So here’s my futile attempt at photography:

I took the first photo while waiting for the rain to stop. The other one, we were sitting at the porch and decided that the moon was beautiful and that we should take a photo of it. Anyway, I don’t have a special interest in photography and I don’t want to lambaste the art, so I will just write instead. It doesn’t mean that I’m doing the blogging world a favor by writing, though.

See, some of us human beings find comfort in self-deprecation. No, not that kind of humbling oneself down to fish compliments. That kind of self-deprecation, which, when nurtured and left to grow inside you, can be destructive. Anyway, I don’t know if it is proper to write about your depressive tendencies and publish it on the web. Who knows, a prospective employer will come across your blog and consider you as not having the strength of mind to handle the pressures of your prospective job. But mostly, people just don’t care.

I have just snapped out from  a series of manic-depressive tendencies, but mostly, they were depressive tendencies. For those who have experienced this, you more or less know what I mean. For those who think they haven’t, I would have to say that sooner or later, you will snap out of it and admit that you have actually been depressive for a certain period of time. If you have all the time in the world to browse through this blog, you will see that my last post was in May, which was an overused one-liner.

More often than not, I post something here when I feel like I have some insight to share. My last “real” blog post was in February, though. And, it means that for around 8 months, I didn’t have any insight to share or worse, I couldn’t get myself to face and understand the realities and feelings that I was going through in that certain period of time. Whatever the reason is, although I don’t really have anything insightful to say, I am just relieved to find myself putting words on a blank page again. It is therapeutic. It clears your mind of voices, powerful enough to wear you out.

The universe, indeed, conspires.

How Being A Pessimist Can Help You Save Money

Many self-help gurus would suggest that to live a healthy and fulfilling career life, you must have a goal. If ever you want to save, know what you are saving for. For instance, at the end of the month, you want to buy a new laptop, or at the end of the year, a big vacation, or after five years, a new car. This doesn’t work for me, however.

I remember my friend telling me while I was still in college that I was exactly like her friend when it comes to handling money. I would just try to save and save, without knowing what I’m saving for, and the next time I know it, I would have more money in the bank than I would have  had expected. That was of course when I was still financially dependent on my mother. I didn’t have bills to pay  and all those adult stuff. All I spent for were photocopying expenses, food, and movies once in a while. And, with the little allowance that I had, I was still able to save.

It does not mean that I don’t get to save now that I’m financially independent, though. It’s just that the money that I would get to save in a year, according to my calculations, would be more than what I would actually get. But still, am confident to say that I know how to save money better than so many working people in my age bracket.

So how does saving money work for me?

I am alone. That’s the mindset.

While I don’t entirely see the future as bleak and dark, I believe that something will happen in the future that would force me to use my long and hard-earned money in the bank. And definitely, this would not be for the  down-payment of a condo unit or a car. It would be something sad, negative. And, I don’t want to rest this possibility on the belief that life is actually good and some good Samaritan will help me out and everything is going to be all right.

Of course, people would say that it’s not healthy. One must spend what they can because the future is bright. Don’t worry too much about the future.  Money is fleeting. It comes and it goes.

So what? I have savings, and that’s all I need to feel secure about the future.

Who Are We Kidding?

Of the many losses that we experience in our lives, the loss that we mourn the most is the loss of ourselves. At least once in our lives, we dream of making a difference, if not changing the world. For the lucky ones, the decisions that they make are based on fulfilling their dreams. Others (who are luckier, I suppose), on the other hand, base their decisions on their adult sense of responsibility, that is, what is practical.

The course that I took in college is not really what many would consider as practical. A major in creative writing? Who does that? Rich people? Students who don’t have much of a choice because it’s the only course where there are available slots?  I based my decision on what I thought I might be able to do well from the not-so-many choices that I had. When people asked me what I was going to do with my degree, I told them the practical and convenient answer, which was, I was going to take up law. At the back of my mind, however, I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to write stories that people would love to read and that would perhaps help them figure out certain things about themselves. But who was I kidding?

I jumped from one job to another without caring about the consequences. My rule was that if I wasn’t happy with what I was doing, I should run away as soon and as fast as I can. I thought I was that brave although others would think of it as cowardice. None of my previous jobs gave me a sense of fulfillment. I thought they did not help me grow. So I sought to find work abroad, which landed me to a teaching job at a university in a neighboring country. As usual, I had so many issues with my job. I’ve thought of leaving the university as soon as I could a hundred times. I thought that this was not what I wanted. I thought I had become so boring and I could not relate to what my friends were into anymore. I was slowly losing myself, slowly forgetting what I really wanted to do.

