I can still remember when I watched Beauty & the Beast (Disney animated classic) back in the 1990s. I was not that young to be still too enamored with fairy tales, but I had always been and I believe up until now I never really lost my fascination with them. I think the fact that I discovered them on my own through my innate curiosity about everything I can find in books and TV and movies, rather than having my parents open my eyes about them as a child, only intensified my attachment to stories of all kinds.

That is why I find it not surprising that no matter how my tastes in the kinds of stories I pay attention to have evolved over the years, fairy tales will always have a special place in my heart. It’s not just about the princess and the prince and her tiara and his mens wedding ring and their happy ever after. It’s everything in these stories that represent hope and dreams and how life can be the most beautiful thing there is if only you can look at it with endless wonderment.

All these are also why I can’t wait for February, when Gaston, Belle, and the Beast will make an appearance in my new favorite show, Once Upon A Time.

I started today on a positive note by willing myself to get up early enough. I thought, all I need to do now is to prepare my things for the gym, actually go to the gym and get a bit of workout, then maybe grab a coffee from Starbucks and go home to start work, which I can feel will come by noon. Work came, alright. My plans didn’t push through, however, and now I’m ending my night quite angry myself for wasting away the ENTIRE day. I didn’t even finish work, which means tomorrow I’ll be cramming to keep with the deadlines again.

Gah. I can print all my “tasks” and to-dos everyday on my Epson TM-T88V, and unless I actually do a little bit of “rewiring” to adjust the way my brain functions these days – or maybe it’s just my attitude – I’ll only keep on wasting precious time. As if I can’t tell myself enough – 2012 has got to be different, for the better of course.

… is that when actually you get to cross out something, you’ll think of something else you’d like to accomplish. Here are some of mine, in no particular order:

Visit Singapore, but now
Visit Singapore often or maybe live there

Watch Wicked live (will do in January, in SG)

Watch Next to Normal, but now…
Watch Next to Normal in Broadway

Watch Les Miserables in Broadway

Watch Roger Federer play live

Watch a Wimbledon final live

Get a picture with Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi

Invest on a would-be abode

Write a book (it doesn’t have to get published)

Write a song

Visit my sister in Canada

Send my parents to Canada to visit my sister

Wow, I could go on and on. Why can’t I just list something like buy my brother a PS3?

That’s me. Maybe not in the whole wide world, but probably in both sides of my family. I mean, my aunts keep on telling I don’t visit them, and what did I do? Visit them once then not do it again for a long time. I’m not too fond of texting either, just because I really don’t normally send text messages unless I really have something to say. I always say they live too far away from my place. And here are my other cousins from the other side of my family, who live just a few blocks – and a jeepney ride – away, and I wasn’t even there when my cousin’s baby’s first birthday was celebrated, and I adore that kid to pieces. (Well, they didn’t celebrate at home, so I guess that’s kind of an excuse.) Anyway, she’ll be two pretty soon, so let’s see if I can at least give her a nice gift and give it to her myself.

It’s been almost a year since I left my job to lead the solitary life of a freelancer. For someone who had never been very sociable nor outgoing in the first place, that decision seemed like a step in the wrong direction. I actually thought about my mental health when I was making that decision. I mean, I’ll never be one fit for Networking & Telecomm Jobs, much more a PR job – those are just not my thing. But I was enjoying my time with a company of friends and colleagues. For 10 years, I managed not to screw up my relationships in the workplace, except maybe for one or two lessons in error of judgment, but even the worst of those experiences came full circle in a way that actually led me to where I am now – perpetually sitting in the small living room of my rented apartment – or sometimes inside the bedroom – in front of my computer day to night, hoping for an opening in my schedule that will allow me to wander around outside with no other reason but to go out.

That sounds rather pathetic, but the truth is it’s not that bad. One year after, and I am sure I made the right  move. Well, I guess it helped that my sister is living with me so I’m not completely solitary – hence, my fear of ending up staring in space or talking to myself consistently didn’t really happen. Or the fact that I realized nothing can ever leave me bored as long as I am connected to the Internet and I have my books, movies, and TV shows. I guess I just want to celebrate my choice right this time. There’s always tomorrow to think about the cons.

I doubt if my father still remembers that when I was becoming a sort of rebellious (by the standards of a deeply religious and conservative family) would-be teenager, he told me that when I turn 18, I can do whatever I please. But that is something that stayed with me for a long time, and I never forgot that. I eagerly looked forward to the day I turned 18. Sure I did, and years after that, I now do have complete freedom to decide for myself but not before I had to go through a phase when I had so much bottled-up frustration that I couldn’t look at life beyond the eyes of a sheltered kid who feels she had been denied the chance to normally blossom into society. Of course, for a while now, I’ve been able to fully admit that a lot of other people had it worse than me. It’s not like I was raised in mobile homes by abusive parents, or worse. I was, and am, loved despite the imperfections of that love.

