Happy First…

 

Hello, beloved bloggers and readers! Happy yuletide season. May the cold December be kind to us all… 🙂

 

Yesterday, I got a message from WordPress greeting the site happy first anniversary. It says 35andupcynicismonhold registered with the host site on December 14, 2011. Wait, I didn’t know that! Seriously, am only aware that I published the first post on the 19th of December, 2011. But what the hey, the WP record did remember, so much the better. Thank you, WordPress, for the kind reminder. So, this humble site is officially one year old this month, woot!

 

Happy first birthday to 35andupcynicismonhold site 🙂 / birthdaydirect.com

 

I thank all of you who kindly, patiently and encouragingly journeyed with me through the year – for reading, for visiting and for leaving those likes and the warm and insightful comments. Your presence and support saw this site and me through. I am grateful up to my chin, ahaha. Muchas Gracias, thank you, maraming salamat… 🙂

In one year, 42 posts have been published in the site, or an average of three (3) posts a month. I would have liked to post more often, but I also maintain another site in the Tagalog language. The topics covered at 35andup range from the mundane, to the esoteric, and on to the deeply personal. There are a few sprinkles of the political, but not so much.

Having this blog has helped me negotiate the wide, vast and complicated blog sphere of the English-speaking, writing and thinking world, a feat I attempted with my old Tagalog site but curiously failed. The English site, more or less, permitted me to swim in this interesting ocean of literary, artistic and philosophical folks who write intelligently, wittily and way better, too. But some of them, you, allowed me to think we’re equals and that has made me glad and proud. Ahaha. 😉

 

The first post I wrote in English was there’s always a rich relative, written maybe a year before it was published (May 2012). Then, When Love Comes A Knockin’, a write up  conceived in December 2011 but also before 35andup was born. It was originally intended for Feb. 2012 publication. Come Christmas day of 2011, nobody has visited the site and read the first post and the About page yet and yours truly was badly in need of affirmation, lol. 😉 I would say that the third post and fourth writing, Parking Lot View stood on a better ground. By January 2012, I have already come to terms with the idea that I would be blogging in English, hohoho.

 

Let me enjoin you to read some of the posts I truly enjoyed writing –

 

Of Valentines, Love and Other Falsehoods – sister and I just came from a trip to Hongkong. At the HK terminal going home, staff gave all passengers a rose made from red towel (cute), woefully reminding us of our Valentineless state, lol. 😉

Off to a Place – written because I was excited about the prospect of a first long-distance train ride South; an epic fail, I took the plane, haha.

My Happy Finds – a continuation of my reading journey and the authors whose works I truly enjoyed reading

Hunger Games: Popularizing Dystopia and the Accidental Heroine – my first attempt to review a movie in the blog

a silly, simple poem – a poem, a first try in English (borrowed heavily from the English, especially the phrase – jetsam and flotsam)

Firmaments –  first attempt at photography, sort of…

Impeaching – an attempt to analyze the ongoing impeachment of the Supreme Court Chief Justice

Atmospheric Pressure – am not sure but I guess, this was an attempt to copy the writing styles of Kerima Polotan-Tuvera and E.L. Doctorow combined.

Kinder and Gentler, conclusion – a write up on Thailand and Philippines’ comparative development, with a bit of politics…

that part of us…  – a take on forgiveness and the digital age

Kiss me in September – an attempt to be coy while waiting for the mood to write the next post

Writing Wounded – was written finally after listening to a hoard of Gothic music, ahaha

Two and a Half Smiles –  the first of the four-part series, I like this best as I did not know that the article would take that long; that I would have that much to say about our mother and be able to write her full story. The idea was triggered when my grandniece and I were playing at the garage, where I used to wheel mother around during her sick days.

The rain and quiet – another first attempt that is, to write about a crime. The story came fast, as though it wrote itself. The notion that it would all be about describing the atmosphere came from an old Filipino movie.

 

What I love about writing is, I usually begin with a blank page or a blank monitor and minutes or hours later, there are several pages of composition – a tale that seems to make sense somehow and tells me that a story has just been given birth – by my hands, mind and heart; by the whole of me.

 

Let me end with a quote from Shakespeare, my first time to quote him –

 

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

 

from Macbeth’s soliloquy (Act V Scene V)

 

Thank you very much, folks, for taking the ride with me. It has been beautiful. 🙂 😉 ~ San