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Adult stuff that Schools don't teach you, about work and dreaming

Aim for the stars, NEVER give up on your dreams. You just need to learn how to make it a reality. Our time here is finite, the end result is the same for everyone. So, tell fear to go to hell and do whatever makes you feel like it's worthwhile been alive.

Learn the most important skill ever: How to deal with difficult people. From minors inconveniences, to personality clashes, to narcissistic cunts with psychopathic tendencies who enjoys making everyone's life a living hell (mobbing). No school, college, university, trade school or whatever is gonna teach you this. IT WILL SAVE YOUR SANITY. Especially when you don't have the luxury of losing a job. So take advantage of some sweet internet and find resources about this. (Z Library is free and safe)

Expand your skill set. Don't stick with only one thing, learn practical and technical stuff related to your line of work. For example: In film school everyone wants to be a director or a writer, which is great but it takes time, in the meantime learning about editing, sound, lighting, props, wardrobe, etc, can open many other doors. This will pay your bills while you're dreaming. So, take your time to analyze what skills are useful in your work and learn.

Fuck the unpaid internship once graduated. It's slavery with pretty words. If you're still studying, you can (and should if you have time) participate in those unpaid projects, volunteer jobs, and all that; but never ever after getting your [title]. You are valuable, no matter what any company says, and you didn't spend countless hours of effort and sacrifice to not be paid. If you apply point number 3, you will gain experience while also getting money. No amount of experience is worthy. It's like influencers wanting to pay with exposure.

Networking, 90% of the time it's not about your talent but who you know, no matter what kind of job you are doing. And I'm not necessarily talking about nepotism. Sometimes if you know a person they can say: "Oh yes, Clara is a friend and she's excellent at her job. You should consider her." Humans are social creatures, we value the opinions of those who we are friends with or respect. Don't be fake, just be nice and try to get to know your coworkers and people from your field. (There are also books about this if socializing isn't your forte)

(Feel free to reblog and add more stuff. We all know we need this 💀)

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Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Amiens.

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Dark Academia Foods

Oscar Wilde himself said ““I can’t stand people who do not take food seriously.” , and yet, I haven’t seen much on what cooking, eating and normal living looks like while embracing a love of learning. So I decided to make a list bc its lockdown and I am b o r e d.

 The criteria I used was either: 

“Can I read while eating/drinking this?”,

 “ Is this a food which has seen various historical eras?” 

“ Can I picture any of my favourite book characters eating this?”

Therefore, with no further adieu, here are a list of foods and drinks that I think fit the dark/light academia aesthetic:

Foods

Buttered English muffins

Croissants

Apple Fritters

Dark chocolate

Strawberries and Cream

Quiche

Scones with clotted cream and raspberry jam

Charcuterie Boards

Cornish pasty 

Stuffed mushrooms

Salmagundy

Kimchi 

Pizzetta’s

Bruschetta

Tayaki

Xiaolongbao

Nigri sushi

Tea sandwiches

Macarons

Baklava

Turkish delight

Comfits

Drinks

Earl Grey Tea

Spiced hot chocolate

London fog latte

Black coffee

Elderflower cordial

hot apple cider

Jasmine tea

Wine

Champagne

Interestingly enough, Romantic writers such as Mary Shelley and her husband, Alexander Pope, Thomas Tyron and Joseph Ritson were promoters of vegetarianism. Before the romanticism era, vegetarianism had been seen as a religious pursuit, but as romanticism sees compassion and community with nature as an aesthetic ideal, vegetarianism was a big deal.   

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some dark academia foods because snacking while studying is important:

- coffee and pain au chocolat

- cheese and crackers

- candied nuts *i would die for candied pecans*

- dark chocolate and a latte

- dried fruits and a sweet tea

- poached eggs on toast and pomegranate juice

- tiramisu and coffee

- mulled wine and thumbprint cookies

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“When you run for your life, you will become the one deciding how you use your time. You will be the one deciding that you are not going to pour out your life anymore. You will no longer allow the school system or the work system to decide what you do with your time.”

― Sunday Adelaja, How To Become Great Through Time Conversion: Are you wasting time, spending time or investing time?

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“To not know what to do during the vacations is just a proof that society and the school system has stolen your life from you.”

― Sunday Adelaja, How To Become Great Through Time Conversion: Are you wasting time, spending time or investing time?

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“You are yet to catch up with the real world if you've never studied any concepts outside the school syllabus or read any books beside the texts books school forced you to read. Most people are just programmed not educated”

― Nicky Verd

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“I think one of the problems [with raising intelligent children in modern society] is compulsory schooling...and that children are sitting there, and they are taught and told what to believe; they are passive from the very beginning – and one must be very, very aggressive intellectually to have a high IQ [...] the child is taught. Right from the beginning, it's a passive process. He or she sits there, and they simply try to believe everything they're told?”

