But after four years of happy togetherness with our varied social groups, my identity is starting to feel inextricably tied to my boyfriend’s. I would guesstimate that less than 2% of the people in my friends and acquaintances lists have spent time with me only. To the rest, it’s unthinkable that I socialize with them on my own. Maybe making aspects of my social life Lauren-only is not such a bad idea after all.

Marco took this picture

This line of thinking began with an observation: whenever I fly solo to meet our friends, “Where’s Marco?” becomes the standard post-beso greeting. It’s hardly ever a “How are you?” or a “What’s up?” Almost always, it’s an inquiry as to where my “other half” is.

To this, I usually shrug and I say, “At home, asleep?” But in my head, I’m letting out an exasperated sigh and quelling an neurotic mini-rant. “I really don’t know. He could be anywhere in the world doing god knows what. We actually trust each so much that we don’t send blow-by-blow reports of what we’re doing, where we are, and who we’re with when we’re not together. Why are you asking? Last I checked, we’re in a relationship, not conjoined to the hip sharing vital organs. Is it so weird to see me out by myself? Do you not like being around me sans Marco? Am I just one half of a couple to you?”

Don’t you want to be friends with just me?

I’m sure that anyone who uses the where’s-Marco-as-greeting probably means nothing by it. As my friend Rica pointed out, they’re likely asking out of sheer curiosity. She also added that we’ve built common friends as a couple, which makes it natural to inquire about the one person that connects them to me, when that person isn’t around. While this explanation applies to the informal gaming circles we’ve joined, it doesn’t explain why even the Hohobags waste no time asking about Marco’s whereabouts when I show up alone.

I guess this is what really bothers me, the where’s-Marco-as-greeting coming from my pre-relationship friends. I expect them to be happy to see me, but when the initial greeting is followed up by a “Where’s Marco?” it’s like, when did I stop being Lauren and start being the Marco-Lauren entity? Is it so unthinkable for me to want to interact with you sans boyfriend, or for Marco to have other things to do than be with me? I’m glad my friends get along fabulously with Marco, but sometimes I just want to be a girl with my girls and talk to them about things I don’t feel comfortable discussing around the menfolk. Why is it so unusual for me to show up without Marco that they have to wonder where he is?

There’s a reason why I’m quite adamant about establishing a social identity outside my relationship. Years after I broke up with my college ex, I learned that our mutual friends – the ones who didn’t hate me for leaving him, anyway – saw me as part of a “we” than as Lauren. I hung out with them nearly everyday but I didn’t realize then that most of the conversation was directed to him rather than me, and that I didn’t feel comfortable talking to others with him always there.

My ex was incredibly manipulative, and had total control over what I could wear and what friends I should have. One of the first things he did was make me end friendships because he thought they were too Christian or too slutty. He would also pick fights when I would get “too noisy” after a glass of wine, and for making statements that seemed harmless to me but was apparently offensive to him. So after all that, I guess I must have been too afraid to try to reach out and make friends with him around, because I might have said something inappropriate that would piss him off, which would start a fight where I end up crying and feeling shitty and sorry for being myself and saying whatever it was that offended him. Needless to say, it was not a healthy relationship, and this shit still kind of haunts me nearly ten years later.

Hello, pogi.

Obviously Marco is nothing like this guy at all. He incredibly understanding and supportive, gives me tons of space when I need it, and has never tried to change me or force me to see things his way. (He is also 1000000000x more good-looking.) But I never, ever want to be seen by anyone as a “we” again. So every time a greeting is followed up by a “Where’s Marco?”, it kind of awakens old traumas. I get a knot in my stomach and I wonder if I’m disappearing into the Marco-Lauren Happy Couple Entity, and if my friends will ever recognize me as Lauren again.

I love my boyfriend with every under-toned muscle of my being, but I am not a “we”. I am Lauren and he is Marco and sometimes we like to do things and see people without the other.

Is this a normal thing to feel or am I overreacting? Do you feel the need to establish an identity outside of your relationship?

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Still excited about having a purple bedroom though!

When thought about where my frustrations came from, I realized that it was because I knew very little about the realities of buying a condo. You’d think that my real estate broker would have given me a heads up these things. Isn’t his job to help me make sense of all this stuff? But I soon learned that brokers and developers do next to nothing to educate their buyers about what they’re getting themselves into.

Here are the five things your real estate broker won’t tell you when they give you their sweet sales talk, based on my experiences:

You can’t see your unit until you have fully paid.

Your condo unit is completely off-limits to you until you pay the developer the full amount for the place. If you’re getting a bank loan to pay off your balance, a Letter of Guarantee isn’t enough. You have to pay the full amount. No exceptions. Not even if you were one of the first people to buy a unit from the building. Not even if all you want to do is look at the place and measure out its dimensions so you know what size of furniture to buy.

I found this a little ridiculous, and I never did get an explanation for why you can’t look at the property you’ve been paying for years. My broker was at least nice enough to take me to my building and show me a similar unit.

Oh, you have a bank loan? You can’t see your unit yet, and we won’t give you an exact date when you can.

My bank loan got approved and signed on February 13, but I didn’t get to see my condo until April 12 – and this was only after my mom sweet-talked someone from the marketing department to help me out. Who knows how much longer it would have taken if I had no connections to Robinsons Land?

