current music: There There - Radiohead

There are reasons why things happen.
There are no freak accidents.
Everything is gift.

And so, you are here and you walk this path
because being here is what will open things for you
if not for yourself, but for everybody else.

You will fail, you will fall, you will tire.
But don't stop.
Don't.

============

I had this spat with my Dad about a few weeks ago. It was about law. I wanted out, and he gave the ultimatum that I ought to get a job, and my salary will have to pay for everything I spend: gas, food and rent. (yup. tenant daw.)

And I was game!

But you know how the weirdest things happen when you make these decisions?

Well, suddenly my uncle arrives to talk to Roel, my brother. My brother's issue, in contrast, is that his thesis for MAC is haveing trouble taking off. Reason being, the business team he's part of think he's the "epal member" of their team, and he's left out on a lot of the decisions. Recently, he's been trying to make a push for prominence, and he needed ideas/help/capital/whatever to make the business model of theirs work.

Guess who ended up quoting the Civil Law on contracts, and coming up with negotiation power-plays to get the legal upper-hand?

Pucha. "O kita mo? Lawyer nga!" yelped my family.

It also didn't help that this uncle of mine exterted the "pressure" by highlighting how the family needs a competent lawyer. WHICH IS SO TRUE, because:

1.) one unclie (siya) has 2 kids to his common-law spouse. who can't track down her first husband, and she is, as of today, still legally married to him.
2.) my other uncle married a single mom, and the kid's father ain't paying child support.
3.) my Dad's involved in a case where some asshole tried to swindle a plot of property that belongs to the family.
4.) don't get me started with my Mom's side.

---------------

Why, Lord? Is this what you want for me?


*sigh*

Kapit, kapit...

current music: Your Love - Alamid

On My (Very Likely) Giving Up the "Grand Manner"

Maybe it's time I finally accept that certain things, people, pursuits, goals, dreams and such just don't work for you. Just... don't. And that some things really just... do.

Where do I begin?

I know. I'll start with the easiest thing to rant about: school.

I'm at this impasse. I'm two weeks away from ending the semester and I'm facing finals and hand-destroying homeworks that must be passed in longhand.

And I've never been so un-motivated in my life.

Really. I'm really, really considering quitting law school. And I mean to just... not show up anymore.

And in so doing, giving up that outside shot to become Chief Justice, or to be ambassador of the country to England or France. I ought to stop daydreaming of driving that Ferrari, of owning that swanky flat in the city, of wining and dining women in posh restaurants or flying them around the world financed by my credit card and earnings as a high-powered attorney-of-law. I'll need to re-evaluate my power to get married and sending my kids to schools like Ateneo (and as of all the tuition raise talk at UP, that school looks tough too.) The mere IDEA of getting married looks trickier too.

I'm not happy here. I can run several reasons.

I gave up lots of opportunities to earn money straight out of college. Hell, some of those opportunities (editorial assistant, writing posts, ad agencies) from the people I've met (connections, fine) are what my peers would kill for. But I had to set them aside in favor of codals and cases.

I had to put aside the valuable time I once spent on getting/keeping fit. My health has hit a strange new low unheard of a year or even 2 years ago. I've always been overweight, but the past two years saw great improvement. I've lost all that work in two years in the first two months of law schooling. And it's not because of the pricey lunch-outs with classmates (because those were fun). I attribute it to lost sleep, to lost hours jogging, and, fine, the binges my blockmates indulge in that I share. And don't get me started on the blood-pressure spikes that classroom hours with profs create.

I've had to put away my draft notebooks and with them all those ideas for poems and stories that shan't ever see light of day. Hell, typing on blogs like this is the last bastion of my creativity. Already, I gave up applying for the Ateneo National workshop just to study my classes and earn a meager 2.0 in a Constitutional Law recitation and to fail the Persons midterms. I'm not growing artistically here. I'm growing only more and more sacrastic, more and more embittered.

Most painfully for me, is how my time is diverted from spending it with people I love. I think it doesn't need much extra explanation. Well. Maybe I'll only add about how many hours I've wasted on reading photocopies of these things, and it forced friends, relatives, and all other "loved ones" far, far into the background. I've made new friends and they're great. I've met several people who I can tell friends about with the famous "Hey... I met somebody" and they'd knowingly smile that familiar smile. But I'm not so dumb to think they'll ever replace the ones I've sacrificed a lot for over the years.

Hell, I don't even really get to go to Sunday mass or pray anymore. Really.

If anything, I've learned a few things here and there. Like how to survive high-pressure schooling the wrong way. Or how to cheat in tests and homeworks. Or how to flirt. Hmm. Not a good sign.

Yeah. I'm griping. But ultimately, I think it's not about being happy where you are, or taking pride in your situation. Sometimes you really can't because you know too little. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, commenting on how this rival soccer team manager boasted of having the best team in the world, said "Everybody things he has the prettiest wife at home." That's because we never see beyond our own punto de vista.

What would life be like away? What kind of work would a law school dropout (and Ateneo Creative Writing graduate) find?

I'll miss my friends. I'll miss Block D. I'll miss the funny moments we'd have trying to carve out a future in law. I'll have to live with never stomping around law library for that stupid Legal Bibliography homework (which, to this day, I CAN'T finish!) or never eating at Mommy's again. (Wait. No, maybe not that.) I'll need to deal with the piles of photocopied cases, the law books and the rest of the expenses my parents lovingly parted with to see me succeed in a world I never had planned to enter.

