moving out of blogspot (after 5 years...)

i'm totally moving in to my new blogsite. blogspot has become too much of a bore, anyway.

this is the new me: www.oddgirl_musings.livejournal.com

I was on my way home when I suddenly felt the need to define and rationalize this “something” that’s been surfacing in my life these past few weeks. Not that I want to paint colors out of it or give meaning out of the meaningless – its way less mushy and more awkward than that. I just need to make sure that what I have at this point is something that happens to everyone before I even acquire anxiety attack. Then, by mischief of a clueless moment, it suddenly hit me that there’s this physics term I learned in back in college that is closely associated with what I want to call this-something-that-can’t-be-helped.

In the physical world, it’s called Entropy.

For starters, Wikipedia says that Entropy has often been loosely associated with the amount of order, disorder, and/or chaos in a thermodynamic system. The traditional qualitative description of entropy is that it refers to changes in the status quo of the system and is a measure of "molecular disorder" and the amount of wasted energy in a dynamical energy transformation from one state or form to another. Blah, blah, blah.

I want to dig into the part and parcel of the abovementioned description so as not to get too scientific and much more readable and comprehensible:

= Order, disorder, chaos in a system, change in the status quo, wasted energy.

It’s something that can’t be helped. I want to think that entropy exists not just as a law in physics, but as a universal law that is bound to challenge every human being’s way of life. It’s the world telling you that disorder is a natural way of things. That sometimes, no matter how much you want to live normal, to act like nothing’s changed, entropy kicks in, and you’re just bound to fall hard on the floor, face-down, unprepared.

It’s a chaos in a system. AND I CAN’T AGREE MORE. It naturally is a turmoil for me to even allow things to be this way. I want to blame familiarity and idleness as the aggravating sources of entropy in me at this moment. Familiarity, because I’ve become too accustomed with what is at hand, to the people within the vicinity, to the ones whom I could easily gain access to social life with that I have already closed my doors to the others. Idleness, because it’s the lack of something that paved the way to the unbecoming development of this something-that-can’t-be-helped.

Its entropy. Hard core entropy that’s been ruining my life lately. It is to be blamed for feeling what I’m not supposed to feel, what I don’t have the right to feel. I am considering the resolve to get away from the current things, atleast to save myself from the drawbacks of what is called a wasted energy. But its hard to resist something that makes you happy at the moment. It’s hard not to be pleased by this and that and everything else that is being done for you no matter how undeserving you think you are of such things.

BUT IT’S WRONG! It is so wrong the whole idea is already near the vicinity of being “taboo”. So unlikely, thinking about it is a waste of energy on its own. Plus, I don’t want to lose anything by nursing and clinging on this thing-that-can’t-be-helped. I don’t want entropy to ruin this precious gift that I’ve always had through the years because of an abrupt change in status quo. I just can’t.

So this is me saying that entropy forms part of the natural order of things. It is human nature to be plagued with the chaos of feeling something beyond what is expected. Entropy proves that a change in status quo because of external and internal forces of nature is as natural as the process of breathing, as normal as feeling this abnormal thing inside of you that you can no longer wait to drag out of your system.

Its entropy, everyone. And it’s a natural phase. I want to give ample justification to what I am feeling because I know that it is never intentional. Let me reiterate that it just happened because of familiarity and idleness. Some things that can’t be helped.

And it is a phase. And I am bound to get over such destruction. Sooner, please?

back to school?

I am going back to school this November. It was a spontaneous gesture, I know, and if anyone will ask me why I decided to take up such master’s degree, I wouldn’t even know what to say, exactly. This UP-SOLAIR thing is relatively far-out considering the fact that it has nothing to do with my journalism degree back in college. The art of journal writing and the humanity of industrial relations are entirely different fields, there’s no point of correlation in any way. But who needs correlation when the road map of your life is still as cluttered and as disorganized as the one we have in EDSA. Bad pun, but its true.

But I think I won’t turn my back on this one. Even if uncertainty has already become a day-to-day phenomenon in my life, I still decided to study. Maybe because I want to prevent my intellect from completely deteriorating. The non-functionality of my intellect because of routine tasks for three years has already taken its toll on me. And I think there’s already a dire need for me to crank up the volume of these brain neurons from their three-year slumber. Again, this is major uncertainty but who cares?

I came across an article in Relevant Magazine entitled What To Know When You’re 25(ish). I am not the biggest fan of self-help articles but this one really got me thinking hard about things. I found the article so practical and empathizing I can’t help but marvel on its content. It said… “Don’t get stuck. Move, travel, take a class, take a risk. Walk away, try something new. There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming.”

So there. Take a class, it argued. I’ve always wanted to study because they said that it is an important prerequisite of promotion. Who wouldn’t want that, right? But I started to think that life isn’t about promotion and getting a better pay. There’s something about studying – about cramming for exams, about the anxiety over a graded recitation – that makes me feel alive. I want to feel that familiar adrenalin rush I last felt before college graduation. That’s it, even if the road map of the life-that-I-call mine is still slippery and mixed-up; I want to go back to school.

