Notes of a Stressed Person

I just miss writing about myself. It has been some quite a time now since I really blogged about the goings-on in my life. I have kept this blog thriving by re-posting poems which I wrote in different moods and times in the past. A lot of things has been happening lately. Saying that I am extremely preoccupied would surely qualify as an understatement. But ironically, now that I am assessing what life has been after undergoing too much pressure from the previous weeks, I still cannot give an honest estimation of progress and productivity on my part.

The semester is now on its last leg, and seemingly, it turns out that the laxness that I portrayed all throughout the semester is now taking its toll on me. Perhaps that is what one gets from having too much confidence about himself. With the rate of things, I can now conclude that this semester has been the most hectic and bustling of all semesters that I have had in my whole academic life. Usually, in the tradition of obssesive-compulsive students out there (read: grade conscious), I fulfill the requirement days before the deadline rolls down in front of everyone, giving me the time to rollick on my own smug complacency while everyone haggles for life just to accomplish things.

But now the tables are turned upside-down. Like a student desperate of finishing the burdening requirements, yesterday I even resorted to gulping down two large cups of strong, dark coffee just to keep me sane and awake all through the night up to the wee hours of the morning. To my fellow batch-mates and me, this is one of the many looming signs of the coming of the apocalypse, or what, in our own UP academic jargon, is more popularly known as our thesis days. Inasmuch as I do not like to jump into conclusion and go way ahead of my academic life, the signs are now lurking around, as if ready to pounce on every unprepared and disgruntled student anytime they want to. Thus, the understandable pressure.

In these punishing times, the only consolation that the poor self gets is patches of happiness brought about by tranquility and some little delights that, however mundane they seem to be, still unfailingly bring back the childishness in one's self.

On my way home today, I passed by a Seven Eleven store located at the busy length of Quezon Ave. Surprisingly, I decided to get a large paper-cup of GULP and have some taste of that particular green-colored drink flavored in apple and kiwi. I found it strange that I was smiling all the while like an excited child as I was waiting for the drink to fill to the brim. Various thoughts played in my mind, like a joyful rollercoaster ride. In one snap, I realized it: I was zooming back to some memories of my sweet, innocent childhood.

As I was about to pay the drink over the counter, my eyes darted to a basket filled with the luscious yet cheap local toffee. Without any contention, I grabbed one and excitedly paid the bill. Then, as I left the store with the cold apple-kiwi-flavored drink on my left hand and the saccharine piece of Cloud 9 sticking out its brown, nutty complexion from the plastic like an inviting tongue on the other, it dawned on me that it had been a long time since I treated myself to such infantile pleasures. But then again, it also occurred to me that, from time to time, one needs to go back to the sheer delights associated to his childhood, for him to have, although fleeting at times, a sense of vitality, a sense of grounding.

It is just crazy to think that after a grueling week (which would obviously still continue till the last two days of the semester next week), it is in this trivial stuff that one finds splotches of bliss. Sometimes, one just tends to be gravitated to the immensity of things, that he forgets about the little joys in and of life. On my part, I am somehow lucky to discover some tinge of ecstasy from these simple things amidst the events that I went and am still going through at the final part of the semester.

I may sound like an evangelist coming straight from Net 25 or any Christian station on boob-tube---but does it matter now? To a self-confessed and self-absorbed cynic like me, reprieve and ecstasy come not so often after all. So why not just celebrate the joy?