Week 44 - NaNoWriMo 2014

Updates to my blog have been really sparse - that much I'm ashamed to admit.

In relation to that, I probably won't be updating for another month after this post. It's not that I'm lazy. I think it's always been the opposite and that this silly hobby has taken a backseat to the other things I've been juggling for the past year - and the next month would probably be a whirlwind of activity for me.

Season 2. (c) nanowrimo.org

I've decided to give this novel-writing thing another go, despite the untimely demise of my laptop. It's going to be one hell of a challenge, but I hope that the preparations I've done would compensate for the lack of a computer for me to regularly save my work to. I'm going for superhero fiction this time around, and I hope that the countless hours of' 'research' would culminate into something that would give all those late hours some degree of justice.

If there's anything I can promise, though, it's that I'll try to write a lot more after this. There are still a lot of stories I keep running through my head each day, and it would be a waste not to commit them to something more tangible. Maybe it's my way of hoping to have a glimpse at permanence.

Don't we all really hope for that?

At the very least, perhaps if I'm lucky, I could laugh at them when I'm a bit older.

Later!

Week 48 - Lessons from NaNoWriMo 2013

"I am the Commander of these words.
I am the King of this story. 
I am the God of this place.
I am a writer, and I will finish the shit that I started."
- The Penmonkey's Paean

Why yes, November has been a particularly crazy month for me as one can see from my posts from the last few days (and their apparent lateness).

The main reason for my lack of updates, however, is NaNoWrimo. It's something I've been meaning to do since I've heard of it way back in college but real life has always pushed it to the sidelines year after year.

In a nutshell, NaNoWriMo (which is short for National Novel Writing Month) is an annual month-long activity held every November that challenges its participants to come up with a fifty thousand word novel within thirty days. Some may see it as a travesty, especially those who write for a living, but for what it's worth I have learned a few things from the experience.

NaNoWriMo is a self challenge.
There isn't really any tangible prize to completing NaNoWriMo nor is there any way of checking whether a participant cheated or not. But I think that's the beauty of something based on a person's own honor system and I think that's what makes the win gratifying in itself.

NaNoWriMo is an exercise in determination and self-discipline.
There have been days when life goes in the way of writing (or more accurately, writing goes in the way of life). If there's a piece of advice that I could give to anyone who would attempt the challenge, it could be summed up in two words: Keep Writing. While some people looked like they breezed through it, I found that NaNoWriMo (and writing in general) is much, much harder than it looks. I guess the trick is to never, ever give up - much like many things in the real world.

NaNoWriMo requires commitment.
I've learned that the difference between saying "I can do that" and "I've done that" is actually getting up from the comfy couch of complacency and doing the damn thing. NaNoWriMo asks us this question: If not now, then when, or rather, will you ever do it?

NaNoWriMo does not need our inner writer, author or editor. It needs the storyteller in us.
It has been said that everyone has a book in them but they didn't tell us that the story is the most important part of the book. I think I'm lucky that I've got a whole world of crazy lore to pull from (which is a whole different story altogether), but I'm sure that a lot of people have their own personal troves to pick their stories from. NaNoWriMo is all about the shitty first drafts - and it is from that chaos that the good second draft and terrific third draft are born (according to Anne Lamott).

NaNoWriMo has a personal lesson for each of its participants.
It may have been a silly and unnecessary decision to forgo dialogue in my entry and write nothing but pure narrative instead. But then I realize that maybe I subconsciously wanted to fit in as much lore as I could in lieu of conversation because I don't think I'm ever going to do this again. But perhaps in those thirty days and nights of literary abandon, I feel like the greatest thing I've learned is that I love writing. Not stories or novels or anything in particular, but just writing in general - seeing my thoughts committed on a medium. A lot of people live their lives without ever discovering anything they're passionate about, so I guess it's all worth it in the end. Self discovery and whatnot, yes?

Give NaNoWriMo a go. There's something in it for anybody who's giving it a shot. As for me, it's back to regular programming. It's something I'm happy to scratch off The Tertiaries.

Later!

