djvgonzales

My own opinion

2012-02-08T10:14:00.000-08:00

It doesn't matter.

I am seriously in no position to be talking to people about how they should be living their lives. I’m 23 years old. Shit, I hardly even have any idea how to live my own life. What makes me think I can get up on a soapbox and just start enumerating platitudes like I’m about to change someone’s worldview?

Just because the same thing happened to me, and watching videos on YouTube motivated me to get off my ass and start running, or Courage Wolf was enough to make me seriously question the validity of my existence, doesn’t mean that it will also have the same effect on other people if I subjected them to the same types of pressure. Internet memes, motivational music, quotes from the greatest men in History, these were enough to get me started. However, that doesn’t give me license to try and collate all of these many different things for others to absorb. There is a time and place for a man to do exactly that kind of thing, but I personally am not there yet.

Discovering my own life purpose is vastly different from just finding something interesting enough to start doing on a boring Sunday afternoon. The truth is, I am really quite a boring person. I may have found plenty of ways to have fun by myself, but I have hardly had the chance to really share my happiness with someone I know in real life; my friends rarely go out, and when they do, it’s very rare that I get invited. I’ve never been that guy. I’m not the life of the party. I’m not the center of attraction. I’m not the source of inspiration. I don’t have all the answers.

And I don’t have any of the most important questions either. If you were to live my life even just for a day, you’d find that I am simply not the questioning type. I’ve read and heard all about the importance of being able to question everything, and I appreciate the meaning of those two very simple words when put together. But no matter what I do, I will never be able to hide the fact that I am simply not that type of person. I don’t have these big, open-ended questions always floating in my mind; I’m not actively seeking for explanations like many other people out there. The mind of a person like that is like a big serving of chicken noodle soup. My own mind would be more like the big empty bowl after the soup has already dried up or something.

I know scientists have a characteristic that makes them consciously seek out information about a particular subject, researching stuff even if no one else will care about it. I’m not that type of person. What I do is I just sit, and sift through the ocean of information with no particular goal in mind, feeling lucky to run into something that piques my interest or sparks my imagination. Basically, I’m like a sponge. And I’ve been doing this for almost half of my life now. How do I even explain this? I’m clearly doubting myself at this point. Why should I go on trying to effect a change in other people, when that wasn’t what happened to me in the first place?

I didn’t go out looking for something to make me change my ways, decide on a certain direction in life, and follow a certain philosophy. I just got up, crept off the bed, put my shoes and clothes on, and I walked out the door. Then I went on silently observing, learning more about one subject matter after another. I didn’t go out looking for answers to life’s biggest questions, or even looking for these questions in the first place.

I didn’t go out thinking that religion is bullshit and that there must be some other worldly explanation for all of the seemingly supernatural things always attributed to God. I just ran into some atheists on the Internet and followed one link after another, reading, and reading, and reading, and reading. In the end, I used my own understanding to deduce the fact that I was already an atheist. I never really believed in God in the first place.

I didn’t set off one afternoon thinking, “Today is the day I will discover my life’s purpose.” What happened was, I was on my way home when I passed by a garbage bin that was filled with trash to the brim and on top of it was a technology magazine that had a picture of a pretty woman on its cover. That was T3 Philippines, and that was the day I got into the world of consumer electronics and high-end technology. The end result was me starting my own web site about the latest news stories on that particular topic.

Now, I spend most of my free time reading about self-improvement, motivation, and becoming a true alpha male. Well, after a few months of doing this, I now know that I actually started off as a natural alpha male during my childhood. I was fresh, self-confident and often came across as showy or arrogant; I didn’t find it difficult to get along with other people, especially girls, and there always seemed to be at least one girl who had a crush on me during most of my entire life. For some reason, though, I became a weak beta male, most likely due to the series of failures that I endured all throughout my early teenage years and young adult life (up to now). What I’m doing now is basically resetting myself so that I can get back into the mindset of a proper, natural alpha and start succeeding again.

