To Love, Be Loved and Be Happy

I have been reading the book "Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within" by Natalie Goldberg these days. And it taught me a lot on writing being limitless and to stop making excuses for one's self when it comes to writing.

I used to (and probably until now) envy the blogs of celebrities who are being followed by people merely because of their #OOTD posts, cool freebies from companies they endorse, their travels and others more which can cause people to envy their near-perfect lives. 

Natalie, in her book, describes writing as a medium for freeing one's self to arrive at the full understanding of what we really are. She suggests a writing warm-up that is just mainly writing on paper whatever comes to mind even if it doesn't make any sense, for when all the nonsense leave our mind, then the vital things surface and then we become free of the obstacles in expressing our selves.

My warm-up looked like this:

What might not make sense to one person may make sense to another but what's most important is, whatever you write makes sense to you or tries to make sense of the world around you, of your life, what you truly are and what you really want.

I always pride myself for having a firm grip of what I truly am. But i realized that as we grow old, and other people come in and out of our life, we somehow lose touch of ourselves. Writing helps a lot in keeping that peace between ourselves and the outside world without losing touch of our core. So here we are, trying to stay sane by staying inside the confines of our mind and the blank space before us and fill it with what is inside our head and what is right before our eyes.

Last night, I had an epiphany of the 3 things I want most in life: to love, to be loved and to be happy (read: #LVBLVDBHPPY ). 

As i journey to achieve those three things, i want to share it with everyone for those experiences to make sense and for them to matter. I believe that part of loving means to share something that would make a difference in someone else's life, that to be loved means to matter to someone and be accepted and respected for who you are and that to be truly happy means to find meaning in our lives.

So join me in this journey and tell your own story by using the #LVBLVDBHPPY hashtag and I will feature your stories in this blog.

Short Term 12

I will try to do a review on this movie when i have the time, but for now, i suggest that you watch this movie as soon as you can grab a copy of it. :) Awesome and fresh!

FIVE FOR FIGHTING!

It is a Sunday (for Moslem countries, the Monday is a Sunday) which makes it all the more grueling for me to control my irritation towards work, “keep the Lord’s day holy” as it was written. But here in the UAE, that’s hard to keep as it is the first day of work (for those who don’t know yet, Moslems’ holy day is Friday). If you are lucky you get Friday and Saturday as days-off from work, otherwise, you only get Friday.

It is hard for me to start my newly set-up website (see: http://chermahoney.webs.com/apps/blog/) with an “angsty” entry but I can’t bear to write a sugar-coated one just to please the reader. So I started this website-slash-blog to document life as an OFW here in the Middle East as it really is, with some toppings of my usual sarcasm, occasional emotional meltdowns and my drama-queen induced interpretations of things. 

I set foot in Arabian soil on 15^th of October 2009, and being here for almost 5 years now has definitely changed me a lot –hoping that it is for the better. I “hopefully” became more patient, I try to look at things from different viewpoints and I keep trying to have a positive outlook in life. I have no other choice because I won’t do these things, I will not be able to survive the “sandy, jungle” that is the UAE.

I am starting to write again, hence this blog, and chose the viewpoint of a third-world-er in a first world country simply because it’s the environment that I am exposed to for 5 years now. And since most of my artistic dreams have materialized (and some, within reach), why not pay tribute to the experience that made it all happen – my being an OFW in Abu Dhabi for 5 years.

Definitely, I cannot make excuses anymore now. I have my laptop, iPad, iPhone, iPod, DSLR and reliable internet connection everywhere I go, everything I needed to let the creative juices flow and continue to create what others may call art. Because I’ll never know when will I be back from being an OFW to the “free-lancer” (take note of the dash) I once was and earn my living by writing and taking pictures.

I want to share those experiences to others to also show them that being an overseas Filipino worker isn’t always about earning big, it is, for the most part, sacrifices brought about by the love for family. These adventures and misadventures are sad, funny, memorable, cuh-razy and action-packed. I would like you to join me in the journey through my first-hand account and maybe a lot of photos (and of course, my over-rated social media posts). 

Here’s hoping to keep the traffic in this part of blogosphere. Thanks netizens of the world!