Bushed! August 13, 2009

I am tired of writing.

Don’t get me wrong, I will forever love writing and I still dream of writing that novel someday. My love for words, pen and paper, PCs and keyboards, books and printed ink, bookstores and libraries is something that will forever be etched in me.

It’ s just that after making a decent living out of researching and writing, I suddenly feel the urgent need to explore something else. I want a job that can take me places, one that allows me to speak to people, or to market a product that I passionately believe in.

I remember enjoying the marketing subjects I took up in college immensely. Brainstorming for hours, racking my brains for the right advertising spiel, shooting a print commercial, and recording a radio advertising jingle had been pure euphoria. The results were phenomenal, and our professor, Mr. Lluch had been pretty impressed to say the least.

I still want to write, but I don’t want to do it for other people, all the time. Perhaps I am looking for some semblance of creative freedom, and not just in putting words to paper. I want to be a part of a team, to come up with creative ideas, and later on to write about them and to bring them to actual life. I want to market a valuable product, a belief, a policy, a lifestyle, one that I actually believe in and not one which others impose upon me.

I could be looking at a profession in the advertising industry, a marketing position at some decent company, or an entrepreneurial passion put to good use.

Whatever it is, one thing remains clear. I don’t want to stop at just writing.

Orbit the Earth January 28, 2009

I don’t want to be trapped!

Trapped. Squeezed. Swallowed. December 10, 2008

The workplace, no doubt, is an interesting set for people watching. People spend more than eight hours every working day inside freezing, dull-colored buildings: facing computers, flipping over countless papers, mollifying clients, chewing at ball pen caps, sipping instant coffee, and spending the rest of the time wishing they were somewhere else.

You see them in stiff blazers and glossy neckties, scurrying around, pretending they were actually busy with something. The fact that they are pretending to be busy somehow gives them the assurance that they are doing something worthwhile with their routine lives.

And maybe they really do have hectic days, no argument with that, but at the end of it, they would begin to wonder even if for just one split second, if the careers they had chosen have put them where they had always wanted to be, if perchance the endless tapping on keyboards, and the ingestion of brainless policies define who they are.

Then you see the arthritic supervisors, those fifty-something superiors who stay rooted to their posts merely because of the beautiful thing called “security of tenure”, which most government-funded agencies take to heart quite liberally, and so they retain their plush swivel chairs, the soft back cushions, the huge tables that hold nothing but family picture frames, plastic flowers, and useless what-nots.

The females paint their faces to obscure wrinkle lines, perm and color their hair in a vain effort to regain its fading luster, and embellish themselves with heavy glittering accessories – gold, shiny jades and rubies, oversized pearls in hundreds of colors- merely to remind everyone that these jewels are their trophies for toiling inside freezing, dull-colored buildings in a span of long decades. The males have protruding bellies, brassy voices, sly gazes, and huge groping hands, and if you’re careless, they might read too much between your quick glances and contrived laughter.

These middle-aged folks can operate machines and shut down computers, but they only do so because these are the callings of the times. Most hours they just shift through papers absentmindedly, verify the checks, and tinker with their high-end cell phones, wondering whether the husband is not with some mistress, or the if the wife is not flirting with the boss. And the worst of their kind never grow up at all. At their age, they still gossip like thoughtless adolescents, feign friendships even while kissing each other’s cheeks, and nurture their prejudices like confused toddlers. The workplace compels them to fake smiles and small talk, to craft compliments and throw them to the air whenever the need arises.

They give out orders like automatons, get panic attacks at the slightest blunders, seek perfection where there is none, and all the while not fully understanding the gamut of their jobs. The madames come to the office because they need to, because they have huge credit card debts to pay off, and new car accessories to purchase, and not necessarily because their perfume-laden presences are still needed.

The workplace is their, home, a stretch of land subdivided into their own little countries where they rule as royalties. And beneath them, their minions toil on their mindless employments – tap away at computers, flip over papers, mollify clients, chew at ball pen caps, sip instant coffee and wish they were somewhere else.

Well, the simple-minded ones are happy where they are, content with everyday work because there are mouths to feed, and because unfortunately, they know nothing better. They have spouses to come home to, and children to tell stories to, so what is the point of yearning for a better profession? Their thoughts are flying in all directions as they work at their tables, wishing they were home because if truth be told, there is nothing like home in a pretentious, dull-colored building.

