137 - At a loss for words

Hi. How are all of you doing?

Just to update you on the new blog that's coming, I haven't done anything yet in the process of creating it. I haven't been that busy, but my mindset isn't and can't be quite focused on that yet. But I think the time off does help with reflection, enables me to take a step back, and see what's going wrong and see what I can do to improve it. So, in the meantime, I'm still considering the exact layout, the style, the feel, the direction, and the content of it, but don't worry, it'll happen eventually.

To be honest with you, I'm at a loss for words right now. Thoughts are coming at me from all directions from the past and the future and the present and I don't really know what to make of them. I wish I could make them cohesive, I wish I could make them a story to tell you. So I'm just going to leave it at that, because the way I'm phased right now is the very reason I don't want to write here. I feel like I've lost my direction, and I feel like I can't gather my thoughts properly anymore.

Maybe you can help improve my currently sombre mood at the moment. Themes that have been cropping up a lot lately are patience and understanding. What if you know that it's impossible for someone to understand you? How are you meant to say 'don't bother' to them politely? What if their misunderstanding causes awkwardness, tension and unhappiness for you? What are supposed to do when someone just doesn't get it?

136 - The beginning of the end

Before an individual presents bad news to others, sometimes they will feel the need to mention that it breaks their heart to even say this, that even the very act of presenting upsetting information evokes in them a sense of helpless shame and sadness before they've even brought others into that same dark place. They may also phrase it in a slightly different way, the clichéd old line of there's-no-easy-way-to-say-this-so-I'm-just-gonna-say-it. Most of the time when people utter these words, they aren't really thinking hard about what their words imply. These two approaches to sharing thorny matters are effectively meaningless and false, because they miraculously provide the user with the exact 'easy way to say it' that he/she so desperately needs, but perhaps sacrificing the level of concern that should be raised - as if those disclaimers make it easier to bear. Saying it is easy any way you do it. It's deciding what you're going to do next that's the hard part.

This is going to sound very egotistical, but I feel that my whole life is a hard one, with many hard parts. I have come to realize that I have an aversion to doing things the easy way. I find myself thirsting for challenge all the time. On multiple levels of consciousness, I create the Hell I so mention in this blog's title, and proclaim it to be some sort of epic battle against the odds. But I don't believe in chances. My faith lies in the individual paving his own path to walk on, and any challenges that arrive in the near future are those reared from his very own actions in the recent past. Not long ago, a friend of mine told me that she notices from this blog that I always try to give everything in my life a logical cause - a reason for their happening or existence. She hit the nail right on the head with that comment. I need to rationalize. And the idea of fate or destiny just never seems very rational to me. I want to attribute everything that happens to me... to me.

And so whenever I'm faced with a problem nowadays, I like to think about what I can do about it. I draw from experiences in the past, I analyze their relevance to the present dilemma, and I make plans for the imminent future. I don't believe that the hands of fate exist and can help me. I have to take matters into my own hands. I know my livelihood isn't that hard, as long as I try not to think too much. While I tend to inflate the severity of my stress, I also tend to exaggerate my own ability to deal with such stress. I often forget who I really am and what I'm capable of. And I forget what matters to me because I'm thinking too hard and there's just too much going through my mind.

Who I am is very simple. As it has always said on every online profile I have, I am an 18-year-old, Filipino-Chinese student living in the UK, and originally from Hong Kong. I'm also a TV fanatic, an avid reader, a food zealot, an aspiring forensic anthropologist, an inborn outdoorsman, a learned bartender, an ambitious globetrekker, an internet addict, and a passionate Pokémon master. There's one thing not on the list, but I'll get to that soon. Despite all of that, though... I'm afraid there's one of those terms that just bears greater weight on who I really am and should be than all the rest.


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And so here I must finally tell you what this 'bad news' is, how this is 'the beginning of the end', and how everything I've talked about so far comes together. Now, it really does bum me out to now tell you that for maybe as long as a year now, I disliked blogging a lot. I didn't want to. And the logical reason as to why I continued to blog in spite of that was to feel like I was trying to conquer some challenge, like I talked about earlier, and avoid the easy way out, which was to simply stop blogging. I mentally overstated my own capabilities and I ended up posting over a hundred posts, on four/five different blogs, that I was not proud of or happy with. It was a big mistake, my own mistake, reared by my actions in the recent past. While I went through this Hell I put myself in, I got lost, and I forgot who I really am.

But who I am is and has always been very simple. I'm just a university student - that is what I have been taught, been molded, and been working to be for my entire life. Along the way, I found 'additions' to my life, but the basic foundation is my student status. I don't consider myself a writer. I may write well, but that doesn't mean I feel... like being a writer. I have always known in my heart that truth, and nothing anybody says to me can change my mind about that. I'm just a guy who wants to talk about my life and meet some interesting people in the blogosphere along the way. I don't want publicity, I don't want money, I don't actually think of this as practicing writing, and I absolutely hate how crowded these sidebars have become.

