It’s not like I never even considered coming back to Clar.me in my 7 months of absence – in fact, I think about it a lot.

I pay my web host on the due date and ponder the last time I actually made use of the space I’m paying for.

I renew my domain and observe how its homepage has looked exactly the same for months.

I write my thoughts and experiences in my journal and wonder why I’m not writing them on my blog.

Because, yes, I do have a blog. I just never, ever use it.

And then I imagine the grand reopening of Clar.me.

I think to myself, “I love web development, and I’ve learned so many new things at school. I could make an awesome new theme.” I get myself excited, “I could comment on all the blogs I used to read and talk to all my old friends again.” I make so many new plans, “I could give Clar.me a whole new direction.”.

But I’m Clarisse, so of course I have to go ahead an overthink everything.

I remember, “I have other projects to work on”. I get real, “Reading and commenting on blogs takes so much time – time I don’t have”. I start to realize the flaws in what I realize is a completely non-existant plan…

“I have no clue what Clar.me is for or what it’s doing…I have no clue what Clar.me even is anymore.”

So I end up doing a lot of thinking, a lot of pondering, a lot of considering…but not any blogging.

Today, I thought again, but, since you’re reading this, clearly, something went differently. Unlike all those other times, I didn’t think about what could be, and I didn’t think about why it couldn’t; I just thought two simple words…

“Screw it.”

So what if this theme is over 3 years old and was coded by me in my pre-college (a.k.a. pre-computer-science-major) years? So what if I don’t have time to catch up on everyone else’s blogs? So what if I have no clue what I’m even going to blog about?

I miss blogging. So I’m going to blog. Simple as that.

I guess that means I’m back.

I’m definitely not one of those people.

Sure, I’ll distort my face so that it may express anger, worry, confusion, sadness or whatever emotion I deem appropriate for the situation. Sure, I’ll find some way to express the chosen emotion through my words. But, all of it will be carefully calculated. None of it ever just comes naturally.

It’s not like I don’t have a heart. I have a heart. It’s just deeply rooted within myself, so, even though I feel these emotions, they don’t immediately manifest in my outward appearance or actions. I end up having to leave the responsibility of that to my brain, almost all the time.

If you were to come to me with a problem, I would automatically try to find ways in which I can solve a problem, ways in which I can explain the problem, or ways in which I could emphasize that your side of the situation is right and the opposing side is wrong. I won’t, however, automatically hug you. Or ask you how you feel. Or know whether it’s more appropriate to talk or just shut up. For me to engage in what’s considered the “proper protocol” for comforting a distressed friend, I often need to exert a conscious effort into doing so.

I automatically deal with problems with logic. But, usually, people don’t need logic. Usually, they just need a friend – to stay with them, to comfort them, to hug them, and do all the things that don’t come natural to me. I do those things anyway, though I may sometimes (i.e. almost always) do them awkwardly. I do it for my friends.

A month or two ago, I realised I missed maintaining a website, but didn’t know what to do about Clar.me. So I made a book blog on Books.Clar.me, and have been blogging semi-regularly there ever since.

A few days ago, I felt an urge to check on Clar.me, and saw a pending comment on my last post. It was from Liz over at 6birds.net. “Come back D;,” it said.

So I figured, why not try to?

Catching Up

It’s been about half a year since I last blogged. Even longer since I last blogged regularly. Of course, life happened, and I suppose I should try to fill you all in (though I’m still not sure what to tell you…)

I turned 19

Apparently my blog “About” has been lying for months, since I never bothered to update it. I turned 19 last September. It’s no big deal. I feel exactly the same.

I learned to play the ukulele.

It was a birthday gift for myself. It was perfect, because, unlike the guitar, it doesn’t trigger my carpal tunnel. Also it’s Clarisse-sized (a.k.a. tiny) so it’s kind of perfect for me.

I got obsessed with books.

I’ve always loved reading. But when, suddenly, you can barely get through a week without finishing at least two books, I think you could call yourself obsessed. I’m obsessed. You can experience my obsession with me on Books with Clar.

I went to school.

Of course. But it has been stressful, and, I can already tell from the first few days of the new school term, promises to get even worse. I still love my major though. It’s interesting, fulfilling, and I absolutely enjoy it, so I really can’t complain much. :)

What I haven’t done much for the past months is blog. I blogged about books, sure, but that’s completely different. It’s been so long since I’ve blogged about my life, my thoughts, and the rare randomness of my mind. I kind of miss that.

Life without Clar.me has been great; but I’m thinking life with Clar.me could be even better.

“…at the age of five, 98% of children demonstrate genius level of creativity; at the age of 10, about 30% of children demonstrate genius level of creativity, and at the age of 15, only 10%.”