Millions of hearts are trapped in places they cannot love, but only be immune to. They have grown gnarly and old, and they cannot fuel their souls to dream of something else. They just sit and watch, at the budding ones in stiff blazers and glossy neckties, lip gloss and stilettos, wanting to tell them to go and follow their heart songs. Wanting to tell them that yes, the workplace is interesting.

But the wide open skies are breathtaking.

Seven Holidays per Week January 15, 2008

Today I went to the bank to claim my cyber account card. Finally I got it, which means there’s definitely no way I’m not gonna get paid for all my written works. Then I went to the mall for my grocery shopping. The good thing about not having a structured job is that you can make everyday a weekend or a holiday. For the first time, I actually enjoyed grocery shopping. Today is a working day so the supermarkets were somewhat deserted. Browsing through the aisles was like being in a peaceful library. There were no annoying shoppers who would bump you with their heavy carts. No obnoxiously loud couples who would argue like they were just inside their bedrooms. No horribly long counter queues, no aisle traffics, no toddlers who would suddenly scream because their mommies won’t buy them those extra soft chocolate chip cookies. Believe it or not, I went through every aisle, checking out the items even though I would not actually buy all of them. It was like having a huge pantry all to myself. Ah, the beauty of solitude amidst such pleasures.

Indeed, having an office desk and a blinking computer inside gray walls is a very dangerous way to view the world. A two- day weekend is definitely never enough, I should know it, because I’ve been there and back. And the early Monday morning rush is not something to look forward to. It’s true, making a living does not run in parallel with having a life. But for most of us idiots who know nothing else, making a living is the closest we’ll ever gonna get to having a life. Again, little wonder why there are so many unhappy souls in this world.

Let’s hope I’m not speaking too soon here. Because somehow, the idiots are the people I love, and genuinely care for my future whether I want them to or not. Who knows, maybe I’m an idiot underneath- having a structured job, short weekends, annoying bosses, well-connected officemates all equates to a perfect life. Maybe, ten years from now, I’ll look back and remember the idealistically foolish and headstrong girl who wasn’t strong enough to find, and to fight for her rightful place in the world. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll wither and grow wrinkles after spending a youthful life inside gray, air-conditioned walls, faking smiles to people I’d rather give a piece of my mind to. Because in this country and age, idealism does not always work. It may work, but not without tear and mucus stained tissues, frustration after frustration, and people thinking you’ve gone entirely mad.

Why can’t every day be a holiday? Because if truth be told, people deserve all the holidays they can get. I know I deserve it, so I’m enjoying it while it lasts. I’ll start my new year by treating myself to seven holidays per grueling week.

The Reign of the Earth Rat January 2, 2008

There is just one resolution I’m gonna be keeping this year. That is, to stop believing in resolutions for once. This year I’m not gonna be expecting anything, but I’ll be keeping the conviction that I deserve all the good things my heart desires. This year, I’ll do away with plans, expectations, fears, and all the useless baggage. This year, I’m allowing myself to be a nomad, a drifter, camper, impulse traveler, writer, and all the things I have deprived myself of in the past. I’ll devour a bar of chocolate in one sitting if I want to. I’ll head out to the beach on a working night on pure instinct. I’ll watch all the flicks I want, read all the books on my shelf, have ice cream by myself at the mall, have a tequila night with crazy girlfriends. This year will be for the fulfillment of all my hedonistic desires, and no one’s gonna step a foot and chastise me for it.

All this time, I thought that if I slaved for work, I’d be rewarded like I ought to. I left my home, friends, dating life, the bookstore, the malls, everything without a second thought. And in the end, I found myself sniffing at tissues, wearing ugly eye bags, and a million times more unhappy. So much for being a slave.

So this year will be my year of redemption. I’ll get a real job when I’m tired of being a drifter. Or when an expensive hand bag suddenly makes me want to have a decent paycheck. I’d probably read more into what the stars are actually telling me. Maybe the answers are just right under my nose. Or maybe the answers are hidden far far away, across a stretch of ocean, somewhere I had never thought of exploring.

Until then, I’ll be celebrating my freedom, looking forward to a year with no framework and no intricate guide maps. And perhaps, this may just be the grandest year yet.

The Art and Science of Words December 19, 2007

For the past five days I have written 8, 850 words in sixteen articles, gulped down not more than two steaming mugs of bitter coffee per grueling day, slept not more than five hours straight each night, ignored one night-out with girlfriends and two movie plus dinner dates, had one episode of blinding migraine attack, and a continuing dry cough affliction. There is more to putting words on paper than I had ever supposed, and for someone who claims to love writing unconditionally, I am apalled at the way my body reactions and daily schedules have spun out of control. Writing for leisure is one thing, writing and researching as an assignment on tight deadlines is another. The assignments always come in droves, at least three, and numbering until well into twenty per a two to three-day period.

