mahiwaga

I'm not really all that mysterious

tags: reflection

2002

January

New Year, Shnew Year

Stress can be a real killer. I hate it! I hate it! I hate it!

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2006

August

rite of renewal

What I have forgotten is how important it is to actually go in the water when you go to the beach.¹^,² I haven’t gone in the water for three years, ever since that time I went by myself to Puerco Beach and let the massive waves pummel me, leaving me gasping and breathless. Contemplating the infinite ocean and its instrinsic power just seems to put everything into perspective. I guess I’ll figure out all this bullshit someday, even though that day is not likely to be today.

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ephemerality of happiness

My closest friends always admonish me that I think way too much, which is most certainly true. If I had the knack for shutting off my brain at least partially, I would probably enjoy life a whole hell of a lot more. Unfortunately, when I give it a try, it seems like my brain shuts off completely, and a lot of untoward and sometimes disastrous things tend to happen.

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2006 Aug 23

demarcation is futile

I’ve been experimenting with other blog engines, namely, Blogger and Typo. I really dig Typo, but unfortunately, I can’t get it to run on my Dreamhost account. There are instructions on how to get it to work but the code gods are not with me, I guess. And since today is my last day of vacation, it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll get it running any time soon.

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September

simple pleasures revisited

I was lying in bed, warm and comfortable, except somehow I had lost my pillow, and I thought I should just go to sleep and find it when I wasn’t so tired, but then I quickly found it to the side of my bed.

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last days of summer

There are approximately 3 days, give or take, until I turn 30, and I’ve basically hunkered down and accepted the inevitable. My life will not be visibly different in any way, no major milestones will be reached. It will just be another godforsaken Wednesday that will blow by faster than I can think.

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October

2006 Oct 23

a hundred million bottles washed up on the shore

I just read this post about depression by alison on bluishorange, and I am so there.

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November

there is a thought struggling to crawl out of my mind

I don’t know if it’s just the psychotropic drugs, but I feel like I’m evading something lurking in my brain. Something that I’ve tried to face down head-to-head, only to find myself defeated each and every time. So like the coward that I am, I’ve decided to try to just runaway from it and ignore it.

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flashbacks (the theory of circular time)

It was fitting that I caught Alexander Proyas’ “Dark City” on cable the other day. In case you’ve never watched it, it is set in some noir city where it seems like it’s always night, and for some reason there doesn’t seem to be a way out of it. One of the characters comes to realize this and basically goes insane, repeatedly drawing spirals everywhere he goes. (Wow, that’s weird, I just realized that this happens in China Miéville’s book Iron Council as well—one of the characters goes around the city of New Crobuzon drawing spirals everywhere. Totally different meaning, though.)

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the magic of the ipod and other miscellaneous insanities

Cause its gone, daddy, gone
Your love is gone
Gone, daddy, gone
The love is gone away

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I’m grinding my teeth, thinking about what happens next, and what the next 18 months will mean.

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2006 Nov 10

not really synchronicity

I caught the tail end of “Just Like Heaven” which is set in San Francisco, features Reese Witherspoon as an ER resident who works 24 hour shifts and ends up kind of undead, and is titled after a Cure song (and which Katie Melua does a pretty good cover version of.)

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2006 Nov 17

definitely broken, and unfixable

What is it in me that drives me to wander the empty ether on a Friday night, bereft of companionship? Why is it that I torture my mind with “could’ve beens”? Or worse yet, things that couldn’t’ve possibly ever happened, they were just thin, dry yearnings escaping from the cracks in my soul, as impossible then as they are now.

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2006 Nov 29

some semblance of winter

The temperature was somewhere in the mid 60s today, which is chilly for Southern California. Combined with the Christmas carols and the mall displays, it’s actually starting to feel like December is coming.

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2006 Nov 29

My mind suddenly wraps itself upon the topic of death once again. It is, I realize, a frequent topic of my profession, one that I am guaranteed to revisit again and again, and while intellectually, I recognize that it is a simple fact of life, viscerally, it still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

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December

the first of the last (to sleep, perchance to dream)

(The track that is currently playing is "The Perfect Kiss" by New Order)

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2006 Dec 16

an addendum to serious brain damage

(In reference to how seriously fucked-up I am.)

