Sunday, December 28, 2008

New Year's Resolutions, part two

Some more thoughts on my New Year's Resolutions:

- I will try to maintain a realistic reading list this year. I've recently added two more to my reading list: Doctors by Erich Segal (a novel I read and loved back in high school but never bought my own copy, and I only remembered it when I bought my boss a copy for Christmas) and Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life by David Allen (another book by the author of Getting Things Done. This time it's little, bite-sized principles that you can easily digest). By realistic, I mean I can easily see myself finishing the books on the list, and only when I've sort-of finished it (i.e. more than halfway down the list) will I begin to replenish my list. Really, I'll try (where "try" is the operative word). Reading is such an expensive addiction, especially when you're picky about versions (trade paperback or mass market paperback? Movie cover or non-movie cover? British or American cover? There's a difference, there really is!)

- Since I'm keeping a reading list, I will make it a point to set aside time to read a little everyday. Then, in between reading lists, I will...

- Watch more DVDs. I'm currently addicted to How I Met Your Mother, and there are so many shows that I know nothing about. Among them: Gossip Girl, Pushing Daisies, Heroes, Entourage... I never watched an episode. Not even one. So, I will expand my pop culture knowledge by joining the bandwagon and watch more DVDs...

- And more TV, and more movies. Here's to more movie dates! :)

- Try to travel more this year. If only cash came in unlimited supply.


Okay that's it for now. Until the new year! :)

Saturday, December 27, 2008

An attempt to make New Year's Resolutions

While New Year's Eve is days away, reading Getting Things Done is encouraging me to just jot everything down as they come. If I don't do it now, I will probably forget about it. So here I am, typing away on my cousin's laptop as I wait for the party upstairs to fill up with people I actually know (and this laptop is pretty fun to type in!).

So, when the New Year comes in, I will...

- Try not to use "chorva", "chenes", "eklavu", and other baklese (isn't that what they call gay lingo now?) to substitute for other words. I realized that these words have become my lazy, easy way out of really thinking about things. It's easier to say "Pass me the chorva" than to think of that chorva as salt or pepper. My vocabulary is in danger of shrinking. And so, I will refuse the temptation to call things and people "chorva" and "chenes".

- Try something new at least once a month. This includes buying a piece of clothing I don't have in my wardrobe, eating at a new place, trying a new dish, and other things I don't normally do. It has become so easy to get stuck in a rut, and the most glaring evidence that it's detrimental to one's health is the state of my feet and lower back. Because I've been walking around in flats for years, refusing to wear heels, my back pain has increased and the arches of my feet hurt all the time. It's my body begging me to please add some height to my walk. And so I've succumbed, forcing myself to tolerate being in heels all day but not every day in an attempt to improve my posture. And it hasn't been so bad, which then proves that trying new things won't kill you after all.

- Come to work early every day. As I have discovered this December, coming in adik-early (as I like to call it) has its benefits: I get to work on things that require absolute silence and I get to take my time getting into the groove of things. Rather than trying to hit the ground running everyday, I have time to settle in, clear my head, and relax before the day really gets started. Coming in early also leads me to my next resolution, which is...

- Set aside at least an hour every day to clean up, process, and organize my things/files. Because I really want to lead an organized and stress-free life, Getting Things Done stresses the importance of lists, keeping your calendar and filing system up-to-date, current, and dynamic, and basically taking the time out to collect, process, organize, and review everything before you decide on what to do. (I swear I love this book.)

- Make it a point to keep the schedule I thought up: go home early twice a week, go on a date twice a week, and have a Me-Day once a week. 'Nuff said.


To be continued, it's time to join the rest of civilization upstairs. Have you thought of your own New Year's Resolutions? :)

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Hello, Cebu!

I made it to Cebu safe and sound. *applause*

For the first time in a very, very long time, my family is not staying over at my tita's house in Happy Valley. This year, we're booked at a pension house called NS Royale. There's wifi here, but I assumed it was for free. It's not. It costs P450 for 6 hours, valid for 48 hours. To save a bit, my siblings and I get two hours each in this card, but can't go online all at the same time. Boo.

Which is actually okay because our schedule looks jampacked:
Dec 25 - arrival in Cebu
Dec 26 - wedding number one
Dec 27 - free day
Dec 28 - free day
Dec 29 - wedding number two
Dec 30 - trip to Argao (might be overnight)
Dec 31 - New Year's Eve reunion
Jan 1 - departure from Cebu

On one of those free days, we'll be hitting SM Cebu to check out the new wing and do some shopping-- thanks to my dad's credit card rewards points, we get P2,000 each! Whee! Then, my cousin wants to have some sort of night out, like have a cocktail or something. I'm actually not very in the mood to hit the hotspots, but I suppose we'll find a way to hang out together.

Looks like I'll have enough of a voice to perform my commentator duties in Wedding Number One. Thank God.

