Free Cut

We didn't have Chem today. I know it's terrible to be relieved about something like that because the term is ending and time is always something there's too little of when in the Trimestral system. But. It's been a long week. And even if on one hand, I felt bad that I wasn't going to be a'learning new reactions today and that my dear teacher might be sick, I couldn't help but feel happy that my brain could finally take a break. I got home an hour early and am now sitting in front of the TV, watching OMG News and America's Next Top Model. I hope that my teacher gets well soon and that things pick up pace by next week but for now I'm just going to enjoy this rare bit of free time and watch all the girly things I want to watch and go do yoga later and not be in a rush. BAM. Have a good weekend, everyone! :)

On Being Yourself & Personal Style

I finally got around to fixing the sizing issue re: the photos on this blog and I just realized hey, I've been doing this for over a year now (the whole personal style blog thing). It's taken me a while to figure out what I want to do with this blog; it's true what they say about having to figure out who you aren't to figure out who you are. And so these are some of the things I've figured out, re: personal style and being yourself (not that you have a choice).

(1) Forget "trendy". I understand that SEO and marketing are important things re: monetizing your blog but also, it shuts you off from being yourself a lot of the time because it creates pressure to fit in. And if you're going to be like everyone else, then why on earth would anyone want to read your blog?

It's also harder and harder to find people's style interesting: I feel like no one does anything un-safe or "normal" anymore. Everyone's wearing things they think will make them look "fashionable" instead of things that reflect their style (the very point of personal style, I think). Throw away the heels if you don't really wear them out, ditch the maxi skirt that dips in the rain--unless that's what you want to wear. Wear what you actually wear.

(2) Forget freebies. I can name a billion people (including myself) who had free stuff on the mind when they started taking photos of themselves and what they wore. And I must admit, I got pretty crazy at the beginning when I started getting stuff from online stores and passes to bazaars--you can just imagine how I felt when I got asked by Zalora to be one of their brand ambassadors--but things get lost in the hullaballoo of what to wear and what to post about and will I actually wear this and before you know it, you're forgetting that there's life outside what you wear and which sponsors you've gotten. This is why I stopped doing this: it went against the very reason that I like blogging and why the blogosphere is so interesting to me. Each blog is a glimpse into a life and I don't want mine to be just "hey, look at the cool stuff I got". 

(3) Forget "fame". I'm not saying that I don't want followers or readers--no one can blame you for that. Part of the reason why we write is because we'd like for what we write to be read. But also, since the advent of the bloggerebrity (someone famous for no real reason other than owning an awesome blog), I feel like so many blogs have come out that don't have an ounce of originality to them. People forget that blog-fame is a byproduct of a good blog (good writing, interesting content) and not vice versa.

 So many blogs that want to be famous are terribly written and offer no real insight into the person's life. This is why I love blogs like AlessiLikesIt and ArtsyFartsyAva: even if they inevitably talk about fashion and food and style, they also tell you about themselves and offer a real point of view on whatever it is they're blogging about. 

(4) Forget formula. Part of me wants to go back to my subdomain (winawonders.blogspot.com) because the formula nowadays seems to be (1) get clothes that will get you mistaken for someone famous (2) buy an SLR (3) take photos of you wearing said clothes (4) buy a domain (5) get followers. It's all so boring. And no one smiles in any of these damn pictures. I also have renounced follower-trading (I'll follow you if you follow me) because it's all such crap: most of the time people just want the big numbers popping up in their stats and don't actually read any of the blogs they've "followed back". It's ridiculous.

(5)  Don't Forget Fun. It should be fun. Or at least soothing. Otherwise, click Delete.

Strangers

I haven't expressed my curiosity toward strangers in a while--probably because the ones at school seem less and less interesting, the older I get; probably also because I'm getting older, in general--but today was an exception. Today, I felt curious about the people around me who I didn't know: the weird guy in all my classes who talks to himself and occasionally offers me unsolicited legal pad, the girl in my one lab class who I always see hanging out at the Coffee Bean early in the morning, the noisy guy in my Trig class with a middle eastern last name and alabaster skin, and so on.

