blurry, lazy, hazy.

yes, i did go. even if it was spur of the moment. yes, it was totally out of character. it was great Ü

ours was a weird threesome - but the one thing we had in common was that we needed this break so much. those three words sum up the entire weekend as a whole: blurry, lazy, and hazy.

but at the end of the day, i was just glad that i went ahead and did it.


the three musketeers!


first view of the island


the two kindly souls breaking in the penultimate city girl


aaahhh...




most fun i've had on a hammock


lovely, lovely.


a great weekend.

off to the beach!

off to galera! here's to being spontaneous! have a great weekend Ü

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and here's a thought to ponder on this weekend - as quoted from my beloved mama Oprah:

"When people show you who they are, believe in them."

I'm off then!

spoiled?

this thought has been something that ive been mulling on for quite a while now. lately, a good friend of mine has been asking me for my thoughts on the issue, and i think now would be a good time to explore the thought.

are we spoiled? hmm...

i do believe that i am part of a group that i like to call "children of leisure". we are children of men and women who came from meager means and climbed to where they are through hard work and determination. we sleep in comfortable rooms, live in fairly comfortable homes, eat at good restaurants (not all the time though), have the use of household automobiles (again, not all the time), and have some expendable credit as our parents' extensions.

does all that make us, or me in particular, spoiled? what does? i remember a friend of mine from college said i was spoiled because i always had money for a cup of coffee at starbucks. a law blockmate called me spoiled (actually - a "prodigal") because i always showed up on clothes she didn't recognize. but can a judgment such as that be based on what is outwardly apparent?

now, if you're reading this and you don't really know me that well, i suppose the logical conclusion would be for you to deduce that i am indeed spoiled. and maybe on some levels, i am. but then, these things that I, and others like me, enjoy are not demanded by us. in better days when i got to eat out at the better restaurants with my dad, it was because he "wanted me to enjoy the finer points so that I would be inspired to work harder to be better". and really, they did. most, if not all of the things that I enjoyed, I did as "rewards" that were pre-set for goals reached. if you know me, than you can understand what i mean by this.

i suppose, in some sense I have paid for those things by being fairly compliant (dare I say obedient), mostly responsible, and on the overall reasonable. I realize that these things are not particularly noble or esteemable, but they are what they are. those were the circumstances laid out for us, and we dealt with them as best as we could. it is unfortunate that some people (as in the case of my friend) will choose to take things such as that and just attack our entire persons without seeing the full picture.

i don't think i can truly answer if i actually am spoiled or not. the things that i enjoy, while I did not have to physically "work" for them, did not come for free either. The comfort, the standards of living - are the norms in our house. I make my own bed, I fix my own closets, I clean my own bathroom. The car, I use when I need to - because it is safer than commuting...especially when evenings end up late, as they do, in my current field of work. And besides, I do know how to commute. The credit card is there for emergencies, and whatever doesn't fall under emergency, I pay for out of my own pocket anyway (most of the time - hey, have to be honest).

the other things -- the restaurant meals, theater subscriptions, cultural experiences, trips to nice places, and all other things I experience that others may not -- I did not ask for. But I appreciate everything that is given to me, and let's leave it at that. I do realize that they are not the norm, and that I have to work hard to provide the same for myself in the future. For now, I will just take what is gladly given, and appreciate, because really, what else is there to do?

what i'm trying to say i guess is that everyone is entitled to their own opinion - but at the end of the day, mine is the only one that matters (in this particular issue at the very least). for now, i think i'm okay. and for my friend who inspired this post, in my humble opinion, so are you.

spontaneity

i am a stranger to being spontaneous. with me these past few days, deciding on takeout sisig for dinner would count as my "wild, young, and free" move for the day (pathetic, i know).

but i've been taking baby steps! and so far, they were steps in the right direction. two weeks ago, on a whim, i decided to go with friend and her family to celebrate the Clark Hot Air Balloon Festival for the weekend. and really, it was the best weekend ever. Ive been broke for quite a while, and because of that ive been living like a hermit for the longest time. i forgot what it was like to have normal conversations with people, and how it was to just relax and do nothing without feeling...edgy. Edgy that my life wasn't going...somewhere - anywhere.

But that weekend was exactly what I needed. It was really just enough to bring me back into good spirits and restore some of the faith in myself that had been slowly ebbing away since late last year. The good food, the great company, just being out of the house was exactly what I needed.

if i had gone with my original instincts and decided against it - because I wasn't sure, because I wasn't too close with that friend, because I didn't have enough money - what would I have done that weekend? It's really true what they say - "Sometimes, getting ahead of yourself just means getting out of your own way."

