I’d just gotten the hang of blogging regularly when I suddenly had to stop again last June. And now I haven’t blogged for over a month.

As I write, I’m fighting the urge to try to justify my absence; as much as I want to write a 5000 word long blog about everything I’ve been up to the last month, I’d rather not risk boring you.

So instead of writing a million or so excuses, I’m just going to write about one of the major ones:

School.

Yes; while a lot of you are in the middle of your summer vacations, we here in the Philippines are already a month into the school year – in my case, a month into my last year of high school.

The idea of it still hasn’t sunk in yet, and I’m still constantly being mistaken for a freshman student (apparently, I have a “baby face”), but, reality is, I’m a senior student now.

It hasn’t changed school life for me significantly or anything though. Generally, the only differences are being expected a certain level of maturity all the time (apparently, being the eldest in the school means we also have to be the most disciplined), thinking about college all the time and suddenly becoming extremely sentimental about everything.

In many ways I’m excited to be a senior; at the same time though, the thought of leaving the school I’ve been studying in for the past 12 years or so makes me wish I weren’t.

Anyway, I’ll let future Clarisse deal with that.

For now, I just have to deal with adjusting to being back in school – obviously, as you probably noticed from my lack of posts, it’s been a slow start.

I’ll get the hang of it though…eventually.

Original image from Flickr

Disclaimer: This is not my closet!

People who like to clean? Those types of people existed? Really? I had no idea…

…until I became one of them.

Okay, I don’t really like to clean per se, in the sense that I don’t enjoy mopping, vacuuming, washing or anything like that.

I guess you can’t really call me “someone who likes to clean” then, but rather, “someone who likes to organize” – a very recent development, yet one that’s been going on long enough to be more than just a strange phase.

It all started with my (fairly new) love of clothing, which led to an obsession with my closet. I then started to have these constant urges to reorganize my closet, and, in the process, everything else in my room and life.

I reorganized, rearranged and purged my closet at least 5 times in the past 2 months.

Actually wanting to fix, organize and clean – it’s a strange feeling. But if it’s something I enjoy, and something that, in the long run, makes it much easier to live in my room, then I don’t see anything wrong with it.

I always dreaded those inevitable “what did you do last summer” questions teachers seemed to love to ask at the start of the year (which is June in the Philippines).

But now, I’m this person who went on cruise ships 2 summers in a row.

Last year, we went on a Caribbean cruise ship for a huge family reunion. This year, we skipped the 24 hour transit time to and from the area and went on a cruise ship much closer to home – a Singaporean cruise ship.

I absolutely loved the last cruise. Because I had such high expectations, I actually just assumed that this cruise would pale in comparison.

Surprisingly, though, I loved this one too. I may have even preferred it.

It didn’t have as much to do with the cruise ship itself than it did with the people on this ship, and the person I was on this ship.

This isn’t to say that the people on last year’s ship weren’t nice in general. Most of the people on that ship were Caucasian, some Puerto Rican. I didn’t see any other Filipinos on the ship besides my family. I barely even saw any Asians in general.

In the sort of “teen room” we went to pretty often, mostly to play foosball, sometimes, people kind of stuck to their own race. This wasn’t always the case, but, in general, there weren’t too many people stepping out of their little groups, so we weren’t a very close group of teens as a whole.

I didn’t really care though, because, at the time, the idea of meeting new people scared me anyway. Plus, everyone there probably thought I was the minimum age anyway. That vacation, I was getting half-priced everything, since I assume most people thought I was 12 years old (actually, I was 15).

This year was completely different.

Right off the bat, since this was a Singaporean cruise, you can just imagine that like 99% of the people there were Asian.

It’s not like I have anything against non-Asians, it’s just that, since we were all Asian, even though we were from different countries, we still felt an immediate connection. There were even a few Asian jokes being thrown around in there.

It was fun because everyone there seemed so interested in everyone else’s culture, constantly comparing countries, trying to see what was similar and what was different. It’s like we shared enough in common for us to relate, but were still different enough to seem interesting.

I found myself going to the teen room a lot, even when I was alone, without my cousins or brother, because I knew I’d have friends there anyway. Yes, I did make a lot of new friends!

If I’d gone on this cruise last year, I probably would’ve been too shy to talk to anyone, so this cruise kind of came at the perfect time.

The ship itself was great – the people working there were really nice and friendly, the food was good, the ice cream was amazing. There were lots of things to do too, but, honestly, I didn’t do any of them because my cousins and I were probably in the teen room for maybe half of our stay there.

I’m glad I did because making new friends, playing foosball with people who aren’t my brothers and playing kids ball games with awesome people every night was the best part of my entire summer.

