Dear Self,

Nobody was ever born perfect,so get used to making mistakes.

Get used to doing things that you wish you haven’t done. Get used to NOT doing things you should have done, if only you had the wits (or guts) that a meaningful life calls for.

Bottom line – get used to making mistakes. Lots of them. In fact, start enjoying the experience.

it gets tiring, crying yourself to sleep each time. quite frankly, the self-pity is pathetic and enough is enough.

Someone once told me that if things don’t go according to plan, then your plan was wrong. From the depths of my heart, once again, thank you, Lord, for showing me that I was wrong.

I don’t know what I did right to deserve a second chance, but thank you, Lord, for giving me the wake-up calls of wake-up calls.

Thank you, Lord, for showing me the difference of passion and obligation.

Thank you, Lord, for showing me that instead of trying to outmatch the pace of other clueless zombies like me, I only actually had myself to compete with.

Thank you, Lord, for making me realize that accomplishing greats feats in all other things pale in comparison to the satisfaction I get whenever I finally get over a baby step for something I sincerely love to do. It’s the difference between contentment and pure, utter bliss.

Thank you, Lord, for showing me which things were actually worth losing sleep over. I still have a bit of trouble detaching from my old ‘programmed’ ways, but I’m getting there and frankly, I’m surprising myself every step of the way.

For all these, thank you, Lord — thank you, thank you, thank you for saving my life.

i find that life comes in phases. one time, you’ll find life so uneventful and boring that you begin to nitpick and question everything. next, you’ll find that life hurls everything but the kitchen sink at you that you just want to zone out. bored. nitpick. battered. zone out. chill. think of what’s next.

i’m somewhere in that zoning out part right now. recently, to say that things have been chaotic is to put it nicely. i’ve never thought of myself as that resistant to change, but when it haunts you at home, at work, when you’re with your friends, it can be a tad overwhelming. gawd, for crying out loud, i’ve got this 3 gigantic zits in my face (oo, mayabang na, but when i get zits, that’s a very bad sign.) i’ve already got them named — BEA, youtube and mike (oo mike, i’m holding you responsible for this. you owe me pond’s. =p) but i say, boo-hoo, have a cry over it, be a bratinella if you need to, but then move on. zone out and chill. speak in abbreviated sentences.

as with any muni-muni moment, i usually take a trip down nostalgia lane to calm myself down. i got reoriented with friendster and multiply, and retroed while reading all my past posts and testimonials. it was kind of funny, actually, when i got to reading the oldest testimonials — these were posts by my high school friends. if you were only getting to know me for the first time, you’ll get the impression that i was this patient, uber-nice and perky person who would never complain about anything. i could already hear my officemates’ eyebrows hitting the roof. “Si Ish?! Patient?? On what alternate universe?!”

i know i’ve changed my stance in a lot of ways, but it never really sinked in this much. i guess in challenging times, you get to know who you are, who you want to be, or at least who you were all along. for the record, i’ve never really believed that soul-searching for who you are would solve anything — what mattered was that you’re happy with whoever you are at a given time.

so that brings us to the question — am i happy with who i am now? the reborn brat who needs to put on the brakes and grow up? (fyi, i’m still debating with myself if that’s a need.) i found that i may be weaker and more vulnerable now than the disciplined thinker i was then. but there’s something with being a feeler that’s just draws you in; i guess any brand-new feeling is impossible to resist. well, one thing’s for sure — i’m happy that FINALLY i’m able to detach myself from my work (o SWAT, paki-baba uli ng kilay.) now i understand that work is just work. i finally got it through my thick head that work does not define me. big feat, trust me.

so there goes zone out; this is probably the chill phase. so, what’s next?

kapag wala kang nakikita, ang nakikita mo ay wala.

kapag wala kang ginagawa, ang ginagawa mo ay wala.

kung gayon, ang wala ay binubuo ng mga mumunting pangyayari o gawain na tila walang kabuluhan. o hindi binibigyang kabuluhan.

doon marahil gawa ang black hole. ang black hole na mas malapit kaysa sa ating akala.

i’ve been known to corrupt the sanity of my peers; i guess i just have that effect. i highly doubt i was put on this earth for humanity’s enlightenment. in fact, i highly doubt that anyone was put on this earth for anything. once you get rid of the notion that we’re here for some higher reason other than our species just refuses to die out, then it liberates you to actually just live. just exist. and just die out like any normal being. none of that messianic gibberish.

it’s a sad, futile cycle, really. we prod, we stress, we overcompensate — only to find a void still there, which eats away from inside out. sorry, i know it’s so emo, but i can’t seem to shake it off for now.

it’s both amusing and sad, actually, how articulate we get when we’re down.

————

they say luck is the lazy man’s excuse for not working for anything.

well, come to think of it, yeah. the only question is if the lazy are whiny, or if the optimistic are delusional.

Most times, I take it for granted, but I just realized that I really am surrounded by AMAZING people.

For example, to my sister Ate Ting — you’re amazing. You have the biggest vault of patience out of everyone I’ve ever known, and you’re not stingy with it. You never asked to look after a little sister like me, and I know for a fact that I can be quite a handful. You know when to just be agreeable, and even more, you know when to give me a good smack in the head. You turned not only me, but also Ikay, into Photoshop nuts (and I haven’t even gone around to teaching you the guitar or HTML yet, after all these years. You’re simply amazing.

To my teammates, Mike & Jan — you’re amazing. As I’ve already told Jan, you two are among — if not the biggest — the factors why I probably am still sticking around. I never really saw myself in something so corporate, but you guys make it seem homey — no, actually, it’s more like a playground. You guys are amazing.

To my partners in goofiness and all other crimes, Rhea & Liz — you’re amazing. There’s never been a time when you guys failed to crack me up. Yet, even when I’m in the lowest of lows, you guys are also the same ones I turn to. I consider myself soooo lucky to find buddies with the same wavelength. You’re amazing.

To Bugsy — need I say it? You’re amazing. We all are so into our own things, yet we never let each other forget that we still have kindred spirits out there, egging us on. We have something time nor distance can’t break. You’re amazing.

To my parents, you’re amazing. Putting up with a know-it-all brat like me is a feat. You accept with without question — even in my ugliest moods, even if I shut you out, even after I lose my phone for the nth time. You’re amazing.

And what’s better is I know there are lots more amazing people not yet mentioned in this post. Hay. I should have posts like these more often.