E is for "Effervescent"

It's been a while since I've actually gone and eaten a full meal in a restaurant. To clarify, I ate at the outdoor converted space in the diner's parking lot where tables were equally spaced apart further than pre-covid days. There was a canopy above lending shade to patrons, but sunlight still managed to filter through the little gaps. It's not quite fall season in the Bay Area, but it was definitely a fine day to finally eat out for once.

Different conversations floated around, most of them were stories about what people would do “when this is over” or “while things are the way they are”. A group of elderly people who had finished off their plates ages ago were still sitting, catching up with one another as if they haven't seen each other in ages – no doubt. There was a family with little kids, the oldest running around an empty space under the bright sun, chasing his shadow. Another couple was seated somewhere nearby, huddled while talking as if in a world of their own.

As for me, while waiting for my longed-after french toast, I was busy folding origami with the restaurant's paper menu. The SO and I had gone through folding hats, boats, planes, and the square folding game – and while the paper could still hold out, I was busy making my final paper crane while he was busy following instructions for a paper sumo. Breakfast then arrived the moment we were both done, as if it were a reward.

Maybe the best and worst thing about living on your own, regardless if you have housemates or not, is the silence. When literally there's no one around you to cut through it, you either become the best philosopher of your life or deal with your own company.

The latter I find very hard to do.

I'm sure it didn't used to be this way, since I was always the kind of kid who would run from one idea to the next, always the busy body, always the person slightly reaching out to one person to the other for some fun activity. If not that, I had plenty of things to amuse myself with – books, games, and it would be a grave mistake if I didn't include the internet. Everything felt new, shiny and exciting and the buzz in my head would always be full of questions and anticipation of what would come next.

But lately, and maybe it's the years saying this, I'm not too excited. I've become a person of habit, someone who I thought I would never become, but here I am taking pride in doing a 9-5, taking a walk on MWFs and having the occasional take-out. Besides going home for the weekend or the usual dinner with the SO, I am pretty much left to my own devices. No one day is the same, of course, and life is definitely beautiful in all its messy glory, but the down times wherein I'm by myself in my room feels both pleasant and frustrating.

I've heard a few other people say that we have become a generation of people who don't have hobbies – and I feel like part of that is true, and for myself, most of it is my fault. Writing this feels like keeping a journal, and therefore not a hobby. If I were given a slambook write now, I would probably have no or only a generic answer to the word “hobbies”, because I find it hard to pinpoint what exactly lights me up and excites me. I wish I could say sewing was a hobby, or reading, or gaming – but to be frankly honest, I haven't finished anything that I've currently started (maybe except watching movies because two hours of my attention span while bingeing on popcorn is okay).

In this silence, I have idle time. It upsets me, but only because I haven't resolved it in myself that I am not who I used to be either.

Two days ago I found myself in this predicament that I'd never thought I would be in – my laptop had a virus. Now I'm usually the most careful person out there, and maybe I'm no advance tech gal who has all systems in place (in truth, I would be on a Linux machine if I really wanted to be hardcore about it) but I do make the effort to have a paid antivirus software for everyone in the family. I would be the one constantly reprimanding my brother about his questionable website choices that seem always attached with a warning, or the one reminding my parents not to click this or do that.

But I still got it, and all because I was too trusting of an email.

The details of what transpired over the next two days are a bit complicated, but either I was hit by something new, or I lost confidence in two major antivirus software because they couldn't tell it existed. In the end, I decided to just do a fresh reinstall on Windows and hoped for the best.

In which that's what I've been mulling about now for awhile. If this had happened a few years back, I would be in a sort of crazy state right now, probably crying on the floor for the inevitable wipe. But I didn't. I looked over the files that I thought I had on my Downloads and Documents folder, but lo and behold, nothing was really too important to be even worth keeping.

Now I know this would have been a different scenario if it were on my work laptop, but this is my personal one – the one that I write these subpar entries on. The one where I boot up Steam to play some obscure VN or RPG Maker game. I thought I would've had a stronger attachment to the thing, but it turns out that I ended up caring more for other people's laptops than mine. Not to say that I wouldn't be unhappy if it became totally unusable, but I feel like my relationship with it has changed.