And I’m doing it. I’m actually making some changes in my own life and I’m feeling pretty good about it. I know I’m on the right track. I’m single but I’m happy. I have some great hobbies. I still need to work on my friendships, but I’m almost there. I’m mostly doing all right in my life.Still, that doesn’t mean that I can go and try to “help” people as if they desperately need it. I know I didn’t. And even when I did, it didn’t take me a day, or a week, or even a month to get over my own insecurities and drop my bad habits. No, it took me years, two going on three now, to finally look at myself in the mirror and say, “Dude, what the FUCK are you doing? You have got to CHANGE.”

And so I did. But that’s just me. Other people have to take care of themselves. I’m understandably excited to share the great amount of inspiration that I’ve gathered for myself in the last 3 or 4 years. But the thing is, I’ve only really been doing it passively, and I got it from many different sources. It was only recently that I figured it all out, somewhat. And that each and every little thing started to make sense and I started to understand. It took me quite a long time. What exactly am I getting at?

I should stop pretending. Even though one thing has worked for me, there is no guarantee that it will also work on another. And I should not waste my time and effort working around that idea and waiting to see whether or not it will have any sort of effect, for better or worse. I am not in the position to be running a business off the idea of telling people how to live their lives. Besides the fact that I don’t really know what to tell people in this regard, I don’t really have that much life experience to back my statements up anyway. And shit, I’ve only been consciously doing this for the last three months. I’m not a guru, and I’ve never aspired to be.

What I’m supposed to do is that one thing that I truly love: writing a technology magazine. That was what made me fall in love with the Internet, this netbook, that cellphone, my future e-book reader, car, and home in the first place. Incidentally, that’s also what most people in the country need. The missing manual for all of their burgeoning consumer electronic needs.

I still remember the day I got started on all of this as if it was just yesterday. Now, I don’t need to start scouting garbage bins within 25 kilometers of my home just to get started again; I know exactly what to do. I’ll be going back to the mall where I bought my first back-issues and pick up everything from there. Wish me luck, friend.

All I Want For Christmas

2011-12-19T20:10:00.000-08:00

This is a message for everyone I know. And what the hell, for everyone I don't know as well.

I know that times are hard. You might be married, you might be single, you might be widowed, divorced, or in an open relationship.

You may find children stinky, repulsive, annoying and mostly goofy-looking. You might have a few godchildren of your own, or none at all.

You could be living in a high-rise condo, sipping on Absolut Vodka all by yourself as you watch the fireworks light up the night sky. Or you could be a breadwinner who's still living in the slums with your family, because who else would take care of them the way that you want them to be taken care of, right? You wouldn't want grandma to spend a day without watching her favorite noontime variety show or soap opera.

So we're all different. We're dealing with different things, solving different problems as we go through different lives. But there's something you should know.

Life is only going to get harder. The rainbow at the end of every storm is an illusion. You know damn well that the rainstorm is only going to come back around, perhaps a bit harder, with the wind a little faster. Fortunately for all of us, there's a simple solution: get stronger.

Now I'm not saying you should go out and begin a journey towards becoming the world's greatest Street Fighter. But that doesn't sound so bad at all now, does it? All the world will praise you for your strength, discipline, compassion, and expertise. Your opponents will openly despise you, but secretly admire you. That girl at work? She will adore you.

But again, I'm not telling you to do exactly that. The only thing I'm saying is that you've got to get stronger. Understand that this is only for your own good, not mine or anyone else's. So how do you do it? How do you get stronger? Frankly, my friend, I don't give a damn how you do it. All I know is that you've got to do it.

Wake up each morning and eat a healthy breakfast. Lace up a good pair of kicks and hit the ground running. Show up at the gym three times each week to push and pull a bunch of round metal plates like it's nobody's business. Do something that will make you sweat, pant, bend your knees, and grunt. Get off your couch, get out of the house, stand up in the middle of the street and yell up at the sky, "I'm doing it! I'm becoming the greatest person that I can be!"

As long as you're moving, then yes, yes you are. There are times when you might find yourself moving in the wrong direction. But who can really tell you which way is wrong or right? Use your own internal compass. You'll find that the only direction worth moving in is the one you choose for yourself.

