Tag Archives: blogging
Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen: The Second Quarter of 2012 Edition
If I could offer you only one tip for the near future, swimming would be it. Return to your parents’ house and hit a nearby beach. Swim with a pink bathing suit on, and yeah, swim without it.
When dealing with family, friends, work, weight, and such, use a mind filter. Don’t take in stray stressors, let things flow as should be. Physicists believe that everything our planet encompasses, comes and goes in one fluid motion. When tossed among ass-kissers and bullies, choose dignity, excellence, faith, honor, and grace.
Feeling trapped? Take to the roof deck. Clarify your perspective.
Or hie off to the mountains. Visit a museum. View art with a friend. Take photographs. Preserve the experience. One day you’ll have something to fall back on, in case you’re trapped again.
Watch every sport you can’t play; rugby for one, that ruffians’ game played by gentlemen. Support your country, cheer for your players. Who knows but that from the bleachers you’ll discover a piece of who you are?
Eat and be merry. If you don’t have a comfort food, find one. Explore the metro, or the weekend markets. Make plans.
Don’t begrudge people who play favorites. Life has its own balancing act anyway. Make efforts to extend peace to one and all. Stop swallowing your pride, spit it out instead. That way, you’ll taste life’s flavors at their best.
Scrawl your bucket list somewhere, and tick items off it one by one.
Hear out fellow bloggers. They have stories to tell. But before strangers, listen to your friend, sister, mother, father. They’re a great part of the stories you share.
Never mind failed first dates. Open your heart to love.
Laugh.
Smile, dance, scream, sing.
Meditate in the morning.
And trust me on the swimming.
*****
PS If I could offer you one tip for the whole year, swimming would be it.
PPS The best advice you can offer is the advice that you took.
Adventure is out there
United Nations (Photo credit: Ashitakka)
I’m not about to brag, just relay facts. That goes to those who think saying your audience spans 33 countries is already bragging — because there’s a lot left unsaid about that — and 33 countries? My flag collection is a long way off for the United Nations Month.
I don’t have a big following on WordPress, and there’s no such thing as the Toned Down & Vintage community. There are only three four persons I can actually talk to about my blog, including my sister. There are the occasional commenters and several writers I connected with, like Hiba and Riz, but blogging has been a solo flight. Flight to where? Good question.
To stardom
I’d not say, “not a chance.” There were days I wished WordPress would give me my 24 hours of fame. (Web 2.0 must really be rocket science to those who set up a WordPress blog and keep their URLs like a key to a diary padlock — and a diary padlock? Come on, get a PIN.)
WordPress (Photo credit: Huasonic)
I hang around much on WordPress, recommend the platform to friends, contribute to the community by following funny and fun individuals who could write, and wait for its enormous traffic to send some my way.
But stardom? Yes, if it means getting promoted on its homepage while making my heroes proud: C.S. Lewis and Nick Joaquin, dead and all that, but proud.
If that didn’t happen, take away the promise of readership, a good future on the blogosphere, and I’m still going to keep on writing. Take away all of these — even my laptop and WiFi, which will be so sad — and I’m still going to write, write with my mind if you will.
Solo flight
So it’s actually a self-discovery. Like how Carl Fredricksen discovered on Disney’s UP, that after a long, long idle time and the death of his wife Ellie, he still had the dream of reaching Paradise Falls. I’ve a soft spot for people who pursue their dreams with the fierce determination of a single mind, heart, soul, and spirit, and then proceed to partner with fellow dreamers along the way.
Cover of Up (Single Disc Widescreen)
On Up, the kid Russell had a dream, too. Maybe I’m just like Russell, starting small, but then I stumbled upon this great community of bloggers where I can always learn something. I’m sometimes overwhelmed by the abundance of Mr. Fredricksens here. Blogging is still a solo flight — for who else exactly knows my aspirations and dreams? In the end, how I’ll learn will depend on how much I want to know. My flight can also lead me to places I never imagined, not just the stereotyped path to stardom. It’s good to know I’m not the only solo flyer around.
