288: Twenty - Freaking - Seven

Funnier with Parents

When I celebrated my birthday for the past few years they were all written in here. Here's a post when I turned 24, 25, 26, and now I am writing for my 27th birthday. I like how different my entries were. It only says how much had changed in terms of my perspective, and how much had changed in how I celebrate my birthday. The older I get, I preferred a small audience, and this is just one of those things that had changed.

I decided that writing post-birthday celebration will be an annual habit, or an annual touch point of how I went for the past few months before I add another number to my age. Maybe it would be even wise to write down my wishes for myself (in spite of how ambitious they may sound), and see if I were brave enough to even pursue them, or I left them as a dream.

So how did my birthday exactly went? It went quietly. I celebrated my birthday with my parents. It's not that I have no friends to celebrate it with, but unfortunately, my birth date was sandwich in between working days so most of my friends were occupied. However, even if there were sans grand celebration of my big day I felt blessed to be able to celebrate them with my nanay and tatay. Besides, didn't they say that we create our own happiness?

This 27 years, all I wish for myself are the following:

• Continue persevering towards your dream. You've always wanted to bring to life the business that you were imagining so go on, bring it to life. You are creative, smart, and amazing, you'll win your customers, you'll make it.
• Stop thinking about how others perceives you while you try to shoot for the stars. You worry too much that people would think that you are arrogant, or ambitious to reach for it, but actually it's only you who were thinking about that. Besides, is their perception of you matters more than your dreams? Go, prove to people that you can achieve your dreams with your feet on the ground.
• Remember what Tony said? Focus on your personal values. In the end of the day it's not about the academic belts that you've gained, nor the position that you reach it's the values that you uphold that will take you farther in this life.
• Never forget God in the end of the day. Remember what st. Augustine said 'Pray like as if everything depends on God, and work like as if everything depends on You'. God is faithful, so stay on the course, keep believing, and continue to move on. God will not let your foot slip. He keeps His promise!

We can do it, Self! You, and I you're only 27, so go and let's conquer the world!

195: Birthday Month!

Picture from Epsos.De

What do you look forward to this month? Seriously, I never had an exciting month as far as I can remember. You see, first, March is my birth month. I usually dread it ~ not because I'm ungrateful ~ but because of the obligatory birthday celebrations. I must admit, I'm heck stingy so yeah I feel obligated treating everyone I knew. Plus, I'm a trying hard entertainer! I feel like I have to entertain every guest I have, in which is one of my weakest. I know you must think, why give in? The thing is I feel bad about not celebrating ... so yeah, March usually is a love/hate month for me.

But this month, is one of my firsts! This is the first time that I will be going out of the country on my own! It's actually a bit of a surprise. I thought that my sister would accompany me going to Singapore, when I had booked everything for myself, she then announced that I'll be on my own. You cannot imagine how much I have ranted about going out of the country on my own.

Honestly, going out without a company is a little intimidating considering that I easily get threatened to unfamiliarities. But since I've been telling myself to 'go, enjoy life at its fullest' I thought why not. It will be a heck of an adventure to travel alone. It must be.

Aside from my travel adventure, I took the opportunity to join my sister's Worldventures travel club. I'm not much of a travel geek but then travelling seemed to be essential in our life. If I really wanted to rally discovery and exploration in my life, travelling the globe should be in my top list. Who knows, I might end up being a travel writer. That sounds good, right? And going out of the country every now and then, enjoying the different environment should be good for my soul. So why not?

I've never been this excited looking forward to my birthday celebration, because I can feel there's a lot of things to discover ... a lot of things to look forward to come my 24th birthday.

So you my faceless reader, have you tried going out of the country on your own? If you do, what are you experiences? Let's talk!

184: The Truth About My Forever ...

©threadsence

Sorry if the past few post had been random and almost blank. For the past of couple of days I find myself unable to express my thoughts, neither can I find a topic to talk about. I felt I was drifting away from myself because my mind was out of proportions.

You see I had laid out plans: All seemingly ~ actually ~ possible to be done, all promising. But I lack of action. I could not act out of fear. I fear that things might not fall on the right place, and I might lose what I cannot afford to lose. So yeah, I was hanging on the edge wanting to jump, but not taking a jump. I have finally had admitted this to myself. I am glad that I took a break for a couple of days and had a self-recollection, of the things I wanted. Now, I have a plan ~ again ~. But this time I'll make a difference: I'll be brave.

 ~

The book that I just finished was Sarah Dessen's the Truth About Forever. I love that book because I could relate so much of the protagnost. I felt like I was reading my story (minus the boys in the book), and it made me think. You should read it. This is one of the books that had made me rethink of my life so I guess that gives you an impression how much I adored it.

