Ang Letrang Dar

Nakaraos!

With two video projects over the weekend (and another one pending for Thursday), it simply meant that I won’t have time for anything. And I didn’t. About the only luxury I basked in was when I got some Lady GaGa online.

During the cram, I realized a bunch of things, both minor and major…

• Water might have been what’s really missing in my diet - I realized that I was actually drinking less water than average everyday so I get tired easy. Cold water worsens the issue - it makes us think we’ve already satisfied our thirst but in fact we really haven’t. If I drank about two glasses every break (which is like everytime Adobe Premiere would go Harry Tate on me), I get the normal doozy for five minutes and then I’m back on the job. Helps a lot on those reeeeeaaallllly long projects.
• For skeptics like me - about the real only way to do things is to just do it. When you find yourself with absolutely NO incentive, morale or inspiration to do the job, imagine yourself DOING IT, and then keep it that way until you find yourself actually ON it.
• Some people don’t know that my head doesn’t appreciate coffee very well… or at least not anymore. It also seems I can’t seem to drink any cold RTD coffee without having the same effects on me. That new Coffee Twist (Hazelnut) got me on a real jackhammer trip. It did wake me up, though not the way I expected - blabbermouth syndrome! Nope, not gonna do that again.
• People won’t stay for you. Ever. But that doesn’t give you a reason or right to go King Ghidora on partitions. They leave because they must, and even if you’re going to feel very, very alien again despite so much time spent in such a place, you’re gonna have to square bear it. After all, it’s NOT ABOUT YOU. It’s about them and wishing them well on their way out. If you can’t take it, go and do the leaving part yourself. Because if you can’t anyway, that’s about the only thing you can do.

“Bwiset na araw ‘to.”

Pero if I root it out, bwiset ‘din ‘yung weekend na ‘yun.

I was set to fill out two deadlines over the weekend (both videos, one of which was about half done). So I start out the weekend already burdened by the thought of no recreationals. (Though I did have a bit of a blast with HBO - Vantage Point was great.)

After finishing the first video, I spent 24 full hours last Sunday (mostly anyway) editing the drat outta that 2nd project. It was supposed to be more intricate as the client was quite keen on specifics. Incredibly enough, there was no sign of drowsiness. No sleep + no drowse = frogs are flyin’!

It must be the VFresh! Busted it like peanuts all night.

Soon overconfidence gets the better of me and I spend an hour yapping to the pillow about my head. Apparently I was hungry. Big great useless fool gets to work non-stop overnight and all that halts it is Pooh’s syndrome! Can’t be helped. It’s a big migraine trigger after all.

Soon after I ate I got some strength back and finished the damn thing by 11AM. Had to take out the morning half of my real job to finish it, too. I was set on getting some sleep back, anyway.

It was to be claimed by 3PM today. I pushed the rendering to hi-speed, though I maxed out the bitrate to compensate. Then took the well-earned two-hour nap. The damn thing finished rendering by 1:30PM. We had less than an hour to make finishing touches and burn it to disc.

I was also late for the later half of my dayjob, so I had to leave the remaining stuff to Jen and have her deliver the disc to the shop at Guadalupe. I left the house by 2:15PM.

But noooo, big ol’ GUAFTIODA boy had to mess my day up and drop me off at Market2x instead of my usual stop at C5-Kalayaan. So I took another jeep for Kalayaan and got about 10-15 minutes of delay. No matter, I left a bit early anyway. Ooo, that’s what Sherlock thought!

Just then, I had a call from Jen. She told me that li’l prick of a PC was playing Yosemite Sam again and f***ed up the burning process too. That PC had some weird issues which should be fixed by taking the RAM out, putting it back in again, taking the video card out, and putting it back again… and unfortunately, I WASN’T THERE TO DO IT!

My sister had to take it to herself and try fixing the wimp. I then realized I was suddenly out of time! Must be the damned jeep trying to cart in every moving creature it came by along Shaw Blvd.

I arrived at the office. 3:01PM. Please shoot me.

Meanwhile, my sister and Jen were still struggling to get the PC back up. After about five calls the PC was back to its old self. It took them an hour to start work again. Jen left with the disc at 4PM.

