[Sorian's Scrapbook} Personality: Disorder!

[Sorian]

Of bad luck. Disappointments. They just seem to come from everywhere, jumping on you whenever you’re not ready, don’t they. They turn around to whiplash you across your back when you’re looking at some sort of goal in the distance, breaking your concentration and making you lose your chance to get that something. And according to the dictations of popular culture, what is the primary cause of it? No, they won’t cite stupidity. They will cite bad luck. It just has a way of affecting the psyche of a human being in more ways than is actually apparent. When the bad luck bug bites you in the ass once, you can dismiss it immediately as a creation of your own doing, but it already leaves an imprint on you. But when it hits you in an unfortunate succession of disasters (your house burns, your dog gets eaten, your bank account closes, your wife runs away with your pot-bellied neighbor), it seems as if would create a never ending pandemic within you. It scars you deeply, makes you paranoid, more guarded, and less likely to get back to your feet. What is it that actually triggers bad luck? There are several premises which can be given to explain this never-explainable phenomenon. The first one I can think of would be doing evil to one’s neighbors. Ages ago, people invented the Hammurabi code (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth) in order to place a system in place which will allow people to strike back at those who caused them harm. Actually, it can be interpreted as some petty way of getting back at unsettled scores; if they do something to you, you should go do something to them in return, and it will be their own bad luck because there is no return and no exchange after that according to law. So you settle for a win-win because you were the ‘victim’ who managed to get revenge. Another one would be because of a general disregard for one’s surroundings. This is commonly seen in movies, especially slapstick (your scheming enemy drops a pail of water on the cops below your balcony, only to hide as you look down at them in horror and concern). This is basically grounded to realistic situations as well, and usually people will try to point fingers at invisible forces in order to explain stupidity. When someone trips on a rock and bashes his brains on the concrete pavement, it isn’t divine providence or whatnot; it should simply be interpreted as bad eyesight, or zero awareness, or the result of excessive staring at the sexy women walking by the wayside. Bad luck can probably be avoided through good planning (probably, because I’ve never tried refuting it), but sometimes circumstances simply happen the way they do. For instance, is being born on the 29th day of February (a leap year)–which technically gives you one birthday every four years–the result of bad luck? Maybe so, if you are a premature or a postmature baby, that is. Usually you can just consider it as bad luck and leave it at that–you get one cake, one batch of presents every four years. The horror!–But if its a leap year next year and you’re a sensible parent who had enough foresight to spill the white stuff with the intention of impregnation during a month wherein February 29 is altogether avoidable, then you can be considered as one smart parent. Congratulations. Not everybody is as talented and futuristic as you are. And its not like February 29 is such a horrible day, but its just highly unusual or weird (or perhaps I simply think so because ‘bad luck’ dictates it to be). I have always been a semi-firm believer in the notion that bad luck is the result of some unseen force, admittedly because I’ve always been too lazy to do anything else about it other than rant and proclaim to the world that I’ve been smacked around as a victim of happenstance. How else can I, should I explain why important things happen in school every time I go absent, when nothing ever does when my classmates do skip school? How else can I explain why I never seem to be the type of the girls I like? Why wasn’t I born with a billion dollars in my pocket? These are questions which beg for answers that will never be given no matter how long you pray, which is exactly why one has to see the rest of the forest for the trees, and make the most of what is there. Since as a human being I am a rational person who SHOULD NOT be given over to my personal dilemmas, maybe this could suffice for me to say, despite my inherent laziness: Life is not about getting lucky chances, its about taking those chances when you get them. After all, there are stories of college summa cum laudes who were absolute nutcases during high school; there have been men who were able to overcome obstacles (such as humble beginnings and being too damn ugly to even by loved by their mothers) to win the girl of their dreams; there have been poor bullied loser nerds who managed to construct mega companies out of a simple piece of junk through the years and tears. Maybe the notion of bad luck is merely a compromise to one’s refusal to work for his share after all. It just takes one a bit of guts, and not luck, to make that push.