Apparently, this is how it works: your bank doesn’t release the loan money to the developer until they receive the signed bank guaranty, Deed of Undertaking, Notarized CTS and Final Statement of Account from the latter. These papers require signatures from various offices and departments (I don’t really know which). I guess it takes nearly two months for papers to move from desk to desk?

To make a long story short – Robinsons promised and failed to return the papers to the bank on two different dates – March 14 and March 22. I started getting really pissed off when March 23 came and the bank still had nothing from RObinsons Land. You can imagine how frustrating it was to be jerked around like this and kept in the dark as to when I could finally see my damn condo.

After some drama with an extremely rude real estate broker on Twitter, a strongly-worded email to the marketing department, and the help of my mom, Robinsons finally gave their paperwork to the bank, who then released the loan on March 27.

According to the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB), buyers have a right to know when your unit’s turnover date is (turnover, meaning the date you can visit the unit and get the keys turned over to you from the developer). So if your developer is being vague as hell about when you can visit your unit, don’t be afraid to complain to the HLURB.

I’m not sure if the same foot-dragging and lousy service happened to people who paid for their balance in cash. Any experiences?

You need to pay a crapload of miscellaneous fees.

I got the sticker shock of my life when I discovered that I had to pay P158,216.20 in miscellaneous fees on top of the balance I owed Robinsons. What the actual shit.

I demanded a breakdown of the fees and this is what they’re for:

Reimbursement of real estate tax – P9,423.00
Transfer tax – P74,952.26
Miscellaneous fees * – P61,967.96
Association dues (6 months) – P11,872.98

While you can use the housing loan to pay for the miscellaneous fees, it’s still an unpleasant and unavoidable reality that I wish my broker warned me about at the beginning.

* Thanks to my non-existent organizing skills, I lost the document that had a detailed breakdown of the miscellaneous fees portion. But I remember that this included stuff like the electricity meter from Meralco, a whopping P25,000.

There are going to be rules. Lots of rules.

Even though I live with my parents, I’m used to coming and going as I please, inviting over as many friends as I want, and bringing in large boxes without filling paperwork. So I was pretty bummed when I got a 20-page document with the building rules, and even more bummed by its contents. The freedoms I thought I would enjoy were wrecked by pages and pages of rules and penalties.

I get that living in a high-rise building with 400 or so other people will require some rules to maintain peace, order, and security. And I get that I too will benefit from these rules in the long run. But I dunno – I don’t deal well with rules and authority figures. I don’t like it when people tell me what I can and can’t do. I wish I had known that living in a condo might feel like living in a police state. It would have probably made me think twice about buying.

I’m not going to provide you with after-sales service. You’re on your own, kid.

Real estate brokers are incredibly friendly and helpful during the first steps of the buying process. They answer all your questions dutifully and act as if they’ll stay by your side until you get the keys to your unit. I’m sure that there are brokers who follow through with great after-sales service. But mine certainly didn’t. While I was wrestling with Robinsons about my turnover date, my broker was nowhere to be found. Requests to help me follow up with their turnover department resulted in an indifferent “Ok”, only for me to never hear from him again. It was so frustrating.

I get that maybe brokers aren’t obligated to take care of their clients when the purchase is done. But the fact remains that they represent your developer and are pretty much your lifeline to them. They really should provide a modicum of after-sales service, or point you to someone who can assist you in these matters. I’ve talked to a few people who purchased condos and save for one who helped expedite the turnover, the others had brokers who couldn’t be bothered to return texts or calls.

Let’s not even go into how one of Robinsons’ sales managers tactlessly pointed out my weight gain. Twice.

I’m not saying that buying a condo was entirely a negative experience. In fact, I was impressed by the building’s seamless construction, and pleasantly surprised when I saw that the actual unit has a much nicer kitchen than the model unit. But I disliked being kept in the dark about these tiny yet significant details. Oh well. I hope my experiences gave you some insight about the realities of buying a condo. I certainly wish someone told me these things before I even made my first payment.

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I read somewhere that tarot cards had to be given as a gift for it to work properly, so I begged my parents to buy me the deck. They were a tad conservative then and said no, adding that they didn’t want me corrupted by such un-Christian toys. Meh. No one else in my life was cool enough to get me tarot cards, and I didn’t have the discipline to save my allowance and buy it myself. Eventually, my interest in tarot and the occult in general went away on its own and I moved on to pursue less esoteric avenues towards social acceptance.

A decade later, I found myself at the receiving end of an interesting tarot reading. Marco and I celebrated our fourth anniversary right when our friend Pat arrived from the States, offering free passage for online purchases in her suitcase. We’re not very big on rewarding ourselves for staying together, but I grabbed this opportunity to give him the Erotic Tarot of Manara. This 78-card deck is beautifully illustrated by Milo Manara, an Italian artist known for his sensual rendering of the female form and tasteful interpretation of sexual acts. While Marco has never really shown an interest in tarot reading, he is quite the Manara fan and I thought this would make a more interesting present than a hardbound compilation of his work. He did quite enjoy my present, and busted out the cards to give me a reading the first chance he got.

As he shuffled the deck, Marco (who majored in psychology) told me something I didn’t know: Carl Jung studied the tarot quite a bit and interpreted the major aracana using his core concepts. Despite my initial fascination with the tarot as an occult object and divination tool, I’d rather treat it as a way to read someone’s personality and psychological state. It feels a lot less nebulous and more grounded that way, plus it prevents you from messing with mystical forces you don’t understand.

