Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Updates + The Happiness Project


(Forgive me for the lack of a better title.)

For the past week, the internet's been down at home. It's really been working to my advantage though! I've been getting a lot of work done and even to my own surprise, I've been writing a lot. Way more than I do when I can actually use my blog.

Here's an entry from last week. I wanted to write about The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, the book I just finished, but I realized that I already did.



February 20, 2013

5:00 PM


Had I not brought The Happiness Project to school, today would have been a total waste. For most of our subjects, we’ve been working on our projects outside of school and coming to class to either submit or present our finished products. That’s one of the reasons why it feels like there’s so much and so little to do at the same time. Either way, I have more time to do things like jog and read books.

At first, I wasn’t too ecstatic about the book, The Happiness Project because it sounded too much like “The Adventure Project”, some long term, self – enlarging, uhm… thing I came up with two years ago, where I’d do something new every week in order to break boundaries and grow as a person. Something I should actually write about more. But now, if ever I blog more about my adventure project, everyone’s going to think that I got the name from the now – famous book by Gretchen Rubin. I'm probably one of the millions of people who think they coined a term themselves when in fact, it's totally unoriginal. Haha! Oh well.

However, after reading the first chapter yesterday, I was already so inspired – so much that I went straight to my desk and finished all my work well before 10 in the evening and even had time for a phone call. It was a pretty good feeling that I wanted to have more often.

That was last night. This morning, however, my alarms were set to go off at 5:30 AM, 5:45 and 6:00. In contrast to my efficient evening, I snoozed them all and got up at around 6:15 without any intention of rushing to my 7 AM class. I took my time to wash up, dress up and even eat a quick meal of pancit canton. Still enjoying the early morning breeze, I walked out my door and into the streets to get a jeepney and go to school and once I got on, I read.

And read.
And read.

The jeep stopped at my gate at around 7:30 AM and I got to my classroom feeling triumphant once again for somehow knowing that “yes, I can be late today,” thereby, earning a few dagger looks from those who actually took the initiative to wake up an hour earlier than me. Our Design professors weren't there yet so, I took my book out and read.

And read.
And read some more.

Gosh, it’s a beautiful book - the third one I read this month about someone whose dream was to become a writer. Hmmm.....

Gretchen Rubin writes about how she did lots of little things every day that changed her life – things like nagging less, reading more, tidying up every night, sleeping earlier and whatnot. My friend was right. It is my kind of book. Haha!

One of the things I realized I do too much is one, complain about school and two, use the word hate, despite the fact that I never really feel actual hatred.

I hate it.
I hate him.
I hate our homework.
I hate how they’re so useless.
I hate this.
I hate that.
I hate…
I hate…

Too much.
Although, in my defense, I also abuse and overuse the word: love.

When someone gives me yummy candy: I love you.
When someone tells me about a free cut: Really?? I love you!
When I see a cute kid: I’m in love.
When I hear a really good guy singer: I love him.
When I hear a really good girl singer: I love her.
When something good happens to me: I love life.

Okay, that might be a little too much as well but, it’s still much better than hating on everything.

So, inspired by Gretchen’s happiness project as well as the Lenten Season is another resolution: no more hating! From this day forth, I shall be cursed with a wave of guilt for every unnecessary use of the word... until I am able to find more better punishment.

After lunch, we submitted our homework for math and rejoiced at the announcement of an early dismissal. See what I mean by the total waste of a school day? We took the opportunity to work on our other video project until around 2:00 and then, I forced myself to jog.

Earlier that day, I told people that I would. Not so much to brag about it but rather, to make sure I get it done. It’s a tactic that usually works because I hate it when people say “I thought you were planning to… blah ,”or when I have to explain why I didn’t do something I said I’d do. But, it’s not like I really want to jog. I just want to have some form of exercise. Plus, I have absolutely no idea how I’m gonna survive running 5k at the Color Manila Nite Run this Saturday when I can’t even run a hundred meters straight without panting like crazy.

2:15, it was time to start.

Three rounds around the UST field.

Dead.

Man, I’m seriously out of shape.



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