[Abashai]

Sorian...I am glad you are back. I am glad you overcame yourself, your embarrassment (dude, a lot of us have had to deal with embarrassment here) and have returned. You are right, you are "wuved", and now there are eight months worth of newbies to fall in love with you too!

Welcome back...I anxiously wait to be struck by a trout.

Mike

[Sorian]

Of war and college. "A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon." ~Napoleon Despite them being the starkest of contrasts in purpose and method, I’ve always found it convenient to use war as an analogy for my school life. I recall sharing something like this to a good buddy back in high school, after having endured our most thrilling victory to date: “Dude, if this was a war, we’d be coming out covered in blood and guts.” Well, I am proud to admit that that was when I had only slight and hazy ideas of what was to come. If high school was World War I, it was an absolute cake-walk compared to the rigors of College life, a veritable World War II itself. For me it was a death factory where freshly-equipped, drill-trained and overeager high school graduates come voluntarily (or through conscription) to test their, as of yet immature and fun-loving mettle in the name of some higher ordeal, bringing along stock knowledge as guns and book knowledge as ammunition. You enter the battlefield with an excitement that belies your worst fears, and along the way you meet many buddies and comrades who are just as eager as you are. Then comes the briefings, strategizing, and last-minute reminders. Eventually, after the initiations and thinly-veiled threats are done with, you’re thrust into the usually-organized, often-chaotic fray. In the folds of the dangerous world you’ve just entered, you quickly realize that what you had envisioned as an instant ticket to fame and riches –the guilty goal of many a college student nowadays– is not all fun and games. The moment you enter this war, you’d be compelled to throw away your laid-back lifestyle and get yourself in shape for an incredible mental beating. You learn the hard way that it’s not the easy Basic English and rudimentary Algebra drills you breezed through in middle school; it is the real deal, in the Linguistics and Calculus sort of way. Stress sets in immediately, and your formerly unblemished skin starts to sport battle scars and nicks because you were so frustrated about the pimples popping out of your face. The long nights of vigil without eating start making you gaunter, more haggard, and often when you return to battle the next morning, you find yourself without a dint of the excitement you had when you first started. You wear out your brain cells’ memory capacities like combat fatigues and your patience like combat boots; they thin out, tear, get holes punctured into them, and grow duller in color through the years. In the case of the latter, they even start to stink with the acids of poisonous lectures you wouldn’t care to sniff. The long, mind-draining class hours are akin to fighting in muddy trenches or in the concrete jungles of urban warfare. The professor’s the captain or sergeant whose commands you follow in order to survive, and in some cases, even they aren’t immune to the strenuous bombardments. Within those holes and trenches, you whittle down and get struck with various ailments, for they usually don’t provide you with provisions for comfort: colds from the air-condition unit; mental lapses from hunger; drowsiness from boredom; traumas from being berated for incompetence. You rear your head from your hole when you try to focus on the direction of the enemy called “lessons,” and you quietly duck it when trying to avoid bullets called “sermons.” Every time out, you seek to strategize on how to beat the