The Erotic Tarot of Manara comes with a little booklet that provides the basic meanings behind each card, as well as two readings you can do – a love reading and a 12-card astrological reading. I picked the latter, which involves arranging 12 cards in a circle to divine various aspects of your personality and current situation.

It is interesting to note that most people buy the erotic tarot of Manara for the artwork rather than its faithfulness to the tarot’s astrological symbols. I didn’t realize the deck’s supposed inaccuracies until I revisited the product page and noticed the 3-star reviews. It might have been because he knows me very well, but Marco’s reading hit me dead on, particularly when it came to divining myself and my work. He was able to tie all the elements together and conjure a coherent picture of where I am now.

Some highlights from the reading, using Marco’s words:

House 1: Personality
The Stars
Symbolic of dance, beauty, enthusiasm, and enchantment. Your personality is driven by your desire to be enchanted with something, to find enthusiasm in beauty and art. Creativity innervates you; to be without it would make you cold and detached.

House 3: Mental Inclination
2 of Fire
Symbolic of uncertainty, lack of stimuli or positive outlook despite present possibilities, frustration, and the need to evolve and fight in an authoritative way. Given that Fire cards are indicative of your passions, desires, and creativity, your current thoughts tend to lean towards frustration with a situation that hinders your spark. You’re bored and unsure of what will come next, which bogs you down so much so that you have trouble seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. In order to counter this, you will need to find a path that feeds your inner creativity.

House 4: Mood
King of Air
Symbolic of power, order, decision ,agitation, impatience, and determination. Air is indicative of the sphere of the mind, governing what is rational. Tying your mood to previous cards, it would appear that your frustration with the hindrance to your creative spark has rendered you impatient; it’s gone on for too long and you’re getting testy. Although your outlook isn’t exactly positive, there’s something in you that provides a drive to get out of this situation. Doing so, you believe, will bring you greater strength, direction, and order in your life.

House 6: Health
4 of Air
Symbolic of meditation, reflection, the need to develop harmoniously, and being unreachable. Since this is once again an Air card, this relates to your mental health – and possibility how it affects your physical health as well. You desire a sense of harmony in your mind: a state free of conflicts, in which everything meshes together as it should. To create this harmony, you feel the need to meditate upon your problems. This sense of “retreatiyo”, however, may make you difficult to reach if taken to the extremes. There is a risk of shutting yourself away in your thoughts, cutting off those around you. For you, the solitude is necessary – without it, your well-being will be in jeopardy.

House 7: Society
The Sun
Symbolic of desire, freedom, direction, arrogance, and self-expression. You desire the freedom to express yourself, an act you believe will help you make your mark in society. Whatever this achievement you seek may be, it must be something uniquely you. This may be connected with your need for creative stimulation. Taken to an extreme, this may be perceived as arrogance on your part, but to you, it is the only way you’ll feel like you’ve fleshed out your role in this world.

House 8: The End
Justice
Symbolic of sobriety, fairness, creativity, and joyfulness. The end of this particular chapter of your life will bring about the creativity you seek, resulting in the calming of your tumultuous thoughts and a state of happiness. In terms of fairness, this reward at the end of your journey will likely feel like something you deserve; whatever it is, you will feel like it’s only right that you’ve earned it.

House 9: Spiritual Tendencies
Knave of Earth
Symbolic of the student, curiosity, the desire to learn, and the beginning of winter. Since Earth is the suit related to the physical world, associations with this card tend to be grounded. Winter is symbolic of an end, which means that something spiritual in your life is coming to an end. (My jaw dropped at this point – see my recent defection from the Catholic church.) However, this is not the blunt slamming of a door – your inherent desire to learn means that you’re seeking to learn the alternative to what’s being left behind. You choose to be educated about your sense of spirituality, whatever it may be.

House 10: Work
Knight of Fire
Symbolic of travelling, departure, adventure, optimism, and ambition. You may be leaving an unsatisfactory work environment for something more stimulating or exciting. Your sense of ambition refuses to let yourself stay stuck, and so you will eventually depart in search of adventure – or in the case of your job, fulfillment. Again, because this is a Fire card, this may be tied to the other cards that mention your sense of creativity, which in turn fuels your ambitions.

House 11: Hope
5 of Water
Symbolic of fear, avoidance of unpleasant events, struggle, and reassurance. Water is the suit of daydreams and emotions, and in terms of your hope, this card could mean that there is a great fear holding you back. As the art of the card suggests, it may feel like you are drowning in your current situation, diminishing your positive outlook. However, the art also suggests that you’ll manage to stay afloat with the reassurance of those around you.

House 12: Difficulties
Ace of Earth
Symbolic of success, perfection, and productive and imaginative states of consciousness. The biggest hindrance in your current situation may be a sense of perfectionism – if everything isn’t exactly as you wish it to be, you are not a success. This attitude may have a negative effect on your ability to perform according to your desires; that is, in a productive and imaginative manner. Tying this to your Personality card, this suggests a lack of belief in your creative abilities – because what you do isn’t perfect, you’re not good enough. This may also be tied to your Hope card, suggesting that this perfectionism is connected to the fear you experience. Overcoming this may very well be the key to realizing your ambitions.

