It takes me forever to get ready (#1)

..to say something.

One time, my brother-in-law wondered about how someone like me, so terribly shy, could choose to make writing her career.  I told him a quote I once came across about actors (he is an actor-singer, and a bit shy himself):  “Acting is the shy person’s revenge.”  In a parallel way, it’s the same with me.  In fiction, I get my “revenge” by having a character say and do things I wouldn’t have the courage to do, even if it is just to send a plate back to the kitchen in a fancy restaurant.

Not so with blogging.

I have a hard time not laughing out loud (that’s not so good when in public and by yourself) when I remember the time I asked my friend Kris if there was any way to post a blog but not let anyone be able to read it.  He said sardonically, “Um…try Word.”  Idiotic as that exchange made me seem, I had to tell my sister Mia and my mom about it once when we were talking about Multiply (a novelty then) and I kinda remember thinking, Come on, I know it’s funny, that’s why I told you, but can you both stop laughing now?

This was before I decided to jump on the bandwagon and be a Multiply member, and when I did I only signed up to be able to place comments on my friends’ pages.  I had my reservations about blogging in general: one, did I really want everybody to know what I was doing?  (No, and I still don’t.)  Two, did I want everybody to know what I was thinking?  (No, and I still don’t.  Privacy is my best policy.)  Three, who would waste their time looking my page up anyway?  (Maybe my mom.  More on that later.)

Based on the exciting activities in my blog in the past two years, and as registered pathetically in the “Your site has been viewed (let’s keep it undisclosed) times…” box, I don’t really have much to worry about about anyone really knowing what I was doing or thinking.

So.  I’ve decided to get over myself already and (I wish someone had invented a better word for this) blog.  How long I will keep this up, who knows.  If anyone gave out a prize for the worst journal keeper in the world, I would win it hands down, both for content and consistency in making an entry.  I have journals from my early teenage years with entries like, “Went to school today.  Saw him.  I had lomi for recess.  I barely passed my Science test,” and then the next entry, just as insipid (but maybe at that time I would have had pancit for recess), would be dated two months later.  Even back then, I couldn’t get inspired, not even by my acid-free notebooks and my prettily illustrated Edwardian Lady Diary from Marks and Spencer, whose pages I hardly filled even if the space provided daily was smaller than a calling card.  (Uh, I will say, defensively, I had a life.  I did.)  But I think what really, truly, deeply held me back then was my mother, who I love but who is notorious among us sisters for reading our found diaries without guilt or discretion and for asking questions like “I read your diary and it said, ‘I saw him.’  Who is ‘him’?” till your nose bled in humiliation.  (I will not confirm nor deny if this actually happened when I was 12 in our kitchen in the late afternoon at my old house.)  Needless to say, I doubt I’ll be diligent in keeping this site updated with whatever is going on with me at any point (I still write journal entries in my actual 2D diary–very, very well hidden, I think–in past, past, past, past, past tense…i.e., it would be October and I would still be be relaying things that happened that February) but I think I get an A+ for Effort at having blogged in this many words already.  And I’m not even done yet.

I think I should give a bit of a heads up to whoever may follow my blog (other than my mother, who will read everything I write anyway, even if it’s just I saw him today).  My header kind of sums up everything about me, and this wasn’t something I realized a long time ago; in fact, I only really was able to sum up what the heck is wrong with me fairly recently and felt that as a step towards getting out my “forever to get ready” rut, maybe I could blog to my therapeutic advantage.  (And if you’re still on this page, reading this, you may realize that I also could blog to your painful torture.)

To be literal about it, I take a very, very, very long time getting ready to go out (and I wish the scenario in my room was as pretty as my header picture, but, no, not ever).  My sister Georgia can vouch for my inability to get ready to go out in a reasonable time period, which is why she always reminded me B.G. (Before Gilson, before she married him and moved away to the Far North) to get up and get dressed a good hour and a half before we were scheduled to leave.  Make that two hours, because she usually told me we had to leave at a time 1/2 an hour earlier than required, just to be sure.  And I still was always late–she would be seething downstairs waiting in the car while I would still be trying to pick out my shoes.

And then there are other things I can’t seem to get ready for quick enough…but I’ll blog about that another time (a fuzzy promise).  I’ll have to see if I’m actually ready to put it out there (for my mom to see).  In the meantime, I’ll just try to keep practicing, uploading blogs how ever dull and uploading silly photos.  (Who am I kidding.)  It would do me a great deal to practice, as I’ve heard it works;  I hope it’ll be just like what happened to my former assistant, Cherry, who I had hired even if she had no experience in sales to be my salesperson at an art exhibition I put up.  She was terrified of going up to people to establish contact–essential in sales, but something I hated and still hate to do myself (which is why I hire an assistant, any assistant, even one without experience).  I tried to encourage her the best I could, knowing I had no idea how to help her anyway.  I passed by the exhibition in the evening of the first day it opened and inquired about how she was doing.  “Kinakausap ko lang kung sino-sino, silang lahat,” she said, shrugging.  “Ayun.  Nagkakaroon na ‘ko ng guts.”  Heehee.

*****
By the way:

Thanks to Living Etc. for the picture of my dream room.  It’s weird that my dream room is a dressing room!  But when I saw it, I knew I was in love: girly, messy, pretty, but not precious.  I’m taking inspiration from this as I try to re-decorate my room…but the chandelier is a bit of an impossible dream–I’d feel too guilty about such a gluttonous consumption of kWh!  (Maybe if I get a teeny-tiny one…?)

My old assistant Cherry got preggers and had to resign from her job–it took me a lot not to beg her to stay.  I now have a new assistant whose name is also Cherry and who, in the course of working for me, has gotten pregnant as well and is leaving me in November when her son is due.  I am inconsolable.  Maybe when I interview new assistants I’ll ask questions like “What job experiences have you had in sales?”, “Where did you graduate?”, “Are your tubes tied?”  Haha.