We were all born creative. Eventually and unfortunately though…we grow up. We are taught that every question only has one right answer. We are taught to fear the possibility of being wrong. We are taught out of creativity.

Reading about this made me sad – sad that children are growing less creative, sad that most people place left-brained thinking above right-brained thinking, and, also, sad from the realization that I’m definitely among those people.

I used to think of perfectionism as a good thing and being overly critical as one of my biggest strengths. But readings, TED talks and my general college experience so far has taught me otherwise – that I have developed a fear of failure, a fear that has been holding me back for far too long.

I barely recite in class unless I’m sure I won’t make a mistake. I never ask others questions in fear of showing weakness. I never volunteer suggestions because I’m too quick to criticize my own ideas.

I don’t want to continue to grow up and just become more like that perfectionist robot of a person – though even some intelligence agents need to make mistakes and experience failure, and even do so on purpose, in order to grow and adapt.

I can’t become less human than a robot.

The statistics I placed at the beginning of this post weren’t complete. The test was actually later administered to another age group: adults.

“…among [adults] only 2% showed genius level of creativity.”

So, apparently, it gets worse. But I won’t. I don’t want to let myself.

So I’ll recite in class without checking my answers first. I’ll ask questions even when my pride urges me not to. I’ll share my ideas instead of immediately concluding that they suck. I’ll do these things because I don’t want to grow up to become a part of that sad majority that doesn’t anymore. I will become a part of the 2%.

Quotes were from a sample that I read of a book entitled “The Business Idea Factory: A World-Class System for Creating Successful Business Ideas”. The statistics were taken from a NASA test normally used to measure the creativity of engineers and scientists that was administered in 1968 by George Land and Beth Jarman to children and adults of various ages.

I didn’t enter college trying to become less shy. I didn’t come here aiming to become more confident. I didn’t target change, nor did I even expect it. It was just by circumstance that change occurred.

As a college freshman last year, I went through a lot of change – possibly the most I’d ever gone through my entire life. I think the biggest contributor to this was the fact that nobody in college knew me when I got there. I had no established identity. I was a blank slate.

With anonymity comes freedom, and I was exercising this freedom without even realizing it.

One of the biggest changes that occurred within me was in my introversion. In my head, I’d always been an introvert, yet, when I was younger, I was one of those undoubtedly extroverted children. I never stopped talking. In fact, I refused to shut up. I talked to everyone, and didn’t hesitate to fast-talk about my day, in excruciating detail, to anyone who’d ask. At least I was young enough that my cuteness counteracted my annoyingness.

I wasn’t like that at all from late grade school to early high school though. I was talkative, but only with a few people, and the idea of ordering food, asking for help in a store or meeting new people frightened me, because I was so self-conscious. I didn’t mind being quiet and still for long periods of time, and I loved working alone.

I was an introvert, in every sense of the word.

Things changed in college though. I started to enjoy, and even look forward to, meeting new people. I was suddenly capable of having unawkward conversations with people I’d just met. I was even capable of having food delivered (which, believe me, is a bigger deal than it sounds). I still loved my alone time, and will always and forever hate small talk, but, at the same time, things were changing.

I didn’t even realize this change was happening until a while back, while having dinner with some college friends. Someone asked me if I was outspoken. In reply, I just laughed and said that I was an introvert, so no, I wasn’t. Then something weird happened – the people around me laughed, as if I’d just said a joke.

How can I be an introvert, when, apparently, I’m extroverted enough that the idea of me being an introvert comes off as sarcastic?

It’s times like those that make me wonder – am I really an introvert? Was my extroversion as a little kid really just a phase? Or was it my introversion in my pre-teen and teen years that was phase?

Am I an introvert, or am I an extrovert?

I love my sleep, and, generally, don’t like messing with it. At the same time, I’ve been wanting to try out early rising for a while now; I’m super unproductive at night, so if I’m not a night person I just hope that I’m a morning person. I figured that my free day was probably the best time for me to test it out – at least if, for whatever reason, I ended up being super exhausted the entire day, I’d have the whole day to recover and be unproductive, rather than have to force myself to somehow pay attention in class.

Thus, I woke up at 5AM – and got more done in about 4 hours than I usually get done my entire day.

By 9AM, I had taken a shower, eaten breakfast, started and finished my only two assignments, compiled all my syllabus due dates into an excel file, knocked off some of the tinier tasks in my to-do list that I’ve been putting off, dried my hair with a hairdryer, and wrote half of an initial draft of this blog post – all because I’d decided to wake up earlier.

Usually by that time, especially on a class-less and commitment-less day such as last Tuesday, I would’ve accomplished nothing but sleep (plus maybe a shower and breakfast at the most).

Clearly, my “experiment” was a success. I found no reason to stop waking up early.

