter to the expectations I created. Desire, as I have learned, is a shapeshifter. It wears the masks of ambition, love, and ambition once more, seducing us with its promises of meaning, fulfillment, ...

Petrichor is the scent of rain on dry earth, or the scent of dust after rain. The word is constructed from Greek, petros, meaning stone + ichor, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology. It is defined as "the distinctive scent which accompanies the first rain after a long warm dry spell". Last night I made my plan to run early in the morning. I woke up at 4 am to hear the beautiful sound of the rain. Since my work starts at 4pm (12 hours to do anything I want to do) I decided to do my routine, some push ups, boil water, make coffee, get my laptop, light a cigarette and sit on the porch.  I was enjoying the serenity of the rain and each drop sounded like someone is playing some notes in his piano. Since I live in a weird place where your nearest neighbor is half a kilometer away, I can’t hear anything except the melody that the rain was playing. I just sat there relishing and enjoying every second of the moment. Petrichor, I remember that word. F...

We spend so much of our lives waiting for the big moments, the grand gestures, the dramatic shifts that promise to mark us with significance. But what if the truth is tucked away in the moments that slip by unnoticed? The small ones. The quiet ones. Like the way the sunlight hits the window just before dusk, painting the room with that strange golden glow. Or the way a friend’s laugh sounds after they’ve told a joke, something familiar but still warming. You might not remember these moments, not by name, but something in you changes every time they pass. It’s easy to think that life’s meaning lies in the milestones—the promotions, the graduations, the weddings, the great victories. But what about the moments before all that? The pauses, the silences, the ones where you were simply there , breathing, watching, existing. The times when nothing “big” happened but you felt everything. We often overlook them, these small moments. We think they don’t count. But they do. Because somewhere ...

She didn’t knock. She never does. She slipped in through the cracks, between an unanswered message and the sound of your own breath in an empty room. I thought I was alone. Then she sat beside me— not quite touch, not quite ghost— and I realized I’d invited her the moment I stopped trying to be found. She looked nothing like loneliness. She looked like quiet mornings and unfinished thoughts. She smelled of old pages and cold air. And when I met her eyes, I saw my own reflection—just softer, quieter, blurred. I called her company, but she didn’t speak. She just waited, until I filled the silence with everything I never said out loud. We danced once, I think. Or maybe I just swayed while she stood still. Her hand never touched mine, but I swear I felt it where all my noise used to live. She wasn’t cruel. She never asked for anything— just that I stay. And for a while, I did. Because her silence was gentle. And I mistook that for safety. But Solitude is a ...

There’s a quiet cruelty in beginnings without ends. Books left to gather dust, their pages folded in half like promises I couldn’t keep. Poems that start with fire but die in silence, suffocated by my own hesitation. Plans drawn in the dirt, erased by the wind before they could ever root. It’s not laziness, exactly. It’s more like a slow unraveling—each unfinished thing a wound that never fully scars. I wonder if the weight of what I never finish is heavier than what I see through to the end. Maybe it is. To start is to hope, but to not finish is to understand your limits—your fractures, your quiet surrender. I’m an expert at the halfway point, the “almost there,” the shadow of completion that never quite arrives. Because finishing means facing what I’ve become—a mosaic of broken intentions and fading dreams. Sometimes I think the parts I abandon tell more truth than the polished whole. The silence between chapters screams louder than any ending ever could. I’m not afraid of failu...

Recently, there’s this new thing blowing up on the internet—some wild trend called “going viral.” Basically, it’s when everyone suddenly knows you, your awkward dance moves, and that embarrassing thing you said at a party, all at once. Sounds fun, right? Like winning a lottery where the prize is endless strangers watching your every misstep. But here’s the plot twist: not everyone wants to go viral. Some of us prefer to stay comfortably invisible—like that forgotten corner table at a café where no one steals your Wi-Fi or judges your third cup of coffee. Fame? Nah. We’re more into “fame-adjacent”—you know, the sweet spot between “who?” and “oh, that person.” Going viral is like getting shoved into a mosh pit of eyeballs. Suddenly, your life’s mess-ups become public entertainment. Your privacy? Poof. Your dignity? Left somewhere between “sent” and “read.” And forget about controlling the narrative—once you’re viral, you’re basically a meme factory with no quality control. Some folks ...

The day the music didn’t work—the air hung still, thick with a silence so loud it rattled the bones. No notes found their way out, no melodies breathed life into the cracked speakers, and the usual hum of rhythm that once stitched moments together unraveled like loose thread. It wasn’t just a technical failure—it was a fracture in time, a quiet collapse of the invisible soundtrack that keeps the world from slipping into chaos. Without music, the spaces between seconds stretched too far. The clock ticked with a hollow echo, mocking the absence of sound. People moved differently, awkward and unmoored, as if the rhythm that once marched inside their veins had died. Conversations stumbled, words lost their rhythm, and the usual lullabies of routine became jarring. Music is supposed to be the invisible hand that steadies the restless, the secret language that translates joy and grief without a single syllable. Without it, the heart feels exposed—naked, raw, and unsure. The silence pr...

7 minutes to midnight.  Another day is creeping in, and yet, I’m still here, awake. After 13 hours of grinding away, 20 hours without sleep,  I’m beyond tired—drained, really, in ways I don’t even have the energy to describe. Nighttime is supposed to be a refuge. A moment when your body heals, when your mind lets go. By now, most people are deep in sleep, tucked in with someone, dreaming of things that don’t really matter but feel comforting all the same. I envy them, honestly. But tonight, it’s different.  There’s no soft comfort,  no calm to sink into.  Just this tug-of-war with my thoughts, a restlessness that doesn’t care how exhausted I am. The pillow? It’s just another part of the problem. I should be winding down by now, but instead, I’m out on the balcony. Coffee in one hand, laptop in the other. There’s a drizzle, and the cold bites a little more than I expected.  The stillness out here isn’t peaceful—it’s heavy, thick with that kind of loneliness ...

I went back to my old school because of a term paper i have to submit—an unavoidable deadline that drags me back into the world of libraries. Honestly, I don’t like the internet much. Too loud, too fast, like a thousand birds all squawking at once with no promise of meaning. I prefer books—their weight, their quiet certainty, the way they don’t blink or scroll away when you stare too long. And then, just like that, the smell hits me. That heavy, almost sacred scent of old paper and ink, trapped in the seams of forgotten pages. It’s a smell that carries time itself—decades folded into the dust, stories layered beneath the weight of silence. It catches me off guard, like a memory I didn’t know I was missing. That smell pulls me inward, beyond the term paper, beyond deadlines. It drags me to a place where the world slowed down—where silence wasn’t absence, but presence. A place where waiting was part of the story, and meaning was something you earned by sitting still. In this scent, I f...