Take it easy ‘kiddo! Why are you in such a rush anyway?

Most people are rushing their way through life. They fail to take the time necessary to nurture their relationships, feed their mind, relax their body or get in touch with their soul's desire for freedom and peace.

Life moves relentlessly forward one day at a time, and there is nothing any of us can do to stop it or slow it down.

We are all getting older every day, but we don't have to grow older every day. Taking time to day-dream, visit a friend, or just have coffee with your significant other is time well-spent.

There is a rush to tomorrow by all of us. We are being prodded into the future by faster computers, shorter delivery times, and a general need to have it, do it, and see it all: NOW!

Take time today for yourself.

Take time to breathe in life, all of it: its color, splendor, smells, tastes, and sounds. From the smallest most insignificant event to the things you have taken for granted.

Tomorrow will be here before you know it.

Today will be a distant memory before you realize it. We create our futures and memories in the present. Go through life today, conscious of your surroundings.

Today is a gift of life.

Live it with gratitude and don't let the sun set today without seeing it, embracing it, and enjoying it.

Why are you in such a rush anyway?

You can't have it all, do it all, learn it all, see it all, become it all, teach it all, in one lifetime so why frustrate yourself and those who are in your immediate life circle with this relentless drive for whatever.

I am not suggesting "vegetable status" here. I am only asking you to evaluate your life philosophy and this need for something - that is missing in your life - and trying to make up for it by an over zealous push for something, anything.

One way to determine where you fit on this do nothing to trying to do everything continuum is to honestly get in touch with your ability to do NOTHING. Just sit or walk and reflect.

No agenda, no deadline, just a laid back approach to life once in a while.

For everything we have missed, we have gained something else.

Last week, while having dinner at Recipes Greenbelt with a friend, it occurred to me that it had been months since I last posted something here in multiply. I can’t even remember the last time I posted a blog, or a video... which for me is a big thing considering that in the past, I post several entries in just one day.

On that note, I will not deny the fact that I had been receiving emails and messages from my friends and followers of my blog, asking me to update my site. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t had the time or should I say can’t find the time to accommodate their request. I surely felt that there were “more important” things in life that I had to take care of than post my works online.
And so I thought wrong.

After dinner, while buying coffee at Seattle’s Best, I saw an old friend from PeoleSupport. It was such a relief to see a familiar face. Allan hasn’t changed. He is still the same bubbly, cheerful guy with a big i-am-such-a-positive-person-i-want-to-share-the-positivity-with-you sign posted on his forehead. During our conversation, he asked me, “Why are you not posting anymore? Your audience misses you. Don’t you miss writing?"

I was caught off-guard. I had been asking myself the same thing for the past several months but I never expected someone to ask me the same question. That’s the beauty of just realizing things on your own; you don’t really have to answer it right away. You can just hold on to the thought and pray that someday, you will have the answer. But being asked by someone is different. You have to give a response weather that’s the truth or not as quickly as you can.

I went back to him and say, “I will next week. I just don’t have the time.”

The truth is I always had the time. I guess I just didn’t realize that there were actually people, real people at that, waiting for my work to be posted online. I forgot that sharing my composition pieces is just as important as making them and storing them in my laptop won’t do any good to humanity.

You see, I never missed writing because I never stopped composing things. If there’s anything in the world that I most passionate about, it will be that I am able to put to words the things inside my head. Writing has saved my life several times before and I owe a lot of what I have become from it. So I can never stop doing the only thing that makes sense to me.

So here I am, posting my first entry... first of the many. =)

Hitting rock-bottom

When you find yourself haunting bookstores and checking out movies alone, then you’d really think you’ve hit rock-bottom. I found myself doing just that this lonely Sunday. I was aimlessly meandering around the mall, pondering the meaning of life, finding myself a slave to my feet.

It just happens, you know.

Life.

It does. It’s what happens when you’re not looking, when you’re not paying that much attention to what’s in front of you.

I don’t want to go into the details anymore. I never thought I’d find myself in the same spot I was in one year ago. In a month’s time I’ll back to my bitter-lonely-why-can't-someone-kill-me self again.

Chalk it up to stupidity. Chalk it up to time. Theirs. Mine. Whatever. Give it to the people who spread the disease of gossip that ended up eating away at my name. It’s over.

I know what I should do. Don’t get me wrong. I need to move on. I need to raise my head up and learn from what happened. I’m doing that.

They say I’m a very self-sufficient guy. I could heal myself. I could push myself to wherever I want to. However, I’m still in what you might call the depression phase.