I just want to be me. Being anything else... is the hard way, the hard part...

So, while I was sitting here considering what I should do before I started writing this post, I looked back at my experiences in the past, and observed that I tend to enjoy my life most when I'm given a fresh start. Having a clean slate invigorates me, gives me motivation that will sharply contrast the indifference I've had for so many months. I'm going to announce the end of this blog and Do you hate it too? sometime in mid-April. Then, sometime between April and July, I will start a brand new blog, with a brand new look, and a brand new focus on just me. No gimmicks, no funny business, just my honest thought and emotion painted on a clean canvas. I'll probably post once or twice before I announce that end in mid-April just to tease about the new blog and inform you of how you can be notified about it ASAP when I launch it.

But for now, I think we'll just leave the news-sharing at that. I'm sorry it took me a while to say something. And I'm sorry that this one and Do you hate it too? have to come to an end. I never envisioned it, but hey, maybe that little thing called 'fate' that I don't believe in will bring me to blog on them again. After reading this, I hope that you realize that for me, there really was no easy way to say this, and that I'm not just saying that without thinking about what those words mean. It truly, genuinely, seriously breaks my heart.  It's sad to have to think about saying goodbye to something that was a part of you for a long time.  But I guess it's just another white hair on the top of my head. Or another immobile, dormant white dwarf in the universe. Or maybe it's the first signs of white light at the end of a tunnel.

123 - The idea process and guest posts

I have a little notebook, with a space for each day, in which I enter my blogging ideas, and what I write down in this journal ends up being what I talk about on my blogs throughout the week. I spend about an hour or two every weekend, and think about what might be good to discuss on Do you hate it too? and "If you're going through Hell, keep going." I do this to prevent cases of writer's block that may come up if I instead wrote my entries on the spot, in the moment, each day. After a year of not planning ahead for my posts, I really understand how hard it can be sometimes to think of something to say, and what a detrimental effect it can have on the quality of my blog.

Also, there may be some instances when I'm simply too busy or too tired during the week to sit and think of my ideas slowly and carefully. So, in the weekend, I spend time jotting down titles, and then some bullet points underneath each one, as a general guideline I can follow when the date arrives. It makes my writing easier, makes me more efficient and organized, and guarantees better content, because I actually spent time thinking my topics through, doing research if necessary. Plus, on the actual day I come to put these ideas on Blogger, it's kind of like my second chance to self-critique my ideas, and I feel like I've got a little bit of an editing process going on.

If there's one day you go on Do you hate it too? and don't see new content, that means I'm not doing the job I intended, because I ultimately aim to do one entry every day. When I miss one day, it can only mean I was too lazy to blog that day, even if it meant I had an idea written down already. In fact, I already have ideas written down to last me 'til the end of February. I have no excuse to miss any day, so if I do, I'm slacking off, and I apologize for that. Trust me, I hate the lazy pig I am just as much as you do.

As for this blog, my personal blog, I give myself Tuesday and Wednesday off, a bit of a holiday on the busier weekdays. So if I'm missing some days out, it again means I was being slothful, and if I'm blogging on the Tuesday and Wednesday, it means I had some thoughts/feelings I really wanted to publish.

I can't say it's easy to come up with substantial subject matter. In fact, brainstorming interesting stuff is more often difficult and time-consuming than it is fast and smooth. If I didn't go through the process I outlined above, I'd be lucky to even produce just more than five posts in a whole thirty days.

Someone told me that I could ask people to do guest posts on both my blogs, more so on Do you hate it too? as it's the more popular one. As difficult as the idea process can be sometimes, I still don't think I'm going to open that door of opportunity any time soon. These blogs were started by me, all by myself, and it would be like I was giving up a part of me, my own integrity, and in my mind, ownership, as the sole author of all the posts that have been written so far. I'm proud of what I do by myself, and as much as I would like to share the space on Do you hate it too?, I don't think I'm ready to welcome anyone else's work - that of my friends, my family members, my fans, the people I go to school with, and all the bloggers I've come to meet through Blogger.

Some day, maybe, I'll be open to offers, but I'd like to see how much more I can do by myself. I'd like to really be confident in my own style, and have the appropriate mindset for sharing, before seeing if anyone would be interested.

117 - That feeling, like your head's about to explode

Sometimes, (and by 'sometimes', I mean the many times in which I'm sitting about just contemplating life or writing an essay, as well as the off-chance that I'm actually in the middle of working out or some other intense activity,) I suddenly stop doing whatever I'm doing, and feel like time is standing still, and everything around and within me has stopped moving, and the only thing that continues to run is the train of thoughts in my mind.

And then I feel like my soul is emerging out of my body, and I'm watching myself, criticizing everything I have going on in that moment in time, from what I chose to wear that day, to how high my expectations are for tomorrow, from how yesterday's actions have changed me for better or for worse, to how what I'm doing at that moment in time is relevant and beneficial in the bigger picture called my life.

