I love you and your little quirks, your seemingly silly but shrewd dreams. The way you frolic innocently whenever you tease and coax your mischief into charm overwhelms me with both frustration and wonder. I love you, not how they describe it in books or movies, but how you live in every piece of literature that I write. I wish we could live the lives of the characters that I create. But, our countless arguments and constant contradictions prove that we are bound to make mistakes and that we are wrong sometimes.
I love you for not always agreeing with me, for pushing me to my limits, for holding my hand during those times. I love you and the certain slyness of your little dark side, how it scares, confuses and thrills me at the same time. You've always loved me with all the hundred different persons that I am. I love you without reason or doubt, in a hundred different ways, in between who we are and what we will become.
~~September 21, 2013
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
lately (not really)
Lately, I’ve been browsing the Inquirer and Vera Files websites for news since I’m too lazy to stay in our apartment’s living room to watch the TV’s daily. Inquirer overwhelms me with a variety of its stories and somehow I find their website now more confusing than before. So, I just kept my verafiles.org tab open and browsed for something more interesting -- less of the hardcore political news and more of the feature-ish stories to bring in the good vibes. And guess what I ended up doing? I cried. Well, I really am a cry baby and I admit, mababaw talaga ang luha ko.
I was actually reading these series of articles about the late Ma’am Simbulan and I came across about her friends, colleagues and students recalling how great a person she was. The stories spoke of her passion for journalism, her calm disposition and her ever dearly ways. She was my professor in my J121 class, The Newsroom. Our lessons were handled lightly; it seemed like less of the lecturing and more of the story telling with the facts. I liked the way she taught and how she made me feel less stressed because of her calm aura and, as I call it, motherly feel.
But above all these, what makes it more sad that she had already left us is the fact that she was a great journalist, someone to be emulated in the profession, someone who did what she wanted in life.
Well, I’ve always wanted to become a teacher when I was in grade school while the other kids dreamt of becoming a doctor, an astronaut or an engineer. But my first love really is writing, writing not journalism. Eventually, I fell for theater but I dated journalism. I dated it for four long years, enduring all the late nights of staring in front of a computer with a blank document and the cursor blinking, waiting for the first few words to form the lead of a story. Journalism is a grueling course because it would not only make your head burn with what words to use but it will consume your time and your energy and it can exhaust you physically. In Journalism, you don’t memorize formulas or spend the nights in laboratories observing things or solving machine problems. In Journalism, you go out into the world and find the problems, the issues, and write about it so the people will be more aware and life will make more sense. You talk to people from different walks of life while leaving behind your own biases. You go to places where you don’t know what’s in store for you. You run after people and stories which are as fleeting as a school of fish on a full moon. As I always say, Journalism is not for the faint-hearted. It is for the bold but not careless; it is for the fierce but not the proud and most importantly it is for someone who has a passion for the truth and the love for the profession.
Yes, I do love Journalism. I am proud to be a Journalism graduate and I will always be. But life sometimes will lead you to roads unexpected. Before I took up my internship, I promised myself I wouldn’t want to end up in a newspaper organization for the summer. But as luck had it, I found myself as an intern in one of the top broadsheets in the country. However, I admit, my stay at the Philippine Daily Inquirer was all worth it and it was actually the best summer I ever had. Yeah, too cliche’ but it really was and the experience made me think twice about my future plans. Well, my family, friends and other relatives expect me to work either in a newspaper or a television network. But then, in the summer of 2011, I fell deeply in love with Psychology that somehow I forgot about my own course. I planned to work for the mainstream media for at least two years then take up a master’s degree in Psychology abroad. But my parents always have a say in my decisions and sometimes it’s better to just listen to them because I have an external locus of control, if you know what I mean. Anyway, by the end of October that same year, I graduated with a degree in Journalism. I bummed for a month and decided to look for work by the end of November.
Eventually, I found myself in the middle of job interviews and assessments. To cut the story short, I ended up with my job today.
Funny how things always turn out for me. I may sound like a hypocrite again but yes, for the second time, I am doing something I said I wouldn’t. I’ve always known that I wouldn’t want to work in an office and I’ve always told myself, my friends and others around me that I really don’t want to be stuck in a desk with the computer beaming against my face whole day long. I’ve always wanted action, adventure, surprises, risks and most importantly I’ve always wanted to learn outside the boxed life. I want to be with people, talk to people and create whole new experiences. But really, look where I am now? But I don’t regret taking this job and it’s my decision, something that I stood up for because I wanted it.
This is sounding really mushy now but my point really is that…well, "Life is a box of chocolates…you’ll never know what you’ll get."
One thing life has taught me is that you cannot plan everything because you can’t be sure of anything. There are things that are temporary-- like maybe the ice cream flavor I love now, I may hate when I get old; or maybe I’d eventually eat cucumber even though I’ve hated it for the longest time; or even my job could be considered temporary. These simple things matter, maybe not really, because at the end of the day it’s the experience that’s important….how you felt eating your favorite ice cream flavor after a hefty meal, or your family having a good time teasing you about being the only person who doesn’t eat cucumber, or the friends you made at work, whom you’ve always had a good time with during lunch breaks.
