Reality Check

Hello there. I’m Dexter. Twenty. You know, the unidentified flying object floating around in your maths class? Right! I’m the one whose face grimaces like there’s always something foul-smelling under my nose. Remember me? Hey! It’s very nice to meet you, yeah?

So how’s it going? I just thought it’d be cool to get to know you more. I guess I’ve somehow been left out of your ecosystem for quite a while. No, no, it’s not your fault. Honestly. Admittedly, I guess I’m what you call boring. I don’t pollute my bloodstream with Starbucks branded caffeine as often as you do, or scream like a disoriented fangirl at how Kobe Bryant dunked a shot over Dwight Howard until my vocal chords snap in two. I don’t like staining my clothes with leftover butter from the box of popcorn I’ll manage to spill on myself on the cinemas either. I prefer staying online while looking for that foreign radio station waiting to be found. I do intently listen when you talk about them, though, these night out’s with your girl friends and those funny youtube videos you came across when you came home at 2a.m.; I’m genuinely interested in what you have to say, as long as I don’t have to entertain stupid conversations about what people do after dancing with a girl in front of a hidden camera to pass off as updated. Oh, Jun Pyo and Ji Hoo are perfectly fine.

On most days, I’m just the guy sitting at the third seat from the center aisle, doing my own thing, Daphne Loves Derby and Red Light Company resonating in my ears until Sir Quinto arrives, while you’re doing yours, planning on hanging out at some local joint to drink some beer. I do talk when talked to, though. And you wouldn’t believe how much I blab, only, of course, you never really wanted to talk to me. Either you thought I wasn’t the speaking type, or someone who’ve tried talking to me before told you how opinionated I was. Well, I suppose I could be assertive at times.

Out of topic, this, but I know you always liked taking personality tests since way back. Actually, I’ve been developing a thing for them lately, as well. I never really understood what’s up with that before, but man! You know who freakishly accurate they can get? Oh, I was born on the twenty-fifth of September, by the way, which makes me a Libran, so if it were to be believed, it means I weigh out my options a lot. Close friends tell me I do that often. It’s cool, no? A quiz I took the other night told me I want nothing but the best for what I’m doing, although I know when and where to draw the line. I’ve been feeling that a whole hell of a lot lately as well. Maybe that’s how some people have come to the conclusion that I was difficult to deal with. I never thought it was possible, but I guess one could be soft-spoken and outspoken at the same time. At the end of everything, I guess I’ve never really been afraid to step up when I think some things have gone insanely out of control. Truth be told, I’ve lost a lot of people with that. And I’m not sure whether I’ll lose you with this one, as well, but hey, what the heck? I’ll take the chance.

So how about you? Tell me something about yourself; I’m very eager to know more.

A Freedom Day Too Early

Here we are, I guess – sunshine, day-off celebrations and all that. I’m sorry about this, you know – I know it’s been more than just a couple of days too late and I haven’t been able to talk to you about anything at all. But, God, the weather’s just been really crazy lately. And you know how my connection always acts up when it’s like that, don’t you? I mean, not that it’s ever been that good to begin with. But, never mind that. Maybe, I’ll save the excuses over coffee, so I’ll have something to say, anything to crack you up. Right now, I want to talk about something else.

I guess it’s been a crazy ride, huh? But hey, this is it, and I’m really happy for you. Finally, things are going the way you want them. Frankly, it’s about time. I’ve told you time and again, you deserve it, maybe more than anyone else does, if only you’d keep faith. And you have. I am not oblivious to the fact that, for months, you’ve been waiting just for this very thing, frustrated, sometimes, but always hopeful and positive. Now that it has, you’re just about to, as cliché as it sounds, take that next big leap. To everything you ever wanted. To everything you ever dreamed of. That little corner of the world you’ve always wished was yours is, well, just a stone’s throw away.

All well wishes aside, however, I have to confess, and you’d have to forgive me. Remember how, when you grew tired from routine the first time around, you found yourself landing somewhere else and said the very same thing? And then you grew tired of that one and moved elsewhere still, you said that was it? Yeah, you can call me exasperated, call me cynical, or whatever, but I’ve been keeping count, and this has been the third time you said you found what you were looking for.