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2006 Dec 17

self-destructive tendencies

Here it is, 1:30 a.m., and I need to wake up in 4 hours.

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2006 Dec 19

fatness and the tragedy of efficiency

Being a Person of Greater Mass™ myself, I understand the discrimination against fat people. (I think the epidemic of anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder among women is another thing entirely, and very bizarre and disturbing, but that is another tale in the telling. Seriously, though, there are way too many women who are either healthy or dangerously underweight who continue to claim that they’re too fat, and sometimes I have to repress the urge to send them all to the inpatient psych ward on the grounds that they are a danger to themselves.)

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2006 Dec 19

life, death, trifles, and the fading sunlight

I read an intern’s blog post about a patient dying, and it sort of recentered me.

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2006 Dec 26

wordpress ate my post

Damn it, I had written a hopeful entry in my delirium last night, and as luck would have it, Wordpress decides to send it to the utter void. I guess it’s for the best. I was kind of blasphemous post. I’d try to reconstruct it in its entirety, but I can’t remember what I wrote. All I’ve got are snippets.

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2006 Dec 27

swiftly changing

It’s amazing how fast time goes. It just occurred to me that we’re fast approaching the end of the decade, what with it soon being 2007 and all. Not quite how Stanley Kubrick or I imagined it. (Where are the flying cars, huh? Or the shuttle flights to Jupiter, hmm?) But then again, I never imagined anything like the Internet, or Google, or the ubiquity of cell phones. Certainly nothing like the iPod, or Wi-fi, or even the PS2.

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2007

January

insomnia continues

So I need to go to sleep now if I want to have any hope of waking up in time for work tomorrow. I mean, I really shouldn’t bitch or moan, considering that I had both Monday and Tuesday off. I’m basically pretty much done with the week, really, and I get the weekend off.

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February

2007 Feb 10

a summary of the year thus far

A lot of random little things have happened in the past month and a half that have really sent my brain reeling. In some ways, it feels like Christmas was just a little while ago, when I was wallowing in an irrational, meaningless episode of depression, and ever since it’s been an emotional rollercoaster.

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March

2007 Mar 12

clarity (like mud)

It is not entirely clear to me what I had hoped to accomplish tonight, except maybe getting a little tipsy and perhaps even filling my heart with unquenchable longing.

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2007 Mar 18

and everything grows still before the tempest

Maybe things are not so still, though I wish it were so. I can feel Time swirling all around me, and I’m just trying to keep my head above the water, wanting to just stay still, but knowing that I’m going to keep moving whether I want to or not.

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2007 Mar 23

the road of dreams

There was a portentuous sense of destiny this evening, despite the dead part of my soul realizing that it meant nothing. All my aspirations have ended in dust. It makes little sense that this would be any different now.

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2007 Mar 24

a decade’s worth of bittersweet memories

I ended up watching two out of the five bands playing at Lolopop, which featured Filipino American musicians. The one that drew me (and the only one I recognized) was Julie Plug which I blithely described to Andy as a girl-fronted alterna-pop band (which was apparently the fad in the late ‘90’s) I first heard about them in the waning years of my college career, introduced by Manny. Their first CD ”Starmaker” rapidly spread virally amongst my friends and there are quite a few memories attached to some of their songs (in particular ”Sometime in June”) We watched a couple of shows, the last of which was in SF in 1998 after we all graduated.

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2007 Mar 25

the color of the sky as far as I can see is coal grey

Mostly I’m tired. This can, of course, be attributed to the fact that I was on call last night, although it’s not like I did much of anything except maybe sleep.

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April

2007 Apr 17

april is the cruelest month

I worry that my capacity to empathize with sadness and tragedy has been destroyed. Most the time at work, I’m forced to put on a mien of detachment and objectivity. If I took everything bad that happens at work to heart, I’m pretty sure I would’ve quit a long time ago. Or I’d have committed suicide.

