merriment

this month has been good to me

(you know, if you ignore how ball-sticky hot it is every day)

i was so happy about getting my final grade that i didn't feel the need to have a birthday party.

DVD stickers and covers i made for the copies i gave for the library etc :3 i scanned the watercolor images i painted when i conceptualised the sets :3

this was how i celebrated my birthday-eve :) with a boy drink and a girl drink (i guess you could say it symbolizes my wholeness as a person or whatnot but really i just wanted to try these new tanduay ice's) and the cutest christmas tree bottle opener! i love how it goes with my thesis theme haha

i did a lot of catching up with my favorite shows after finishing my requirements. it's been good :) insanely hot, but good.

my "problems" arent over, i still need to know what to do with my life, but at least i'm more in the same stage as most of my friends.. it's one thing to feel lost, it's another to feel deliberately LATE.. if you see what i mean.

i feel like this year will be a great one for me. even though the rest of the world seems to be going crazy (really sad stuff in the USA and Iran and NoKor craziness)... I'm really looking forward to finding out what I'll be doing next.. Even though I'm really anxious too! SOMEONE HIRE ME haha

anyway yeah :) tomorrow i think i'm going somewhere with a nice water thingy (is it a pond?) to celebrate both my birthday and my cousin's move to Saudi. so yeah. the fun continues.

☼☽ things to be excited about ☽☼

ignore sad things! think of good stuff! make a list of exciting things!

stuff to be excited about:

• Graduating - This is a huge one. It's been a while since I last felt that I can accomplish anything big.. Especially because of the fact that there's loads of brilliant people in my university. I try my hardest not to compare myself to anyone, in fact I'm much better at it than I've ever been, but this one has been weighing on me for years now, and I feel like I just want to formally end this chapter and say that I did it, so I can start anew on other things, and be better at those than I was with college. Graduating would just take such a huge load off my shoulders. It hasn't happened yet and I already feel lighter just because I know it's happening. I feel freer to do things, to speak to people, to make things. It's really odd but it weighed on me like a ball and chain, constricting my very being. So yeah sorry bout the gloomy description, but it's the only way I could express how great this is for me! 
• Yoga - I went to yoga again this morning! after more than a month! It was great. I'll have a nice sleep tonight. I'll keep going and it will be awesome.
• Nero - I can edit videos now! hehe. So I might be able to post videos of Sansa soon.
• Disc covers - The fact that mama's extra laptop has a burner has somehow never occurred to me until I had to use it to burn my school film DVDs... i have sticker paper and a working printer! just imagine aaall the playlists!
• My Bday week - coincidentally my first week of freedom from school work! ( there will still be administrative stuff to work on for graduation, but there's no more papers to pass or whatever ) I shall try not to drink or eat much. maybe just one night. hehe. (of drinking)
•  Time for creating freely! - Since i won't be so bogged down by guilt of not being done with school
• My newly improved sleep schedule! - I am pleased to announce that I have been sleeping properly for more than a week now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOORAY
• JUST ALL THE THINGS! THE GREAT UNKNOWN! I DONO WHATS GNA HAPPEN BUT I CAN MAKE IT GOOD AND I'LL MAKE IT MINE

a victorious day

guess what happened!!

clue:

don't say anything about the discarded dress ITS REALLY HOT OKAY

and then i

\

!!!

What, I stayed up all night on FACEBOOK and then printed some random stuff the next day? nonononono i finished my THESIS and printed it this morning!

and then i went to school to submit it for binding!

they planted a bunch of sunflowers at the main road in uni.. i've only been hearing about it on facebook, never really noticed them when i went there.. they said it's for the april graduation ceremonies.. so sunflowers had been a graduation-related meme online. there was an image that went around, a background of just sunflowerheads and in the middle was written:

 tapusin mo na ang thesis mo.

("finish your thesis already.")

at the time i was trying my best to push myself to do just that, so I actually downloaded that image on my phone and used it as a wallpaper. it did help remind me everyday.

and now fast forward to this afternoon.. i was in the jeep entering the uni grounds, and for the first time i made it a point to look for the flowers.. i noticed the hedges.. and sure enough, i saw a first couple of little sunflower heads. greeting me, like hi i know you finished your thesis, good job we'll all see you soon.

it was a feeling that was really thrilling and i felt so excited and i felt feelings i didn't think i could feel anymore.

i remember feeling thankful about my thesis being about children. thinking about the things that make children different from adults really put things into perspective. i find it easier to be happy/pleased when i tap into my child self. i don't call it inner child anymore. i just realised it's still who i am. 

i passed my copies, returned my adviser's book, and i passed by a little sunflowerhead on the way out of my college. i snapped a picture of it with my phone, and replaced the one with the thesis reminder. now it's time to remind myself that the hardest part is over, and that the sunflowers are waiting :)

in other news, i made earrings today!

