Slip of the Pen

Last night, my snail mail Gmail was the harbinger of good news — I’ve been accepted into this year’s Filipino poetry workshop to be held by the Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika, at Anyo, more popularly known as LIRA.

LIRA was founded by National Artist for Literature Virgilio Almario (a.k.a. “Rio Alma”). He’s going to deliver the first lecture to the workshop’s fellows — all fourteen of us, according to the email’s recipient count — but I’m not sure if he’ll conduct more lectures after that.

One thing’s sure, though — I won’t have any excuse not to blog in the next two months. I’ll be having plenty of blog fodder, as the workshop will run from June 2 until August 5, 2007. I’ll be honing my Filipino wordsmithing every Saturday and Sunday, from 9 AM to 5 PM. Suddenly my weekends are booked!

I’m thrilled with this chance to once again learn new things inside the best of places — UP, my alma mater. Of course, there’s also that tinge of nervousness blended in, akin to what I always felt during the first day of classes, from prep school all the way to college. Heck, I’m just probably getting anxious waiting for the lit criticism to roll in, haha.

Wish me luck!

Subtitled: The Birthday I Won’t Celebrate

22. This is the first day I’m wearing this age. Double two, accompanied by a double whammy just like the year before. And like the first one-two combination, this pair is again cause for much disorientation.

First, it doesn’t help that May 10 is hemmed in by April 23, the day I decided to follow my bliss, and May 17, the day I took the first step to follow that bliss. I’ve already written about the (self-)fuss over April 23, so it’s May 17’s turn to unabashedly bask in the spotlight.

On that day, Ia and I got our first jobs (as work-from-home Web Project Managers for Toronto-based Enthropia Inc.), a few hours removed from a lengthy semi-corporate job interview somewhere in Quezon City. The recruitment was sudden —

Friend: We’re looking for a team of two writers/webmasters for a slew of new domains. Up for it?
Me/Ia: What’s the pay?
Friend: **** dollars per month, split between you two.
Me/Ia: DANG!

(Not the original online chat transcript, of course.)

— too sudden that the next morning, I woke up whispering to myself in disbelief, “And I had wanted to be a bum for six months!”

Since then, I’ve never looked back. Freelance writing evolved into professional blogging, and working from home allowed me to spend time on the Art-side of writing. Now, while musing over the struggles of my first year of mixing Work and Art together, I’m also pondering upon my future. It boils down to one question:

Should I lessen Work to make more room for Art?

It’s never easy to jump from writing about search engine optimization to Tagalog poetry, for example. While I’m happy with my current situation, to put it bluntly, I’m not satisfied with my literary productivity for the past year. Some of it has to do with personal discipline and time management, but most of the blame lies with work.

Because I’m itching to spend more time on Art, I’ve been caring less and less for my monthly income, even if I’m not exactly well-off (I have trouble budgeting for family bills). I guess my mentality in a nutshell would be:

Glory first, gold later.

I know it’s a bigoted statement in a country where millions of people are desperate for mere coins. It’s also an insult to my family that needs my salaries. Hence, I have been in deep thought in the past few days. Not deep enough to drown me in misery, but enough to make me drown myself in video games and scientific magazines, which are the alcohol to wash away my sobriety.

That’s the first wham. It’s pretty much trivial compared to the second.

Last May 7, one of my uncles on my father’s side passed away. It was an untimely and unexpected event for our whole clan.

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