thelifelongloner

[thelifelongloner]

When 28 Years Feel Like It’s Enough

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering. - Nietzsche

I think Nietzsche said is best that living and suffering are intertwined. The only way to come out alive (at least figuratively) is to find some semblance of meaning in the everyday drudgery of working and trying to reach your goals.

But how do you find meaning when the meaning you want is light years ahead of you? How do you even muster enough patience to get to the point you want to? 

Sigh. So many questions but not enough answers to silence my diabolically overactive mind! Sometimes I feel so emotionally and mentally exhausted that I feel like I’ve been living a lifetime’s worth of stresses. But then I remember I’m not even three decades in yet. The hell!

Me right now. 

If there’s a word that encapsulates what I’m feeling right now, it would be “ennui.” Everything is just so goddamn tiring, I want to go back to my mother’s womb and time travel back to before I was even a zygote so I could let another sperm cell win.

Just goes to show that not all battles are meant to be won. If I’ve only known this before. Haha

Short of thinking suicidal thoughts, my plan of action right now is to take things day by day. It’s a good thing I’m able to set long-term goals and shit but if it’s crippling the heck out of my mental and emotional resources then I really have to take it a few notches down or risk driving myself mad (not that I’m not already crazy but ya know, at least I’m not clinically insane hehe).

That’s about it for today’s useless rant! Hope you learned nothing because this isn’t meant to be informative at all. Teehee. :P

#thirties #30s #sperm cell #zygote

[thelifelongloner]

Adulting at 28 Doesn’t Mean Having Marriage in Mind

To be 28 and nearing your 30s! ‘Tis the age where my peers and younger acquaintances try their hand at marriage. I don’t know if it’s just me but I think that anyone marrying below the age of 30 is making a really big mistake.

I’m not saying that those who do so won’t have a successful marriage. I’m just saying that it will take a lot of hella work. Like, the kind of work where you’re trying to fill a pail with a hole—a neverending exercise in frustration. 

A married person I talked to once told me that it was 10 years of hell first before he got to the heaven part of his marriage. When I heard it, my inner reaction was like holy cow—I better think twice (or thrice and whatever comes after that) before marrying anyone with two legs! 

If that doesn’t deter you right there, you either have a heart of steel or you’re so mindless nothing registers as a coherent concern for you. (I sincerely hope it’s the first because who wants a mind that can’t think, right?)

Can you imagine being in 10 years of relationship hell before ever getting to the good part? I surely can’t. Knowing my emotional nature, I’ll just probably kill myself by the 2nd year. Joke! Of course, I’ll exhaust other means of solution first if I ever get to find out what that is. Haha.

The thing about marrying in your early to mid-20s is that you don’t get to see the entire picture. It’s like being required to make a life-altering, important decision that is bound to affect a good part of your life but only using half the mental capacity you’re really capable of. 

You know why? Because the development of your pre-frontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that’s responsible for reasoning and making logical decisions, doesn’t fully develop and mature until you’re about 27.

This could be the reason why there are a lot of anecdotal stories stating how they realized that their spouse was different from the one they married or how they themselves were different people all along. I presume a lot of people’s realizations aren’t as drastic but you probably get the picture, if you know what I mean.

Case in point is a close friend of mind who had been brow-beaten to marrying his long-time girlfriend because he got her knocked up. It was clear as day that he wasn’t ready—either emotionally or financially. But he’s a nice guy and he always aimed to please so he acquiesced.

They pushed through with the wedding and loaned the expenses required for it. The baby then came a few months after via C-section and the costs kept racking up. Add the fact that the wife didn’t resume work since she’s so beholden to her offspring so the household income was slashed.

Of course, the issues above don't yet involve their key differences in parenting style, financial decisions, as well as other relationship dynamics stuff. I know differences between two people in a relationship are par for the course, but if only one side is doing all the adjusting then how is that called marriage? 

Picking a person to spend a lifetime with who consistently pressures you into doing things their way and has an obvious deep-seated disparity from your beliefs is like picking a rock to bash your head in. It’s painful and bloody. 

I don’t think that kind of romantic love alone is worth losing your personal integrity over and committing emotional suicide but hey, to each his own. I feel sad and unfortunate for them but it’s a problem they’ve set up for themselves. 