I wonder why these people are in the course we're in and how they got there. I know some of them are my age, some of them maybe older. Some of these people are in BS Psychology (I always feel the need to stress the difference between that and AB Psychology as I cannot help my condescension despite being aware of it) as a result of wanting to be there--some of these people shifted to this course, like me. Some of these people are disappointed, too. And also, some of these people seem so truly, thumpingly normal: some of these people are there because they didn't know what they wanted in High School, except that they wanted the option of going to Med School one day. These are the people who fascinate me the most: the ones who rush out of the classroom or lab so they can have lunch with their friends or so they can go catch a movie. These strangers, so excited and so ready for the day always make me wish I was invisible, so I could see the expressions on their faces when they meet up with their friends or when they see the guy they met at an org party who they thought they wouldn't see again. How must that feel? I know I knew, once. But I've left so many things behind: part of that is memory of feeling.

On one hand, thank god. On the other hand--

In Between

Life's  been weird, lately. On one hand I feel like I've been very reluctant to let certain things go--old routines, old habits, old luxuries. But moving past that, I feel like I've also begun to decide what kind of adult I'm going to become and what kind of life I want to live after these next few months are over.

I've been more accepting of the fact that in order to get past these next few months that are (if all goes well) my last months in college/University/tertiary education, I'm going to have to work my ass off and I won't have time to do things I want like hang out with people or eat a proper breakfast. And that's okay. Sometimes it's okay to be in the in-between.

Changing Lanes

 I have mixed feelings about this whole new transportation system: it just isn't worth it to go the old route anymore because it's longer (thrice as long, to be specific) than the Skyway route, plus it doesn't get me where I need to go. I kept going that way because it was just one stop and I didn't mind sneaking in a nap. But if I'm going to have to switch modes of transpo anyway, I'd rather get where I'm going on time thanks very much. This is going to take a lot of getting used to, but it took me 45 minutes to get home this afternoon so maybe it'll be worth it. I'm still skeptical, but who knows: this might just work.

What I'm going to miss most about the Coastal route is this, though: 

Good thing I took this photo when I did. This whole week feels like a distorted reflection of my life, as projected onto a convex lens: mini-life. You never know when the last time you're going to do something is. 

Also, sorry for slacking off on the Coffee & Flowers posts. Now that my life's normalized a bit, I'll get back to that methinks.

Letter Writing (C&F, Post 5)

Today was difficult. No photo today, just this song and this letter--written to keep whatever it is that must be kept, at bay.

When It Rains

    When I was younger, I used to think that I was a water faerie--so much so that my bestfriend Christine and I wrote this 100+ page "novel" about pre-teen girls who discover that they are, in fact elemental faeries (via the intervention of neopet sidekicks, mind you). While I no longer (publicly admit that I still) hold this delusion, I still do like it when it rains. I know that I complain about Taft flooding and about the hassles of stormy weather but when the sea isn't coming into the city, I actually enjoy the July gloom.

 There's something fresh about overcast, drizzly weather. And everyone on the ride home looked sleepy and relaxed--a welcome change from the usual agitated, hot mess that is the usual Monday afternoon Manila public. The rain's washed my city. 

Rediscovery, Moving Forward

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about reading Breakfast At Tiffany's and since then, I've re-watched the hell out of this classic and it reminded me about why I started this blog. This began as a blog called Holly Golightly Sitting Alone In The Back of A Taxi (a mouthful, I know) which was dedicated to trying to figure out who I was (am?) and therefore arrive at some semblance of stability (which Holly finds, in the movie version). That was in 2011. 

I'd just been through the worst kind of break-up: a break-up with a friend and I really felt like I needed to figure out why it was that I'd acted the way I had. Why was it that I couldn't be honest? And why was it that I felt like I needed to be able to leave everything? Why was it that I felt like I needed to be the center of someone's universe? And why couldn't I deal with that not being the case?

I think that was the first time that I'd ever been the dumpee in (any kind of) a relationship. It struck me that it hurt so much when the person "breaking up" with me was someone who wasn't even with me--much like Paul Varjack, I guess. And re-watching it after almost two years has got me reinforcing my belief in the importance of keeping a blog or a diary or some kind of log of realizations. I think writing things down helps you deal with things that you can't say yet--not to yourself, not to anyone else.

Photo c/o google search.

