antique bowl

i never really had the best communication with anyone. despite my eloquence and spontaneity, i've always kept to myself especially with my parents. they never knew what i really wanted or what i was really going through, they were always a few steps behind knowing their son. i don't blame them really, i'm pretty sure they did their part in reaching out to me, it just so happens that i never had it in me to actually communicate what's on my mind because i was taught at an early age to respect my parents. i never really knew the distinction between respect and damaging self-restraint.

and now i'm suffering from the lesson i failed to learn

i can be at least proud that i never turned out to be a delinquent, i never ran away from home, i never screamed back at my parents, i never stayed out late at night because i was too drunk to go home, i never got jailed, i may have had numerous disciplinary cases filed against me back in high school, but i'm more or less a better child than most kids.

but being like that somehow got me into a situation where i failed to really let all my frustration toward my parents out. i grew up resenting them on a regular basis. i know it's very bad and i wish i can afford therapy, or at least muster up the willpower to actually tell them what i want in life. because it's easy to tell them i want a burger, it's easy for them to pull out their wallets and hand me a couple of bills, that's what parents do. but to tell them what i want in life is something i've always wanted to do but never really got to doing it. maybe because i grew up not wanting any of my parents to be disappointed so i kept on shoehorning myself to a mold which i think my parents will be happy with while compromising my want to be just me.

i've always compromised though, painfully so.

patternal faces

i haven't been happy with life lately, unfortunately.

i haven't been happy with life lately and all i will do is complain.

i haven't been happy with life lately and the best you can do right now is to quit reading this.

i haven't been happy with life lately and i do a fairly good job to appear otherwise. however for those who can read people, my recent photos are a huge giveaway.

i haven't been happy with life lately and a friend of mine just attempted suicide and i admire his balls. he did something i can only wish at night when life sucks, maybe i should start drinking?

i haven't been happy with life lately and it's no thanks to the people around me, after years of being around people, somehow i can't seem to find the right set of people to make me feel better to the core.

i haven't been happy with life lately and all i can do is to escape from reality and be a skilled basketball player or an amazing dragon slayer or a competent dictator, all in the comfort of my couch.

i haven't been happy with life lately and i can tell i've yet to go through tougher times, it doesn't look like it won't be ending at this stage of my life.

i haven't been happy with life lately and 21 years later it's still the same old shit.

i haven't been happy with life lately and it can't end any sooner.

i haven't been happy with life lately, unfortunately.

kuma-quarter life crisis

yes, i do feel the need to get a job... and fix my damn shift key. however, i'm sincerely wasting away and i'm not exactly in a rush to actually make something out of myself. i'm not pushed by great necessity to start earning money. yeah sure, it would have been nice to have money to burn for my numerous wants and other wants which pretend to be ''needs'', but i'm fine living on the same pasta dish for breakfast over and over again. there's nothing wrong with having the same meal for months on end, if a couple can stay loyal to each other, then why can't i be the same to food?

the monotony is NOT killing me.

there's something comforting about a routine that feels snug like a shoe you wear day in, day out. there's a sense of affinity to that shoe that when you wear it, you know it's for you. same goes with my routine, the way i cook, what i cook, what i watch, the way i work out, whom i talk to, my name is written all over it.

bumming around isn't exactly all that fulfilling. nothing fulfills you more than a sense of purpose in life, a direction, a raison d'etre. but a reason for being isn't exactly something you google, it must fit you. so i'm taking my sweet sweet time, being unproductive, living by the same routine, hoping that fate won't fall short, that serendipity isn't as pitiful as it seems like.

but then again, how does one find lady luck in routine?

strokeing

i haven't written something as personal as a blog in a long time, probably because i have a girlfriend now who occupies pretty much most of my time now, and for the past couple of months, i've been busy with my thesis... and the scar my thesis left was this fucked up keyboard on my year-old netbook.

that might be an exaggeration, the only thing fucked up about this keyboard is that the shift key doesn't work... can you imagine how difficult life is without the shift key/1

exactly.

i would've worked in the production for this blog entry and used proper capitalization and punctuation , but i figured with something as personal as this, i don't see the point of any formality. as i've had my generous share of formality with writing my thesis, so much so that if i see the word 'methodology' again, i am going berserk.

again, that's an exaggeration. that's how it goes in life.

quite frankly though, the college thesis, despite its complexity, seemed to be much easier than my high school thesis... or maybe because i was working on two simultaneous theses back then, and 'sleepless nights' associated with theses rang truer than my love for being number 1.

funnily enough, writing my thesis now and back in high school was similar in that my college econ and high school pre-med theses were, in the back of my head and according to my advisers, primed to be one of the best theses. both did not made the cut, however, my high school thesis left me elated after the defense whereas my college thesis defense left a bitter aftertaste... what was more embittering was that my girlfriend got a much higher grade than we did. at that point, fairness and equality in life lost all meaning. i put in much more effort in my thesis than my girlfriend and she was rewarded with a marginally higher grade than i did. i should be happy for her for getting a good grade, but when the effort you put into doing something wasn't met with the adulation it should've had, it's very... very... embittering.

pretty much at that point, i stopped exerting effort in anything anymore... noticeably, my cooking has been shittier than my past works.

oh yeah, i've been cooking recently... and watching a good number of gordon ramsay tv shows, and it's not an overstatement when i say that it sparked a deep passion for cooking. i mean really passionate, so much so that i think about mise en place, or in terms you would understand, food preparation, all the time. on the commute to school, strangely enough, in my head i was chopping onions, perfecting how to dice an onion. i was imagining working the pans, putting in the spices and drizzling it with oils and stuff. but mostly i was imagining chopping vegetables, and cooking scrambled eggs. i was constantly thinking of getting a career in a professional kitchen and being a chef... or a cook, or whatever you wanna call it.

however the cynic in me saw this already, when i was much younger and wanted to be a football player playing for the national football team, way back then when the philippine football team wasn't called the 'azkals'. seeing the same shit before, i know this dream of becoming a chef will go nowhere, as i'm a few months away from graduating from my bachelor's degree, and my girlfriend doesn't want me to leave the country.

i say that a lot, that my girlfriend doesn't want me to leave the country. i'm not implying that she allow me to leave the country, it was just an option, provided how few the opportunities there are in this country. the other option, which i am willing to take, is to stay here and hope for the best. admittedly though, i don't see a solid direction, career-wise, for me in the philippines, but i'm fine with suffering in silence, or even suffering in general. a good number of my years were spent sucking up to faulty life quality, doesn't make much of a difference.

in spite of that, it's not all doom and gloom if i stayed here. if a million other filipinos, and billions more in africa, can deal with third-world life, then so can i.

it has been pretty much established in the past that i'm one of those people 'who could have been great'

if not, here's a refresher...

ever since i was little i was primed to be a very exceptional individual, in terms of skill and intelligence... not so much in social skills, as exemplified by me blogging right now and not talking to my girlfriend, i am really socially inept to be anyone's friend, boyfriend, or even son. however, as the years went by and every year, a new person to disappoint, a new expectation i failed to live up to but wasn't pushed hard enough. i could've gone on a tirade on how i could've been the 'chosen one' but failed and hear me pour my heart out, but nah, the cynic in me extrapolated that i couldn't be the only one like this. there must've been a lot of people like me, gifted individuals who didn't live up to their potential. so i'm tired of trying to live up to my potential, there are a handful of people who are doing that and have been doing it for a very long time, if i will start now, then, to my exceptionally high standards, it would be an exercise in futility.

as life is, so in order for my efforts to not go in vain, might as well not exert effort at all...

...cause the disillusionment is killing me...

..slowly...