challenges before you, and try to hide from it when you simply can’t, hoping the thunder would just roll away. Sometimes, even when you’re tired and in need of rest, you hear clear commands from your captain ringing through the rumble of your fellow troopers; sometimes you find yourself falling asleep through the dead of silence. This is when most casualties hail from; you can get caught unawares and get hit by the sudden explosion of a bomb right outside of your cratered shelter. At the end of every term, of every semester, you look around the crowd of huddled men and women, counting how many of your friends survived. You’d realize that their ranks are getting thinner, that your last best friend was a casualty of the recent finals you just had, or one of your buddies was caught cheating and was summarily executed. If you’re in any way a true friend, you’d instantly feel remorse for those who were lost, for their shattered dreams and wasted time. But then again, you’d feel relieved that you yourself weren’t the victim of some stupid mistake or botched, mistake-filled instruction from one of your inconsiderate captains. The exhilaration would be there, only for it to fade once the horn sounds for the next battle to come, and the process repeats itself again and again and again. You rush into things without thinking at times, and they can get you wounded quite easily. Some experiences stay with you forever, never meant to be shared, like the lingering fear that you’d suddenly receive bad records because you cheated, and the relief that you got when you came out clean. There was the occasion when you tried to befriend your professor, wishing to get more credits for a medal of honor for your troubles someday, only to be turned down with a vindictive and satisfied smile. The cumulative effects go two ways: you either start to love killing those miserably lessons and become more adept; you start to hate it and simply shun trying to meet the daunting odds; or you start to become indifferent, sitting on one corner like a reserve waiting to be called. But no matter which path your emotions take, after every battle you win, after each campaign you fight, you eventually begin to find ease in the tasks you need to do. You become the battle-hardened veteran cooked in the hearth of trials. And once you get the hang of it, once your system has fully adapted to the rigors of your tense lifestyle, you find out to your grimly happy surprise that, in the words of John Rambo, “Killing (school lessons) is as easy as breathing.” But like every other war that had been waged through history, this one has to end sometime as well. And it often does end, one way or another. Either you’re abruptly released from your woes through the convenient expulsion x court martial method, or you duke it out until the smoke clears and the fires burn out. You eventually see the vindication that comes with the price you’ve paid, the tears that you’ve shed, the warm things about home and romance that you’ve sacrificed for the greater good of tomorrow. You eventually don that black silk robe you’ve always dreamed of, not of the Grim Reaper who mercilessly cuts down enemy lessons and assignments, but of one who has stood the test –or tests– and survived it. After a celebration in your honor, you’re discharged from service wielding a parchment on one hand and a better future on the other. The struggle of life, however, doesn’t end with college graduation. The next chapter of our lives, whether it becomes easier or more difficult, or a World War Z, is up to us. Perhaps it may be more suitable to another analogy altogether. But that is a sharing session for another time. For now I'll be content with my little personal victory. Because a hard life couldn't conquer me.