There’s no guarantee that taking up a master’s degree is a direct route to success but I want to give it a try for once. I’ve been too fed up by my chronic disease of a low self esteem that for once, I want to try something new. Out with the old, so they say. It’s about time that I begin to track my way to who I may become in the future. I can’t dwell too much in uncertainty, I’ve subsisted on it for too long and I want to allow myself to hope and to come to terms with this idea that it is also human nature to trust and dream that one day, living in this 3rd world country isn’t as morbid as it appears on television.

The quest for knowledge may be too much of an understatement. I know that I am not that smart. I know from a fact that my intellectual capacity is so limited that sometimes, all I can offer is a sigh of dimwittedness. Taking the credit of being smart cannot be my thing, at all. But passing the braincell-wrecking exam in UP-SOLAIR is just so inviting I think I will give in to such temptation. Like what the SOLAIR professor stressed during the orientation, “you must be proud to enter UP”.

In between uncertainties of what’s life ahead, entering State U is a natural high. Its a fix for people like me who’s been strangled by doubt and the overrated disease they call, quarter-life crisis. The scholastic environment, when I visited UP was so nostalgic, memory lane suddenly presented itself without warning. The pavement felt like it’s trying to direct me to something larger than life. Such invitation was so irresistible; I suddenly lost all these pathetic defences.

I am about to take my master’s degree this November. I felt lazy with the idea that this is a five-year course, and I initially wanted to step back, thinking that I’d miss my long hours of idleness during days-off. Five years are a while. Things could make and break in my life in a span of five years. But as I look at it, at this point in my life, there’s nothing else to lose. I haven’t achieved anything worth keeping yet so there’s no point of contemplating whether or not I should grab this master’s degree. Since I’ve got nothing yet, I want to do something to at least mobilize this dismal status quo in my life.

Industrial Relations and Journalism are water and oil. Twenty-four years of breathing this life actually and vicariously, however, has gotten me to think that life is just a labyrinth of things with no rhyme and reason. I want to think that having another one of these absurdities won’t hurt that much.

UP-SOLAIR, here I come! :)

funny

stuck in a rut?

its true when they say that life after college swallows you whole - hook, line, and sinker. college is all theoretical, and once you set your feet on the pavement of labor force, you definitely find yourself engulfed by this system of paychecks and paying taxes.

you begin to notice how each day makes you older half the time. the wrinkles and fine lines may not be visible on your face yet, but the things that you have to go through everyday when you start working ages you furiously you won't even have the time to stop and breathe.

your intelligent theories and self-fullfilling ideals already become a thing of the past. because you're suddenly thrusted into the world of dirty competition and paying bills. you will always think of college and of the days gone by but you also become too rational to think that college already bid its goodbye a couple of years ago and will never find the nerve to come back. so by then you just come to terms with the idea that things change, and then you let yourself get devoured by life.

i have been working for three years already. ive already had my fair share of our governement's sustainability by religiously paying taxes. i say religious because tax is automatically deducted from my salary. this is a no-option-to-decline kind of thing to all workers. but its okay, i know that it is every citizen's responsibility to pay their taxes, its like buying our right to live safe and sound in our country. and i have no problem with that.

yes, you get devoured by real life. everything becomes routinary and your muscles begin to voluntarily adapt to such unlikely routine. you get to do the same things. your quizzes, papers, and homeworks will be converted into tasks assigned by your boss - and the result of the task becomes directly proportional to the rate of possible promotion. so you run for your life by ensuring that tasks are done perfectly. but at the end of the day, politics still gets in the way. no pun intended. the kissass people are scattered in places you may never anticipate. and they can hit you in the most unsuspecting instances. you just find yourself being just-that-second-best because they do every possible way to become that-one-on-top no matter how mediocre they truly are. hideous they are. and you always have no clue.

but you still gain friends and they will become the best people you've met simply because they are also devoured by real life. they are your co-victims, so to speak. and predictably, you content yourselves by your occassional drinking sessions. drinking suddenly becomes your natural high. sometimes you also smoke with them because inhaled smoke is another natural high suitable for forgetting how a day sucks the life out of you. your friends at work suddenly become the best friends you never knew existed.

i just resigned from a job that i have adapted with for three years. i want to say it's a leap of faith, because i want to pursue the idea that this is what i've always wanted. and this new job is familiaring the every nerve of me again. routine is welcoming me back and this time, there are so much uncertainties that thinking about these is already becoming a bore. so i resolved to the fact to let things go as they're supposed to and pursue a full-blown wishful thinking after.

there are just so many things that i want to do. so many things i dream of doing, like taking up a masters degree just so i can upgrade an almost non-existent intellect. yes, its true that routinary work weakens your logic and memory because you get too much adapted to pattern. and adapting to pattern is, in every way, the doom of your supposed desire to move forward.

life after college is the REAL LIFE, i want to beg to disagree but the evidences laid on the table are too real to contest. and its up every person on how to deal with it. its either we deal with it or we deal with it. good options, right? because at the end of the day, we all realize that there's no choice at all.