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May

My oldest friend whom I’ve known since we were in third grade is getting married to a wonderful woman sometime in 2008, and I can’t help but marvel. It seems like it was just last week we were playing Wing Commander II and listening to the Cure, the Smiths, Soft Cell, and Front 242, or walking up that godforsaken hill while playing some weird word game. There were all those hours spent in front of the Commodore 64 and the 8-bit Nintendo. There was Robotech. Voltron. Bastketball in my backyard. Junior high football. Watching movies at the AMC in Burbank. I could stop and reminisce for hours on end, and my memories may be astray. But it all goes by so fast.

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holding on to a thin strand of hope

I suppose if that’s all the medications accomplish, I’m still getting somewhere. For the first time in a long, long time, I actually believe that there’s a good chance that my life will get better. I’m actually looking forward to the future.

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the witching hour

It’s 1:30 a.m. and I just woke up about half an hour ago. Ever since I finished up my last call month for this year, I’ve just been exhausted. I suppose I have about a month of sleep to catch up on. But this makes my sleep schedule completely screwed up.

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2007 May 11

happiness, the continuing elusiveness of

Now I realize that happiness in of itself is a rather empty goal, reserved for victims of unusual strokes, the congenitally mentally incapacitated, and the clinically deranged. You lesion a few tracts in your brain, and you can be permanently happy until your dying day, singing “zippy-de-doo-da” out of your asshole, your face guaranteed to freeze with a rictus grin. I can see it now, a corpse grinning maniacally in his/here casket.

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2007 May 17

crossing my fingers

The last time my sister graduated, I was seriously in love with S. While in the back of my head I suppose I always knew it wasn’t going to work, I had been doing a good job ignoring that particular fact. Naturally, when I got back to Chicago, everything went to hell, and I went into a patented downward spiral.

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June

2007 Jun 12

the middle part

(inspired by a comment to a blog post by someone whom I’ve been blog-stalking on MySpace)

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2007 Jun 23

by the pricking of my thumbs

So I thought about the story of Snow White, how her mom pricks her finger on a sewing needle, and when she sees a drop of blood upon the white cloth she is sewing, she thinks of naming a daughter Snow White. So she gives birth, and then dies.

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August

2007 Aug 10

<meta>Still playing with ecto right now. I can’t figure out the timestamps and it’s kind of driving me nuts. Whatever. I’ll let Mephisto figure it out. But ecto is starting to grow on me. I may very well be shelling out $17.95.</meta>

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September

Damn it, the heat is practically melting my brain. It’s been near 100 degrees all weekend, and as humid as a tropical rainforest. Which means that by the time I get home it’s like 120 degrees inside my apartment and disgustingly moist.

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My mood is better now.

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mindtrace (a full review)

But if I dissect out the past few weeks, I guess I’ve been asking for it. It’s like jumping up-and-down on an unstable bridge.

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2007 Sep 13

Today came without much fanfare or glee. I am quite happy that I have the day off, though. This week I’ve been working rather fucked-up hours, and it’s begun having a toll on me. I’m not a big fan of leaving work and finding the sun rising up to meet me. I still have to work another shift with similar hours tomorrow, but thankfully I have the weekend off as well.

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2007 Sep 24

hulogdahon (a prelude)

Summer’s beginning to give up her fight…

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2007 Sep 24

hulogdahon (failure to disentangle)

It’s been a strange ride. Friday, against my better judgement, I went to the Beer Festival. Hilariously, I ran into a bunch of people from my residency class. I didn’t know whether to be disturbed or to be comforted that there were at least six or seven physicians at that place.

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2007 Sep 24

hulogdahon (the heart of the matter)

So S (of whom I’ve written a few things here and there) got married on Saturday. Strangely, it didn’t seem like it had been all that long since she first hooked up with her now husband, but four years is a pretty long time.

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2007 Sep 24

hulogdahon (a brief and fitful storm)

I’ve never been sore from crying before. I mean, literally sore. My recti abdominalis hurt the next morning.

