Gratitude Post

A lot of good things are happening in my life right now.

I had my thesis defense yesterday and passed with flying colors. And the good thing is, I am now one of the candidates for best thesis. It was all worth it after all. Next thing in sight is to actually win the best thesis award.

My grades are better than ever. My journalism 101 tabloid output made the highest grade in the roster. My fiction midterm examinations went very well and my Spanish is not bad.

David and I are closer than ever and this weekend, we'll go out again. Second date. My ultimate inspiration from all the adversities I faced while writing the last few pages of my thesis. And did I tell you that David is a Korean? Yes, he is, and his reputation precedes him. He's not what you think.

Turns out, Spire has a lot of cash from accumulated funds over the years. I may reward myself some incentives from it. And we'll be having a meeting with the BAC about the preference of the printing press. Under my care, Spire '13 may and will be CMYK.

My Esteban Javellana applications are going quite well. Highest writing award in the University. Fingers crossed.

I'm 116 pounds and more confident than ever all because of how David makes me feel about myself.

I can sleep now now that my thesis is done.

David (the guy I was talking about in my last post) and I went out today and one of our conversations was about this song. Apparently, he knows how to play it and loves the lyrics.

And that is not just what we have in common. We basically wore the same outfit, matching colors from the shirt, shoes and bag without us planning about it. We both don't know how to cook but love to eat a lot. We both consider coffee a vital aspect of life. Both want to be professors. Both go to state funded schools. Both are minimalist. Both love simple pleasures in life. Both love pizza. Both chill and cool. So we totally looked like a couple out there today.

Unlike other friendly dates I've been to, this one is the most...expensive? No. This one is the date where I went home so tired but still very much enjoyed the whole thing. Haha.

I admit. I'm a little into him now. Let's see if we'll have a second night out.

New Manifesto on Love

"Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final."
Rainer Maria Rilke

The thing is I don't even know how I feel about this. There have been people who took interest in me, made me feel giddy and surreal, but they were fleeting fondness and attraction. Some lingered but eventually left me hanging in mid-air. Now I don't have any expectations. I don't assume things. I don't have standards or borders and anything in between.

But then, love comes knocking again and again. And I try not to fall for ephemeral romances. But this one, this one at the present, is out of the way --- it is different.  It has only been three days since we met and I have felt a whirlwind of emotions. Maybe because he's different and our differences make everything exciting. I can't imagine where this is going. Maybe this will just be a fling, or a week-long love affair. But what I can tell is that I love his skew text messages,  how he calls me "lady", how he booked the weekends of my February, his taking interest in the minute details of my life.

And it all started with the way he set his eyes on me whenever I looked away.

Am I really showing signs of imminent spinsterhood?

My best friend told me that I am. And I still can't get over it. Oh, my sadness just escalated all of a sudden. I need a half day to take this.

What's wrong with postponing relationship until I find someone right for me? I have accepted courtship from people before but it never turned into anything substantial because it just didn't feel right and I don't want to mess with people's feelings.

And the fact is, I'm very busy and will be very busy in the next couple of months. I don't really have time to fall in love.

But then Jay's remark just slapped me in the face.

It hit me that I am are getting to that age where it’s downright bizarre that I’ve never been in a "serious" relationship before. 

Of course, I want to fall in love, be someone's girlfriend, do those things couples do. I want to know how to love someone so completely without being crippled with anxiety. I want to get over whatever it is that’s holding me back from achieving this but I also have to face the reality that I might not ever figure it out.

I'm literally crying in this part.

People do end up alone. It happens. Months turn into years and all of a sudden you’re the one who never found love. I’m at a crossroads. Either figure it out now or get used to living life alone. Love is like a muscle and if you don’t use it, you’re going to forget how to do it. You’re going to forget how to love and then you’re going to be forgotten.

I seriously don't know what to think or do right now. I'm just so pathetic.

My Tumblr

Weep and Wallow

I just knew that my crush has a girlfriend.

This is a sad, sad day.

Nothing to do here. Must go to bed and weep and wallow in self-pity.

Nagarao Captured

These are photos to be included in my photo essay assignment in Journ 101. I hope I'll get the grade. Wish me luck!

Auld lang Syne

I am a series of small victories and large defeats and I am as amazed as any other that I have gotten from there to here. - Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last 

I am excited for the New Year.

Why, you ask?

I will (have to) finish my thesis some time on the second week of January; my internship on February. And with these wrapped up and written on my Application for Graduation forms, I will finally be legitimized to graduate.

I will graduate on March. The four years of hard work, tears and feats for an English degree will rest its case. And I may or may not graduate with a laude status.

I will move to a place of my own after graduation. And that’s where my own life as an independent miss will start.

I will take a Master’s degree in English Literature, as to where, I’m still haven’t made a choice between UP and my school.

I’m going to look for a writing or a teaching job or a call center stint. It’ll be painful but the bills have to be paid.

