9 after 28

Limits are possibilities. - Patton

How do you assess a year? How do you measure passed days, from disparate moments and detached memories strung precociously across the thread of one's consciousness; a life, an existence, into empirical and detrimental morsels measurable, thus lending more readily to valuation and assessment? Do you define parameters by which these moments could be billeted against, like some vague yardstick edgeless and non-graduated? Or do you attempt to distill sense from the intangible, a critical assay purely subjective and maudlin?

Our society is inherently self-aware. Stemming from a culture of subservience, the aspirational qualities of our reality almost always leads us to valuating, devaluing and evaluating self-worth by comparative means, through defining an objective, the superlative, that is an amalgamation and congregation of various specific milestones assimilated, collected, filtered, and highlighted from those around us. But to subscribe to this methodology, I believe, would be defeatist and a malfeasance against the perspect of well-being. Life is a spectrum, and whichever facet we peruse, there will always be someone out there who has done better, and worse, than us. This predisposition to compare and contrast one's life against another is a requisite to gauge and tune our solipsistic self-awareness, but it should be taken neither as an absolute mensuration of worth, nor as an exact qualifier of state.

So instead of allowing preconceived notions of success and happiness reflect, and ultimately tarnish, my sense of value, I choose to look back on the year that was with an optimism that has rarely graced my writing or this venue at least. Despite various mishaps, disappointments, omissions and commissions, there is a lot that I find myself thankful for. I may not be a complete and absolute antithesis to who I was a year ago, but suffice to say substantial things took place that has given a plethora of reasons for this overwhelming gratitude. Besides, if I have become an absolute antithesis, it would defeat the purpose of progressing. This being the case, it is imperative to take things with a grain of salt, that though holistically I am in a better place than I was a year ago, ad meliora so to speak.

Stagnating in a job that appears to be dead-end for the most part, I find comfort in the fact that I still get to express creativity in many respects, despite the languid myopia of my immediate seniors and the culture of mediocrity harbored by a highly political, elitist and cliquish roster of colleagues. I still hope to receive a more commensurate compensation for the work I put out, but I feel expecting this would be a long shot, considering that I do have a lot of detractors in the workplace.

I am no saint, this I admit, and for numerous occasions I have demonstrated how I can be difficult to work with. Heck, I am a difficult person. Social skills were never my forte, and I still immensely lack the appropriate amount of rapport and tact to blossom in a corporate setting. Considerations surface that maybe I am in the wrong side of the creative industry, and that maybe advertising is a more suitable environment for me, but I digress. Things could be better, yes, but so far I am well. Maybe an improvement is on the horizon, who knows, all I could do is to maintain my steady growth and focus on developing compentencies that will empower this growth.

I am fortunate to have such a supportive and understanding family, that although I fold and get stressed once in a while from the responsibilities that beset me, they are able to ground my qualms, quell my agitations, and offer perspectives that temper my, well, temper.

I am thankful for my friends, few as they maybe, for being not tolerant but rather accepting of all my myriad eccentricities. I am a man replete with contradiction and idiosyncratic leanings that to have a regular set of friends, normal if you may, will not be reflective of whom I am. So few as few friends go, they are as varied and complex as my interests are, and as interesting too.

I am thankful for having a supportive partner. Who grounds me, is level-headed and affectionate, practical and brilliant. Who is understatedly intellectual without being arrogant or condescending. Who can slap sense into my harried haunts, and laugh with abandon at my twisted brand of humor. Who injects color to my otherwise chromatically-challenged existence. At the moment when I thought I had no hope but to accept solitude as my eventual companion, you came along.

I am thankful, most of all, for still being here. For realizing that despite how harsh and challenging life may be, I am luckier than others. It will be unfair if I said that mine is a dream, for life rarely is, nor is it a casual walk in the park, pedestrian and without conflict. But knowing how blessed I am for the past year, and how benevolent things have turned out to be, I cannot help but smile. That although few people did remember my birthday, for their own reasons, it is sufficient to know that having them in my life have enriched, informed and transformed it beyond my imaginings. For the few who did, I am grateful for the humble greeting, for the simple dinner feast at home despite the spiteful weather and being slightly under the weather, for being there in spite of distance or distanciation, for remembering and reminding me that life is still good.

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The author of this blog celebrated his 28th birthday over a week ago, during the downpour of the then receding super typhoon Falcon, amidst crushing and rushing deadlines, minimal fanfare, and a minor health affliction. He sends his warmest greetings to fellow bloggers who, similarly, celebrated their birthdays recently, namely Kane, Moi, and Ewik, and all other bloggers he may have inadvertently missed.

Original image from here.