I’m not sure what’s going on with me right now. But I have been soaking myself in a lot of negative emotions lately. Also, I don’t fear on missing out anymore. In fact, I love and enjoy my time with myself doing the things I like or doing absolutely nothing at all. And I hate myself for that.



It eases my depression at times but when I realize that the world doesn't stop and that I have to make up for the missing times, I just become more depressed. What makes it worse is that I have to come up with a lie so I won't have to say I'm depressed. I didn't sign up to be a compulsive liar but I'm starting to be one lately. Lying is just so much easier than saying "I'm depressed".

Insecurities

I’m aware that I’m trapped in a cycle; In a limbo that I can’t seem to get out off. And while I’ve been dealing with a lot of regret, insecurities are gobbling every part of me as well. I live in a bubble of inaction and thoughts. I’ve been dreaming a lot. I've been staring at the ceiling for God knows how long. I can't get myself out of bed and sometimes I wish I didn't have to wake up. But I need to. I have to try.

Call it Quarter Life Crisis!

I don’t even know if quarter life crisis is for real or someone just made it up for the heck of it. Don’t get me wrong. I have been trying to help myself ever since. I have tried countless times for the past six months and I've got nothing.

Yes. I realized this over a month ago as I checked through my payslips. It started around June when I turned one year in our company. One year. And I thought, hey it’s only been a year but that feels a lot and you have all these problems coming right at you and you’re only half as you imagined you to be. You’re probably not even half. You’re probably still nothing.

I was nothing when I started. A complete reboot after graduation. You think it’s a joke when older folks would say “Welcome to the real world.”? Well if you don't call your parents Mommy and Daddy it’s not a joke. Reality comes with bills and other responsibilities and they will all come right at you and rip your face off. My problems just piled up since then.

The Hardest Part

The hardest part is that I can't open up to anyone about this simply because that means drama. I don't like wasting other people's time for drama. I have been called many names but I don't want to be called such an 'actor'.

This is probably why I'm writing about it instead. It might help. I don't know.

So far only one has offered help and it felt good. Made me think "Hey, I still have friends". But that person has done a lot for me already and I don't want to be a bother to anyone. I feel like I should be able to understand myself first before I open up to anyone about this.

Until then, I'll keep to myself. I'm sorry.

A week ago I was lucky to have been invited to the 6th RAFI Triennal Awards. An award giving body that recognizes individuals and institutions from Visayas and Mindanao for their respective efforts in improving the lives of the marginalized and in community building. I've attended several award giving ceremonies in the past and after those events I could only come up with words like prestigious and colorful to my pocket and all my articles are facts laid out with a straight face.

Happening now: The 6th RAFI Triennal Awards #dbsthebest #rafitriennaawards #RAFI #davaobloggers #dbstravels #dbsincebu

A photo posted by Davao Bloggers (@davaobloggers) on Aug 14, 2015 at 12:20am PDT

However, the RAFI Triennal Awards more than meets the eye. It is by far the sincerest and the most empowering of all the awards I've attended. It brings faith in humanity. In a world full of bad things, it's wonderful to have someone or something recognize the good things done by people. It reminds us of the innate goodness of people. That despite all of the things we hear of or read about in the internet, there is someone out there making the world a little bit brighter. Giving wisdom, information and hope to everyone.


Inspiring Mindanaoans Wins Big at the 6th RAFI Triennal Awards

The winner of this year's RAFI Triennal Award for exemplary individual is Anita Castillon, a teacher of Lake Sebu, South Cotabato. A double win for Mindanao with an institution (from Maguindanao) winning the Outstanding Institution. #GoMindanao #LakeSebu #Rafi #rafitriennalawards #davaobloggers

A photo posted by Davao Bloggers (@davaobloggers) on Aug 14, 2015 at 2:18am PDT

This year two inspiring Mindanaoans donning their traditional Mindanaoan costumes. Nanay Anit or Anita Castillon, 62 years old, is a retired teacher from Lake Sebu in South Cotabato who won the Ramon Aboitiz Award for Exemplary Individual. She is an advocate for education and has since developed three learning schools in her hometown. She also developed a system to sustain the feeding program withing the schools which in effect resulted to the decrease of children's malnutrition in their community.

