My Turf

Para sa "napagsakluban ng langit at lupa" moments, para sa mga hirap "maka-get over" (pootek, ang college-y ng term!), at para sa mahilig mag-drama at mag-self pity… basahin niyo itong ubod ng gandang sinulat ni Ginoong Paolo Coelho… Let’s put an end to the wallowing.

Mr. James, salamat sa pagpo-post nito!

Closing Cycles

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.

Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.

None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot forever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back. Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away.

That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts - and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place. Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.

Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.” Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person - nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.

Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

- Paolo Coelho

Baket kaya kung kelan ang dami-dami mong kwento, saka naman mas nakakatamad magkwento? Labo no?

So much has happened to me in the last couple of weeks, and there are are a number of big and small stories that I long to write about. However, I’ve been really busy juggling my office tasks and finishing my final project at Mowel Fund (I’m graduating this Saturday! Woo-hoo!) that I was unable to really sit down and finish a coherent blog entry–not for lack of inspiration, but really due to lack of time. 

If there’s one thing I could unabashedly claim now, it’s this: I’M HAPPY. Very much so. While it is not the sole reason, my enrollment in Mowel Fund contributed much to my current happy-happy-joy-joy state. I’ve made lots of new friends, established new contacts, extended my network… Shooting my low-budget TVCs have never been easier. I’m really very grateful for the opportunity to get help and give help, to be blessed and be a blessing to others as well.

Sometimes, it’s very tempting to feel bad about what others have achieved, but I’ve learned that one effective counter-measure to this is to take a look at the things I feel truly happy about. Una sa lahat, I really, really love my job. I am not earning a lot from this (not financially rewarning at all!), but I get to write, I get to Direct, I get to interact with different kinds of people all the time..in short, I get to do all the things I enjoy, and the experience is different each time! Moreover, everyday, as I go about my tasks, I realize more and more that it really just pays to be nice. Sometimes, we don’t know the wonders that a sincere smile or compliment, or taking a short time out to ask how someone’s doing could do to a person’s day. And, magically, all the nice treatment would come flowing back to you!

Perfect manifestation nito is my TVC shoot two or three weeks ago. I put up a group from the Directing and Cinematography classes to help me out. These are my closest friends in school who were all just very eager to join the team. I told them I needed to do two TVCs in one day at mejo madugo ang shoot kasi wala nga akong pera and di ko kayang magbayad ng equipment rental kung lalampas ng 11 hours. Pero these guys–Aaron, Jarvee, Anthon, and Arthur–were like huge Energizer bunnies who treated the shoot like it were their own! Nakakahiya pa cause all of them are already quite established in their own fields–in many ways, mas magaling sila sa akin–pero walang ere at all nung pre-prod at nung araw ng shoot. They were all just supportive sa eengot-engot na direktora. Hehehe.

Astig din talaga yung connections pag nag-MFI ka. Dahil super friends ko yung mga coordinators sa school, they helped me get approval to shoot in Mowel for free kasi magiging part nga rin naman ito ng personal reel ko. Kinarir din nila na maka-kuha ako ng discount sa CMB for my equipment (more than 40% nabawas sa total bill ko, tsong!). Then yung classmates ko who work in another equipment rental group lent me a generator for free (actually, x-deal sa camera, pero not a bad deal)! Hay, blessings, blessings, and more blessings!

Being used to a small budget production, noon lang ako naka-experience mag-direct ng may maayos na crew. Dati kasi, it was just me, Wendell (DOP), the lightmen, a makeup artist, and a stylist. Pero that day, meron akong Assistant Director, Art Director, Production Designer, Lighting Director at Cameraman. At ngayon lang ako nagkaroon ng Art Dep! Hehehe. I know that to my other director-friends, this is no biggie, pero ako, overwhelmed na ko don. Nagugulat pa nga ako na halimbawa, nakatayo lang ako at pinapanood yung pag-buo sa set, biglang may lalapit sa akin at aabutan ako ng yosi, o ng lighter, o ng drink ("Direk, ito po o!") kahit di naman ako nanghihingi! Ang weird lang to be on top of all these people, at lahat sila naghihintay ng instructions from you and calling you, "Direk." I was in control naman most of the time, pero inwardly, nahihiya ako na I was being given such treatment kasi para sa akin naman, nag-sisimula pa lang din ako and even a year of making TVCs still hasn’t earned me the title, "Direk". Oh well. Basta, ang saya-saya lang!

 

It helps if you work with people you know you could have fun with! (Anthon, our LD wearing green, is obsessing over the lighting setup habang nakikipagtawanan pa ang direktor na pasaway!)

The girl in white, Mai, is Japanese. She is the talent for this shoot. Nosebleed pala mag-direct in straight English! (Sige, Checheboo, tawa pa!) Sa sobrang liit ng budget ko, ni hindi ko na na-afford mag-rent ng video assist! Ex!

                              

                              

               The Wasabeauty/ B-One Top Crew

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The Secret

I’ll give you a really great advice: get a copy of this book.

I’m no self-help fan myself, but I’ve been learning a great deal of lessons about gratitude and happiness and asking, believing, receiving and being one with the Universe from The Secret.

I’ve always subscribed to the power of "Self-fulfilling prophecy" which says that anything you genuinely want and truly believe with all your heart you could have will eventually be yours. The Secret talks about the power of attraction: you will attract whatever it is you’d need to get to where you want to be or be the person you want to be.

"You will attract everything that you require. If it’s money you need, you will attract it. If it’s people you need, you’ll attract it. If it’s a certain book you need, you will attract it. You’ve got to pay attention to what you’re attracted to because as you hold images of what you want, you’re going to be attracted to things and they’re going to be attracted to you. But it literally moves into physical reality with and through you."

The Secret also speaks about the power of gratitude. I’ve always tried to live with an Attitude of Gratitude, but after reading The Secret, I’ve started a sort of "morning meditation" which includes me thanking the Lord for every blessing I have in my life now, as well as everything else I know I will eventually experience or possess (Thank you for the food on my table. Thank you for my friends and family. Thank you for my officemates and classmates, my school, my job. Thank you for my projects, the new people I meet. Thank for this and that experience. Thank you in advance for…Thank you, thank you, thank you!).

This quote is not from The Secret, but it’s a nice one to remember as well:

"Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do which must be done whether you like it or not. Being forced to do your best will breed in you temperance, self-control, diligence, strength of will, and a hundred other virtues which the idle never know."

- Charles Kingsley

I encourage you to try this daily "Thank you" practice. I think it’s more effective when done before you start your day, because it already puts you in a very positive mood. Who wouldn’t feel happy after recounting the many things one can really be thankful for?

"You can begin right now to feel healthy. You can begin to feel prosperous. You can begin to feel the love that’s surrounding you even if it’s not there. And what will happen is the universe will correspond to the nature of your song. The universe will correspond to the nature of that good feeling and manifest, because that’s the way you feel."

Hence, my everyday now begins with a few minutes of expressing gratitude for everything and everyone, and singing along with Martina McBride:

"Oh, watch me go! I’m a Happy Girl and I’ve come to know that the world won’t change just ’cause I complain. Let the axis twirl, I’m a Happy Girl!"