Maybe I did spend a whole lot of time thinking about the things I didn’t like about my upbringing and that I subconsciously tried to become someone who is, at least inside, different from what those years should have made me. Both my parents are used to being in extended families where grandparents, parents, and their spouses and children all live together, at least in one town if not in one house, and share everything together. Although the changing of the times have made them more accepting of their own children creating seemingly independent lives, I know they wish it was different. And now being an adult, I realized you don’t turn around and tell them, “You used to tell me I can’t have things my way; now you know how that feels.” I understand now. And despite feeling wise enough I know I’m not doing everything right, but that’s life. It’s about compromise, and trying to make things work without causing too much damage to those you care about. That (I think) I turned out to be a fairly decent human being somehow made everything else in my life history just things that factor in, with none of them too bad or too outrageous to ruin how I look ahead to my future.

First, I’m not really ambitious; not even adequately so. Second, I’m talking about literal dreams: those you get when you’re sleeping. Third, I don’t actually think this will make me rich.

Do you believe that people write books, make movies, or even do something entirely drastic with their lives because of something that felt so tangible and real while they are dreaming?

I do get vivid dreams once in a while, more often when I was younger (I don’t know if it means anything, psyche wise). Last night, I’ve had a couple of really interesting ones. I only remember one “scene” in my first dream — I was at home, but in a house that looks different from ours, when all of a sudden our entire living room turned “sepia-like,” and all of our things—TV, sofas, fans—transformed into their old (think 1960s as you see in movies) versions. Cool, huh? I remember feeling amused in my dream, thinking it must’ve been a remote control that did the trick. Weird? Wait for the next one.

Now, I’m not the least bit entrepreneurial. I do sell stuff on Ebay sometimes, but only to get rid of things I no longer want/need. Even when I was actively looking for a job after graduating from college, I rarely looked at management jobs because I feel a sales position is not something I can be good at. But here’s what’s funny: my other dream last night seems to be telling me that I need to go into the notebook business. Say what? Well, look at what I scribbled, with my eyes half opened because I believe I was still half asleep then, on the writing application (Penultimate) on my iPad. I felt that I had to take it down lest I forget it when I’m fully awake:

That, I believe, is a proposal for a kind of notebook with onion-skin ruled pages (in the mid-yellow range) that can be turned using, and weighted by, magnets (don’t ask me how! i have no idea!). It comes with a very, very small version where you can write your daily to-dos. But, wait, that’s not all. I also dreamt of a name (!!!) AND slogan (is that what it’s called?) for the product, which I think don’t make any sense:

I really have no explanation for why these things are in my head. I do collect notebooks for no other reason besides that I kid myself into thinking that someday I’ll fill them with grand words of whatever, but I never even thought about marketing them (or going against Moleskine). I just thought this is too funny/amusing/peculiar not to share, at the risk of you people doubting my current mental state.

I wrote about guaranteed issue life insurance and health coverage in my other blog just today, when I realized that I actually have another life insurance coverage that’s included in that condo unit I’m currently paying the down-payment for. I guess because I decided on that purchase with eyes closed—while praying that I won’t regret that decision—I temporarily forgot about the matter. There are still a lot of things that I have to understand about owning a property, which I need to get a grasp soon, especially because I’m a bit dubious about my broker, or at least about how much she can help me complete everything smoothly and without much hassle. Thus far, I was told my bank loan application has been approved and all I need to do is show up to sign some forms. I’m still waiting for any bank officer to call me to confirm this, but somehow it’s taking longer than I had hoped for. It’s still about 15 months before I start paying the 80% balance, so I’m not rushing this, but should I? Wow, I really don’t know much about some important things and this has got to change soon, before I get myself into anything unpleasant because of my own negligence and/or ignorance.

So I bought my first book from the Kindle Store because I got really curious about this new bestseller—Please Look After Mom—from a Korean author, Kyung-Sook Shin. Then I thought to scour the ‘net if I can find some “free” downloads, and what do you know—I now have more titles than I can ever read in a year, and they’re mostly books that I actually have been dying to read. Well, that’s if I can find the time between my work schedule and my…well, work schedule. I think I’ll need some sort of a roadside assistance club; maybe I can ask someone else to read the other titles and just tell me the story, heh.

But things are looking up, since I’m already past half the pages of my current book, so if these e-books can make me read twice more than usual, then it’s more than worth the price of my reading device.

I wish I have something to say, but I don’t. In the past two weeks, I was faced with a family crisis—involving close relatives—and I chose to not say so much, in the process further alienating people who probably expected something from me that I was not able to deliver. If I was the “absent” relative before, I think I’ve become the “disinterested” relative now. And it’s sad because I am not really as apathetic as I seem, but I can’t blame anyone else because I really haven’t done anything to dispel that notion. I really shouldn’t be writing about this here because it’s too personal, even without the details, but I guess I have a need to see it “written on paper.” As a sort of “soul cleansing,” not akin to colonetix treatment. Maybe if I read my own words, I’ll realize my misgivings. I’m trying to shake up something in me to see if there’s something wrong: why my core is not fully susceptible (though not totally immune) to the blame, or in the very least the disappointment, that I even accept I deserve. I became hardened, true. I guess my problem is that I have come to accept it about myself and I can’t, and shouldn’t, expect others to understand the same.