I’ve been thinking a lot about sadness lately, but only because it seems to have elected itself as a permanent sheen on my otherwise pretty good life. I have found myself getting sad over the littlest things like having to explain things to people twice, social exclusion, accidentally exposed rolls of film and, most recently, withholding tax.

Once, Reggie wrote that she doesn’t even remember what kind of things she used to be so sad about in high school. I know what that feels like, when it comes to my life, too. Because, I don’t think my life was ever severely lacking, at least in the ways that mattered. It’s just like that Smashing Pumpkins song, I’m in love with my sadness, but believe me when I say that I never truly mean to be.

At some point in my life, I agreed with a lot of things that John Green’s female protagonist in Looking for Alaska thought. Alaska said, “Pudge, what you must understand about me is that I’m a deeply unhappy person” and briefly, I believed with all my heart that that was just the kind of person I was. Lately, I’ve been giving in to sadness and negativity, and the truth is, I haven’t felt as disconnected from myself as I do now.

It’s not like “I don’t know myself anymore,” but it’s more like “I don’t feel good when I respond or think this way.” I don’t think I’m alone when I say that sadness is beautiful. It’s beautiful in a way that honesty and vulnerability are beautiful, especially in the face of ugly, painful things. I’m drawn to it, because it opens up a more interesting complexity in humanity, reveals a side that a lot of people would just rather ignore.

“Brod discovered 613 sadnesses, each unique, each a singular emotion, no more similar to any other sadness than to anger, ecstacy, guilt, or frustration. Mirror sadness. Sadness of domesticated birds. Sadness of being sad in front of one’s parent. Humor sadness. Sadness of Love Without Release.” — Everything is Illuminated; Jonathan Safran Foer.

But, just because it sometimes can be beautiful, it doesn’t mean that I should constantly seek it out and put myself in situations where sadness will prevail over everything else.

It’s no secret that I relate to a lot of coming-of-age stories. These stories reflect basic human pains, stings of which are often felt for the first time, and then they tell of how young people overcome them. The first pangs of betrayal or rejection might just be some of the worst feelings in the world. Sometimes, it gets worse, but we learn, we grow, and we cope. That’s how the world works. I think sad situations are inevitable, but ultimately, you get to choose how you respond and how much of yourself you allow to be affected.

I don’t mean to say that it’s better to be a happy person than to be a sad person, but I think that I personally should know by now how to better deal with these bouts of sadness and these tiny tragedies, without having to feel like the whole world is ending or that my heart is imploding on itself. My So-Called Life‘s Angela Chase is an early adopter in Wallowing, but I imagine that even she eventually had to suck it up and deal with her feelings, too. I’m thinking, maybe, so should I.

“Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is really worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It’s okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.” — The Shared Patio; Miranda July.

March closed with a screenwriting workshop, led by Aaron Rahsaan Thomas, who’s now a supervising producer for CSI:NY. I’ve never watched an episode of CSI:NY and I tend to shy away from programs like that (which are called procedurals) because I tend to favor character-driven shows. The real reason why we even went to that two-day workshop was because Aaron Thomas was a staff writer for Friday Night Lights, even writing two episodes during his stint.

It’s been almost a week since we left that workshop and I don’t even have notes or a vague idea for a story. It’s kind of depressing. Watching behind-the-scenes footage and extras on DVDs made me really want to be a part of something so completely collaborative, like television. In particular, the footage from the LOST DVDs that featured the writer’s room and a big binder of notes they kept for six season’s worth of continuity. It seemed like such a great thing to be a part of, especially someone like me, a big fan of television.

Aaron talked about the structure of a procedural—an episodic series divided into twenty-two or so 40-minute, goal-oriented episodes—and we sort of got to write the teaser (the segment at the beginning, before the credits, where the main premise of the episode is revealed) and Act One (the first seven-or-so-minute chunk before a commercial break) collectively.

