You’re fucked up, Mister. But you’re cool.”

“I believe that’s what they call the human condition.”

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Universal truth, that.

I’m in my “it’s been a week since..” phase and I don’t know how else to cope. I had an AMAZING time in Siem Reap, Cambodia; everything about it was just perfect to me. So perfect that four days and four nights were nowhere near enough. The travel bug had been threatening to bite since the year began, and now it’s in full swing in my system. But since I’m back to reality now, I’ll just talk about what I love about being out there. Cambodia, and the world in general.

1. Tans.

Sure, outwardly I complain about getting dark. But the truth is I’m happier overcooked than in my natural fair-to-moderate color. Fair to me is lifeless, kinda dead. But roasted brown, man! What a lovely color! Even if it’s over-roasted. It signifies sunshine, and the wind in your face, the open road, the endless skies, and all the adventures they bring. It means that I’ve been out there, in the world, with the world, living life, and not cooped up in some boring ass concrete hole. 

2. Planning, Preparing, Packing

The anticipation to me is a crucial part of every trip. Like they used to say in Advertising, “importante and magandang latag” (the proper set-up is important). It sets the mood, the tone of what your trip will be for you. It’s where your heart starts beating in excitement and your mind comes alive in wonder. It’s when your reality slowly shifts from your day-to-day existence into this exciting new experience (forgive the alliteration haha), so that when you finally step into your adventure, you’re 100% present and committed and ready. People usually take this for granted, taking pride instead in how quickly they could pack before leaving. But it’s not just about the packing. It’s the whole psychology of it. It’s like soldiers being prepared for battle; that’s how I am with travelling. I need to set that area of my brain in motion so that when I switch it on during my trip, it’s ready to take on anything.

3. Buying things

Whether as preparation for the trip, or during the trip itself, there’s something more fun about buying things in relation to travel. It automatically gives that object more value because from the get-go there are sentiments and memories attached. It’s purposeful, and thus more meaningful. Like, buying a bag is fun. But buying a bag you know will accompany you in a thousand photos makes it more important to pick the cutest bag. Or buying shirts. When you find one with the perfect balance of exotic, unique, and great quality to give as a gift back home, it becomes more thrilling to haggle with the local vendor than when simply fitting on another generic shirt in a another retail store in another mall. 

4. Foreign Air

I don’t just mean from another country though, it could be local, just different from the usual air your breathe. I’m lucky I live in one of the cleanest cities in Manila, but when I go farther out into the metro, I could feel the gray clouding my lungs. That’s why when I breathe provincial air, and I feel the greenness of it on my face, I’m automatically happier. Even the smell of it tells you immediately you’re somewhere else now, let the adventures begin.

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What is excitement? (Taken with instagram)

Some of you may know that I’m fresh out of work, a week and a day to be exact. After months of agonizing about timing and consequences, it’s almost amusing how things actually went down. I think the Universe just got fed up with my brain vomits and did me the favor of removing me from the position. Basically, I was handed the chance to leave a week in advance, and I took it. 

Over these past few days I had a lot of time to think, to mull things over, to do my usual mental cataloging of thoughts and feelings. And with nothing distracting me, the bulk of things I tuned out last year started to catch up. 

Wants, needs, urges that came with my nature resurfaced, and there’s no reason to quell them anymore. After a year of filtering myself, familiarizing with the old me has been quite interesting. Freeing, really. I’m only remembering how I used to be and how used to act and the things I used to say. In many ways I feel like a newborn. I’m trying to grasp the language again, and how to use it. Sometimes I get overexcited and say too much; I think I even managed to offend somebody already without meaning to the least bit (and that sucks big time!). I’m in that in-between where I try to balance out my brain turned on and turned off again. I’m not a robot on auto-pilot anymore, and I’m only getting used to it after a year.

Old feelings are coming back too. Reactions to circumstances I didn’t have at all last year are happening again and it’s pretty cool. I now get angry when I used to be blah, I now get sad when I used to be blah, I now get excited when I used to be blah. Everything was in my head last year, in order to cope with the sterility of my situation, that I almost forgot about “feelings”. Now it’s as if blood is rushing back to “sleeping” limbs. It’s pretty awesome.

I still have a lot to sort in my head, as you know my brain works in drawers and compartments. It’s hard sometimes but it has its uses too. Haha. Hopefully at the end of this process I’m fully back to being myself again. I’m even speeding up the process with exercise. Good looking out; I’m so excited!

Storm by Lifehouse

This song. That voice. Those words. *sigh*

(It doesn’t hurt either that he looks like a Hemsworth.)

Repeat 10x, bite the bullet, and pray to the highest heavens.

1. Life doesn’t happen behind walls, computer screens, or inside your head. It happens out there in the pulsating, throbbing streets with all the chaos and excitement humanity creates.

2. When your heart starts pounding so fast you can’t think or understand anymore, that’s what being alive is. It’s not sitting in a comfy chair outlining useless analyses about shit that don’t matter at the end of the day. Or sitting in a comfy chair dreaming of wants and perceived needs you’ll achieve in an undetermined future. It’s being in the thick of things, when you move with gut and pure human instinct. It’s skydiving, going down caves, running. It’s quitting your dead-end job that pays the bills but brings you absolutely no thrill in any way. Then going into hungry, survival mode that makes the blood run through your veins again.

3. Being in the Now makes you feel more alive than being in a Bright Tomorrow. Like animals. There is nothing, only this moment. That way you are 100% present all the time and you can take in more, and give yourself more in return. 

4. But if you can’t bare the Now, then something must be wrong, and action must be taken. Upheavals are one of the scariest things in the world, next to hopelessness and uncertainty. But it’s exactly these things that challenge us to fight back. To keep our hearts beating just one more second, one more hour, one more day..