I don't regret applying and taking the test (because Lord knows what happened to me there. hehe). I just regret screwing around my personal priorities on what matters. I realize that I only wanted the glory, the stability of life, the G's. And that my original dream of Helping People got lost on the way. And that very dream can still be made real elsewhere.

I regret committing myself to that dream, knowing well what it'd take, but not knowing if it was the right dream for myself.

Granted. I'm learning a lot in law school and I've a lot more to learn too. But this? I dunno if I'm learning thing right things, at the right time.

Or, (which I personally hope to be true) that it wasn't a mistake. That, in some strange, only-God-knows way, my getting kicked out, or my dropping out, or my taking a leave, or whatever...

...all sort of opens something that I wouldn't ever have had without UP Law and law schooling "in the grand manner". (and if it's the case, it better be worth it.)

And I'm to decide whether it'll be my last two weeks and leave at the end of the sem. Or if I'll stick it till the end of the year, or, for that matter, stick as long as I'm capable of escaping the axe. Or if it's really goodbye as of right away.

Well. At the very least, I've made friends with 37 potential lawyers who can save my ass from jail someday. :p

current music: Your Call - Secondhand Serenade

(I just heard this 20 minutes ago, and I love it. Amazing. Lyrics c/o www.lyricsmania.com)

Your Call Secondhand Serenade lyrics

Artist: Secondhand Serenade Album: Awake Year: 2006 Title: Your Call

Waiting for your call, I'm sick, call I'm angry
call I'm desperate for your voice
I'm listening to the song we used to sing
In the car, do you remember
Butterfly, Early Summer
It's playing on repeat, Just like when we would meet

I was born to tell you I love you
and I am torn to do what I have to, to make you mine
Stay with me tonight

Stripped and pollished, I am new, I am fresh
I am feeling so ambitious, you and me, flesh to flesh
Because every breath that you will take
while you are sitting next to me
will bring life into my deepest hopes, What's your fantasy?

I was born to tell you I love you
and I am torn to do what I have to, to make you mine
Stay with me tonight

And I'm tired of being all alone, and this solitary moment makes me want to come back home
x4
( I know everything you wanted isn't anything you have)

I was born to tell you I love you
and I am torn to do what I have to, to make you mine
Stay with me tonight

I was born to tell you I love you
and I am torn to do what I have to, to make you mine
Stay with me tonight
(I know everything you wanted isn't anything you have)

What the fuck? I've been writing so much on these blogs, that I hardly get to get anything done. Well, no. That's not true. Blogging isn't the problem. It's how I manage my time. Observe:

7PM - fresh out of the UAAP defeat, Roel and I arrive at UP to pick up the readings I needed book-bound. Discovered I didn't have enough cash to pay, so we ended up using what little I had to treat him to dinner at Rodic's. Gastos, shet.

8PM - watched Project Runway with my kid sister. Actually understood a few extra things about women's fashion. Saw a dress that I'm DYING to buy, just to see how it'd look on Dearest. (Banana Rep na 'to! hahaha!) Checked email, Friendster, etc.

9PM - Starbucks. Parents know I'm headed to Katipunan to "pick up readings from a classmate who dorms in Katipunan" (ie: Charrie, Irish, Mowie, Carol, Charles, WHOEVER). Reality = it was the post-UAAP defeat cheering-up for May (who took offense to my statement "It sucks to lose, 'specially when you're there live, but I'm not THAT sad."). Met some of her friends at Starbucks. Had coffee and talked about all manner of stuff.

12PM - Cantina. Girl wanted a drink. Accompanied her, and helped drain some of her Red Horse, just to "lessen" her drinking. I go leave to get the car. She ends up spending time with this Babble dude she knew there at Cantina. And leaves the scene with exchanged cell numbers! ("May, magaling ka. Saan? Basta, magaling!")

1AM - Drove around Xavierville looking for a certain house of a certain guy she liked *cough*Rre....*cough*, with intent to crash/surprise. Yikee! Since he couldn't leave the house (strict ang Nanay), nauwi ito sa Neoatenes, kung saan si May ay naka-internet, at si Raph naka-gawa ng Days related work.

2AM - finally drove home.

3AM - spent a LOT of time talking to my still-awake kid brother. was AMAZED. He actually managed to convince me that I belonged in Law School. Something about how, given that I actually passed the test, and that I'm not failing everything but just one subject, I'm doing NOT SO BADLY. I go "No, you see, I'm taught that 'if you don't 100% want to be a lawyer, get out'." And he answers "See? The mere fact you can argue like that, further establishes that you're very capable of being a lawyer." 'Ika nga sa commercial, "Kumbinsing!".

4AM - Tried to sleep. Ended up listening to music with kid brother, before finally nodding off.

6AM - woke up. and chatted with long-lost highschool classmate Mark Yebra, who has presently moved to Seattle as an engineer for Boeing. Asenso!

7AM - right now. and no breakfast in sight. And still sleepy/drowsy, but will soon head to UP to collect those readings. (none of which I've read for today!)

At present I am financially raped. Biro mo, yung baon ko for the week, halos ubos sa isang gabi! Ggranted, I get very little in terms of parent's giving allowance compared to most, but that's no excuse. Looks like Charrie will have to wait another week. Hahaha. (Like it matters.)

Haay. I can't live my life this way.