And I Write Again.

I remember telling myself that I shall not write again. Apparently, I forgot to promise myself not to write again. I just settled for a decent sabbatical. After all, two years of being an editor-in-chief as an extracurricular activity for a cum laude student nurse wasn't a joke. It was stressful trying to balance out the academics and plotting and following through with the great plans for the publication. Needless o say, it took a lot from me and I needed appropriate amount of rest. So, I declined the offer of the Medicine Student council president to be part of the supposed Medicine publication, Sulo. I was really tempted but I ended up deciding to give myself a break. I knew that if I accepted the job, I would end up in the same fate. I also know for a fact that it's not in my personality to just do everything in a mediocre fashion. It has to be grand. Even if I convince myself that it is not necessary and I should not do things in such grandiose levels, I can only last for a couple of hours or a day at most. After the forced display of discipline, I revert to my old form of intense obsessive compulsiveness and I find myself trying to make everything with a bang. That said, this time around, I must practice complete discipline and resist trying to join the publication. And to do that, I convinced myself that I should avoid writing altogether. After all, my skills deteriorated after being exposed to a lot of erroneous and juvenile "masterpieces". So, there. I stayed away from one of my passions - writing.

Well, at least I tried. 

It was restarted a little bit when I started blogging once again. I've kept a blog since 2005. I had it running ever since and it has reached at about 1,000 posts. It used to be a public blog but after a messy occurrence, I decided to make it private with only few trusted eyes being able to chance upon the content. It was working for me. I don't need to have that expecting feeling towards the things I express. In a sense, if I make something accessible to the public, I would be longing for that sense of affirmation that I've grown a bit accustomed to. Making it private eliminated the feeling of "pressure". However, it also eliminated the feeling of communication and my initial purpose of keeping a blog. I wanted to use it to update my friends with the things that I am doing especially when it reached a point that we became too busy or our schedules were too different to sustain a decent communication pathway. In simpler words, when we are not able to update each other with text messages, I see blogging as a feasible way. Thus, I created another blog - this blog. Which has public access. I place some random stuff here that I believe would be safe to share with others. I haven't done something academic or that intellectual lately. I'm trying to lay off those things because I was saturated with them back when my term. And I was planning to keep it that way.

However, things didn't go as planned.

During the Medicine Week, we sort of had some free time. I was supposed to rehearse for Medwards when one of my classmates encouraged me to join the University of Santo Tomas Medicine Alumni Association (USTMAA) On-the-spot Essay Writing Contest. I was skeptical at first. It has been a while since I joined a competition. At the same time, I was trying to lay off writing for a while. But I have to be honest, I missed it. Anyhow, I pushed through. I didn't really care about winning. I just missed that feeling of being able to write again and I was really happy to be reliving that feeling. I sort of felt the same zest that I felt back when I was in grade school. It's like it doesn't matter anymore if you're output sucks, just as long as you are writing and expressing yourself. It was really nice to have a feel of that again after being so trapped in the obligatory writing process.

Thereafter, we just went on with our med school stuff without really minding the results. My friend and I brought it up once but we didn't bother asking the organizers for the results anymore. In my mind, I didn't really care. I got my reward already. I got the flame back. :) It actually reached a point where I was asking about the offer that the Medicine Student Council President gave me back in June. I was thinking of having a little journalism in my life once more. However, the publication was shut down and it was a whole different story that doesn't really deserve much space here. Anyhow, I resorted to some writing in the blogosphere as my outlet from time to time. Well, it kept me sane from Med anyway. :) So, I just continued with my daily routine until one day, I saw my name posted as a 3rd placer in the contest.

Well, that's a cherry on top. So, tomorrow, I'll be attending the awarding ceremonies of the USTMAA. I don't really know if I should attend. I don't feel like I really deserve to attend it. I mean I think they'll just be awarding the 3 of us and the board topnotchers. I hope the 1st placer and 2nd placer show up. Otherwise, that would be weird. Anyhow, we have to be in our barongs and thank goodness I just had one made for my brother's engagement! I'll try to look as normal as possible later. As for now, I'll study Biochemistry. I want to make it really good. I just computed my grades, I think I'm not going to make it to the Dean's List anymore and that's just sad! :( So, I'll make do with what I have and bid you a goodbye!

Sorry for the lengthy post! Haha!