[Sorian]

NOTICE/shoutout/slap to the head/slap to the face for all my little penpals, writepals, readpals, chatpals, AIMpals and Fishpals: This week is graduation week for me, so for the whole week (April 12-17) I'll be partying and loving the last vestiges of college life. I'mma be a busy bee cause I be a... *runs out of words that rhymes with 'b'* Don't panic! (and don't celebrate either! >.<) I'll be back up by next week. Toodles. <3

[Sorian]

(Dave,) Stop Crying Your Heart Out. Oasis is probably my favorite band. Its British, meaning that Filipinos are hardly aware of it in most sectors, and as such its easy to look beyond it as something seen before, something already quite old. True enough, I was completely unaware of how awesome it is (or was) until I was well into my teens, during my sophomore college year. I’ve only heard about them in hearsay then, dubbed by some as a sort of present day rendition of Beatles. I hardly knew anything about the band, beyond the fact that the girl I really like loves the song ‘Wonderwall’ and sings it with regularity during contests. So for the sake of inciting a good ol’ conversation (and just for the heck of it) I listened in. Truth be told I didn’t even like the song at first. It was a bit raw for me, and shallow. I instantly understood what a ‘wonderwall’ is. Usually I go for stuff that others would find puzzling because it makes you look smarter. I completely ignored it, until I heard how she sang the blasted song, with the moment also coinciding with one of those days when you feel left-out. When I heard how she sung the blasted song on the karaoke, I felt so stupid for not liking it. Granted, she sings with a lovely tune, but when l listened to Liam Gallagher’s original rendition again, I strangely fell in love with it. Eventually the love spread to their other songs. Pretty soon I was bleeding Oasis (and almost felt destroyed by their break-up in the process). Since then I’ve been collecting their songs and stuffing them on my poor cellphone (because I don’t like Ipods) and burning my earphones away by listening to them on a consistent, back-breaking, routine-establishing basis. Whether the days be glassy and rainy, dark and melancholic, or vibrant and happy, I have had this band as a constant companion. I suppose the same applies to people. It’s like music I think; you tend to love the people you don’t like at first when you listen, or exert more effort into mustering a second look at them. A closely knit group of pals can also be the same with regards to break-ups. When bands and friends separate from one another and an individual goes on as a solo act, you can either stop following or keep following. Last night, while we were driving home from my college graduation, the song ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out' broke out of my random playlist. It’s probably my favorite Oasis song beyond Wonderwall and Champagne Supernova, and I’ve listened to it thousands of times over. I could sing (or at least attempt to) this song asleep, or dead. But despite the many times that it had caught my fancy, the innumerable instances of it catering to my moments of depression, it’s never been so impactful, never as heart-rending, and never been as fitting for any occasion as last night’s end. I loved-love-my college friends very much; I had long realized this, and I’ve cherished the years we’ve spent together as a result. But it’s never easy when the ordained hammer falls and the curtain closes on your journeys together. Despite the constant barrage of idiocy we have to deal with in one another’s company, we were genuinely happy. Now we go on our separate ways to build our future lives, as well as earn more friendships along the way. I had left the graduation forum with a light heart. I hugged my classmates, took pictures with them, felt the elation, the vindication that comes with holding that hard-earned diploma on your hands, and thanked everybody who had been a part of my four years in PLM. It was a happy gathering, and it was one that affixed itself to my mood completely. However, once the splendor of our dark togas and bright-colored tassels has faded into the distance, once I was left with only the departing memories of my youth, the happiness started to dissipate. Soon I was on the verge of tears. I thought I was simply exhausted because the ceremony lasted for six hours without food, water and bathroom breaks, and there was no denying that I was sleepy and weary, and maybe even a little bit cranky. But it lingered until the very end, and for the first time in a long time, despite the presence of my family, I felt alone. As the song scampered into my consciousness with alacrity, I fell into silence. Putting it on repeat, the loop lasted for throughout the duration of my little personal recollection. I could hardly move, breathe, or even sigh; only my head was moving, swaying sideways back and forth like the curious kid in the song’s music video. All of the happy memories were tinged with a point of sadness, for pretty soon everything that I’ve said and done through four years of work and familiarity will be nothing more a faded memories. I listened again and again as I surveyed the dark world outside my car window, the bright neon lights of Manila gleaming on the smooth of my glasses. At some point I felt like my heart was about to burst, with only the sheer embarrassment and the instant concern of my parents stomping on me to desist. Success and failure is a black and white pattern which I am very familiar with. My blood runs thick with innumerable stories, with both entities playing the protagonist and antagonist roles respectively. But these were always done and accomplished with the heavy burden of reality set aside, with the prospect of retreat into the hallowed sanctums of my school should I screw up and fail. I’ve had jobs before, and they’ve awakened me to the bitterness of the reality I’ve been pushing out of my head. And back then I could afford to, because I always knew that at the end of the day I still belonged in school, where my friends would be waiting for me. Now that I’ve been let go of, I find myself scared. The margin for error seems so much narrower, and the threat of defeat seems magnified tenfold. I find myself terrified of the future despite being quite equipped for it. But just like any rain cloud, it will eventually stop pouring. I knew very well that sadness operated in the same, predictable way. As the song kept rolling, it whispered to me those long-forgotten promises of freedom –complete, absolute freedom. That eventually, like the fading stars in Noel Gallagher’s lyrics, we’ll all meet again in the embrace of that freedom. We’ll all laugh, have fun, fight and share the best and worst of times again someday. By the time my cellphone went dead from exhaustion, the song had inscribed itself into the fabric of my mind. All I could do now is pray, cast my dice and roll my luck. For like the hypothetical person being addressed in the song, I’ve taken what I needed, and am on my way, wherever the destination might be. Just try not to worry, you'll see them someday.

