Hobbies

Once upon a time, I had them -hobbies, I mean *points up at the title of this blog entry*

I used to walk into a bookstore, pick out a stack of graphic novels, a few books of short stories, a bit of poetry and laze around in my pajamas for half a weekend, dead to this world but very much alive in a completely new one (or two or three). Oftentimes, I'd spend the rest of the trip to the mall breaking the spine of my latest volume of Sandman. The threshold of each shoe and bag shop mama walked into was nothing more than a signal to dig into my National Bookstore plastic and fish Morpheus out.

I used to lay the music room floor, on my belly, making up new characters and sketching how I hoped to look, at 21 (not at all how I look now, I can tell you that) At a point, where teenage love seemed like such a huge deal, I attempted to draw a stranger I would have wanted to run into one fine day -in my very own meet-cute, as screenwriters call it.

I used to put on a baseball cap, stuff a jersey in a bag and spend my afternoons relearning the many different ways to throw a ball into a piece of leather as accurately as possible. For the longest time, this and the roadwork and the drills were my life and I'm actually not sure it should be in a post about "hobbies" as it was always much more than just that..

But regardless of whether they are to be classified as "hobbies" or not, they all have a few important things in common:
They took me away to other realities, for afternoons at a time.
They made up a great chunk of my childhood.
I'm not convinced they are out of my life, just yet, or that they ever really will be.

Talk

Something in my voice

changes (slightly)

when I talk to a parent;

when I give a speech;

when I conduct a meeting;

or gossip with friends.

It may be volume

other times, tone, diction

or all three, in varying degrees.

But there is a 

completely

different

voice,

for you

and your cold ears, only. 

How do you measure (measure) a sem?

It's normal for social networking sites to be full of tweets, FB status messages and even photos about grades at around this time. Coincidentally, I've also been editing the ASC first sem report..so everything's just got me thinking about the past semester and how some people gauge whether their efforts (if any) were worth it for the past 3 or 4 months.

How do you measure a sem?

The number of unos you racked up? The list of projects you pulled off? The amount of money you saved up, or earned from random part time jobs? The checklist of places you visited? The hours of sleep you managed to survive on? The weight you lost? The averages you got in a mid-term eval? :p (Hehe)

Numerically, it may not have been the most impressive semester for me. But the quality of the experiences in the past few months..well, I don't think there are scales, ranking systems or rubrics designed to measure that. Maybe if I count the number of make-or-break moments I've had to push past, the amount of game changing realizations and epiphanies we laughed or cried over, or the number of times people have brought me to literal tears of joy..maybe those'll be the numbers that come close to measuring the past couple of months.

Don't get me wrong..this is not to disregard the importance of the aforementioned numbers (grades, projects, savings, etc) This is just me realizing that there were so many life changing things in the previous semester that just can't be listed down or accounted for..

I'm glad I learned how to push, not because of a grade or tangible reward..but because I wanted to learn and do my passions justice. I'm thankful to have struggled to find more relevance to what I'm doing..and to have worked with people who felt the same way. I'm pretty sure that all the times the past months brought me to the edge of my wits, were blessings.

It's all part of the process. 

I am happy and satisfied..there're things I wish I'd done better, but all I can do is learn from what's happened :) It's nice to be able to measure that by my own standards, this time. It's nice to let go of whatever expectations others may have of me..or, expectations I thought others had of me. How do you really measure growth, after all?

I don't know, I'll dodge the overly cliche cheese bullet and leave it at that.

I have a feeling next sem will be really good though :)