As for the winner of the Eduardo Aboitiz Award for Outstanding Insitution, the emerging winner is the Kadtabanga Foundation for Peace and Development Advocates Inc. They are an organization in Maguindanao who are simply the Peace Heroes of Mindanao. They advocate for peace and work with the communities and local government units of the war-torn areas in Mindanao. And that makes it a double win for Mindanao.

From a Mindanaoan, I would just like to thank RAFI for making this happen. I mean, all the other nominees are deserving of the award but I consider your verdict as a great opportunity, a great move towards discussing and featuring Mindanao in a different light.

You see this is actually one of the reasons why I blog. To inform people that it's peaceful where I live and that we are all doing something, in our own little ways to keep the peace. And that we get by with what we have and what we can offer to others. That we breath fresh air and not gunpowder.

I believe this will put us in the map as a place where there's progress and where people have big hearts. So thank you RAFI! Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

If you've been following my blog you probably already know about what happened the first time we went to the riverside. I had a nightmare the night it happened. In my dream I woke up with an unbearable hunger and when I went to the kitchen the crazy person was washing the dishes and creepily smiled at me. The lights were off. But the moon beamed through the window so I could see it very clearly. And it was there! It was just standing there smiling at me. Scary shit! I also dreamed about a twisted version of the river people and you don't wanna know about it. But I'm saving that concept for a potential film.

I also mentioned how much I feel at peace when I'm in the river and I still do. Allow me to focus on that because on our second walk to the river we made something so rushed, river-rushed and yet so personal. It was an entry to a nationwide short film competition called Cinephone. Our entry was entitled "Suba" which is the Cebuano translation for "River". This is the first time that I'll share my screen writings but forgive us (me especially) if we didn't made justice on the 3 minute short or the theme for the competition which is "Peace" btw.



We didn't have much time because we decided to join two days before the deadline and we couldn't schedule a good time for shoot and we didn't have bikes. We also don't have real actors so it was kind of a struggle for everyone. Lastly, 3 minutes was just too short for what I wrote. Hahaha

Logline:

On a hot summer day a kid wanders around their neighborhood to seek peace from their home.

Story

FIRST DRAFT - We focus on a kid drawing something on the ground. We hear his parents argue in the background. It enrages him and he quickly gets his bike. We follow him bike from around the neighborhood. He passes by a gate where a girl gets out with her bike. He paddles with rage. She follows. He dumps his bike, gets on a cliff, finds rocks and throws them on the river. He screams. He holds his tears. He sees a huge rock and tries to bring it down but he couldn't. The girl arrives. He stops. She starts to ask some question. He shares a bit. The girl thought of something. They both threw something on the river. Something important to them. And they biked all the way home.

But after realizing how cliche that was! My god summer films with kids and bikes in them. So revise! revise! revise! Then I shifted from writing a story to writing the dialogue. By the way I just used a notepad in writing this. But I normally use Celtx on my other works. Anyway . . .

Dialogue
Show/hide


But the final cut was this! Actually we didn't have any other cut so this is the final output. What you see is what you get I suppose.



Yeah, it's kinda vague but I hope you get it somehow. We used my Samsung Galaxy S4 and if you noticed we used the instagram ratio to our film and we didn't get to edit the sound though. But I think that's kind of a good thing because it kinda feels raw.

Anyway, today is the last day of voting so if you like the video! Please help us get to the finals by clicking the link below:

http://mmda.gov.ph/index.php/cinephone/40-cinephone/1680-suba

To vote you must be logged on to your facebook account and just hit the Facebook like button on the website! Lastly, this is the Part 2 of my river series on this blog and there's a part 3 which involves a boat ride across the river so watch out! 