TLDR: I’m a creative person currently experiencing high dissatisfaction at a non-creative job, which contributes to my lack of confidence, diminished hope, and disharmony in my mind. The good news is that I will soon leave my job (how the fuck did the tarot know that?), likely for something that allows me to express myself and make my name in the world. Aside from fear, the other thing keeping me from happiness or achieving my dreams is my perfectionist tendencies. I’ll never be happy until I achieve my imagined perfect life and perfect self. Yeah, that about sums it up.

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I am writing to let you know that as of today, I have decided to defect from the Catholic Church and renounce Catholicism entirely. I know that short of excommunication, there’s actually no way to formally leave the Catholic church, but humor me. After 27 years, it’s time I start getting serious about my spirituality and come clean about what I really believe in – or don’t believe in.

Like most Filipinos, I was baptized a Roman Catholic long before I could speak, and was raised by its doctrines, customs, and mythology through my family and private education. I don’t blame my parents at all for baptizing me Catholic. It’s just what people in the Philippines do to give their kids a moral compass, social acceptance, and a safety net from Limbo in case we die in childhood. School actually had more to do with raising me Catholic. Aside from the occasional Sunday mass, a few bedtime prayers, and some gruesome books on the lives of the saints, religion didn’t figure much into my family life.

Still, I don’t think my parents will be too thrilled to discover my defection from the Church, and I hope I’m not disappointing them terribly by formally rejecting the religion of my birth. The truth is that I have never really taken Catholicism very seriously, not even as a child. I mean, I had my first communion illegally at six years old because I wanted to know what the wafer tasted like.

The only time I remember being a “good” Catholic was when I was 11 and read the book of Revelations for the first time. I took the entire thing literally and was gripped by a very strong and irrational fear of enduring these horrors as punishment for being a bad Catholic. I was also aware that I wasn’t worthy of God’s Kingdom – not because I was being humble or whatever, but because religion was a thing I did, thoughtlessly and with little sincerity. The time to repent was nigh! For the next couple of weeks, I attended mass as often as twice a week, and prayed the rosary every night because I read somewhere that the Virgin Mary saved good little girls who behaved well. Then I cried myself to sleep because deep down I knew that I was just doing all of this in order to save my own sorry ass, and maybe that’s not enough to win you passage to heaven.

I am telling you these to illustrate the first reason for my defection: the only things that kept me in the Church was fear and guilt. Catholicism and all its rituals and doctrines was not something I could identify with, no matter how hard I tried. But I proclaimed my love for Jesus God in public anyway, not only to avoid Hell in the afterlife, but to avoid the Hell of Social Rejection right here on Earth.

Seventh grade and high school was spent at a small, very religious all-girls school run by Augustinian Recollect nuns. There I learned that people who don’t know how to say the rosary are a social anomaly to be made fun of, because what kind of horrible, hell-bound person doesn’t know what all those beads are for? The school’s brand of Christian Living Education involved show-offy religious ceremonies under the sun, strict body policing in the name of simplicity and modesty, and lengthy retreats designed to make you feel lower than a worm for committing very normal, very human “sins” and treating Jesus like some sort of prayer dumpster that you only pay attention to when you need something. There were no intelligent discussions about Catholicism in here, only “believe in what I say” lectures and threats of eternal damnation for not believing enough. The distance between me and the Church grew rapidly in the years I spent at this school. Ironically, this was also the point in time where I probably said the most prayers.

My reasons for leaving the Church are more personal than political, but I would be remiss if I didn’t address how the lack of separation between Church and State continued drive me away from Catholicism. Where do I begin? Their continued efforts to delay the implementation of the Reproductive Health Law and demonize its supporters had a lot to do with it. The whole reproductive rights debate made it clear that the Church is more interested in maintaining their influence and power over Filipinos than improving the quality of our lives. It feels wrong to be part of a Church that doesn’t care about preventing maternal deaths, reducing the spread of AIDS, and making effective birth control methods available to families who otherwise can’t afford them.

The heart of the matter is that the Philippines has weak political institutions and a wealthy Church that’s only too eager to exploit these weaknesses to maintain their influence and political power in this country. I can’t speak for others, but to me, staying Catholic means that I’m okay with all these celibate old men telling us who to vote for, what kind of people should get married, and that it’s fine for elephants to die so their tusks can be fashioned into valuable religious paraphernalia.

I suppose now is a good time to bring up my thoughts on God’s existence. Am I an atheist, you ask? Is this why I’m leaving the Church? In college I thought I was, but I think I’m more agnostic than anything. I’m not 100% convinced that there is no God, but I haven’t seen any real proof that he’s out there either. God or no, I’m going to live my life as though he weren’t there.

I don’t want to debate about whether or not God exists, because that’s not what this is about. I am leaving the Church because I no longer believe in any of its doctrines, teachings, and rituals, nor do I much respect it as an institution. I want to figure out my own spirituality without old fogeys in the Vatican and the CBCP telling me what to do, think, and believe in. I am leaving the Church because they have kept the Philppines in the Dark Ages long enough and I’m tired of pretending to support them for the sake of social acceptance. I want to be a good person, not out of fear of the afterlife, but because I want to make a positive difference and be one less asshole here on Earth. I don’t know where I’m going to go after this, or what philosophies will make up my new moral compass, but I won’t be turning to organized religion for guidance anymore.