PS I wrote a half piece of a song about adventure, based on UP. Comment if you want me to sing it to you. 
Break time
Editing break. I haven’t blogged in the office before, just because I’m so stiff with my schedule. Who has time to handle personal things at work, yeah? Well, this is my 10 minutes of proving myself wrong — that being creative, which is a personal pursuit, could be spontaneous (Oscar WildeWalt Whitman agrees: “Spontaneous me!”) and sometimes out of schedule (like this February blog post). And by creative I mean the ability to create something. And creation always has a purpose. And my purpose is to share to you some of Riz‘ latest posts because they’re so making me smile at my station now. 
Go read ‘em:
1. A year of Saturdays — I wanna do this, too!
2. This made my day – “What does the dog say? Aw-aw! What does the cat say? Aw-aw! I love you! Aw-aw! Say bye-bye! Aw-aw!” LOL-ing IRL all by myself, AT MY DESK!
3. That Saturday afternoon at Harbour Square – Reminds me of my own “APs”/cellmates
PS I promise to blog more often. At work. During break times, ‘course.
PPS I also lurked in her blog and found some interesting letters from somewhere.
Between allergy attacks and the hype of ‘Hit Publish’
A dozen thoughts rumble in my head, one of them quoting Manny’s dad from Modern Family: “Everything is more interesting after 2 AM. The night belongs to the poets and the mad men.” So, a) my being wide awake at 1:44 AM can make me assume there’s a sleeping dragon of a poet within me, b) let’s debunk/discover after-2 AM by staying up later than 2 AM, or c) none of the above; this insomnia is just the result of an allergy attack.
D. All of the above. Let’s get these over with fast and furious.
1) Blogging has deprived me of one beautiful deviation: writing. AS IN writing with my heart on my sleeve, writing free-fall, writing on crisp paper with a sharp-point pen, writing in, on and with my mind, writing without being affected by a new reaction to a stimulus which oddly corresponds to INSTANT PUBLISHING — which I believe robs you of your saccharine excitement for clipping your copies, filing them in a folder, and timing everything so that you’ll see your work printed on the newspaper or in a magazine or book before you turn 25, or before you die.
But what you get today is the hype of the ‘Hit Publish’ — you scramble for words to create pieces that are yet to serve a purpose. There’s the excitement, always the anticipation of pressing the Publish button, only to realize that one day you’re no longer making Nick Joaquin (perhaps in heaven), or whoever your hero is, PROUD. Next thing you know you’re screaming for life, lost in a sea of useless thoughts. So think about it.
*This is self-talk*
2) Kids. I love kids. It’s safe to say that I know my way around them. I know how to catch their attention. I played teacher as a kid; I learned teaching kids before I could really write a good essay. My favorites were the little Koreans, my kids from church — and that’s several groups in all — and the ones I babysat or tutored. It’s not safe to assume though that I want to have my own now because 1) I don’t believe in another immaculate conception and 2) I haven’t really thought about it.;p
3) The night ended great. I got a Lois Lowry book I read about some time ago, and a bag I really wished for to have. My mom called through the phone and I wasn’t my crying and complaining bitchy self anymore to her — and when you’re not 1) crying, 2) complaining, and 3) bitchy, you sometimes find a force stronger than you that wants to make the soul from the other line happy, encouraged, or relieved.
4) My friends have been their great selves tonight — so thank you for the company. We’ve been to hell and back. Papakape na ang magpapakape.
5) I love the Philippines. With what happened to Corona and all that shiz, I don’t remember a time when governance was deemed great in this land. But somebody said our country is young; let’s give it a time. Now I’m thinking of how my part can be done — PHILIPPINES, LET ME HELP YOU. I’ll find out how.
#s 6-12 are now resting in peace.
