But before that, I want to tell you that I was out last Saturday and this stone(d/r) guy shoved his jacket in my face in an attempt to pseudo-suffocate me jokingly-- I was taken aback, but it's those little efforts from high people that get me high. That, or I was just a little intoxicated myself. (Deleted scene)
P.S. YES LEA, YOUR COUSIN TRIED TO PSEUDO-KILL ME.

+Semantics.

"Today, I quit my first job."

I've been trying my hardest but I couldn't find more concise phrasing than this - that I quit my first job. My main problem with it, I suppose, lies not in the factual component of the sentence, but with the connotation of the word "job". Too run-of-the-mill. Too impersonal. Too... sterile. Because while I couldn't articulate what my now-former "job" was for me, I am certain that it wasn't all these things.

+The Long of it.

For a year and two months, I've constantly ventured into the unknown - surprise workloads, daunting meetings with people who made me feel small (both in good and not-so-good ways), unexpected turns in my everyday life's - and the show's - story. Point: Regular, it wasn't.

For two seasons and four episodes, I've gone on to make friends with a roster of people who can easily be the nicest - or the only genuinely nice ones - in the TV industry. Here are my favorites, and your favorites too, if not for the fact that you don't know them because you were never in my shoes:

• Witty, amicable, glorious Angel
• Professional, intelligent Gabe
• Fun-loving, outspoken Mitch aka PCD
• Uncompromising, OC John
• The Best DOP Award goes to Mccoy, Mr. More Shadow, More Drama
• Kuya Manny, na "tao lang"
• My editor of choice & movie buddy, Herbs
• My work BFF, Ate Rita
• My partner, in crime and in grime, MC.

Point: Impersonal, it wasn't.

I don't love the feeling of not knowing what's going to happen next. Truth be told, I'm a bit of a control freak; in fact my friend Edzon advises me against furthering my prod career. I like being on top of things, especially things that are assigned to me (no matter how indirectly). I like working at my own pace, in my own time. I don't like disappointments that I haven't prepared for, palpaks that could have been avoided. Suffice it to say, I am not the best team player there is. In retrospect thought, I could have done worse. At least, I hope. (Right, guys?)

At times, I was too hard on myself, and consequently, on everyone else. MC on this: Tin, iba-iba ang mga tao. Hindi lahat pare-parehas ang response sa mga bagay-bagay. Somehow, I learned to adjust. But I digress; let me stop before this turns into a coming-of-age aka pseudo-success story.

I only ever had a full-on argument with one person, but that doesn't mean it was smooth-sailing with everyone else. As with any job that remotely involves creativity and the cooperation of more than one person, there were petty misunderstandings, one too many annoyed looks thrown at each other's direction, and other less-than-pretty inevitables which made staying nice difficult. Oh, things got ugly. At least from where I was standing/sitting/writing (hehe), they did. I myself got ticked off by this-or-that-or-perhaps-you at an almost-daily basis. But still, while others figured too much in my regular drivels, it was never enough to foster complete disrespect. Point: sterile, it wasn't.

Point I shouldn't have to make: Almost everyone asked - or already knew - why I quit, but no one ever asked me how I felt about it. Not even after adopting the I'm-going-to-miss-you stance. If anyone dared ask me if I was going to miss them, this that, I would have volunteered more information than required. Alam mo naman ako, feeling overachiever minsan. ;)

+Anti-Reckoning.

The details of why I quit are too convoluted to try to lay down here. Or perhaps they're too simple, but also too personal. Either way, the things that I've had to set aside when I put my work-blinders on, I'm getting back. Granted, as with any instance of leaving, I will miss a lot of things, but there are also things that I've missed so much, too much that I can't go on ignoring them any longer.

I miss self-assigning readings on a weekly basis. I miss being able to plan my week. I miss knowing what roughly what time I'll be home. I miss YOU, friend who cares enough about me to still be reading this. I miss not feeling guilty about sleeping. I miss being the Tin who sometimes comes to you with a devil-may-care attitude. I miss seemingly-endless walks wherein I walk for the sake of walking. I miss chatting with people. I miss being among the first few to hear about and try out the recent new media trends. I miss blogging (almost-solved, as of press time). I miss reading. I miss lazy weekends. I could go on and on and on and on, but you get the picture.

