Soledad or Beatrice

Once i hoped that in another universe, or in another dimension or maybe in another lifetime I could be with you for eternity. We may not have been able to make it in this life, but in another we probably could. Don’t you think?

You moved away and for years we’re not talking. Not even a simple hello. But recently, your name appeared again. I can feel the love again through our “haha’s” and “I missed talking to you” phrases. In a few months, you’ll be home you said. You said you want to spend your days here with me, only me. I promised you, “just go home and I’m yours!” when what I really want to say is “I still love you.” But that phrase scared me so i reinvented it by saying “I’ll plan our trips when you get home” or “we’ll play in the arcade again like we used to.”

You’ve always been my Soledad, my God given solace. But you seem to be my Beatrice too, someone I will always love but only from afar.

Poetry of the Oppressed

Lately, I seem to fall in love with Button Poetry. It’s a group of poets who do performance poetry or I’d like to call it, the artistic performance of the oppressed. The later part is maybe because I think watching the performance poetry regarding oppression are the most stunning performances I’ve seen so far.

The thing that draws me to button poetry is because I love almost all forms of art, from performance arts to literary, to design to prints, photography and so on. I used to participate in creative writing, but kinda lost the passion along the way. I used to think that art is my only way to survive since I grew up troubled. Now I’m 26 and I’m still in trouble in so many ways, I think.

Now I know why I love performance poetry about oppression or why I lost my artistic side. That’s because I, too grow up oppressed. I learned the word silence before I even learned to hear my own voice. I learned that shooting stars are just dead sporadic meteors before I learned how to make sincere wishes. I was pushed to learn the science of everything before I fully enjoyed the wonders of the world. Everything should be properly explained and all actions should always fall into the norm. So I grew up a skeptic which eventually, I didn’t really like. I lost too many people and too many opportunities because I was a skeptic and cynical about almost everything, but mostly, because I grew up afraid that I might do something wrong or that I may not be able to defend or explain why I did what I did. So yeah, I’m still a little bit in trouble.

Despite everything, I learned not to hate the adults that surrounded me when I was little for making me who I am right now. I understand that they also have no idea how to raise a child, especially when that child starts to learn how to think for herself and question the things that surrounds her. But this I promise, if ever I’d be lucky to bring another human form into this world, I would let her/him be whoever she/he wants to be and promise to support her/him whatever the cost. That she/he will be able to choose her/his own identity, whoever she/he wants to love, that she/he can make her/his own mistakes whether she/he can explain it to me or not.

If I Hadn’t Said Yes To A Few Drinks!

It has been ages since I last wrote something on my blog, but I guess that’s kind of my thing. I do write a lot before. I just don’t publish it ’cause I’m not that confident. I used to be really passionate about writing when I was a kid, but I lost it when I grew up and realized that the world are surrounded by horrible beings. Not all of them though, but most of them. . Especially people at work, people that surround me at my job are ridiculously horrible individuals, arrogant, self-absorbed narcissists who can’t even enumerate the function of their frontal lobe or may not even have the slightest idea that they have one. At first it didn’t bother me, but then their crap started to weigh on me. It slowed me down and made me disgusted at every moment I am surrounded by them (Ugh).  So I requested a change in my duty hours. I like my new shift because most of the time I am left alone, which peacefully allows me to think and be productive. Though I know sooner or later I have to go back to my old shift because so many reasons. So cheers! I’ll probably drink even more when I go back to my old shift.

Well actually, I don’t want to talk about my overly – confident colleagues. They’re not the reason why I’m writing now. The first part was just me venting and I can’t help it. I wanna talk about my drinking. On my previous entry “I’m Not Extroverted Unless I had A Few Drinks!”, I talk about the downside of my drinking. Now I will talk about the good sides (huh… a silver lining after all). I used to be a non-affective kind of person. People who are close to me says I’m too hard and I don’t allow anyone to get near me. But not if I’m drunk! No one in my world has imagined that I’ll fall in love just because I said yes to a few drinks. I’m happy with who I am with and I also never have thought that I would be this happy and content. My closest friend say’s I’ve changed a lot since then, in a good way and she’s lucky that I am trying to be the best that I could for her. But I think I’m the one who got lucky here. Most of the time I hurt people because of the brutal honesty that goes out from my mouth and they can’t handle that and I never thought there would be someone who’s willing to be with me because of that. Most importantly, I’m a better person now because she inspires me to be better.

Just to be clear, I’m not encouraging anyone to drink alcohol. What I’m just trying to say is sometimes, it’s okay to loosen up a bit and be carefree or venture into the unknown. As the saying goes, “You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore”.

