Song reference: Paper Planes Back Home, Departure, four.
Because in my heart, tonight, I grieve. Love and light to you, Ate Cathy. <3
A Quarter of Myself
Disclaimer: This post exists because a certain Filpina author named Caryn P. Santi tagged me over at Wattpad. 😛 I’m going to try my best to make this worth your while. <3
First, some ground rules.
Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. (T: This is a looooong note.)
At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. (T: Dayum. That’s going to be difficult.) You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it means I want to know more about you.
Let’s begin.
1. I have a pet bunny named Max. Max Rusca.
There’s a Heneral Luna reference there somewhere. If you haven’t seen the movie, do it. Anyway, this is Max.
He’s been with us for six months now, and we initially thought he was a girl until his balls dropped, freaking us out. I have never had a bunny before (I used to have dogs, adorable askals) so having him as a pet is an entirely new experience for me. Max is the reason why I thought of the initial concept for my #StrangeLit novella, even if it morphed into an entirely different thing altogether. He’s a sweetheart, and likes getting cuddles.
2. In high school, I had three orgs.
I was an official member of the dance club, and an honorary member of drama and glee. Before graduating, I penned a stage play for the high school drama club and got to help direct its very first run during my freshman year in college. After that, I also got to direct the glee club on their yearly concerts. Fun times. <3
3. Sometimes I got into trouble for writing fiction . . .
. . . because I would do it in the middle of class. Geometry, for example. Kids, don’t try this at school. Unless you’re really, really good at Mathematics. I failed Geom on one quarter in junior year.
4. My favorite author is Mitch Albom.
And one of the things I’d like crossed out of my bucket list is to meet him in person and give him a copy of my book, Paper Planes Back Home, because in some way or other, he inspired me to write and finish it.
5. DBSK/Cassiopeia will always be my fandom.
Got hooked on them in 2006, three years after their KPop debut. Wrote fanfiction (they call it real-person fiction now, I found out) and about them. Collected their albums, posters, magazines, etc. Broke my heart when they disbanded, lost some friends over it too. Which side did I take? Yunho and Changmin’s. They’re my top 1 and 2.
And I will refuse to get into any more discussions about how they disbanded and why I stuck with the leader and the magnae because I don’t think I’ll ever be over it.
Finding my way back home
I think I was in pre-school when I first fell in love with the performing arts. My mother was a Whitney Houston fan who would always play her cassette tapes at home, and I learned to sing most of her songs by listening to them over and over. I was in kindergarten when I joined my first singing contest–The Greatest Love of All, anyone?–and since then I’ve kind of found my way back on stage every so often, even when I’d transferred schools at thirteen. There were stage plays, dance competitions, instrumental performances, and everything else in between that made it so natural for me to be affiliated with anything connected to performing arts.
Being able to stand in front of an appreciative audience is, in itself, its own high. I remember being up there dancing, representing my school as a member of the St. Scholastica’s College High School Dance Club and feeling so inexplicably happy hearing people cheer wholeheartedly. It’s kind of addictive, actually, in that I recall feeling sad whenever I don’t get picked to perform for certain events because my skills weren’t at par with the others that were chosen. But after a while, I realized that working behind the scenes also had its perks and one need not be in the limelight all the time to feel fulfilled.
Sweet dreams are made of these.
Fact: I have the most awesome friends. No, seriously. I may not be very well off (there’s a running joke in our office right now how we belong to borderline SEC D before payday, and it’s kind of true) but I have friends who are always there to y’know, make me look forward to every day, like my #ClingyGirls. ^_^
Last week, my friend Chi came to my house and delivered a bundle of these–my first-ever digitally published eBook, Paper Planes Back Home–IN PRINT! Of course she’d already told me that she was going to give me these as a gift, but I was still surprised when she arrived and gave these to me. I WAS SHAKING! It was such a surreal feeling to actually hold the book in my hands, like . . . WOAH, is this really happening?