"yer heart's desire."

I don't know why, but no matter how sick or sad I feel some days, I can't bring myself to leave work. I don't consider myself a workaholic at all; I'll honestly say that on some days, I just phone it in — figuratively.

There are days when I wake up and don't want to get out of bed, but somehow, I find myself on my feet anyway, making breakfast, getting dressed, and grumbling but, eventually, finding myself on the road and then at my desk. I completely understand the feelings people have when they decide to call in sick when they aren't or drop everything and head on the next bus to the beach. But I just find myself unable to do the same thing, no matter how much I want to.

A few years ago, I saw this interview with Hugh Laurie. Jay Leno asks Mr. Laurie if he had fun hosting Saturday Night Live, and Mr. Laurie says:

Where I was brought up, sort of fairly strict Presbyterian household, fun was viewed with suspicion. Fun was not a good thing. Pleasure was a questionable goal. It stayed with me. I don't see fun as a goal ... I think I may actually be incapable of having fun. So when I went there, and people said, 'Oh, you know, just have fun!', to me, it's like saying, 'Just have a baby!' It's that ridiculous. I'm just sort of not put together that way.

Later in the interview, he goes back to it, when he's asked about people saying he's difficult to work with:

I suppose I have this, somewhere in my head, I have this idea that if a thing is pleasurable, it can't be any good.

The interview is really funny, maybe especially because Mr. Laurie doesn't smile much in it.

In another interview, he says:

I had some pretty bleak times, dark days when it seemed like there was no escape. And having a very Presbyterian work ethic, I was determined never to be late, not to miss a single day's filming. You wouldn't catch me phoning in to say, 'I think I may be coming down with the flu'.

But there were times when I'd think, 'If I were just to have an accident on the way to the studio and win a couple of days off to recover, how brilliant would that be?'


So when I beat myself up about turning down something good because of work, I think of Hugh Laurie, and I wonder about how this kind of thinking got wired into me, too.

And then I think of my dad and those years that he was in that one department where you had to drop everything if the plant needed you. I remember my mom telling me and my brothers that it was Dad's job that let us live in our house and have food on the table, etc. I also remember seeing that other kids' dads got to come home Saturday afternoon, and mine didn't. I remember that one Father's Day I walked out of church and cried in the car because it was time to honor the dads, and he wasn't there for me to honor with the ribbon or the mug or whatever it was the church had come up with for us kids.

But mind you, the whole time I was crying, I was also lecturing myself about being a melodramatic baby. I did used to be a big crybaby, and I think people at school knew this and would make me cry on purpose. So some part of me saw crying not just as an expression of weakness but as an invitation for others to pick on that weakness.

Maybe I deserve to cry, I told myself in the car that day. Maybe crying is for wusses, I also told myself.

My dad showed up, still in his uniform, while I was still in the car. He was smiling when I hugged him. But, I felt extremely embarrassed.

Anyway, enough of the trip down backstory lane; I'm at ~700 words now and still haven't gotten to the good part of this post.

I've been stuck in a no-fun holding pattern for the past eight or nine months, and it's been, well, no fun. I told myself I couldn't have certain things I wanted because it was not a good time. Friends, family, and Cris complained that my job took me away from them. I had to tell myself, it's your job that lets you pay your rent and bills, have food on the table, have something maybe impressive to put on that grad school application, and have bosses who can give you references for said application. I told my loved ones, "Well, it's work."

I tried telling myself not to want things because it would just set me up for the disappointment of having to turn them down. The problem is, I hadn't recognized that telling yourself not to want things doesn't actually stop you from wanting them. You think you're doing the Christian self-denial thing or the Buddhist shunning-desires thing (take your pick). But, it's impossible to drain yourself of your wants. The wants don't go away — you can either act on them or change them; it's denying that they're there that makes them stronger.

You want to know what it gets you, denying your wants because you think you shouldn't have fun right now? Tonight, my family is flying to Europe without me. I could have gone with them, and all I would have spent would have been for personal stuff, like meals and souvenirs. Who turns down a semi-free trip to Europe because of work? This idiot, that's who: the one who didn't ask for leave because she told herself she wasn't allowed to want it.

