Damsel in Distress - or not.

When in UP

Earlier today was my first day at UP SOLAIR for SY 2013-2014, as I am finally taking up major subjects for the master’s degree proper (currently on my 3rd year). As always, first days of every semester drag me into a spin of unkempt, mixed emotions. But the most empowering among these emotions is that proud feeling, the one that keeps you on the highest of high, believing that someday, your dreams will chase you back relentlessly. The giddy feeling that makes me believe that what I’m doing - wasting time and money going to class on weekends - makes full sense, bridging in some personal gaps caused by immaturity and inexperience.

So to ensure that I will be paying UP back for making me believe that all aren’t really lost, here are some academic and personal resolutions I am bound to observe for the next n-days:

1. I will study like I mean it. Why? Because there’s just no other way.

2. I will manage time like its my last chance to finish two incomplete subjects —which is totally a fact of life I am currently burdened by. This is my last chance to ensure that my former mistake of not finishing one semester will no longer be repeated or aggravated or whatever.

3. I will become a little proud. Since I was told that the problem with me is that I look down on myself a lot, this time, just for a change, I will become more confident. I think I have sufficient intellectual capacity to accomodate a labyrinth of cognitive intricacies (lol) and I can do a lot of things independently. I am hardworking and when I work, I always give my 100%. I can write and that is one true love I am planning to pursue for the next 100 years of my life. Whew, I am not used to such bragging pleasure, but I will sure try. lol

4. I will not go with the flow. I will not let myself go down the drain just because of the recent turn of events. I will not be mean just to be in uniform with the approximate mainstream. I will listen to my mother who keeps on telling me that God is the answer to all my uncertainties. I will not comply with the ways of the world even though sometimes, being bad becomes the hippest fad. I am sticking to my values and morals. Yes, I’m corny.

5. I will still dream no matter what. I will work hard and pray harder. The road ahead is unchartered and rough, I feel it now, actually…but I literally commute three hours everyday, so I know I can manage to surpass whatever intangible bump there will be …because I know myself and I am notorious for being overly patient.

This semester, I am feeling that I will do good, if not better. My teachers in my two subjects seem to be truly “at it” and are very pleasing, which is what I like most about UP Solair. The faculty radiates the real essence of a healthy and cooperative industrial relations, where power-tripping is just a word and where being humane, and developing human resources are among its core requirements. Love it.

This semester is already giving me some colorful vibes. So its all a matter of strengthening the consistency, I guess.

For the win!

Dear Amanda Bynes,

Thank you for disturbing my thoughts these past few days. Its just so hard to believe that you’re all over the news with your clinically-crazy tweets and your overwhelming marijuana-fix. Its just so hard to swallow because we belong to the same era. I was among those who had a hard time moving on from “What a Girl Wants”. It was among my favorite romcom movies, you know. That movie never gets old, really…never fails to sweep me off my feet as I re-watch that canoe scene where you and Oliver shared THAT knee-melting kiss.

But now, all I am seeing are your half-naked “selfie” pictures, surgically-enhanced breasts, strange wigs, and your favorite weeds…not to mention your wild-goose chase with the cops. It was really hard to believe. Now, all we see in you is the personification of a sad, “downward spiral”.

Whatever happened to you? No one could fathom that easily because you now seem to live in your own lost private world. But what gets to me is the horrifying fact that it happened, that something so unthinkable like that is very possible in real life. What could have caused this erratic behavior you’re showing everyone is a big mystery that is just sorely alarming.

Its pathetic how disturbed I have gone through your media circus. I know its funny but you were once my feel-good movie. But your latest courtroom appearance was more like a reminiscent of “The Walking Dead” than that teenybopper who ran away from home to have the time of her life in England.

Now you seem to be lost. It was like the doom of a certain era I once belonged.

Sad, right?

To Each His Own

Sometimes, no matter how much you think you are learning and growing maturely, there are still some major things that you miss out in life. Sometimes, you feel like you’ve become wiser beyond your years only to find out how dimwitted you act on the simplest predicament you are faced with. Like you would just have to throw a dialogue saying, “should have known better”. And the reason for your misfortune lies with the fact that, subconsciously, you only play smart most of the time, like some major role-play you have been doing your entire life.

Okay, I know I’m being melodramatic again. BUT I COULDN’T CARE LESS ANYMORE.