Aside from the old school papers I still had in here from a year ago, I don't think I've done anything major on Mulberry (my laptop's name) for about a year or so now. Most of my important files have been backed up on the cloud, tucked away for some future use – they're mostly pictures. Most of my usage solely rests on being in an open tab on Firefox instead. One one hand, I think it's amazing that technology has come so far that the average user only really needs one running application – an internet browser. But in the same vein, that sounds completely dangerous in a security stand point – if someone just cracks the code, all hell could break lose.

And so I wiped it clean. I have no idea if it's actually really virus free or not, and I still have to have that conversation with our work's IT guy tomorrow, but literally besides Firefox and my antivirus, it seems that nothing else will probably get installed on here for the time being.

Maybe Steam to play games, but we'll see.

If there was one anime I know every episode by heart, it would be Aya Nakahara's Lovely Complex. I first heard about it from a friend back in high school, but I only ever did give it a chance a few years after and completely fell in love with it. For those of you who're not familiar with it, it's an anime about a tall girl falling in love with a shorter guy and spends around 17 episodes trying her very best to make him fall for her – and it's great. If anything, I feel like it was very ahead of its time, tackling on one or two social issues whilst dazzling us with romcom tropes, but the actual story pans out as a very satisfying watch.

Or at least to me, I felt very drawn to it because I was going through the same thing. I had the greatest crush on someone who was a couple of inches shorter than me, and I honestly could not resolve this inner conflict. Fresh out of an all-girls highschool, my college had so many good-looking guys, and I end up liking one who was just as geeky as me BUT shorter? My 17 year old self must've been trying to grasp for some acceptance and reason. And so, I clung to LoveCom for dear life. And to those naysayers out there that say anime can't teach people a thing or two – I learned from this show that when you're visiting a sick person, the right etiquette is to bring well meaning gifts like citrus, or the person's favorite get-well snack. Take that.

But kidding aside, I love everything about this anime, even if it was stupid at times. But now that I'm older (hopefully wiser), and more experienced, I think back to my teenage years and feel that maybe I must have had too much unrealistic expectations of what “being in a relationship” and “giving your best” actually means. I had been that tall girl trying my very best to get that short guy to notice me, succeeded at it after a months and months of painstaking heartbreak – but the similarities end there. I am happy that in my mind, after 24 episodes, the main characters get to perpetually live out a fantasy romance we all dream of.

But not for me – real life is different.

I feel like I've come a long way from how I used to be a decade ago, and real life has definitely taught me difficult and hard lessons I would never wish on anyone. To the me now, love isn't constantly giving your all and crying at every rejection. It isn't being with someone 24/7 and expecting every minute to be magic and rainbows. As I type all of this, please know that I'm actually cringeing and beyond embarassed – and I really wish I could send my current self back in time to just let the old me know that it's okay to have a break.

That it's okay to quit too – putting yourself first is more important.

Of course, my bull headed teenage self wouldn't listen to all this enlightened talk (would call bullshit on it, in fact), but we get dealt with different cards with an unlimited number of episodes to play out. The LoveCom chapter of my life has long ended, and now I can look back to it fondly and say that really, I lived out an anime for a time.

Recently, I've just slowly become more conscious about forming habits and routines – the good ones. When I'm in my space, I find it a lot easier to follow through some well established ones – so far I have:

• In bed by 11 PM, asleep before 12 MN
• Reading a few pages of my current book 30 minutes before I snooze
• Awake by 8 AM
• Breakfast (which is a huge deal because I was never a regular breakfast person in the past)

I know these sound very basic, but I feel like I speak for a lot of other people when I say that the pandemic has absolutely changed our well established routines. During the earlier months of the year, I felt like I was in a long summer vacation where I would wake up in the middle of the day and go on playing or watching things way past midnight. It's still the norm when I go back to my parent's place for the weekend now, given that my brother is A) a college student who knows no bounds or limits and B) my parents and I particularly like watching movies whenever we're together – I find it a struggle to keep on switching back and forth between these two routines, but I try anyway.

There are also a few things I've been trying out too:

• Meditation when I get up in the morning
• Drinking vitamins like a proper adult
• Taking a short walk outside when I can during the day

As simple as those three sound, they're pretty challenging if I were to be really honest with myself. They're pretty new routines, so I'm trying to be kind to myself, especially when I slip up and forget. Consistency is key, so I just have to keep on hacking at it and trying until I get there!