Now, even as you work to become stronger, life is still going to get a lot tougher. The only people who have it easy are dead. So what do you do? How do you deal with this? I'll let you in on a secret.

When you're feeling down, when you're feeling kind of hopeless, like you've lost direction and you don't know what to do, remember that there are millions and millions of other people out there going through what you're going through. They suffer just as you do, cry just as you do.

Moping about your own situation won't help either you or anyone else. The only thing you've got to do is realize that even though we're all different, even though the details may never be the same, even though one person may never fully understand the plight of another, there's one universal truth worth remembering: we're all in this together.

Happy holidays and a happy 2012 to all!

It's worth it

2011-11-18T01:12:00.001-08:00

Everyone has the desire to win, but only champions have the desire to prepare. - Unknown

How to save a life

2011-10-29T18:53:00.000-07:00

It was 10:00 PM on the 4th of May and I had just finished 3 hours of indoor football practice. The team heads and I were discussing the details of the first ever country-wide football event in years, and even though my body was slightly shaking from exhaustion, my mind was racing. That was when I got the message.

"Can you drop by to check on Nanay? She's been sick for days. Bring Ate Cecil."

That was the text message I received from my younger cousin Emily, asking me if I could drop in with my old girlfriend, Cecil, a 4th year Nursing student, to check on our grandmother who had been sick for nearly a week. At the time, I thought it weird for my cousin to ask me to "drop by" even though I was going straight home after football practice anyway. I spent the last two nights sleeping in the living room of my old girlfriend's house and was actually planning on going home to my grandmother that night.

Thinking that the situation was kind of urgent, I got up from the meeting and immediately called my cousin Emily's number. I talked to her for all of two minutes and she told me the exact same thing she said over text. She was getting really worried about Nanay and wanted me to bring her Ate Cecil over to check for her blood pressure. And then she mentioned something else.

"I was talking to Nanay earlier today and I noticed that she was starting to stutter. Tonight, she was trying to tell me something but she couldn't even finish a single sentence due to stuttering."

I knew what the stuttering meant so I started to get scared. It wasn't just urgent, it was an emergency.

I called Cecil up, asked her if she was available, and fortunately she was. I hung up and went back to talking with the guys, hoping that the meeting would be over soon so I could go pick Cecil up and see my ailing grandmother at home.

But it was almost 10:30 in the evening and I was still somewhere inside the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City. The meeting was far from over. I excused myself one more time to call Cecil and ask her if she could go ahead and see my grandmother by herself. She asked me where I was and what time I would get home, and I told her that I was already waiting to catch a ride so I should be home in about 30 minutes. I lied.

After another half hour, the meeting was finally adjourned. I was lucky to catch a jeepney going out of U.P. right away and I was home by 11:30 PM. But it was too late.

Cecil arrived about a half hour earlier than I did and had already checked Nanay's blood pressure. She said it was normal. From the time that she got there until I arrived, she said they chatted and exchanged jokes about me and my two dogs. They were basically just having fun until five minutes before my arrival when Nanay asked Cecil if she could lay down for a bit because she was starting to feel dizzy.

I asked Cecil to go ahead and see Nanay by herself because she knew just as well as I did that the stuttering was a clear sign of a stroke. Cecil wanted to bring Nanay to the nearest hospital's emergency room right away but Nanay insisted on waiting for me to get home. She was scared just as much as anybody. When I got home, my father and I helped Nanay down the stairs, hailed a cab, and went to a nearby public hospital. That was our first mistake.

Just as we got to the hospital's emergency room, Nanay started having a seizure. We had to carry her up and through the door then wait for almost five minutes just to get a stretcher. The emergency room was crowded and people were running in and out the door. Some of them were mad, others were sad. I was scared and confused. Why weren't any of the doctors or nurses paying attention?

I later learned that "that's just the way it is" in these public hospitals. You had to wait your turn, the nurses were usually just interns (sometimes even Nursing students), and you couldn't get sympathy from anyone even if you tried. A public hospital's emergency room is like hell, only colder and perhaps a bit stranger.

