I'm not much of a person, if you think about it. I'm a little weirded out creating and maintaining relationships. I shrivel at the thought of commitment. I overanalyze. I judge too much and yet overlook the glaring human anomaly that is myself. I'm an intellectual snob. I'm not even that smart to deserve it. Not that anybody does, but you get my point.

--- the past two weeks I've been going home at 6pm sharp; I've become the clockwatcher I've been warning myself against

Who knows where sadness comes from? We are attracted to misery. We are sick. I swore off angst a couple of years ago. Not that my life is full of melodrama. Sometimes you realize you've been looking at the trees too long you've missed the forest.

--- like when we, financial analysts extraordinaire, interpreted the 46% jump in gross profit as a miscalculation, trying to explain the horror of the 'blessing' (we are conservative mites and will not stop at anything that will allow the work horses to take it easy) with reviews of last-minute account reclassifications in the past months, etc. when in the middle of number-crunching, the new hire tips his head in confusion and says, "Did we not acquire the plant precisely because we wanted full margins?" Full Margins. Because now we produced our products, and did not have to pass through profit-seeking middlemen which are really our brothers in the business. That had been my mantra when this whole Let's Put Up a Bloody Commissary for No Reason At All Project started. We are one weird. We, financial analysts extraordinaire, denied having accepted the truth of this observation by saying of course, we knew it all along, we were just checking our figures to be really sure.

But the truth is we are missing the forest. It is beautiful, glittering, free. And yet I disparage the dust at my feet, for not being crumby enough, or something.

The Holy Week is arbitrary, but the opportunity is too neon to ignore. Here you have four free days, away from media and all things stressful. I asked Tatay if we could stay somewhere nice during the weekend.

{{{ Dear Lord, my prayer is that You teach me how to love, for the sake of love alone, because although You tell us it is why You made us, I have yet to let go of all my hang-ups. I tell the world what to do, smile, be happy, choose to do the right thing, and they admire me for it. I'm the coolest rocking sunflower my friends have ever known. But they don't know me, Lord. In my heart, I am angry. I am sad. I don't know why people become so sad for no reason, but that is the truth. It is a mixture of different things, I guess, and You can trace it to a lonely childhood and a severe fear of rejection, or my physical appearance, or my personal inadequacies, but the bottom line is the same: I am sad, Lord, please help me not be sad anymore. }}}

And this is my prayer for the rest of the world, because the struggle is universal and you can try to pretend we're not related but that's bullshit because we're both alive, in this particular century, and I believe there is a distinctly crucial reason why we're both here now, my prayer is that we learn how to live, finally, after all failed attempts, after all half-hearted endeavors at sucking the marrow of life, not just in the bungee-jumping adrenalin that comes with new, exhilirating experiences, but especially in the ubiquitious ones that are important only to you,

like the feel of your father's hand, after years of not talking to him,

or the smell of the air before a thunderstorm, because you've been busy all these years cursing whatever gets in the way of your work,

or the color of the wall of your neighbor's house, which tells you you probably have the same tastes in architecture, and more besides, but you were too narrow talking to your other neighbor about the heinous smell of his dog's dumpings.

I wish to get my life back. They say it's really easy. They say all you have to do is to give it up. Give everything up. Everything you think is important is dung in the science of lasting things.

--- Sometimes I think I can never be the good person I really want to be. It's easy to be nice and loving and fun to be with, but being good-to-the-bone is tough. Being a writer I like the flashy conversions, the complete turn-around of one bad person's view of life. I like the thunder and stage lighting that comes with a person's realization of all his faults, and then follows his immediate decision to live a life of godliness. I like it when people say they converted radically because of this one incident, like this song in Mass, or this little act of kindness by one person, etc. But the really holy people I know tell me otherwise.

They say life is a constant battle field. They tell me the struggle is miniscule but grand, regal even. That each and every moment is a chance to show the creator our vast gratefulness for being allowed to live.

But most especially that pride discourages us from beginning again. Pride tells us, since this is the six hundred seventy-fifth time we've fallen, there is absolutely no use getting up. Pride tells up that when we decide to get better, we have to be better all at once.

But the truth is, the Lord loves us more for trying, and trying, and trying, and trying, almost as if our trying is the sole basis of our entrance to heaven, because He likes it better when we are bad people who want to be good, than if we are good people who are being ourselves.

--- I am really just who I am.