I just won’t show it.

People say I should wake up. I should let him go. I can’t. I love him. One of my friends asked me why. Everybody’s wondering why I keep holding on. I love him. Didn’t I already say that?

I think it was Blaise Pascal who said “Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait pointe.” The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. I don’t know why I love him. I just feel it. Isn’t that reason enough? This world has become too logical. We’ve lost ourselves in statistics, in our belief of numbers.

Anyway, I’ll live my life. Right now, I’ll let myself absorb the moment. I’ll revel in the feeling… and I will get stronger. Winners are not winners if they don’t know defeat.

As the cliché goes… when you’re at rock-bottom, there’s nowhere else for you to go…

but up.

Defining Friendship's Moments

I used to be afraid of so many things... that I'd never grow up, that I'd be trapped in the same place for all eternity, that my dreams would forever be shy of my reach.

It's true what they say. Time plays tricks on you. One day you're dreaming, the next your dream has become your reality.

And now that this scared little boy no longer follows me wherever I go, I miss him.
I do.

'Cause there are things I wanna tell him --- to relax, to lighten up, that it is all going to be ok. I want him to know that meeting people who like you, who understand you, who actually accept you for who you are, will become an increasingly rare occurrence.

Lisa, Liila, Anna, Despi, Pinky, Pam, IA, Marica, Sherryl Lou, Ardie, Debbie, El, Sean, Vincent, Uly, my loving brother Mark and my countless faceless blog readers... These people who contributed to who I am, they are with me wherever I go, and as history gets rewritten in small ways with each passing day, my love for them only grows. Because the truth is... it was the best of times.

Mistakes were made, hearts were broken, harsh lessons learned, but all of that has receded into fond memory now.

How does it happen?

Why are we so quick to forget the bad and romanticize the good?

Maybe it's because we need to believe that the time we spent together actually meant something, that we were there for each other in a time in our lives that defined us all, a time in our lives that we will never forget.

I can't swear this is exactly how it happened.

But this is how it felt.

Time and Tide

There is something wrong with me.

Seriously, I used to be able to get all sorts of stuff done each day and still have time, most days, to relax afterwards. In fact there were some days when I could just lay around, read, watch TV, or whatever, sometimes to the extent that I'd actually get bored and wonder just exactly what I could do with my time. Those days are gone, though, and something must be wrong with me because I sure don't understand what could have changed about the world to make this so.

Sure, when I look at it closely there are some things that are different. The biggest is the Internet. I spend a lot of time surfing and reading on the net, usually in the night once my shift starts and ends not until the morning of the next day. (Hey I work graveyard, =) that would explain it. LOL.) That probably accounts for at least 3 hours a day and more like nine hours a day. Still, it seems I should have more time.

Maybe television should be blamed, but realistically I probably watched as much TV as a kid as now - at least as far as shows I watch with dedication every week. I don't count just having the TV on to watch something in the background. I easily admit that the TV is on much more often now than as a kid, largely due to the varied offerings of cable, but I don't see this as sucking away my time. I can take TV or leave it.

I also see myself losing time because of some of my obsessive-compulsive activities. Really, though, these things are more disconcerting than they are really consumers of time - they bother me more that I have them and can't avoid them than they bother me because they consume a whole lot of time.

Yes, they take up time from my day, but not a lot, and certainly they rarely keep me from doing something else. I expect I lose maybe an hour a day from this sort of behavior, maybe more on some days, but that's still not a huge dent in my available time.

The biggest difference between now and those "olden days" when I used to feel like I had more time, is that I'm older. Huhuhuh. I am 23 already. Yes, being in my early twenties has made me, physically, slow down a bit. ( Excuses!! =) LOL).

Some of that's due to the effects of age and some is due to being out of shape and some is due to the fact that I do not have an inspiration to do anything, but the effect is the same - I don't have the energy to move and do the things I love to do. But not having energy doesn't seem to equate with not having time. It's not like I sleep more because I have less energy. I may even sleep less now than when I was a kid, actually. Getting older seems like the biggest issue, but I can't see how it really makes any difference.

And really, I can't find any reason at all that I don't feel like I have any time to relax - or even enough time to do what needs to be done. I wonder if it will always be this way? Will I retire, sometime around being 80 or something, and find once again that I have all sorts of time on my hands, or will I still be struggling to keep up with all that has to be done.

I certainly hope that by then, or more hopefully well before then, that I can find extra time in the day to wind down and enjoy myself. I need to make up for a lot of such lost time, and I'm looking forward to having it again.