While a couple of days of experience probably isn’t the most accurate basis, I can already think of a few pros and cons to making early rising a permanent part of my sleep schedule:

Con: Missing that block of time at night when everyone is online

On Wednesday morning, I woke up to 16 Facebook notifications. I’m a member of some organizations/groups in school, and I sometimes have to work on group activities for classes, and, by not being online, I could risk missing opportunities to help out.

Pro: Missing that block of time at night wasted online

Even if sometimes there’s a good reason or even a need to be online at night, 99% of the time, there isn’t. I think if I could look back and record my activity from 7:00PM-11:00PM for the last few years, I would mostly just see myself scrolling through Facebook and Twitter, waiting for something to happen. I can always see announcements or interesting posts in the morning; I don’t need to see them right when they are posted.

Con: Not waking up to the sunlight

I enjoy waking up naturally, to the light of the sun. The days start earliest at this time, as it is still kind of the summer season, yet the sun still rises between 5:30AM and 6:00AM – never as early as 5:00AM. Alarm clocks aren’t nearly as comforting to wake up to.

Pro: Not waking up to the noise

During the school week, I live in a condominium near the school i.e. in the middle of the city. That means falling asleep to car horns and train noises and waking up to the same thing – unless I wake up early. I appreciate my quiet alone time, so it would be great if I could have that every morning.

Con: Not having the whole night to finish school work

The other day, I asked my brother the other day why he didn’t do his homework in the morning (since most of his classes start late and end late). He just replied that he’d just rather work on them at night – because, at night, it feels like you have “unlimited time”, at least compared to the morning, and especially if it’s due the next day. By waking up earlier, I also have to sleep earlier, which would deprive me of this “unlimited time”.

Pro: Not needing to have the whole night to finish school work

Last Tuesday, I finished both my homework for Wednesday and my homework that’s still due on Monday. Would I rather use my mornings to finish homework ahead of time and still get enough sleep, or use my nights to finish homework the day before it’s due and be sleep deprived? I figure it’s an easy choice to make.

I’m going to continue to wake up early – no later than 5:00AM, possibly even 4:30AM, every morning – my main motivation being to be more productive. I don’t need to get less sleep to have more time to do things. By making sure I’m asleep when I’m unproductive and awake when I’m productive, I can gain more time, in a way. That’s my theory behind this.

Have you every tried waking up earlier? Are you a morning person, or a night person? Or are you something in between?

This year, my family and I went to Italy for summer vacation. And yes, I did do that thing with the pretentious greeting in another language. Please forgive me; I’m still having some difficulty getting over the entire experience.

But as wonderful as Italy was, I’m glad to be back home in the Philippines. An Asian girl needs her rice, after all – especially after 2 weeks of eating pizza, pasta and gelato pretty much exclusively. I probably won’t eat pizza or pasta for a month, but in the presence of the summer heat of our tropical country, I would probably welcome the gelato with open arms.

The food was great, but we didn’t just eat while we were there. Unfortunately, a blog post doesn’t give me nearly enough space for 2 weeks’ worth of thoughts and occurrences (at least without boring you all half to death), so here are a few of the parts that I’m most excited to share.

We went to the Colosseum in Rome.

While we did go to the Vatican, I just enjoyed and appreciated the Colosseum and Roman Forum so much more. While I’m not the type of person who’s too into history, I still found myself being genuinely interested in our tour guide’s stories and explanations about ancient Roman life. I found a lot of it extremely relevant to, not only the history of Rome, but the history of the entire human race.

I’m extremely jealous of the Italian kids who get to go to such an amazing place for their field trips, while we need to spend a day flying first to see the same thing.

I bought a sword in Florence.

It’s a tiny one, but I was just so happy with myself after buying it. I did and bought a lot of other things in Florence, so I don’t know why this one purchase sticks out in my head so much, but it just does. I just walked into this shop in Florence, saw this (among several other swords) on the shelf, thought, “That’s awesome. I want it,” and, after a bit of thinking, went back and bought it. And I don’t regret this purchase one bit! Now, to figure out where to put it…

It’s just a bit larger than my hand. How can something look so lethal and so adorable at the same time?

We went to Museo Ferrari in Maranello.

This was honestly the place was least excited about. Even for my brother, it was just the replacement for our original plans to go visit Lamborghini, which was closed at the time we were in Italy. I was supposed to spend the day resting and reading while my brothers and dad went. I ended up going in the place of my younger brother and having a generally good time.

This room was the coolest one, having models of winning cars, pictures and helmets of winning drivers, and tons of trophies!

We had the most beautiful view of Lake Como.

This was also another place I found myself enjoying a lot more than I thought I would. The view from our hotel was breath-taking, first of all. Usually, if I sat down and did nothing for an hour, I would feel like I was wasting my time, but when I was there, simply sitting down and breathing in the surroundings often seemed like the only logical thing to do.