I think that weekend was the proximate cause which set other good things in motion. Ü

so here's to being more spontaneous!


our gracious hostesses

in the words of a genius

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

- Albert Einstein
part of "The World As I See It" essay

great spurts of lunacy

This ends an incredibly crazy week in my life. As you may have read from past posts (if you are my one loyal reader, tanya), I have been so consumed with the thought of how boringly vanilla I was and how I was spending the best years of my life not being spontaneous or loony enough.

Oddly enough, my friend Tanya commented about that post by giving me a different perspective about people’s perceived personalities. She said something that just made so much sense –

“The key is to be deliberate. People are intriguing, whether vanilla or spicy, when they believe in who they are.”

For quite a while now I was being deliberately but uncomfortably vanilla – not wanting to be so tame, yet not knowing what to do to change. And I couldn’t defend who I chose to be or what I chose to do.

This week was a study at how decidedly insane (or stubborn) I was. Trying to organize a speed dating event without guys, without human or financial resources, with the venue suddenly canceled, and with a partner backing out, the obvious choice of course is to suck it up, give up, and pack up. But I begged and pleaded complete strangers online to go, whored myself of little piece by little piece, made my existing friends hate me for being so pushy, groveled in front of unsympathetic male species, and everything you can imagine of that sort of desperation.

*as a little side note, I also found myself smack in the middle of a scary singles party with an equally terrified friend, scouting around for vulnerable guys we could beg to go to our little humble attempt at speed dating (none went, by the way – THANK GOODNESS). We had the very exciting choice of being color-coded as (red - single and looking for love, or pink – virginal and are to be hooked up with greens – attached but willing to cheat). To forever document our terrifying foray into that end of the single-scene spectrum, I took a picture of us amidst all the chaos. –must upload said photo soon. Our faces were a combination of constipated and confused. It’s hilarious.

Sometimes it is so surprising which of your friends will actually come through for you. I won’t go into specifics, but the evening went on despite a tire burst and an almost-towing, me getting more guys than I needed, the delivery people bringing less chairs and tables than I wanted, more food left than I expected, and me more calm that I ever thought I could be given such terrible circumstances.

But somehow, matches were made, and fun was had. While I cannot speak for everybody of course, I realize that you cannot please everyone. I’m just glad that some people got what they came for, and that I survived in one piece.

At the end of it all, a good friend of mine texted this:

“am proud of you. gotta hand it to you though. One woman show. That took guts.”
To which I replied:

“I think what it needed was someone who had a great dose of lunacy within her to believe that such an obvious flop would succeed.”

And then she said:

“I don’t know how you missed it, but lunacy is what you always bring to the table, Ia.”

Hmm. I didn’t realize that.

definitions

i refuse to define today the way most people would. there are a lot of people left to love in my life and i am no less of a person because i do not celebrate today as more than just another day i have to learn, to live, to try to be happy and to make an difference in someone, anyone's life.

yes, i started it feeling horribly inadequate and unfortunately mistreated. i realize that while i cannot force anyone to make whats important to me a priority, i can just pick up where they left off and remember to know better in the future.

after i write this i will take a shower, try to wash off all feelings of misery, and then, i will go out and spend this day with people i know are happy to see me.

im not happy yet, but i will be before this day ends.

if you are reading this and you feel lonely, you are not alone. go out, do something. its only a bust of a day if you let it be that.

i therefore redefine today as: i-will-be-happy-today-if-it-kills-me day. will just update on whatever craziness this day will lead me to do.

what do you define this day as?

when a stumble is not so bad.

Who would have known that I would grow to love every stumble? Online that is. I’ve recently been converted to the cult of the Stumble-Upon, a Firefox Add-on that collects your interests and virtually leads you to cool sites that you would never have found on your own. In my half a day of being a new stumbler, I have come upon word origin sites, sites of the most interesting statues around the world, correct language usage sites (this may seem boring to you, but to me, its about as exciting as the Oscars!)

With a click of a button, different worlds are opened to me, and all that influx of information just made me a tad bit philosophical, leading me to this particular thought – while we may hate to admit it, we all need a little help sometimes.

----------------------------------
moving on to something slightly connected, but not really…I used to be terrified of stumbling. Literally. For the longest time, I would have nightmares of me falling on my butt in front of people who were important to me, and I have seen more than my share of those nightmares realized. For a good part of my college years, I was called “Dulas Queen” by those who were close to me. And I have developed many mechanisms to deal with my apparent clumsiness. Weird ones. Look at me walking to see some of them I suppose. I can never pinpoint when exactly each of them comes out.