― Marilyn Vos Savant

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“Grades really cover up failure to teach. A bad instructor can go through an entire quarter leaving absolutely nothing memorable in the minds of his class, curve out the scores on an irrelevant test, and leave the impression that some have learned and some have not. But if the grades are removed the class is forced to wonder each day what it’s really learning. The questions, What’s being taught? What’s the goal? How do the lectures and assignments accomplish the goal? become ominous. The removal of grades exposes a huge and frightening vacuum.”

Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

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I used to be a perfectionist.

Before this academic year began, I loved to put all of my effort into my works. I felt bad for getting merely one mistake on a quiz. I spent hours and hours on a requirement, not because I found it difficult to accomplish, but because I wanted to make sure it’s all good, and that I didn’t miss a flaw. 

Now, I’m writing this blog requirement like this when I’m not even sure if I’m doing it correctly. Maybe I’m only doing it for the sake of finishing it, and I feel really sorry for that, yet I can’t help but admit it. 

As I’ve said on one of my previous blogs, my values have changed. From valuing validation, perfection, and staying on top of everyone, it became self-love, creativity, and humility. I’m not saying that I’m doing really good at it, but I know I’m at least working on it. 

I still have sleepless nights, but I know that if I still valued perfection, it would be much worse. Today, I don’t spend much effort as I used to on school works because I believe I should not keep being hard on myself for the sake of getting good grades.

It’s still difficult for me to express my creativity, but I’m using my new hobbies as outlets: sewing clothes and crocheting. If I kept draining my energy solely on academic work, I couldn’t have had the time for those hobbies.

I still don’t see myself as humble, but these days I find myself appreciating and supporting people more instead of envying them. I now value working on my relationships with my family and friends, rather than proving to the world that I am worthy of their validation or attention.

I know this is a very different take on the matter, but I’m glad with this decision. It may sound foolish, but it’s the best way of coping I’ve found as of now. It’s the only way I could keep going, the only way I could prevent myself from giving up.

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what am I doing all of this for?

This is a difficult topic for me to talk about, because its heaviness never leaves my heart, and I doubt it ever will.

The thing is, I don’t want to study anymore. I’m writing this at 2:30 AM after hours of forcing myself to just begin, and this is not the first time that happened. I often have to put a lot of pressure on me before I get on a task, especially when my doubts about my future rush in.

I have no idea of what it would look like. I don’t even know what course I want to take, or what kind of job I want to apply for. I keep questioning the purpose of forcing myself to do things I do not enjoy doing, and studying is one of those. I do love learning, but this setup makes it very difficult for me. I believe there are other, more important things that I should learn other than how to memorize exact definitions and how to factor polynomials. 

I have a feeling that it’s wrong to say these things, but this is what I really think. Every day I go hard on myself just to earn fair grades on a requirement I didn’t want to do. Most times I would try to convince myself that it is worth it, because doing these tasks will make me learn something new, but then, that’s not true. I never learned anything new. I can say that I learned more from the self-help books that I’ve read whenever I didn’t feel like doing anything school-related than on these learning tasks given to us.

I can’t even find a proper topic for this blog because all I can say about my online learning experience is that, it’s destroying me gravely. That’s why I opened up to my mom saying I wanted to drop out, which unfortunately did not go as I desired.  I was only told to “keep going” and that I “can do it”. I understand where she’s coming from, though. I’m on the last year of Senior High School and that’s the missing piece that will complete my puzzle: acquiring a diploma. We couldn’t delay that just because of my incompetence. 

I’m completely out of words. I thought that after writing this I’ll eventually come up with a positive reflection such as, “my pain has a purpose” or anything like that, but I can’t think of any. This question has been bothering me for days and I can’t seem to find an answer: what am I doing all of this for? 

Is it to eventually graduate high school and proceed to college? But what if I don’t want to go to college? What if I lose all of my will to keep going by then? What if, after all, I’m doing these for nothing?

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I am a work in progress.

These days, I’ve been so insecure. It seems that instead of getting better at what I’m doing, I’m getting worse, and everything goes back to zero. But then I thought, this is normal. Because, as I was sorting out my thoughts, I came up with a message: 

“I am a work in progress.”

Yes, I have bad habits.

I procrastinate my school tasks because I don’t believe in myself. I don’t believe that I will do things correctly if I do them right away, so I keep escaping from it. I also get lazy sometimes. But that does not mean I’m going to stay like that forever. That just means there’s so much room for me to grow -- to get better.

I'm  getting aware of what I have to change.

Being a perfectionist turned me into an anxious, insecure, restless student. I always thought that I should be the best, and I have to let the world know about how good I was by standing out. I lived for other people’s validation, beating myself up just to reach a certain standard I created for myself. I lost sleep, I forgot about spending time with my loved ones, and worst of all, failed to accept who I was by being so focused on what I should be.