[Sorian]

For the information of the wonderful general populace of MIzahar, I'm haven't been nowhere! I'm still around, often just lurking. However, for the mot part I've been away from the computer because I'm still suffering from a critical malady borne of having two permanent first molars extracted from my person and then being drilled some metal brackets on, after which they were fused together using thin metal wires that push and pull at the roots of every one of my teeth. In other shorter, more layman terms, I'm dying of pain from being drilled with a new set of braces. I know I'm not being hunted down by the masses (except for Old man Siiri, please forgive me for the inactivity!) so I will take this opportunity to rest this friggin' mouth. To those who know my AIM, I'm still around over there(albeit in invisible mode as always, and still quite prone to absences). In other completely unrelated news, holy week here in the Philippines has been hot and hotter and hotter still. It was spent with no issues whatsoever. With no beach, mountain or even slumber party vacation to speak of, I'm completely vulnerable to my condition. Also, I still don't have any jobs calling. No luck in securing a high-profile, nice-paying, status-building occupation as of yet. I know that's totally my fault, but I would just like to say. Damn you Jobstreet.com! *shakes fist* Okay, I'm gonna go slink away and suffer on my lonesome now. *grumbles*

[Sorian]

Shifting past some old memories (and picking up a few lessons along the way) Its currently 8:00 pm here. Hot as usual. It’s just hell on earth here in the Philippines nowadays, when nothing, save for the ever-reliable aircon unit can relieve you of the intense heat. Yesterday it clocked at 37 degrees, with the air becoming so arid that you’d literally sweat buckets before you manage to get within a hundred feet away from home. Not that home is of any comfort anyway. Tonight the mood is quite nostalgic, not because of the god-awful heat storm outside, but because of a literal timecapule I just opened, one in grave danger of impending deletion. Let’s roll back a few hours ago, back to around 3:00 pm. I was supposed to be writing a couple of Wikipedia-style articles right now, so I can finally land a job in one of the big-shot publishing companies I applied in. Feeling extremely bummed out and stressed because of the overpowering heat, instead of pushing and pulling and grinding myself into mopping up my work (managed to finish one out of three), I took a time-out and peered into my Facebook account’s news feed. I found several links and notifications which didn’t even begin to dent the armored sphere of my interest level; some game application requests, several cheesy status messages about broken hearts (courtesy of the multitude of teenage students proliferating my list) and a lot of tumblr-related posts. In short, nothing out of the ordinary for me. I was about to log out and continue working when I noticed a link posted by one of my college classmates. It’s a shared link from Yahoo! containing news of a mass deletion which is about to happen in Friendster, the largely-defunct social networking site that pioneered this damn particular internet craze. The news immediately tugged at my heartstrings and spurred me into action. I haven’t used Friendster in a very long time; the overwhelming superiority of Facebook simply did too much to make people abandon it. But the thought of all those years I had spent trying to accumulate testimonials for my ego’s gratification, something about those memories being deleted en masse with no hope of recovery made me really sad. So I went ahead and logged into a world which I have long decided to leave, my confidence broken in my foolish assumption that it will always be there, waiting for me. Visiting it was like roaming in a ghost town populated only by memories. Few, if any of my friends were still using their accounts, and as such they remained frozen in time, back to when life was still quite a bit less tense for everyone. The profiles inhabiting the news feed paraded many familiar, yet impossibly youthful faces, for most have been left as they were by their owners months, even years ago. To the right I saw that my joined groups hadn’t been updated since 2008, when it was still our main hub of activity. There is a bunch of games available which weren’t there during my last visit—an obvious attempt to stifle the user bleeding caused by Facebook. Not that I cared enough to try them anyway, for I have long outgrown games. My old blog is still there, still very much functional (for now), containing a treasure-trove of emotional write-ups reflective of the lower mental level I had two, three, even four or five years ago. Then I proceeded to wander around my profile page, which still sports a green-clad picture of me in a very girly posture. The music application I installed years ago, an mp3 player featuring a song by Within Temptation, started playing a very melancholic tune that played into my faded preference for such melodies. I remembered that I used to like gothic, dark-themed and operatic songs that fueled the shallow, youthful pains I cultivated, in contrast to my current taste for techno, hip-hop and dance songs that are upbeat and lively. The testimonials just above the mp3 featured several by my second (and last) girlfriend, as well as a few ones from younger versions of my college and highschool classmates. They were filled with many cheesy remarks, reminiscent of the aforementioned irritants I have to deal with on Facebook every day. It made me cringe somewhat, though the warm, sincere ones made me yearn for the sort of affection you could only get from a girl who loves you. Looking at my stored pictures, I couldn’t help but crack up a smile and feel quite ashamed of the stark differences between the old me and current