This great epiphany came at around 1 AM as I cried my eyes out — for the first time in ages, I might add — because my plans with Cris for a consuelo trip to Pinatubo fell through. After months of telling myself I couldn't have what I wanted, I acknowledged that I wanted this little thing, and disappointment had immediately swooped in.

It wasn't just the disappointment, though, it was the disappointment on top of knowing that my family was about to leave, and I would be left behind because of my own quote-unquote work ethic, which nobody in today's world gets a cookie for, really.

I can't live like this (I told myself); I can't not want things. To want is to live, because you act or you change — and, goddammit, you actually have fun sometimes. I'm not having any fun; I'm just becoming sadder and more isolated the more I try to want less.

I'm done. I don't want to wait anymore.

The other day, I got some news that I'd been waiting for. I told my dad, and he offered to loan me the money I'd need, "if this is yer heart's desire."

(Another reason I still value work ethic: it's helped get my dad to where he is, able to fund family trips to Europe and offer to finance heart's desires.)

It's a cheesy phrase, often used at my old church as a euphemism when people pray for someone to make the singles not-single. But, I've taken hold of it. I cup it in my hands like a secret and relish knowing that, yes, I have it, and I'm allowed to have it, a "heart's desire" — something to live for.

Letter No. 23

Started yesterday; finished today.

--
It turns out that the mid shift can be good for a morning person, or at least for people who like to spend their mornings doing nothing.

Maybe my body clock still needs to adjust to my new working hours, but despite the late nights I've had lately, I still wake up at around six AM and have trouble going back to sleep afterward.

My body has been like this since childhood. It's as if it knows that there is so much to do and so little time; whether I've had a full night's sleep or just an hour's, I have no choice but to begin another day conscious.

Now that I'm on the mid shift, this means that I have a couple extra hours every day to do whatever I want (except maybe go back to sleep, haha) instead of rushing to get ready for work. This morning, I finally got to hand-wash some laundry. I sang out loud. I did my last peer evaluations for my Python class (I can't do this during the waiting hours at work because it involves playing five different games of Asteroids). I had eggs with thyme and tortillas instead of just cereal. I played a couple songs on my ocarina and then a couple rounds of Triple Town. And after I finally did get ready for work, I still had time to experiment with a different commuting route and pick up some groceries so I wouldn't have another dinner of rice crackers.

I'm actually struggling more with meals than with sleep. Along with its own alarm clock, my body has a pretty rigid eating schedule and will punish me with hyperacidity if I don't follow. My classmates used to joke that they could tell time by my stomach.

In my new department, things are pretty quiet until the daily story conference at three PM. After that, you can expect to be hard at work until nine if you're lucky (one page, good stories) and 12 if you're not (two pages, not-as-good stories, and give or take an hour if you're Night Editor). There's no time to break for dinner because any breaks longer than the time it takes to refill your tumbler or empty your bladder mean that your pages are that much later.

I've only been here a week, though, so I'm hoping that I'll get faster; I'll know things better and have to double-check things less often, and my layouts will get less embarrassing and need less polishing by the artists.

But even if the long nights are here to stay, it's nice to know that I'll have the mornings to recover my spirit, if not my sleep.

--
Learning to play a four-hole pendant ocarina last year made me see how much I took music lessons for granted. I'd forgotten how much fun it could be to play an instrument, so I asked Cris to get me a 12-hole ocarina when he went back to China last month. It's a good-sized alto C ceramic "sweet potato", though the orange color makes it look more like a carrot. :)

I sometimes wonder how things would have been different if I hadn't stopped piano lessons, so I feel like I'm catching up a little by learning songs and looking for sheet music that doesn't have anything higher than high F or low A.

I hope the neighbors aren't tired of "Danny Boy" yet.

