Café Kontra

Losing Neverland

It’s funny how things change. When I was a freshman in college, I knew where my life was going. I was going to write forever and ever, amen, and to hell with Computer Science and programming. I was going to finish the course so that I could get a fallback job somewhere, but that didn’t matter, because I was going to write.

Now that I’m about to start my fourth year, I know that I’m going to work in some company and type a thousand lines of code a day.

What’s funnier, though, is that I’m probably going to be happy, for a given value of happiness. I like computers and programming, I like my school, and I love my course. That’s something you don’t hear everyday; most people write about the extreme drudgery of their (un)chosen major and how they would love to shift. Usually said major is in the field of Math, Science, or Engineering, while their ‘dream course’ regards Social Sciences, Philosophy, or any of The Arts (notice the capitalized The).

Just a small sidenote: my second choice, when I applied to UP Diliman, was Fine Arts.

I had no big revelation, no huge moment of insight; eventually, I just realized that, against all odds, I was enjoying myself. Could have been the people; I made a lot of close friends and became part of a lot of cool orgs. Or maybe I’m really just a nerd at heart. Or maybe I'm too easily satisfied by my lot in life, who knows?

No one knows, really. For a given value of ‘knowing.’

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I can’t remember what I dream anymore. Not that I remembered all my dreams before, but now they’re so uninteresting that I forget them the moment I wake up.

I think up stories less and less as well. My imagination works less, and on the wrong sorts of things.

I started writing a story once, about a girl who, when she became sad, would suddenly be surrounded by butterflies. It was inspired by random imaginings and small white butterflies that fluttered down short shrubs by library pathways.

When I read A Hundred Years of Solitude, I said: ‘damn,’ because there was a character in the book who was always followed by yellow butterflies.

Originality is hard to come by, these days.

posted by Jael @ 11:33 PM