Catching Up

It’s just January 8 so I guess it’s yet not too late to share my experience last year or just last month. Well, I was baptized and raised as a Roman Catholic and before the 25^th we have these 9 days Novena Masses. During the 3^rd day, the Priest was talking about not giving up, not giving up on the government, not giving up on being nice even to those who aren’t nice, not giving up on faith, and not giving up on life. It hit me big time since I have doubts and my faith is quite shaking. I don’t know if anyone can relate, but I have a lot of questions like, if there’s a gracious and loving God, then why has He allowed bad things to happen to good people, or why has He ignored all those brutalities happening around the world where the government suppresses its own peoples’ rights and kills them like cattle’s in a slaughter house. And if they say God is gracious and merciful like He is, is He gonna punish me for having thoughts like these. Don’t get me wrong, I want to believe that there is something out there. Something bigger than what we can understand, something who’s power is bigger than what we can fathom, whose infinity is so much bigger than ours. I think believing in the Supreme Being looking over us is a comfort to this cruel world, but is He really looking over us, I’m not so sure. I also despise the idea of heaven and hell where the heaven is a reward for those who did good things and hell is a punishment for those who didn’t do so much. When I give food to the hungry, I don’t look up and say to the heavens “You owe me one,” and when I do bad things, I don’t look down and say “I’m getting near!” Basically, I wanna own up the things I do in this mortal world. I do whatever I think is right and when things turned out to be wrong, no regrets. At least at that moment, I did what I think was right.

I may not be a faithful member of the church (or however you wanna label me) but I believed what the priest said, about not giving up. It kind of relates to my blogging too. I haven’t written anything for like ages. So sharing these thoughts I kept for myself is my way of not giving up.

Note:

This is the first time I said these thoughts out loud or at least typed it in words.

Focus Direct Inc. – Philippines Joined Masskara Festival

Bacolod City, Philippines is know for Masskara festival which takes place for 20 days from Oct. 1-20. It gives the people of Bacolod as well as the tourist a time to enjoy 20 days of merry making, beer drinking, and street partying. The term Masskara is coined from 2 words: mass meaning crowd and spanish word kara for face. It was coined by Ely Santiago, a painter, cartoonist, and cultural artist who devoted his show in his art of many faces of Negrenses overwhelmed with various crises. Today, Masskara Festival uses the symbol of smiling masks to depict the Happy Spirit of Negrenses despite of the difficulties.

Focus Direct Inc. an outsourced contact center of Focus Services, is located at 22^nd street, Lacson which is where the street party is exactly located. During the hype of the festival, Focus Direct Inc. and it’s employees participated in the festivities. The management has it’s own Masskara Bay Making contest.

Friday night, Oct. 18, 2013, the employees wear masks and colorful costumes to join the street party outside with the beat of electro-dance music being played by different DJ’s on the big stage set up in the middle of the street. On the second day, a caravan of the different establishments on the City of Bacolod, Focus Direct Inc. also participated with it’s colorful float and it’s employees marching on the street, giving candies and other perks to the spectators. But the most fascinating event was the paint party held just outside the office of Focus. In these pictures, you will see how amazing the festival and how the employees joined the fun activities.

Day 1:

Day 2:

And the Masskara continued till dawn. I think you can now guess what happened next morning after whole day of partying.

This just proves that engagement doesn’t just in the form of monetary payment or perks and incentives. Engagement in this particular event is when the management involves themselves with the employees activities. It’s nice to see that the Director down to its employees celebrates together.

Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Where To Download Motivation?

There was once a friend who asked me, “where can I download motivation?” And I was like “what?” Then she told me about her experience at work saying that she is losing motivation because of so many things. She felt like she is not being appreciated at work, that her working environment wasn’t healthy anymore, and she experiences too much stress because of too much workload.

I don’t  know how to comfort her because at that time, I felt like I’m demotivated as well. But I couldn’t think of why I felt the same. When I’m at work, I’m happy because I have friends who are really funny. I don’t have to suffer from scheduled breaks, I have everything I need to do my job right, and people from our department always bring food which in my opinion is awesome because we don’t get hungry.

Me and my friend just sat beside each other, just thinking. We are very close friends so it wasn’t awkward at all. In fact, it gave me an opportunity to think about my current job and my current situation. I started evaluating myself. I’m a Sagittarius, and Sagittarius are very out going, fun-loving, but can also be easily bored. That’s when I started to realized that I was doing a routine job. It was always the same everyday and it feels like even if I close my eyes, I can do it almost perfectly. It would be nice for some maybe but not to me who likes to push myself to the limit.

I wasn’t demotivated because of bad management, or low incentive program, or because I’m stressed with the workload like the majority. I was demotivated because the job failed to challenge me. It didn’t satisfy my need to compete to myself and beat myself. The job wasn’t bad but it did not also gave me the reason to feel good about it or to feel good about myself. There was no personal growth.

My point is, not everyone feels happy or feels bad because of all the same reasons. Some ways are maybe good for other people but not for the rest. Pressure can be sickening to some but can also bring out the best in others. If you are in a managerial position, for me it would be best to know your subordinates  personally. Determine which approach can bring out the best and the worse in them. Listen to all those psychological approaches on how to build good relationship with colleagues but never forget to humanize your own approach.  Motivation can come in so many ways to different kind of personalities and try to celebrate diversity! It actually makes the world a lot more colorful.