Maybe some people really have a streak of emotional masochism in them. If that’s the case, all the best to them. All I can really say is that I’m glad it’s not me in any of the situations above! I thank the high heavens I was born me because I know and trust myself that I would never willingly put myself in that kind of situation.

Although I’m not averse to marriage per se. I am, however, averse to society’s notion of marriage particularly here in the Philippines. 

Here, people treat it like it’s the end of all things that are remotely fun for you. You’ll start hearing comments like, “you shouldn’t be doing that, you’re already married” if you ever as much as go out with your friends once in a blue moon or God forbid, buy that shoe to replace your aging, pocket-riddled one. Or something similarly innocuous. 

Not that this ever happened to me because well, hello, I’ve never been married but I see it in how married people are judged and scrutinized for their daily life choices like they don’t have the right to live like normal human beings who are allowed to let loose or be selfish once in a while.

Last time I checked, marriage is about two people living their lives together with the blessing of the legal system or church—not being condemned to a life of made-up prison.

For me, a better definition of marriage is that it should be able to give you wings. But that’s just me and sadly, the reality for others who have been married or are currently married won’t be changing anytime soon.

I’m just feel fortunate it’s not me facing their reality. Teehee. :P

Last meme of the post to give you a laugh:

#marriage #adulting #millenials #philippines #filipino culture

[thelifelongloner]

Finding One’s Missing Will to Live

If you’ve been in this world long enough (I say, anything more than two decades is long enough), you’ve probably realized at some point in your life that it hurts to live. You know, the traumatic, agonizing kind of pain that makes you feel so despondent, you keep asking the universe why you ever existed in the first place. 

But hey, since you’re already alive and well, might as well give it your best shot, right? (P.S. Excuse my feeble attempt at encouragement. Teehee.)

If only having the will to live is as easy as refueling at a gas station, I would be living life at full speed, always on full tank. But alas, reality is a bitch and I’m always left grappling with my ever fluctuating will to live.

Almost describes me to a T.

I’ve been trying to pinpoint why my will plummets to startlingly low depths every specific period of time and I’ve arrived at a few conclusions:

It’s a result of that ever hopeless feeling that your goals and dreams are taking too long to happen. Like, I want all of the things I want now! But I guess life has other plans. Boohoo for me.

It’s a result of struggling with pointless things like senseless feelings for other people which I deem has no real purpose in this life or even the next lifetime, or the next one after that (you get the drift).

Or it’s as simple as the fact that being emotionally stable is not my forte. No surprise there actually. Haha.

Anyway, like any self-respecting life guru will tell you—all things shall pass. 

You know life has fucked you up so bad when you start resorting to this hollow, time-worn sayings with no additional insight whatsoever. Oh well, if you’re expecting a better conclusion, think again since I already spent my last ounce of will writing this post. Haha!

#the will to live

[thelifelongloner]

Depressed? Maybe You Just Have a Shitty Job

Depression is a complex feeling. But the cause behind is often not. Sometimes it could be as simple as hating the tediousness that comes with your job that it inevitably seeps into your emotional and mental core.

But if you’re not sure—all it would take is to quit your job and you’ll know exactly if it’s really the reason behind your underlying blues. I know it’s easier said than done but hey, at least your jobless AND enlightened, right? 

If you say, “Well, I can’t exactly quit my job right now because of (insert blah blah reasons).” My only advice to you would be to pray to all the gods that they give you the wherewithal to withstand your job until such time you don’t need it anymore or you suddenly die of heartache. I kid, I kid.

To those looking for a more viable advice, the following would be great (which is what I use too):

If you don’t have the heart to quit then let them quit you...by doing a really bad job of your everyday work! I guarantee you it won’t be even a month and they’ll be raring to show your ass off the door. *wink, wink*

#depression #work #job

[thelifelongloner]

On Nicki’s Karma and Remy Ma’s Predictable Claptrap

As a long-time avid hip-hop and r&b listener, I try to keep up with the industry’s newest happenings and the beef that just exploded between Remy Ma and Nicki sure got my attention.