Now, the only thing I think of after waking up each morning is neither my breakfast nor my day wardrobe, but the articles I need to write. More so, how to write them so as to maintain originality and freshness inspite of the burgeoning numbers. Indeed, putting words into paper is much a science as it is an art. There has to be a nifty strategy at hand, so nifty as to keep creative juices from running out. Ever a creature of diversion, it is challenging enough for me to ignore other sites that excite me, and to concentrate on the ones that deal with my assignment. Ringing telephones and books getting impatient to be read holler their way to my subliminal core. But there is no other way than to ignore them, and ignore them I must, even if I get runny nosebleed in the process.

I love what I now do, of that I am certain. In fact, I would never love the idea of work, except when I’m whipping up dishes, playing with watercolor, or writing. But there is no denying I am tired.

And happy.

I think I know now what divine exhaustion means.

Freelancing Newbie December 14, 2007

So I came home from the office Christmas party earlier than usual. I had been meaning to go have a night-out spree with my friends but the article deadline kept me in anxious spirits. So I declined, went home with my goodies, and sat in front the computer wondering if I had done the right thing. Of course I wanted to have a bit of fun, and for the longest time had planned on getting drunk. You know, the embarrassed-the-morning-after kind of drunk. The laughing-and-crying-at-the-same-time kind of drunk. But then again, I have a deadline and since time immemorial, I have always been a freak about deadlines. At least those that other people set. So now I am just left wondering if being a killjoy is the right thing to be.

This freelancing stuff is quite alien territory but hopefully I’d get the hang of this sooner than I expect. At least someone else is pushing me to write, which is a welcome rarity because all this time, I have been pushing myself to write with very little success. I usually get too complacent, because no one is breathing down my neck, and because when I set deadlines, it’s not really a deadline. Ha ha.

And the fact that I am learning something in the process is a good thing. My personality is inquisitive by nature, I want to learn and understand so many things at the same time! So these writing assignments are keeping my brains from getting rusticated, plus it improves my typing and writing skills, too.

No, I don’t expect to get rich with this venture, at least not so soon. The pay is still so-so, considering this is my first project. But I am doing something I’m happy to, and something that gives me fulfillment. The rest is just icing on the cake, so to speak.

Well, the party was a no-brainer. Playing BINGO is not my idea of fun, and the people there just looked so worn out, it seemed as if they were trying too hard to be happy. What’s to be happy in working for stupid demigods anyway, and doing brainless work all day? For the first time, I really pitied them. Really. But at least they are being paid well, that’s the only nice thing about their careers. Without it, perhaps they’d be slitting their wrists open by now.

Too bad I didn’t win anything. Ella won a nice bed foam and a humongous two-burner gas stove. Mae won the microwave oven I’ve been secretly wishing for myself. But when your friends are happy, you can only be happy for them too. There is simply no other way.

So, I have to get back to my writing. The deadline is tomorrow before midnight and I’m trying to beat it by submitting it tonight, before midnight. Wish me lots of luck and pixie dust.

Fungi on a Pedestal October 17, 2007

It’s a blown out war against the demigods. Why did allow myself to fall into this pit in the first place? Why, for all my idealism, love for creative thinking, contempt for repetitive, boxed-in professions, did I allow myself to putrefy in a bureaucratic government agency? Why did I waste four fucking years of my life working for people who think they are the last geniuses in this damned country? Did I honestly believe I would come to be like them- horns, tails, and all?

It was cowardice, ambition, and arrogance that got me here in the first place. Cowardice, because I was too afraid to disappoint people. I was too much of a coward to refute the suggestions of the powers that be, too exhilarated with the flowery promises that stoked up the recesses of my ego. I was too spineless to say no, which was what my heart was telling me all that time, too hungry for an opportunity that I took without really thinking. I was driven by ambition, too, thinking that I could get anything so long as I slave for it, which is usually the way things happen to luckier folks. And worse, I was arrogant to even think that I can share the tilted world of four males who laugh at God and religion, worship alcohol and vagina, and think that women who speak out their minds are an obliterated genus. Arrogant enough to believe that I will not miss Mom and her annoying reminders; that I am grown-up enough not to miss home. That I can read a book more peacefully, watch my favorite shows without interruption, consume as much caffeine as I wanted, and relish all the other glories of self-government. That a tiny, provincial city will allow me some respite, that the town’s simple-minded folks can somehow keep pace with my love for literature, stimulating repartees, interest in the fashion and the arts. Arrogant and bullish, that the promises I have so lived on will soon be delivered to my doorstep on a silver platter, and that I shall learn to worship the false gods, the cunning geniuses, those lofty creatures who crown their own heads with gold and brass, and clutch at them fitfully even when asleep.