Week 20 - Everything And the Kitchen Sink

"It's a damn dream when you find someone you can do nothing with."
- Ryan O'Connell

Sometimes, you go out to dinner with a friend on a whim and somehow end up listening to a very different person vent their life's frustrations an hour later. In vino veritas, as they say. You realize that your problems are infinitely more mundane compared to what other people have to carry - and that they carried these on top of the things that you complained about everyday. And when you really look at how things turned out (up until this day - to be quite honest), you've had it easy.

I learned this years ago in Calaruega, and I was reminded of the same thing last weekend.

Anyway, back to the present day. I decided (and managed) to finish Dragon's Dogma after about a year of not touching the title. I decided to run on instinct on my first playthrough and invariably messed up my character's story. Needless to say, I was horribly underleveled and Grigori was almost impossible to beat. I didn't want to restart after pouring a ton of hours into the thing but seeing The Dark Arisen's release made me want to beat the main story and delve into the dungeon-themed expansion - something I'm quite fond of.

In other news, my content aggregator Smirah ate a banhammer this week. I've been repeatedly reading their terms of service lately and I still don't understand what made the Twitter gods decide to ban her and appealing for reinstatement turned out to be quite easy - thank heavens that they were pretty reasonable.

Later!

Red Mage

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
- Robert A. Heinlein

Sometimes, I wonder what would have happened if I took the humanities (or arts) route in college. I often see such people through rose-colored glasses (which shows how little I know about the world) but still, I've always felt like it would be fun to harness creativity for a living. I imagine that it must be deeply gratifying on a personal level for someone to complete something they've put their soul into and show it to the world (or to the bosses - again, I know little of these things).

I wonder how it feels like to be able to spew art on a whim. I'd bet that's a fun thing. In retrospect, I guess taking something that was boring, but practical has been better for me in the long run. That's the saddest thing about not being perpetually inspired by a Muse - whatever artistic impulse that one can muster heavily depends on mood, which doesn't amount to much in my case.

After all, isn't that what being a jack-of-all-trades is about? One can do a lot - and in some cases can do it well - but the suckiest part is that there's often a ceiling to the level of skill that can be attained.

I'm never sure if that's the reason why I try to learn or do as many things as I can, to the point that sometimes I bite much more than I can chew. Maybe that's why I often rationalize ridiculously tall odds into something that can be done. I reckon it's either one of two things that provides a drive - hunger for knowledge or the fact that I'm still trying to look for the one thing I'm really good at.

Whatever, we'll see.

The Silent

"To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man; but to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true
and perfect image of life indeed. The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have sav'd my life."
- Falstaff, Henry IV

So first off, I'd like to share this photo of a random everyday scene at some Russian subway train. I've always wondered why Russia always looks so bleak, but that's beside the point. At first glance, there's nothing out of the ordinary about the photo. However, the man holding the grocery bags is one Fedor Emelianenko. To those who do not follow MMA, Fedor is generally regarded as the greatest of all time in the sport by both fans and champions alike. He is most notable for having a quiet personality, which added to his mystique and instilled fear in his opponents. One of Fedor's most well known characteristic is that he maintains a calm and cold look even when he was viciously beating down someone, or was being beaten up himself.

Needless to say, like most athletes who excel in their sport, he probably has oodles of cash lying around somewhere. It's odd to see someone in a similar position as he is riding public transportation like everyone else. That certainly never happens in a country like ours, where there is a point when fame or fortune gets into someone's head - and they end up thinking they suddenly don't belong to the same category as most people.

That's probably where humility comes into the equation. A lot of people - and I'm pretty sure I'm guilty of this at times - tend to blow their own horns when it comes to their accomplishments or abilities. I guess everyone needs their egos stroked at times, but there's a point where it stops being admirable and turns into asshattery.

In any case, people will be people. Maybe those folks were right when they said humans inherently seek some form of approval from some higher authority. While this beats the purpose of right-for-the-sake-of-righteousness, it is sadly prevalent in our society. I guess old dogs can't learn new tricks.

At the very least, it's nice to see people try.

Always Outside Looking In

"There's always a third way, and it's not a combination of the other two ways."
- David Carradine

So I feel that there's a totally inappropriate joke in that quote somewhere, considering what happened to Carradine. I'm not going to elaborate though, for fear of being ghost-crane kicked.