I will have to survive each day with ramen noodles and canned sardines until my first salary.

And continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire through the many novels that I will finally be able to read because I will have more time for it. Maybe some Bukowski and Cheryl Strayed.

More books, more music, morning coffee and afternoon tea.

More unplanned trips and adventures with friends new and old.

What more?

I have no idea. And anything is possible. Every good and bad.

But I will be okay. Okay is almost always where I will eventually land, even if I fuck up entirely along the way.

Happy New Year!

Photo 

Drifting Apart

This is really what happens, you know.

Friends leave. People do get distant. My sister warned me about this.

It’s not that I’m trying to drift away and let the friendship break down. Things change. People change. We have nothing to talk about anymore and this saddens me. The silent treatment, awkward talks, the disinterest to see each other, yes, I couldn't quite believe it myself but it has happened to us. And even though we drifted apart, in those short, random moments in your life, I hope that you remember those amazing moments we had. It can’t be the same every day. That is why the best days are always the memories.

We will be okay. Knowing you, knowing us, we will get by, and I'm afraid to say, we already did.

December 26

The 26th of December came and went but it has changed me so profoundly that I consider this as a new life.

It rained the entire morning, in heavy downpour, rain hammered our roofs. Our parents were out and being the old sister, I was responsible for the entire household. Imagine the burden on me when flood started to rise and entered our gates. I had to save my brothers and our possessions. I did my share of lifting – TV sets, encyclopedias, couch, tables, everything. Our dogs, Pau-pau and Ericson, were perched on the jeep. Paul stayed on the penetralium of our terrace while Jam-jam and her puppies had to be evacuated upstairs. Mom came and Dad and I felt safe but then the flood rose very quickly. By six p.m. the waters were 5 ft. deep.

We stayed in the second floor of our house but there was a fear in me, what if the waters rise so high and reach us?

I stayed up until 1 a.m. like a watchdog. Checking the water level every fifteen minutes. Making sure I’ll be able to save my dogs if ever the waters reach the roof of the jeep, but it didn’t. I was trembling in both cold and fear and images of my entire family perched on our roof, our things being soaked in the flood and our dogs drowning.

The waters continued to rise and friends started to check up if I’m okay, if I’m alive after they heard the news that the entire city was flooded, blacked-out. I cried out of fear.

I can say that my entire life flashed before me. Emotional trauma?

Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of things and experiences that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Since then, I have changed, drastically. Of the ways, I still can’t explain but I know something clicked within, and I am changed. After that flood I don’t want to go back. How do you watch something slowly disappear? How do you cope with it? I realized that you lose and lose and keep on losing. So much leaked out of me. There is an indifference, a selfishness, an insensitivity in me that was so ugly I cannot bear to confront it or even admit it and I saw it that night, in the dark, my feet cold and in pain.

GPS for the Soul

I have severe sunburns all over my body. The skin on my back suffers the worst that any inadvertent contact inflicted upon it could reduce me into a howling cat. I have minor scratches in different areas of my body from ascending upon enormous rocks, from climbing in and out of pump boats and trailing rock-strewn shorelines. The bruise on my left leg is the size of my own fist and it has caused me so much pain throughout the whole getaway to Nagarao Island. But you know what, dear reader, I don’t regret anything about the trip and in my mind the whole time I was having bittersweet moments was the line, “I cannot rest from travel, I must enjoy life to lees.”

This line is from Odyssey and this line is with me, in my heart, every single time I go places. One thing I am grateful for this year is the rounds of travels and going-to-places. Traveling is dear to me, for, I feel that when I travel, I am the truest, and simplest me - unknowest, blithe and completely in the moment. That I can be anything and anyone I want to be because I am both magnificent and insignificant at the same time. My mind wanders, my feet roams and my soul meanders into the vastness – may it be a light-pollution free starry sky or a sunrise that soften the faces of people I see, or getting lost then finding the right direction. I find the most relaxing and healing images are totally free and readily available in nature. Whether it’s a flower in bloom or a flock of birds frolicking in the wind, nature has a way of slowing me down and bringing my body, mind and spirit into the present moment.

And so the quote.

And so is the dream.

That when I’m done with school --- I will go places near and far. It can be a country on the other side of the world, or a river in another town. I know life can be demanding but I will take every opportunity to travel. I choose to travel.

Because when I’m old, I will not remember sitting on my desk, I will remember that roller-coaster, near death bus ride going to Antique. I will remember the huge, heavy waves while island hopping in Nagarao that almost turned our boat upside down – which also induced tears from my peers and a whole lot of gut-tickles for me. I will remember sliding into the zip line in Camp Alfredo, and getting very close to finishing the obstacle course. The wonderful, reckless and careless fun I had in Boracay’s night life. The first time I wore a bikini in Guisi. The mangga eating contest in Guimaras. The bonfire in Ajuy. The profound silence in Baguio’s lush forests and Bacolod’s old houses and ruins…

I’m still uncertain about what to do in this life but what I know for sure is that I’m getting there.