Here are a couple of the things that I realized, over the past two years of writing in this blog and trying to become (or remain? I'm not sure) a somewhat sane person:

Project: Room (Found Objects Project)

So, I've been away from this blog for--I'm not going to lie--more than a couple of days because between school, writing, exercising, reading and trying to remain a social being there just hasn't been a lot of time. (I've also had one too many Duck Dynasty marathons, I will admit.) But I'm back on today because I thought I'd share a little project that I've been working on: my room.

For the most part, my idea of "cleaning my room" is making it so that I can find whatever I wanna find, ASAP: which means it's all on the part of the bed that I don't sleep on. But yesterday I figured hey, I'm growing up and I suppose it's time to make my room somewhere that I can get serious work (and working out) done, because there's just so much to do and I can't afford the inefficiency of living like a hoarder anymore. So I cleaned stuff up, moved shit around and hung up a lot of art work and found objects. The only things that I bought were the wall hooks from Daiso and mounting tape from Ace Hardware. :) 

 The white towel on the right-hand side of the photo above is where the door is (the towel is hanging on the knob). I decided to put the coffee table/photo pinboard right by the door so if I'm going, I can grab whatever books I need from the coffee table and if I'm getting in from a busy day, I can get a boost of happy energy from the old photos and the bright painting. 

 This is the view from the door/photo pinboard area. Before yesterday's cleaning time, the middle part of my room was occupied by the coffee table so I didn't ever work out in my room. Now I can work out (see the yoga mat beside the bed?) and study and do pretty much anything I want here. 

As I mentioned, this is a Found Objects project, so I decided to use a lot of old things like broken jewelry, extra book covers and things as decoration. :) Click below to see the wall art, etc. in detail!

Something To Do With Struggle

Today was a weird day. I'm glad it's raining. I wasn't feeling too well today, so I decided to stay home. As soon as it started raining, I felt better--my nose cleared up, but also I felt better emotionally. Not sure why, but I'm guessing a lot of people feel that way when it rains. 

As I was laying flat on an exercise mat this afternoon, trying to hold a pose that was killing me softly, I came to the realization that maybe the thing that makes something beautiful or desirable or "worth it" is struggle. You know exercise is effective when you struggle to execute the movement. You know someone is worth keeping in your life if you make the effort to see them and vice versa. In relationships, if you're with someone with whom you don't have to try at all, you get bored and find someone else. If  you're with someone with whom everything is turbulent all the time, it's monotonous as well and you leave, you find someone else.

But if when you see someone, you feel the need to make the effort to be your best, to listen, to interact, then that friendship/relationship/whatever will probably last.

It got me thinking about how maybe the most difficult thing to do is to actually go through life and to struggle for the middle-ground: for normalcy. Euphoria is just floating, depression is just avoiding the fall.

Gravity is struggle. If you float out in space (euphoria), you don't have to exert effort to get anywhere and yet nothing makes an impact either and if you go dive deep enough (depression), you end up just floating as well. With both, you need something--an oxygen tank, a crutch--to survive; otherwise you drown: you either choke on water or on air. What it means to live is to struggle with dying, what it means to have is to struggle with loss. 

The other day, I was reading Breakfast At Tiffany's and what I found beautiful about the book was (sorry for spoiling) that Paul (Fred) and Holly don't end up together. They don't end up together, but it's okay. It's not overly dramatic; the tension is created by them both striving for normalcy (underneath it all) and I found that very touching and both extremely painful and extremely comforting.

And. That's it for today, really. 

Slide Out of Touch

Last Saturday I was sitting at a wooden table located on the second floor mezzanine of a house-cum-restobar packed in with around 50 people, listening to a couple of friends talking and somewhere mid-sip or mid-puff or mid-reaction I realized that most of the people I hang out with these days are people who are relatively new to me. This made me happy in that it's wonderful to make new friends--I'm very happy that turns out I'm not socially inept after all and that I'm slowly relearning how to relate to/with people again. 

But also, it made me kind of sad to realize that I don't know a lot of people who've known me a long time, anymore. Friendship is an elusive thing--you can wake up and suddenly be great friends with someone you barely talked to before and just as suddenly, you can find that you don't know someone you've known all your life, anymore; in the same breath, you can find yourself lacking the desire to reach out to someone or you can find yourself laden with the sudden desire to want to get to know someone, just because--things that have been a long time coming but which you didn't notice until it was "suddenly" there.