--
As the Python course entered its last week, instead of diving into Python on my own, I signed up for another course that involves a little design, a little music, and a little programming. It sounds perfect for me, but I'm forced to confront something I kept at the back of my mind when Python class was still in session.

I don't know what to build. Or rather, I don't know if I can come up with anything original to build.

This wasn't such a problem in Python class because each project had specific objectives: build Pong, build a Blackjack game, build Asteroids, etc. But as the course went on, I was a little alarmed that I wasn't coming up with any ideas for original games to attempt building when I was done with the class. Not even for simple toys like this elegant pendulum program by Emily Wachtel (press the play button, then mess around with the other stuff in the window that pops up). Maybe that's why I signed up for the digital media course so quickly; maybe a new class would distract me from the fact that my personal drawing board was empty.

The trouble is, this new class requires that we submit a creative project in two weeks, and I can't think of anything. We have the option to extend some of the demo programs in the class, but I find even that I challenge — not a technical challenge, but a personal one. I think I've had enough of building on templates from the Python class; I need to prove to myself that I can build something from scratch. But, what?

If I'm honest with myself, this is something I've been struggling with for a few years now. I haven't had a good fiction idea in ages. The unfinished stuff — either I've abandoned it because I've lost my connection to the story, or I'm stuck in a part of the plot and can't find my way forward.

What this has to do with programming is that I want my projects to have stories. They don't have to be as elaborate as choose-your-own-adventure games; they can be as simple as a Ferry Halim game like Pocketful of Stars or The Crossing (though I know I can't expect my graphics to be as lovely).

I could be overthinking this, of course. I probably just need to step back and scribble.

Letter No. 22

Next week, I'll be leaving Special Features for a spot in the Editorial department, so tonight, I'm treating the writers to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants nearby. It's not so much a goodbye as, "I'll just be down the hall."

I've kept this under my hat for a while, partly because I was waiting for the official announcement at work, and partly because I still haven't really worked out how I feel about the transfer. It was my decision. Everyone says it's a good career decision. People are giving me their congratulations. Still, it's going to be something new, and a new thing for someone who has been doing the same kind of work for four years is scary. No wonder people with 10- or 20-year careers at one job go nuts.

Also, thinking about leaving Special Features feels like a door closing, maybe even another childhood ending. Mikko asked me about it over lunch one Sunday, and I somehow came up with, "I like who I've become since college, and I did a lot of that becoming in Special Features."

Sometime between last year and the year I joined BusinessWorld, I stopped seeing my life as a sad city story. I started to believe I could be good at being alive. Going to work every day stopped being a drag. I was learning and making new things. I had made my peace with the city. I was coming to terms with who I was to my family, and who they were to me. And, I had found a love better than anything I'd imagined for myself.

Somewhere along the way, the meaning of growing up changed. It isn't no longer getting to be the child you were. It's keeping that child happy while teaching her to not be childish when life gets scary and unfair. It's seeing yourself at 5, 10, 16 years old and being able to say, I am still that person, but I am more that person today than ever. It's being able to recognize yourself more clearly with every year.

My high school science teacher told us in freshman year that people are like pots. Life molds and fires them, and they're set by the time you reach 20-something.

I've come to think of people as a certain kind of place. In certain places, trees will grow, be cut down, or die; buildings will come up and fall down; people will move in, move out, be born, live, and die; and grass will grow, be paved over, and grow again, but the places are unmistakably still those places. It's sort of the same starfish recovery I had in mind when I started this blog, but less about moving on through suffering, with a little more lingering on the suffering than necessary, and more about just being yourself.

The day I realized this "certain place" thing about Kalsangi was the day I stopped worrying that it would somehow stop being my home. The day I realized that my family was the same way was the day I stopped worrying about change. It wasn't long before the day I realized that about myself. The more my life changes, the more clearly I see my own shape. And the day I can no longer see Kalsangi, my family, myself, or Cris under whatever surfaces we've assumed will surely be the saddest day ever.