This out-of-body experience only comes about when I have too much to remember at one time. It's kind of like an automatic system reboot that follows a system overload to prevent it from overheating. I just felt like that a while ago. And I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders right now.

Too often, I burden myself with too much to handle - and I spread myself too thin and end up with a couple pieces of very bland toast. A very good example of this is how I say I will blog everyday, but actually don't because I want to catch up with some television shows. However, I'm still not up-to-date on those because I have some work for university to get done. And I haven't gotten that done yet because I have some personal networking to do on Facebook - catching up with long-time-no-sees and photos to "like" and leave a "comment" under. I haven't got round to that because there are TV reviews to read. I haven't gotten round to that because there are webcomics to catch up with.

But my music playlists need serious updating. And a friend told me to check out this new anime series. Wait, my cousin asked me to read this book. And this other friend told me to watch a series of videos on Youtube. Now, I'm hungry. Now, I feel dirty, let me go take a shower. Now, I'm sleepy, I'm going to go to bed.

Oh, shit, 7am already?

Darn it. 

...I didn't get to finish yesterday's blog post.

I seriously need to get more organized.

Or maybe I should throw away some parts of my life.

I don't want to, though. I wish I was more high-powered. I wish I did things more efficiently. There never seems to be enough time in the day...

107 - On blogging and the busy life

It's getting to the time of the year where it really is a true testament to how dedicated I really am with my blogging. I said I would write in all my blogs regularly, but the simple fact of the matter is - inspiration and creativity only comes to you in patches, for only certain times in a given day, week, month, year, or point in your life. There's also the added matter of having to live with a billion others things to do as well. Oh, the perilous life of university murders my soul... 

I find that I'm feeling really writery (writerish?) right now, so I think the only way I'm ever going to manage getting something published frequently on all three of my current blogs, is if I just prepare posts beforehand right here, right now, as I feel imaginative, innovative, prolific with ideas.

Don't you think that's so smart?

I think it's genius. But whether I'm going to get distracted while I'm in the middle of writing this upcoming week's posts is an issue of concern. Oh, well. Let's see what happens.

84 - I know I'm a bad blogger.

Damnit, it's 3:20 in the morning, but I've got to write something here. I must write something everyday, anything, any little thing will do. And I must read other people's blogs - at least ten - everyday as well. This no-blogging-because-I-now-have-a-job-with-insane-hours thing is getting on my nerves, and I don't want to be the cause of any distress (albeit, only towards myself).

There has been a lot on my mind lately, but I shall bore you with that next time. Right now, I just want to say that life is pretty routine, and I didn't really want it to be so, as I had just graduated from high school.

Instead of waking up everyday to go to school, coming home late and then going to bed, I now wake up everyday to go to work, come home late and go to bed. It's the same thing. Do you notice that?

Only school doesn't take up fifteen hours of my day.

One hour to get to work, then thirteen hours of work with a three hour break somewhere in the midst of that, then an hour to get back home, followed by one hour of settling down when I get home, and two hours worth of time for me to do useless, unproductive shit on my computer until I fall asleep. So, altogether, that makes...

18 hours, leaving six hours for me to sleep. That is, if I actually do spend only two hours worth of time doing meaningless stuff, and if I also go home straight away after work.

I know all this talk about my new bartending job is boring blog material, for both this blog, and Do you hate it too? I know. I know that. There are bigger topics that I could discuss, but I just don't have the energy, I've been awake for forty hours over the past two days. I also feel a bit nauseous, as we bartenders tend to down a few drinks towards the end of the night just to celebrate another day of work surpassed. I actually don't want to drink - believe me, but my coworkers peerly pressurize me into the celebratory spirit.

Oh. This is now long enough. End.

71 - I got a Neno's Award.

An award, namely the Neno's Award, has been bestowed upon me by Argentum Vulgaris, creator of a number of blogs, including the less commonly advertised Beyond Bolivia and Things that are Not Normal. The award is given to and displayed on Do you hate it too?.


The award is:
- a dedication for those who love blogging and love to encourage friendships through blogging
- a means of seeking the reasons behind why we all love blogging.

The aims of this award:

* As a dedication for those who love blogging and love to encourage friendships through blogging.
* To seek the reasons why we all love blogging.
* Put the award in one post as soon as you receive it.
* Don't forget to mention the person who gives you the award.
* Answer the award's question by writing the reason why you love blogging.
* Tag and distribute the award to as many people as you like.
* Don't forget to notify the award receivers and put their links in your post.

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On Do you hate it too?, I love to rant primarily, and I like to have people rant with me or rant against me. We use the word 'hate' so freely, and this applies to everybody, everywhere, at any given time, in a vast multitude of workplaces, public spaces and households, and I just like how widely I can stretch this theme across so many different things, while also providing a day-to-day update on my own life and learning about other people's experiences through their comments. It's also a very good medium to ventilate in, and it also helps me practice my writing. For me, there are so many reasons I love to blog.