and with that let us all live.

musings inside a moving fx

there are so many things that had happened, im not even sure if i can still be all-specific when i write them down, i thought while inside the fx taxi heading home the other night. i was sitting right next to these high-school kids who i thought were siblings until i saw them hold hands in the darkness. the boy was too short he looks like he was in 2nd grade and the girl is obviously taller, towering over the boy as they held hands and giggled. they were whispering sweet nothings to each other like crazy, like they were the only people inside the fx. whew! the kids today, they never fail to surpise and piss me on how advance and on how high-school they can get. my thoughts were shifting from the tiring day i had at the office to the secret lovers i was currently sitting with inside the fx.

and then it hit me. i need something like that. the secret lover. the secret love. whiner. there's so much non-inspiration at the office i can't even remember the jeer i'm supposed to feel when a highschool crush passes by. or the natural high i'm supposed to inhale when an officemate (whom i've began to secretly like) tells me that something's up with me when he saw me put on my lipgloss. i miss those things. there's so much in my life that's began to drift apart, too much parting ways.

maybe i'm being melodramatic again. maybe there's just too many things that's clouding my mind and they're already getting out of proportion. too much clutter. but didn't everyone know that i love clutter?

blame it to the kids who held hands.

my boss loved the speech i wrote! :)

this is the speech i wrote for my boss for her turnover as Pres. Noynoy's appointee to spearhead the Land Transportation Office...
she said she loved the speech and said that i write good. (goosebumps all over me when she said that)
and she used it on her first day at work during the flag ceremony.
its just so awe-inspiring hearing her deliver this speech that i wrote for her. :)
-----------------------------------------------

LTO ASSISTANT SEC. VIRGINIA TORRES
Department of Transportation and Communication
Land Transportation Office

[greetings to the honoraries and other guests present....]

I would want to thank the people who came here today to witness the beginning of my task as the new new Assistant Secretary. I thank you because I know that you are one with me in this goal to make the Land Transportation Office commit itself to excellent public service. The enormity of my task is already at hand, but everyone's presence here today - from the familiar faces up to the ones I am yet to get acquainted with - gives me enough courage to go on and accept this huge challenge.

It may sound as a cliche, but this moment, this scene that I am having is truly beyond my wildest dreams. It never occurred to me before that this moment will be possible - that one day, I will be able to rise from the ranks and be tasked to spearhead this office's vision of a well-developed transport system. But God gave me this for a special purpose and I have no option to decline. So from this day forward, I am already submitting myself to the duty of serving the people and the country through a well-functioning transportation.

I hope you all agree when I say that the Land Transportation Office plays a vital role in our country's progress. The accessibility of roads, the enforcement of traffic rules, and the 100% compliance of people to these rules are all contributing factors toward a progressive transport system and economy. Truly, the importance of this department cannot be overstated.

And with that being said, allow me this honor to introduce you to the "NEW LTO". In recent years, we have been plagued by accusations of corruption and malfunctions that taint the name of our good office, in more ways than one. Standing in front of our nation's commander-in-chief during this turn-over exercise, I commit to the task of eradicating this unbecoming image. Let us take a halt from the misunderstood image and pave the way towards clean and efficient public service.

As the new Assistant Secretary of Land Transportation Office, I will spearhead this drive to enforce the law of transport fair and square - no-in betweens, no honorary exemptions. The New LTO shall commence the drive towards clean and unadulterated public service.

There are two simple things that I want this NEW LTO to pursue - these are Transparency and Availability.

Transparency, I believe, is the core value of public service. Together with my colleagues who are here today, I am already committing this office to ensure that all transactions are geared towards transparent and clean public service. President Noynoy Aquino exemplified this drive towards change during his inaugural speech. as i quote "Walang lamangan, walang padrino, at walang pagnanakaw. Walang wang-wang, walang counter-flow, walang tong. Panahon na upang tayo ay muling magkawanggawa." This strong statement will also be the be-all and end-all of this office - we will strive to ensure that all actions are based on legality and clean and honest public service.

The next thing that this NEW LTO shall pursue is ACCESSIBILITY. I am giving my 100% commitment of my availability on this office. There will be no such thing as an elitist leadership. With my term as the Assistant Secretary, I will ensure of everyone's accessibility of my service. This department's hierarchy shall just serve as task organization - in the end, it will all boil down to this department's collective effort towards excellent and honest service. I will be one with you - because from the district office clerks up to this department's assistant secretary, we are LTO. We all function as one from the point-of-view of the observing public.

I am committing to the immediacy of the "NEW LTO" image. There should be no honeymooning period in this trying time. And with that, I commit to immediate, time-specific, and realistic action plans.

Indeed, the road towards these goals I mentioned are ready to be taken. It is a great honor for me to take the first step forward to this familiar road. There will be bumps and curves along the way, but with the right attitude, clean conscience, and dedication to the core value of public service, the road will come clean in the end.