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2007 Sep 25

back to our regularly scheduled program

While I’m technically not on a ward month now, I’m spending about 11 hours a day in the hospital. Which is not as bad as it sounds, I guess. I dig working on the wards a lot better than working in the ED, frankly.

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2007 Sep 27

last thoughts of the day

My mind has been everywhere today. I suppose one of the good things about getting older is that there is a wider field for my brain to wander. I could probably keep myself usefully amused for several days just letting my thoughts meander.

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2007 Sep 30

september fades

This song is by Pedro Gil, whom I ended up watching a few months ago.

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October

2007 Oct 12

Inspired by a random blog post.

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2007 Oct 19

again with the indecision

Right now I can feel my plasma glucose levels slipping. My liver seems to have exhausted all of its supply of glycogen or something, too.

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2007 Oct 24

last thoughts for the day

As I try to clear my head from the fires, S. gets me thinking.

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2007 Oct 25

After grabbing some grub and buying more toilet paper, I noticed for the first time the unnatural, diffuse glow that seems to envelop all of San Diego. The sky is this bizarre faded and yet deep blue, like the color of the light filtering through an aquarium, maybe, or maybe more like a TV screen that’s on but without any input coming in, not even static. Or maybe more like an overexposed picture, and just as grainy.

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November

2007 Nov 12

Not sure where exactly this entire weekend went. My mind feels like it’s been liquified, and I’m not sure if I’m coming down with something, if I’ve grown allergic to my parents’ dog and my sister’s dog, if I’m suffering from really severe caffeine withdrawal, or if I’m quite possibly losing my mind.

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December

2007 Dec 21

documented higher risk of mortality

It's official. I have hypertension, which is more simply known as high blood pressure.

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2007 Dec 31

pinanggalingan/paroroonan

In six months, my plan for the future will officially run out.

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2008

January

If there are no endings, can there be beginnings?

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passion (and the lack thereof)

I suppose that dull, drear apathy is preferable to suicidal depression, but I keep thinking that there's definitely something missing from my life. The apathy, I'm sure, is merely a symptom, and not the thing itself. (And I guess I've become some sort of expert about what things aren't, although I'm still pretty sucky at telling what things are.)

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time: out of sync, in a daze

I don't really believe that it's 2008. The number looks ludicrous. I'm disappointed that we don't have regular shuttle service to Mars and Europa. That alien species haven't tried to contact us. That we don't have flying cars.

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2008 Jan 25

messages in a bottle

It finally occurred to me (or I just remembered) who I'm writing this for. Me.

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2008 Jan 25

small epiphanies

At this moment, I'm right where I want to be.

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February

2008 Feb 28

Not good.

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2008 Feb 29

This is probably getting a little obsessive.

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March

2008 Mar 11

looking back at the last decade of my life

It seems like an infinitely long time since I last claimed to understand what love is. There was a time in what seems like another lifetime when I thought I got it. In nerd slang, I grokked it, once upon a time.

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2008 Mar 14

Where do I go from here? Isn't that always the question?

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2008 Mar 29

It seems like this week has been filled with bad news. S's grandfather died. My neighbor was recently diagnosed with metastatic small cell lung cancer. JdG—one of my closest friends from college—just recently found out her mom has breast cancer, and both the sentinel node and the margins were positive.

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2008 Mar 29

It is interesting that the dark night will arouse strange thoughts that you can't imagine thinking during the day time. Maybe it's because of the fact that I'm excessively sleep-deprived and not-a-little delirious. Maybe it was because it was 1 o'clock in the morning, and we all know only crazy people are out on the open road at that hour.

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2008 Mar 31

escape from the black iron prison

Philip K Dick coined the phrase "black iron prison" to describe the illusory world that we are trapped in, forever living and reliving the first century anno domini. It is an instrument of the tyrannical Empire, initially identified with Rome but also identified with any wielder of imperialist power descended from Rome, culminating with the tyrannical elements that rule the United States. Dick identified Richard Nixon as the apex of this tyranny. (God only knows what Dick would've thought of George W Bush and Dick Cheney.)

