This blog was created in attempt to see the world as it is and to appreciate all its parts – evil and good at the same time. The result did not disappoint – for as I browse through its entries it encompasses real things such as college basketball, gaming, dating, personal life and a bunch of other things.

I was comfortable just watching the world and putting a small piece of it into this blog. I loved how it reflects different sides of me and how so many topics it covered. For this I am happy.

But alas I believe that time has come to an end. I believe that the time is now ripe for me to be creating my own mark in the world by creating focus in my life.

As I turn 23, I want it to be in order that I take the notch up higher as I enter this more focused part of my life.

A new blog, a new approach to my own life. Will be in order soon enough.

Wait for it…

NOW.

It comes only in a few moments where the true beauty of life is glimpsed a bit more. Each glimpse is only more potent than the one before it – and each time there is a feeling of rebirth.

January 31 2009 was a day I coined as the Day of Courage. To take life as it is – to face fear & uncertainty with a clear head and a peaceful heart. To make what is the right decision and not succumb to mere emotions or ideals.

But what is courage when there is nothing to act on? No goal in sight? No giant to slay? No road to drive on?
Courage is a valuable asset and yet, it does little without something to act on. Courage without anything else is like a cooking pot without anything to cook with.

The ingredient courage is used for in my humble opinion is creativity. Creativity is an asset or a skill or a trait or whatever you call it. It is easy to be creative but it needs boldness to make it work.

Put courage and creativity together and you have the ability to adapt, renew and frankly, kick some ass.

February 28 2010 – Day of Rebirth.

Won’t get the best of me.

I swear it.

And what a fitting day it is. When two men can throw down the gauntlet, let the dust settle and show mutual respect in the end. Knowing that sometimes, it’s not what a man learns to keep, but what he learns to let go of.

I’m not God. If I were, then there are many things I would have changed around here myself. But they didn’t. Things keep haunting you and keep coming back. Sometimes we all try to be humble and lower down pride, but end up doing the exact opposite.

When things go like this, a man learns what he’s made of. We can’t control what happens to us, but we can control how to respond to this.

Courage maketh a man.

ALL WILL BE WELL!

This is where I learned to be humble. To know that not even love can conquer all. To know to role of our choices balanced with our feelings. To know that we can’t make the right moves all the time and react in the way we should have. To know that there are simply some things in life that we will regret. To know that some of the most valuable lessons in life are also the most painful.

I think I failed recently. I failed to understand and be patient. I failed to be humble. I failed myself. For a while back I wanted to roundhouse kick myself in the face for all these failures. Good thing that a few important people in my life made me realize where I didn’t fail.

They said I didn’t fail to love.

To those who saw me disappear like I usually do for a few days, know that for the first time I didn’t do this for my own selfish reasons. To find meaning, to bathe in solitude, etc etc like I usually do when I go out of sight & out of mind for some time. This time around, I did it for someone else. I did it for love. I know this is true because I wasn’t aware of this until those who truly knew me pointed it out.

Funny how I am usually confused as to what love is – and still am. But I am at peace that this is indeed true. For making me realize this, I thank these people with all my heart. You know who you are.

This is one of the greatest, most profound feelings I have ever had in my life. For this reason, I simply believe that there must be a God. I don’t believe in a life of too much coincidence – only a life of faith.

All will be well!

Despite the fact that I came from a very tiring overnight but no sleeping party at my best friend’s home the night before, from my niece / goddaughter’s 7th birthday celebration a few hours ago and therefore almost no sleep at all, I am still in this predicament. I’m almost quite sure I’m the only person involved in all these events who still hasn’t hit the hay. I guess it is quite true that the mind rules over the body. If the former gets no rest, then neither does the latter.

Then, I remembered a moment I shared with an awesome musician friend during the aforementioned overnight party. I had been arguing to him about the stuff I thought about music. The topic is a bit complicated, and thus I will just try to do justice to the point of what he said: that music that comes from the heart is good music.