The enormity of the recent events in my life had swallowed me whole that I know I need to stop, rethink, and decide on how to truly live. There’s no walk in the park anymore with people in your life you thought will never leave you behind – the people you’ve invested too much of your care and love to, and yet you get by with nothing in return.

Yes. Unfortunately, this post is about people.

For most of my life, I have been giving my 100% on dealing carefully with people. I am not entirely a people-person but I always make sure that I am humane to everyone; it has somehow become automatic in my system that is truly hard to get rid off. Even my line of work from past to present involve required adeptness at dealing with people, from the nicest ones down to the ones whose rudeness and disrespect are just beyond words.

You can say that my life involves much on humanity because I believe too much in fairness, justice, and lest we forget, karma. I have become that person who has been striving to get the best karma possible by means of giving all the respect, care, and love to anyone who needs it.

But karma is playing lazy sometimes.

This is especially true with friendships. I have been a strong believer of friendships. You can say that I love my friends and I am the kind who really expresses it in words no matter how corny I might sound to them. I am never shy in telling them how I feel – how I love them and how I will do just about everything I could for them. It’s not like I am super friendly, because I am really not that type.  I have few true friends primarily because I want it that way – that certain control and regulation over the people you are willing to give your whole friendship to. There’s just no room in my life for superficial friendships, period.

But just like in the movies, there will always come a time, some sort of a soul-searching moment when your life will take a short pause as it lets you watch these people in your life leave you behind, in one full-color slow-motion sequence.

But you would deny. That’s always the initial reaction, of course. You would pretend you’re okay despite this recent scene where they deliberately broke your heart. This exact scene where the helping hand you were in dire need of at that moment would just disappear into thin air all because all along, they consider you insufficient, and is not there to “their level” yet.

But you love them too much, so you would skip all these stages of grief by leaping all the way to forgiveness and acceptance. You’d deliberately forget your pride and hurt because some predicaments had already followed and you know that they need you and the least thing they need is your unnecessary drama. So all along you think you’re already okay. And you actually thought that’s how swiftly life works.

But life will just slap you one day to tell you you’re dead wrong. That isn’t how it works, and that “okay” feeling you thought you already have is just a fleeting impulse due to your love for friends. The pain will just come back without warning, like one dead silent moment when you realize how prematurely you have given your thumbs up over their uber-friendshipneverends gesture.

So now you’re left with that enduring pain about being left behind while everyone else has become accustomed to your being “okay”. AWKWARD, yes. But care is the farthest thing I am willing to give right now.

This, unfortunately, is my current life story.

But there’s one learning experience I have taken away from this sad story. Good thing there’s actually something to consider a lesson afterall. I have learned to never put your faith in other people. Never ever invest on that category because eventually, you’ll be proven wrong no matter how much you believe with all your heart that you’re right. You only have to put your faith in God. You only put your faith in your love for your family. Be faithful to those that will automatically be there for you – those that you no longer need to work hard in caring for them 100% just so they could consider you someone that “could be helped and cared for”.

Heartbreaking yes, but speaking from experience, that’s how things work.

Nothing Like Summer



So that was my four-day weekend swiftly flashing by, leaving my term paper on School to Work Transition perfectly untouched, without a single paragraph created, and  worse, not even a single idea to begin with. That’s how detrimental my laziness becomes whenever I go home to Paniqui. I tried to push my luck four days ago, thinking, or maybe forcing myself to believe that I have a deadline to beat, that my future is at stake here, but here I am, clinging to this very least distraction of writing this blog entry. Funny, or not.

So instead of having the sanity to go write my term paper, I thought of writing down the resolutions I am to take this Summer 2013. Here they go:

• FINISH THE INCOMPLETE. It was only few weeks ago when my chronic laziness has finally taken its toll on me. I was told that I won’t be graduating this summer because of my 2 INC subjects and one penalty subject for failing to complete in two years the diploma part of the master’s degree. That was hardcore reality slapping my face nonstop up
until I went out of the College Secretary’s room.  That was just sooo unfair, right? Imagine enrolling one major subject, which won’t even be credited, as penalty for being lazy. But as I have previously mentioned, my future is at stake here. SO YES I HAVE NO CHOICE: thesis proposal, policy paper, and annotated bibliography—to beat the heat this summer.