Anyway, there are times in life when we seemingly only have crappy choices left. We've been trained by society to settle for compromises from day one. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, but sometimes relying on this approach to solving problems could be mentally unhealthy.

In a lot of cases, we are seemingly rushed into making decisions without being allowed to think things through. Unfortunately, "practicality" trumps common sense these days. Some people actually make it part of their strategy to get decisions out of others as fast as possible, even when the best course of action is to ask for time to contemplate on them.

I've always appreciated offbeat solutions. I've always been in the belief that one can learn a lot about a people by how they approach and solve problems that come to them. Sometimes their answers do not really make sense at the first glance, or even during execution, but it's surprising how elegantly they solve problems sometimes.

Hence, there's a lot one can learn by taking mental notes on how others work. Sometimes hints to self improvement could be found by observing how others work their way out of a problem.

After all, not everyone had the same teachers and obviously not everyone had the same things thrown at them throughout the course of their lives.

One Last Tuesday

So it has been two and a half months since I've started updating this blog on an almost daily basis. It has also been six months since I've restarted it from over two years of inactivation. I've been meaning to do it as soon as I finished college, but I just couldn't make it a priority when I was wading through one of the crappiest periods of my life (so far). That's a story for another day, though.

I've learned quite a bit in the past year, and a lot of it could be because of trying to motivate myself to write about something frequently.

It has been a fun experiment, but I knew that at some point I'd run out of things to say. I didn't really expect it would last more than a month. I guess what I'm saying is that I'll be updating this blog less often after the month ends. It sucks, but I feel like things are starting to pile up and I have a lot of adjustments to do. Hopefully, I'll at least still be able to post twice a week as a starting point. I don't think that'll be too much of a disappointment for all three of this blog's readers (if it would even reach that much, heh).

Looking back, I think that the hardest thing to write about were the Tuesday entries. Before this, I didn't really care about the bigger things that were happening in the background of my life (such as socio-political issues and their direct impact on our lives). I've always had a libertarian view on these things, which is horrible when said issues start intrusively seeping into people's lives. There's only so much one can read about without becoming embittered by how backwards-thinking people seem to be in terms of running this country. I know that public administration isn't exactly an easy job, but sometimes things go beyond questionable into utter stupidity because people are more interested in the semantics of the law instead of serving the common good.

Anyway, that's about it. I still have quite a few drafts up (and a few ideas to write about), so it shouldn't be much of a problem.

Later.

Switching from Time to Priorities

"I do not particularly like the word 'work'. Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive."
- Masanobu Fukuoka

So I've stumbled upon this Lifehacker article lately. The author discusses how changing 'I don't have time for X' to 'X is not a priority' triggers a subtle but drastic change in perspective.

I feel that this is sound advice, for the moment. I know that I use a lot of my time doing whatever at-the-moment thought comes to mind and I would often wonder why I don't have time for matters other people deem more 'urgent' or 'important'. I guess I march to the beat of my own drum, as the idiom goes.

I think it's pretty strange then, that writing blog posts is a priority for me while something like, uhm, cleaning my room isn't. While I know that it's a horrible example (because I do clean every once in a while and the room's not a rathole anyway), I guess reorganizing personal goals via what I perceive to be their level of priority would help me do things I've been putting aside for so long.

That being said, I should probably prioritize the life part of work-life balance. I can't be bothered to admit it, but I know that a vacation is pretty long overdue. I guess I'd have to plan that soon given that I now have the time, resources and opportunity to do so.

On the other hand, it's probably difficult for others to adjust to this philosophy when their time is already committed to other people. I guess it's irresponsible to say Person X isn't a priority, so there's that. That's something to think about, but in my case I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

On second thought, getting to that bridge should probably be a priority.

And yes, I know what I just said - ZING!

Chapter 24 - Random Ruminations

So don't bother looking that up. It's the Desiderata translated to Bastardized Tengwar. I think it looks better that way, even with my horrible MS Paint cropping. Anyway, it's my favorite poem (and I don't really like poems so that's saying something) and I guess it's one of the few things I try hard to live by.

I need to remind myself that.