My take on this is that Nicki had it coming to her. Anytime you leave no room for competition, you’ll always have people behind your back raring to take you down. If you’re not encouraging others to get ahead, you’ll always be perpetuating a dog-eat-dog world that thrives on putting down others.

It’s like karma but not the Western definition of quid pro quo where you get the exact same thing you put out. I’m talking about its original Hindu meaning of accumulated karma where you’re bound to reap the fruits of your action once it has ripened. Sooner or later, Nicki’s bound to have competition because no one is on top forever. Believe that.

If that ain’t the truth.

It’s good to extol your virtues and shit. This is a rap game, after all, and a rapper’s bread and butter is to make sure they outdo others. However, anything that’s taken to extreme will always easily backfire on you. 

Nicki’s rapping byline throughout her career is based on how successful she is and how other female rappers are not. She only ever supports female rappers who have a different target market than her (e.g. Young Ma and Dej Loaf).  This is just sad because it promotes the typical female competitive dynamics that we often see in real life. You know, the type where girls are deliberately putting down other girls and outshining them and all for what? Just to get the male attention.

I don’t get what’s so special about getting male attention or approval. Yup, you get admired but adoration can only get you so far and waiting on other’s approval puts you under their power. I’ve always believed that there’s always room for everybody to shine and succeed no matter what the industry is if we only make it so. But as with the case of Nicki, she chooses not to. Now moving on to Remy Ma’s verse. It embodies the typical claptrap attack on females. Strike at their looks or their sexual morality. It lacks originality and is a superficial attempt at undermining another female.

My other concern about Remy Ma’s verse is that she’s quick to dispense such kind of potshots at her surgically enhanced body but is actually guilty for having had some work done on herself as well. Is this a classic case of a pot calling the kettle black? It sure sounds like it to me.

#nickiminaj #remyma #feminism #shether #karma

[thelifelongloner]

New shizz!

Check out this post on flight attendant salary.

[thelifelongloner]

The Kind of Guy You Should Absolutely Steer Clear From

I’m no expert at picking guys but I can, however, smell a rotten apple from afar. At the minimum, I have the good sense of knowing those who’ll only spell trouble down the line. And one such type is the “Insecure Guy” a.k.a. “I-Need-You-To-Need-Me-So-I-Can-Feel-Better-About-Myself.” 

That’s a good thing...so she won’t have to see your face. Haha. This type of insecure guy initially comes on strong and makes himself appear to be some sort of an alpha male. But don’t be fooled, the only thing that can be considered alpha in his whole being or persona is his deep-seated self-disgust. You know the kind of belief that no sane woman would stay with him lest that woman needs him financially. 

He wants a beautiful woman but has zilch to offer in the looks department. Notwithstanding that, he belittles people—especially women, even if it’s his sister—who he deems ugly as unbefitting to act in anything less than hospitable or accommodating. Like, what the heck? Do you expect less than good-looking people to not have bad days?

It baffles me to no end how guys like these form their idiotic, dumbfounding viewpoints. If you’re ugly yourself, how could you have the gall to talk down others who are in the same boat as you? It’s like a pot calling the kettle black. Don’t you have a mirror in your house for god’s sake?

However, what’s more disconcerting than his appearance-bashing rants is his antiquated perspective on gender roles, specifically that of women. This type of guy actually believes that women should marry for money if they want to come up in life. Uhm, hello? This isn’t the mid-ages now and women can perfectly work for whatever they want to achieve.

Moreover, this is the type of guy who would dare blame your being single to your apparent “manly-like” characteristics and accuse you of being a lesbian. Like bitch, women ain’t 2-dimensional barbies. Most girls perfectly have both masculine and feminine characteristics. Grow a brain, would you?

This is actually saddening because the said perspectives perpetuate a twisted definition of love for this type of person. This kind of guy predicates love on the basis of need. In those kinds of setting, love ends once that need has been fulfilled or when the person has overcome that need. Therefore it’s less secure than opting for the kind of love that is based on genuine acceptance and desire.

If it were me, I wouldn’t want to be loved just because a person needs me—I prefer to be loved by someone who wants and accepts me for who I am.