People slide out of touch and it usually happens without us noticing: a missed event, a holiday off with other people, an I'll Go Next Time mantra--and it's two years later, someone's getting married or leaving and you're on Facebook looking at pictures of them and wondering how've they been and thinking it's been so long and problematizing over whether or not you should text them, right before you click the tiny x on the right-hand screen and go do something else. Later in the day you start to ask yourself, why was it that we slid out of touch?

I'm not sure if I'm making any sense--I figure that maybe I don't have the right words to describe how it was I felt that night (and am beginning to feel again, now) but someone else does: The National's I Should Live In Salt seems to convey what I mean exactly.

Can you write it on a wall?

You should know me better than that.

There's no room to write it on,

You should know me better than that. 

Start to slide out of touch,

You should know me better than that.

Tell yourself it's only noise,

You should know me better than that. 

Learn to appreciate the void,

You should know me better than that.

The Smell Before Rain

(Follow me on Instagram!)

So. I haven't updated in ages (or what feels like ages) and I do apologize for that. I have a bajillion beauty products I want to share with you but my camera's broken (why, SD card have you left me behind) so those will have to wait. 

When I was younger, I used to absolutely love when it rained. I used to think that I was a water faerie; and to this day, part of me still believes that. I've never been stranded anywhere during a flood and it hardly ever literally "rains on my parade". Back in 2009, when Ondoy happened I wasn't on Taft or anywhere that flooded; I was at the supermarket nursing a hangover. The rain is more often than not on my side.

And yet I find it difficult to love rainy weather nowadays; it's difficult to forgive the rain for what it's done to homes of people who I care about--or well, people in general over the past few years. It's difficult to love rainy weather when I find myself looking out of the bus window and seeing families huddled under melting cartons. It's terribly, terribly sad. 

It makes me even sadder that I no longer find joy in having it rain. I feel the way I did when NU 107 shut down or when they pulled the old South Supermarket out of Alabang Town Center or when I found out that Baskin Robins was no longer operating in the Philippines. There's this interview of Brian Fallon's that I watched once and he said that there are things we need to bury to cross over into adulthood; given the chance, I'd like to ask him what it means when we miss the things we've long buried? Does that make us less adult? Less mature? Or more mature for not being able to bury our hurts? 

Whenever it rains, now there's a silent panic that wasn't there before 2009. Now we're all wondering, as the rain refuses to stop whether or not our city's drowning, again.

I've been listening to The Rain Song by Led Zeppelin a lot lately. It helps me sleep. That guitar bit is just genius. And Robert Plant's voice is amazing.

The Through The Years Tag!

I realized today that I've become a completely different person than I was say two, or three years ago. On one hand there are certain things that I hate about myself, now--I hate that I've become socially inept; I feel extremely uncomfortable talking to strangers nowadays whereas I used to be able to make friends just like *that* in the past. I hate that I now spend more time thinking about what to do or what to say as opposed to just doing something or just saying something--it can be extremely tiring and I lose a lot of sleep over petty things like whether or not it's okay for me to buy designer coffee when I can brew some myself or if it's alright for me to borrow a pen from my seatmate if I forget mine or if I should buy one from bookstore at the expense of being late as I deserve it for not bringing a pen to class. 

But also, I think I've become a person that I can respect a little more than 2009 or 2011 me. A little less bubbly and less impulsive or "fun" (I no longer smoke and now always drink in moderation harhar), maybe but I think that the years have sanded me down into a person I can actually live with (at the risk of sounding like I have split personalities). Today, I began trying to not beat myself up for things that spun out of control because of the way I used to be--a little too excited and impulsive about everything. 

HH told me about her time in the States and how she made friends even if she was initially pretty reclusive. Also, she told me about "finding the fine line" in my interactions: in the past, I find that my intentions became misconstrued because I have a tendency to become overly affectionate to people who I like and inversely, extremely exasperated with people who frustrate me. That resulted in a lot of broken heartedness (both on my end and on other people's ends--if that makes sense) and extreme, heart-wrenching guilt that I am still trying hard to ignore. So now, I'm learning to temper my impulses and am re-learning how to gauge people beyond "does this person like me or not and/or do I like this person or not?" and more "how can I best be a good acquaintance/friend to this person?"

On to the tag!