Now that things seem to have slowly fallen in to place after my recent move, I've been trying to slowly pick up the pieces of where I've left off, including writing on here. It has honestly been AGES since I've fired up W.a and I feel like I'm back to the very beginning – sitting blankly in front of the white canvas in front of me with nothing to write.

But that isn't true – there has been so many things that has happened recently, sometimes I feel guilty. I virtually met online with my therapist a month ago and with embarassment and guilt, I told him that on one hand, I feel happy where I am right now because things are still turning for me, but yet I simply can't indulge on this happiness too much because I fear that maybe I'm not being sensitive enough to others. I fully admit that it's a weird balance between my pride and my empathy, and up till now I still don't know where I should stand between the two.

Nevertheless, I am alive, healthy, and doing well. That's what's important.

I now also have a bigger desk, which is why it's becoming a more recent thing that I'm sitting in front of my computer, instead of having to look at my tiny cellphone screen for entertainment. I also do have a hand-me-down TV set inside my room, but I just realized that it caused me more headaches and neckpains in the past few weeks from prolonged viewing. I know it's from the angle of where it's located in proximity to my bed, but there's no other space to put it.

I am also slowly incorporating a few healthy habits, now that I have the time and space for them – might actually write about it in another time. Being alone has definitely freed up pockets of my day, and I am thankful that I can focus on a few areas that I haven't thought of focusing on before.

Let's see if I come back to write tomorrow, or in the next few days.

It's been a while since I've last written anything, so much that I've completely forgotten how to use Markdown, and therefore I am writing all of this void of any formatting. I may or may not get back into the groove of things (with me, who knows?) but I just wanted to write down a few things that have transpired over the course of a little more than a month.

The biggest things probably is that I have finally moved houses and I am now fully living the so-called “adult life”, albeit it has only really been less than a full week. The house is in your typical San Francisco Victorian house style, complete with two flights of stairs that are excruciating to walk up to when you're dead tired. I share the space with two lovely ladies who I rarely see, but I hear their presence whenever they pass by the corridor. My only fear is that one day they'll come up to me and say “I can hear you snore”.

Joking aside, it is absolutely fantastic! The month I've been away from writing was spent on getting ready, and mostly buying new supplies and gadgets that would satisfy my aesthetic and trendy needs more than my practical ones. I've ransacked my parent's cupboards and brought with me whatever I think I could cook, but the past few days had me buying take-out and dividing it into three equal parts: today's lunch, today's dinner, and then tomorrow's breakfast. I must admit, there were some things that I severely overlooked, and in my excitement to go, I didn't think about the practical side of living alone: meal planning, cleaning, and laundry. I was only prepared with the idea of having to do it, but not actually doing them.

But then, this is where I should start to grow. I now call the shots on my life fully, with no one else to blame if things hit the ceiling. For now, it has been lessons on eating properly and telling myself constantly that just because I can, means I should. Still, the other day, I bought a few cans of beer, fully knowing that I don't drink too often. It will probably take me months before I finish the last can.

But anyway, Cheers!

As much as I like writing, I have never really felt strongly towards poems. I know it's supposed to flow better in terms of sound, and have a better, concise, delivery because of its brevity (as compared to writing such as this), but it rarely encapsulates my soul. There are a few gems I've found tho, one if which is Alfred Noyes' The Highwayman.

I must have read this when I was in high school – during the phase where my (and probably everyone's) hormones were just looking for adrenaline and romance in every turn... or page. This particular poem encapsulated all the wild romantic fantasies I've ever read, all in just a few verses. It has a The Princess Bride feel to it, but a touch bit darker.

Read the Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

#Feature #Poetry

Earlier this morning I had already written down at least half a decent post's worth of my opinion about the term “Filipinx” – on how, as a former Mainland-er, I doubt I'll ever understand the real essence of it, but at the same time find it surprisingly relatable in terms of holding on to a personal cultural identity and narrative I can hold on to while I no longer have my feet planted firmly on my hometown.

I had all these ideas built up, stopped to take a quick break and to work on actual work-work, and then when I came back to my draft, read it once and deleted it. Poof. Gone.

