Life Journal

Saturday, February 1, 2020
January 2020

For 2020, I had one new year’s resolution and that is to have small goals for every single month, things that will hopefully help me shape better and healthier habits. And for January, my goals were;
1. Read 4 books
2. Write 2 short stories
3. And upload 1 blog entry.
We’ll go through them one by one.

Read 4 books. I did manage to read 3 and 2 halves of books. Two halves because I finished a book that I was already half way through for the longest time and I’m currently reading my fifth(ish) book which I hope to finish around tomorrow. I still have 170 pages more to go. The idea is to read one book per week that I’m home for my semester break. And technically I didn’t fail. 3 and 4 halves still make a 4.

I love reading books for a few different reasons (not that I read a lot, I just really like the idea of it) but I guess right now my favourite thing about reading is the thinking part of it. Wow, that’s possibly the douchiest thing I have ever said. But hear me out. At the moment, I really enjoy dystopian novels (The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, Never Let Me Go) because I like it when abstract concepts are taken and made so, so concrete that it creates a world of its own but it’s somehow still reflective of our world. It’s piecing the puzzle and understanding the allegory that I somehow feel sort of addicted to.

The same thing goes with movies; I enjoy things that feel so different from my personal self but also so familiar, if that makes sense. It’s the psychology behind it that intrigues me. I’m sure a lot of people feel this way too but as of now I can only speak for myself. And I suppose, in contrast, I love cartoons because for me, it’s the opposite. It’s almost brainless. I’m not kidding when I say I still watch Spongebob and The Loud House (it’s a fairly new cartoon on Nickelodeon) whenever I watch tv at home because I don’t take cartoons seriously and I don’t have to take myself seriously. Not that reading novels and watching movies means I take it that seriously that I can’t enjoy it for what it is, it’s just that I also enjoy the thinking part of it.

Write 2 short stories. This, too, I did manage to complete; Roses and The Woman in Black. But I’ll be honest with you, I’m not completely satisfied with them especially TWIB because it feels sort of unfinished. Maybe it is unfinished because I don’t have an ending for it yet. But we’re not going to talk about that.

My recent short stories have the average of 1500 words and I was not happy about it. I checked my older stories and realized that they are a bit longer cause I always worked towards surpassing the 2000 words mark. The longest one has about 3500 words. It took me some time to think about what happened and now as I’m typing this all I can think about is ‘why should it matter?’ I’m writing for fun, not to send a manuscript to whatever publisher. And the number of words, at its core, shouldn’t matter that much as long as I am able to tell the story as honestly and as best to my ability (which is not that great, but you know what I’m saying). If the story ends at 1000 words and there’s nothing else to tell, mampos gi dia la panjang mana. The number of words isn’t what determines how good a story is, it’s the content of those words. It is true that the length tells how much information you’re giving the readers and how you decide to explain it but I don’t think I should put too much thought into it and focus on the stories themselves rather than the number of words.

Write 1 blog entry. Well, I know it’s February 1^st already and I was supposed to do this yesterday but there had been some change of plans, alright?

Speaking of goals, the reason why I have them is because I like having something to do and to look forward to. That’s why I started drawing almost daily after SPM, why I started a blog during CFS, why I write and why I read. If I have nothing to do, not even videos to watch on YouTube or tv shows and anime series to binge, I would drive myself into quite a dark place. Been there, didn’t like it. My fragile ego also needs to feel like I’m accomplishing things so I don’t feel like a piece of shit.

Ah, segue.

I watched a JustKiddingNews video (are we even surprised at this point?) on internal validation and Joe brought up achievement vs. fulfilment. He said that we need to set an agreement with ourselves that we will be fulfilled with what we achieved. As people, we want the best and sometimes once we reach a goal, we don’t feel content because there’s that nagging feeling of there is something more to it. That leads to discrediting our current achievement just because ‘it’s not good enough’. Yes, there is such thing as that. Yes, it’s possible that there’s a lot more that we can do. But in every step of reaching that level, however small the achievement is, we have to learn to feel fulfilled with it, or we can never feel happy with ourselves. Nikki also said that recently she manages to teach herself to acknowledge and recognize even the smaller things she’s done and those little accomplishments so that at the end of the day, she feels like she’s achieved something.

I just feel like it’s something worth sharing.

Now that it’s already February, I’m looking forward to building my goals and trying to achieve them while also bringing January’s lessons to the table. I hope you guys are having a good day, and may you continue to have more good days ahead of you. See you in the next one.

-Nik.