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There are two type of guys that I find myself attracted to.

The first type of guy is the Brooding Artist. I happen to be a huge sucker for them, but I’m betting it’s because they’re the only type of guys that move in all my social circles. Despite that, I am hopelessly drawn to them. How can I not melt at the sight of that messy-haired boy, smoking his cigarette with long tapered fingers while he sits and broods about the state of the world? The Brooding Artist is an amazingly intelligent and creative individual who can play a thousand instruments while razzle-dazzling me with trivia about my favorite authors or bands. He has a taste for obscure indie films and anime and he burns me DVDs of his favorites labelled with “Must see before dying!” in thick, black ink. The Brooding Artist and I can stay up until dawn, talking passionately about philosophy, love, and life. He makes me fall in love with his words.

Though he might know a lot about the aesthetic and metaphysical, the Brooding Artist’s intelligence drops down to a zero when it comes to his personal life. Wherever he goes, he leaves behind a trail of weeping, brokenhearted little girls and furious knife-wielding women, thirsty for his blood. Sometimes he does this intentionally. Sometimes he doesn’t.

He tells me about his past, of course, because we talk about everything. I’m not stupid enough to fall for someone with such a crazy history. But I love the Brooding Artist anyway because he’s just as spontaneous, insane, and dangerous as I am. “Let’s look for sushi, I’m starving,” I’ll tell him. “Only if we can go out of town after,” he replies. “Right now? Sure, let’s go!” He understands that it takes a tremendous amount of effort to go out in the world and pretend like you’re not about to fall apart by the seams. It’s a struggle he has to go through every day as well. He says the right things to make me get out of bed each morning and to keep myself going, going, going. But when it’s his turn under the bell jar he falls silent, withdraws into himself, and I’m left standing outside unable to do a thing.

The next type of guy is the Normal Guy. I have nothing to say to him and he has nothing to say to me because we’re both so different. The Normal Guy is about as normal and mainstream as you can get. He’s got a few skeletons in his closet, but nothing as scandalous as the bones hidden in the crypt of the Brooding Artist. He doesn’t understand the way I think and why I do the things I do. I don’t understand how he can never once dare defy society’s norms and do the unconventional.

He likes hip-hop; I like good old-fashioned rock. But we both love to dance. In the middle of the dance floor, with the beat of the bass pounding through our bodies, it feels like we’ve been doing this dance all our lives.

The Normal Guy is the man I will marry. He is interesting and intelligent without being insane. His moods are steady and his mind is clear, and that helps me stay calm and steady more than pretty words ever could. I know I’ll function well with him backing me up because he will be that one consistent, predictable factor that I desperately need in my otherwise chaotic life. Like that song by Oasis says, “Because maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me.”

The Normal Guy will never understand me, of course. He’ll never understand the thoughts that race through my head when I go quiet. He’ll never know what to say to make me feel better. It will be a little unfair to him, I think. But for his sake and mine, I’ll do my best to keep from snapping.

I met a Normal Guy last night, which is why I’m writing this silly entry. I’m not sure if I’m falling in love with him or if it’s just a very deadly crush. Either way, I’m pretty fucking doomed. I don’t know if my existence registers a blip on his radar and if anything I said to him made the smallest imprint on his memory. For some reason, it doesn’t seem to matter. I will see him tonight. I will see him tomorrow. Or maybe the day after. I haven’t felt so eager and excited about seeing anyone in the longest time.

I just came back from lunch with my best friend Kristel and Aedz, another one of my really good friends from college. By “lunch” I mean “sit at the nearest Starbucks and gripe about boys, school, and life in general over coffee and cigarettes.” No actual eating takes place. Today, however, we were at the Starbucks in Emerald Avenue instead of Katipunan Avenue. Aedz already has a part-time job in the area and Kristel just accepted a job offer as a web content writer. Which officially makes me the only unemployed bum in our group (friends going to med school don’t count).

I’m happy for my friends, of course, but at the same time I couldn’t help feeling like I just failed at life. I’ve been sending out resumes but no one has called me for an interview yet, which is far more heartbreaking than never hearing from a guy you really like. I know I can make relatively easy money just by blogging but there’s a lot more I want than just money. I want to join the workforce, I want to build a career and make a name for myself. The kind of career I want though, is the burning question that I haven’t found the answer to–until today.

When I graduated from high school, I was so sure that I wanted to be a diplomat. So sure that in all my college application forms, I ticked off “Political Science” as my major. Then I realized that I hated reading the newspaper and that politics bored me to tears, so I switched to Sociology when I got to Ateneo. (Which was actually a very good move, since I would have had a radically different college experience if I had stayed in Political Science.)