Just so in traveling. It’s always uncertain. But whatever comes my way or wherever my fate takes me in life, I know that I have my own GPS – my heart, nothing else.

(I’m being very romantic but these feelings are true nonetheless.)

Quick Things

My mum and Justin are coming over tonight so I will do some cleaning. Must show real independence.

Yoga for thrity minutes after that.

Then will write thesis again for an hour.

My Spanish teacher is one of the hottest women I've seen in person.

I deleted my Tumblr blog after having realized that I might as well devote the time I spend reblogging stuff into reading and writing.

I am knocked down, tired and in love with the possibilities of blooming romance. Could this be something?

Spire et al.

I miss writing here.

Life has been very busy for the last few months and since then I can barely breathe from all the activities I had been and have been involved with. I love being busy though. It keeps me happy and I feel useful. Though tired, but still useful.

Only that I haven't went out running for like a month now. I need to get back on yoga and exercising. Will start tomorrow.

Also, we are moving from this apartment to somewhere cheaper. It'll be temporary though. I will only be staying in the new boarding house or apartment for the next three months until I graduate. After that, then I will decide where to actually stay for the next few years of being truly independent.

I love being in Spire. Not only because I have a crush on someone in USCC (though this makes everything exciting) but because I love being a leader, being the boss. Finally, there is an avenue for me to give all my best, my creativity and energy. I can say that unlike in FD, here I can finally produce an output that is out of my own ideas, untarnished by others and the people here look up at me and think I'm that awesome. I hope I can live up to their expectations, I know I can and though we are just halfway through the release of Spire '13, I can definitely say that everything's working out fine and they like me. That's a great incentive.

There's a shift in my indulgement in the romantic aspect of my life. I kind of like the attention though. And just tonight great things happened, yeah, I'll stop here. I'm not keeping my hopes up here though. I don't want to be disappointed. I'm happy now and if something good comes out of this, I'll let you know.

As I've said, I'm freaking out with stuff to do so I'm just gonna end here and write something of substance tomorrow, that is, if my schedule will allow me.

I miss you.

Falling Slowly

Dear You, 

Almost a month ago, I saw you and I had this impression, in that instant, that I would know you. Really, deeply know you. And that the person I'd been in love with for all those years --- the person I'd thought I was swimming towards --- well, I'd confused him with you. But I didn't know that and I couldn't know that because I hadn't yet met you. And then all of the sudden there you were. there you are. A slow, long glance across the room, across the table, beside me, closer and closer, as I fall for you, hard.

Will You Catch Me?

Kate

On Duty

Me and Annie on duty at the Capitol. We are interns at the Public Information and Community Affairs Office. Our work includes perusing the daily publications to find news about the Governor and everything that concerns the province. We issue certificates of appearance to public officials that come to the capitol. We write articles to be published on the State of the Province. We also do interviews with public officials. Co-write with journalists and do voice recordings for campaigns and advertisements. 

Pierced at Long Last

Remember when I told you that the only bucket list entry from the past semester that I haven't fulfilled yet is to get my ears pierced? Well, I got them pierced this afternoon. It hurt a little at first, but I'm okay now. 

I look like a real girl. LOL. Later. I'm packing up for I'm going home.

New Semester

Resolutions

1. Be organized. Plan in advance and write them down.

2. Follow scheduled tasks. That means for me to attend every class, every meeting, and to cross out everything on my to-do list.

3. Sleep on time. That’s 10 pm.

4. Read more books rather than spend time online.

5. Eat healthier. Drink lots of water and tea. Exercise.

6. Take every chance to go places, to travel and meet new people.

7. Journalize every night, both in my internship journal and personal journal.

8. Attend all campus activities and enjoy them to lees. This is the last hurrah.

9. Take care of myself better. Dress more like a lady. Treat Saturdays as spa days. Love myself more.

10. Be closer to God. Attend church service every Sunday. Don’t forget to pray harder and thank the Almighty for all the blessings I cherish every waking moment of every day.

Photodump: With Annie and Xy at the Hills

The stress the crappy enrollment system brought drew our weary hearts to Janiuay to come visit Damires Hills. Another spontaneous trip. Another fun-filled wanderlusting. Another adveture getaway. I just love my on-the-go friends. Where will be our next stop?

Photodump: With Girl Friends at the Beach

Annie. 

Xylene and Iris

Iris taking a walk on the beach.

Wearing this polka shirt at the beach is a faux pa. Thanks to Iris for lending me her white  shirt.

Iris is so adorable when she laughs

I told her more than once to get rid of that umbrella.

Playing in the water.

This unplanned trip to Resols was completely a surprise. I appreciate how my friends manage to get together despite our busy and varying schedules. They're always on the go and up for some fun. It's nice to have people cheer you up when you feel the noisy confusion of life.