However hard it got, working in Special Features was part of a process. It was especially hard in the beginning, but it helped me to grow up, which is to say that it helped me see that growing up did not mean what I thought it meant. I saw that I could find an anchor point in myself as long as I could see where I fit in the world, if I wanted to. And at a particularly low point in my life, when everything else suddenly went to shit, working here kept me from dissolving into someone I wouldn't be able to recognize.

To those of you who've worked with me, thanks for being part of that — and for putting up with me when I got absent-minded or weird.

I guess it's all this that's going to see me through whatever's waiting for me down the hall.

Letter No. 20

I have a striped green, black, and white dress with pockets that I like to wear only occasionally, when it's a particularly special day, when I want a little confidence boost, or when I have a meeting with a client on whom I want to make certain impressions: "I'm professional enough to dress well, but young enough to avoid anything resembling your suit."

I don't have a lot of clothes, so maybe that makes it easy for me to remember which shirt or dress I wore on a particularly memorable day. For instance, I can remember that the shirt I wore yesterday is also the shirt I was wearing when Cris first asked me out. It's also the shirt I was wearing two years ago, when my former boss told me that she was leaving, and I was going to take over (like I said, I don't have a lot of clothes).

I wore my striped dress the other day, on one of the longest working days I've had in a while. Something bad happened at work, it was nobody's fault*, but because I was the one who had to make the required emergency request, I felt burnt down. While heading out to meet Cris and smother my fatigue with Chickenjoy, I remembered that it was also the dress I wore on the day I described in this blog entry, which sounds like whining about Makati rush hour but really came from the middle of being burned down by everything at once.

I wondered idly if my dress could be cursed. But, I quickly remembered that I also wore this dress on my birthday last year, on one of the most magical days I've ever had.

Last year, after the last big fire, I also reacted differently. I wanted to leave my job and possibly even leave the country. This year, I just wanted to get some fried chicken and gravy and then go home.

Maybe it's because I was actually near home, and sitting in my office instead of slogging through torrential rain like last year. But for better or for worse, I've learned to care less.

There is only so much you can do when you're trying to do your job, and only so much you can control when, while you're a boss of some sort, you're not the boss of the unpredictable, unreliable factors and non-coworkers on which your team's final output depends. I've learned to set my jaw and just make sure no one can say we're not doing our job, even as everything around us is, well, on fire. And sure, I've made a few mistakes here and there, but nothing so disastrous as to merit punishment other than the mental beating I give myself. Nobody's perfect, and when you're juggling all kinds of demands, you're bound to drop something.

Maybe it sounds careless, but it's a result of having learned to care less. At some point, getting worked up about what's gone wrong is just beating a dead horse. There's a handy little diagram that I saw floating around the Internet a long time ago, and I printed it out and stuck it on our office door, right under a souvenir from a former colleague:

Over time, I've taken this to heart. You do what you can do about a problem, and then you don't worry about it anymore. It's kept me from losing my shit completely, especially on days like yesterday, which was even worse than the day before.

The people we couldn't blame* kept us at the office, fighting fires, till around 10 at night. I hung around waiting for Cris outside. For the first time, I was the last person on the newspaper staff to leave the building. Even the senior editors had gone home hours before our team did. The guard turned the lights out after I went outside. The wind blew cold and hard, and I played games on my phone. Then, Cris arrived, we got KFC drive-thru, and he drove me home.

It's no use letting some bad juju ruin a favorite shirt, or a perfectly good dress.

--
* It really was somebody's fault, but they got to wear the immunity necklace and could not be voted off the island.

Leavings: Liebster Award

Lance tagged me in a meme called the Liebster Award, only neither Lance nor I really know who's giving the award and why, so let's just go with it. Anyway, it's been a while since I've filled out a meme.

THE RULES

Share 11 facts about yourself.

Answer the awarder’s 11 questions.

Ask 11 questions of your own.

Tag 11 people.

THE FACTS

1

I like to sing. I sing a lot when I'm home alone. I am shy about performing on a stage, but if we happen to be at home watching American Idol, Glee, or a musical movie, or if a song I like comes on the radio, or if someone has a guitar and starts to play, I will sing along if I know the words and you are someone who will not judge me for it.