That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really all about. It was twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wished would last and last. But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening. Right then, as I ran with Wes into that bright sun, and every moment afterwards. Look, there. Now. Now. Now ~ Sarah Dessen

156: On Self-Commitment

"Come on, you promised."

"But what am I suppose to write?"

"Well, I don't know. Why don't you just sit in front of your laptop and just start on something… Anything. I'm sure something will come out of it."

"But what if there's none?"

"Something will."

"augh, I'm sort of tired."

"You had enough sleep. Just go! Think of your commitment. If you break this you'll be breaking another."

Can you believe that that communication transpired between me and ... myself ... inside my head. HAHAHA. Seriously! You see I have promised to myself that every week, every weekend I need to publish an entry. Unfortunately, just right after I woke up I didn't have that enthusiasm of writing. I thought about giving it up for today. I told myself that I could do it tomorrow. But I felt that if I start breaking this promise soon enough I will be breaking others. 

But alas! Talking to myself and reminding myself that I need to stay true to my commitment won.

So here I am writing. Finally! And I actually feel good about it. 

Despite of how much I wanted to practice staying true to my commitments there will still come a time that something will pull me back. There will be a lot of external and internal factors that will lead me to failing on my supposed self-promises. But actually thinking about it, and telling myself that I need to get it accomplished helps me.

My friends asked me that they like how productive I could be for the whole day. I tell them that it's not easy because there will always be something that I have to battle with in order for me to get something accomplished. But being decisive that I have to do it; that I need to do this, that there will be no room for procrastination drives me to achieve my goals. #BeatProcastination #ToProductivity

There will be a lot of ways in how someone could get something done (I mean isn't that supposed to be a personal style? - haha), in how a person could battle procrastination and laziness. But I believe that it really starts with that firm decision that we will stick to our commitment (no matter what's the cost) will help us accomplish our goals.

So start making small commitments and stay true to that commitment and after a month or so I believe we could accomplish something great.

To productivity!

152: Frustration is good

Planning, planning

So the past few days I have been struggling with what I should be writing about. The reason why I was struggling is because I do not know what I should talk about here. Additionally, one of the reasons why I haven't been blogging is because I was spending time trying to think of my own project.

I, seriously, hate being bored and unproductive. I cannot just live working, and going home and be idle. I want to see results. My own results. It doesn't have to be big, but at least something that's creative. So, for the past few days I have been writing about my ideas, and I realize that execution of ideas is actually not easy. It's not easy because I'm the only one working on it. I do not have a team who will work out with me. So, basically it take most of my time and energy.

The past few days I was frustrated because I haven't done anything despite the ideas running on my head. I was disorganized. All the plans that I have went into clutter. The ideas that I have basically die a sudden death.

I'm glad that I have bumped into this entry that had helped me. Now I am more than excited to be productive and actually work on my ideas. I know I have to start back to round one, but I am more positive about the future results now.

I might have been frustrated but frustration never stops me, because I end up assessing what's wrong. Frustration was never a woe but rather my friend. I like how I get determined from this bad feeling. It helps me to continue finding for solution. :)

150: Moved On from the Pain

It's been quite a while since the last time I have written here. The thing is, I drifted away because I was in "moving on" process, hence my last post.

Anyway, the past few weeks were another self discovery moments for me. Among the things that I have discovered, I conceived how much would my emotion do to try to beat to my knees. During the time that I was moving on, I was controlling my mind from wandering back to the person involve. I try to be productive just to divert my attention. I also tried so hard convincing myself that if I want to move on I must stop clinging on the thought of going back. Additionally, I try not to wonder about the "what-ifs" or console my longings. I was afraid that if I did, I might tell myself to try it for the last time. I have decided that I should look forward. I must look forward. So, those steps were essential for me to take.

Know when to let go

I wanted to empty out all the hurt that I had.  So when I was more in control of myself, I wrote about how I felt. I know it might sound contrary of what I just said but I allow myself to grieve. I do this so I could dump all the pain inside. Believe me, it helped me moved on.

I do not write only of my pains, but I also write the small joys that I have; The feeling of gratefulness for where I am now and for what I currently have. Writing about those healed me. Praying to God also have helped me heal. Those things that I did helped me gain back the hope that I have for tomorrow.

Moving on is a process. It takes strength to overcome the pain. It takes faith that there's something good to look forward to. But we have to believe that one day it will all end. We just need to take the first step in order to get there. Know when it's enough, and stand firm on it. The rest will follow. ☺