The rainy season

It’s been raining a fair bit in the past week.

Okay, it’s been raining a lot.

Doesn’t bode well for us that there are two tropical storms headed our way. The hurricane season is making up for its tardiness, throwing things at us more than two months after its official start. While my long vacation doesn’t seem to have a good start, I expect that to change after the season ends.

I’ve been spending all my time at home (what a surprise). In the last few weeks of college, I wasn’t feeling so great and had trouble keeping food down. So, I’m taking my time to relax, eat and rest. It’s what I need, for now. I’ll have to take some courses to complete sixty hours that I’m supposed to do in order to graduate. Two should be enough, and I hope I can take them at the same time.

Other than that, I haven’t done much of anything. I’m not the type who goes out to parties or drinking or whatever people my age like to do. I stopped reading a good while ago, because of the overwhelming amount of college work. I’ll have to pick that up again.

I should make a list. Lists usually work. I’d like to improve myself during this time, before January comes and I go back to college for the final term.

Ever since Wednesday night, my family keeps asking what I’ll do now. I just don’t know. They’re probably wanting for me to get a job, being the only one who doesn’t have one. I’ve told them that I have to do those courses, and that seems to have done the trick in keeping them quiet for a while. I won’t be able to keep that up for much longer, and I’ll eventually become a part of the herd working world. Live to work, work to live, repeat.

It’s probably not as terrible as I make it sound, sure, and I would like to repay all that’s been invested in me (too unrealistic?). I guess I’m wishing there were more than settling for something that could become a decades-long routine: going to work, sitting at a desk, typing words or numbers, or creating/editing images until someone other than I is happy about them, followed by a trip back home. It seems to work for most of the world (I said seems to), but I’m not sure I want that for me.

Maybe I should sit outside and wait for my dream job offer to fall right on my lap … if only I still knew what that dream job is. I’m not sure what I want to spend my life doing (and photography is just a hobby, and one that I might get tired of sooner or later).

I guess figuring out what my career will should be makes a good addition to the list.

Meanwhile, the rain continues to fall.

The night thinker

I seem to be a night person. My mind is clearest at the late hours (or early hours, depending on where you’re looking from). I will often spend my nights walking around and thinking about various things.

I go back and forth, usually between the living room and the kitchen, with no lights on, except the bit of light that comes through the window, either from the parking lot or the neighboring apartments. I begin with the simple things. Things that have happened recently, things that could’ve been had I made different choices and things that would be if I didn’t have to worry about consequences.

No, not crimes. I just picture myself in front of someone, or in a situation where they’re all willing to listen, and I begin a long speech, one that won’t stop until I stop walking and thinking. I don’t always give a conclusion to my imaginary speeches, but I just enjoy thinking about an intelligent string of words coming out of my mouth.

The subjects of my speeches may vary, from the most simple things to ones as complex as I can make them. They are mostly about my life, about things I want out of it, about who and what I want to be. I don’t imagine people nodding their heads or saying “Oh, I get it!” or anything like that. I just continue to talk, sometimes rephrasing to make better sense of what I want to say. Like I said, it won’t stop until I stop thinking. No “Thank you for listening” or “And that’s all I’ve got to say about that”.

I can’t make sense of time during those moments. The wall clocks are barely visible, even when my eyes have adjusted to the darkness, and the time display on the DVD/VHS player under the living room TV set isn’t working. So, I could walk and think for hours, and the thinking will often follow me to bed, to the point where I’ll finally fall asleep after four in the morning.

Being that I don’t live on my own, and that I must therefore adhere to certain rules (like not staying up the whole night), it’s not something that happens every night. If it were up to me, it would be, and I’d be walking around and thinking up until the sun rears its shiny face.

If it were up to me, I’d sleep through the day, forgetting about daylight and everything it entails (for most people) and instead dedicate my limited energy to thinking through the night, perhaps making those thoughts into reality somehow.

I do get some nice ideas that I can share but that I’ll often forget about in the next waking moment. Not sure if it’s a shame for me or for the world (ha!). Either way, it’s a shame.

Year’s end

Once again, we find ourselves at the finish line. As the last few steps of 2008 are taken, we look forward to a year of hope: 2009.

Okay, let’s cut to the chase: 2008 sucked. No, really. It did. I wish I could make the clock hands turn faster so it’ll be next year already. I have no idea what it will bring, but I sure know all that it will take away, once I throw away the old, dusty, scratched calendars and hang the shiny new ones that have a year ending with the number 9.

At this moment, I’m feeling pretty much the same as exactly one year ago. Where have I gone? Nowhere. What have I done? Nothing. What am I to do? I just don’t know. I somehow wish that a version of me from the future would travel back and tell how things will go for me, or even just to warn me about what I should/shouldn’t do in the coming year(s). Of course, I would probably be too freaked out at the thought of meeting myself to even listen to the warnings.

Science fiction aside, has the world gone forward? Is it any closer to the world I’d like to live in? While there are a few indicators that some progress is being made, the backward steps are more noticeable.

What is it, really? What is it that makes it so unbelievably complicated to achieve that peaceful life we can only dream of living? Is it money? Is it religion? Is it skin color? Country of origin? Who you’re married to? Who you want to marry? What?

When did we notice that we’ve turned the world into a big mass of confusion in which the rich strive to get richer, the poor can only become poorer and, as soon as the former feel that they might catch a glimpse of the latter, they quickly turn their heads around to pretend that they’re not there? If you’ve done your homework, you know where your money comes from. You’re at the top of a pyramid, held aloft by an infinite number of worn-out hands. Take notice that those hands don’t just spring out from the ground. They belong to people. They have no choice but to hold that pyramid, unless they want to be crushed by it.

In this world, where a government can keep two people who love each other deeply and want to spend their lives together from enjoying the legal benefit(s) of marriage, just because a majority of religiously-influenced people voted against something they don’t quite understand and have been taught to be against by whatever book that rules their lives, countless love stories have been written. Stories about love, despite the multiple boundaries that make that love seem impossible, to the point where lovers consider ending their lives in hope of being together in a possible afterlife. In this world, this day and age, why is it that people speak so much of love and, with their actions, insist on pouring another layer of concrete to further reinforce those boundaries for others?

In a world where “bomb thy neighbor” seems to be the sole commandment of some, what have we to gain with all these actions that do nothing but take us farther away from peace? What’s the point of learning history if we have yet to stop learning how to screw ourselves in way that are only familiar to us because they’ve been written about before?

Really, world. The first decade of the 21st century is ending, and I fear that you might come to an end before we reach the 22nd. I’m worried because I live on you, as does my family, as do my friends. It’s no wonder people are fascinated by fantasy worlds as depicted in literature and other media. They’re much less screwed up.

In 2009, I would like you to get your stuff together. To wrap the bad things and throw them in a giant wastebasket, and to provide sun and water for the few good things we’ve got left, in the hopes that they’ll grow and spread faster than a celebrity rumor.

Anyway, I better stop writing now before it gets too depressing. I just want to wish you, reader(s), a Happy New Year. The dogs want to wish you the same, too!

Run along, now. You’ve got a year’s end to celebrate.