Things change, they always do…even people. Whenever you fall, fall gracefully, pick something up and stand up like nothing has happened. Let go. Move on. When you’re happy, be genuinely happy. Live in the moment but never dwell in it that you forget you’re supposed to keep moving forward. And like what they say, never let praise get into your head nor criticism get to your heart. Most importantly, always bloom wherever you are planted.
*wrote this last April 17, 2013. I faintly remember why I wrote this but I know I was in the stage of “getting used to” again.
I was actually reading these series of articles about the late Ma’am Simbulan and I came across about her friends, colleagues and students recalling how great a person she was. The stories spoke of her passion for journalism, her calm disposition and her ever dearly ways. She was my professor in my J121 class, The Newsroom. Our lessons were handled lightly; it seemed like less of the lecturing and more of the story telling with the facts. I liked the way she taught and how she made me feel less stressed because of her calm aura and, as I call it, motherly feel.
But above all these, what makes it more sad that she had already left us is the fact that she was a great journalist, someone to be emulated in the profession, someone who did what she wanted in life.
Well, I’ve always wanted to become a teacher when I was in grade school while the other kids dreamt of becoming a doctor, an astronaut or an engineer. But my first love really is writing, writing not journalism. Eventually, I fell for theater but I dated journalism. I dated it for four long years, enduring all the late nights of staring in front of a computer with a blank document and the cursor blinking, waiting for the first few words to form the lead of a story. Journalism is a grueling course because it would not only make your head burn with what words to use but it will consume your time and your energy and it can exhaust you physically. In Journalism, you don’t memorize formulas or spend the nights in laboratories observing things or solving machine problems. In Journalism, you go out into the world and find the problems, the issues, and write about it so the people will be more aware and life will make more sense. You talk to people from different walks of life while leaving behind your own biases. You go to places where you don’t know what’s in store for you. You run after people and stories which are as fleeting as a school of fish on a full moon. As I always say, Journalism is not for the faint-hearted. It is for the bold but not careless; it is for the fierce but not the proud and most importantly it is for someone who has a passion for the truth and the love for the profession.
Yes, I do love Journalism. I am proud to be a Journalism graduate and I will always be. But life sometimes will lead you to roads unexpected. Before I took up my internship, I promised myself I wouldn’t want to end up in a newspaper organization for the summer. But as luck had it, I found myself as an intern in one of the top broadsheets in the country. However, I admit, my stay at the Philippine Daily Inquirer was all worth it and it was actually the best summer I ever had. Yeah, too cliche’ but it really was and the experience made me think twice about my future plans. Well, my family, friends and other relatives expect me to work either in a newspaper or a television network. But then, in the summer of 2011, I fell deeply in love with Psychology that somehow I forgot about my own course. I planned to work for the mainstream media for at least two years then take up a master’s degree in Psychology abroad. But my parents always have a say in my decisions and sometimes it’s better to just listen to them because I have an external locus of control, if you know what I mean. Anyway, by the end of October that same year, I graduated with a degree in Journalism. I bummed for a month and decided to look for work by the end of November.
Eventually, I found myself in the middle of job interviews and assessments. To cut the story short, I ended up with my job today.
Funny how things always turn out for me. I may sound like a hypocrite again but yes, for the second time, I am doing something I said I wouldn’t. I’ve always known that I wouldn’t want to work in an office and I’ve always told myself, my friends and others around me that I really don’t want to be stuck in a desk with the computer beaming against my face whole day long. I’ve always wanted action, adventure, surprises, risks and most importantly I’ve always wanted to learn outside the boxed life. I want to be with people, talk to people and create whole new experiences. But really, look where I am now? But I don’t regret taking this job and it’s my decision, something that I stood up for because I wanted it.
This is sounding really mushy now but my point really is that…well, "Life is a box of chocolates…you’ll never know what you’ll get."
One thing life has taught me is that you cannot plan everything because you can’t be sure of anything. There are things that are temporary-- like maybe the ice cream flavor I love now, I may hate when I get old; or maybe I’d eventually eat cucumber even though I’ve hated it for the longest time; or even my job could be considered temporary. These simple things matter, maybe not really, because at the end of the day it’s the experience that’s important….how you felt eating your favorite ice cream flavor after a hefty meal, or your family having a good time teasing you about being the only person who doesn’t eat cucumber, or the friends you made at work, whom you’ve always had a good time with during lunch breaks.
Things change, they always do…even people. Whenever you fall, fall gracefully, pick something up and stand up like nothing has happened. Let go. Move on. When you’re happy, be genuinely happy. Live in the moment but never dwell in it that you forget you’re supposed to keep moving forward. And like what they say, never let praise get into your head nor criticism get to your heart. Most importantly, always bloom wherever you are planted.
*wrote this last April 17, 2013. I faintly remember why I wrote this but I know I was in the stage of “getting used to” again.
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