• TRIM DOWN. Yes, yes, and yes! I will make sure that my P14K paid for gym enrollment will not go down the drain for nothing. I have done it, I lost 5 pounds already! For a girl who never seems to lose weight, 5 pounds is already an accomplishment! Haha. It’s just that things have been a little overwhelming these past few months, blah, blah, blah, and other excuses. So, I am promising myself that this April, I will bring the sexy back! Lol. Welcome back treadmills, circuit trainings, no-rice-low-carb diet, and late nights at the gym. Whew!

•  EARN, EARN, and THRIFT DOWN. God has been so good! Mommy, auntie dada and I were talking, make that “dreaming”, earlier about finally building a house for mommy and daddy. So we were planning of talking Uncle Arthur into selling his share on the parcel of land they own in Carapdapan since he already lives in Bulacan with his family. I felt so giddy-up by the mere sound of a house we can finally call, “our own”. I already asked Auntie Dada to talk to Uncle Arthur about it, when, by mischief of fate, right at that moment, his wife, Auntie Arlyn and my cousins came knocking at our door to visit us. You know how it feels when the timing seems so right? That was what I immediately felt the time I saw them. And as if on cue, Auntie Dada was already talking to Uncle Arthur on the phone, and YES, he agreed to sell it! WHEN GOD PERMITS, WE ARE FINALLY OWNING A HOUSE SOOOOOOOONNNNNN! :)

•  READ for PLEASURE. My pending reading materials are already full to the brim that most of them no longer fit into my portion of our book shelf in Greenwoods. I dunno,  but I am always like that, I always leave my books undone. I’m not sure if it’s a personality disorder or whatever but I get tired easily, and the high I feel in all Chapter 1’s of every book are always too much, that my expectations ruin the thrill of reading the succeeding chapters of the book. But this summer, I’m into being teenybopper by finishing Wicked and Catching Fire.

• MEET SOMEONE NEW. Err, make that reunite with my former workmates and classmates I haven’t seen in a while now.  And maybe, use them so I can meet someone new. Kidding. Its funny how cynical you can get when you’re that twenty-something bordering into “hopeless”. However it works, I need to see people more.

• HIT THE BEACH? Could be. But how can I do that when I need to thrift down, finish my school requirements, and punish myself at the gym? Haha

So its hello summer for us! Its one of the most rapid seasons of the year but the mere thought of it psyches everyone even if it means squeezing into skimpy summer dresses and rocking those flat abs caused by barely breathing. Haha. Summer is about bringing back the glory days of the young wild and free, so they say! Haha. And even though the countdown above looks nothing like summer, I am still oh so excited! :) 

Broken

Sometimes, no matter how determined you are to keep it all together, things in your life seem to blow really out-of-proportion. Even if you’re the kind that will try the hardest to save the day, the farthest role you get to snag sometimes is that hopeless damsel in distress. And the only possible thing you’re left to do is to wait for things to get better.

See, my family and I have been forever strifed with health issues. Always, without fail. It has somewhat become a daily routine we had to endure. I would even jokingly tell my mother, “inani mo naman na ang lahat ng sakit, me!” She’d had numb or excruciating back pains one day, another harrowing ache in her recently-operated breasts on the other day, and then overly sore throat the day after that. That’s how the days of my mother roll. Not to mention my father, whose life he had pledged to this chronic disease called diabetes. Whose once chubby physique was eaten by the disease and who also has equally-painful episodes of diabetic complications.

And then the role you have to play everyday as the only child of legal age is to ensure that you have a sound and healthy body and mind so you could earn a living and help your parents get through with everyday necessities. That despite your employment limitations, you need to earn just so you have something to share for medical checkups, among other things. That despite the lurking fact that your current job is plagued with uncertainties, you need to make things work.

I am keeping the faith, that’s for sure. Because essentially, that’s all I have at the moment. Sometimes, I have occasional surges of self-assessment and what I seem to find are gray areas, hazy soliloquies and unfulfilled personal happiness. But at the moment, self-centeredness is very very unecessary. When you have an ailing mother and a father who is striving hard to earn a living despite his equally-feeble health, thinking about your own happiness is a misnomer.

I just believe that God will finally shed my tears someday. I am also holding on to the sweet promise that the best is yet to come. That even if the people I have around seem to have it all, seem to have everything going on their way, I will have the same someday.

Right now, I’m sure God is forgiving me for being burdened by the recent turn of events. I know that He hears and feels me all the same.

That’s how I get by, everyday.

heres to all the kids who have never found their name on anything in a souvenir store

sodamnrelatable:

Made my day. So true! Never really found my name eversince. Haha

(Source: realitybl0ws)