Nowadays, when some friends see me, they’d always comment something about my use of Foursquare and how I tend to Tweet and Facebook it more than the usual. Some find it cool, some don’t care, some are concerned about my safety, and some find it annoying.

Here are some points I’d like to tell to those who just can’t stand it: UNFOLLOW ME. Simple. If you think it’s stupid and unneccessary, UNFOLLOW ME. Simple. Instead of wasting your energy towards complaining, tweeting, and ranting about an application I am using properly, UNFOLLOW ME. Simple.

But definitely, I’d rather tweet and Facebook where I am than complain about my life every single day. And it’s almost the same thing anyway, you tweet and Facebook about where you are too, you tell us what you do in that place, so why not let me Foursquare?

I share with my friends the places I like to go. I want to see some of the restaurants and vacation places they go to. I find new friends on the site. I gain points for discounts and perks. I gain excitement. I gain gratitude towards the realization that God is giving me the ability to travel and eat anywhere in the world. Did I hurt you? Did I contribute to any global conflict? Did I kill anyone? No.

To those who are concerned about my safety: My dear friends, I understand and acknowledge your concern but I am not that stupid to allow someone to rob me, kill me or rape me. Just to let you know, I check-in earlier or later than the exact time I am in that place. Sometimes, I don’t check-in at all. And sometimes, I check-in all at once. So I will have to salute you if you can ACTUALLY and REALLY calculate the distance, the time, my decision of when to check-in, the time I will spend staying on that place, and the moment when to kill me.

To my friends who appreciate the benefits of having a Foursquare and to those who just let me do what I want to do, I appreciate it very much. Thank you.

You use Twitter to tweet, Facebook to stalk and everything else, YouTube to watch videos, Formspring to cyberbully people (well, for some), Tumblr to blog, and Foursquare to let people know where you are and see where other people are at and are up to. Every social networking site or app is made to create an impact to each and everyone. And I honestly think that whether you like it or not, you are going to be a part of it.

Let’s just appreciate the gift of technology; it is also a gift from God anyway. Lessen the hate you are giving towards a freaking social networking site or application and start criticizing yourself to improve. Minimize complaining about your friends’ updates and start doing what you’re supposed to do with your life.

After all, there is so much more in the world than Foursquare.

From Point A which is your birth to Point B which is your death, friends come, friends go;enemies come, enemies go; money comes, money goes.

The only thing constant between Point A and B is you. You’re the only one who’s going to be there the entire time. If you change yourself just to please the people who’ve been sliced in the middle of Point A and B and then they leave, you’ll be stuck to whoever you really wanted to be. There’s no point in changing who you are just to please the temporary others.

In an ever beautiful world, there’s always going to be people who’ll stick with you through thick and thin. But this is not an ever beautiful world; this is the real world. So fall in love with who you are because you are the only one who is and will be stuck in yourself through thick and thin, and until the very end.

I’ve been going through a not-so-good time in my life recently, and since my usual preference is to hug myself and cry away, I am trying instead to concentrate on desires. That word unfortunately is considered as something cliché or underrated, and so I am warning you right here, right now, that that is not how I think it is.

I am talking about little instances and beautiful heart-warming occurrences that remind me of how every second of my problematic and temporary life is worth living whether I choose to appreciate so or not.

There are about a thousand reasons why every day is wonderful, but here are a few things I find personally desirable:

1. Taking a cold shower after a day’s work, and letting it kick off the smell of perspiration and pressure
2. Finding an extra-large shirt and tiny cotton shorts to sleep on with at night
3. Songs written about how love and dreams can change your life
4. A little line you find on Twitter that says the thing you’ve always felt but never thought to describe
5. That first stretch in the morning
6. Encouraging text message from someone you love and loves you
7. Eating good food with people who genuinely appreciate eating good food
8. Standing in front of a kind of landscape that makes you stop and think “Wow. I am giving myself a right to be miserable with this kind of beauty existing.”

I know it’s cheesy and corny and that it sounds like a greeting card, but I am choosing to see the world as good and I am so grateful to live here. 