During my junior year, when I was getting A’s and B+’s in my Sociology classes, I decided that I wanted to have a brilliant academic career. I imagined myself in big libraries somewhere in London, churning out dissertation after dissertation on a rickety old typewriter. Then I realized that this would never work out because most of my college days were spent not studying. I get shit grades in exams because my mind automatically goes blank every time I see the questions, no matter how familiar I am with the material. All those A papers–I was just lucky because I figured out which writing style would get me high grades under which professors. It also helped that I have a knack for backing up my conclusions with statistical evidence, despite my loathing for math. I finally junked the academic career idea for good during my senior year. I had a whole semester to do my thesis but guess what–I only started working on it three weeks before the deadline! How I got away with a B, I will never know.

During the later part of my junior year, I decided that maybe I’ll just move in with my boyfriend after college, get married, pop out baby after baby, and become a rotund housewife crocheting doilies in her spare time. Obviously that didn’t work out.

Late last year, I thought, “Fuck this getting a real job shit. I’m going to be a rock star with a full body suit and multiple facial piercings!” \m/ Two horrible gigs later (one in which we got harassed by frat boys) I realized that breaking into the music scene wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought it would be. Currently the band is on hiatus since we’re missing a bassist (but keep your eye on my podcast as we will be uploading demos very very soon).

Early this year I was so sure that I wanted to be a high school English teacher and write my novel in my spare time. I was so sure that when I went to the Placement Office for the routine interview, I had the lady convinced that I knew exactly what I wanted to do after college. Then I realized, who the hell am I kidding? I hate teenagers. Even when I was a teenager I hated teenagers. As for that novel–it’s been a year since I conceptualized the thing and I’ve yet to write a word of it.

Oddly enough, what I really want to do with the rest of my life is so simple and so obvious, it took me this long to realize it. I want to be a writer. Ever since I was a kid, I could write better than I could walk. Which is not to say that I’m a good writer–most of the time I can’t stand reading my own work–but I think I’m decent enough to make a living out of it. The only thing I want to be right now is a web content writer, preferably at the company Kristel works at. From there, who knows. I suppose I can slowly worm myself into literary circles, get published, and win myself a couple of awards, or die as a failure only to become some sort of cult figure years after my death.

The moral of this story: college is a time where you will undergo many many changes. That sweet, wholesome looking girl with the boring haircut–that was me during my freshman year. Obviously I’m nothing like that anymore. At some point, you might think you’re sure about what you want to do when you graduate, and that you’re going to end up marrying your college sweetheart. But four years is a long time and events will happen that could make you emerge an entirely different person 48 months later. One day you’ll wake up and realize that your boyfriend is a douchebag. Or that you’re not at all suited for the course that you’re in. Or that the easy money of a call center job doesn’t sound very appealing after all.

You can make the job-hunting process a little bit easier by doing the following while you’re still in school:
1) Join an organization suited to your interests and slowly work your way up to becoming one of the core members. It looks teh awesome on resumes.
2) Suck up to a professor, preferably the ones with Ph.D’s, so they can give you glowing recommendations to future employers.
3) Good grades are definitely a plus, but I think what employers are really looking for are skills and abilities. So start sharpening those mad writing and Photoshop skillz.

What you really want to do after you graduate–only you can decide that for yourself.

The Bell Jar by Slyvia Plath is the most apt and the most dangerous book for me at this point in my life. I first read it when I was fourteen and pseudo-depressed; therefore I couldn’t appreciate it very much but I thought it’d be a clever present to give to my first boyfriend anyway. Now that I’m twenty and my teenage angst has metamorphosed into existential angst, this book is hitting me where it really hurts.

“Of course, you have another year of college left,” Jay Cee went on a little more mildly. “What do you have in mind ater you graduate?”

“I don’t really know.”

There’s a lot of other things in The Bell Jar that echoes my sentiments and outlook of life at the moment, but that particular scene damn near made me jump up and scream, “THAT’S ME! THAT’S ME!” At first I entertained the thought of being a high school teacher, but do I seriously have the patience to deal with teenage girls and be some sort of wholesome role model for them? I think not. I HATE HATE HATE doing research so even if my major is geared towards that, I would really loathe having to do research for a living. I can write, I suppose, but bleh. There’s absolutely nothing I can picture myself doing for money! Except maybe the band, but I’m not betting on that to get me rich. So career-wise, I’m drawing a blank here.

My brain can’t take any more academic torture, but the thought of graduating and having to join the working class is bothering more than I’d like. It feels like from that point on, I’ll no longer be able to do what I want because I’m too busy doing things that I should so that I can get enough money to someday do what I want. I don’t even know what kind of thing it is that I should do so that I can have the resources to do what I want. If I can ever get around to doing what I should (i.e. graduate from college and get employed, ugh ugh). I hate that these days, it’s the people who sacrifice their own happiness and dreams in order to attain society’s definition of success that are most admired. But enough of these thoughts.