Prolog

The Plan

This blog grew out of the germ of an idea as all enterprises do. The plan was to write about issues and concerns of personal relevance and treat them with an informed point of view, research about them, etc. and string them together based on subject matter. But these plans were not followed through, instead this online repository grew into a ranting board as creativity and diligence left me. The handful of entries that first graced this blog were nothing more than selfish and “insidese” whines.

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Content and Intent

This is a repository of one adolescent girl’s ponderings on the controlling domains of her life, the issues that arise as she deals with them, more often than not a result of the clashing values between society and her own personal beliefs, or the lack thereof. It is with the hope of capturing on record her quest for selfhood that these strings of entries have been written, that they may one day remind her of who she is and what she is all about when the need arises.

I write at times, to experiment, to explore the world of words and answer that inner need to merely sing, perhaps what others have called a writer’s obsession to hear her own voice, yet somehow, one knows it is more than that. At other times I write because I have questions about a lot of things, and I have to make sense of the questions I ask. Consequently, I write because I want to continue asking questions. I also write because of the questions people ask me—not merely as myself, but as a youth, a citizen, a Filipino, a female, a student, a nonbeliever, and all the other labels which I wear, or am branded as I take part in society, like “What does the Filipino youth think or feel in this day and age?” or “Do you still believe in people power?” In some big way, I also write because of what people say, mostly adults, sometimes people of my age and generation. At times, I write in response to echo their sentiments, but mostly as I’ve found, to question generalizations, to beg to disagree, to defend and set the record straight. On these times, writing becomes more than an exploration and a discovery. It becomes an action of struggle against competing voices, who are often more powerful by virtue of the experience of their speakers. But still, I write, and I shall write on, ultimately to make sense of my self, my life, and eventually my citizenship, my nation, and my world.

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General Introductions

The guise of anonymity has become necessary once again to call up freedom in my writing. Having contacts who either know me too much or too little has given me a sense of restriction from writing out my thoughts as honestly as I would have them said. There is always that half-conscious effort on my part to show a sophisticated and cool facade when I interact with people whether online or in real life. I rarely feel that I am truly real with anyone and it is a serious personality quirk (to call it glitch would be self-deprecating) that I hope to resolve in my attempt at becoming a whole and OK person. But for the mean time I will have to resort to escape, which I have done. To free myself from this irritating self-consciousness (probably reinforced by the adolescent imaginary audience), I have decided to put up this blog and post the more personal of my musings at the backwoods of my online social cirlces, and it seems to me that wordpress is as good enough a place as any.

Reviewing the past entries I have written on the fly prior this post, I can see that they are mostly emotional, sentimental and self-absorbed. Although these are things I find embarrassing to admit, these are in fact what I am. It has been my attempt to be a little more objective especially in dealing with description in prose; to show more than tell is what my creative writing professor would say. I know it to be necessary in writing good prose and poetry, but I do not want to lose this part of me entirely because I recognize that emotions drive me more than logic and perhaps that may just be a defining aspect of my character. For this facet, I apologize in advance.

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Susan Anne A. Quirante