I’m learning things about myself.

Through a lot of introspection, I realized that I had faulty values: validation, perfection, and getting to the top. It destroyed me because I depended my happiness on things I cannot control. So I chose to change it into: self-love, creativity, and humility.

I am growing.

I had to experience insecurity, to let myself find security. And in the process of finding it, I got to look into myself a little more, and know who I am. So at least for now, I’m aware that I should have healthy values to achieve what really keeps me going: the beauty of life that I can experience with family, friends, or myself.  Instead of isolating myself from people just to achieve my selfish goals, I wanted to build healthy relationships that could actually benefit me in the long run, instead of seeking temporary pleasures with my former unhealthy values.

Of course I would experience difficulty, but it does not have to be an instant change, for I am a work in progress. My responsibility is to keep that progress going, no matter how slow it may seem.

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little hope

I used to have a routine...until this pandemic happened. 7 months ago, I would wake up at about 5 am, eat my breakfast, take a bath, and get ready for school. I would leave the house at past 6 in the morning, ride a jeepney to Pulo, and then suffer in the heavy traffic —not to mention the smog I inhale especially when I'm riding the charity seat in tricycles.

I cant help but say that I do miss it: 

waiting for my friends on the third bench by the path walk to Einstein building,  hanging around the cafeteria during our vacant hours, and most of all, buying time at the library by either reading books or doing my homework, just because I didn't want to go home. And once I get home, I would still have the time to watch movies and relax.

Let me tell you-- I have an unhealthy habit of escapism, and all my life, school was my best escape. 

Not necessarily all the recitations, group works, and the mere thought of 'studying', but the little pleasures that come along with it. Before, it excited me to simply think about what clothes I should wear for the day, where my friends and I should eat lunch, what movie should we watch on the cinemas next, or even where should we sit in the classroom. The amount of school works used to not worry me, because the joy I got from these little pleasure was more than enough to give me the will to accomplish school requirements.

Now I feel stagnant, and nothing feels new. 

I would wake up at lunchtime with an exhausted mind and body as if sleeping did not replenish my energy. My bed felt like a broken charger.

I've grown tired of eating at the same spot every day, so I tried switching places: different seats around the table, eating by the sofa, by the garage, and in my room. I got bored of taking baths without feeling excited about how I was going to style my outfit to school (on weekdays) or to the mall(on weekends), so I tried dressed up the same way I would if I could still go out.

You see, routines bore me. 

I don't like to do things today the same manner I did it yesterday. I've got a long list of failed routine plans since this pandemic began. Most of them included waking up early in the morning, cooking breakfast for myself, studying, exercising, and sleeping on time to get enough rest. I would always do good on the first day and eventually give up and just do everything spontaneously the next day. 

The worst part is that, it messed up my sleep schedule.

Because I noticed that I work better and get more productive at night, I tried making it a habit to stay awake at night and then sleep during the day. I did this for a week until I started to notice that my sleep and wake time was never consistent: if I slept at 5am today, I will sleep at about 6 or 7 am tomorrow. It became later and later, adjusting almost everyday, until I completely forgot what time I was originally supposed to sleep and wake up. This was because always found something interesting to do the moment I am supposedly about to sleep. I kept on taking the temptation to stay up later than usual to accomplish spontaneous tasks because even if I don't, my excitement about the idea won't let me sleep. I thought, "it's better to do it now than just think about the possibilities and eventually forget".

I found it so difficult to come up with a schedule that would fit me well. Every day, I would struggle to get on a task. 

I wonder if everything I'm doing is still worth it. 

Like, does it even matter if I get good grades, if I'm already at risk of dying from a disease? I was not sleeping well. I barely ate on time. I could not find the time and will to exercise. It's very possible that my immune system grew weaker.

Every time that I felt hopeless, I couldn't stop thinking of what was supposed to be, if only the pandemic did not happen.

Focusing on online classes is still very difficult for me. 

As a person with a very short attention span, it felt frustrating. I'd sit in front of my computer for hours and still not finish a task. I could watch a lecture video, get distracted, replay the part that I missed, and get distracted at that same part, so I have to replay it once, twice, or thrice more. I could create a new document for an essay I'm going to write, grab my phone or come across another task, and forget what I was supposed to be doing, leaving the document blank.

My point here is that, I see no fun in learning anymore. I cannot cope with the changes, I can't function well in my current learning environment, and I'm even losing the will to pursue my studies.

I wish I could go back to my old life, but seeing the current state of the nation amidst this crisis, I'm starting to feel hopeless. 