It was hard to get a general concensus, because everyone had their own ideas that they seemed to fixate on. I kind of just quietly sniggered and sighed, being in the midst of a lot of professional writers and such who already worked for local networks. It seemed unnecessary to speak just so I could complain about ideas instead of being constructive. Anyway, most of what they threw around and played with were not my cup of tea. I already saw the disparity between the shows that are locally produced (telenovelas, the kind of humor they liked, etc.) and the shows that I enjoyed, and it made me sad that it didn’t seem like they intersected at all.

Because a really big part of me wants to work in television, but it doesn’t seem like local television has room for the shows that I want to make.

I am moved by series that center on coming-of-age, especially those that confront issues in a raw and honest way. I love it when shows speak to me through the characters, genuinely and believably. I love the brutality of feelings, the tragicomedy of high school, the overwhelming weight of things that matter now.

To tell you the truth, I have no idea what I used to be really sad about when I had been growing up. But we get hurt as we grow older, and we heal. We forget, or we think we forget.

These shows that I love so much, they’re reminders of the things that had mattered in the moment, and how intensely they felt to us at the time. I think I want to create stories that allows people to look back on—or experience at once!—these growing pains. To take those hurts and feelings of weightlessness, and preserve them in stories people can look back on, alone, together or apart. To remember, and maybe to forget. To detach or reacquaint ourselves with the very things that first taught us how to feel.

I digress, because I sought out to write about the workshop and how different it is where he is from (Los Angeles) and how it works here in Manila. But, I ended up talking about feelings and growing up, and that’s what I would love to write about. That, or something else wholly consuming, a web of stories, characters, and relationships that you grow and fall in love with.

I’m not interested in pushing the drama to ridiculous points to rake in ratings, and maybe that’s where I would falter if I worked here. I’m interested in making stories and using television as a way to share them with people. Sadly, it feels as though there is little room in the Philippines—maybe the world—for this kind of creating and collaboration.

I want to have a voice, but I’m not exactly sure where to start.

For the April 2012 issue of Rogue magazine, I wrote about artist, Arturo Sanchez. On a drizzly day last February, Joseph and I went to Art’s studio in Angono for the interview. When it was time for Joseph to take his pictures, I took a few behind-the-scenes ones, too.

In other news, make sure you grab a copy of that issue! Aside from writing this, Sarie wrote a feature on Vincent Moon (photos of which my brother took), plus there’s a really good visual contribution from Kris. The rest of the content—I’ve only skimmed through it thus far—seems excellent, too.

Also, just so you know, the cover is an AR incarnation of Solenn Heussaff.

Nikon FE, Fuji Provia 100

Sometimes I think I forget about why I do things.

I think I forgot about why I liked to blog in the first place. My first blog was born because my best friend gave me the link to her secret one, and although she was a much better writer than me, I wanted to tell stories, too. I got my LiveJournal because someone I liked had one, too. It resulted in Nothing Special, but I moved on to making bonds with people over the Internet, which was, at the time, kind of a creepy, shady thing to do. We talked about obsessions, and real life, and asked no one in particular why the world was so unfair. We grew up and moved on, but LiveJournal has always been a safe place for me.

I got Nothing Spaces because of envy, mostly. I read a lot of personal blogs that were “.coms” and I admired the honesty and candidness of those journals and diaries. Back then, people didn’t really Google people, and no one really plugged their blogs. They just poured their hearts and souls and pictures in these repositories, and people from all over the world somehow connected with them.

Mary Oliver wrote the “instructions for living a life:” Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

Sometimes, I’d like to think that that is why I do what I do. It’s not something I earn from (although a lot of people who get in touch with me for work find me through here), and it’s not something I use to share what I do (although I have been wanting to do so for a while). It’s just here, because I am “living a life.”