2

As my friends Nina and Vikki can attest, I'm not a hugger. The only people I make it a point to hug are my parents, my lola, Cris, and, occasionally, my brothers and cousins. The circle of people whose hugs I reciprocate is only a little bigger.

It's not you; it's me.

3

I attend church with my brother and consider myself a Christian, but I also consider myself agnostic. For all my belief, I still disagree and question, and for all my disagreeing and questioning, I still, somehow, believe. I just don't like to talk about it much, don't blog about it, avoid talking to conservatives about it, and have never talked about it with my parents, because I don't want anyone worrying about me going to hell.

Mostly, I hope no one back home reads this and blames my parents. They raised me well, but my faith is my own. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong, and if there's a God, then I'll work it out with him.

4

I like watching bad TV, but it has to be "good" bad TV. The Kardashians, Gossip Girl, and America's Next Top Model are "good," for instance, but I can't sit through The Millionaire Matchmaker, True Beauty, or TMZ without wanting to throw something at the screen.

5

I love green things and grew up in a really green place; my mom is an excellent gardener. I don't think she passed her green thumb on to me, though. Every plant I've been given to personally care for has died.

6

I love to bake, but an oven won't fit in my apartment, so I just use Cris's when I can. I love baking cookies in particular, but I'd like to learn to make bread.

7

I prefer old hymns to contemporary worship music. Singing hymns somehow makes me feel closer to the community, while contemporary worship music seems very much a very individual thing. As it is, church is one of the few community things I do, and my involvement is minimal at best, so it's nice to have something that makes me feel a little more connected to other people at church.

8

I learned to play the ocarina late last year. I bought a four-hole pendant ocarina in Beijing just for fun, but if I'd known just how much I'd enjoy it, I would have splurged a little on a 12-hole sweet potato ocarina so I could play songs with more than one octave. I might ask someone to get it for me if they go to China or Taiwan this year.

9

I write, eat, and use my craft knife with my left hand but use scissors and kitchen knives with my right.

10

I like nice things, but I hate shopping. I also hate being badgered by sales clerks; I prefer clerks who let you browse in peace and help you only if you ask. I actually leave stores with badgering clerks even if I like the things inside. My idea of going shopping is wandering around, looking at things, and telling myself (and the clerks!) that I'll come back some other time. This is partly why very little of my wardrobe has changed in four years.

If something needs replacing, I spend a long time agonizing over whether to replace it with something durable but expensive or to just get something cheap to tide me over till I feel more ready for a costlier purchase. When I run out of time, because I spent so much of it being indecisive, I often end up buying something that is neither as cheap nor as durable as I'd like, and my dislike for shopping only deepens.

11

I wish I could have a dog, but no one would take care of it while I was at work. Besides, look what happened to my plants.

THE QUESTIONS

1: Do you dream in color?

Yes. I read somewhere that this depends on what kind of television you grew up with. I'd be more surprised if someone told me that they dream in black-and-white.

2: What did you do with your first salary?

Spent it on food, transpo, and books. I know you're supposed to send it home to your parents, but I felt uncomfortable with the idea. It's not that I wanted to keep the money for myself, it's that sending the money home would have meant asking Dad for money for two more weeks.

3. What are the books that you've read more than once?

There are a lot; these are just a few favorites.

American Gods
Good Omens
The Graveyard Book
Brief Lives
— all by Neil Gaiman; Good Omens was co-written with Terry Pratchett. Gaiman was a favorite author for a while, and I still like these books.

A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle, and the rest of the series

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, and the rest of the series (but not the Eoin Colfer continuation)

The Arrival, by Shaun Tan

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen; a recent reread, because I've been following the Lizzie Bennet Diaries on Youtube

The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury

4: Your dream job?

The protagonist of Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson, makes a living off a strange physical sensitivity to branding. In one scene, an agency flies her to London to show her a logo on a piece of paper. She takes one look at it, says, "No," and then spends the rest of the day enjoying the city (and spending her money).