The Through The Years Tag:

I came up with this tag because it seems like a) something fun to do and also b) a great exercise in self-reflection. The tag is simple, really. :)) Look back at the past 5 years and pick a song your present self dedicates to your past self + a teensy message to your then-self; after that tag three bloggers/friends to do the tag! :D Also, you can include pictures of you from the past 5 years + a present photo of you if you like!

2008: [17-year-old me] The Future Freaks Me Out by Motion City Soundtrack

This is a good year. :) You learn a lot of things about being a semi-grown up. Don't be too afraid or anxious about what's going to happen in the future; just enjoy yourself. You go to MOS this year and make a lot of meaningful friendships. :D

Also, don't wear that backless purple dress to your 18th birthday party in December--it is going to make you feel cold, and don't buy that brand nipple tape you'll end up needing band-aids. 

P.S. Your 18th birthday party will be fuck awesome!

Old Haunts

Lately, I've been thinking about the things that haunt us--songs that get stuck in our heads long after the actual track's stopped playing, scary scenes that keep us from sleep days after we've left the cinema or that tooth your tongue still looks for despite said tooth having been pulled out months ago.

 Last Monday, I was hanging out with my friend Ron and we were trying to remember his wifi password; after a couple of attempts, he was finally able to get it down just right. He told me that theoretically, our minds retain everything we encounter; but to be able to function properly, our conscious mind just puts everything in storage. If we wanted (or tried hard enough), we could dig it all up and recall almost anything. I learned this back during my majors, as well--certain information is there pretty much forever, all you need is the right trigger to pull it to the forefront of your mind.

The other night, I had a dream about an old friend of mine. I haven't talked to this person in years and in my dream, we were lying in a strawberry field, talking. Despite not having been in the presence of this person in years, in the dream the "friend" talked and laughed and joked around with "me" in a way I didn't even remember I remembered. 

How much is up there that we don't want to remember? How do we keep from having it jump out at us and "ruin everything"? A lot of the time, I suspect that there is no such thing as the freedom of choice--how can there be when we can't even control ourselves? How can we say that we choose this or that when we don't even know truly what it is we're basing our decisions on?

A lot of the time we use the present to justify the past--"if that didn't happen, this wouldn't have happened"--and more and more I'm starting to think that justification is a load of crap. Gaining one thing doesn't mitigate the loss of another because different things mean different things to us, in different ways. I don't think it'd be right to say that a baby being born makes someone else's death less grave. How do we mourn loss, then? How do we find redemption when the very fact that we are in a state of mourning for something or someone already means that we in fact, could not find redemption for that situation?

Beats me.

As I could not--cannot--come up with answers for these things that've been on my mind as of late, I instead decided to record a "duet" of sorts with one of my favorite bands, ever. This song's been haunting me too, recently so I decided to record an additional backing vocal to this awesome acoustic version of this I found online. Music (or art, in general) doesn't solve anything, but I find that it makes things bearable. And so we go on.

You said it was not inside my heart, it was.
You said it should tear a kid apart, it does.

Hope & All That Jazz

Lately, being online and looking at people's posts and/or posting my own shiz has been a huge challenge for me. I've been thinking about sincerity and literature and Facebook and whether or not people are still willing to listen. There are more than a million blogs out there, more than a million Facebook accounts, more than a million people tweeting about how their days went--is anyone listening? There is so much talking and so much yapping and so much pressure to "like" things that I find no one really takes the time to take a look at anything anymore. And this is why I've been off the web for the past few days.

It made me extremely sad to realize that despite the (overwhelming--thank you , guys) visits to my blog everyday, this blog has failed to do what I started it for--as a means to keep in touch with people who are no longer in my everyday life. While I find people liking things based on the title or the little blurb that I post up on my social media accounts referencing these entries, only a few of those people who like these things have actually read these things. I'm still unsure about what I can do to promote reading again in a time where people would rather scroll through a feed than sit through a story or listen to an anecdote, but I will keep writing. And I will keep reading. To a certain extent, I guess that's all that I can do. 

Writing is a lot like an eating disorder when you're starting out--you think you write to assert the illusion of your freedom of choice when the truth is writing is the ultimate exercise in losing control. You are speaking to someone (everyone, possibly) and you don't know if you will be heard (no one, possibly). Even more than in speech, the possibility for humiliation in writing is huge because a) it is in a medium that can be resurrected (photocopied, re-printed) and b) because writing beyond your diary will always entail tedious care and enormous struggle before you're satisfied with what you've written down (enough to show to other people).