I like taking photos, I like writing, and I like telling people about things that I find. I like telling stories on blogs, because truthfully, it’s the best way I know how to. I’m not very articulate, nor am I particularly good at adding flourish to my story-telling. A lot of people kind of hate on blogs, and I understand why. It doesn’t mean I agree, but I get it.

When I see blogs today, I realize it’s very different from what I grew up with. It feels kind of like how old people don’t really “get” the learning curve of computers. All of a sudden, there is an influx of blogs that were monetized and sponsored, and I couldn’t wrap my head around how it all worked.

I was obsessed with figuring it out for a little while, and it was a huge blow to the ego when my stats began to dwindle. And it got sad when I realized that what began to motivate me to post were my stats. So I stopped caring.

And now we are here.

I don’t think I can recreate the earnestness and honesty that gave birth to so many funny, endearing blogs that I used to spend hours reading in high school. I don’t think that writing here even improves the quality of my writing.

But I’m paying attention, and I’m being astonished, and I’m here to tell about it.

I started writing this on February 3, and I feel like it might be time to continue this train of thought, and get on with it. Ahem:

This marks the beginning series of posts has been stewing in my head for the past couple of months, and because I’d been putting it off for so long, I was afraid I’d never get to post it—here I am, at 4:25 AM, writing a crapshot introduction for it. In case it’s not common knowledge, I have currently been enamored by a certain film called The Social Network. To be honest, I expected very little from it, and only really wanted to see it a little bit. How the frak was I supposed to know that it was going to turn me into a crazy lady?

But I digress.

The Social Network is a semi-fictitious account that follows the dissolution of the friendship that founded Facebook, not-so-arguably the biggest social networking site to date. (It’s based on Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Billionaires,” which was based on the story of Eduardo Saverin, Mark Zuckerberg and the website that came between them.) On paper, it sounds like a horribly drab film—I can see you now, shaking your head and asking: “You want me to waste the hours I haven’t already wasted on Facebook, watching the story about the dorks that came up with it?”—but I maintain that it’s pretty much a stroke of genius.

It’s curious to see how a movie about something as cold and (strangely) impersonal as a website can cause this much noise. It’s gotten a lot of awards show buzz and recognition, aside from all the crazy stanning from the Tumblr community—me, included. Zadie Smith wrote a pretty telling review on it for The New York Review of Books, which caused me to think about my relationship with Facebook, with the people I am friends with on Facebook, and ultimately, the Internet.

“That other movie about Facebook” is called Catfish. Set up as a documentary, it follows the unlikely friendship of photographer Nev Schulman with an eight-year-old girl, Abby, over the Internet—a relationship which might be the least creepy situation that we encounter for the rest of the film. He eventually forms bonds with the rest of Abby’s family, with much of the attention shifting to her gorgeous half-sister, Megan. I watched it a couple of days after I saw The Social Network, and I’ve written a review about it for Pelikula, but I feel like it’s worth revisiting, for the sake of argument.

One of the biggest points that Catfish is trying to assert is pretty obvious: don’t believe everything you see read on the Internet. What people seem to take away from The Social Network is that Mark Zuckerberg is something of a douchebag, but I suppose it’s just because it is less upfront about Facebook’s social implications. Helpfully, Smith’s review touches on a lot of things that many might have missed or overlooked.

I am thinking about the projected length of this discussion, and I feel like it’s going to take me a while to sort out my thoughts, so this will come in parts. Also, I’ve bought and read most of Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not a Gadget,” which Smith reviews along with The Social Network. She makes up and uses a term that I have since adopted as my personal goal; I’ve been re-learning how to be a Person 1.0.

What exactly is a Person 1.0? I couldn’t really tell you right now, but I’m looking into that. All I know is that technology has rapidly been shaping the way we interact with people, as well as how we function as human beings. I don’t know about you, but often I’ve let slip computer jargon in “RL” conversations. I’ve asked people to delete what I just said, or to please compress their story into a .zip file because I have no time for it right now. (Just kidding about the .zip part, but wouldn’t that be amazing?) Sometimes, I wish I could just CTRL+F a Philosophy text to get to a term which has a definition escapes me. Do you not groan at the injustice of it all?