This isn’t exactly goodbye, though. You may still occasionally see me in Church, standing up and sitting down as required at weddings, Christmas mass, and funerals. I will be attending these ceremonies not because I want to, but because I choose my battles. Sometimes it’s less exhausting to participate in religious rituals than to expect others to adjust to your unpopular beliefs.

I draw the line at having a Catholic wedding, though. If I ever get married, it will not be officiated by some celibate dude who is denied the very sacrament he is performing, and my wedding guests will have to deal with it.

Sincerely,
Lauren Dado, apostate

Cover image source

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The day where I finally inhabit said shoebox is fast approaching, and my current singular obsession revolves around making the place look like I hired an expensive decorator to prettify it. Only the expensive decorator is myself running on a very limited budget, with the added challenge of making the place look spacious while expressing who I am and somehow fitting everything I own.

You’d think that decorating a condo would be as simple as keeping the walls white and buying furniture at the local Ikea equivalent, but not if you have very particular tastes. On an average evening, you can find me analyzing paint swatches, studying furniture placement, and devouring every single piece of advice from my favorite design blogs. There are days when my boyfriend comes over for some wink wink nudge nudge, only to find me pinning away obsessively, with barely a grunt to acknowledge his presence. When I eat at a restaurant, I find myself paying more attention to the lighting fixtures than the menu, wondering if I can somehow accommodate the same details into my place. I know more about the different types of crown molding and where to get wall stencils than who’s running for senator and why I should vote for them.

After several weeks, I had my mind made up on the look, feel, and color scheme of every room in the place, except for one: the bedroom, the most intimate and personal of all spaces. A bedroom must be conducive to sleep, but more importantly, I think it must also carry the strongest reflection of its occupant’s personality. And that’s what makes the damn place so difficult to decorate: who am I, and what will my bedroom say about me? All my bedrooms thus far have gotten then sleep part right but failed to capture my personality, because I never put much thought into planning the space. This time, I was determined to get it right.

I think the trick to planning a bedroom lies in getting to know its space and its limitations. From there, decide what you want to use it for. My bedroom is small and square, with only enough room for a double bed and built-in closet. That’s fine by me; I want my room to be used exclusively for sleep and whatever else one might do on a bed. My desk (if there’s space for one) can be placed somewhere outside.

The next step involves choosing a color you love, and putting it on your wall, or on your bedsheets, or in carefully placed accents. Most people will be screaming at you to keep the walls white. “White walls looks nice!” they will say. “White walls will make your room look bigger!” they will say. But I have never been a fan of white walls. I want to be enveloped by a color that I love, even if that color is more pigmented than most people would paint their bedroom with.

Besides, my research shows that white walls will not always make a room look bigger. See the photo above? That’s the actual room with its default white paint, and it doesn’t look any more spacious and inviting to me.

If your room is small and does not receive enough natural light, pale colors will make it look gloomier because it highlights the shadows in the space. In addition, white walls are harder to decorate. Forget using bright colors as an accent; white will make them look brighter than they really are.

So what do you do with a small room with only one window? According to color expert Donald Kaufman, “A rich, deep colour can make a dim, somber space feel warm and luminous – even though it receives no natural light.” A dark color also makes the walls and ceiling recede, giving the room the illusion of depth and space. And so my instinct to paint the walls with rich jewel tones is vindicated.

I had my heart set on painting my walls in my favorite color, dark purple:

But then I fell in love with this gorgeous deep teal bedroom, and started reconsidering my walls.

When my boyfriend did a 3D model of the room with the paint, I was disappointed to see that the teal wasn’t working on my walls. Instead looking cozy and inviting, it created a foreboding and depressing atmosphere. And so comes the most important lesson in decorating a bedroom: what works in someone else’s room won’t always work for yours. Different architecture and light sources create different design needs. After studying the photo further, I realized the high windows and angled ceiling had a lot to do with why the paint looked so gorgeous. These elements created shadows that added depth to the color and made the walls sing. The same effect can’t be achieved on a square room with flat walls.

So I am back to my original paint choice, and I’ve never been more excited about it:

Incidentally, a study shows that people who inhabit purple bedrooms have the most sex. Draw your own conclusions about what that says about me.

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But as I start to become pro-active about my mental well-being, I realize that happiness doesn’t need to come from a grand and earth-shattering event. It doesn’t even have to involve positive thinking, witty aphorisms, or letting Jesus into my heart. Maybe happiness is as simple as allowing myself to enjoy the little things. And maybe I don’t need to wait until I become my own idea of “successful” to take pleasure in everyday delights.

Here is a list of 10 things that make me happy any given day, in no particular order:

Having no plans for the day

I love waking up to a day with no errands to run or social obligations to meet. The world is my oyster and I can do WHATEVER I WANT. I can stay in and marathon Doctor Who or I can play video games or I can finally finish my Double Rainbow cross-stitch project or I can go out and exercise or eat something nice or I can just stay in bed and not do anything at all.

Having plans for the night

Whether it’s dinner somewhere nice or doing nerd stuff at someone’s place, the thought of capping the night with Marco or my friends is enough to make the day more tolerable.

A quiet time and place to read

My favorite thing to do during the work week is to spend an entire lunch hour holed up in a coffee shop with a tea latte on one hand and my Kindle in another. There’s something about reading in a coffee shop that relaxes me in ways reading in my bedroom doesn’t.