Anyway, I totally thought my birthday would fall on a Tuesday. It's strange how the universe works things out sometimes. Is it mere coincidence that my birthday falls on a Thursday, of all days? I have no clue.

Anyway, if there's any day in the year that I'd rather be alone, it's probably this one. It's not that I'm a loner or antisocial, it's because I've always felt that birthdays are reserved for contemplating, reflecting and evaluating how far things are in terms of where I am and where I want to be. It's a reminder of my mortality and a chance to check on where I could improve myself in terms of my general shortcomings.

Society thinks otherwise, so I guess I'll oblige.

Personally, I don't feel like I've done anything substantial in twenty-four years. Perhaps I'm just jaded by the world, or maybe I unnecessarily put too much admiration in other folks' accomplishments that I don't really see my own.

Ah well, I've booked a bunch of days off anyway, I might as well start wandering the city. Maybe I'll learn something useful.

After all, it is a Thursday.

Like Justice, Charity is Blind

"A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog."
- Jack London

So there's this video that has been making the rounds in Facebook last week and has probably gone viral by the time this post is up. It's a video taken from a car during the time Gener (Typhoon Saola) was in the country, which showed a lady stopping to give a naked child her coat before hurrying away to find cover. The video is only over half a minute long, but it's enough to make me question a lot of things about myself.

That clip made me wonder what I would have done if I was in her place, and I would have to admit that I'm ashamed of what I'd answer. I am troubled by the fact that despite my efforts in trying to make myself a better individual, I would not have conceived such an act of random kindness.

I guess feeling guilty is a sign that I'm not as charitable a person as I thought I was. Sure, I'd give some amount to some charity every once in a while, but I never imagined myself giving up something I need for someone who needs it more than I do just as spontaneously as she did.

I feel guilty because there's an aspect of selfishness I think I'd find very hard to defeat and that there are people out there who would go out of their way to do sacrifices for others who they've never even met or could ever repay them for what they've done.

I feel guilty because deep down, I envy those people who practice charity even if there are no eyes to validate their acts. These people are the ones who truly don't expect anything in return and it's these rare acts which show me that maybe my general sense of misanthropy might be misplaced after all.

I guess I've become tired and jaded of seeing people who do good deeds for the sake of praise or even for the sake of an audience seeing said deeds. It got a reaction out of us because admit it or not, we live in a society so earthly and materialistic that such deeds seem rare or unusual even to the best of us. I have this hope that she should remain anonymous, so that her act could merely be an embodiment of the fact that the righteous still walk amongst us, even if we do not see it.

I guess that video depicts the very essence of charity. I does not need publicity. It does not need judgement from the eyes of others. It is not done for the sake of being a source of inspiration. It does not need a reason to justify some past mistake, affirm one's sense of morality or bolster one's faith in the divine or in humanity.

I guess true charity happens when one does something to uplift some other person's human condition in the conviction that the act justifies itself to be worthy of personal sacrifice.

I could only hope that one day, I know that I'd have the decency to truthfully know that I'd have done the same.

...But Never Grow Up

"A geek isn't the skinny kid with a pocket calculator and acne. There can be computer geeks, video game geeks, car geeks, military geeks and sports geeks. Being a geek just means that you're passionate about something."
- Olivia Munn

So I remember this one speech teacher I had back in high school. She left in the middle of the school year, citing personal reasons. The details were very vague so I won't be filling in the blanks. However, there's one phrase she said during one of our last classes that would remain with me forever:

"Grow old, but never grow up."

I'll never credit it to that one statement, but personally I spend a ton in buying stuff I know I'll probably never use. Ever since I got a Paypal account last year, my room became a stockroom of sorts.Impractical, yes, but who cares?

I'm not sure if it's the inner packrat or the inner child that takes over whenever this happens, but I'm sure a lot of folks could relate. Some of the sanest and most rational people I know have interests that most of the world would scoff at. I guess some of us retain that part of ourselves that doesn't want to grow up. There's that part that still wants to stay irresponsible, immature, childish and carefree.

It's the same part of us that doesn't really care about what others think. I think some people would only dare to reveal that aspect of themselves when they grow older. That's one of the perks of growing up. Ironic, isn't it?