Probably the only time I'm outside the house is when I run errands for my Mom or when I come up with project proposals to my unemployed friends. The proposals are mostly film-related so yeah I'm still serious about pursuing a career in filmmaking. Anyway, for most of the time I'm either in bed ready for an ephemeral slumber or still on my bed facing the laptop or my phone and mindlessly scrolling my social media feeds. On productive days I open Photoshop and Blogger.

Image credit: Netmarble Games

Recently, I got myself to play this game called "Marvel Future Fight". It's an interesting game I downloaded after a marathon of all Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films. It came to a point where I realized everyday is just like the other and I thought I needed something different in my life. My mom's been hinting that I go find work because duh? I've been a bed burrito for months. So I started thinking about the future, my future. And I never thought saving storage space to play Future Fight would be that or at least a part of it.

I'm not really the gamer type but I'm a sucker for really good graphics and that's mainly the reason why I downloaded Marvel Future Fight. Upon browsing Google Play for Marvel themed android applications I thought the Future Fight characters closely resembled the characters we've seen fight on MCU. The game is developed by Netmarble who are mostly known for their Korean android applications so I like to think it's tailor-made for Samsung devices. I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S4 by the way and so far I've had no problem running the application.

Marvel Future Fight is a role-playing game where you assemble your own team with a maximum of 3 heroes and go on missions and do 3v3 Battles. There are four types of mission in the Single Player Campaign which are the Normal Missions, Elite Missions, Daily Missions and the Villain Siege. It will take time to unlock the last three so I suggest you explore the normal mission first. The Normal mission is where you get items you need to upgrade your armors by the way. The moment you unlock the other three, make it your target to play via the Elite in search for Character biometrics, Norm stones and even clearance tickets.

My team!

All the other Marvel characters on this game are unlocked except for your first three characters and you need these character biometrics to unlock and 'recruit' them. So keep on collecting biometrics as they're also used to rank up your heroes. As for the Daily Missions and Villag Siege, both are quite hard if you're level is under 30 but you can try the first few missions in search for ISO-8, EXP Chips and Villain Biometrics. ISO-8 is also an important stuff, if you followed the storyline it's an enhanced material that will increase all of your stats. It's quite expensive combining and enhancing ISO-8 but they're a big help during battles.

I'm not quite sure on this but I think the default characters are Captain America, Ironman and Black Widow. But don't worry! During the practice gameplay you can use Thor or any hero you like. What a tease! The most exciting part of this game is actually collecting the characters and going against the boss as you near the end of a mission. Once you get used to doing the missions, especially when you've already unlocked the 3-star autoplay option the game kind of wears on you. It's not boring. It still kind of gives you some adrenaline but we really could use a change of environment and more accessible characters.

So far I have 12 characters namely Captain America, Ironman, Black Widow, Ghost Rider, Blade, Daredevil, War Machine, Falcon, Vision, Winter Soldier, the Hulkbuster and unfortunately M.O.D.O.K. I hate that guy!

Perhaps the most tedious part of playing this game is repeating the missions you've already accomplished just to get more materials, biometrics and above all, leveling up your newly unlocked heroes. But what the hell, if you got a hero like Spiderman, Hulk or Thor or Captain Marvel or the inhuman Black Bolt you just can't help but want to level or rank them up. I still don't know how to unlock characters from Guardians of the Galaxy on this game but it was announced that Netmarble has already released them. Maybe on a special event called "Dimension Rift"?

Anyway before this sort of Marvel Future Fight Review gets long let me just say that of all the games I've downloaded this game will hold a space in my storage. I mean despite all the repetitive and long adventures it does give some adrenaline keeps you on the edge during fight with the bosses. The strongest opponents I've had so far are Ironman, Cap, Spidey and Goblin but who knows when I'll get to Chapter 8 entitled "The Apocalpyse" where the multiverse is expected to collide. For the meantime, I'll enjoy the free time I have in playing this game because so far it's better than other android games out there and there's nothing Marvel a Marvel fan wouldn't enjoy. Well, except maybe for the first Daredevil movie and in my opinion, Ghost Rider. Let's forget those two ever happened, shall we?

Rating: 3.5/5