My 2013 is crazy awesome so far

The end of the first quarter of the year is almost here and 2013 is proving to be quite incredible to date.

Real life seems to be pretty calm. I don't have hell weeks anymore, for starters, unlike during this time a year ago when the mere sprouting of leaves and petals of the sunflowers along the University Avenue gave me generous amounts of anxiety and fear. Challenges in my new workplace are sure to come, I'm pretty sure. So I'm mustering all that I have learned in college for that. 

Speaking which, the Journ Department of UP CMC was named Center for Excellence by the Commission on Higher Education (again, of course). I'm proud of my alma mater, if that is not quite obvious yet. I'm just not sure if it is as proud of me, though. Haha.

2013 is also made more awesome by the Manila leg of Stars' The North Album Tour. That night of February 16 is going to be one of the, if not the, highlights of my year. Incredible experience. 

My fiction and fantasy-loving self is also quite overwhelmed by what I have what I have seen, read and watched so far. A team mate from my previous workplace lent me three books, one of which is Begin to Exit Here by John Welter. It is a highly-satirical and witty novel about a (cynical) journalist who hates journalism and who's always ready with tongue-in-cheek jokes, and his exploits in a local newspaper. It was a light read, and I couldn't have read it at a better time. Haha. I imagine it would make a good Hollywood film if done right. 

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Maybe it's love,
Love at first slightly drunk
Now I'm walking with the sun
In my mouth

Was there no one, no one at all, they'd ask.

You were a different thing entirely, I'd reason in my mind. You are the scribble in green ink at the last page of my notepad, the page I refuse to tear off, the page I refuse to write anything else on. You are behind the wheel of every ashen red car that passes by. You are the first greeting in the morning and the last before bedtime, the pointless volley of text messages that makes idle hours bearable. You are every three-digit number that ends in 4. You are beach campfires and windy nights when the milky orb is waxing and the stars unabashedly glitter in the sky. You are the calm voice trying to instill reason in my haphazard ways. You are the silly board games and sillier jokes during night-outs. You are my first bottle of beer, the incessant beat of the drums in my head, the unread book on my bedside table. You are the companionship I thought I had and never will know anymore. You are solitude and the hope I harbored.

No, I'd say, there was nobody.

Why, they'd ask. The voice in my head would answer, I guess because I didn't try. You have been no one yet you were so many things.

What's your middle name?
How do you play the game?
I'll the be the first to leave*

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* from Midnight Coward by Stars (In Our Bedroom After the War, 2007)

Finding home where UP is

As I go to work every morning for the past two weeks, I suddenly realized how lucky I am to have landed a job where the workplace reminds me so much of the place I have always loved since I set foot in it almost six years ago--UP Diliman. My current workplace is situated inside a camp so everywhere I turn, I see trees in all their perfect green canopy glory. The camp is a blessed relief in the middle of the city, much like what UP was to me during college. The joggers, the scant vehicles, the breeze, the sunlight through the leaves--walking along the lanes feels so much like being back in UP.

I don't know if it's a good thing, but I guess I'm always looking for something "UP" in every new environment I get into to determine whether I will last or not. It's not so much as the highly urban landscape of my previous job that made me quit as my desire to experience something more than what I had been doing there. Tall buildings, the people's upscale lifestyle, and limited (and overtly structured) greenery just didn't cut it up for me. Everyday, I felt drained.

My first part-time job, on the other hand, where I lasted more than two years, was very much UP because everybody in the team, was, well, from UP. We were on the same wavelength more or less, and I didn't feel as if I was an outsider--I get the jokes, my opinions felt worth sharing, and being burgis was a no-no. Haha. When it's the cheerdance competition, we watch together with bated breath rooting for the same kickass team. Often times, after our shift at midnight, we'd go straight ahead to Maginhawa St. to eat and it's still UP.

No, I probably haven't made the most out of my years of undergraduate experience, but UP still made its mark in my psyche and I always end up on the look out for it everywhere I go.

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Sa'yo,  UP Manila freshie, paumanhin. Paumanhin at hindi naging sapat ang aming tinig. Paumanhin at hindi mo naranasan ang maraming bagay bilang isang Iska. Paumanhin.

Ticksy little timeses

It seemed like only yesterday that I submitted my 30-day notice of resignation at the company I was working at. My eight-or-more-hour days at a desk are over. Tomorrow, I will be working at a new place, up for a challenge I might have told myself and people who'd care to listen that I wanted to do. But  now I am not sure if I actually have what this takes at all. I'm worried to the core about my abilities (or lack thereof) to really do the field work I will be made to do, to interact with people I barely know, to be entrepreneurial in the angles I will work on, to actually write my own stories.

It's probably a little too early yet to think this. I guess, I'll just have to muster all the courage I have and be prepared for the tasks I will be set to do. It will be an entirely new environment--I am scared, as always, about new beginnings, apprehensive towards people's expectations about me, wary about getting my hopes too high but excited for new things I will learn.

Just like the end of the previous phase of my life, this uncertainty will be over before I know it. At least, I hope so.