5. Never say you don’t have a choice; you always do. It’s just a matter of summoning the courage to acknowledge it, and then to make it.

6. You must always do yourself justice. Nothing more, nothing less. You’ll resent everything around you when you resent yourself, and that’s just no way to live.

7. Friends are there for a reason. They are lifelines. They connect you to a world you might otherwise not know. But more importantly they connect you to your core. They’re reflections of you, and mirror the self you know lies inside. They help you see snippets of yourself you might be missing. They’re also magnets. They can ease out the real you that’s hibernating at the back of your subconscious. The simplest actions and words trigger markers of yourself that you made, and may have forgotten, along the way. Nothing reminds you better than them. Hang on to your lifelines, whether you need to or not. An honest to goodness guffaw is welcome any time of day.  

8. Jumping off a cliff is hard. But the feeling afterwards is one of the best feelings in the world. So good in fact that you literally feel it running through your body like little football players celebrating after scoring a goal, until it forces itself outside of you with a screechy, guttural “Whoooo!” The harder the action, the more intense the “Whooo!” You have to remember this feeling every time you flounder at the edge. It’s a worthwhile reward, to say the least.

9. Being brave is so much easier said than done. The human brain can confuse it with many other things, like stupidity, brashness. The same way it can confuse settling with comfort, or tolerance with strength. But at your core, with your logic off and your cerebrum in low volume, you can tell the difference. Don’t ever doubt that you know.

10. Courage and faith make up the core of everything: love, trust, dreams, even the most base act of crossing the street. At the end of it, it’s what it all comes down to.

I met up with friends this past weekend, and scheduled more dinners for the coming week. I haven’t seen most of these people in ages and ages, because we’re all so caught up in our own things that getting out of our routines just get harder. Partly it’s also my fault for not fighting the vacuum that sucked me up these past months. I sulked in my obscure corner, literally, and watched as life passed me by. 

Getting to talk to them again was amazing. It was so refreshing, and lighthearted, and just warm and fuzzy overall. Mostly we gossiped about people, made fun of others, reminisced, and looked ahead. I guess we’re at that age where planning our lives was inevitable, and taking concrete actions was a necessity. 

It was so important for me to reconnect, not just with them, but with people who were pretty much going through the same things I was. We’re all still in the in-between; staring down the road of our hearts’ desires, and the road our brains chose for survival. Not quite settled with the tedious comfort of routine, but seeing its merits. Not quite ready to let go of lofty dreams, but seeing their risks. We talked about our confidence and certainty back in college. We we were all sure that by this time we’ve all made names for ourselves, or at least taken leaps to advance our careers. Only to realize a year after graduation how deluded we really were, despite “knowing” the realities and “anticipating” the setbacks. We knew nothing. I know nothing.

Three years later, we’re all pretty much still feeling our way through. Some of us have a stronger grip than others, some have a better sense of direction. But none of us, not one, was there yet. Not even close. 

It was comforting for me to know this, not because I didn’t want them to be there yet, but because it emphasized for me where I really was now(: nowhere). And that I was not alone, and that it’s not even abnormal. I guess I knew this before, but endless days of talking only to myself and instant messaging windows kinda muddled everything. I lost track of realities, and I began to let go. I settled into the comfort of the void. 

Seeing old friends, hearing their stories, put things in perspective, I was reminded who I used to be, what I used to do, what sort of life I used to lead. How alive I was. And I missed that. But most importantly, I was reminded of why I was here, doing this, of what I gave up for it, and why. What my dreams were. It just gave me all the more strength, and all the more drive, to get back on track. On my own, if I have to. 

I finally have competitive photography gear. It’s still basic, but it has way more power than my previous stuff. Tomorrow I’ll talk to a business-savvy friend about business-related things I couldn’t comprehend. I’m actively searching for more steady pay as well. I’m back. I’m scared shitless, and walking on with a transluscent blindfold, but I’m walking on anyway. 

As my friend said, “You owe it yourself”. I must do justice to myself. And I give you full permission to whip my ass if I didn’t. 

So here I am standing at a precipice, contemplating whether or when to jump, and I see this on top of my Facebook feed. 

Thank you, Universe. I badly needed that.

with-eyes-averted:

kitharingtonruinedmylife:

frodos-lass:

turrner:

peregrint:

LOTR MASH

Thank you to zumanity for giving me the initiative to make this!

I am from the race of Men, my lover is Aragorn. We live in Lothlorien, we have a pet Mumak. My weapon is Glamdring and I sail to the Undying Lands. This pleases me.

I am an Orc (well okay), my lover is Faramir, we live in Fangorn Forest. Our pet is Shadowfax. My weapon is an Axe and i fall off a cliff. This is actually not cool.

I am an Elf, my lover is Frodo (yay! =D), we live in Mordor (nooo! =O), our pet is a Warg, my weapon is The One Ring, and I die by an overdose on pipeweed.

I am Hobbit, my lover is Legolas (my inner Orlando fangirl is squealing), we live in Moria (with some sweeping and recessed lighting this place won’t be half bad) , our pet is a Warg (he shall be named Pooky), my weapon is The One Ring (My Precioussssss), and i die by falling off a cliff

I am an elf, my lover is Celeborn, we live in Mordor (at least I won’t have any additional costs for heating), our pet is a fell beast, my weapon is a dagger and I die by being squashed by an Ent.

I am a hobbit, my lover is Frodo, we live in The Shire, we have a pet balrog, my weapon is a glamdring, and I die by falling in the fires of Mt. Doom. Holy shit, I am Samwise Gamgee in a tragic fanfiction! :)))