Lately, I’ve been weaning myself off of the Internet—or so it seems. I have been online, sure, but my “presence” hasn’t really been active. Is this progress? I doubt it. I think I just found other useless things to do. Or, I just got too lazy, or it finally dawned on me that, No, Carina, the Internet doesn’t need another GPOY. However, I’d like to think that I’d been spending my time on fairly productive things. I mean, I do feel a little bit more self-fulfilled, occasionally. I don’t know if that means anything.

In any case: there it is, really. I’m re-learning how to be a Person 1.0, and thinking about what that means. At some point in my life, I’m sure I was a Person 1.0. It’s just really fascinating to step back and think about just how much technology has shaped and changed the way we view the world, and how we think. It’s astonishing, and it’s mind-blowing, and that is probably why people don’t really think about it all too much. This is so ingrained in our culture and our habits.

It’s scary because it suggests some kind of major alterations in the world. I mean, at the rate that technology is already shaping the present (and in turn, the future), I think it’s safe to assume that big things are going to happen. And it’s scary that we don’t know just what these changes are going to bring about. Like I said, social implications are inevitable, but think about other possible revisions to life as we now know it. I think it is potentially terrifying, and it doesn’t help that everything is very, very possible.

This is just the beginning of what I hope to be a string of fairly coherent thoughts about the future. At the very least, I hope I make sense. I’m not exactly sure what the purpose of all of this is, at this point, but I’m fairly sure that, given the scope and the subject matter, it may very well concern you, Person 2.0. Don’t try to deny it! The fact that you are on a computer, reading this obscure blog by some nobody from the Philippines, means that you kind of know your way around what a Person 1.0 would call “The Information Super Highway.”

Don’t worry, fellow Person 2.0. We can find a way to make it better.

There are people who can get by life coasting on their looks, their wealth, their natural intelligence or talent. I am not any of those people, so at a young age, I resolved to be remarkable. While my ambitions shifted around a lot, I just always wanted to be someone who mattered, people took notice of, and was good at what she did.

Aside from a strong sense of entitlement, what plagues this generation is discontent so potent, it’s hard to find people my age who are genuinely happy. I’m not going to write myself off this list, because a lot of the time, when I “feel weird,” it’s because I am drowning in this sort of restlessness that I can only assume comes from discontentment.

People talk about the feared yet inescapable quarterlife crisis, and have spoken great lengths about how awful it is to be victimized by it. I’ve done this quite a few times myself, and I think that, after acknowledging this crisis, this loss, and confusion, maybe it’s time to just let it go, and figure out how to get past it.

Maybe what the problem is what my perception of “remarkable” is. Think about the fact that everyday, millions of connections inside your body function together so we can exist. Think about everything that interacts and coexists, all the random little things your body does, everything that happens on this planet, and tell me that that isn’t magnificent.

I know it sounds like I’m making excuses for my lack of accomplishments. It sounds like I am justifying this growing cloud of laziness that is slowly becoming a permanent fixture in my life. Does getting rid of this listlessness give way to me being remarkable? Maybe. But maybe it shouldn’t be the reason for me to stop being lazy anyway.

I think a lot of people give up in the middle of doing something when they see that it’s not putting them on the road to remarkableness. Maybe they stop doing what they do because it’s not giving them the attention or the praise or the reactions that they were hoping for. Maybe that’s what’s been happening to me.

I’m not sure why I’m writing this entry, to be honest. Did I want to draw attention to the fact that I am nearly twenty-three and I’m nowhere close to where I wanted, where I want to be? Am I quitting on the dreams that I have held onto for so long because they feel a little bit harder to reach everyday?

