Sick day reflections

Today is one of the rare occasions when I can update my blog with a text post. I’m sick, and it’s such a shame that the only time I have to enjoy this hobby is when I’m not out and about doing the stuff I’m supposed to do.

The past few years have been tough: from the mountains of paperwork and the mounting deadlines, I can’t even imagine how I survived all that chaos, but I’ve also learned a lot of new things about myself and others during those troubling times. I’ve learned to open up to people about emotions, and I’ve learned the value of talking about your problems.

It’s amazing how a few years can change you drastically. I think I’ve matured considerably online, and I think that I’ve become more responsible with my posts. I’ve been back-reading this blog and I’ve seen a lot of stuff that falls short of praiseworthy.

Hopefully the next time I update this blog, it’ll be when I’m healthy and have the time.

What counts is to win. The rest is collateral damage.
“One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read – in such a moment, anything can happen. The pressed oil of words can blaze up into music, into image, into the heart and mind’s knowledge. The lit and shadowed places within us can be warmed.”
— Jane Hirshfield, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (via litverve)

(via fuckyeahexistentialism)

We went to Dakak for a convention last week and we stopped by the Rizal shrine before going home. This used to be a fish pond but the keepers say that the fishes that used to be in the pond have died already.

The trip was full of firsts for me: I travelled by sea for the first time, I rode a rollercoaster for the first time, I tried a zipline for the first time, and I went to a lot of new places for the first time.

It was a few days to remember!

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”

aseaofquotes:

Albert Goldbarth, “The Sciences Sing a Lullaby”

(via thesynesthesiaghost-deactivated)

“So many times, so many as now, it has oppressed me to feel myself feel — to feel anguish just for feeling, to feel the restlessness of being here, the nostalgia of something I’ve never known, the sunset of all emotions, myself yellowing, subdued to grey sadness in my external self-awareness”
— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet (via pro-solitude)

(via fuckyeahexistentialism)

“Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but “steal” some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.”
— Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1951-1959 (via starrywavves)

(via fuckyeahexistentialism)

reformationx:
“ Looking For Alaska, John Green
”

reformationx:

Looking For Alaska, John Green

(via peopleraindrizzlehurricane)

“You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.”
— John Green (via psych-quotes)

(via margoism)

“‘A cell,’ Steve Cole said, clasping some amberjack, 'is a machine for turning experience into biology.’”

It’s been such a long time since I last wrote a blog post. I’m already in the second semester of my third year in BS Accountancy and things are getting stressful.

There’s hardly any time to write or read anything else but books on Accounting, Finance and Business Law, lately.

But the struggle and pain only lasts a small amount of time in memory, really. I look back at what’s behind me and all I can see is how far I’ve come, how great the experience has been, and how this struggle is just temporary.

I was very iffy about Accountancy three years ago. I was always cynical about why people always felt the need to share their sob stories.

Now I do. There’s a compulsion to share comforting words to each other that arises when your populations are dwindling.

But after all the heartache (and I’ve had my fair share of it) all that’s left really is joy and laughter.

The ultimate finality of time lies in forgetting. The forgotten are more dead than their comrades who are cherised and remembered.

I have been gushing so much over a Pacific Standard article, The Social Life of Genes, lately.

The article talks about how the popular notion that our traits are a product of our genes, might be less true. How we frame our experience, that is, how we perceive our experiences, seem to bear a lot on how our experiences change us.

It’s a really great read.

I guess it will be another while before my next post.

reuters:

Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was elected in a surprise choice to be the new leader of the troubled Roman Catholic Church on Wednesday, and said he would take the name Francis I.

Pope Francis, 76, appeared on the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica just over an hour after white smoke poured from a chimney on the roof of the Sistine Chapel to signal he had been chosen to lead the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.

The choice of Bergoglio was announced by French cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran with the Latin words “Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum. Habemus Papam” (“I announce to you a great joy. We have a pope”

READ ON: Argentina’s Bergoglio elected as new pope

Habemus Papam! We have a new pope. I’m no devout Catholic but somehow every time a new pope is elected, my hope for an even more open, relatable Church is renewed. That is notwithstanding his historically conservative beliefs.

breakingnews:
“ Physicists says they have found a Higgs boson
AP: Physicists say they are now confident they have discovered a long-sought subatomic particle known as a Higgs boson.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, says a look...

breakingnews:

Physicists says they have found a Higgs boson

AP: Physicists say they are now confident they have discovered a long-sought subatomic particle known as a Higgs boson.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, says a look at all the data from 2012 shows that what they found last year was a version of what is popularly referred to as the ‘God particle.’

Photo: A hardhat worker is dwarfed by the inner workings of the Large Hadron Collider’s ATLAS detector, deep beneath the French-Swiss border.(EIROforum / CERN)

This is just exciting news.