And that ladies and gents, is my two cents’ worth regarding this topic. Hihi. :P

#insecure guys #relationships #relationship advice #love

[thelifelongloner]

Why Hoping and Waiting is Not a Viable Life Strategy

I’ve always been the hopeful type. You know, the ever optimistic expectant who firmly believes that everything would no doubt turn out well.

When things take a turn for worse, I tell myself, “just hope.”

When life throws lemons at me, I tell myself, “just make a lemonade. “

And so on and so forth.

The things is, it can get tiring being always hopeful. Sometimes, there just comes a point in your life when you think that hoping isn’t cutting it anymore.

The time comes when you’re thirsty for results and it feels like you’ve been waiting for forever. 

So what do you do when you’re at this point? You act on it. You start doing more and you start doing more of what gets you results. You hope less, but nevertheless still hope.

After all, what is life if you can’t keep a sliver of hope that things will be better. 

Of course, I can’t leave things on a rather dour, gist-less note. In place of the words that seem to escape me now, Ayn Rand said it best with this piece:

#hoping #hope #life strategy #hope and wait #ayn rand

[thelifelongloner]

As long as you continuously improve, success is inevitable.

Unknown

#success

[thelifelongloner]

If You Deserve It, You’ll Probably Get It

The logical perspective is to deem life as unfair.

There will always be lucky people who enjoy fortune without going through hoops and there will also be people who work their butts off and still be in the same place for years.

Others subscribe to the idea of fate—if it were meant for you, you’ll probably get it. I have a problem with this perspective because it promotes yielding your control of your life. That no matter what you do or what you don’t do, you’ll still get something if chance wants you to have it.

It reeks of a lazy and powerless undertone if you ask me.

A better part of me would rather cling to the idea that if you deserve it, you’ll probably get it.

The operative word here is “probably.” Of course, not everyone will get what they’re due, but it always pays to be hopeful.

But what makes someone deserving? Some people think they’re deserving because they worked hard or because they’re good people.

I hear a lot of people say they’re deserving, but what’s actually their basis for that? They’re perception of themselves of course. The things we say to ourselves—”I’m competent,” “I’m capable,” “I have what it takes”—is comforting to some extent, but it doesn’t mean others think the same thing of us.

Deserving or not, maybe life is not actually fair. It’s our idea of fairness that’s unfair.

Of course, when things are going our way, no one complains that life is unfair. I think at the core, wanting life to be fair is just wishing it to grant our innermost, deepest desires. And I’m definitely all for that.

#life #fairness

[thelifelongloner]

The End of the Line

For the past year or so, I’ve had this nagging feeling that writing isn’t just cutting it for me anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always liked the freelance part because that means I can set my own hours, stay at home, and be able to deal with people online. But over the last months, it has been increasingly harder for me to motivate myself to work through projects, no matter how short or long.

Before, that would only happen when I’m working in extended projects where I have to write on the same topic over and over again.

I definitely knew when I started that I wouldn’t want to make a lifelong career out of writing since my ultimate goal and dream is to actually be a business owner. 

Hopefully in the future. Haha!

Although most people think they’ve escaped the corporate rat race by switching to freelance, it’s actually just another rat race of finding clients. Moreover, even if you technically don’t have a boss when you’re freelancing, you’re still subject to the whims of your client.

Now that I’m nearing the 5-year mark of my freelance writing career, I just can’t shake this inner unrest anymore. I actually made a significant cutback on my projects this year and have only taken on a few clients. Good thing I’m fortunate enough to be able to do this and come out still financially intact.

So now, my plan is to fully transition away from writing. I’m still gonna do some writing of course, but for personal projects only. Over the past few months, I’ve started a few small ventures that can slowly, but surely help me sustain a living apart from freelance writing.

Five years of freelance writing is not a bad run, and although I wished I could’ve made the jump sooner, I feel good about the timing in making this transition.

Goals!

So mark my words, before my fifth year of being a freelance writer comes, I would already have a different income earning system in place. Wish me luck and cheers to the future!

#freelance #career change #career choices

[thelifelongloner]

[thelifelongloner]

Batlag falls in Tanay

[thelifelongloner]

Verse of a lifetime

[thelifelongloner]

There’s Always A First Time For Everything

So this year marks my 4th year freelancing. I’m definitely proud to say that for the most part, I managed to steer clear from scammers who request work and then don’t pay. This was until last week.