Even the proposed 'new normal' seems blurry to me. Would this make the situation any better? Wearing personal protective equipment, social distancing, quarantine—why is there no concrete plan on how we will get back to normal? If the new normal means that we have to keep isolating ourselves at home and forget about all the things we used to do before until we find a vaccine, then what's the point of it?

Those are my frequent thoughts. Though, there's a glimpse of hope in me, merely enough to keep me functioning— hope that I need, because I still have dreams to achieve.

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habits to get me through the day.

I already mentioned in my recent blog that, being the spontaneous person that I am, I could not stick to routines. I am still aware though, that I still need to incorporate some healthy habits in my daily life that could help me function well through motivation and relief. I told myself to do the following every day, but not necessarily in a particular order. My goal to do most in the list, if not all. I did not want to pressure myself into following a strict routine, because I've failed at that a lot of times. So, I decided to take it easy— just little by little.  Below are 5 of the habits that I chose because I believed it will help me get through the struggles of online class.

1. Taking a bath before doing my tasks for the day

Don't get me wrong, I do take a bath every day. The thing about bathing is that it gives me a sense of motivation, giving me a kind of "boost" to get through the day. I see a lot of difference in my mood if I compare doing tasks prior to taking a bath, and doing them after I take a bath. The former makes me demotivated and lazy, while the latter refreshes me and gives me the idea that I already did something to 'progress' my day. I find this habit as the easiest to incorporate.

2.  Reading a self-help book

This one helps me to just stop and rest, while still being productive in a way. When holding my phone, I do my best to open my eBook reader app instead of aimlessly scrolling through Facebook and Instagram. These eBooks enables me to be introspective and intentional in dealing with life. At the same time, it expands my vocabulary. Some books that I've finished reading are: "Limitless" and "Heart Detox", both by Bo Sanchez, and "Unfck Yourself" by John Bishop. As of now, I'm close to finishing "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck" by Mark Manson.

3. Drinking tea

Yes, I know. It sounds like a "Tita" or even "Lola" habit, right? That's exactly how I feel every time I drink tea. I feel like a productive, responsible, mature type of person. Emphasis on the "feel". I drink green tea, with honey and a squeeze of lemon. This makes me relax and destress, particularly when I have too much going on at the moment and I feel like breaking down but I have to keep going because there are other tasks to finish. That's right, it's my type of drug, my stimulant.

4. Journaling/Blogging

I had long wanted to journal regularly. The blogging part though, is one that interested me just very recently. 2 weeks ago, our Creative Non-Fiction course required us to write a memoir of our chosen topic, and I wrote about my passion. For someone who has a lot going on in her mind, writing becomes therapeutic. Now that I think of it, I really loved to tweet about my thoughts on Twitter especially about my self-reflections and sudden realizations, as well as my opinions on certain matters that I felt the need to share. I guess that's why I got so addicted to it— it gave me a voice and an audience. This platform, however, led me to an unhealthy habit of oversharing unnecessary events about me, because I thought of it as a diary or my brain dump. It made me feel vulnerable and exposed, so I deleted my account. Now, I'm looking forward to putting all my raw, unfiltered thoughts in a journal, where it is safe and no one can see it as a way to take advantage of my vulnerability, while my more "refined", organized thoughts will go to my blog.

5. Taking a walk outside with my little sister

My little sister has always been my little ray of sunshine— although sometimes, her demands also stresses me out. Whenever I feel exhausted, I play with her. It's not just me boasting, but I am her favorite person in the house. I'm even close to thinking that she thinks of me as a playmate her age rather than a sister 15 years older than her, because I join her dancing to nursery rhymes and Blackpink videos, at the same time, doing pretend play with her. I'm also the only one she can trick into going outside for a walk (tbh, my family isn't really the physically active type— most of them don't enjoy exercise). With her being my happy pill, I get a reason to go outside because I like to let her to experience playing outdoors, just like how I did during my childhood. This is also one simple way to add some physical movement in my routine, because I can't seem to have the energy to workout.

My progress

I have quite mastered habit #1, taking a bath before doing my tasks. Also, I'm getting used to habit #2 reading a self-help book and habit #3 drinking tea. I've already mastered these before too, but got lost again after classes started, so I'm trying to bring it back to my routine. Habit #4 Journaling/Blogging and habit #5 taking a walk is still difficult for me to do consistently, I assume because it requires a certain amount of time and energy. I have to do it intentionally, or else, I'm going nowhere. I guess that's my problem, because I often wait for me to be "in the mood" before I start working on something, especially if the tasks need me to think deliberately or exert energy in physical movement.

For the meantime, I will focus on turning these five activities into daily habits. I will keep on making baby steps until I reach a point where I can finally stick to a routine. Given this, I will do my best to journal and blog about my progress! I reckon this blog will be my pledge to keep getting better day by day. I hope the people like me who are reading this can get the motivation to go forward, too. Let's get this!

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