Folks, that is my problem. I wish I could come clean and tell you exactly how many times I've done this, but it's happened so many times that I've lost the exact count. I start this whole rant and inner monologue about an opinion I have but I start to get cold feet and, ultimately, erase every single word into oblivion. I fear that my opinion in the matter is not valid. That I have no additional point to make, so maybe I should keep my mouth and thoughts shut. Sometimes I fear that my opinion is flimsy, and if called out (or worse, cancelled), I won't be able to recover. I know full well that W.a is probably the safest space my thoughts and opinions could ever be in, and discourse does happen in a better, more constructive way, but I still live with that fear.

I'm no coward, but I know my emotions are fragile. Heck, people forget that people are humans once they start hiding in anonymity and in numbers, hurling one destructive comment after the other. I don't have a lot of faith in how most people use the internet, and most of the time I have chosen to lurk rather than to actively participate because of that exact reason. But this is the internet – anything I put out here is “receipts”, and modern-day society has developed sleuthing skills that could land them a career in the FBI.

I guess another thing for me to overcome in my writing journey? Sounds about right.

#Journal #PrattlePost

In the same vein as people who occasionally say “I have so many clothes in my closet, but I've got nothing to wear”, I have fallen into the pits of boredom yet I have so many sources to draw entertainment from.

To illustrate, I've amassed the following over a lifetime:

• 71 games on Steam most of which I bought off from sales and have never touched, downloaded, opened, etc.
• 2 gaming consoles; a Nintendo Switch solely for the purpose of playing ACNH and a modded GBA with 3 game cartridges
• 5 cookbooks
• 29 Mousebooks, 95% of which have never been cracked open from their plastic casing
• 40 books in my Filipino Book collection, which I admittedly hoarded on the last trip home
• 16 books I've bought from second-hand bookstores
• 2 library loans (one physical book and another an audiobook)
• 100+ articles saved on Pocket
• 162 Watch Later videos on Youtube

This is probably just a partial list of things that I can potentially do, yet most of the time I've just been sitting on my bed, listlessly scrolling through my phone. Now that I've actually written it all out, I feel both horrendous and disgusted with myself – all this self-talk of “owning less” and being “purposeful” is hypocritical if I own so many but not derive any pleasure and enjoyment from them.

What mindset or framework should I be looking at this current train of thought? The simple answer to my dilemma is to go through the list, but it's weird to admit that I have no motivation to do any of them. No desire to pick up a book. No inclination to cook. The fact that I'm writing this is the only indication that the embers inside my mind have been somewhat stoked, but just ever so slightly – it isn't enough for me to finish anything that I try to start.

It's a weird and petty dilemma for sure, one that I'll probably ponder on a few more days before finding something to occupy my mind again. I've never thought of myself as this person until now. Does it mean that I'm changing as a person and that the old things no longer hold my interest? Is there something else I'd rather occupy my time with? I might not know the answer now, but I'd love to understand where this feeling is stemming from, and how I can fix it for the better.

...

It hasn't escaped me that this is going to be my 25th post (not day) in the #100DaysToOffload and oh wow, I'm actually amazed that I've made it to this point! If I had followed instructions, this would have been Day 55, but as it is, life tends to just take its course and make a beautiful mess with personal plans.

I have been seriously considering it but I've made my decision and at this point going forward, I'll be dropping the challenge hashtag. No, I'm not going anywhere, of course, and I'll continue writing, but I just feel like the frequency of which I post is no longer motivated by the challenge itself, but more of an intrinsic need to write what I feel. It has always been the main goal of this space, and initially, I jumped on the challenge to jumpstart me back to the right path of writing. Right now, I just find it silly of me to be saying “post” instead of “day”, and this is the only way I can reconcile it in my head.

But I am absolutely thankful. Because W.a is set-up the way that it is, I have no clue if anyone is regularly reading this, but I've gotten the occasional message on my fnContact and that has truthfully warmed my heart. I've learned so much from reading other people's musings as well – so much so that I've been influenced to make changes with the way I interact with the internet. The pinnacle of my learning would be embodied in the fact that I now have Mastodon and use it! You guys are great – it is exactly the internet that I want to be in.

I'll still keep on reading and writing, and this is definitely not a goodbye. You guys know where to find me (if not, check out my About Me – it's all there), and I'll always keep an eye out on everyone else who joins the challenge.

Signing off now. See you guys on the next (highly irregular) post!

25/100

#100DaysToOffload #Journal #PrattlePost #EndOfSeries