The pressure to be remarkable—to stand out enough for people to notice—is, at times, motivating, but much more often, I find that this compounding pressure leaves me paralyzed. Instead of making me want to prove people wrong, it just makes me want to give in to being someone whose dreams aren’t and won’t ever be realized.

Holocene, Bon Iver

On Bon Iver’s latest record, Bon Iver Bon Iver, Justin Vernon sings: “… and at once I knew, I was not magnificent.” And I think maybe I just need to come to terms that I am not magnificent or remarkable, in the way that I want to be. At least, not yet.

I have always attached the idea of remarkableness to accomplishing things at a young age. Perhaps this is the cause of all the panic that surges through me each time I see a younger friend or a younger famous person do the brilliant things that they do. Maybe it’s a tiny bit of jealousy, a constant reminder and signifier of my severe lack of having done anything important. It makes me feel like I’ve let down my younger self when I look at myself and see how little I’ve done with what I’ve been given.

I’ve read through Frankie‘s latest issue (JUL/AUG 2011) and Benjamin Law writes about the woes of being 30, but with a slight upward resolution:

“Things didn’t turn out to plan… Really, who cares what the 12-year-old version of myself would think of me? Because, to be frank, the current version of me thinks the 12-year-old version of me was an annoying little f*ckwit.”

He laments the things that turning older means: saying goodbye to the things you wanted to be—a systems analyst instead of an athlete, a deputy sales coordinator instead of an astronaut—but he also says that you get to say hello to a lot of new things. Let go of dreams that are really far gone and dream up new ones. Find new goals to pursue, new ways to be remarkable. Look for new parts of yourself that you want to grow and can cultivate.

I’ve said a lot of things in this post, and really, everything’s still a muddle in my brain. Do I resign myself to the fact that—no matter what I do—I might not reach that point where I see myself as remarkable, and so stop trying to be? Or: do I try anyway and see where it takes me?

The trick, I think, is to look past what you could have done, and to look towards what other things you could still do. The human spirit is extremely resilient. Maybe, that in itself is what’s remarkable.

(Although, maybe I should actually do things that mean something, and things I could be proud of. What I mean to say, Carina, is: don’t sweat it. You’ll get there. It might take you a damn long time, but you will.)

I just finished reading Jennifer Egan’s “A Visit From the Goon Squad” and you should know that this is not a review so much as a congregation of Things This Book Made Me Feel. I think, before I will be able to write a proper review, I would have to revisit the novel again (which I don’t mind, because I thought it was beautiful) or talk to other people who’ve read it. I thought it was brilliant, because aside from making me care about what—and oftentimes, who—she was writing about, Egan also utilized so many different ways of telling a story, fitting of the characters, the stories, and the circumstances.

Most of all, this novel moved me to want to start writing again.

Currently, my writing has been limited to tiny snippets of semi-fiction and to-do lists, some scenes that would play out in words and paragraphs, but would stay in my head, eventually disappearing forever. Example: a smattering of notes for a YA novel I have had in my head for a while. Another example: a collection of short fiction that I never quite managed to complete.

I used to dream about having my fiction published, and writing a column for some magazine or broadsheet or online tendency catalog group. That was what I always wanted to be, but I think I really just am more sensitive about my writing than my design work. I never really published a lot of my stories, but I wrote all the time. This was the journal I used to bring around with me from when I started college until the end of sophomore year:

Right now, I’ve still been writing, but the level of documentation from then is so much different. It was very entertaining to read through: often funny, sometimes sad and painful. But I loved it because it reminded me of how real those feelings felt at the time, and it showed me a) that it really does get better, and b) how much I’ve grown up, even if sometimes, it doesn’t quite feel like it.

I’ve been writing in tiny notebooks (Field Notes is obviously the brand of choice, LOL), and while it is awesome for to-do lists and keeping me in line when it comes to productivity, it’s not particularly helpful for me when I want to write. Maybe that’s just an excuse I’d been formulating. Maybe it’s not in the tools, but in the want to write, in the desire to keep track of everything, in the love of telling stories.

