TALES BEYOND THE CUP

PASSION:

I've always enjoyed writing. It's the perfect outlet for me to let all these feelings out and to indulge my obsessive-compulsive side without being too obvious (because I re-read my stuff and edit them long after I've posted them). These past few years, I've blogged a lot less than before. Reasons? Well, there's the lack of time (med school... Always blaming it on med school... Sorry...) Then the lack of inspiration (As I've said before, my heart needs to be broken before I can write something of substance.). Once in a while, I give myself a chance to write again even if I feel like the content's a bit BLAH for me. As long as I can keep writing, I'm good.

PUSH:

The other night, a batchmate and I were getting to know each other. She was telling me about my brother and his artistic gift. My brother can draw... He does it REALLY well. She asked me if I, too, can draw. I laughed and said that it was the gift that I wasn't blessed with. Then she pointed out that WRITING was my gift. I humbly and modestly agreed that it, maybe, was my gift. She also implied that she got to read one of my blog entries and gave me an unexpected feedback. "Wow!" she said. I've never had someone tell me something about what I've written before. I was flattered... REALLY... Then this next statement... "Maybe you should start a blog site." I already have a blog site but I think I knew what she meant. She meant something like the ones that people often visit to get advice for something, read reviews of some techie gadget thing, or learn more about life by getting immersed into the stories of others. The problem is... Like I've said before... LACK OF INSPIRATION... People like to read about life... But I don't think they would want to read something with heartaches and failures all the time... It's hard to admit but... My life is pretty boring without the broken heart...

INSPIRATION:

Then... Last night happened... I realized that I've already posted a couple of moments that I've had with the baristas of Starbucks FEU-NRMF... I must say, those moments really made my day. And those moments gave me that spark to start a flame...

TALES BEYOND THE CUP:

It's a blog that I started just last night... Well, I started it today, a few minutes past 12 midnight. Since I became a regular at the Starbucks FEU-NRMF store and became friends with some of the baristas, I became fascinated with their work. At one point, I even asked myself, "Why didn't I think of becoming a barista before?" Honestly, I am interested. Maybe because they make their job look so much fun. Plus, the interaction with the people... I guess that's the best part. It's amazing how they could keep their energy up for 8 to 9 hours a day. Sometimes I wish I could stay at a store and just watch them work a whole shift. 

"Tales Beyond The Cup" is dedicated to:

1. The baristas who became and will become my friends. Big things come in small packages, sometimes. Though I don't get to chat with you longer than the usual counter conversation, I thank you for for the small talks. Those became my inspiration to start something to further feed my passion for writing.

2. DK... I guess that conversation really started something in me. It didn't take long for me to find the missing pieces because you pushed me to search hard and search deep. Though we just recently became officially acquainted, I want to thank you for giving me that push... I really needed that.

http://talesbeyondthecup.blogspot.com

The Hurtful Moments Can Become Life's Gems

It's 12:18 AM... Weird how I suddenly got the urge to write something at this hour after such a LONG time of not writing... I've been on a downhill ride since, maybe, last week and this last thing that I saw (out of curiosity) just triggered me to let these thoughts out once again...

I had a pretty traumatic experience yesterday getting "yelled at" by our group's proctor during our case discussion in ward class. My groupmates said that that was still nothing compared to the other times that they've seen her really grind a student. True, somehow, because I was expecting something worse... I really can't blame her for "yelling" at me because I knew what I wasn't confident about what I was presenting. No excuse nor explanations were accepted... It's okay... I knew I deserved it... But still,  it left me, somewhat, speechless and feeling like I needed more room to breathe. I guess the weight of that horrendous moment wasn't really totally lifted off my chest. (THIS wasn't the trigger, though... Something else pushed me into writing once again.)

As I got back to my dorm room, I started thinking... My mind wandered off into the common theme of my previous entries... PAIN... HURT... HEARTACHE... Then I asked myself, "Why didn't I write about the good times that I've had? Why do I keep focusing on the bad stuff? Have I become a pessimist since the day I experience real emotional, heart-wrenching pain?"

I consider myself an optimist, as someone people can turn to if they want some encouragement. But I do have a hard time being that source of encouragement once I start dealing with my own demons. Well, the demons being getting hurt by people... Okay, getting heartbroken... That has always been my problem. Once that happens, I'm done... What's worse is that I keep reliving those painful moments over and over again in my mind, trying to find the answers that only the other person involved could give. Unfortunately, I'm not brave enough to confront them... By saying "them", I mean all the people (okay, all the GUYS) that broke my heart. Well, I had this one experience... It was pretty liberating... But I don't think I could go through that again... (The good thing that came out of that experience is that we're still friends to this day... THANKS for the friendship, man!)

Anais Nin once said (or, maybe wrote), "We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrrospect." --- I read this on Facebook and this gave me the drive to write again... I just needed something to write about... Until yesterday happened...

That saying also gave me my realization as to why I keep writing about the painful stuff... "To taste life twice... In retrospect..." I guess I needed a reminder of what went wrong and where things started crumbling to the ground... Basically, I created my own manual... "The Things You Should Learn From" A manual of my life's mistakes that resulted into heartaches.

I've always thought that I never learned from my pit falls... Until recently when I realized (yeah, these realizations just keep coming to me) how EXTRA CAUTIOUS I've been for the past year or so. The conversations I have with myself in my head have been, "Why did he say that? What does that mean? Does he mean... Nah! He's just friendly." or something like, "Why did he do that? Did he do that because... Nah! He's really just like that." Yep, the once "conclusion jumper" has become "the automatic dismisser". There's no such term but for me, it exists... I did post something on Facebook about having my walls and defenses up... Fairly true... After what I endured almost a couple of years ago, I think my heart needed (and deserved) a break... (To the guy who broke my heart more than a year ago, THANKS A LOT! I think you just scarred me for life! *sarcastic*)

There's just one catch... Having my guard up kind of scares me... I've never been this guarded with my heart before... What if I've already missed an opportunity?  There's NO WAY I could get it back... I've been busy keeping myself from getting hurt that the chance for getting the happiness that I've been waiting for has already passed me by.

I guess the only thing I could take away from this is, AT LEAST, I had no idea what I could've missed. I mean, yeah, there's that chance for happiness... But maybe, just maybe, it wasn't the kind of happiness that I deserved. I've endured too much pain from different people that, maybe, someone amazing was meant to give me happiness beyond my imagination.

I'm still hopeful... And I guess I never really lost the optimism towards myself...