Funny. Now, almost four years later, the gods I have sacrificed for, wasted too many weekends for, traveled so many miles and so many hours for, idiotically defended every single working day, and cried over for far too many years, do not seem to recognize even a trifle of my existence. It becomes clearer that I was no more than a guinea pig in the end, fed with hopes and assurances, drowned in liquefied deception, made to run around in a spinning wheel, and when the demigods became bored, or decided to shift to other forms of amusement, dropped me just as simply in a cauldron of boiling water. Of course, I never should have trusted them, as the greedy and supercilious are rarely to be depended upon. But should I have known better years before, when sweet nonsense had been gushing from their mouths so profusely, and when it was their hands that fed me divine ambrosia? How perfectly they have hidden their tails, and shrouded their horns with lovely tresses! I had been one lonely fool all this time, and a willing one at that.

Surprisingly, the tears do not threaten me anymore. As a matter truth, I no longer feel anything. To be angry at them would be futile; to bawl my eyes out would be downright pathetic. Trying to reason with them would make me a worse fool than I already am. They cannot make me swallow their shits anymore, glorified as they are. People tell me I’m intelligent, but my life is nowhere near that, duped as I was this half decade past. It is a silent war that I am waging, one that still affords me a peaceful sleep and a hearty laugh every now and then. It is an all-out war that’s impending, yes, but if it ever begins then I do not know how to ever make it end. There are nights I wish I could wake up from this nightmare, and realize that the demigods deserved their posts after all, that they are where they should be, and that I was not a guinea pig drowning in a boiling cauldron.

Funny, but more often I wish I can just pack my bags and leave in a single breath and not to look back again at a time and place I have ridiculously learned to love, but never, never loved me back.

Eerie Enchantment September 23, 2007

A few years back, I once lived alone in a house of seven bedrooms, for ten months. It was that time when I just got transferred here in this nascent, sleepy city in the heart of the Bukidnon mountains for work. I barely knew anyone in these areas and was looking for a house to share with young professionals like myself, when someone suggested a cozy, cabin-like dorm house which was up for rent in a quieter part of the city. The owner lived in another split-level house a few feet away from the cottage, but because the property was relatively wide, and was surrounded by trees and bamboos, the cabin had an isolated, almost surreptitious appeal to it.

There were not too many neighbors, facing the property was an empty lot lined with cacao plants, and farther away one could see the tips of the mountain forests, hidden now and then by the transitory fog. Public transportation was rather a short walk away so that honking cars, whirring motorcycles, and the like were a welcome rarity. I found the cottage charming at once; its façade was designed to look like it was a log cabin, when in fact it was just made of simple cement, and it had a little wrought-iron gate, and potted ferns hung carelessly from under the little windows. Because it was bordered on two sides by trees and shrubbery, brown leaves would often carpet the pavement during breezy days, and the chorus of the crickets and the sound of bamboo leaves brushing against the wind would often greet me at sundown just after arriving home.

The little house had seven rooms as I had mentioned: three on the first floor and four above the small, steep stairways. It had two spacious bathrooms, and a corner sink. My room on the first floor was the largest and I was happy to have grabbed it first. The middle-aged landlady, perhaps a looker during her salad days, was friendly enough but always kept a certain distance from her tenants. She promised me that soon, I would have housemates; mostly young and single nurses working at the public hospital near her place. The summer season merely delayed their arrival, and that come June, the cottage rooms would all be rented out.

Except that the nurses never came. Or anyone else, for that matter. The weeks dragged into months. The landlady became noncommittal, and soon I grew tired of the solitude I once found so charming. I soon dreaded coming home to an empty house of seven bedrooms; the isolation was slowly eating away at me. I would take my dinners at fast foods or little cafes, and upon getting home, play all my CDs until the wee hours of the morning. The darkness, the crickets’ noise, the bamboo stalks all had an eerie feel to them that I slept with the lights open. I could not stay late outside because by then, the streets would be pitch black, if not for the light of the fat, sinister-looking moon. During the course of the ten months, I found myself a roommate, but she traveled frequently that she was almost never home at all. My landlady was quite particular with her choices, and so was I, so no one else came to live with me at the cabin.