Sometimes I think that maybe I was never meant to be a writer. This years-long dry spell is a little bit ridiculous. But, Egan’s writing jolted a desire I’d been nursing from before I could even remember: to put thoughts and ideas and lives into words. It moved me to want to start turning possibilities into actual, tangible writing. Maybe I’ll come up with something crappy, but that’s O.K. The important thing is that I always just try to be better. It’s better to come up with creating something that could possibly be good, than giving up before even getting started.

Something from a person whose work (and opinions!) I admire, Ira Glass:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this.

And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met.

It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.“

And so, my personal mantra, until I die:

I’m pretty excited about how it’s going to turn out.

Another thing I have always thought of making, I finally got around to actually putting together tonight. I was going to go with a few friends to Rockeoke, but felt guilty about ditching work. So, I did the responsible thing and stayed behind to do some work. The Internet started acting up by around 6PM, though, and finally died by half past eight. I really, really got upset, but I didn’t have a social network to whine to, given the death of my internet connetcion, so I decided to try and actually start on my chapbook.

LOL. I bet you’re sick of seeing that darned deer.

It doesn’t have all of the stories I want to put in it, not even all of the ones in the fake table of contents, but I just wanted to try out the technique and see if producing a small print run was feasible. I think the size (4.25″ x 5.5″) might be a little small, but it’s a nice fun size, so we’ll see. Maybe if I have enough material for one that can handle the perfect bind.

Cutting. This is just a working title/placeholder. Also, it is a brilliantly sad song.

This story needs editing, but it’s got some of my favorite sentences.

Teaching myself how to use Masters, etc. This is a fake table of contents. Obviously.

Trimming the edges.

A few things that I’ve realized:

• I need a pen tablet. The fact that mine died a few months ago is upsetting to me. I never realized how crippling it was to live without one, once it’s become such an integral part of one’s process. But I digress.
• I need a heavy-duty paper cutter.
• I need an awl.
• I need good paper, waxed string, etc.
• I really, really like making books. This is actually more of a reinforced idea than a realization, but whatever.

And, you know, it sounds like so much work, trying to figure out Masters for InDesign pages, and printer settings, and margins and packaging contents, et cetera, et cetera, but it has, so far, worked best at calming me down.

October has been the most confusing, frustrating, exciting, fantastic, boring month, so far, this year. I have resisted the urge to punch people in the face, and sob uncontrollably (which is to say, I guess I controlled that urge pretty well), and kick and scream at nothing, sometimes about nothing at all. But it has also been one of the best months, if we are going to talk about blessings alone.

When I try to think about what has been happening in October, they all congeal into this indeterminate blob of either ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ depending on what kind of day I am having. On paper, it really seems like a stellar month.

• A piece I had written a few months ago got published in a magazine that I honestly don’t regularly read (on account of I am usually poor LOL) but I deeply respect. It’s also about something that I’m really attached to and interested in, so, way to go, right?
• I mounted a show with only my favorite artists ever. (No kidding, here is a list: Juan Alcazaren, Roberto Chabet, Nilo Ilarde, Bernardo Pacquing, Soler Santos (lol my dad) and Gerardo Tan. “What even!” is all I can say. Also, that yes, I have died. already, thanks.)
• I got offered a pretty sweet position at a new company with a pretty sweet idea and mission that I really feel personally close to.

(Yeah, I mostly put all of that there to brag and plug, but still, pretty good month, considering, yes? Please get the October 2010 Issue of UNO magazine! And drop by the exhibit; it’s up until November 6.)

And yet.

October 2010 remains one of the most harrowing months I have ever had to live through. I was sad for no specific reason, and whenever I tried to talk to other people about it, I couldn’t really give definitive answers, because, to be honest, I couldn’t think of any. Whenever I tried to put words into what I felt, they sounded wrong, and pathetic, and came across as measly, little problems that people whined about when they ran out of things to be sad about. But the feelings were real, and they were eating me up, and I didn’t know what to do about them.