When I like what I write

My inner critic makes writing a real pain in the ass, but nothing else makes me feel as accomplished as when I’m finally finished and satisfied with what I’ve written.

A cat. Any cat.

I’m as crazy as cat ladies come, and nothing makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside like when these proud, silly creatures allow me to pet them, or when random stray cats rub themselves all over my leg and declare ownership of me.

Pandas make me happy too, but they’re not really an everyday thing.

Decorating my shoebox, in my head

I can spend hours poring through Pinterest and Houzz, daydreaming about how I want my condo to look like. Every night I create a happy place in my head as I flick through photo after photo of well-designed rooms, colorful accessories, and quirky furniture.

A new pair of shoes

My clothing budget is practically nonexistent these days. But the less I spend on my wardrobe, the more I appreciate and value the few things I buy. So when I’m feeling splurgey enough to get a new pair of shoes, and they’re as comfortable as they are gorgeous, I can pretty much die of the happies.

Cuddling in bed

Cuddling with Marco feels like a warm hug on a bad day, except a hundred times better. I’m at my most comfortable and relaxed we’re in bed together doing wholesome, silly things and talking about nothing in particular.

Working out with ALL THE ENERGY

My gym membership is over a year old, but only recently did I start enjoying exercise for exercise’s sake rather than just weight loss’s sake. I don’t always have the energy to run 3 km or do an hour of kick-boxing, but I feel like a vicious badass when I do.

A warm cup of tea

I’m a coffee person at heart, but it’s quite comforting to have a warm, fragrant cup of tea on a cold and cloudy day.

I realize how cheesy this must all sound, but really. Having small things to look forward to is a huge relief from feeling numb and meh for so long. It gives me perspective and reminds me that shit happening doesn’t necessarily mean that my life is shit. And while it isn’t always easy for me to find joy in the little things, I make a conscious effort to do so anyway. I figure that I at least owe it to myself to try to be happy, even for just a few minutes.

What are the everyday things that make you happy?

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I resisted the Kitchenaid’s arrival at first, in the same way I resisted the iPhone, Kindle, and signing up for an Instagram account. There’s  something about new technology that makes me wary and suspicious; I’m forever afraid that something will literally explode in my face with the wrong push of a button. But I soon discovered that using a Kitchenaid is as simple as locking in the bowl and beater, then switching it on. Unlike our old mixer, you didn’t even have to scrape the sides of the bowl to make sure the beater whips it all. It pretty much readies your dough while you multitask in the background. Absolutely no explosions happen.

After being away from the kitchen for some time, I feel like I have to re-learn everything I know, one major ingredient at a time. Currently, I’ve been experimenting with baking shit using chocolate chips. Here’s what I can make so far:

Chewy chocolate chip cookies

Biting into a crunchy chocolate chip cookie brings almost as much disappointment as biting into an oatmeal-raisin cookie that you mistook for a chocolate chip cookie. I like my cookies moist, soft, and gooey, and it’s a waste of calories to eat any that don’t have this texture. The secret to the perfect chewy chocolate chip cookie is to leave out the Crisco, because this is what creates the crunch. Also, make sure to use real butter (salted). While this doesn’t create any difference texture-wise, it does provide a sinful buttery backdrop for the chocolate

Chocolate chip cookie dough

There’s a certain childlike satisfaction to dipping into raw cookie dough. I daresay a spoonful of cookie dough is often more enjoyable than the end product. When I was younger, my mom tried to discourage me from consuming the batter by pointing out the raw eggs in the mixture. Obviously that never worked. Thanks to Pinterest though, I discovered a recipe that lets you indulge in good old fashioned chocolate chip dough, minus the threat of salmonella. The trick is to leave out the eggs. Best enjoyed with a spoon, deadly on a bowl of ice cream.

Chocolate chip pie

My crappy food styling does not do justice to my obra maestra thus far – the chocolate chip pie. This is NOT an enormous chocolate chip cookie, but an actual pie by its own right, with a nutty graham cracker crust filled with a soft, gooey mixture of semi-sweet chocolate chunks. The reason it looks a soggy mess in the photo was because I cut it fresh from the oven instead of waiting for it to set, but trust me when I say it looks better than it looks. My boyfriend asked me to marry him when he took his first bite.

And all the girls love my pie.

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I had been suffering from a major case of the new year blues, if there ever was such a thing, at the peak of a depressive spell that started mid-December. The last day of 2012 was spent mostly in bed, with hardly the energy to do more than flip absently through my saved Instapaper reads in an effort to distract myself from thinking thoughts that rhyme with the word “muicidal”. Eventually, I decided that to get up and pretend everything was fine might be less tedious than having to explain why I felt so down and so wrong, for no good reason whatsoever. So get up and socialize I did, which made me realize that maybe being around people tonight wouldn’t be so bad. Which led me to Marco’s doorstep where he led me, half-drunkenly, to the dining room.

Marco and his siblings had already gotten their drinking on, and for one he imbibed enough Captain Morgan rum to overcome the hard-working enzymes that break down alcohol before he can feel their effects. When Marco gets tipsy, he becomes talkative and more open than usual. And smiley, he gets very smiley. Which is why it surprised me when he nodded and said, “I hear ya. I’ve been feeling that way too.”