Creamed on top of all that work, though, there was no sign whatsoever of the client anywhere near EDSA Guadalupe.

T_T

“…but the work waits, I’m alive at last, and I’m full of joy!”

So after setting my mind on NOT diving into any sort of video game, I found myself playing Shadowrun. No, not the Xbox game. The old Sega Genesis game. On an emulator, too.

Lesson MCXXVII: Hold back on gaming, and you’re gonna get some ‘nes-whooping’.

Despite the sin, I’m not the least bit inspired by my gaming. This is my sixth Shadowrun, one Shadowrun being one entire game from start to finish. If I remember correctly, I played the following classes in order: Samurai, Samurai, Shaman, Decker, Shaman, Samurai. It’s such a nice game that I’m thinking of modding Morrowind, turning the theme into cyberpunk and converting the entire game into something similar.

One great procrastinator, whining once more over one of his ‘planned’ projects. Expect results by winter of 2040.

Albeit unprovoked by gaming, I have been watching Sweeney Todd on a daily basis since last week. And it relieves stress to a level, whether it’s the actual film playing on a small part of my screen or the soundtrack playing on Winamp.

Speaking of which, I just had a dream the other day that soundly relates to this obsession. The setting was in our office, but the ambience of the place had somewhat fatally dissolved into deathly gray. It’s Burton’s vision, obviously, and it doesn’t stop there. I’m also holding a kettle, and apparently I’ve already killed a dozen employees with it. The rest of the dream strolled into what I could only describe as… a lucid satisfying release of long-kept anger, hatred and immorality. I’ll say no more.

Beyond all that, I’d really like to go back to 3D creation and game design. The former would suffice, but reeducation is still the least of my problems - there’s still procrastination to yap and cuss about. Being an uninspired designer by day, and a nonlinear editing cog by night doesn’t help. Though I hope there’s a way out of this poop I’m in, because it’s really starting to stink and I’m running out of air.

Pessimism is a birch!

This lack of gaming life is killing me!

I just found out that gaming is sort of my motivation and inspiration for all my actions, most especially in design. Now, my friend is watching me so closely I couldn’t even play for five minutes! Bummer.

So instead of succumbing to failure, I’m thinking of restoring this Combatron project.

I lost all my meshes due to a PC transfer last year, but I think I can start again from scratch and still get it done.

Once again, I’m torn between 2D and 3D design. Hrrrf. Well, I suppose whatever gets me going will let me survive…

Some call it rehab.

The casual gamer would dismiss it as another day.

For a 15-year addict to the system (or systems), however, it would be one of the toughest things to get out of.

Most probably know my lack of vice. Booze, cigs, weed? I don’t do any of them, and I carry that fact with pride. To the average eye, it would be virtually impossible. Commonly, it is.

My case is not an exclusion.

I may not have the usual vices, but I have one of the sordid addictions many people at my age level dismiss - video games.

More than half of my life, I’ve succumbed to this underlying need. I always felt it to be minor. What I didn’t feel is the immense amount of NEED I carry for it.

My late mother had my father swear not to let me start out at it. Right now, I would say, ‘yeah, she was right’, but yesterday, my answer would have been entirely different.

It would have been, “Why?”

The addiction, years ago when it was almost dormant, was like a simple hobby. Simply something to pass the time. College came, and I hit an all-time 4.0 report card on my record. That was the era of Counter-Strike. Most of the people I know have probably heard of it.

During the time, I lost a lot of things.

I think, in a way, I lost my sense of reality. There’s always a better world in my mind, and that was in the realm of video games. I could always escape this world and be back to that world I so desperately cling to in a matter of minutes. It was probably part of the reason why I took a single year of college in another school - so that I can be finally over the study thing and do my rounds at de_dust.

The reality, of course, is that when I fell from the horse, I always had the option of getting back on the straddle. And I didn’t. For three years, I didn’t. Not even the thought of it crossed my mind.

I also lost my sense of society. In my own world, I didn’t need society. There’s only the 3D objects that I can destroy, activate, ride on, or play with.

I lost a lot of friends. I earned some in the process, but I dare say I shouldn’t have kept them. I wasn’t like this - I choose my friends very carefully.

Back then, I’d blame all this on my ex. Now I figured that it wasn’t because of her that I fell.