Then a situation where I have to be responsible for the people I care about sets in. A couple of years ago, the only thing that I felt responsible for was myself, of what made me happy and satisfied. Now, it’s a different story. I thought I could stay in my prison cell for a little longer and cry without any specific reason once in a while. Or maybe there is a specific reason why I cry after all. Maybe I cry for losing that part of myself that I love. There’s not much I can do about it now because I have to consider the most responsible thing to do at the moment.

Two years!

Happy 5th Birthday  to my blog! It turned five yesterday, September 22. 🙂

On Being Brave: A New Year’s Resolution

A colleague of mine, who is around 15 years my senior, handed me a news article. The article is about how the unhappiest people in the world are those that often think about the future, those that cannot live in the moment. Prior to that, he told me in one of our conversations that it was his principle to enjoy the present as much as he could. He told me that for an ‘old’ man like him, the future was not something that he should worry about.

Growing up, I remember planning my life, making sure that everything was in order. I had to do well in high school so that I would get admitted to the so-called premier university in my country. And so I got admitted to the university and managed to graduate on time. After graduation, I planned on giving myself two years before I go to graduate school. I thought it was cool if I was able to complete my master’s degree at a relatively young age. Time was everything, I thought.

I am a control freak. That’s what I think at least. Things have to be in order. I take charge because I want things to happen as I have wanted or imagined them to be. I have to do something. I just can’t sit still and watch. But if there is anything that I am glad about getting older, it is that I have come to realize that more often than not, things are not under our control. This realization still freaks me out sometimes, but I can say that I have come to terms with myself about this. Spending so much time with myself over the couple of years, I have become less hard on myself. I have learned to allow myself to commit mistakes, to make decisions without over-thinking about their consequences.

I have this belief that humankind, in general, can never be totally happy. More often than not, we are sad and lonely. A lot of people I know say that everything is a choice, that being happy is a choice. For me, however, we are made to believe that we have a choice when the truth is we are not given a choice. All we can do is to live in the present, take things as they come, and then we become less sad and lonely or actually be happy. And that’s what I am going to do this year and hopefully, in the years to come.

So I have not totally moved…

Let’s just say that I have found another space to fill in, but I can never leave this blog. So, I’m gonna write here once in a while. I’ll start with this:

 

Today, I have been working for this University for exactly one year. A year ago, I was this excited 23-year old who wanted to see the world. I did not have expectations of sorts. I did not have plans. I did not have back-up plans in case things went wrong. I just wanted to take things as they come.

During my first few months (or weeks) in the University, I was excited all right. I was excited of the possibilities — the people that I would get to meet, of the things that I would do with these people, and so on. But I should have known myself better. I should have known that this excitement was temporary.

A few months back and until now, I have been thinking of new ‘possibilities’, of things to look forward to and feel excited about. I have been thinking of what it feels like to be a student again after four years of being away from university. Of the things that my friends and I are going to do. Of the things that could go wrong.

But going back, this one year of my life has been not really been momentous. Perhaps when I look back, it would just be like any other year of my life. I know because I don’t feel the need to romanticize this experience of living in another country. I used to make myself believe that this should be one hell of an experience. I have been to quite a few places, and I should be very excited about them, but hell no. Now I think I know why this is so. Forgive me for the cliche, but I would say that it is because I am not sharing these places with the people I truly care about.

I’ve moved

to a new space . That is easier to manage. That is more user friendly. Where I can be closer to being honest.

Some Lessons Learned

Airplane Rides

Some friends told me that it took a lot of guts to go to another country all by myself. I mean, I traveled alone (think of three airplane rides and the tormenting hours of waiting), and I do not have any friends or relatives in my country of destination. This may be an overstatement, but they were “amazed” at how I was able to manage all the traveling alone and living independently in another country stuff.

But there is nothing amazing about it. It is not like you are going to walk and rely on clues and maps (although that would be much more interesting). You take the right plane, then another right plane, and another right plane, and lo and behold, you are in your country of destination.

Life’s Lesson on “Readiness”

Now, I don’t believe in not trying something out because of that “I’m not yet ready” cliche. I’ve learned that you cannot be ready for anything. What you can do is decide to go for it or not, and deal with the regrets that go with the decision later. It’s like when you badly want to blog about something, but you just don’t know where to start. You say, “No, I’m not ready to blog about this.” But, you cannot be ready until you start typing out the first word or first sentence or first paragraph of your entry.

Choosing to live very far away from home is like writing that blog entry you think you are not ready to write. Was I ready for it? All I knew was that I was not obsessing over thinking whether I was ready or not. What I knew was I wanted some change to happen in my life before the year ended. When an opportunity came, I grabbed it without expectations of sorts. I did not know whether I was ready or not. And it paid off.