So, please, help me recover the lifegems I cast aside.

+Plans.

So what's the plan? Right about now, I should be getting back to organizing my freshly-washed clothes in neat piles. You'll all be hearing from me SOON. I just have to remember that in my life, there are no bye-forevers; just see-you-laters.

An emoticon for all of you: =)

(Whispered caveat: Space-Time. It's always Space-Time.)

I don’t know what’s up with everyone I know these days but it seems like hell cast its wrath upon my circles of friends—me included. This deserves explanation.

Lately, my friends have been wigging out. Depressing stories of out-of-placeness, first job woes and post-college encounters with trauma make up our everyday. And I repeat, I don’t know why. I have had to listen to countless stories about nothing in particular, or no stories about monumental somethings. Great. But as always, I do my best to listen and sympathize, only to get ragged on for not being unkind.

I think everyone's bound to come in contact with these two types of friends in this life: one, those who treat you with utter distrust, and two, those you don’t trust. I don’t know which one’s worse to have around, and which one I’d rather be. Staying true to my anti-essentialist tendencies, I’d say we all weave between these two extremes. The middle’s the safest, as always.

Something tells me this doesn’t count as teenage angst anymore. No deep rationalizations for dressing a particular way, no long-drawn explanations for preferred music genres, no reason to defend emoxcore or justemo, no idealist dreams of making poverty obsolete, no more Catcher in the Rye in our bookshelves (at least not in the must-reread section). And so we turn to quarter-life crisis.

A few days ago, Fredo sent me this essay that an Atenean wrote about quarter-life crisis. I won’t link to it, or post it here since I imagine most everyone (who’s in their twenties) has read it or heard of it by now. Some of my friends embraced the points of the article wholeheartedly, attributing their (insert emotion here) to “quarter-life crisis”. And then there are those who shunned all identification with the persona/s in the essay. Mixed reviews, interesting. I, for one, am torn between the two poles. While I think leaving college contributes to my general annoyance with life as of late, I don’t want to bring it all down to age. Just because we’re twenty-somethings now does not mean we have to feel a certain way.

I should mention, I was the last person in my group(s) of friends to cross the great two-oh divide. Only it wasn’t that great, and the crossing itself was kind of anti-climactic, at best.
 

Instead of quarter-life crisis, maybe this craziness has something to do with the rumor that’s been going around that August-September is breakup season. And that breakup season seems to coincide with horrible-fling month/s. Add that to the following:

1)      Christmas 2008 is almost upon us (which means we’ll have to hear how less people can afford a queso de bola this year)

2)      We think everyone seems to be fairing better than us

3)      That we’re in the closing stages of our first jobs or contemplating quitting (which both means we’ll be unemployed yet again)

4)      We can’t express anger at people who “leave” [us behind] for work, for money, for no particular reason

5)      We have, in the span of three months, all had our hearts broken

6)      We feel that everyone around us going is fucking crazy

… then bam. Meet my friends and me.

These days, we’re either running out time and reasons to read, or of new material to peruse. If you’re my friend and you’re reading something these days, it means you’re unemployed and revisiting a paperback novel you bought back in high school, or work is boring you so you brought home another stack of books from National Bookstore. So if we can’t read for the sake of reading, what’s next? We force ourselves to convene and drink on Fridays just because it’s not a work night?

Unlike before, now we can’t accuse our books of making us feel. So we blame and hate on each other, is that how it goes now? One good thing’s come out of this: clearly, we’re over the whole separation anxiety phase.

Before people start telling me I’m so self-absorbed that I take everything as a personal attack, try wading in a pool full of people grumbling about things you don’t understand, or things you would understand, if only we all went beyond generalities. Then you tell me my exasperation is unwarranted.

Nevertheless, I don't expect myself to tire of listening to complaints anytime soon. For one, I am used to it, ha ha ha. Another, isn't that why we keep friends around? It might suck that the people who are most implicated in my tribulations are not genuinely interested in walking me to the exit of the emotional hellhole I'm in, but what the heck. You're all free to barge into my room at 2 in the morning so you can whine about life's injustices AND THEN never return my calls or respond to my texts ever again until we accidentally run into each other.

=) I wish I could say everything not in line with academic pursuits is meaningless.