Someone who understands! This was my cue to open up. “I hate everyone on new year’s day,” I grumbled. “People all over my Facebook and Twitter keep gushing about how uh-ma-zing 2012 has been and how awesome their lives are for it. It makes me feel bad for feeling so lousy and thinking that 2012 was just another year like every other year before that. Not a very bad year, but you know. An okay year. An average year.”

Count my blessings, my mother often tells me, and I followed her advice by taking a moment to reflect the good that was on 2012. Objectively speaking, it really wasn’t a bad year at all. New job, trip to two countries, saw Billy Corgan in the flesh after wading through waist-deep floodwaters. My cat died and I’m still torn up about it, but at least all the people I love are still alive and talking to me. Yet I couldn’t shake off being disappointment by how I’m still nowhere closer to figuring out what the point of it all is, what the point of my life is. My zest for life is gone and I can’t remember the last time I felt genuinely excited or happy about something. Part of it may be due to a chemical imbalance, Marco suggested, but maybe I can shake this feeling off by doing what makes me happy.

“Well, writing makes me happy,” I ventured slowly. “But what’s the point? I’m not an important person. Nobody cares about what I have to say.”

We paused to take a swig of rum from the bottle.

“I just finished re-reading Doom Patrol,” Marco said, referring to Grant Morrison’s entire run of the series, my self-serving Christmas gift to him. “Do you know why I love the Brotherhood of Dada? They’re completely absurd and wildly deviant from society’s norms, but they were unstoppable when they started embracing that fact. They embodied was was pointless, and found purpose in doing that.

“Here’s the thing. We all tend to judge things that have a “point” from the perspective of society. The norm is for writers to write in order to be read, so it must follow that a writer without readers shouldn’t even bother, right? But what if what’s pointless to them means the world to you? What if some silly little thing you do fulfills you in a way that the norm doesn’t?

“You may think that the things you love doing don’t have a point. That’s not true. They may not have a point to other people – by their standards or whatever – but they make a point to you. That’s all that matters. The only way to really live is to do what’s pointless, yet fulfilling.”

See, this is why I love my boyfriend. My last ex gave me bullshit speeches loosely borrowed from Ayn Rand’s novels, but this is stuff I can actually use. It’s true – the only kind of writing that gives me some sort of peace is the stuff I write for myself. The irony is that my personal writing is often hindered by anxieties over how society might judge me if I show the world that I have feelings, or the thought that there’s no point writing something halfway decent if no one’s going to read it anyway.

But there is someone who always reads what I write, kind of likes it, and will continue to do so until the day I die. Me! I care that my new year’s angst is well thought-out and decently written. I care that I realized stuff about myself by typing down my thoughts. And I like putting my thoughts out on public because I’ve met a lot of cool people doing so. All this stuff matters to me even if no one else thinks much of it. Long live the Brotherhood of Dada!

The empty bottle of rum was our cue to leave and consume more alcohol at noisy, overcrowded bars, because that’s how people spend the first night of the year. We spilled out into the garage together with Marco’s brother and climbed into the car, heads pounding. When Marco ran back into the house to grab the camera, his brother said to me, alcohol on his tongue, “Not that you need our approval or anything, but I really like you. You are an awesome girlfriend.”

I love it when drunk people get candid with me.

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The whole follow-your-dreams thing isn’t really working out right now. It’s not because I don’t have faith in my abilities as a writer, but because I realize that I am magazine-unemployable for two reasons: I have never written for a magazine in my life, and my senses and ideas are dull from years I’ve spent at an isolating work-at-home arrangement. (Also, I guess I’m not being aggressive enough with my applications? Because I might actually kill myself if a magazine tells me that I’m not good enough to join their ranks?)

While this is happening, I’ve been getting job offers without really seeking them actively. The catch is that they’re not quite like the unpredictable, jet-setting writerly life that I’ve dreamed for myself. I’m getting bored and despite having a part-time job to tide me over, I’m also getting broke. Do I hold out for a silly dream that in all likelihood will never come to pass, or do I take the next great offer that comes my way?

I asked Marco about it over YM, and this is what he has to say:

Some people can wait through a job they don’t love. They get by through seeing it as just a stepping stone to what they really want. To be perfectly frank, I don’t see you as one of those people. You hate the grind. You want the most efficient way of getting there, and separating your attention between your goal and a job you’re not into is a waste of your energy.

Now, you can convince yourself to push a little harder with the patience thing, but you reach your limits easily. You don’t like the feeling of wasting your time and effort. It’s not a lack of EQ or impatience – you just see things differently.

What does this mean for you? You’ve already tried the whole settling for a paycheck thing. You didn’t like it. What you really need to do for yourself now is to do as you please. The only thing holding you back is the financial part – your condo.

So what should you do? If you can muster the will to sludge through yet another passionless paycheck, make sure you get one that you’re kind of into. It may not have the world-changing impact you want at the moment, but you might as well make it meaningful to you. Find a job that’ll pay you for little things you want to enact, like, I dunno, helping women toughen up or something. The medium through which you achieve this is up to you. If it’s writing, great. If it’s helping people socially find jobs, go for it. What’s important is that it feels right for a change.