There is one more reason that I reckon I must mention separately. Quite frankly, I love the attention. :)

I love the followers, the comments, the thousands of viewers I've had in the past six months. I'm an honest guy, and honestly, even though I did not expect this much readership when I first started out, it's now mainly what drives me the most to keep blogging - you, the readers, the fans, your consideration, your comments and your care.

I hope that sounded sweet, and not arrogant at all. I mean it - your care means a lot to me.

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I'd like to give the award to, and hear back from:
Eura from Thumbs Up, Feet On The Ground
Madame DeFarge from bateau de banane
Randa from 365 Days
Marcy from Tales of the Kids
Eugene from Solviter
Douglas from Boomer Musings
Tiffany from lipstick & poker chips
Chris O from My Cat ate my Brain
Jodi from The World According to J.J. In L.A.

67 - I'm shutting this blog down.

For personal reasons, I've decided to take this blog down. I wanted a blog where I could really be honest, but it turns out that there were too many people in my real-life prying into my thoughts and feelings. Through this blog, I have unexpectedly discovered that I actually want my private life to be more private than I first thought a couple of months ago.

I didn't really mean for this to be anyone's entertainment, but apparently, mine is a blog that manages to as a matter of course. I appreciate all the comments you've all given each of my posts, for the followship, for the support, care and ideas you've given me while I've been writing in this one. I have already closed my television one as well, since I wasn't writing too much in it. I'm really sorry for having to do this, but I must go back to my blogging beginnings where it was just Do you hate it too? I believe it would make me feel a whole lot better about blogging.

I'll take this down at the end of the month. Take care, everyone - my e-mail's always on my profile for you to write to if you'd like.

49 - You people are scaring me.

It's the weekend again, which means I can return to blogging with all the rest of you. I'm sure it's been a long week for all of you, but I hope you all have something to make you feel better this weekend, and something to look forward to this month.

How have I been doing? Well, I have a little something to share. It gets me a bit emotional, but in a good way, so here we go:

This blogging thing that I started three or four months ago has escalated to a point where the people in my real life are telling me I should publish books. They tell me they admire what I've done, that my writing is definitely very commercial and relevant.

I, with complete honesty, do not want to think about it. I think my skills are above average, but that is as far as I am willing to be proud of. It is not my humbleness that makes me think I'm not good enough, it is my practicality and my honesty that makes me doubt I am writer material. I am only seventeen. I am a student that achieves reasonably well in English class. But the reason people under twenty generally do not start publishing at that age is because you need many years of practice and experience in order to be great, to be truly fabulous, extraordinary and unique.

It's scary to have my mother dreaming of me succeeding as an author. Of course, an autobiography, novels and perhaps a 'Do You Hate It Too?' book have crossed my mind, but I am in disbelief. I understand that people in their youth can publish books. I get that I can do it if I worked at it.

But my heart isn't there right now. I want to publish books some day, but within the next three years seems a little soon and it scares me so much, I think I might pee a little. I'm damn frightened of that sort of fame.

Nonetheless, I still love the praise. In the blogging world, people care about me, and have found my writing and my life to be 'honest', 'beautiful', 'charming', 'humorous', 'mature beyond [my] years', 'excellent', 'interesting', 'thoughtful', 'thought-provoking' and 'emotional'. Someone two months ago said they respected me for being so honest, despite the fact that I don't believe I'm very respectable. I uncomfortably carry a high reputation on Blogger, when I don't reckon I am reputable.

This particular blog of mine urges me to be honest, and honestly, frankly, really, I believe I'm just a kid with familial, scholastic, romantic, and friend-related problems, with funny stories, with emotions, with a life like everybody else. I have always told people this piece of advice: you make your own life interesting. And that is what I've done, and what I hopefully will continue to do. I think anyone can do this and could write as well as I do.

Now, I actually get fanmail. Bloggers add me on Facebook. I actually have a social life that reaches further than it ever has before. People know my name, and think of my words and ideas while at work and school. People know me, and think I'm friggin' hilarious and wonderful. For most of the time, I don't believe I walk on the streets everyday, with people all over the world that expect me to write when I get home. I don't believe I've learned so much about so many mind-boggling things from being amongst such a talented, thoughtful cyberclique. I find it hard to believe in things that are this good.

And the rate at which all of this is growing is exponential.

Lately, I have frequently been stopping in the middle of my work to daydream.

And I find myself thinking, shit, what the Hell have I done to my life?

Is this really happening to me?

48 - The late-shift Pizza Hut delivery guy

A particular friend of mine wrote a blog post about a special friend she had, and I'm inclined to think that special friend is me. Following her example, I shall not give her name, or call her to tell her that I wrote about her, but she knew I was going to read it, and I know she's reading this, too.

But she touched on something that really hit me hard, that made me swallow, that made me hold my breath, and that nearly made me cry as I was reading this one paragraph.