It's been six years since I've been here. I wonder what's changed. 

The limited Internet time is pressuring me, I can't seem to write anything coherent. Oh well. Signing off!

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

the book hoarder

I cheated.

I have a reading list with ten books on it, and I read nine out of ten. One more to go, it just had to be The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory, the thickest and possibly most challenging read in the bunch.

What did I do?

I went and skipped on over to my boss' copy of Remember Me by Sophie Kinsella. It was a much simpler read-- almost too simple. The pacing was slow, the middle was too dragged out, and the end was the only thing that redeemed it, as I could picture the couple's scenes as parts of a movie. The imagery was that vivid, and it's probably the only thing I took away from the entire novel.

The Other Boleyn Girl remains untouched, and a new reading list is beginning to pile up. My boss is trying to get me on the Cecelia Ahern bandwagon by lending me her copy of A Place Called Here, whose premise interests me more than If You Could See Me Now, which she gave me as a Christmas gift because it's her all-time Ahern favorite (and I think it's a subtle way of trying to get me to agree). Ahern seems to have elements of magic realism woven into her stories, so it should be an interesting read (and maybe less complicated than getting a magic realism fix from Garcia Marquez!).

Also waiting in the wings are The Smart One and the Pretty One by Claire LaZebnik, an impulse buy thanks to my indulgent boyfriend; Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin, which Amazon reviews swear is more than your average chick lit; and The Amber Room by Steve Berry, which was given to me by my "mommy" in the recent Kris Kringle at our office and is a thriller that I've always wanted to read. I'm a fan of Steve Berry because he chooses to investigate other historical mysteries rather than do a Dan Brown and theorize on the templar legacy, the Magdalene gospels, and other religious themes.

Rounding up the list is the book I'm currently reading, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. The book talks about setting up a personal filing system that will help you become more organized and efficient, minus the stress. Sounds too good to be true? It's actually simple yet daunting at the same time. Before you can get to being organized and efficient, you have to sort through all your sh*t first and build your system from bottom up. So for every item on your desk (or email inbox, whichever applies), you have to decide: toss or keep? If keep, is it for future reference or is it actionable? If it's actionable, what are the next steps to take? Is it something that can be accomplished in under two minutes? If it is, get to it NOW. That's how the book talks, and it's not even done yet! It walks you through the nitty-gritty of collecting your stuff, processing them, and organizing them. The book is making me want to set up a filing system of my own and fulfill my dreams of owning a labeller. I now have a "legitimate" excuse to buy a labeller, though I'm sure my boyfriend will beg to disagree. I'm not even done reading yet, and already I want to get cleaning!

My cleaning will have to wait till the New Year. Until then, I'm off to a much-awaited vacation in Cebu! Merry Christmas! :)


taking another stab at it

"Why don't you have a blog?" my boss asked one day.

I opened my mouth to reply, but the words didn't come automatically. Quite honestly, the question had me stumped: why didn't I have a blog? I used to have one on Livejournal, and it was filled with every single detail of my life. Aside from the URL bearing the anniversary of a failed relationship and bad memories of The Ex (I wouldn't advise posting lyrics over Livejournal as a way of breaking up with someone and declaring that you're through with his sh*t), Livejournal found its demise with the arrival of Multiply.

I tried migrating my entries from Livejournal to Multiply, then tried blogging on Multiply. But as the relationships on my Multiply ranged from family, friends, officemates, former classmates, and acquaintances, I realized that my blog entries were not for everyone after all. The thrill that once came with broadcasting thoughts and opinions into the vastness of cyberspace was dying. In its place came a wariness about who was reading what about my life. And so I stopped blogging, no longer compelled to let everyone in on what I was thinking, feeling, and currently doing.

That was the most I could tell my boss: "I decided I was tired of broadcasting every detail of my life." But the truth? Ah, maybe the truth is that I lost that blogging feeling-- that is, to find it in me to write coherently, to express opinions and talk about something more substantial than memes and the boredom that rules my day.

Inspired by a fellow writer-friend who is taking another stab at blogging, here I am, opening a new blog in a new site, strangely named after the old one. Maybe because that's really what blogging is to me: the thoughts that move somewhere between dreams and reality. Hopefully this blog will awaken the deeper side of me and my writing, the side that longs to say more than the latest fashion trends and great gift ideas, the side that wants to do more than encourage people to grab a copy of their favorite magazine, now available in newsstands and bookstores nationwide. The phrase comes automatically, as my fingers fly across the keyboard. This blog hopes to break that monotony, that droning that comes with being a slave of the workforce.

While I don't promise to write anything profound, I do promise to go beyond how bored I am about my day or how work is being a bitch, and instead try to pin down my thoughts, my opinions, my desires, and yes, my dreams.

Welcome to my world. Again.