Now I don’t doubt you, of course. Not at all. I trust you have everything in you to know what’s good for you. I guess what I’m trying to say is, well, people have a tendency to not know what’s good for them. We always keep looking for something better, even if we already have something good. Or rather, we keep looking for something better, only we never find it. Trust me, I know. For one, I’ve migrated from a dial-up connection to wireless broadband and yet, I’m still complaining that it’s too slow. Or I’ve clamored to lose weight when I was a tad plumper, but is bent on putting on more meat now that I have. Heck, I won’t even begin to talk about my career options a couple of years back – how believing that “that was it” forced me to give up on my blog, even if I was not really thrilled about not keeping it anymore. Don’t fall into that trap.

Or better yet, just take each moment as it comes. Don’t regret anything you’ve ever done, and don’t get too excited that you miss out on the fun, either. It’s independence day, after all, and on the most essential of levels, I wish you’d be liberated from the fear of not knowing whatever would come next, or from wanting everything from the past to just come back.

Now with that aside, congratulations on a job well done. Don’t forget to write back, alright?

The Faith Factor

A couple of months back, when mom was still pretty conscious of filling the whole unit with an eighty decibel audio from whatever it was that she was watching at that particular moment, I heard Kris Aquino over the tube. It was on one of those considerably less stressful Sunday afternoons, me headset-free and what-not, and after her emoting over something I don’t exactly remember anymore, she ended her tried-hard-to-be-dramatic-but-didn’t-quite-pass-off-as-such speech with a cliché. “Choose your battles,” she said. It made sense, weirdly enough, even though I’m sure it didn’t really quite tie up with whatever it was that she was saying anyway. Even so, it’s pretty much lived with me until now.

I’m not exactly into reliving my defeats and failures from the past. The fact notwithstanding, three weeks ago, I lost a bid to become N.E.C.E.S.’ vice president for logistics and documentation. I think here’s where I’m supposed to insert bitter comments about how my pessimistic tendencies dictated it was never going to work out in the first place.

But I won’t.

Because I won’t make a mockery out all of the experiences I gained from that point onward; there were a lot of lessons learned, new friendships formed, bonds with old friends that got strengthened, and a particular one that takes special mention for being renewed – you know who you are.

And then there are the offers. Of course, a lot of things have opened up for me after that. One’s being delegated the task of organizing workshops for the same club that I ran for, which is nothing short of being nailed in the proverbial coffin. But I’m barring the two more that I’m essentially considering up to now; I’m indecisive like that, I guess – that much still hasn’t changed at all.

Because after everything I’ve purportedly been through over the last couple of months, I’m no stranger to having cold feet. Right after the loss, my resolve was complete; there was nothing left for me to lose. I gave myself the green light.

Yet as though on that line-up less Saturday redux, I’m having second thoughts about taking one more. What if I’m having too much on my plate? What if precisely because of that, I end up undercooking all my commitments? What if I haven’t chosen my battles well enough?

How committed are you? The last line read.

People will have you believe that ultimately, you should let go of your inhibitions. As for me it’s not a question of having guts of steel or having a face four inches thick, but rather it’s the prohibitions It’s all about firmly believing that I can do it all.

I guess the only question now is: can I?

The Faintest Chances

This, on a day when everything seemed to crumble right beneath his feet. Sure, it felt – and he sounded, no less – like a broken record, never mind that he’s used to throwing the same arguments and lament at the selfsame insecurity that’s always been flung a quarter of the way across the room. Admittedly, it was deplorable, his state; he’d only have to think that he’d only a little more than a year left and things were done, and he figured he’d have something to look forward to – that’s what he told me before: I suppose that’s how bad it really was.

Not that it was fair to begin with. Too many times, I’ve seen him try his hardest to do what he believes in his heart to be right, which was to reach out, really, despite whatever sense of belongingness they were withholding from him for no obvious reason other than that they were jerks. It was something which would consistently spur sporadic fits of self-imposed isolation on his part, though at the end of the day, he’d manage to overcome his own tendencies and give things another shot, only to fail again. From this, I guess, you could see he was nice as it is. Maybe he wasn’t the nicest person in the block, and maybe he never received some outlandish award for always trying, but he tried and he was certainly nice enough than most others who only pretended to be something they’re not. Instead, he found that people actually patronized hypocrisy – I guess that’s what really bothered him in the first place. And yet he still trudged on, quite unseemingly, probably, though he did.

“So where’s this strength coming from?” I’ve often asked him, I recall, a question to which he’ll merely give a virtual shrug in reply.

I managed to talk to him again a couple of hours back, and he was, I surmised, more aggravated than usual. He came home from a particularly frustrating day at work today, with stuff probably going on as usual, if not any worse.