And indeed as I pour my heart out into this post, I thought of a little something different to try. Basically, I am gonna use self-therapy on myself by making some music “that comes from my heart” even if I am NOWHERE near being a musician. So I decided to sing my heart out on a recording song from Karaokeplay.com (LOLOLOLOLOL!!! try the site it is very addicting.)

It wasn’t hard to pick a song – basically I didn’t want it to be too hard and that the lyrics should be saying pretty much what I’m feeling. So I chose a song from a movie I recently watched from the daily download list – Way Back into Love by Hugh Grant & Drew Barrymore. After a few tries of recording, adjusting the lame speakers on my notebook and keeping juuust the right distance from my built in generic microphone, I came up with a recording that seemed ok. SEEMED OK is the right phrase – I don’t know how people will receive it since I’m one of the worst judges of any work I do on my own.

So here’s some courage for ya – the link to my recording!

One last thing, thank you to all the special people that shared their moments with me in the last two days. It was epic – seriously. I feel like I’m about to really live a life now.

Time to go to sleep.

My village in Filinvest Homes East Marcos Highway wasn’t one to be spared by the floods. People who lived in single floor houses had to count on the hospitality of our neighbors. In our own home, the flood almost reached the second floor. All of our cars were submerged and I was stuck on the second floor with my family, the household help, a couple of kind strangers who came our way and my cousins.

One of my closest cousins, Reginald Meria who was 5 years my junior was worried sick for his older brother, Ren-Ren Meria who unfortunately, went to school at University of Sto. Tomas (UST) was was last heard stuck without food in the Dominican residence. By the time we had lost contact with Ren-Ren, (in the cutting off of electricity, power, signal and phone lines) none of us had informed Ren-Ren that our village was pretty much inaccesible. This was friday night at the height of the storm.

Morning came and the rains have stopped, I looked outside and it was unbelievable. The village looked like a river – some cars had drifted away, some people were already using boats and people were walking shoulder-high on the main road. I thought the water would have evaporated by then – but that was my elitist-ignorant head talking. (It didn’t evaporate for a looong time). I guess for the most of us in the Metro Manila area, this is God’s lesson on Humility 101.

Speaking of lessons, I’m here to write about my Ondoy Moment. For a good number of my friends unaffected by the flood, their moments were the service they rendered to the victims such as helping out in relief operations and the like. For these people you know who you are, you are awesome. For a good number of my family members, it was when they had to rebuild – have the cars fixed, clean out the houses, etc. Yep, I shared a lot of these moments with them.

But my favorite moment, MY moment was when me and Reg were outside walking in the flood that Saturday noon, and we caught sight our his Kuya Ren-Ren hugging his backpack who had trudged all the way from UST, walked across the flooded Marcos Highway famished and hadn’t eaten for over a day.

I was just lucky enough to have my camera with me to capture it:

Yes, our cars were all rended useless for a while and I had to commute against overwhelming MRT odds in those two weeks that followed Ondoy. Yes, we lost a lot of stuff. Capturing this moment though, kind of takes that pain away from us. (Self-explanatory) ;D

As of this writing, I have just finished a 23 hour writing spree with Jez Lucas, my newest workmate and good old friend. As of today,  I consider myself well-initiated on my newfound role as an outsourced SEO content writer.

No sleep since last night. We started around 10pm and I have just ended now, 9:15pm. 10 articles on a topic we knew absolutely nothing about.

Now beneath my battered brain cells, red eyes and caffeine-saturated body there lies a smile – a smile that depicts a kind of happiness that I haven’t felt in the longest time.

Whoops! Before I go on, let me zoom out and take a look at the bigger picture: last week.

SUMMARY: In the blackest plains of hell’s domain, through the fire and flames I carried on.

True, that is a broken excerpt from a song by Dragonforce, but I feel that right now those are the best words to describe what I had just gone through.