I fell because of myself.

My loss of proper senses, judgment, and reality - they were all because of my morbid addiction to rendered fun.

My first job didn’t save me from this. In fact, it sunk me way deeper. This was the era of Diablo II. My judgment didn’t improve, but after some time, I got myself laid off of gaming. For a very short while.

My second job had me recover minimally. I was so focused at work and that weird, abominable concept of advertising. Still, gaming got to me. This was the era of Xenogears. This era was supposed to be the fall of my addiction. It was merely a spike downward, set to spike the other way of the graph.

I carried this era over to my third and current job. From there, I never recovered. It was a stream of cumulative addictions for five years.

My life as a father didn’t make this sickness go away. Like the trend, it went worse. So much work, lack of personal time, and the general lack and denial of realism turned gaming into my toxic incentive for my life. I fed on it for days and even late nights. Like there was no little girl or loving wife waiting back home. This was the era of Elder Scrolls, followed by Rising Force Online.

Even though I knew MMORPGs were gonna be my 2nd chickenpox, I kept on. Up to Level 34.

Life, from 150,000 yards, was perfect.

After a little discussion with a friend of mine, she got me convinced in getting me to quit the thing altogether. I knew it was gonna be difficult, but the moment I hit the Enter key on the deletion dialog box, it felt so unique. Maybe I had felt this condition way before, and it was just like feeling it again.

I felt very light. For someone at roughly 200 lbs., you can imagine how it felt like. I thought that if I tried to run last night, I’d beat a road runner at least in a sprint.

Right now, even in the midst of an annual planning, I couldn’t get my mind off of gaming. Not even for five minutes. It comes, I try discarding it, it goes. Then, back to line 1. I couldn’t stop thinking of fighting in a MAU (Massive Armored Unit; game thing).

I hope, despite the tantrums, I can finally be rid of this and get back to my real life, which is also in the middle of a sales planning. That, for sure, is one thing I’m going back on to.

Right now.

I found this video on Youtube, while I was looking around IMDB’s trivia section.

For those of you who don’t know about the Wilhelm scream, it’s the unmanly, desperate squeal a grunt/trooper/gunman cries out when they get thrown out a window, off a ledge, or to whatever grisly (but lame) death-inducing platform it may be.

It sounds like “oooooooowwwwwwhhhh” with a high-pitched (albeit masculine) voice.

A lot of these scenes are from Lucas’ films, but not limited to them. Jeez, the first scene had to be the lamest application ever.

Last year, there was this bunch of autorun virii that spread like wildfire on cafes and on e-mail. They were so easy to spread due to their main targets - flash drives.

I’ve been using NOD32 in tandem with Spybot S&D, but still found it too difficult to eliminate those threats.

What really helped me on this is a little tool called “Noob.Killer” made by Leerz. You just run it, execute a 8-X scan, and then clean up afterwards with NOD or Spybot. Voila! Get Leerz’ nice tool right here.

It’s been three years. I think I’ve pretty much done what I’ve can to keep those under me alive and happy, but it still isn’t enough, I guess.

I’m currently living three lives - as a nonlinear editor, a computer tech, and a 2D artist. All this was what I could come up with to maintain a healthy little mumbler. And yet, it still wasn’t enough.

I held on to this thought until it tumbled last night.

I fled in the afternoon to do some maintenance on a bunch of computers somewhere east - in Marikina. I had to leave the missus and the baby sleeping because the latter was yapping “ama, papa?“  (sama ako kay papa) right before she fell aslumber - it was gonna be difficult to leave if I left her awake. I was going to be proven wrong very soon.

I arrived where I wanted and in a matter of minutes, I received a call from my wife, in a dialogue similar to this transcript:

Jen: “Pa, si Thea, nagwawala!”
Me: “Bakit?”
Jen: “Hinahanap ka. “Papa” daw.”
Me: “Nyeh… pakalmahin mo muna, kawawa naman. Dapat pala iniwan kong gising nang nakapagpaliwanag ako.”
Jen: “O, kausapin mo.”
(Jen hands over the phone to Thea)
Me: “Thea…”
Thea: “Papa….”*
Me: “Galit ka kay papa?”
Thea: “Wan!”
(Noises, then Jen grabs the phone)
Jen: “Hala, pa! Nagtatatalon! Gusto ka puntahan yata.”