In her entry, she said that she found me by accident, and that our friendship should all be attributed to the efforts that I put in to the relationship. She said that I am the one who has encouraged her to partake in sexless hangouts, and that without my invitations, my texts and my calls, she would be at peace with being on her own. She said that she knew I had a lot of other close friends, and she viewed that as being quite depressing. If you look at it in a pessimistic, cynical way, she is just one of a bunch, a bunch of Michael's good friends. I can empathize with that, but read the following:

I know a lot of people. I cannot describe to you bloggers just how many people I know, but a lot of people have told me that I have touched their lives, changed their perspective deeply, been kind to them, appreciate me for my honesty, my scruffy, unique looks, my wit and humor, my sage advice, my hugs, my quirkiness, my words, my actions, my thoughts, my feelings (most notably, love), and my incredibly expansive insight regarding anything and everything.

I know a lot of people, and although I cannot express to you just how many that is, here's a taste:

• I was once suspended at school for collaborative and organized theft. I would go into the changing-rooms at school and scavange for spare cash in pants pockets and bags, while my British friend was the lookout and told me if someone was approaching. We've both moved on since being partners-in-crime, and he now lives in the UK. I love staying up late in Hong Kong, talking to him while it's only the early evening for him. I love him so much. He lives quite close to another friend:
• This other friend is Japanese and he's bisexual, just like me. He's been in England for a year and a half now, and likes it when bigger guys buy him drinks and escort him to their college dorms to spend the night. I fooled around with him many, many times when we went to school together five years ago, and I share all my intimate 'gay thoughts' with him because he knows what that's like. I love him, too, and can't wait to see him again some day.
• One thing that has been interesting for me being a bisexual, is how girls just love to be my friend, but don't want to be in a relationship with me. They like how thoughtful and good with the words I am, and they like that I don't indulge myself with guns, cars, sports, games or hair products. I have a dear friend, a girl, who I used to go to. I don't keep in touch with her much, but I had a crush on her once, and she had one on me, too. Whenever we do talk, she tells me her problems at school, in her family, that she would never tell anyone else about. And it moves me to know that she can find trust in me, a shoulder to lean on, a support system and an ear to listen. I love her, as well.
• I have a gay friend in Thailand, who works as a barista in Starbucks. He's 22, and wants to keep doing part-time temp. jobs like the one he has now. I have loving feelings for him, too.
  
• I have a friend, again, a girl, again, one that I had a crush on. She dances, she loves learning about physiology and anatomy. She always is determined to work hard, to be responsible, to be content, to be accepting, to be rational. She has a father that hits her in the face when he gets angry. It's sad. But unsurprisingly, I love her, too.
• I have similar feelings for twelve people in my class. There's the girl who achieves exceedingly well, and will go to Cambridge to study medicine, skipping the first year and moving straight on to the second. The sad part is that her parents will likely get divorced when she moves there.
• There's the short, unexercised girl who has had to follow her father's 'business' around the world for her whole life, never stopping long enough for her to make any 'real' friends.
  
• There's the boy who really wants to play the guitar for the rest of his life, but can't because his parents can't afford to send him to the US. There's the guy who smokes too much, the girl that fails her exams, the twins who struggle with keeping the peace and lessening the drama amongst all these other people with issues. And guess what? I love my class, too.
  
• I have seven old-fashioned, letter-writing pen-pals in the States, Canada, Australia and China,
• around two hundred people who I've talked to on Facebook in the past year,
• a handful of the LGBT community who I've met in forums and bars,
• teenagers and kids that live in my building,
• distant cousins and my three half-sisters,
• around five hundred schoolmates in three different schools,
• the late-shift Pizza Hut delivery guy, the McDonald's crew that know my face only too well and the 7-11 staff that have served me for years,
• and I have all of you Bloggers, all of you, even my list of 'Blogs I Follow' is very lengthy for following standards, but each of you have touched my life in so many different ways, and have reminded me that the world is much bigger than just your own city, a dot on the world map,
  
• and then I have my Best Friend, the one I trust with everything, the one that loves me unconditionally, the one that I care about the most, the one that has made me laugh more than anybody else, the one who was there to console me whenever I cried, the one that saved my life and talked me out of suicide, the one that stood by me with whatever was hurled at me, the one who knows all the rest, everybody, each individual I've encountered in my life.
  

The point that I wanted to express (and have strayed away from slightly with the whole dramatic, bullet-point thing) is that friendship is hard for me, too. Friendship is something that I don't know how to do well without relying on others. Friendship is something that I don't take credit for, and all I can see for myself is this long list, this incredibly long list that still doesn't convince me that I have a natural 'talent' with friends. I feel like giving up on friendship at times, I hate being friends with people when I get really angry at them. I am not confident in my ability to make and keep friends because I still get lonely, I still feel inadequate and inept, I still find it hard to simply define the bloody word itself.

