maybelle victor

I’ve been online for quite some time but I still have some reservations against online purchases – specially from newly created websites.  This is a blog about that experience – and perhaps a bit more – for users who share the same dilemma.

I first noticed Pisobid’s ad at Facebook and similar to all the other ads, I didn’t mind it.  It was weeks after, that I finally took the time to try it out and well, got frustrated.  5 free bids, apparently couldn’t take you very far – nor can it help you win what you wanted.  The experience however, was something new and exciting for me so I decided to purchase 100 bids at Php 1000.  This amount, I thought, was the most cost-effective and fairly acceptable.  I mean I was ready to lose that entire amount just to try it out.

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After reading about 5 consecutive books, I lost my interest in reading.  I am not sure if it was because I was disappointed with The Shack (the last book I was reading and haven’t finished) or I simply, just got busy with other things.

I now know that it was more than that.

There are only two reasons why I read: first, because I want to be entertained and second, because I want to be inspired.  Reading fiction gives me a sense of disorientation from the realities of the world and the business life.  The disengagement allows me to relax and be part of something magical, mystic or surreal.  These allow me to think out of the box, look at my life in a different perspective and hopefully, be insightful.

I, however, was recently forced to read more on something reality-bound.  I was reading the news, the updates on the web, articles and ebooks relating to work and the advancement of my knowledge.  Work requires me to read.  The idea would have excited me.  I enjoy reading and I get to be paid while doing so.  But that’s not the only thing there was to it.

The change in my routine made my reality check more pronounced and simply, I lost interest in insights and self-reflection.  I found my creative mind caged in an everlasting prison of web business.

I started to read again last week and the book I’m reading now, changed that.  I realized that I am in control of shaping my opinion of the world as well as my perspective of the web business.  And as before, life wasn’t meant to be difficult.  It was meant to be beautiful.

God is good!

Dear Lord.  Thank you for blessing me and my loved ones.  Thank you for giving me the strength and perseverance to wage the storms I am facing head on.  Thank you for giving me friends and for giving me everything I need to live through each moment with Your saving grace.  Thank you for teaching me to be humble.  You are most gracious!  My life is Your hands.  Please forgive me for my shortcomings and let me be a better person.  Let me do as You will and help me be Your instrument of love and peace, through Jesus, Amen.

I told my colleagues that lately I feel like I’ve lost track of time.  It is like waking up one morning not knowing what day it was or this weird tug on your shirt telling you that you’ve forgotten something and of course, you wouldn’t know what.

Normally, I wouldn’t worry, I’ve always had a weird “place” somewhere no one can reach me but walking out of a building after work and being surprised that it’s night time or walking along the sidewalk and feeling like you’re floating – well, that’s a bit too disoriented.

Funny how a pathetic story can wound me out of such paranoid episode.

You know that feeling of watching a movie where a scene caught your attention and you kept on watching because you wanted to find out what happens next and then, the movie ends, with nothing else to offer?  I would think a book is otherwise but well, I thought wrong.

Reading Lauren Kate’s “Fallen” is a depressing experience for me.  So depressing that my disorientation was replaced with a waking sense of reality.

I guess I am disoriented no more.  I should sleep better tonight.

It’s my website’s 2nd year anniversary.  It has evolved in a lot of ways and although, most of the time, I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing keeping my blog active, I am very much thankful that it exists.

In one way or another, its existence and its growth is a strong indication of how I managed to come out of my shell and explore all the possibilities available to me, not only as a web professional, but also as a creative individual.

January 2011 was tough to me.  He caused me many sleepless nights and many insightful blurs.  Since then, nothing has come easy for me.  But February came and she was more accommodating.  She promised me many things and there were many truths in what she said.  March told me to stay put, be strong and be a better person.  April sings me serenades.

For what it’s worth, this is definitely going to be a new year.

It took about 4 weeks before I finally convinced myself to write about this entry.

It started with a few incidental discussions on Michael Ende’s The Never-ending Story.  At that time, I was reading his book like crazy and each adventure within the book brings me to a state of sharing and nostalgia, of revisiting the little scenes in my head of the movie version of the book.  At one point of summarizing the story, a friend raised how similar the story was with Fushigi Yugi – anime which does talk about a book within a book.  Then, I realized that the movie “Pagemaster” was a bit similar too, and then of course, a more recent one, Inkheart, generally follows the same concept.

Knowing that Ende’s piece was written prior to the rest, the idea that “there is nothing else that’s new” sprung about.

I’ve been into several YA books lately and I can’t help but notice the trend that they all talk about one thing.  Yes, they present a different angle or an additional element but in totality – the story isn’t really new.

This makes me ask, what is really left to be considered original?  It seems that all ideas are borrowed, it must have come from one source, but does that make all ideas readily available for realization?  Worse, does that mean there is really no new idea and that is why we continuously revise and reuse the ideas that we encounter?

Did people stop becoming imaginative because they now share a common imagination – as with language and culture, which is also shared?  How shall we therefore label original and move away from any repeats?  Will that make any difference?

My mentor once told me that “There is no point of reinventing the wheel.  One must simply learn how to ride it so one can improve it.  By then, one can claim that it is hers.”  If that were true, then why am I writing this entry?