Drama Is Not Exclusive To LJ

Tainting the new blog with drops of emo wasn't in the plan. I was trying my darndest to stay as far away from that topic as possible. But tonight, because I wanted a no-qualms audience while I fumble for words, I have decided to use this channel the way it was meant to be used, as a personal emotional toilet, without the convenience of a flush.

Like the song goes, it's my party and I'll cry if I want to. Be warned though, this may be the most gag-inducing entry in this blog as of present. That is, here in Blogspot. LJ posts still top the list of things that can make Elmo want to slash his wrist.

After all that intro, I'd hate to disappoint. Let's get on with the crying, shall we?

Before the boohoos, I apologize for the LJ putdown. I do not hate LiveJournal nor do I dislike it. I have an account, actually. But for tonight, it is precisely the reason for my wanting to take an emotional dump.

There are things in life that tear you apart, and once damaged, you will never be the same again.

As for me, what caused irreparable damage was getting a close look at my current flame's brighter flames. (wipe your frowns away please) In less dramatic words, I've read several years worth of very public LJ entries of two people madly and passionately in love, and wrote about it daily for the world to see. Their flames burned so bright that it was awe-inspiring in its grandeur. And because I had an insider's point of view, watching from the sidelines as they professed their burning love for each other, as if I was with them while the fire was very much alive, I was burned.

It's as if watching a chick flick of your partner paired up with perfection. Say for example, the sappy The Notebook. If you've seen it, you'd know that the movie revolves around the story of the characters, Noah and Allie. They fell in love when they were young, and although certain events drove them apart, their love for each other never went away. They eventually ended up together despite all the obstacles. And when they were older, Noah patiently stayed by Allie's side reading her their love story day by day, as she whiles away with Alzheimer's disease, not remembering herself, more so the people around her. It is a beautiful story of fiery love, enduring love, unending love.

It is unbearably sweet, but in line with the analogy; your man is Noah, you're not Allie and you have front row tickets to watch them be mesmerized by each other.

That is how knowing past intimate details feels like. That knowledge has created for me my own personal monster; it eats me, gnaws at my strength, nibbles away my confidence, creeps up on me, shows up its ugly head in the most inopportune moments, and I hate it. I'm beginning to hate myself for it too.

The funny thing about all this is that I have been accused often enough, by a number of people, of being distant, aloof, and even uncaring at times. I AM distant, aloof, and uncaring at times. In all honesty, this being greatly affected by the past, it's a very new and scary thing for me. It is extremely frustrating, because for once in my life, I cannot keep these unruly emotions in check.

2008

I have decided to make this year's resolutions a bit more specific. So this time next year, I will be able to assess what I've accomplished and what I have again postponed to do. Here we go.

Resolution # 1. Study for the GMAT, take and pass the exam.
    - I have been postponing this for so long. This year, i resolve to stop procrastinating and start studying. Sabi nga ng shirt ni Jin, "Procrastinators of the world... Unite! ... tomorrow."

Resolution # 2. Stop being sarcastic.
    - This has always been a bad point of mine. Being sarcastic to the point of offending people. I will be more conscious of this and try offending less people this year. Example: When gawach says he will quit smoking after his baby is born, I will not roll my eyes and retort, "How long after?"

Resolution # 3. Believe in life and love.
    - I am a pessimist. The cup is so half empty. And someone will probably spill whatever is left. The dog maybe. Whose poop I just stepped on. With my new high-heeled shoes. On my way to the big meeting. Which I'm already late for. Because I did not wake up on time. The damn alarm clock was set to 5pm instead of 5am. Who set it? Me. So where was I? Oh so for 2008, I will be less of a pessimist and try to believe that life can blossom and love will save the day. Someone hand me a barf bag.

Resolution # 4. Invest.
    - The stock market scares me. Basically because I don't know/get anything about it. I promise to ask people about this and start investing money. Also this will make me stop splurging on food. Which will result to me eating less. Which will result to me not getting fatter. So, in all, this is a win-win situation. When my stocks increase, I will celebrate and eat in my favorite restaurant. For 8 weeks.

