New Year's Resolutions

TALK LOUDER.

When 90% of the people you talk to everyday say Ha? and put their ears closer just to hear you that does not mean all of them are deaf. Perhaps the problem is with the volume of your voice. I am guilty of this because this is what my brother and I have been accustomed to. Our voices are always set on Ascending. Just to give you an idea:

BROTHER: *&@^%$#! *%^ %#$* &%)&! @$ )&%&#& (inaudible).

ME: Ano?

BROTHER: Pa@^ku#! *%^ yung &%)ro @$ kwar#&! (low).

ME: Leche magsalita ka ng maayos diyan tsitsinelasin kita!

BROTHER: PAKIKUHA NGA YUNG LIBRO SA KWARTO! BINGE!

And then when it is my turn to ask for a favor it also goes that way. It is perhaps because when we speak we hear a voice in our head telling us that we are speaking loud enough and when I try to talk louder it would seem tantamount to shouting. I think I would just practice talking louder for everyone's sake.

DECIDE WHAT TO DO WITH MY HAIR

My hair is a bitch/attention-whore suffering from a long unresolved identity crisis. Just talking about it actually deserves another blog entry just to point out how complicated it really is. Suffice it to say that when I have it shaved I look like a convict. When it is extremely short I look like a cross between a drug addict and E.T. And when it is long my mother calls me taong-labas while the cashiers at Jollibee refer to me as MA'M.

A voice inside my head tells me not to cut it, while the same voice's classmate tells me I should run to the barber shop, as in right now. I do not know what to do. It is very irritating when it is long. My special good for nothing genetic illness rejoices and a lot of people mistake me for something that I am not (What the hell is a taong-labas? Honestly!) I guess I would just leave it to fate since the resolution of dyeing it white last year did not do any good either (It did not push through.)

IMPROVE MY ENGLISH

My English proficiency is going down, down, down, which is really weird. It should be improving with all the languages I am trying to learn and yet I feel that it is just getting worse.

While I do not usually commit eyebrow-raising mistakes such as Yasmien Kurdi's Thanks to all who buyed my album! or Janina San Miguel's My pamily, there was the wa-they're, they was the one who's... very... Hahahaha... I realize that I usually am lost for words when I am conversing with someone in English. This freaks me out because when I am writing, those words then rush to my head. So what, my brain is discriminating between speaking and writing now? Now I have more reason to believe that my hair is such a bitch/attention-whore. It is connected directly to my head.

I am not aiming to be Shakespeare here. I just want to better express myself in the language. With the different accents I have no problem (Oi lurve Ausseys!) but maybe I should review my grammar and choice of words. I guess that is when this blog comes in handy. If I could just write religiously every week and read my book collection then perhaps it would not take long for me to finally get satisfied with my English proficiency.

FOR NOW, BE DAMN GOOD AT SOMETHING

There is GOOD, DAMN GOOD, and then there is GREAT. For the last few years, everything I have done has not even reached GOOD. The lack of motivation to study also brought along with it that brand of mediocrity I am suffering from right now. Too bad this is real life, not college. If I screw up I could not repeat, and experience could never be any less of a bitch than your sixth grade English teacher.

I need to be DAMN GOOD at something. More than approbation from my peers, what I truly need is approval from myself. I have already started two lessons, one in music and another in sports. I will add three more to discover where I could really excel and which I would eventually come to love. When I discover what, that is then even DAMN GOOD would not do. I should be GREAT. By that time, I will have proven my self worth and I can then throw all my insecurities out the window.

BE STRESS FREE

No more stress! Enough is enough. In part this is also because of my job. I sit in front of the computer for 12 hours waiting for calls to come. At the end of the day I only receive three (So very lucky if I receive five, how boring is my job?) And so I have a lot (I think even a lot is an understatement) of time to think and most of the time I plan my life.

Planning my life is a very stressful thing to do, knowing how obsessive compulsive I am and since I do this in my free time (which happens to be synonymous to those 12 hours of work), I really get so much stress. Starting today, the said free time would be allotted to literature. It is time to read the pile of books resting in the bookshelf!

HAVE FUN

I think it depends on how you define fun. I define fun as being able to do what I want to do and learn what I want to learn. Fun means one movie per week in the nearest movie house. Fun means finishing the Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia imprisoned in my bookshelf. Fun means traveling around the world or perhaps just Southeast Asia this year (Xin Chao Vietnam! Here I come!) Fun means having a one week Broadway or West End musical treat, which would not happen this year because it is too expensive. Shit.

But I guess more than anything, it still boils down to being stress free. Most people end up in Mandaluyong when they cave in from too much stress. Sometimes they slit their wrists, or throw themselves off an EDSA billboard. I admit I am adventurous, but not that adventurous. As for me, I have a different way of dealing with stress, or at least my body does, and I hate it, annoying, irritating.

I would not promise to dye my hair white, like I have been doing in my past two Halloween's resolutions. Nor am I going to promise to read more novels in their original languages, for they are just damn hard to find. I would not promise anything. Not to anyone. Not to myself. I would just try to try to do my best. That is not a promise. It is more of a statement. But a statement could be a promise. But is every promise a statement? Or am I just bangag today and I am not making sense?

A leche. Basta I would just try to try to do my best, no pressure. I do not work well under pressure. Perhaps that is what I need to do, chillax. Go easy on me, self. Go easy on me.

Chillax! Yahoo! Not be bangag. Shit.