What I am confident about is that you mean a lot to me, too. But, please, don't ever, ever feel unhappy with the fact that you are one of many. I treasure you, not more than them, or less than them, I just simply treasure you a lot. I've been maintaining friendships my whole life and I am sure that in my heart, I will cherish you after we graduate, and that we will keep in touch until the day we meet again, part ways again, and repeat the cycle over and over.

I hope you can find it in yourself to smile, despite being one of a bunch. You know that's the way I am. You know friendship makes me happiest. You know that I am here to live happily - not prosperously, not for the benefit of society, not for a long time. It says something about who I am in the left-sidebar, which is what I was trying to achieve by putting it there: 'I reckon that bonding with other people is all we humans are capable of doing well, and that the world has the capacity for each and every one of us to find people who we can share our lives with. I believe my purpose in life is to inspire, to share and to be one with the world.'

Like all the rest, I love you, too, my friend. I sure hope it ain't depressing.

36 - Life stories are meant to be told slowly.

Over the course of the past week, I have had a lot of thoughts on what to post on this blog but I haven't had the time to do it because of school. It's a shame, really, because now my mind is drawing a blank and I suppose it's just a result of using too much of my brainpower doing schoolwork. (Boy, I miss those holidays.)

So, as I sit here, cross-legged and hunchbacked on the end of my bed with my laptop, I'm thinking about my life (as I always do) and it feels like my life has stretched on forever. I know I will repeat this statement some other time. I know when I turn sixty, I will think to myself, Seventeen-year-old Michael, boy, you really had no idea how long life could be. But right now, I think I have the right to say that and think that. I feel I've had it longer than most seventeen-year-old people, and to me, these seventeen years feel like they've been going on forever. (I'm still not sure what I want to talk about in this post.)

Yes, seventeen years has been a long time. You see, that's just the thing. Where do I even begin to decide what to post about in this one? Who says one episode of my life deserves to be shared more than another episode? There are just so many episodes to choose from, so many of them interesting for readers and close to my heart.

I remember this one blogger whom I met when I first launched 'Do you hate it too?'. She was a girl, fifteen, with a somewhat dark and mysterious display picture. What struck me as odd and interesting about her was the way in which she laid out her entire life in bullet-point form in a single post. In that one entry, she stated that she had crappy parents, gotten pregnant, self-harmed, taken drugs and moved from place to place. I knew she was looking for answers by saying all that. I knew she was looking for someone to listen, maybe even to help. But to get help we need to know how to ask for it.

You see, I could do that. I could lay out my life in a single post. I'll do you one better: I can sum up my entire life into this paragraph: I was born in 1991 and my parents got divorced in 1993. I spent a year in Canada with my mom's family, then one year on the beach with my dad. Then I moved to my maternal grandparents' apartment, where I currently reside. I was clever and happy in primary school, and during that time, my mom brought me on many travels while my dad got remarried and had three daughters. I entered high school in 2002. I got suspended for theft in 2003. Someone pushed me out of the bisexual closet in 2004. I got expelled for theft in 2005. I was half an hour away from committing suicide on June 17, 2005. I entered a new school (the school I go to now) and there, I found friends and myself. My dad got divorced again and I won't forgive him. I like reading, watching television and blogging. Now, I'm clever and happy, just like in primary school, but even more so. I go to university soon.

You see that? You see how easy that was?

But where is the emotion? Where is the complexity in these issues? It just isn't there. And that's why I think that people need to learn how to stop moaning, complaining and throwing words like 'drugs', 'divorce' and 'suicide' around like they don't mean anything deep. Surely, they are the words you use to refer to these events, and I'm not discounting the fact that these things didn't make a huge impact on your life, but those words don't make up your life and they do not define you.

I take my blogging seriously and I know things need to be told slowly for people to welcome you, accept you and want to hear about you if you have a personal blog. I wonder if that girl still reads my blogs because I haven't seen her post anything or leave comments at all since the end of last October. But I hope she knows now that she can't expect people to listen if she overwhelms readers like that. Those who have been following my blogs for some time know what I'm like. People who know me in real-life know that 'bisexual', '17', 'teenager' and 'Asian' don't and cannot describe me well enough.

Those words are understatements of what it truly feels like to be those things. And it's about time some people learned that the true value of people's stories are in the ideas they put forward about their thoughts and feelings, that their life story's value does not lie in the bland words people assign to life-changing experiences. Otherwise, I would comprise a bunch of labels, like 'that boy with the divorced parents', 'the kid that got expelled', or 'that dumb blogger with that hate blog'.

So, anyway. That looks like a post so let's end it there. I look forward to learning more about all of your lives slowly and I will continue to take my time in introducing you to mine.

26 - Reflections on 2008.

