Friday, May 22, 2009

think it, post it, forget it



that is a screen shot of my desktop.

the background is set to a photograph of a community notice board that i came by at a singapore bus stop. these notice boards make for fascinating gawking material while you wait for the buses to turn up – which they do with clockwork precision. you can post and check out notices for everything from home rentals to yoga classes to housemaids and erm, other kinds of ‘maids’ on these boards. i didn’t actually see the last kind of notice, but i’m sure i’d have found one (or more) tucked away in all that useful clutter or the kanji. it’s a very distinct possibility given that the folks at singapore are such an insanely organized lot.

but let me get to the point because this post of mine is not about the singaporean penchant for order. it’s about the magnificent digital ‘post it note’ by 3M that you see adding such striking colour and character to the top right of my desktop. i downloaded it from this site the day after i got back from my vacation, walked into work and had a mountain crash land on my head. it was either get the post it or start talking back to the voices in my head, and as i had no time for idle chit chat i decided to go with 3M’s magic invention that really does make everything fall right into place.

oooh, mentalie is so organized, you might think. but let me assure you, i’m the kind of person who forgets what i have eaten for breakfast while i’m eating it. and i mechanically answer to ‘space cadet’ and ‘scatterbrain’ because i’ve been called those names so often.

here's what i definitely am my friends, i am ingenuous. because i single handedly reinvented the post it: i use it to forget, as a mental purgative if you will. whenever a niggling thought strikes i simply post it. so i can cease to think about it then in peace. it’s been numbered, formatted and pinned down on my desktop and has nowhere to go, ha! more often than not i never look at it again, except to delete it, which also happens every once in awhile. in fact, over the past week i’ve managed to get so much off my mind that i can't remember the last time i heard a peep out of my squeaky clean conscience.

what makes it all even more beautiful, is that i inexplicably remember exactly how life was without the fabulous post it. soon after waking up a niggling thought would make its presence felt. it would remind me for the gazillionth time that i had forgotten all about it. it would begin with an itchy spot at the edge of my memory that i’d never get around to scratching because there were too many things to do – calls from my mum and dad to answer reminding me to eat and breathe, more threatening bill overdue sms-es from vodafone to ignore, other itches from yesterday to itch… as the day went by the itchy spots spread like a rash, one itch leading to another and another and yet another, until i crawled back home and to bed with a cacophony of niggling thoughts prickling away in my head. and i’d lie there and count all the things i had 'forgotten' through the day instead of counting sheep as widely recommended. needless to say, i never got a good night’s rest because i was too preoccupied with feeling like a complete moron by then.

these days however, i finally know the precise sensation regan macneil felt after the priest jumped to his death from her window at the end of the exorcist. it’s the unbeatable feeling of being thoroughly and completely cleansed. i highly recommend it.

signing off now with a kiss for 3M.

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