On the third month, I had a sweaty nightmare, I didn’t sleep until morning. On the sixth month, a number of transients lived at the house for a week, disrupting my sleep even more, and stealing my toothpaste and soap, but the night they finally left, I wished they never did, and I would have gladly given them a gallon of toothpaste if their lives depended on it. On the eighth month, one of my friends from my home city spent a night with me, and told me she’d never understand why I would live in such a lonely part in this side of the world. She was right.

On the tenth month, I finally left. And couldn’t be any happier.

Leaving Home September 13, 2007

- Originally created on 08/09/2006-

I had never appreciated home the way I did after I packed my bags and left, and perhaps when I finally return one sweet day, it will be harder for me to leave again.

I left home almost two years ago for work. Well, I never really left it, I just spend five days working away from the city I grew up in, then traveling back to my hometown on weekends on a two-hour bus commute. A few months before my twenty second birthday, I remember how I had packed my stuff in a state of unusual optimism. I was trained to be self-governing in character, being the oldest in a brood of three, and I felt that subsisting in the recently chartered city of Malaybalay in Bukidnon where city traffic and shopping malls are nonexistent would be as easy as pie. The lifestyle congestion of a thriving city like my hometown in Cagayan de Oro can be quite a nuisance that I easily welcomed the thought of a simpler life, so simple that one could hear the pine trees rustle their needles during breezy nights and anywhere within the town proper is just a short walk away.

For all the poetic romanticism I had reserved for this new place however, I was soon shoved face first in a position I hadn’t really counted on. It turned out I was the only young female in a workplace dominated by five twenty-something males whose language and antics got fouler each passing day. They were fond of swearing, for one, and it came as naturally to them as breathing. They would talk of girls and sex nonchalantly, as if I myself were not from Eve, and being the newest addition in the office could very easily take offense from such brash talk. Simple minded and insensate as they are, they would comment on the size of my chest, the shape of my buttocks, and would even go to the lengths of asking me something as personal as my own virginity. One officemate has this unabashed habit of relating his sexual encounters of the previous night whether anyone in the office asked for a recount or not.

Sure, there have been good days and after a while, in a very odd way, we have all become better acquainted but being in their company teaches me to simply accept people the way they are and seek out, however difficult, the lighter side of each one. It was out of my own volition that I came here, and I have learned how to hold my tongue and keep my cool, even when the feminist side of me longs to lash out mercilessly at Mr. Casanova. Oh well, since I have no one else to back me up on my arguments, lashing out at him would be futile. The rest of them would just laugh and examine me as if I were something fast forwarded from a different era.

Yes, leaving home not only meant leaving that sun-drenched house with the cozy kitchen I had known since childhood, it also meant leaving for five straight days sensible conversations with life-long friends, anecdote-filled family breakfasts, and “diet” dinners eaten while watching evening news. It meant having to do away with the perquisites I had grown to neglect over the years, like always having someone laugh at my stupid jokes, a sister who would iron my frilly blouse at the last minute, or having that particular someone fetch me from the office, hold my hand, and walk me home. And until I lived my life away from the comforts which had been right under my nose, I never realized that I would actually come to prefer a humble tomato omelet lovingly prepared by Mom than one ordered from some fancy café.

Almost two years and dozens of tear-stained tissues later, I have grown quite adept with turning a deaf ear to insensible remarks and to amuse myself with things I’d rather do alone. Here in this cold plateau, I have grown twice as strong-hearted and a thousand fold more grateful for the things I am now missing but have actually been blessed with my entire life. And yes, the mobile phone has become my very reliable companion, as calls from home, apart from my precious weekends, are my anesthesia in this period of psychological loneliness.

There are just some days that I wish to have an interesting talk with people who respect women as persons, gives a damn about economic or socio-political issues, and appreciates topics other than sex, women, booze, and, sex again. Some days I would love to share thoughts with someone who has read the works of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez or the sensual poetry of Pablo Neruda. And funny enough, some days I even find myself missing the carbon monoxide fumes of busy Divisoria and the maddening traffic after office hours.

And whether or not the decision I made two years ago would prove to be a wise career move in the end, it doesn’t hide the truth that some days, I wish I never left home at all.