Years ago, when I was initiated into Malate Literary Folio, I remember my editor/friend Akire telling us that the truth is this: no one cares whether you write or not. Most people on campus don't even know about Malate, or don't even read anything that isn't in the "To Read" section of Powerbooks or anything that hasn't been turned into a movie. So if you're writing because you want to be recognized--well, yeah: you might as well stop because that's something you can't count on. Being recognized and making quality work aren't always synonymous.

It's only now, almost 5 years later that I'm realizing how true this is. To a certain extent, I'm sure that we all want recognition but all we can do is the work (make sure we deserve it)-- and whether or not we get the recognition we want is the part that isn't up to us. We just keep working.

Over coffee today, Trizha reminded me that everyone goes through a period of starvation and that we all feel obsolete, sometimes but no one ever got anywhere turning into a recluse this early in life. And so, yes. I think I'll be okay. And yes, Paperweight will be coming out this summer--one way or another.

Love They Say

Before I get started on this post, I thought maybe you'd like to give the song to which I owe this post's  title a listen; it's really good and one of my favorite songs off of Heartthrob, the newest Tegan & Sara album. :D My favorite lines off of Love They Say are as follows: "Love they say this--you don't need to wonder if love will make us stronger, there's nothing love can't do." :") Cheesy but whatever, it works.

I'm not the type of person who particularly enjoys family reunions just because our family is comprised of a lot of very stubborn people--intelligent but stubborn as f--and sometimes that can be unbearable. But as Keav was staying over and thus, invited to the said reunion I ended up going. :D And it really made my day that Keav agreed to a) come with me all the way to Pampangga for lunch and b) take silly pictures with me on my aunt's front porch! :)

 We took a lot of photos but the others were super goofy (as in, almost not PG-13 goofy) and so I decided these two pictures perfectly summed up how the afternoon went. :)) Above: Keav is doing the grumpy cat meme face as a reaction to the severity of my camwhoring. Below: My boyfriend thinks he's a cat. <3 p="">

I hope everyone's had a good day today and will have an even better day tomorrow. :D To everyone who doesn't have class because of the EDSA Anniv, yahoooooo! To everyone who will still have to head out to work: at least that'll be something fun to complain about. :) Nighty, world!

Back On The Brightside (And Then Some)

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to stop posting up Brightside Entries because, well--I got lazy. And also because when I fixed up the new WinaWonders layout, I forgot to make a button for the Brightside Entries (yes, everything on here is in my terrible handwriting). But I realized lately that life is a lot harder without (at least the delusion of) looking on the brightside/making an effort to find a piece of happy in everyday life. :) So here I am again--talking about (and perhaps talking myself into believing  in) life's everyday happy shiz. :D

Today, instead of going to Art Mart, I stayed down south and did two things: rest and help Keav out with thesis--he needed some info on Hofstede and his Cultural Dimensions (which is super interesting and which you can check out here) for his rev lit and I used that in my own thesis so I didn't really mind ze type-type-typing. We spent the whole afternoon snacking and typing and hanging out and then had dinner at Wings N' Things. After that hooj meal, we decided to walk back to my house (which is around 40-45 minutes away from the Town Center) and spent almost an hour just goofing off and looking at the stars and making fun of each other.

Life has been so busy lately that I'd almost forgotten how it was to not be worrying about sales or about books or about (god forbid) stapling. I've been taking a lot of time out (also why I've not been online as of late) to focus on the things that matter: studies and writing and spending time with the people I love. I'd really love to post up some new stuff I've been writing on here soon, but as of now I think it's a bit too young for public exposure. :D On the other hand, the local Paperweight launch draws near! :) Click on "Writing" on the sidebar for more info!

Wait, They Don't--

I've been listening to MAPS by the YeahYeahYeahs a lot lately. It's a great song for when you're in a contemplative mood. And these past few days, I feel like I've done nothing but think about everything. Today, in Organic Chem class we played with different structures--Cyclohexane, for the most part--and we turned the models around for almost two hours, trying to figure out different ways to look at the same compound and life seems to be no different. The past 24 hours have been exhausting; a constant cycle of turning the situation around and trying to figure out who's wrong, who's right, why is this happening, why isn't this happening, what should I do, what shouldn't I do, should I say this, how should I say this? I'm so, so, so tired. All my life there are only two things that I've really, really valued: love and experience. 