Resolution # 5. Sleep more.
    - Target is to sleep at an average of 6 hours per day. Kahit 4 hours pag weekdays, tas 11 hours on Fridays and Saturdays. Basta the weekly snooze time should be 42 hours. Why? Because, life is short. And I shouldn't make it shorter.

stealing the sparkle.

Yes, I am blogging again.

I'm not really a true blue writer. I don't have dreams of writing professionally or commercially. But I do enjoy writing from time to time. I get moments when the thoughts inside my head simply have to be translated into words, into phrases or stanzas, into sentences, paragraphs, chapters. Sometimes it seems that my brain wants to spit out something, and it knows that I am not a good talker (*cough* terrible actually *cough). So it finds another output channel, which is writing (really it's typing cause It's been a while since I last held a pen to write long paragraphs)  

And even though I write occasionally, I can't say I'm an exceptionally good writer. It's just, my mind translates its ideas into words. Sometimes the words don't even make sense. Like, there's no glue to hold the ideas together. But what the hey, it wasn't meant to be understood by those who can't. So for those who read, and understand what I mean, congratulations, and thanks for taking the time to read my words, for those who cant, it's perfectly all right, even I don't understand what I'm writing from time to time.

All that shit i just typed? It was all meant to lead to the fact that I haven't written in such a long time. Bleh, okay fine, I update this journal sometimes about stuff that goes on in my life. What I meant was that I haven't had an interesting idea for a storyline or even an article in sooo long. The last interesting one I can remember was a short story about the Undead, where i was able to write an outline of the story, and several paragraphs but never got to polish the story. My heart just wasn't in it anymore, even though when I first got that idea; the sagging skin, glassy eyes, unbearable stench, and slow slur of the Undead was as clear as day in my head. But now, it's just all feels like some foggy illusions of the distant past. My passion for writing has died.

Which can't be good, can it? I may be the first non-writer to have non-writer's block. What the hell happened to creativity? Whatever happened to inspiration? Years ago, inspiration came from even the most simple things, like a stain on the carpet that is sort-of shaped like a witch with a wart on her nose if you squint your eyes just a teensy bit and tilt your head at a certain angle. Lately, when I see a stain, my eyes just fade into dull gray and I just think, "Oh, that needs to be washed." Eeeeyuck, how boring is that? Have I become too jaded? Where is that little girl who used to dream of one-eyed dragons and rainbow-maned unicorns and fluffy little balls of koosh in electric pink and candy yellow? Where is that girl who used to grin in amazement at the sunset when the sky turned into a shade of cotton candy pink or when it turned into that specatular mix of midnight blue and happy orange. Where is she that waited for the full moon to come to simply stare at the clear and perfectly rounded white against a backdrop of night grey sprinkled with stars that winked merrily? Where is she that tirelessly mixed oil crayons to get the perfect shade of lavander just to color the unicorn's horn?

Where is she? Is she being pushed back by the exceptionally strong tandem of sarcasm and cynicism? Is she still fighting for survival? Or has she died completely, forgotten and decaying? ><

sometimes you just have to read between the lines..

I've never been good at getting to the point.

And people have told me quite a few times. Sometimes jokingly, other times seriously, sometimes politely and other times rudely. And I do sort of agree, time comes when I've opened my mouth to speak and then in the middle of it all; i stop, pause, and think: "What the hell did that thing-I-just-said have to do with what I'm really trying to say??"

I'm not sure, perhaps because growing up, I never had to explain myself completely to others. People around me always seemed to understand what I was trying to get at, so I didn't have to try very hard at making them understand.

You know those people that nod in agreement in the middle of a 'kwento' session and even before you can finish it off, they offer their conclusion to your intro? and if you say "it's not that.." they offer another possible conclusion.. and that goes on until you agree at some point? Well, i think i had a lot of those people growing up, up to now even. Hence, i seldom got to finish my own stories. Except in my mind. Sometimes it's all formed coherently and quite nicely inside my head but when i open my mouth, all coherence comes crashing down. Open mouth, insert foot situations are normal occurrences.