I've always wanted these and now I have them and it's a lot cooler cos I MAAADE THEM OKAY! there were four pendants in the little baggie so i made two pairs. one for me, one for mama!

also i bought some blue feather earrings that i altered (i used the same chain):

ta-daaaaa, muuch bettor.

all i used was this thingy which i think is used for surgery or whatever who cares it's cool

I almost gave up on finding the perfect chain, because i had something specific in mind.. luckily this really long one came close enough, and still looked cool:

 and i'm going to make other funky pendants for that blue chain i found. it's so cool-looking. i'm thinking i'll screw some loops on some tiny plastic animal/insect/dinosaur toys...

i bought lotsa nice cheap stuff today.. take a look at these AA batteries:

all of those for only 88 PESOSWHAAAT

also, i found this in mama's room and she's reading something else so she's letton me barrow it:

yey to fey

SO YEAH i'm excited and i'm drinking a beer. it's super exciting cos now that it's over i can just look forward to the summer. what's happening in the summer? guess.

clue:

Catching Up

on thursday i went to QC to finally hand in my thesis draft.

*screams internally*

a day before, abbie expressed desire to have a creative brainstorming session over milk tea.

so after meeting my adviser and returning some books to the library, i met up with her at katipunan 

we had lunch at kfc and went to moonleaf

when she first contacted me i simply thought she was just randomly brimming with inspiration and ideas,

little did i know that she just got out of a MAJOR phase of distress in her life! i do my best to keep in touch via twitter and i always make it a point to read her feed when i feel like she's down (i don't to this for anyone else hehe ʕ❀ᴥ❀ʔ) but i thought she was just feeling depressed mood-wise (not to trivialize it of course! moods are just as real as feelings that have an outside cause, they're just easier to treat internally) so i didnt feel alarmed or whatever. but yeah she went through tuff times! but the worst is over and im really glad..

we talked about everything and anything and she was hyper from recovery and i was sabaw from a whole week of not really sleeping (like, i'd take naps of course) and it just felt like we had so much to talk about and it felt really nice. plus, there's the actual brainstorming which - was awesome because we're on the same page about making a channel on youtube! her idea is for us and our cousins/siblings to collab on it, and soon after we were thinking of ideas and concepts for videos. i'm really excited about all this!

i didn't make it a point to tell her this, because i didn't want to make it weird, but inside i was kind of feeling  touched + happy that she wanted to see me, and that we were being so hyper together, and that we spent a whole afternoon together. i lived with her in their house for five years in college, but because we were studying, the time we spent together was usually quiet! we rested together i guess. and i was always the more expressive one. i always wished she opened up to me more naturally, but lately it's been easier to talk to her about that... i used to be scared to say anything about it, because it's not like she's doing it on purpose! shyness isn't something you can cure by telling someone "don't be shy." and i really understood where she was coming from, so i tried not to push her.

but i guess she encountered some sort of change in herself after going through her recent trubblez. she told me that she got to express her feelings to her family at home, and i felt really warm and almost teared up to be honest, cos i felt a bit relieved and happy that she can talk about stuff like that to them. i always worried about her, i didn't like the idea of her suffering more than necessary, just because she didn't know how to express pain. ANYWAYYYYY (/end super dramabellz..im not even going to proofread this because ew feelings)

so it was AWESOME catching up, and i'm really looking forward to spending more time with my cousins this summer, especially to do stuff that involve being creative and laughing one's butt off.

another thing about "catching up": i learned a money lesson today...

you know how you think you know how to do something until you have to do it? i learned a valuable lesson about restraint yesterday. i'm not going to go into details, but the lesson was:

"when you have more than usual cash at hand, think about how much you want to save, and mentally 'delete' it. so that you'll go about your day having a mindset of someone who only has the amount of money that you do want to spend."

it's as if cognitive dissonance had made me simultaneously believe that: 

1) i can afford to spend more cash, and 

2) i will have money to deposit at the end of the day

when in fact, these two possibilities cancel each other out. so yeah. you spend and you spend and it catches up on you. get it. yeah.

anyway, lesson learned, and i don't think i'll forget that one! although, i'm actually happy with the makeup i bought (they're cheap, i just don't really have a lot of money to begin with) so whatevz

kk byby!

★★★