Another Shot at Unemployment

In less than three weeks, I will be unemployed again. I have started my countdown. Not surprisingly, it feels like the last few weeks during grade school or high school when you're raring for summer vacation but you still have to endure those unbearingly long weeks of school left.  Very apt since I have treated this job more like a school from the very first day. Except this is ten times worse because it is presently happening. Anything in the past may be romanticized. The present can only feel longer, more constricted. And that is exactly how I feel: trapped and boxed in.

I try to find the positive in it. I have long trained myself to think that nothing at all is wasted in a writer's life, no matter how boring, painful, or worst of all, ordinary. At some still to be identified future time, these things will come in handy. And I did learn some new things, made some new friends, earned some money. All in all, I think it's not a waste of three months.

So now I am passively looking for a job. I want another run at the fulltime writing/revising of the novel, thus the "passive" description. I have not worked on it at all since the translation job started and hopefully, I have accumulated enough material to finally finish it. I really, really, really want to be done with it (*sobs). In the meantime, if you know of any freelance projects that may need writing and translating, send them my way. I still have to eat, you know.

On My Need for Stories and Burning Time Cards

Consistent with my “Touch and Go Joni” moniker, I have printed my resignation letter and am set to file it on Friday. I’m afraid I’m too much of a gypsy to stay in one place for too long. I have to keep moving. But that’s an oversimplification.

There has always been something about my job that does not feel real. Maybe because since graduation, this is the first time that I find myself in an office environment, punching my times in and out. As the measure of my existence in the company, they count how many hours I stay in the office, regardless of the amount of work I’m doing. I have been reduced to an eight-hour entity, occasionally having to put in an additional couple, at times four, hours in a day lest I disappear from earth and never come back.

But I had grown tired of the sheer mathematicality of the whole thing. The words wish to spring forth from me. I no longer just want to have to write “main entrance,” “granite,” “foresta green” and “polished” all in a straight line, from one language to another. Is there a candy store right outside the main entrance? I would want to see the little girl peering into the display window, her face pressed close to the glass, mesmerized by the greenredyellowpinkbrown in a large jar in the corner. She would go home only after her eyes have had their fill of the colors of the candies, her mind have imagined the sweet slightly rough texture of the round objects in her mouth. 

I thought working with words, in two languages no less, would make me happy even for just a few months. But I realized before long that I needed to have them in my hands, shaping them into a reality that I can see in my head before my soul can be truly satisfied. I need the stories. And that’s how I know I’m cursed.

The utter frustration of having red granite for the pavement and not see a young boy of about fourteen sitting on it so he could have fifteen minutes all to himself before he goes home to a crowded house filled with siblings and parents forever in shouting matches has reached its limit. Perhaps he thinks about the new girl in school as he hugs his knees closer to his body. How she had looked at him and shyly smiled across the classroom that afternoon. Or perhaps he’s looking at the stars and wondering about the light years that it takes before the light reaches us.

I need the stories. I will have to look for them elsewhere. In the meantime, I wish I could burn that time card.

I've Been Tagged: Seven Random Facts About Me

I've been tagged by Emer and Cai. Here are my Seven Random Facts About Myself:

1. When my throat itches, the corners of my mouth itch too. I would scratch them until they get sore so sometimes I go around with wounded mouth corners. No people, it's not from too much eating.

2. If you look closely, you will notice a small greenish dot between my eyes, closer to the right. My sister and I were tickling each other in bed while she was holding a newly sharpened Mongol pencil. Inevitably, I got stabbed. Quite surprisingly, it didn't hurt. I lifted my head and saw the pencil swinging from side to side while still stuck to my head. That made me cry. I was maybe seven or eight years old.

I think she was aiming for the eyes.

3. I tell stories in a super-loud voice, especially when I get excited. I am usually unaware of this until a friend would call my attention to it. And much as I try to keep my voice down, I would forget about it after less than a minute and have all of the passengers in the FX/jeepney/MRT know what happened to me that day.

4. I never graduated high school Chinese.

Most Chinese schools in the Philippines follow this format: regular classes in the morning (with subjects like Math, Science, English, Filipino, etc.), then Chinese classes in the afternoon (with whatever subjects they could come up with that were taught in Chinese). I failed Chinese Math (Geometry in Chinese!) and was thus required to attend summer classes to make up for it. I did not attend. I had to repeat 3rd year Chinese while I was a senior in English. Most fun Chinese class I had ever had.

5. I have posed nude for a friend's photography project in school. That was ten years ago and it was for art's sake. Enough said.

6. I am twenty-seven years old and I have yet to apply for a real driver's license. Maybe next month? We'll see.

7. I swear by tomato juice. I hate the taste but it makes my complexion glow and when you're vain, that's all that matters.

I'm tagging Jason Hinsley, Nick Wah, Jason Tan, Bevz Asenjo, Jing Racelis, Anna Cinco and Cheska Lim.

Bonding with Baby Iel