Liv in a Life Well-Lived

One thing I’m starting to suspect about myself is that behind my goody-two-shoes exterior is a competitive obsessive biyatch just lying dormant. I have actually analyzed the whole thing, and I suspect that much of my peaches and cream persona is actually a survival mechanism and not just a selfless desire for world peace. I have no real way of proving this because as it happens, I’m too close to the subject matter (me) and would never see it objectively. But once in a while, something comes along and strengthens my suspicion. Like Plants vs. Zombies. You know, I know, all my friends know, I hate Zombies. They are the foulest monsters ever imagined by the human imagination. I will take on hundred-headed hydrae and overlarge half-rats, half-mange creatures but God spare me from Zombies. Lately though, the world is overrun with a sudden interest and fascination for the unholy Re-animated. Movies, TV Shows, Books and Games all have different versions of these flesh eating, brain-feasting f...

It feels a little like brain surgery: how do you decide which parts are important and which parts are just meat? And what if what you thought of as a useless fraction of brain mass now turn out to be the critical piece that controls a vital human function (read: ability to plan and significant points in the cerebral cortex) and you would have to live your whole life not being able to imagine a future just because at one point in time you thought, “oh well that part is dispensable anyway”? I’m stuck. I’m stuck with over 3,000 books inside my teeny tiny house. Not all of it is mine, of course. About 700 or so belonged to my parents (management books, teaching aids, religious texts, reference materials for all possible branches of the social sciences). Approximately 45 belongs to my sister Ella (yeah, she loves to read, obviously). There was a point in time I would’ve felt boastful pride (redundancy intended) in the sheer number of literature available at my fingertips (because I sure as ...

Have you ever played one of those Hidden Objects Games (HOGs)? I’m currently playing one called Pahelika: The Lost Legends, and it’s quite difficult. So difficult that I have to cheat and download the strategy guide just to move to the next level. I have played dozens of HOGs, and I plow through them somehow without needing to cheat. In the earlier games, sooner or later, the puzzle unravels and you realize you’ve been staring at the answer all along. But this game just plain stumps me because of the utter lack of clues as to what’s next to be done. All you get is a generic exclamation about finding the next clue, and “oh-what-a-pretty-fairy-Garden” and then you are left to your own wits and defenses. The game so frustrates me that a friend told me if I was putting half of the energy it took to solve the befuddled mysteries into finding a boyfriend, I’ll be effing Venus de Milo. It’s so obvious she has never played a HOG all her life. The thing about finding hidden objects is it provid...

Today we talk about that personal mobile black hole we call a purse. Whether you like them big or small, with pockets or not, zippered or buttoned or clasped --- it’s an essential lady tool to carry our stuff around. What should be inside? Probably your wallet, Blackberry, Mp5 and kikay kit. Perhaps a pen and a small notebook and a thin tome of short stories to read while waiting for the bus/train/boyfriend to pick you up. Girls reading this are nodding their heads knowingly, albeit a little too hesitantly. I know, I know. That’s what SHOULD be inside. But what is actually inside that bag, honestly speaking? Melted Maxx candies you’ve had since October last year. 5-centavo coins that spilled out when you forgot to zip up your coin purse that one time... (okay, okay, lotsa times). Enough bus tickets to fake your way from here to Bukidnon. Movie stubs from your last gimmick with friends. A pen with a missing cap and ink on the inside lining of your bags. Kleenex tissues which might have ...

Summer is here. It’s time for the ubiquitous summer outings and gimmicks where everyone is encouraged to bare it all for the glaring Sun. Just last week, I accompanied my sister while she shopped for swim wear, which also happens to be my least favorite activity right after falling in line for a friggin’ useless sedula. Being big in some parts of her body, (aherm), she just can’t shop anywhere. But Marks and Spencer’s have forgiving sizes and she found a dress she can wear over her old swimsuit. Warily, I eyed a black lace see-thru summer tunic which looks painfully warm for summer, but undoubtedly sexy. Maybe a little too much for me. Then it occurred to me that our summer outing is uncomfortably near, and I still use the flowery blue swimsuit my Dad bought for me in high school. Yes, the one that makes me look like a walking flower patch, or as Gabe once screamed in open water, a blue whale (it didn’t help that I was also wearing a blue snorkeling mask). Maybe it really was time to c...

Trust the younger ones to ask the most difficult questions. This one is for Gen who taught me the finer points of Taylor Swift's music, and reminded me of the many reasons how writing can save a life from being mundane. -=-=-=-=-=-=- How to write well is a topic avoided by most writers because each and everyone hold a secret suspicion that their method is the least veritable way of doing it. I have read through countless manifestos stating that a certain process is best, but they'd be the first to justify that that there is no one way to write well. My take on it is that: all you need is a firm grasp on your language of choice, a topic, and a voice. Now, the first of the three can be learned (and you'd be surprised how many things somebody can teach you regardless of whether they've read LOTR or not). A topic can be given, chosen or decided upon. But it's the voice that takes forever to find and sometimes, even after finding it, you lose it and it takes another set ...

Who knows, the next corner, you might find the spoon. :D Recently, I have been thinking long and hard about what direction I ought to take with my life. I have harped on long enough about not knowing where to go, and I have committed so much energy to it that I failed to recognize the silver lining: well, doesn’t that just mean you can go anywhere??? Anywhere you choose, Olivia! Anything that sets your heart on fire, you could go there. All you have to do is to take a step, in any direction, and you’re there. For your whole life you have been preaching to your sister that God takes us where we are meant to go, but how much have you lived that precept? You only go when you understand where you’re meant to go, when you can see a path. But don’t you also like to talk about how sometimes you can’t see what’s ahead of you, and all you need is Faith? Are we all talk, and no real visible action now? Inside the bathroom, where all my best ideas come from, I realized that instead of seeing the ...