This is probably one thing that people without hobbies would never understand. It's sad that a lot of folks are content with whatever is being fed to them and that they're unwilling to shake things up a bit or go back to those parts of their youth that they feel they've missed.

This Cracked article got me thinking. These are indeed interesting times because society has become more tolerant and more importantly because we're starting to turn things that we've only dreamt of as children into reality. It's interesting because the ideas being presented are from a generation that we could relate to and whose ideas are fitting for the times.

Ultimately, I guess that's one of the keys in keeping ourselves satisfied and reaching goals that fulfill us - to never grow out of things we love.

Memo Restructure: Challenge Accepted

“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.” 
- Winston Churchill

So I guess it's time to restructure this blog. It seems that I have a lot of spare time anyway, so I've decided to regularly post five updates per week. I found that posting for eight straight days messes me up, so I have to reduce that to something I think I can manage.

I'm posting the general idea for the posts below.

Open Mondays
I'd probably keep this open for any topic under the sun. I have a few things I wanted to post anyway, and I keep finding old essays which I might as well upload. I'd also probably post some things done by people I know personally (credited, of course) and some other stuff of that nature.

Tuesday Commentary
The keyword here is rant. Topics may be about current events, social commentary or whatever society may be into at the moment. Expect expletives to flow like a bar full of pirates.

Wednesday Reviews
This is pretty self explanatory. I'll review movies (regardless of release date), books (that I've finished), (maybe) video games and whatever it is I feel like reviewing. Spoilers will be plentiful. You have been warned.

Thursday Lessons
For some reason, the universe almost always throws me something to ponder on every Thursday. Maybe it's because that's when John Cheese publishes his articles. Maybe I'm just used to overthinking things every Thursday that it has become a habit. Most posts here will be personal reflections, so don't be surprised if they're incoherent. I like my life lessons esoteric.

Impromptu Fridays
Most posts in this blog have handwritten drafts. Every Friday, I'll try to post something from scratch and hope that it makes sense. Like Mondays, any topic is open for scrutiny.

Am I obsessed with writing? Not in the least. I'm just fairly certain that life is speeding up and I feel that this is the best way to prevent derailment. Reflection is incredibly therapeutic, even more so than alcohol or caffeine or whatever people pump into themselves nowadays.

Also, NaNoWriMo. I have to scratch that off the Tertiaries and I really need the practice.

The Struggle Against Self-Entitlement

"Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark."
-Carl Sagan

So this is something I've been really struggling to get out of my system for quite a while now. I'll be lying if I said it's not a losing battle.

Someone I know once said that there is no greater disease to society than the (misplaced) sense of self-entitlement. I argued that perhaps apathy was a good contender, but then again not giving a crap is most likely because of an inflated sense of self importance anyway.

I see this in myself as much as I see it in others. We, subconsciously or otherwise, always expect a bigger cut of the proverbial cake. We think we deserve special treatment. We think society automatically owes us something for everything we do. We have this deeply ingrained mindset regarding a system of 'reward and punishment' that it is rare for us to do what is right without any sensible reason.

We see it in the person who cuts in line because they decided they could get up late and expect to get to work on time. We see it in the beggars who complain when you only give them a small amount of change. We see it in the traffic enforcers who let people cheat the system for some money. We see it in the pickpockets and muggers roaming our streets who believe that what they do constitutes earning a living. We see it in the common laborers, who think that drowning their sorrows in alcohol is a reward for their hard work. We see it in the people who give themselves (and are often given) priority because they command a higher pay grade. We see it in the illegal tenants who will fight to the death for land they do not own. We see it in the corruption that permeates the government we are supposed to trust with our hard earned money.

It is a fact that selflessness is only attributed to heroes nowadays. And with a society like ours, those who are willing to sacrifice and uphold what they believe in are usually deemed expendable.

It's been said that the high road is a long and lonely path. We've been questioned why we still do things the hard way when there's an easier one. What people don't realize is that when a flood arrives, only those on the high road will have dry shoes.

But then again, I don't know. I'm done with metaphors for the moment. There's just something about the moral norm nowadays that disturbs me.

We can always hope, I guess.