We got Nanay hooked up to an IV at around 12:30 AM. We had to beg for a nurse's attention just to get it replaced when it was necessary. Cecil and I had to clean up Nanay's soiled underwear and put an adult diaper on her by ourselves. The doctors instructed us to buy medicine seemingly at random. After 13 hours, we had to throw everything out because Nanay was finally pronounced dead. I was out trying to raise money for a private room so I wasn't there when she was drawing her terminal breath. I only found out through a text message sent to me by my grieving cousin: "I'm sorry but she's gone."

Over the next few days, I would learn that Nanay was already showing signs of a stroke as early as a week prior to her death. She had been complaining about having severe headaches (which I knew, but thought of as nothing) but was mostly ignored. She was a strong woman, so even she thought of her headaches as nothing. In fact, she was still doing all of the household chores at home right up to the last day that she was alive.

I have an uncle who lived with Nanay at home. He was the first one to see Nanay stutter, and do you want to know what he did? My uncle told her, "Stop doing that! You're starting to scare me, so quit it!" Yeah, he's an ignorant asshole.

As I said earlier, I was out for a couple of days sleeping at my old girlfriend's house after work so I missed most of the earlier signs of the stroke. My mistake was trusting the bunch of people I left to live with Nanay at home. Two months before she suffered the stroke and died, she just passed out cold and hit her head on the floor while trying to get coffee. I didn't learn about that incident until after the fact, so I wasn't able to act on it at all. When I told Nanay that we should go to a hospital, she said it wasn't necessary. She would finally ask me to take her to a hospital a few weeks later, but by then I had no money. That was another huge mistake.

Through the loss of my beloved grandmother, I was able to learn a lot of major lessons. What breaks my heart is the thought that I could have learned all of this without having to see her suffer. I figure the best thing I could do is share these lessons with you now instead of grieving over something that I'll never be able to change. There's no use crying over spilled milk, as they say.

Facts about stroke

I'm no expert on the subject, but based on what I have read, stroke is a preventable and curable disease. It is defined as the rapidly developing loss of brain function that results from a loss of blood flow to the brain. In the case of my grandmother, she had a stroke because of the blow to the head that she suffered two months prior when she fell on the floor; this caused a blood clot to form right around the back of her neck which obstructed blood flow to her brain, leaving certain parts of it to slowly die.

The symptoms of a stroke may vary, but the one thing you have to watch out for is the severe aches and pains in the head. A headache caused by a developing stroke is different because it is actually happening inside a patient's brain. And then there's the stuttering.

In this video, reporter Serene Branson from CBS News suddenly started spouting gibberish while doing a live broadcast. This was how I first learned that a sudden inability to speak clearly was a sign of a stroke. It was later reported that Ms. Branson only suffered a case of migraine and not a stroke, but this video is still worth watching to be able to see what it's really like for an otherwise healthy person to suddenly have a speech impediment.

These little bits of knowledge are really only what most people need to recognize and be able to treat a possible stroke victim right away. It's also important for you to be willing to act immediately. Trivia is mostly useless, I'll admit, but I would have paid good money to know about all of this six months earlier. Here's hoping you never have to go through what I had to go through.

* * *

October 29 is World Stroke Day. Visit the official web site at www.worldstrokecampaign.org.

Still

2011-10-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

[While Jamal is typing on Forrester's typewriter]
Forrester: Punch the keys, for God's sake!
[Jamal begins to hit the keys harder]
Forrester: Yes... Yes! You're the man now, dawg!
- Finding Forrester, 2000

They say when you curse someone, you also dig your own grave. I think that's a bit drastic; this blog's rating is General Patronage. But I'd like to take that idea, turn it around a bit, and make it apply to promises. You know how those things are. Promises are those little prideful statements that you say every now and then to make yourself go in one direction or another. Quite recently, I made a promise to myself that I will publish one blog entry per day here. I'm trying to make good now with my third.

Growing up, most people are conditioned to believe that promises are made to be broken. It doesn't matter who you make the promise to, some day soon you're bound to fail on the follow through and inevitably break that poor individual's heart. We break promises we make to our parents, lovers, friends, ourselves. Hell, most people break their promises even if they're made to God himself. Is it really human nature to fail?