“You think something’s wrong with me?” he went.

“Why?”

“Feel ko kasi laging ako ‘yung outsider. Parang laging ako ‘yung hindi na-a-accept since dati pa, samantalang ‘yung iba hindi naman nagkakaganun.” He then proceeded to have dinner.

It was most definitely surreal, when, two hours later, he’d come back to message me about a friend of his who was apparently in a crossroads of a different kind, as though he’s completely forgotten what we were talking about before we suspended our conversation.

“You know, she deserves to have everything,” went a spontaneous message from his end.

I was lost.

And he went on to explain everything.

“So you had dinner putting your actions into question and go on to comfort someone who’s wondering about her own future,” I teased. “How could that be possible?”

“Well…” he stuttered for a good minute or so.

“Well, what?”

“I guess we’ve always listened to each other is all. Not that she needs me, though – I know she has a lot of friends who she doesn’t need to feel awkward talking to over a cup of tea. It isn’t her fault either, but…” Another long pause.

“But?”

“…but she was always patient with me. I’d have to admit she was one of those people who allowed me to hold on to my faith. You know I could have lashed out at those people anytime, one year to go or not, but she always reminded me of positivity. Now, the roles are reversed. I figured the least I could do was to let her know I was there.”

And suddenly, I thought everything was answered.

“You know what I really think?” I beamed. “From the boy who’s having doubts, to the girl who’s having doubts – they say it’s called holding on together.”

The Much Needed Inspiration

Out of wanting something that might even remotely help me in keeping tabs of how far I’ve come in learning the things that interest me, I rummaged through the drawers in search of anything that would rise up to my needs. At the top of the plastic bags that neatly categorized one class of paper to the next – from the leaves of yellow pads to the packs of construction paper I used in art class back in high school – I found a little notebook, its pages yellowed out, presumably, it seemed, carelessly thrown inside as though someone had rushed to hide it as someone was approaching. I turned the cover, flipped through the pages out of innocence: I realized it was a diary.

My diary.

I probably left a huge gap on my previous blog at the end of 2006 leading to the first quarter of 2007, as the written entries were dated from December to January of the said years. It felt a bit surreal.

Of course, there’s the usual things, albeit they’ve been done in a slightly different fashion: bullet-pointed metaphors and hasty little scribbles that probably suggests what they faintly mean, all capped under a bold-faced highlighted title. There were the things that blew me away – those that made me recall how fascinated I was with the French, from the titles that ranged from itineraré to trés raison – and those that were outright weird. It seems I’ve despised this particular someone since second year, though I’ve always imagined that I only learned to hate him last term; he’s been arrogant from day one, apparently, and been wanting to outshine everyone else at the outset of everything.

But it’s the littler details that really caught my attention. On the first page, for example, it quickly became obvious that I was on the second term of our second year in the university, as it made mention of my itineraries for a given week. At the top of the thirteenth, it read:

PENDING: Integral Calculus, integration formulas and transformation.

Physics, mechanisms of heat transfer and the first law of thermodynamics

Philosophy, modifiers and the principle of double effect [ test on January 10, 2007 ]

There were checkmarks and crosses, beneath a header that said STATUS, teeny additions to a list as the day progressed, and lists that went on for a good two pages or so.

A couple of days ago, I told Niko I felt as though I’ve barely accomplished anything. Today, I realized it just might be possible that I’ve never been more misinformed.

From the day the last entry was made up to today, I’ve lost something, I guess.

I realized I’m a memory buff, though I don’t mean it in the sense I’m the sort of guy who has a knack for remembering things that everyone else has forgotten. I mean I figured I’m the sort of guy who holds on to anything that’d remind me of the past. I’ve been keeping letters I shared with some of my high school friends in a neat box on my closet for four years now, refuses to delete quotes on my inbox unless the memory stick fails me, or deletes them but only if I’ve been able to transfer it onto another notebook. On that respect, I guess I’m that sentimental.

But on the other, I always wanted to see how much I’ve accomplished from a given point. What spurred this entry, in the first place, was a product of that wanting, after all. I’m a sucker for posterity.

From a society that demands things to be done from an eight-to-five shift, admittedly, life’s been a rush, really. It seems we’ve been programmed to measure our success in two discrete steps, the intermediates somehow getting disregarded. Yet why is it that we’ll always look at the bigger things, without appreciating the little steps we’ve taken to get there, when they’re probably every bit as important?

I have an idea.