Summer Favorites

Songs:

      a.     Love songs

   - So I just started writing on Wattpad (https://www.wattpad.com/story/74439949-the-brokenhearted-club) that’s mainly about romance, which seems like a far cry from my normal vengeful-women-out-for-blood thing going on. Because obviously an NBSB, single AF hermit is totally qualified to write about falling in and out of love (*sarcasm everywhere*). Anyhow, Backstreet Boys, Westlife, David Archuleta, Jojo, and Jesse McCartney henceforth dominate my playlist with lots of crush and breakup anthems.

      b.     “Throne” by Bring Me The Horizon and “Let it Burn” by Red

-       I also listened to rock song these past few months to complement my breakup playlist.

TV Shows:

Life With Derek

-       I literally don’t know how I started binge-watching Life With Derek—

was it nostalgia or me trying to verify the Dasey relationship? Nonetheless, I watched almost all the episodes in no particular order (although I kind-of started with episodes with the most Dasey moments).

Manga

Haru x Kiyo or Gakkou e Ikou (Ozaki Akira)

-       This is basically about a girl who’s like a cross between the main character of Lovely Complex and Kimi ni Todoke and a short, no-nonsense guy who later bond in heartbreak. For someone who doesn’t like the cliché romantic stories, I like this one because the characters are a breath of fresh air and the romance is sweet and not the saturated kind.

Book and film

Little Women (1994) and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

-       It is rare that I watch a film a lot of times and not get bored of it, even if it’s a favorite movie of mine. Yet interestingly, I practically watched Little Women three times during the summer and still, it never fails to capture my attention whenever it plays on TV. There’s something about the setting, the music, the characters, and their lines that transcends time. Same goes for the novel.

Even though Jo and I share the same passion for writing, I used to think I was a lot like Beth and Amy with a bit of Meg. Jo was headstrong, outspoken, opinionated, and determined while I’m more timid and introverted. But growing up, I find myself relating to Jo more and more. She was a feminist, writer, misfit, and bookworm. She spoke words that felt true to me, and often she felt awkward, which I know I often feel too.

Ship

Joey Russo and Six Lemeure from “Blossom”

-       I’ve been listing down my favorite couples from TV shows and it’s only after I put down the pen that I realized that most of these ships couldn’t hit an iceberg because they never even sailed. One of them is Joey and Six, the former is Blossom’s brother and the latter is her fast-talking best friend. Their relationship is sadly one-sided and since the series ended more than a decade ago, this ship has sunk even when it never even moved.

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Life’s tough, get a helmet

            Everyone wanted to graduate and move on; but I wasn’t always enticed to jump in that “grown-up” bandwagon. I was the Chloe in Pitch Perfect or a girl stuck in a metaphorical quicksand with Flo Rida’s song playing in the background getting low, low, low, low (2x). Quarter life crisis was—still is—gnawing at my twenty something mind like a person doing a corn drill challenge.

            They say that students like to become adults fast; unaware that being a student is actually way easier. I, on the other hand, have always believed that being a student for most seems simpler. To pass you have to study; you are given all the materials you’ll ever need and then you’ll just have to do the task. But having experienced 9-to-5 work for four months, the crisis really sunk in deep. You begin to realize that work is like the beginning of Avicii’s “I Could Be The One” music video over and over again for practically five days a week. Suddenly, the “work until you die” saying terrifies you more than a jump scare from a horror movie.

            Welcome to the club.

         As a member, I think I’ve swam in a dozen of articles that dealt with what to do after graduation, stories that talked about unrealistic millennial expectations, and those that stated solutions to your growing Peter Pan-like paranoia. I even remembered watching a video of successful media moguls who weren’t as lucky when they were my age. And while it aimed to probably boost our self-esteem, I recalled instead someone saying in a speech that some people get lost and then find themselves later in life while some might stay lost forever.

            I reckon life is like that labyrinth we literally had to go through during this one team building exercise I was in, except this time, it feels like I have to navigate things on my own. Cliché enough as it seems, there will be many twists, turns, and strange brown puddle you wish was mud—which I dare say will have equivalent experiences IRL. The only silver (maybe bronze) lining I could see in this is that no one gets out of the labyrinth by staying still. As the animated surgeonfish once said, you have to keep swimming, or walking, or doing something, or actually getting out of bed to send applications and hope that your resume won’t be torn to shreds like your spirit.

            Or maybe stop reading into Eric Matthews gifs and just get a helmet.

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