One of the things I was upset about was my general listlessness when it came to “achieving” and “productivity.” It’s no secret to most of my closest friends that what I want for myself in life is to matter. That’s why I write, and that’s why I’m always so focused on making things. I used to think that maybe this fixation on ‘getting my name out there’ pointed to me wanting be popular and famous, and that thought really upset me because I didn’t want that to be my ultimate dream. How selfish and self-absorbed, I thought.

I think that the “not getting very far with what I had been doing” is what made me panic. And this panic bubbled into something I can’t even try to name. Sitting here, thinking about the month that still is, I have arrived at the realization that, perhaps, I’m not working hard enough, and I’m not spending my time as I should be, if I wanted to really make things that will mean something to people. If I really wanted my life to matter in the way that I wanted it to.

I’m sitting on an article due tomorrow morning, that I haven’t written, and I’m going to steal one of the quotes from my friend, Nash: ” i think [certain things] after college really taught me to stay away from the sad things for awhile.” I have a feeling that October is the month where I will try and teach myself to stay away from sad things. It’s been opening my eyes, slowly, to seeing that I needed to spend time on other things that I loved, and steer myself away from the little failures and disappointments that have been so liberally scattered recently.

A conversation with Abi made me realize how dumb it is to fixate on one aspect of my life that was going wrong at the time. When I saw her for the first time in months, I was visibly sad and upset. “How’s work?,” she asked. “Pretty good,” I said.

“Your family?”

“Also good.”

“Friends?”

“Quite well, actually.”

She didn’t say anything, because she’s such a good friend, but I could see her thought process, and it became clear to me how stupid it was to devote so many hours of my day to being upset over something I couldn’t control. It weighted so heavily on me, and I couldn’t shake these bad thoughts and bad feelings away. But I think it might have been because, up until that point, I didn’t really try very hard. And then, quite suddenly, the clouds seemed to part, and then it became easier for me to look at the other parts of myself that were working out well (and celebrate them!) and work on the things that I could.

Nick Hornby wrote, in 31 Songs (a book I have been in the middle of reading for the last eight years), “One has so many more opinions about what has gone wrong than about what is perfect.” And it’s true. From another high school staple, Megan McCafferty’s Second Helpings goes, “Tragedy was part of our daily routine. But through it all, I never understood the point of being sad when I could choose to be happy.” It’s been all around me all this time, and it took me a pretty frakking long time to get it.

What you choose to spend your time on is what’s going to matter in the future. That’s what’s I’m slowly learning. That it’s not good for certain things, especially those that are surrounded by negativity, to take up too much time and space in your life. That by giving these things an entire continuum, you ignore the other parts of your life that you could be happy, proud, excited about.

I’ve always been the kind of person who is propelled into action by the overwhelming sense of pressure. School taught me how to speed-write a paper an hour before it is due, and still get passing, if not excellent marks on it. I know how to cram a paper, edit a report, make a presentation in record frakking time, but what I’m learning right now is to be patient and to really spend time on the things that matter to you. Your relationships, your work, your craft—even reading books (as Atwood’s “The Blind Assassin” is kicking my ass so hard right now).

Some things can’t be rushed and need to be coaxed to grow and bloom and what-have-you. Sometimes, you really need to make time for them. Other things need to be left alone for a little while and be given some space to breathe. The trick that I’m trying to master, I guess, is which parts need to be looked after and which ones need to be aired out.

In the introduction to his novel, “Mother Night,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. I was first introduced to this by Megan McCafferty’s “Second Helpings,” and while I always thought of this as a cautionary tale, a call for us to take care to ‘pretend better,’ I realize now that I may have missed Vonnegut’s point entirely.