me. The old one was (ironically) much younger and less stressed-looking, but he was still so immature and even buffoonish at times, always so unaware of his surroundings. He looked like a total geek, with little knowledge of the workings of life. He wore shirts that were too big for him, pants that were cut too low, and was rail-thin to boot, with hair that was only beginning to get sparser. Personality-wise he was an idealistic fool who believed that he had seen hell, when he hadn’t even experienced the inebriating effects of college life yet. Young David was someone who wanted everyone to listen to his stories, who unabashedly prodded people into replying to his unsolicited testimonials and messages at his personal pace, rather than on other people’s. He was childish and inconsiderate, thus everyone often tried their best to ignore him. He also tried to poke people into talking about the things he liked the most—romantic experiences involving him and his former girlfriends—by asking them about their own experiences. If there wasn’t any to be had, he kept his guard up for notifications that involved such happenings and then presented himself for a companion and a chat. It usually worked to his favor, but it tended to annoy people very much indeed, and he would often sulk when they berated him for it. Yet for all his flaws, I remember Young David as being a fresh breath of intellect for those who could understand his quirks and see them for his own honest intentions. He was caring and thoughtful to a fault, and could still afford to smile without a care in the world. He reveled in the foolish, but ultimately blissful ignorance of youth, deeming himself as capable of anything when he was so limited. Physically he was less well-built than I, but he had substantially better features, brandishing no scars, no wrinkles, and no frown lines. His skin was perfectly smooth; his eyes were good enough to go around without high-grade glasses hanging around his nose bridge. He had no interest in getting jobs yet because he still had the protective excuse of school tucked under his belt. Of course, it was a valid reason back then; he hadn’t conquered highschool and college yet, thus he could frolic around with friends whom I had long since lost contact with. He could communicate freely with his first and second girlfriends through testimonials and other tokens of affection. He hadn’t found any purpose in thinking ahead of everybody yet, which explains why he had so little to worry about. He could indulge himself in video games with little repercussion, and feed himself with ideas quickly because his memory wasn’t as impaired as mine is. And he was still very innocent, knowing little about the topics of sex, politics, and other evil things that have come to proliferate my mind. Lastly, he never stopped believing in the general goodness of people and the tired notion that life is simply a matter of playing games to pass it by. It was then that I realized something that didn’t help ease my longing for the years passed by. This David was a very different person from a very different time, preserved for my current perusal by Friendster. And the physical proof of this person’s existence is about to disappear forever. I have often told myself—and others—that I have come a very long way since those days, that I have shed many of the ‘impurities’ that inhabited me and transformed into a different person, a better person in general, so to say. I still feel very much superior to what I was, and I’d often rub my current achievements and talents in the face of those who would choose to remember my younger self in order to make me feel bad. But even though I have become a bit more successful and broad-minded in the years since, I fear that I wasn’t able to preserve many of the good qualities that Young David had. Gone was the general affectation he felt for others; the level of care he lavished on those he loved has been replaced by a far more cynical, far-less willing version, more mechanical and generalized than unique and specific. Now I can freely choose those I would like to care for, and I would still care very much for those select people. But then again, I won’t give a rat’s ass about the welfare of the general public, because their pains are their own, self-incurred problems. I tend to let others worry about their lives and then continue caring only about my own concerns. I had thought that to be a very cool thing for awhile; now I consider it to be a shame. I definitely don’t regret what I’ve developed into, for I’m not a monster, nor will ever have the guts to become one. But peering into this hidden, forgotten world made me see just how far I have actually come… And how far, in some respects, I have fallen. If I had been able to maintain the Younger David’s good qualities to mix with the knowledge and understanding that I can now utilize, who knows how many more friends I could have made, or retained. Maybe people would care about my shyke too, respect me more, love me more now. And maybe, just maybe, it’s not too late to reclaim those lost ideals. The original purpose of my visit to Friendster was left unachieved; I wanted to save those old pictures and blog posts before they are deleted forever. But now I’m considering leaving them as is, to let them disappear altogether. Now that Young David, who still lives in Friendster has reminded me of my current limitations and the idyllic things that I once possessed, maybe I don’t need to. He reminded me of a few lessons about myself that I hardly expected to come across again. Of course, I hope that this long-ass post might inspire some of you to rummage through ‘yourselves’ (AKA your old accounts). Who knows? Maybe you’d even find a piece of yourself that you thought was lost forever behind those humiliating college pictures and old lovey-dovey poses with your exes.