So there it is, a compass pointing at a direction that finally makes sense. Maybe what I do for a living doesn’t have to be related to my life’s greatest passion. Maybe all I really need is interesting, well-paying work so I can afford adulthood without killing my soul in the process. Nobody says I can’t be a writer if my professional life revolves around an unrelated field. I’ll just be an unpublished, unrecognized writer, I guess, but that’s never stopped me from enjoying the quiet pleasure of putting my thoughts on paper (and getting validation from the one or two people who read what I have to say).

Photo credit

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I didn’t expect myself to welcome my first e-book reader with delight and excitement, but squeal happily I did when the Kindle’s black box was handed to me. I figured, I won’t have the luxury of shelf space when I move into my tiny shoebox, so might as well get with the times and go digital with my books rather than give up reading things that aren’t Longreads or Cracked articles. From what I’ve heard from Anne, the only one of my friends to have ever used a Kindle, it’s actually a pretty cool device – a sleek and light thing that tries to replicate the physical book reading experience as much as it can. I eagerly unboxed my Kindle and plugged it into the nearest USB slot to charge. Within ten minutes, I was already downloading my first e-book.

Owning a Kindle is such a revelation. I feel like a caveman who just discovered fire and finally understands why it’s much better at keeping warm or cooking food than an animal hide or a slab of rock positioned carefully under the noontime sun. I’m not saying that the Kindle experience is necessarily superior to browsing through bookshelves and keeping a paperback in your purse. But aside from the obvious convenience of space and portability, it does have a lot of perks that I’ve never really considered before.

For one thing, I no longer have to feel like a douchebag for telling friends, “No, I cannot lend you this book because we are both busy and forgetful adults who can’t be bothered to do simple things like return books to friends, or remember to ask friends to return your books.” There is no lending Kindle books to people, unless you lend the device itself, and there’s no way in hell I’m letting anyone have free reign over it for more than five minutes.

One of the things that delighted and scared me about the Kindle was how easy it is to purchase e-books. Just hit the Buy button, and it downloads into your library faster than it takes for you to line up at a cashier and walk away with your purchase. There’s no prompt for your credit card information or anything. It doesn’t even bother asking, “Are you sure? Are you ABSOLUTELY sure?” This is pretty dangerous when you consider my compulsive shopping habit and the fact that most e-books are priced under $10, a negligable amount that can easily add up. It’s a good thing I just discovered the free public domain classics in the Kindle Store, which takes care of my compulsion to collect without putting me deep into credit card debt. I finally have The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I’ve been meaning to read for ages.

More than the convenience and savings afforded by the Kindle, I also enjoy the satisfaction of being able to bypass this country’s conservative selection of titles without having to go abroad or pay hefty taxes to customs officials for online deliveries. I mean, can you imagine a novel called Satan Loves You being sold in hyper-Catholic Manila? I don’t think so. Not without sanctimonious parents getting their panties in a bunch and rallying to start an MTRCB for books, anyway.

Then finally, there is the device itself, a sleek and beautiful black thing no thicker than a pencil. I honestly think that the most low-end Kindle (which I own) is superior to any other e-book reader out there. Okay fine, I’ve only seen what a Nook can do, but I wouldn’t trade the Kindle’s design and features for the conveniences of any other reader. It’s so light and thin (6 ounces!) that I can slip it comfortably into my smallest purse, and I won’t even feel that it’s there. Now I’ll never be grumpy while waiting in line or for people to show up. With an entire library in this thing, I probably won’t notice how late you are.

The matte screen is a thing of beauty, displaying words as crisply as if it were printed on a sheet of paper. It has absolutely no glare, not even under the sun. The lack of a backlight was a little off-putting at first (I mean, what gadget made after 1998 does not have a backlight?) but I soon grew to appreciate how respectful it is of my circadian rhythm. There’s no white glare shining at my eyes and keeping me up longer than I should; just the yellow glow of a bedside lamp that I can easily turn off when my e-book lulls me to sleep.

Unlike today’s multi-tasking gadgets, the Kindle is designed with one purpose in mind: to make e-book reading (and fine, shopping) as pleasurable as possible. It is not a tablet. It is not a portable music device. You cannot use it to take photos of your lunch or videos of the concert you paid expensive tickets for. To many people, that might sound like a deal breaker, but I love its total lack of features and hostility towards superfluous third party apps. Nothing on this device will distract you from reading whatever you’re reading now, save perhaps the desire to check out what’s new on the Kindle store and buy more, more, more e-books! In an age where people only want a blank touchscreen to play Angry Birds on, the Kindle is a gadget that is least likely to get stolen.

I think my only complaint about the Kindle – at least, the model that I own now – is how difficult it is to use the virtual keyboard. The annotation feature is absolutely brilliant, but the five-pad navigation system takes me so long to type a word out, I’d forget what I wanted to annotate by the time I hit the space bar. I now realize that a Kindle with a dedicated keyboard exists, which I may consider buying in the future. But clunky as my Kindle 4 is, I’m still quite in love with it, and I hope it takes years before I find the need to replace it with a newer model.

So there you have it: the many reasons why I did a 180 on e-books and learned to love them through the Kindle. I am aware that there are many experiences the Kindle can’t capture – the quiet pleasure of browsing through a non-chain bookstore, the smell of fresh ink on paper, the visual overload from colorful comics panels, the pleasure of seeing my wall-sized bookshelf fill up with new titles. But while space forces me to limit my physical book collection to favorite titles, the Kindle saves me from descending into illiteracy altogether.

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