Unfortunately, I do not feel physical revulsion upon seeing pictures of Bibendum, so something else will have to do.

I'm actually pretty happy with my current job, but if National Geographic or LEGO came calling, I'd be out in a second.

5: What's the greatest moral issue of our time?

I think human rights will be a big deal for as long as humans somewhere are denied them. It sounds generic, but really, when you talk about causes like women's rights, gay rights, children's rights, or ethnic minority rights, you are talking about human beings not being treated the way human beings deserve.

6: Describe how you look to a blind man.

I am an inch or two over five feet; I don't really measure because most other people are taller than me, anyway. My face is heart-shaped, with bony cheeks and chin, and I don't weigh much, but my body is starting to go soft from lack of physical activity. My hair is short. The skin on my face is uneven because of some mystery problem that comes and goes. The skin on my legs is a bit rough because of some parts that I scratch, stubbornly. I still think I'm pretty, but you know, that's just me.

7: Name three words you have a hard time spelling.

misspell

accommodate

embarrass

8: What are the places you like to visit someday?

Incomplete and in no particular order:

New York

Italy

Mexico

Singapore (again)

Beijing (again)

Japan

Taiwan

Palawan

Davao (it's been a while)

Sagada (again)

Mt. Pinatubo

Vigan (the last time didn't count)

Zanzibar

Cuba

Hong Kong

London

California (again)

and Kalsangi with kids, before my parents retire and move out.

8: Your greatest frustration?

That I didn't have a sport or sustained extracurricular activity as a child.

When we were in the US, I never asked my parents if I could go to gymnastics, be a cheerleader, or join something like Brownies or Girl Scouts, because they seemed like things only American girls could do. I didn't explicitly think that then, but it was something I felt deep down. Finally, when I was in the fourth grade, I joined the track team on an impulse and was kind of good, but then we moved back here.

I had piano lessons both in the US and here in the Philippines, but they stopped because we couldn't find a teacher who could teach me and Mikko after school on weekdays, and I didn't want to give up Saturdays doing other things.

9: How do you cope with loss?

The last time, I listened to some sad music (Adele, anyone?), then some great music (Ceremonials, by Florence + the Machine). I cried and wrote in my diary a lot, and wrote blog entries, semi-cryptic and not. I prayed. I worked on some crafts. I just kept working. I realized I could now enjoy people, activities, and ideas that, before, I'd felt compelled to make second priority. I looked for friends both old and new. I hung out with my brother and saw my family a little more. I learned Mandarin.

I'm thankful I haven't had to deal with the death of a loved one yet.

10: What's the next language you want to learn, and why?

Probably a southern Chinese language, like Hokkien or Cantonese, or Spanish. I think I should learn Spanish because it seems important to being Filipino (though I won't think you less Filipino if you only know one language), and I chose the Chinese languages like I chose Mandarin; they might be useful to me one day. But at this point, studying any language is more out of nerdiness than any actual career plans.

MY QUESTIONS

1

What is your favorite cheese?

2

Do you have a favorite building?

3

Any plans for Valentine's Day, or is it not your thing?

4

Tell me about an interesting scar or blemish.

5

If you were to go out without any identification and suddenly die, how would it happen, and where should we start looking for your body?

6

Regardless of whether you actually regret your major, if you could go back in time, what would you study instead, and why?

7

Complete this sentence: "When I was 10 years old, I thought I'd be __________ by the time I reached my current age (__)."

8

Describe your ideal dwelling.

9

How do you keep your current place tidy?

10

What's the most important decision you've made in the last five years?

11

If you had the country's or even the world's attention for one minute, what would you say?

THE PEOPLE

Audrey T.

Eush T.

Petra M.

Nash T.

Zoe D.

Dom C.

Carina S.

Nina D.

Joey R.

and anyone who comments and is not on this list (and not Lance).

If I've tagged you, it's either because you're more likely to actually blog or because I'm just curious. Kindly leave me a link to your post if you accept this award.


BONUS