Add to that, the hesitance i have about sharing true emotions. That personal space bubble? Mine's a whole lot bigger than Bubbleboy's. Made bigger by certain circumstances that involved trusting too much and getting a kick in the arse, a blow to the head, a pitchfork on the back. But I am learning to be a tad bit more open though, little by little. Baby steps. Baby steps and i'll get there.

Coz i'm slowly realizing that while some people are dirtbags, others are okay. Nice even. But i'll never be the person who spills her guts out to the person she just met a week ago, i can't be the person who can be close buddies with a person she'd just met that day, i'm not the type who'd gush about feelings too openly. Even if we've known each other for a bit of time, I won't necessarily bare my heart and mind and soul to you.

So you know.. the things I'm not saying? Get it.
:P

Do We Overpamper Ourselves?

I took a sort of personality test a few months back in a seminar where you get to measure the importance you give to different aspects of your life. The highest percentage I got was for the ‘self-pampering’ bit. Apparently, I give more importance to me and my happiness more than I give importance to family, religion, love, friends, career et al. What’s even more surprising was that there were a whole lot more of us who had this result and there were just a handful of those who gave the highest importance to career or family or religion. So now the question that has popped in my head quite a few times already is: Are we overindulging ourselves?

We buy clothes/shoes/accessories we don’t need, eat food we don’t need, drink drinks we don’t need, watch movies we don’t need, get massages we don’t really need. Quite regularly we spend too much for stuff we don’t need. You get what I mean? No? Well, all I’m trying to say is that I’ve just recently taken myself out of the box, and looking at my life from the outside, I see myself one day eating bread and drinking coffee that I bought for three times its actual cost. And I wasn’t even that hungry, I just wanted bread and coffee. And boy, I can name other instances like this.

This day and age, every damn thing is overpriced. And three most blatant examples of overpricing in my opinion are bread, movies, and coffee.

Bread: Why are there sosy bakeries everywhere nowadays? I say sosy because I believe try to create that impression. They advertise fluffy, freshly-baked bread in a delightful array of flavors.

Cost: P50/piece give or take.
Frequency: Once in a while. I admit I love them, and I used to hate bread.

Movies: They’ve added everything to give you the whopping movie experience you can ever have. THX, Dolby, a little ambiance, good food, good seats, uh-huh the works, baby. It doesn’t hurt that there are new films once a week, great for business. And add to the cost, the popcorn, tacos, nachos, burgers, hotdogs, sodas, juices and other junk food.

Cost: P200.00 give or take.
Frequency: Roughly once a week. Even movies like Catwoman don’t stop me.

Coffee: They have cappuccinos, frappuccinos, mochaccinos, and all those other ‘ccinos’. Whatever happened to good old black coffee? Underneath all those layers of sugar, cream, milk, mocha, cinnamon, chili (ok, maybe not chili), is that wondrous flavor from that little black coffee bean.

Cost: P100.00 give or take.
Frequency: Daily. Yes, caffeine is addicting, and don’t argue.

Why are they overpricing? Well, there is business where there are dividends. They go on with their business profiting as much as they do because we buy from them. We get sucked into the vortex of shameless overpricing. And for what? For ourselves? For our happiness? Bull.

We put much emphasis on our indulgences, we nonchalantly pay for stuff like these because we want to, we enjoy it, and we can. But another question is, should we? While there are others who can barely make ends meet, and others still whose ends can never meet at all, do we deserve to indulge ourselves regularly? (and that’s another story altogether) Looking at the whole nine yards, I feel guilty sometimes. One, because I pamper myself too much; and two, because there are others out there who cannot and I’m not doing anything about it. But the good of it all, things can change. I’m not sure I’ll be buying any of those crappyccinos anytime soon.