Here is a list of 15 things which, if you give up on them, will make your life a lot easier and much, much happier. We hold on to so many things that cause us a great deal of pain, stress and suffering – and instead of letting them all go, instead of allowing ourselves to be stress free and happy – we cling on to them. Not anymore. Starting today we will give up on all those things that no longer serve us, and we will embrace change. Ready? Here we go:

1. Give up your need to always be right. There are so many of us who can’t stand the idea of being wrong – wanting to always be right – even at the risk of ending great relationships or causing a great deal of stress and pain, for us and for others. It’s just not worth it. Whenever you feel the ‘urgent’ need to jump into a fight over who is right and who is wrong, ask yourself this question: “Would I rather be right, or would I rather be kind?” Wayne Dyer. What difference will that make? Is your ego really that big?

2. Give up your need for control. Be willing to give up your need to always control everything that happens to you and around you – situations, events, people, etc. Whether they are loved ones, coworkers, or just strangers you meet on the street – just allow them to be. Allow everything and everyone to be just as they are and you will see how much better will that make you feel.

“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond winning.” Lao Tzu

3. Give up on blame. Give up on your need to blame others for what you have or don’t have, for what you feel or don’t feel. Stop giving your powers away and start taking responsibility for your life.

4. Give up your self-defeating self-talk. Oh my. How many people are hurting themselves because of their negative, polluted and repetitive self-defeating mindset? Don’t believe everything that your mind is telling you – especially if it’s negative and self-defeating. You are better than that.

“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.” Eckhart Tolle

5. Give up your limiting beliefs about what you can or cannot do, about what is possible or impossible. From now on, you are no longer going to allow your limiting beliefs to keep you stuck in the wrong place. Spread your wings and fly!

“A belief is not an idea held by the mind, it is an idea that holds the mind” Elly Roselle

6. Give up complaining. Give up your constant need to complain about those many, many, maaany things – people, situations, events that make you unhappy, sad and depressed. Nobody can make you unhappy, no situation can make you sad or miserable unless you allow it to. It’s not the situation that triggers those feelings in you, but how you choose to look at it. Never underestimate the power of positive thinking.

7. Give up the luxury of criticism. Give up your need to criticize things, events or people that are different than you. We are all different, yet we are all the same. We all want to be happy, we all want to love and be loved and we all want to be understood. We all want something, and something is wished by us all.

8. Give up your need to impress others. Stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not just to make others like you. It doesn’t work this way. The moment you stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not, the moment you take of all your masks, the moment you accept and embrace the real you, you will find people will be drawn to you, effortlessly.

9. Give up your resistance to change. Change is good. Change will help you move from A to B. Change will help you make improvements in your life and also the lives of those around you. Follow your bliss, embrace change – don’t resist it.

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls” Joseph Campbell

10. Give up labels. Stop labeling those things, people or events that you don’t understand as being weird or different and try opening your mind, little by little. Minds only work when open. “The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.” Wayne Dyer

11. Give up on your fears. Fear is just an illusion, it doesn’t exist – you created it. It’s all in your mind. Correct the inside and the outside will fall into place.

“The only fear we have to fear, is fear itself.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

12. Give up your excuses. Send them packing and tell them they’re fired. You no longer need them. A lot of times we limit ourselves because of the many excuses we use. Instead of growing and working on improving ourselves and our lives, we get stuck, lying to ourselves, using all kind of excuses – excuses that 99.9% of the time are not even real.

13. Give up the past. I know, I know. It’s hard. Especially when the past looks so much better than the present and the future looks so frightening, but you have to take into consideration the fact that the present moment is all you have and all you will ever have. The past you are now longing for – the past that you are now dreaming about – was ignored by you when it was present. Stop deluding yourself. Be present in everything you do and enjoy life. After all life is a journey not a destination. Have a clear vision for the future, prepare yourself, but always be present in the now.