But now I hate making mistakes. And I punish myself repeatedly for making them. I still mentally punish myself for things I did in high school even. Stupid things I said. Bursts of overexcitement that I may have spread too much too son. Bold fashion choices that I regret putting together. All those years of self-punishment I think have resulted in me becoming the vanilla person that I am. I’m scared that the clumsy wild person inside has left me for good.

I was asked what about my old self was it that I missed the most --- and I couldn’t muster an answer then…but I think I remember parts of her now. And so I recall the silly person whom I tried to forget once lived inside my body.

The girl who said things, random things, before she thought.
The girl who wore leggings and shoulder pads the way her mom did. (this part I don’t miss too much, but I miss her fashion bravado hahaha)
The girl who was ballsy enough to call her high school crush because she didn’t want to spend an afternoon watching tv alone.
The girl who thought hopeful thoughts and dreamed big dreams.
The girl who liked sharing, everything, anything.
The girl who fell in love too much too fast, with almost everyone in sight.

Years down the line, it seems to me that it would have been “way funner” if I had slipped and stumbled my way down the garden path. At least I would have had great scar stories to tell.

Vacating Your Life

This whole entire time that I have been on break, every attempt to write a post in my blog has been such a chore. I seem to have the unfortunate habit of editing my thoughts so quickly that by the time I get myself in front of a computer to document what seemed to be highly interesting thoughts, I would have edited myself out of material completely. And so another day is left undocumented, because I have deemed my life too…mundane. Who would want to read about that?

Ever since I came across the movie Sabrina, way back in high school, I have been enamored by the thought of leaving a dull life and coming back an entirely different person. An enchanting person. A person you would want to get to know. Many a trip has been planned with that very hopeful outcome in mind, but every time I leave I seem to just fall back into my old unsavory habit of letting people run my life the way they think I should. And then I return exactly the same person that I disliked so much to begin with.

In fact, every time an unfortunate incident occurs...I get so ashamed of how I deal with things that I end up just cutting out that part of my life and boxing it in somewhere in my memory…hopefully never to return. I am like one of those sad people in teenybopper movies who still feel the sting of old hurts. Like never being asked to go to prom, or never being invited for Saturday nights out. Like having to be the first to call so that I would have someone to talk to on long dull nights. Like being the last to find out something. Like the one who always had to walk around so that people don’t notice that she’s alone. Old “friends” are carefully sealed inside and old hurts are tightly wrapped in bright bows inside my head – attempts to color dark points.
Then I pretend that I am unscarred and unbroken and I try to act as normally as possible around the new people whom I hope will think I am normal.

No one has wanted to leave their entire life and become a different person more than me. The other night, I heard someone say that they wanted to vacate their life and that phrase just struck a chord in me, because that’s exactly what I want to do. In my head I have planned a million scenarios for vacating my life. But somehow I never seem to be capable of doing it.

Now, the thought has never been more present in my head than it is now. I suppose watching the movie “The Holiday” last night did a lot to bring this old secret wish back to my consciousness. I feel like leaving my life is exactly what I want to do. This whole entire time I have been thinking about physically going some place else to be someone else in order to have the life I wish to have.

But here’s a different thought. What about waking up and just deciding to be a different person entirely? You wake up, and snap! You’re a different person. Not the pushover you hate. Not the walrus you see in the mirror. That would be a delight indeed.

Now, perhaps, I am as ambitious as the man who tried to empty the ocean one spoonful at a time – but I will no longer edit myself like I used to. That’s no longer who I am.

my how you've grown!

does this happen to me every year? i'm not quite sure. about a month or so before my birthday, i begin thinking about my life and how i chose to live it this past year, about the changes i instituted and the progress that i was supposed to make.

how different am i this year from last year? i'm not sure. but for the past few days -- no -- weeks, i have been stewing (not silently, i might add) about the fact that nothing about me is different. and everyone else is moving on.

now, more than ever, i think that the fact that i haven't changed is such a critical sour point because people around me, people i used to jog around the block with, some i thought i had left behind even, are instituting life-changing grand plans. getting married. making babies. buying property. traveling around the world. getting ready to take the bar.

the new changes in my life are...

...ho-hum.

ive recently decided that im addicted to juicy flavored gummi stuff.

and i've recently increased all my weights by 10-15 lbs.

that's about it.

crap. and in about 2 months time i will be 25. whooppeee.