Right now, I'm feeling a strong urge to just drop this digital pen. But if I did, then I'd only be doing nothing. A part of me thinks that it's perfectly acceptable to do nothing at all. That since I don't know what I should be doing anyway, I should just resign myself to not actually doing anything. I've made an awful lot of movements compared to most people in the past 22 hours, and that's not even counting the number of reps I managed to turn out after spending one hour in the gym this morning. Isn't that enough? Since I don't know what to do and I'm not really going anywhere, maybe I should just stop and sit still. At least then, I can make sure I'll be safe and sound in one place when tomorrow comes and presents a new opportunity for me to begin.

But that's the problem, right there. I may think that I'm not going anywhere, but in reality, I'm still moving very fast in the one direction that all of us are always heading towards: the future. So I can either move towards tomorrow being idle, or doing something that will better prepare me for whatever happens to pop up in front of my face when I get "there". Obviously, I've chosen to do the latter. Since I realized that it's no use trying to stay still because we're all inevitably moving towards tomorrow anyway, I've become a bit more productive. Just a bit. But I'm a work in progress.

If I promised you that I would send you a postcard each day while I was 1,000 miles away and I didn't, not only would I be breaking my promise to you but I would also be breaking my promise to myself. So the hurt is two-fold. By that logic, if I didn't post a blog entry here tonight, I would be breaking my promise to myself twice! Now that's just mean. I don't want to be mean to myself. Call me selfish, but that's just how I roll.

Better

2011-10-25T18:51:00.000-07:00

Max Schumacher: Ten after seven in the morning, I get a call, "Where the hell are YOU? You're supposed to be on the George Washington Bridge!"
[Beale and Schumacher exchange laughs]
Max Schumacher: I jump out of bed, throw my raincoat over my pajamas. I run downstairs and out into the street...
[Schumacher runs into the street]
Max Schumacher: ...hail a cab, and I say to the cabbie, "TAKE ME TO THE MIDDLE OF THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE!"
[Beale laughs]
Max Schumacher: And the cabbie turns around and he says...
[giggles]
Max Schumacher: ...he says "Don't do it, buddy! You're a young man! You got your whole life ahead of you!"
- Network, 1976

The stresses of everyday life got you down? Join the club. These days, one should be thankful enough for even being. But it's too hard, you say. You feel like you're not going anywhere. Well shut up, sit yourself down, close your eyes, take a deep breath, exhale, open your eyes and read on.

At the moment, the world population level is fast approaching the 7,000,000,000 mark. Your young mortal mind may be unable to fully understand it, but you are vaguely familiar with what the number seven followed by nine zeroes equates to--7 BILLION. So some day soon, the world population is going to reach 7 billion. That means there's going to be plenty of human social interaction going on in this world for a long time.

As you go on through life, you're bound to meet all sorts of people. And no matter how hard you try, you will inevitably come across one particularly annoying type of individual: the complainer. The complainer always likes to whine about everything. "This coffee is too cold," "I need a better job," "This place is too crowded," "You missed a spot." These are the type of people that you visit at home after you make the time out of your very busy schedule only to find them asking you, "Why didn't you come over sooner?" These people complain a lot.

And when complainers run into any obstacles in life, do they stop, take a good hard look at themselves, and ask what it is that they might be doing wrong? No, complainers like to put the blame on external factors instead of looking for the often deep-rooted answers to their questions from within. One thing you can expect to hear out of a complainer often enough whenever anything goes wrong: everything sucks!

That's bad logic. Instead of seeing yourself as a victim, you should see yourself as a fearless leader, responsible for any and all things that happen to you and everything around you. If something goes wrong, does everything suck? Are you just a victim of fate's circumstance? No, and no. You have the ability to turn your life back around and move on in the only direction that truly matters: forward.

Can't move on for one reason or another? Are you waiting for something better to happen in your life? Let me save you the time it will take you to wait (forever) by telling you something that you should have known a long time ago: something better is never going to just fall on your lap and happen. If you want something better, you're going to have to make it happen!

