This journal is semi-friend locked. It's my personal journal, so most of what will be posted and can be read are rants, random musings, and general observations. It's my space to unwind and stalk kpop communities.

For more serious, coherent posts, please go to NewsMine.
For pictures, photos, and random fuzz, please go to my Tumblr.

Here I am writing a semi-farewell post to college. It's mighty stupid of me not documenting my four years through a blog, and it's just now that I belatedly regret having laziness, confusion, and depression keep me from documenting some of the very best moments and biggest growth spurts in my life.

This is just a semi-farewell because I want to make a longer, more coherent, more heartfelt entry about what I really feel leaving college behind. I'm just not in the right frame of mind right now to write a post that is deserving of my memories.

I just had my last presentation for Lit class earlier. I still have one Advanced TV Prod class to go, but then that doesn't really count.

I will miss college.

There are things I would have done differently, especially this last semester but wallowing in regret will just make me bitter. So instead, I've chosen to let things come as they would. I don't want to burden myself anymore. I think I've suffered enough as well that I want to gift myself with a little bit of respite. I may not be leaving college having earned the goals I entered it with, but I am taking with me various valuable life lessons that I don't want to exchange for anything else.

You know when people say how they've grown so much and experienced so much, and sometimes you think it's just bullshit?

I ain't talking bullshit.

 Maybe a change of layout was what I really needed. Yesterday, while leeching off of Troy's wifi in his condo, I decided to change the look of my livejournal blog. I've been meaning to change it for some time already, since my friends page doesn't load correctly in the old layout, but I've been putting it off. It was the picture in my previous post that finally pushed me to do it.

The old look, though abstract and beautiful, was dark and stale. This one, which I got from LiveJournal Themes, is bright and quirky. I don't plan on editing it anytime soon. I like it--very very much. I like it so much that it's easier for me to post and push myself to post.

Today, I slept at 8AM after an impromptu study night-pokemon playing-discussion about COA night at Troy's condo with Jana and Jeff. I woke up at 3AM, thinking *shit I have to go to Ateneo Law today and they close at 5!*. But then I realized that their offices are open until 8 during weekdays, so that bought me a couple of hours to indulge myself in Kpop. However, I shouldn't really be doing that since I have a lot of stuff to do for school. :(

Checklist for today:
[  ] Finish at least four more thesis statements for Theology
[  ] Meet up with Miggy and Bob for panel meeting rehearsals
[  ] start preliminary research on Lit paper
[  ] shoot a video blog for Media Law and Ethics

It’s 5.29AM, and I’m just about ready to fall asleep but I can’t, or to put it more properly, I refuse to fall asleep. It’s Monday and though there are no classes (because of another one of GMA’s let’s-make-unnecessary-long-weekends plan), it marks the start of the most hellish of college hell weeks (or sems).

I know that assumption seems like a big exaggeration, but I think that so much more is at stake now. This week will be the last finals week the seniors will ever take. The Last. That raises the stakes so much higher. On one hand, you have those people who just want to get it over with; on the other, you have those scrambling to pull up their grades or escape failing.

The stress has an added dimension, because if we screw this up, the consequences are too great to quantify.

So what am I doing now? Going on my fourth thesis statement out of 11 for Theology 141: Theology of Liberation. Studying theology has never been my strong point. I just can’t accept how some professors teach (or dictate) theological understanding. However, I do love my professor for this subject.

There are just some teachers that you know will have taught you for life, rather than just a semester in school.

Studying for Theo orals, however, is only one of my worries. There’s also Philosophy orals, a final research paper and presentation for Japanese Literature, and a special project and video blogs for Media Law and Ethics.

Speaking of video blogs, I recorded an impromptu one earlier (by earlier I mean around 1AM) at Starbucks. I would have you witness my incoherence and eyebags (as you can probably tell from my stunted writing) but WordPress doesn’t allow video uploads and I’m too tired to upload them in my Youtube account, so a picture would suffice. Here’s me trying to be cute to mask how tired I am:

 It's 6:18AM and I haven't slept a wink. No, it's not because I didn't have time to sleep.

I couldn't sleep. :(

Because adding and subtracting makes a region of my head ache

5 days 'till classes end.
15 days of vacation.
2 months of classes.
2 months of office.
15 years of education.
1 month break before graduation.

and then it's the end.

Christmas will come and go. It's a fixed thing--you really can't escape from it even if you want to.
But to end a routine, a habit, a character part of your life that took almost 15 years to build in about 2 months' time--
I am not prepared.

I've started to keep a journal again.

It was JD's birthday and we went to Eastwood. While we were at the mall, I went to Scribe to look for planners and because stationery shops (next to bookstores) make me happy.

After much debate, I bought a cheap planner and an expensive, absolutely gorgeous journal.

I love it.

I hate the term "emo". Once upon a time, maybe there really were people who felt depressed, wore all-black, and used excessive amounts of eyeliner everyday. Once upon a time, maybe there were genuine souls who really did feel disenchanted and disconnected with the word. Well, that was once upon a time. Now, being "emo" is a fashion statement. Actually, it isn't even one now because it's been so passe since everybody has done it. Being "emo" is cliche.

Yet I see myself writing only when I'm feeling "emo" - in every colloquial sense of the word. I can't seem to write a decent blog entry when I'm happy or euphoric, but when I'm feeling down, the words pour out and I can't stop hitting the keys. I want to see the end and click the "post" button.

So to me, being "emo" means being productive. Screw anybody who says otherwise.

My friends and I were drinking in Katipunan last night when one of them suddenly told us about how fast she was fulfilling the things in her proverbial bucket list--one of which was to drink at Drew's.

Drew's is one of those hole-in-the-wall drinking places every college (and high school) kid knows about (well, at least in Ateneo). Social drinkers rarely go there because it's not something for the mild and halfhearted. There are urban legends about the mixed drinks and Drew's, and last night, I lived that urban tale.

October 10, 2009--I will never forget that date.

 I was over at my Tumblr, and saw this picture and it somehow reminded me of that day when Dumbledore drops Harry off the steps of Number 4 Privet Drive, at the moment just before he touches the ground and pulls out his Put-Outer. The street reminds me of Harry Potter in a third-world setting, with close ramshackle houses and drooping electric lines.

And it somehow reminds me how much I enjoy literature and fiction, reading and writing. I think this may be the push that I need to get me on my feet again. What I need is to learn how to enjoy writing again--I haven't for a long time. Maybe going back to my absolute, most favorite story in the whole entire world will bring the magic back to me.

I want to leave a story as good as Harry Potter, as inspiring, as poignant, as life-altering. Maybe I'll start now.

Claudia and my other friends have been ridiculing my obsession with K-pop and fanfiction. Though fanfics will remain fanfics, there are actually a few good writers I admire--some for their writing talent, others for their creative minds. Writing a book is a long way into my future--I'm not sure I even see it there, but maybe i can pick up the pen again by writing fanfiction.

I'm still deciding whether to make it original fiction, though. Putting DBSK into it is so, so temptating, especially since my wayward imagination has been doing a lot of imagining lately. My brain has been unearthing plots and stories involving K-pop artists and me, and it's just so easy to get lost in such a megalomaniac pretend world. 

But it is oh so tempting. And it sounds so much fun.

And hey, if fiction can't happen in real life, who says I have to limit myself in reality?