.:168: Or Maybe Not...:.
To be honest, 168 isn't really "memory lane" for me. I have no fond memories of the place to share with anyone, since except for a couple of times, most of the time I go there, I'm actually alone.
On its own, I like 168. It's not really my favorite place to be because it's pretty far and difficult to get to, but you're rarely going to go there without finding anything to buy. Prices there are cheap, and you can even get your hands on some items you'd be hard-pressed to find anywhere else, such as Dian Sheng Rubik's Cubes.
I guess I only have tangential memories there, really. I know how many people love that place, and while I like being there, I never really had a special moment of my own to call while I was ever there. The feeling is more along the lines of "I'm walking in the same general area as someone I know," but I guess there's no outright label on 168 as a place so-and-so and I have had great memories in.
I shopped around there last Wednesday, and I was pretty pleased as punch with most of my purchases. I found a purse frame by buying a cheap purse and ripping it open, then I found my mood ring, and even a different ring that I could really use, plus Pringles for a mere 65 pesos a pop (Yum!).
As I walked around, I realized quite starkly that I wear my heart on a sleeve with a passion. Even tangential memories kept on flooding me, both good and bad, and it did have a profound effect on the experience. It seemed like every five paces I made, a "memory clip" ran in my head, as if I was seeing a scene, whether it happened in the past or merely something I imagined, almost like a flashback montage for a movie.
The thing is, that's really how I am. I wear my heart on a sleeve, and for better or worse, it's not going to change. If someone affects me positively, it shows. If someone deals with me adversely, it likewise shows. I guess I can't avoid that, but lately, I've been able to take most of it in stride.
But I digress. 168 is still cool, even if it's in the heart of Chinatown (sorta), which is almost always hot during the summer.
.:What Have I Done Lately?:.
I recently had an epiphany of the bad kind...
You see, I'm probably finishing my M.A. this coming schoolyear (Yessssssssss!), and yet, with recent developments, I sometimes still feel that I wasted four years of my life in this Masters.
I've given up a lot of time and money for it, and at the end of the day, I come off with more and more bad memories of Ateneo, than anything else, from the whole T.A. bit, to what I went through after being a T.A., to the more recent stuff involving Dr. Angeles and the English department, all the same. The only bright spot that somehow involved my M.A. would've been Reedley (Well, 98% of it. There was this one wee exception...), and that wasn't exactly dependent on my status with my M.A. in Ateneo. Obviously, my Beloved had absolutely nothing to do with my Masters.
But a recent conversation made me realize that after living on my own, working for four years, and completing 90% of my Masters, what have I accomplished? I seem to have very little to show for it, and the feeling that I've wasted four years of my life doing nothing of consequence does make me feel a tad depressed.
It does make one ask himself if he was a failure. It would seem that after all this time, things are still the same for me, and I still haven't really made any progress career-wise. The fact that my M.A. is still being completely useless for me does tend to be a mite annoying all the same.
Except for a few bright spots, the things I gained and subsequently lost over the past four years have really stuck out to me like a sore thumb, especially when it comes to people. I feel as if a chunk of me is ripped out every time I lose a friend I was close to, or at least thought I could be close to. Other more drastic experiences could only yield similar results.
Indeed, where do I go from here? At the rate I'm going, it would appear my mentalism career is the one paying the bills already, and to be honest, that's not such a great thing, knowing all too well that my M.A. is not the least bit going to benefit from mentalism, or vice versa.
I can't even think straight right now and blog about something more compelling than another one of these "woe is me" posts, and I'm feeling guilty about that already.
Sigh... to think this all came about because of one lousy conversation...
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