About two years ago, I told myself that if you can't have one, you can at least have the other. Experience--well, I thought I'd had enough of that. But sometimes love can just break your heart. Love so quickly turns into the pain of experience.

Also, I've been drawing lots of maps for a new project I'm working on. How's that for Organic Unity? Meh, life.

For What It's Worth

I just got home from a very exhausting trip. While the trip was super duper fun and was really (really, in every sense of the matter) more a vacation than something work-related, I found myself being extremely introspective while we were up there and a lot of anxieties have been coming to mind as of late.

In one of my favorite movies (You've Got Mail), there is a part where the protagonist talks about leading a small life--she (Kathleen Kelly aka Meg Ryan) owns a small bookstore that's about to be put under by a giant chain store and she asks herself in one scene whether or not she's been brave; she says she's lived what she likes to think is a small and meaningful life but what if her life ends up just being small and that's it? I've been going through a similar mini-crisis. While I love what I do and running an indie pub can be extremely fulfilling, it can also be very, very tiring and emotionally taxing. I'm the kind of person who can get severely emotionally attached to the things I'm passionate about--and when things don't go as planned, I get very, very hurt.

One of the things that people say a lot in the indie world (or maybe the literary/art world in general) is "don't take it personally"--yet another thing echoed in You've Got Mail--and I see the merit of that saying if you're talking about critique but it's difficult for me to accept that of the business aspect of things. I know there will be times when things don't sell out completely or times when the events fail but so far, these past couple'a events have been the only ones that've flopped for us and so maybe that's why I'm taking it extra hard. It's not the (lack of) monetary compensation that kills me--it's the hurt that I see in the people who are signed with us when people pick up the book and flip through it then go "Wow, that's nice but now that I've read it I don't see the point in buying it" and put it back. I know how hard it is to generate work and how difficult it is too to find an affordable, quality printing place and then spend nights collating the pages and fixing the layout and stapling, stapling, stapling and I know that these people don't deserve that hurt. "Don't take it personally" just doesn't seem to apply in a situation like this because what is more personal than something you literally put together?

I think about myself sometimes and wonder if I'm suited for this job. Am I the right person to be running this thing? Or have I over-extended my boundaries? Should I have just stuck to writing and selling my own material? Maybe the person doing this should be someone more managerial and less scatter-brained and/or "attached to the product"?

I overestimated myself once by running for (and winning the position of, sadly) Prose Editor and after that horrific experience I thought I'd decided that I could be the judge only of my work and no one else's and yet now I find myself in this position again--in a position to choose what to put out there and what to shelf. And I am so terrified to fail because it's not just me and my silly little feelings at stake. I am trying--bending over backwards, really--to be the best person for this.

February isn't over yet (I tell myself again).

Wisdom Hurts

Photo taken by me (Instagram here) at 6:30 am last Thursday (extraction day)

I do hope you guys forgive my lack of blog posts this week. I just had my (four) wisdom teeth taken out and while it doesn't hurt as much I expected, it really does suck not to be able to chew what you eat. That's one thing that I've definitely taken for granted--who knew that so much of the pleasure of eating came from mashing the food up. So yeah. I've been eating Egg Nog biscuits (melting them on my tongue) and iced coffee or iced juice or well...Iced anything liquid, basically.

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of wisdom teeth a lot lately and I guess (aside from the obvious fact that they usually grow when you're older) it makes sense that they're so painful to have taken out. Not all wisdom teeth need a'taking out, mind you--just the ones that are impacted or that aren't growing properly. Like actual knowledge or wisdom, some of the things we come to believe in or come to "know" can punch holes in things that they aren't supposed to; in addition to that, these hard, usually deep-rooted things usually grow so that they're difficult to clean and so bacteria as a result of food deposits usually cause them to rot and cause infections greater much greater than themselves: they can give you lock-jaw and they can inflate your lymph nodes. In the same way that something tiny like believing that you should or shouldn't tip your waiters or that you should or shouldn't cross the street if the pedestrian light is red can affect greater things, in the long run.

Recovery is a bitch but it's a small price to pay for peace and growth (or in this case, the disruption of growth).