[Edalene]

Dave, just so you know...

I miss you!

[Sorian]

HOLY SCHNIT!!~ Koala burger attack!! We iz undr attack!! I call Lenincat! Dorkishness aside, I hope you're well, Kang-oala! --------------------------- NOTE: The following useless blog post was written last Thursday, June 23. It went unposted because: a) Dave wasn't working and left his crap at the office, and b) He's a dork. Stuck. As of now, 10:15 pm, I'm currently stuck at the office due to heavy rains and flooding. No food (curse you, KFC delivery!), no toothbrush, just me, my leather Arnold Schwarzenegger jacket and my broken down, slow-as-hell PC. But what hurts more is the fact that there is no overtime pay for this shenanigan. Ohoho yeah, pretty much sucks like that, but it's actually my fault for not being able to anticipate this dilemma and thus failing to sign the OT sheet. So yeah, been gone for awhile again. What else is new, eh? LOLCAT. If I had been complaining about a hectic lifestyle during my college days (and my, oh my, how far away they seem right now!), you are entitled to a one-way, one-time smack to the face, to be inflicted on yours truly. Because I had hardly expected to be thrust so deep into a 7 day-a-week stress and fatigue bonanza. I found work as an article / news / copywriter in a publishing corporation (YAY!), which means that my small-time skills in the field are actually made useful to mankind, specifically my fellow Filipinos. (courtesy of thepoc.net and filipiniana.net!) I get to write stuff about topics which I love, particularly Philippine history, and get to sit for 10 hours a day in front of a PC doing nothing but writing, writing and more writing. In shuffling back and forth between musing over convoluted thoughts, a still non-existent romance life and intermittent Ellie Goulding songs / Yeah Yeah Yeahs / Oasis songs, I've found myself quite satsfied. Of course, there's always the deadlines and the bad grammar checks and the bland, expensive food at the canteens to offset the great stuff I get (like, free books for making book reviews), but they're seriously dwarfed by the cool. "You hardly feel the effects of your work when you enjoy it." It's quite the cliche, but one that I now understand to be true. But of course, being human and fallible is something which cannot be overturned by a great life. When the process of writing and correcting and internet surfing is done and you're on your lonely way home, that's when the bad crap kicks in. Your head goes wheezy from staring straight into the light all day, your hands are sore from typing and writing, and your emotions are dry from having to listen to alternating sappy and cutesy unrequited love stories. Then, when the weekends come rolling by, you get treated to 11 hours of lectures and mock tests. Review time for the licensure examinations. To those whom I owe my attention and my affection, pardon me for being able to express the latter only in personal thoughts, and the former in very, very limited amounts. Being a non-multi-tasker and a very susceptible victim to stress and fatigue, I haven't had the time to be the fantasy writer that I long to be once more. Shoutout to the people I wuv and the people I super wuv. You know who you are. I'M STARING AT YOU. Like the lurker I am. <3

[Alice]

Hey, I'm glad you're doing something you love! This is about the sort of work I'd love to get one day, so I'm actually quite jealous of you. There will always be extremes though... (mine is the lack of serious obligations right now) I hope you still enjoy what you do and have faith that you'll find enough time for Mizahar and writing your own stuff again. And sometimes... you just have to take your time doing this instead of waiting for it to arrive.

Not sure what's the best thing to do in your case (or if anything can be changed at all), but I wanted to get that out to let you know that I still love to read your stuff and wait for your full return.