I went through a number of phases growing up, all of them different versions of ‘fitting in.’ When I was a freshman in high school, I assumed a completely different personality, one that immediately calls attention to myself as someone who was “different.”

I wasn’t like many of my schoolmates who cared too much about looks, and too little about learning. I didn’t mind lying on the grass, or looking silly, or being alone in public. I was different, sure, but I still wasn’t me. I was caught under the illusion that I was being who I was, not caring about what others thought of me, but the truth was that I did care. In fact, I cared so much, I created this whole other person—a supposedly better version of myself—that I could be.

That was a completely stupid way to live. Always considering the opinions of other people, not to mention failing, is taxing. Of course, I still do it all the time. Will this person like me better if I do this, if I say this, if I act in this way, if I say yes? So many unnecessary questions that coalesce in my brain, coming together to form something that, ultimately, matters very little.

Kurt Cobain said, “Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.” I think he was onto something. Embrace who you are, because you’re going to be stuck with that person until the day that you die. Don’t make yourself into somebody you will hate, because at the end of everything, the person who will care the most about how you lived and what kind of person you turned out to be is yourself.

These days, it seems like the only way to judge a person anymore is by looking at what they listen to, and the books that they like. It’s so easy to construct a ‘personality’ when you choose all the right books and all the right films and all the right artists, but these things tell you nothing about a person, at their core. The things people consume tell you the level of their comprehension, the kind of things they like to hear, what kind of stories they like knowing about. They don’t really say anything about a person’s character: how they will act in the face of danger, how selfless they are, what kind of people they have grown up to be.

“At three, I wanted to be a cook. At five, I wanted to be Napoleon. My ambition has been growing ever since, and now my ambition is to become Salvador Dali, nothing else. It is, nevertheless, very difficult, because the closer I come to Salvador Dali, the farther away from me he goes.” — Salvador Dali

Why are we so apologetic about who we are? Why are we so scared of being judged? Yes, criticism is painful sometimes, especially if it hits us in places that we are most sensitive about, especially if it’s being said by someone who means the world to us. But why hide who you are? I don’t think altering our character just to avoid hurtful words from other people is worth wearing all these masks.

I think that that’s why people never really say what they mean anymore. There’s a certain degree of paranoia that has whitewashed over everything, because we are suspicious of ulterior motives, and we are always on the look-out for insincerity. The only people who aren’t afraid of other people’s cruel intentions are people who are still sincere, and I think that those people are very hard to come by these days.

This isn’t to say that we should stop trying to be better people. My point is that living our lives, for other people, for the sake of being “different,” for some sort of acceptance, at the expense of our happiness, is stupid. What I’m saying is that it’s OK to be who we really are. It’s inevitable to run into people who will heckle and judge and talk behind our backs, but who cares?

I was bullied in the fifth grade, trying to please people who made me miserable everyday, and while I thought about what they must have thought of me at the time, I couldn’t really care less right now. I don’t even speak to those people anymore, and I think about the time I have wasted, being pushed into doing things I didn’t want to, and having so much unnecessary drama that I frankly could have lived without. Dr. Seuss wrote, “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind,” and I’m taking his word for it.

J.K. Rowling’s Harvard Commencement is called “The Fringe Benefits of Failure” and she talks about stripping away of the inessential, of doing away with things that don’t matter to make space for the things that do. I hold on to a lot of things, and I still cultivate ideas that people have of me that aren’t true anymore, but I still try to live up to. And I realized that to move forward, I had to get rid of a lot of things.

“I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity.” — J.K. Rowling

I had to strip away the inessential and stop pretending to be someone I was not. I think that that is what Kurt Vonnegut was ultimately trying to warn us about. We are, to other people, whatever we pretend to be. But what I’m hoping is that, little by little, I learn how to stop pretending and start actually being who I am.

excerpt from Mikael Co’s “As Courage, To Camus.” Click the photo to get to the entire poem.