Though the cruise itself was only 4 days long, we stayed in Singapore for a couple of days before it. Because I was gone for a week, the last two posts were actually scheduled, and that’s also why I wasn’t able to return any comments or go online anywhere last week.

• I posted about how we’re so different, and how our differences actually make our relationship better
• I posted about how inconsiderate it is of others to say that I “could do so much better”
• I also mentioned him in several other posts

Add this post to the mix, and that makes 11 posts mentioning my boyfriend (and counting).

It’s only natural for me to talk about him so much, just because we’ve been together for over 2 years, since before I even opened Clar.me.

Though I mention him on this blog so much, I still haven’t properly introduced him to all of you.

I never actually wrote his name on Clar.me though, believe it of not. He has commented a couple of times though, so if you’re really observant, you probably already know what his name is.

Anyway, getting to the point so I can finally properly begin this post, his name is Kenneth.

I mentioned this earlier, but Kenneth and I are actually extremely different people. We’re basically polar opposites.

We differ in characteristics:

I’m generally pretty shy and introverted – I was especially awkward at the time I met him. He, on the other hand is extremely outgoing and friendly.

He basically is friends with, or at least tries to make friends with, every single person he meets. When we go out, he often makes conversation with waiters, and salespeople. There are always random people in the mall saying “hi” to him because of this. One time, I went to the barbershop with my brother, and he was there. Apparently, almost everyone there knows him by name.

I always say that I am a quiet, but talkative, person. Kenneth’s not complicated like that. He’s just loud. He’s really, really loud. Anyone who knows him in person knows exactly what I’m talking about.

We also differ in hobbies:

I love reading and writing, while Kenneth only ever reads graphic novels (he told me to edit this and say he also reads manga, because “it’s different”, haha). I guess he’s not that into words!

I, on the other hand, am not really into sports, or anything really that involves too much movement. I don’t consider myself a lazy person, but I guess in that sense I kind of am. As you’ve probably guessed, since I don’t like sports, he loves sports. He used to be volleyball varsity, but what he really loves is (ultimate) frisbee. He can pretty much pick up any sport pretty easily though, unlike me.

Believe it or not though, we do have one major thing in common, and that is music. Singing is a big part of both of our lives, so it’s great that we get to have that to share. He plays some guitar, and I play a bit of piano, but the main thing is really the singing.

We’re very different, but in my opinion, that’s what makes our relationship so great. Somehow, the strengths of one compensates for the weaknesses of the other that way. I won’t get too into too much detail with that though, since I already did that in a previous post.

I’ve actually written about a lot of things before. I do talk about Kenneth a lot on this blog, but, also, recently, I’ve been talking a lot about change. I know I’ve been writing post after post about this, but in all of that I wasn’t able to tell you all the reason I was able to improve myself and become more confident in myself. He’s the reason for all of it.

As I mentioned in an older post, Rolling the Credits:

I used to be so shy and so insecure – I used to think I was so ugly, so stupid, so imperfect… but he made me feel beautiful. He made me less insecure. He made me less shy. Never before have I experienced tears of joy, yet I’m crying right now, just thinking about all he’s done for me – that’s how happy I’ve become because of him.

He was just the push I needed to believe in myself and finally get myself out of that rut. I can never thank him enough for that.

Original image from Flickr

I know I’ve been talking about change for 2 posts straight already. Add this one, and that makes 3. I was actually supposed to post another, and then post this one. I realized how redundant I was being at that point though.

This post itself was just supposed to be some sort of summary of everything I’d changed in myself the past couple of years – like a sort of wrap up of the two other posts – but now that thought has sort of morphed into something else.

I love writing, because it gets me thinking.

For example, as I was writing this post in particular, I started to look at this “change” as something else entirely.

There was something my mom said the other day, and even something Jen wrote in the comments the other day that made me realize all of this for what it was.

Your confidence is like a sleeping dragon in you, and you just woke that up. :)
- Jen, in the comments

You were such an extrovert as a kid; you’re just going back to the person you used to be.
- My Mom

I believe that people will always have certain defining traits that never really change as they grow, characteristics that will always be a part of who they are, no matter what.

For the longest time, I thought those traits were my shyness and introversion.

When I think about it though, as a child, I was actually one of the most outgoing, most excitable, most extroverted of people. I’ve always been talkative, but I’ve been so selectively talkative for so long that it got me to forget that, as a kid, I never shut up, no matter what the situation.

Shyness, awkwardness, introversion, self-consciousness – these aren’t my defining traits. All that was just a phase, a phase that I’m, thankfully, starting to outgrow.

I, and many others, saw this past year as a sort of a period of change wherein I mutated into some person that I wasn’t originally.

In reality though, I’m not straying away from who I was, rather, I’m just going back to my roots. Not changing from, but changing back into the person I was before all this mess.