It all started friday last last week, when a deadline was given to me by my office where I work full-time. It was a hard deadline – pretty difficult as I really wasn’t used to this kind of work. But I needed to. I wanted to. I felt it. (but just a bit) It occured to me that I needed to do this job so I could move on to MY main project in our company. But I won’t go there. (it’s a surprise)

I didn’t meet the deadline.

I’m fortunate enough i guess, that the person who put me in charge of the project was kind enough to give me some slack. So it was that Wednesday that ANOTHER thing happened.

It is this two-headed creature named diarrhea that loomed over me. Moreover, his gremlin cohorts must have sabotaged the men’s cr in my office that SAME DAY as well.

Needless to say I retreated.

To be greeted by yet another deadline – the one I just finished TODAY.

The deadline was last Thursday – so I failed two deadlines this week.

And yet somehow, someway in all Hallow’s Eve. I got em done. I pulled through.

This was the week that I failed my first deadline in the office.

This was the week that sickness hit me in the worst possible time and place.

This was the week that I failed a second deadline.

This was the week that I barely slept – and didn’t sleep at all.

This was the week that messed up my personal life in ways I decline to mention here.

But this was the week I pulled through anyway.

and #%^%^%$^ IT if it THIS wasn’t THE BEST WEEK SINCE I STARTED WORKING LAST JUNE!

Because this was the week.. that I discovered what it was like to fulfill myself again through good ol’ hard work.

MANY THANKS TO THOSE WHO WERE WITH ME!

- To my office

- To Jez

- To my cousins

- To my friends

If I were to rephrase the above quote, it would state “follow your calling” or “take the road less travelled”. Back in my childhood, I always thought it would be in the academics – to stand above the rest and succeed. A little later, it would be in social dynamics – how to deal with people, get what you want and help everyone succeed and be happy. In early high school it was in debating, and later on in geeky stuff like card games, sleight of hand magic and videogames. In college it would be in the performing arts, military service & business.

Each time I shifted my focus, (which was DEAD SHOT LASER-LIGHT FOCUS every. single. time.) I would leave people disappointed, certain commitments unfinished and some would even say I am a fickle man for this. And to a certain extent, I believed the accusations.

But until recently, I realized that amid the constant change of mind I had, one thing was constant.

I followed where my heart led me. To the letter – with complete faith and belief in myself and other people involved.

I never shot blindly because I had expectations. Expectations are goals and I always had a plan to get to them. When they didn’t work, I learned and I picked myself up every single time and tried my best yet again.

Looking back at all the failures, I regret not a single moment because they have taught me invaluable things about the world.

But recently, I feel I made a small mistake. Faced with a choice as to “where to move on next” after graduation, I went for a job. Now this was shooting a bit blindly – because the only goal I had here was to get “work experience” as people suggested to me. I didn’t really care what kind of job it was or how much it paid, (all I cared about is where it was – I declined a much better offer but it was from Makati, I liked Ortigas more for its nearness.) but I just wanted to again obtain experience.

No following my heart. Now THIS is shooting blindly. No faith. No belief. Just a commitment on paper.

The result?

BLAND.

For the first time ever, life tastes pretty bland to me. It is like waking up every morning to a rerun of yesterday. It is like running so damn hard & fast but without idea where I’m heading to next. I have to consult my planner to keep in mind the tasks I have to do for that day – and sometimes just to know what day it is.

In a sadistic sense, it is an awesome experience.

I finally know the consequence of putting my heart aside. To commit for the sake of commitment. To act purely out of duty, without heartfelt motivation. More importantly, how to sustain it without ruining my life. (e.g. excessives drinking, vices, etc.)

I see this as a positive thing. Why? Because:

1.  I will be motivated not to let this happen again.

2. I have become more open, more constant & stable.

3. I have learned to value what my heart shouts to me – more and more.

To establish greatness, I must establish effectiveness first.

Destiny, Here I Come.

- My summarized mission statement