This is the view we got to wake up to. I know. Wow.

We rode on a Gondola in Venice.

Venice as a whole was definitely a different experience. Riding water buses and water taxis to get around obviously isn’t the norm in most places. Gondolas weren’t really a form of transportation as much as they were a novelty. We still ended up riding on one. It was literally the only thing my little brother asked for the entire trip, so how could we deny him of a family gondola ride? It was cool when we crossed paths with other gondolas, and the ride also served partially as a tour – but the best part of it was seeing my little brother so happy.

At one point there were six moving gondolas in one place!

As a whole, our trip to Italy was a lot of things. It was an opportunity to experience different cultures, to shop, to try new things, to relax, and to spend time as a family. It was definitely my favorite vacation thus far, and also, probably, our biggest one. I really want to learn Italian now – if only I had a use for it, then I’d have a good excuse to take a class.

At the moment our family’s getting over-excited with plans for our next big vacation – as if it’s going to be happening soon (which it isn’t). I guess we’re still high on happiness from our vacation in Italy. Are there any countries you would suggest for us to visit next time? I would love to hear about your suggestions and past vacation experiences!

Grazie, and I hope you all had (or will have, depending where you live) a great summer vacation!

One of my classes last term required me to render a certain number of hours of church service. At the point in time of this story, I only had 2 hours left to go, as well as a rare Friday afternoon off. Because of this, I decided to render my hours on Friday that week instead of on Saturday, when I usually did.

I entered the office, and, while I was being given my task for the day, I noticed there was a boy around my age there doing office work too. As soon as I sat down he initiated conversation with me. We found out that we went to the same university and had a couple of mutual friends. We continued to talk in between work, which was a refreshing change from the 2 hours of silence I usually endured during church service.

After a while though, completely out of topic, he suddenly asked me,

Would you wanna hang out sometime?

This caught me by surprise. This isn’t the kind of situation I had any experience dealing with at all, so I didn’t know what to say. What I wanted to say was that I had a boyfriend, but, at the same time, I didn’t want to assume that that’s the kind of “hang out” he was referring to. I was put on the spot, so I just said the first thing that came to my mind,

I’d rather not.

Wow, I sounded like a bitch.

That was the first thought that came to my mind afterwards. Unfortunately, I had no way of taking back what I said without making things even more awkward. I was so worried I’d offended him, and was really embarrassed for being so stupid and inconsiderate.

I mean, “I’d rather not” – who says that?

Apparently, I do. Oops.

After my reply, he just continued the conversation as if nothing had happened.

“There’s a sense of fulfillment that comes with being busy.”

This is a sentence taken directly from my last post. Ironically, I’m going to spend the rest of this post contradicting that statement.

Don’t get me wrong – there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being busy. It’s actually good to give yourself work to do and short-term goals to work towards. The problem arises when the motivation is wrong. You work on, contribute to or commit to a project or group out of you passion for it; you shouldn’t work simply for the sake of being busy.

Throughout my first year of college, I frequently found myself going into a state wherein I somehow deluded myself into thinking that I could find fulfillment in work – that being accomplished was equivalent to being busy. Subconsciously, I felt that being successful meant always having somewhere important to be or something important to do.

Looking back, the times I was overworking myself were also the times I was at my worst, in almost all aspects. They were the times I wasn’t getting enough sleep. They were the times I was in a snappy mood. They were the times I felt helpless, as if my life was beyond my control.

I’m actually glad I tried out a lot of extra-curricular activities this year. I’ve tested the waters. Next year, though, I need to be much more more selective. At least now I have a better idea the types of non-academic activities I’d want to prioritize, and where my limits are.

For now, I’ll just need to put a conscious effort into reminding myself that my priority is my sanity, not my state of being busy or not.

It’s been almost two months since I’d last blogged, but instead of apologizing, let me just update you all on my life a little bit:

1. I turned 18
2. I joined a couple of things at school
3. I became extremely busy

…and that’s the main gist of it all.

In grade school and high school, I was never one to join a lot of extracurricular activities. My only priorities in school were my academics and the chorale.

Now that I’m in college though, I’m finding myself being active in organizations, joining activities, and overall just wishing I knew the secret to time-bending, though it doesn’t look like that’s going to be happening any time soon. In all honesty, compared to some others, I may not actually have too much going on, but, for me, it’s still a bit of a struggle to find time for it all.

Though I may be having difficulty managing my time, I have no regrets. There’s a sense of fulfillment that comes with being busy. I just like feeling that I’m contributing to something big, one way or another. It’s also nice to know that, in the pursuit of becoming a computer programmer, I’m not leaving all my other interests behind.