It's been a very, very long year, to say the least. This is the first time I'm doing one of these reflections, so I hope it helps in bringing me closure, so that the new year can be approached with another year of life experience to support me. How should I format this?... Hmm... Oh, I know! I'll just make a list of all the major events and talk a bit about each of them. (The last one is the most relevant to you guys. :D)

(Jun) Father got divorced again: He tells me my stepmother cheated on him with another man. Not just any man. A 63-year-old man. And I believe him, but I think that if Dominique and their other two girls appear to be fine, then my stepmother and the old guy are fine. Why does my father have to exaggerate everything, I don't know. I agree with him and sympathize for him to an extent, but the fact is: he was the less committed one. I'm a lot like him to be honest... especially in relationships. Over-confident when we really don't have a damn clue. I think I'm working at it. I don't see that in him. All in all, he's an ex-husband twice for good reason.

(Jul) Stopped talking to my dad: Nobody else will understand my perspective of things, that's a given. But let me just tell you: if there's anybody I hate more, it's people that are narrow-minded, unforgiving, who fail to look at things in other people's perspective, who don't even try for a second to walk in another person's shoes. That is all I ever do with my life, every, single, fucking, second, of, every, single, fucking, day. My father is radically different in this aspect and I hate the way he is so arrogant about everything. I look at him and I see the smoking, the drinking, the two divorces, the negligence toward his three other children, the prostitutes in Shenzhen, the lousy dead-end job of a private investigator, his knucklehead friends, especially her (who he's exploiting at the moment), the pervy uncle, the grandmother who always fed him what he wanted, the spoiled brat inside of him that never grew up from over thirty years ago, and at the time, before July, I didn't give a shit about any of that. And it's a testament to how much I know about him, the dreadful, honest truth about him. What does he know about me? Nothing.

Next year, all he will know is that I went to holiday this winter, because he needs to give my mother permission to bring me out of Hong Kong. He will also know which country I'm going to next year for university, only because my mother will tell him. When I grow up, he will know what I do for a living, but only vaguely, only a little bit, only because my mother will tell him. That is all he will know because he never cared to get to know me or the details of my personal and academic life, that as a student and a teenager, are very, very, very important to me.

I am not going to be all melodramatic and say I won't visit his deathbed, go to his funeral or visit his grave. But when those occasions come to pass, all father-and-son sentiments will be lost. There's no space available for me to forgive. My mind does not have the capacity to and my heart is not functioned to forgive a father who does not care to hear about his son's 'lifeless' day. I have been through more than any of my family really knows. This isn't a contest to see who's been through the most, but he should stop boasting and pretending to know everything that I don't. Piece of shit father.

(Jul) The last outing I had with Dad: I went to the beach I grew up on with my father, my grandmother, my uncle, my cousin, my two stepsisters (all on my dad's side, of course) and one of their friends. We had this killer mashed potatoes with tuna and raisins that serves as one of my grandmother's signature dishes. Filipinos know how to make the best comfort food in Asia... We were at the infamous Pui O beach, the word Pui (貝), meaning 'shellfish'. Buried under the sand are hundreds of clams. I had a fun time swimming with my stepsisters. I had a fun time barbecuing with my dad like we used to when I was a kid. When I was out there in the ocean, I dived down and managed to find a clam the size of my hand (around 15cm in diameter). My dad soaked it in beer to wash out the sand and placed it on the fire. I ate it and let me tell you, big doesn't necessarily mean tasty. ;)

It was a good trip, a good final trip before I vowed to ignore him and avoid him at all costs. Why he had to ruin that week is beyond me. His impatience got the better of him and will serve him well.

(Feb) Fell in love for five days: I fell so deep and so fast. I was so darn lonely, to the point where I just didn't care about anything else. They were like another family, to add on to my list containing six or seven other families. I took a leap there, and they caught me, they let me know that life was okay, is okay and will always be okay. Sisters, brothers, father and uncle. Oh, Michael, you're so pathetic.

'Cause the shame in these five days is that they came all the way from Oman. They were only here for a week but I was totally immersed into their group of friends. I will always have a special place in my heart for them but I think that's very useless now. It was there for five days, and now it's gone.

(Dec) Came to a decision: I have found a solution to the problem at school I've been having for a year now. It's time for a change and the new year will bring on a good one. It's been a long, treacherous journey with these people. They've pissed me off more times than I can count and I'm sure I have gotten on their nerve many times as well. I will never forget any of the good times, but hey, there weren't that many to begin with, and they weren't that good at all.

(May) Birthday: My birthday always happens when other things are happening. It was quite a lot of fun going out that night after the Graduation Ball, but again, I drank alone, I danced alone, I went home alone. Why is it so hard to find somebody? Why is it that the four of them stuck together? Why is it that they were a couple? Why do they go home? Where does it ever leave me?

No, that's not the right way to think about it. It's precisely about me on my birthday if I am willing to believe it to be. Besides, I have made a decision to stop caring about them. I had fun on my birthday, and it was a considerably good one when compared to my birthdays in previous years. I won't forget it and next year will be even better.