I signed up for this new job marketplace since I want to expand my clientele reach. Wrong move. This new job bidding site doesn’t vet their clients like my previous one did, leading to sketchy clients such as the one I got. The client’s name is Cathleen Cofler, but was only posing as Cathleen Cofler (there’s no such name or person that exists). 

The person behind the identity was actually a wannabe Kenyan writer who scams writer to do his/her work since he doesn’t have any elementary writing skills from which to start his/her career.

It just made me think, how you could people scam writers who are only out to make an honest, decent living? Do they have no conscience at all? Don’t they have any shame to speak of? What kind of family or environment raised this type of people that they have to resort to swindling people just to get by? Are they psychopaths? 

I’m asking all these questions because I wanna know what made it possible that there are people like this.

I think that’s really no way to live a life. I’m amazed they could still sleep at night and look at their own reflection in the mirror without flinching, because that’s the kind of ugliness that goes bone deep I tell you. Had this happened before, I would’ve raised hell to get my money. I don’t know if time has mellowed me down, but I decided to just let it slide and move on (not without giving the “client” an earful though). What I felt is pity.

I pity this person because how could an individual who dupes people for a living ever be successful in life? Do they think they could get by in life by doing that to people? Why not just improve your writing instead of using other writers and not paying them? What I see is one pathetic human being with a contemptible existence.

I pity them because there’s no way you could rise above in life with that kind of attitude and working credo. Inside them, I think what festers is a good-for-nothing, talentless complex that’s why they can’t even use their own identity. 

It’s such a shame there’s people like this that exist. But I guess their existence has a purpose as well, to serve as an example of the kind of person we don’t want to be—inferior, useless, and despicable.

I pity them, because they are their own hell. Everyday they’re probably disappointed with their selves for all the things they can’t and will never hope to achieve. I hope they get duped out of their hard-earned money so then can finally get to have a taste of their own medicine.

Just in case you encounter a person named below, stay away from him/her! He/she scams people of their work. Stay out of Outsource.com too, they have a shady business model that does nothing to protect their freelancers.

#Catherine Cofler #scammer #beware of scammers #outsource.com

[thelifelongloner]

This is how I chill - Spike

[thelifelongloner]

The Pitfalls of Upgrading Your Goals

Have you ever been so deliriously ambitious about something that you spend your waking days scheming how the hell to make it happen?

I do and it’s driving me into a hysterical funk, because attaining it is one hell of a grueling effort. You want it and you need it now, but your current circumstances just won’t let you have it.

Of course, my mind knows that any goal worth pursuing takes time, but the other side of me, the one responsible for all my basest, most grisly acts, tells otherwise. It keeps telling me why the heck it’s not seeing any results yet when a day has already passed.

I’m like, shut up would you. This is no walk in the park and I need you to stop whining and start thinking so we can double-time our way to this goal. The petulant git in me just grumbled back at me for telling her off.

But I digress (I blame my exceedingly short attention span here). So back to what I was talking about, you make the necessary plans for your goal only to realize that the path to it is filled with every crack, pothole, and bump you can imagine.

What do you do when your plans and reality are like the two opposing earth poles?

If you’re anything like me, you resort to amp up your conniving ways in order to hatch the perfect, Machiavellian plan; however, illegal or fictional the means are. 

The thing is, my experience renders me unfit to execute those plans seeing that I have only ever stayed at the right side of the law. This is actually one fleeting moment where I wished I was kinda living as a highly functioning, sociopath CEO or some hot, rich, ditzy celebrity living off from a leaked sex tape-induced fame. 

Me right now.

I kid, I kid. I’m really not that desperate to trade myself or my life. Not by any stretch (I hope you’re duly convinced as I am). I’d probably be miserable as hell if I ever get to live their lives even for just a day. I know it must be hard not know what to do with all that money or free time.

With all those ideas dutifully trashed, the only recourse left is to slog it out, hope for the best, and find the lofty bounty I know was meant for me. Teehee. ;)

#goals