Let’s run this motha

New year, new attitude. This year, I won’t settle. I will work my damned hardest to the point where I wake up every day and see my dream so vividly and not rest on my laurels.

Tis the season to be sorry—sorry that I ever felt sorry for myself to a point of self-doubt and self-immolation. What for, when I had all the tools at my disposal to forge my own path, my own happiness as opposed to waiting for manna to fall from the heavens? The manna was always there, I guess — just covered in my horse-blinder determination to keep running after the crumbs. Don’t get me wrong, I do love me some Hansel. But given that it’s the holidays, I’d rather see him as a mocha sandwich than an inadvertent life peg. See, that’s the self-belief talking, the maverick spirit in me that has formed of late. “I’m bulletproof, nothing to lose. Fire away, fire away.”

I guess happiness and self-belief for 20-somethings come in waves (and as we know, they undulate from top to bottom surreptitiously); towards the end of our college life, once we get the swing of our first job, promotion, achieving a sense of fulfillment, monetary rewards, financial gain, finding a true love, nurturing our passions, achieving focus, and then finding a sense of enlightenment. That it’s no longer about the things that don’t really matter (a.k.a. media value, though everyone has to go through this phase I believe. Hello, it’s small-town Manila!) but the things that do (a.k.a. our passions and our intrinsic human value).

2013 was certainly a year of ups and downs for me, not in terms of relationship sh*t shows (stupid 2012!) but making a conscious decision to leave my comfort zones and devote myself full-time to something I’ve always left to second fiddle — the theater. It’s not easy to commit to a life in the arts — the uncertainty of the life that it represents can be ever so jarring. It’s enticing in theory, really — being a patron of the arts and also a practitioner. But when the going gets tough, speaking from experience, the Toff got going (pun intended), which also means that when the theater thing was getting a bit too serious, more real than reel, I always found myself an escape route.

I guess that’s the thing about being in your 20s. It’s the time of the great jubilee that is, collect and select. Experiences, occupations ergo the multi-hyphenate, sh*t shows and relationships — take it as you may. But at some point, you’ll realize that energy and time no longer come in bundles of surplus as they did in your #YOLO days of high school and college life. You end up becoming more strategic as to how and where you allocate your level-ups — to boosting your HP, MP, or your occupational ether drive (sorry, that’s the holiday free time playing Final Fantasy talking, but you get the point). Ooooh, is that my grown-up self talking?

So at the cusp of this new year, what am I looking forward to the most besides a shot at redemption and getting my sh*t show act together? Growing up, in the truest sense of the word. I resolve that I will fight my battles and not flee, and that I will keep my priorities intact. I will work my damned hardest to the point where I wake up every day and see my dream so vividly and not rest on my laurels. I will go to sleep knowing that there is always so much more to be done because life is full of mysteries and beautiful possibilities. That I won’t get complacent because there is so much still to learn, room to grow, and that learning and yearning leads to earning one’s stripes. Substance over hype. Take it from Beyonce. “Run this motha…”