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April

random quotes gleaned from the web

Twitter is an exercise in simulating Brownian motion in a network. It's kind of like the example of the drunkard trying to find his way from the bar by choosing a random direction at each intersection he crosses. Or, technically, I guess, it's a random walk on a graph, where instead of merely choosing cardinal directions, you could just as easily choose walking through a tunnel, down a diagonal, or up a freeway on-ramp.

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inspiration and sacrifice

So talking to S has inspired me. And reminded me of all the things that I've given up to follow this path that I'm on.

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2008 Apr 12

In that moment, as I leaned on the railing and watched them all dancing, the unasked questions buoyed my heart, lifted it up with the tide, and I smiled, knowing for that one moment the answer.

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2008 Apr 13

For some reason, old songs I haven't thought of for a while suddenly sprang forth from my memory.

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2008 Apr 14

small tasks; simple promises

Even as I grow torpid and still, I remember that I promised myself that I would see the ocean today, come hell or high water. The temptation to just crash out on my bed is immense, but I know I will be a lesser person if I give in.

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2008 Apr 19

trying to characterize what makes me sick

The irony is, I'm terrible with details. I can't figure out the right threshold, the right setting. Either I actively ignore the minutiae and pretend they don't exist at all, or I end up mired in the trivial, and I end up taking hours when it should've taken minutes, and every task becomes a variation of Zeno's Paradox, getting halfway there, then halfway again, then halfway again of that, but still no closer to the finish line. This leaves me extraordinarily tired and frustrated, with a bunch of half-finished or maybe three-quarters finished projects lying around.

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2008 Apr 25

how i hate the night (reprise)

Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see by infrared,
How I hate the night.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep,
Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night.

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May

cause is not reason

It is easy to fall into the trap of believing that causation means intentionality. Lots of things happen where you can trace the chain of events, see exactly how one thing leads to another, and all of these things could be devoid of intention. While each decision may be made by a rational agent, the sum is not greater than its parts.

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epigastric abdominal pain

It could just be acid-reflux. I could just have a gastric ulcer.

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I don't know. Maybe S. is right. Maybe the last 3 years 10 months have finally caught up to me.

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bizarre stimuli

How did this all begin? That's probably too much to figure out in one night, particularly one where I'm at work. I'll just pick at a single thread in the tapestry. Eventually it'll all unravel.

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I really should sleep, but the sensation of burning acid in my gullet makes me wary about lying down supine again. I suppose an extra pillow should suffice, but I'd have to dig through the disaster that is my bedroom.

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June

2008 Jun 10

yet the arrow of time

I randomly went home on Sunday. I woke up around 6 a.m. outside my own volition, without any alarms, and decided it would be a good idea to hop on a train and head up to L.A. I pretty much just ate something like six meals and watched cable TV with my dad. We watched a bunch of westerns.

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2008 Jun 12

What does it really mean to be done? I've got 17 days of formal education left. I'm trying to be as optimistic as I've ever been about the future, but I'm just not an optimistic type of guy. I don't know. I'm more of a giddy cynic. A hopeful pessimist. The mantra of my profession seems to be "Hope for the best, but expect the worst."

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2008 Jun 14

3 of swords, reversed

3 of swords, reversed

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2010

April

2010 Apr 14

life? don't talk to me about life

The other day I was eating by myself at a restaurant and happened to overhear a heart-to-heart conversation between (two people who I assumed to be) a father and his teenage son. The father had (something like) this to say:

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2011

December

2011 Dec 31

don't look back

So when I was a teenager and in my twenties, I used to be really into "Best of" lists and countdowns and reflecting on the last 365 days and all that crap, but lately, I just don't give a crap.

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2014

August

Thinking about the last three months, it's kind of crazy how much has happened to me.

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2015

February

2015 Feb 18

better late than never

Everything worth having, everything worth experiencing has a price. When all is said and done, it really isn't much at all, just a small trifle.

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March

2015 Mar 14

a long time coming

I learned early on that things fall apart.

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