14. Give up attachment. This is a concept that, for most of us is so hard to grasp and I have to tell you that it was for me too, (it still is) but it’s not something impossible. You get better and better at with time and practice. The moment you detach yourself from all things, (and that doesn’t mean you give up your love for them – because love and attachment have nothing to do with one another,  attachment comes from a place of fear, while love… well, real love is pure, kind, and self less, where there is love there can’t be fear, and because of that, attachment and love cannot coexist) you become so peaceful, so tolerant, so kind, and so serene. You will get to a place where you will be able to understand all things without even trying. A state beyond words.

15. Give up living your life to other people’s expectations. Way too many people are living a life that is not theirs to live. They live their lives according to what others think is best for them, they live their lives according to what their parents think is best for them, to what their friends, their enemies and their teachers, their government and the media think is best for them. They ignore their inner voice, that inner calling. They are so busy with pleasing everybody, with living up to other people’s expectations, that they lose control over their lives. They forget what makes them happy, what they want, what they need….and eventually they forget about themselves.  You have one life – this one right now – you must live it, own it, and especially don’t let other people’s opinions distract you from your path.

“Love yourself.”

I hated it. I hated hearing this so much, I forgot what it meant.

Surprised me to think that somehow, I managed to ignore the real meaning of loving your - SELF. Too many people are allowed the power to manipulate this part of us that is the point of life, after all. How does it happen?

Selfish, egoistic, self-glorifying; words all too commonly designed to hit you where pushing & pulling never stops until it hurts. I’ve been a bitch for what I do, a bitch for what I don’t do, and when I happen to be learning the ropes from in-between, well then I’m just a bitch for not knowing which direction to go, or what the hell I want to do.

Well, apparently, things could get worse, because life becomes a plain fucking pain when you start looking at things from ‘their’ point of view.

If this happens to you, you’ll find that you’re scared to be good at what you love most. You’re scared to be good to WHOM you love the most. Unless you’ve got some concept of hope and manage to get sense knocked into your head by some force of nature that pulls you back to what you know, then you’ll probably never stop wondering why you’re not the same. Why crashing feels so familiar to you, why understanding melancholy is too easy to do, why the existence of love beyond science seems harder to prove.

“Love yourself” is not a command to throw away like a song you’re done with after playing it in your head for so long; it’s not something you change your mind about if people begin to label it as something it isn’t made to be.

Loving yourself is believing that it is okay to like the great and crazy things others like about you, or that you are someone who has friends who love you, even if you don’t know why. Noone is perfect, and noone should feel, or be, alone.

It’s knowing that it is okay to want to be one of the best, if not just better, at that thing you do, JUST BECAUSE. It is happier to dwell on the good things to know what to make of the bad. Shoot for the moon.

It is okay to jump at opportunities, because it is okay to be grateful and it is okay, if not better, to make use of what you have. There is always, ALWAYS, a reason for everything.

If you have a life that makes you want to bounce all the blessings back, it is okay to know in your heart that, one day, you will give everything back.

Noone should ever have the power to pressure you to do, or be, something that you aren’t ready - nor made - to do, or be. One thing I want to say about the entertainment industry is that, people forget that none of us have anything to do with what our faces or bodies look like, pretty or ugly, bought or born with— this should be reason enough not to base your work, or your life, on your looks.

There is a bigger picture in the world for each one of us & we are all specks of dust in the end. What you do with your life now can outlast you later on.

It is also okay to smile (maybe even so randomly, you’d seem to be on E) — it is okay to admit you just honestly like being in this twisted world, no matter how cruel, judgemental, angry, or dangerous it can be.

It took me 3 years of gradually losing that strength. A year and a half to slowly gain it back, and 5 months to finally feel it creeping back into me.

So you think you love yourself, but still somewhat believe that all the countless times you fucked up serve as an estimate of who you are in all your years of being. If you think you do love yourself, but fail to ignore the things that you know exist to try and screw you over then please, love yourself a little bit more. Messing up is NOT equivalent to BEING all messed up. you have every right and reason to LOVE, EVEN if you don’t know why.

Loving that one person, loving anyone, and especially loving yourself, is not anything that LOVE is NOT.

and you know what? if you find Love, there’s your God.

Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true. Think only of the best, work only for the best, and expect only the best. Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. Give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. Live in the faith that the whole world is on your side so long as you are true to the best that is in you!

Christian D. Larson

And so I did get hired. All of a sudden, everything changed or should I say, everything started all over again. From being a student-athlete slash Psychology major - tennis player who aspire to be intellectually, emotionally, and physically balanced in all ways possible, to becoming a student-athlete-employee slash graduate studies student - senior year team captain - Marketing Head and Event Manager who is battling and struggling with the famous quarter-life crisis; everything went by so fast that I most of the time feel the hustle and the hassle.

I’m seriously having a hard time juggling everything all at once but more than anything else, I am happy and I am thankful. I was never a contributor to the country’s rising unemployment rate. I have a top-management entry job position which opens up a lot of future opportunities. I was able to meet THE expectations of the society (and by “THE”, I mean that I was able to land on a well-paid, highly-respected job since I graduated with latin honors, et cetera, et cetera). Most of all, I am learning. For the past few months, I was able to buy myself little and fancy things without having to ask money from my mother. I was able to be independent financially and emotionally. Most importantly, I was able to learn the concept of time management in an entirely new level.

When I was in college, time management meant tennis and school, tennis and school, tennis and school. Having to meet the real world, it now means life and work, happiness and work, dedication and work. Since there is a bigger room for independence and a smaller room to control one’s time, I realized how valuable life is more than anything in this world, how normal it is to suffer and dream, and how important it is to not dwell on your career but on the responsibilities you have for yourself, family, and society.

This life transition made me believe that nothing in life is hard or easy, it’s only our thinking that makes it so. It’s normal to complain and rant about requirements, pressure, crises and expectations, but if you love what you do and you are willing to fight for its worth, you can turn every negativity upside down.

They call it the Quarter-life Crisis. It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn’t know and may not like.

You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren’t exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don’t recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren’t really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.

You look at your job and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you.Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn’t.

One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure.You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused.

Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can’t meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing this because you know that you aren’t a bad person.

One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic.

You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision.You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself, and while winning the race would be great, right now you’d just like to be a contender! What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it.

We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.

I’ve very recently learned how easy it is to descend into negativity. The world is filled with things to rant about: our jobs and our schools; our workload and our subsequent lack of sleep; our meddling parents and our inconsistent friends; the traffic, the weather, the crowds; famine, disease, poverty, war… the list goes on.

Luckily, I have in my life people whose wisdom and experience happen to help steer me back to the right course whenever I begin to go astray. I was reminded—in a rather penetrating, almost rough way—that feeling the need to bitch and bemoan our unhappy fates is a sign that we’re looking at the wrong side of the situation.

“Things might not be going the way you want them to be,” said my personal Yoda, “and you may not be getting what you feel you deserve. But that’s life. It’s not fair. Instead of complaining, learn from what you’re given.”

And he added: “Remember to keep your opinions to yourself. Watch and learn, watch and learn.”

I’ve since come to realize (after much thought to the sound of sad, rainy day music) that success comes to those who don’t succumb to the temptation of ranting. It’s so much easier to complain than it is to do something about it; so much easier to gripe than to grin and bear it; so much easier to give good advice than to follow it.

And yet life is as generous with its blessings as it is with its burdens. How quickly we forget that having a job to rant about means we have a job at all; that parents who meddle are parents who care; and that hard work tends to reward the worker.

I know I can not delete the affection you had for her
or remove the misery of loving her just before this summer.
I know I can not guarantee the feelings you are currently having
or assure myself that it is the truth you are withstanding.

But in spite the things I know, I’ll keep holding on.
In spite the doubts, I’ll risk it all.
They say “It’s stupid”, I say “I’m just happy”
They say “It’s not worth it”, I say “I’ll just let it be”

About the end, I worry
but why face the future if today there is still me?
Who would want to get hurt sooner or later?
but I dont want to just let it go, give it up and take that forever.

If the time comes you choose her over me,
the time will also come that I will be free.
But if the time comes you choose me over her,
the time will also come I’ll prove you that things will be better.