We've all had our moments when we've felt like shit as soon as we wake up in the morning. It doesn't happen as often as when we spend the previous night drinking, but I know it does happen. It's when you wake up but keep your eyes closed for a few moments, thinking and thinking and thinking before finally opening your eyes and trying to get up. Only you can't actually get up, and you feel like you just have to stay down. For some reason, and it isn't gravity, you just can't get out of bed and do what it is that you have to do. These are the days when we feel we're at our absolute worst. How are you supposed to take control of a situation like that?

The answer is simple: get better. And don't give me that it's easier said than done bullshit. It's easier said and done, period. Think you suck at painting portraits or landscapes? Keep brushing. Can't turn out thoughtful essays or meaningful poetry? Keep writing. Can't even perform a single push up or bench press? Keep pushing!

If there's one thing I've learned about moving on through life, it's that no matter how hard you stress yourself about what's going on around you, in the end, the only stuff that really matters is that which goes in inside you. So forget everything else. Only take care of yourself. If it ever goes bad for you, remember this one thought to keep yourself moving on: it only gets better when you get better.

Who am I?

2011-10-25T06:25:00.000-07:00

Evey: Who are you?
V: Who? Who is but the form following the function of what and what I am is a man in a mask.
- V for Vendetta, 2006

As a thinking individual, what do you think is the most important and most insightful question that you could ever ask? Is it, "How did life in the Universe begin?" Or how about, "Why are we here?" Is it, "Is Simon Pegg gay?"

All of the above mentioned questions are meaningful and profound. The first two have kept philosophers and scientists busy for more than two thousand years. The last one is just something that I've been thinking about for the past couple of days. If you follow @simonpegg on Twitter, you would know what I'm talking about. But I digress.

The biggest, most important question that any rational being could ever ask does not concern life, the universe, and everything. No, the question is much more down to Earth. And it doesn't concern anyone else but yourself. Most people think they already know the answer to this question before they've even bothered to ask. And who can blame them? Often, all it takes to realize the wisdom behind this simple question is to take a look into the mirror.

The question, the only one that truly matters to you and your life right now, boils down to three short and relatively unassuming words. That question is, "Who am I?" No matter where you are, what you are looking for, or what your problem is, the only way you're ever going to find any meaningful answers is by asking yourself that one simple question. Knowing who you are is the single most important piece of knowledge that you can ever have. And that includes your knowledge of how to dance the Macarena. Having a clear sense of self is just that much more important.

Was there ever a time when it took you forever to order lunch at a restaurant even though you've been to that place hundreds of times in the past? Are there times when you sleep at night feeling like a champion, only to wake up feeling like absolute crap in the morning? Have you ever walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door only to realize that you have no idea what it is that you were looking for? Yeah, I've had that last one plenty of times. The weird thing is, I don't even have a refrigerator in the kitchen. Crazy, right?

Actually, that's just the kind of thing that happens when you don't know who you are. And as I've said, knowing who you are is vitally important if you want to keep living and breathing on this Earth. It's more than just being able to recognize your name when it's written on a piece of paper, or pronouncing it properly in front of a few foreigner friends (if you happen to have a native, exotic-sounding name). Knowing who you are extends to more than just your established identity in society and how you look like. It involves how you move, how you take care of one thing or another, what you do in the bathroom before turning on the shower, and where you take your most cherished loved one to dinner on your 25th wedding anniversary.

If you don't know where to take the love of your life for dinner on your 25th wedding anniversary, don't worry. I have a friend who can help you with some recommendations. And if you have no plans of getting married, that's understandable. If you don't even know who you are, you simply can't be expected to worry about anyone else's sense of self.

What's that? Not wanting to get married is your personal choice and has nothing to do with having a sense of self regardless of whether you have it or not? Well, even if that's the case, it still wouldn't hurt for you to know who you are. That's the first step to getting everything you want out of life.

Do you want to get everything you want out of life? Then go on a journey to find the right answers. The only way you're going to accomplish that is by asking the right questions, the first and most important one of all is this: Who am I? You should be able to take it from here.