(Sep) Mid-Autumn Festival: I've never been to the beach on that night. I had no idea that loads of people actually did that. It was good, though. And I got the chance to see her, so it was nice. The moon created this mysteriousness amongst us. I wonder if we would ever find ourselves in that same spot again.

God, why do I always think I'm alone? People will always tell me, no, you're not alone, but heyheyhey. I really am by the end of the night. I think I have to make peace with the fact that I will be more alone in the next few months. Yikes.

(July) Family trip to Toronto: Now, this was a really good time. A time that I pretty much forgot about until I looked at a calender to remind myself about what I was doing in those blank two weeks in my head. I went to Toronto with my whole family (save my mother and my aunt). We went to eat crazy-good steak, and to see all the attractions that I could now look at in another, more mature, light. I love Toronto. I will live there at some point in my life. And although I can't say I love time with my family, at least they never, ever make me feel alone.

(Jun) Last week of school: I had to stage manage a concert, as well as perform in a lead role of the senior play. To be honest, I stage managed better the previous time. This time, I was breaking down, I didn't care about these people and I couldn't do my job because I let these people get to me. Not all of them were bad. I don't want to say it goes to show how tired I've gotten of them. I think it's just me again. Pathetic, emotional me.

For the school play, these people were cool. Actors are nice people. Never really bothered me much. Oh, how could I forget about him though. He was a pain up my ass. Oh, but at least the lot of them were sitting in the audience, far, far away. The show went quite well and everybody clapped for Andrew, Bea and Chas. I want to do more professional stuff, though. The stuff I had in my old school, as opposed to this mini-production. Oh, the life I could've led... It's my own fault for bringing that upon myself.

(Aug) Cheung Chau: Here in Hong Kong (I start an awful lot of my paragraphs like this, don't I?), during the holidays, a lot of young people like to rent a house on one of the outlying islands for a few days to enjoy life outside the city for a change. We can go biking, go to the beach, eat lots of junk food and even bring our laptops, our Playstations and even our electric guitars to the house to just relax and be lazy (or in my social group's case, work and study :P).

This year, five people came to my house thing that I rented. Last year, twelve people came, so I was a little let down. I was happy that the four 'right' people came to accompany me. Especially the couple. Both of them lightened up my time there... It wasn't all smiles, but I was content. However...

(Aug) Loneliest I've ever felt: It was a strange night that night. They were asleep in the room and I didn't want to wake them (well, I did. And I texted them). I stepped outside, went biking for a while, bought a drink at the store at two in the morning, but gosh, the emptiness inside of me felt so strong, it was unbelievable. I sat on the beach, frantically, desperately trying to call everyone I could. Nobody would pick up their phones. I had no computer to go online. I was overwhelmingly sad and it was cold and it was dark and the beach was empty.

The beach is a place I usually go to sit and think about life. Beaches have always been comfortable for me. I find it nice when there is sand in my shoe, caught between my toes. I like the feel of my jeans drenched in seawater. I can have a good night's sleep on the sand, falling asleep and waking up to the sound of the waves. For some reason, that night just did not work for me. I was restless, lonely and miserable. I cried that night very, very hard. It brought back thoughts of my suicidal incident four years ago. It brought back memories of all the pain I ever experienced with either parent, with my friends, with my heart that's fallen in love so many times, so deeply and so wrongly. I just wished that someone was there so badly.

But I was considerate enough not to bother the couple. They had enough on their minds at the time. It came at the cost. How big of a cost am I, really?

(Oct) Started blogging: I didn't believe that blogging was therapeutic. I didn't think that I could entertain people, or that I could touch people's hearts with my writing. I just thought it was a leisure activity, where angry, depressed and/or talkative people would bail their hearts out and talk about the most insignificant things. I don't know why I felt this way, because normally, I'm usually a person that's very open to new experiences. But, in a rush of emotion one night, just because I was bored, I created Do you hate it too? and wow, I had no idea that people from the States, from Brazil, from the UK, from everywhere, could be so welcoming, and could give a damn about what I had to say.

I used to be mightily unhappy around my friends and family. They would piss me off to no ends. But if there's something I must thank them for, it's for doing exactly that. Driving the living Hell out of me with their annoyances so that I could start my blog and enter a whole new realm of socialization. I cannot express how grateful I am to all my followers and all the people who have such fantastic, inspirational, equally and differently opinionated blogs for me to read. Blogging is still not therapeutic (in fact, it gets stressful at times trying to come up with topics), but I think I can be confident in saying that it has brightened up my mood and cheered me up after a year that has been so eventful, stressful, troublesome, miserable and lonely. You are all like family, and I cannot wait to grow up, travel the world and meet all of you in person perhaps, visit the places you mention in your blogs, meet the people you talk about in your entries. Blogging is the biggest and the best part of my 2008.

*update: I forgot about the Presidential Elections,the Olympics and other big news. Goes to show how self-centred Iam...*