* Thea sounded very bitter when she said this, along with the other line. She said “Wan” as in “iwan”, with anger at the top of her throat.

One quote hit me - “This too shall pass.”

And it did.

I could take up all the time I have in the world to get what money we need, but soon I will be left with nothing but that - which is, needless to say, not exactly what I want.

Her time as a mumbling little infant was going to pass.

I’ve never felt SO NEEDED in my life until last night. Who would go jumping up and down in anger just because you left them for work? Who would go dancing frantically when he/she sees you coming from the parking area? Only from an infant. You could get that kind of emotion from a wife or a loved one, but from an innocent’s perspective, you get something else.

To an infant, there’s no “why” in needing a father or a friend - there’s just the need alone. And it felt so good, yet bitter at the same time, for it was going to pass.

All this time I’m taking up for money and not on them was also going to pass. On weekdays, I could try to get home early, but she’d already be asleep when I arrive. Weekends have me tied up to all other work and rest.

I could choose to stay yesterday afternoon and keep the baby company, but then, I’d still be busy with other work.

Cliffhanger: Can I possibly ignore all that work and prioritize what was going to pass real soon?

P.S. Re last entry: They found the lump to be nothing but that - a lump. A growth in the skull, similar to what I already had when I was born. It would’ve been different if it grew bigger in the following weeks, but it thankfully didn’t. Guess that means no ESPs for me.

The damned lump just won’t go away.

I remember getting up from squatting and getting hit by the end of a pipe or something by accident. It’s probably what caused it.

This head lump has been here for too long… I think it’s been weeks. I kept ignoring it, not thinking about the length of time it’s kept itself there. It’s got a radius similar to that of a 5-peso coin’s. Doesn’t hurt much when I rub it, but it gets worse when I press on it hard, but that is how it is when you press on any part of your skin THAT hard.

People tell me it’ll just go away. Kind of like several lumps bound in one location, or that’s the way I think they see it.

What I’m really worried about is what’s been going on in the past few days.

I’ve been going home ALWAYS with a terrible headache. It wasn’t like back then where the migraine would just annoy the front right end of my brain - this time it scopes out the whole right area of my brain - from front to rear.

When I walk, I feel like my brain’s a factory-reject jelly snack and it’ll leak out of my ear if I’m not too careful.

I hope it’s just my migraine getting worse. The last time I intercepted head lumps in my life turned out to be very grim and regretful.

I was about to have it checked up a while ago, but rain told me to stay in and weep.

I really need all that positive thinking right now.

On the brighter side, some paranormal webbies thought that head lumps enhance psychic ability. Could this be my chance to see a ghost? I’ve been hearing things, but not enough to fulfill that need.

I hate rain.

It reminds me of a lot of things, most of which I do not enjoy remembering.

The majority of those things are what I would classify as ‘regretful’.

For instance, I remember being drenched in rain 3 times a week right before attending Chemistry class in college. Classmates would greet me with mixed humor. I would lay my uniform on the chem table and attend class in my undershirt and I wouldn’t mind.

Another instance was getting home from a college friend’s party in Baclaran with hardly enough barya (and hardly enough knowledge of directions) to get home. Rain donated further frustration to an already frustrating scenario.

What I did regret so much about this time in my life which rain forcibly makes me recall are decisions which could have made things better if they weren’t done at all.

Among them was deciding which class to attend - Calculus or Counterstrike? I failed a lot of grades due to that decision, and I felt the better of my conscience seeping into my veins as my father saw my transcript. I felt the heavy rain even in my room as I mulled over what I did.

I also regret having said what shouldn’t have been, and not having said what should have been;

Being honest with myself and landing those proper words to who really should have deserved them;

And focusing on that right person all along though I do not expect the road to continue on.

It also sounds so justifiable - whenever there’s rain, it’s the regretful past that I feel and smell. Then, in contrast, whenever there’s thick sunlight, all I recall are the days going all the way to Dau to meet my girlfriend (who is now my wife) every single week.

Perhaps that is what the departed (or the beyond) feel of my past decisions?

…I really need to get a nap!