Monthly Favorites: November 2015

Ah sweet November. Before the favorites, a bit of background on this month: It was crunch time for everything. I finally had to present the results of that Masters’ thesis, I had to work on another subject, I had to work, I had to be a good family member and show up to family events, I had to deal with offline drama. It was insane. And so, it probably comes as no surprise that the things I loved most about this month were those that helped me stay within the bounds of the law. Without these, I probably would have gone to the neighborhood sumpak vendor, and, you know where this train of thought goes. On to the favorites.

1.)  The bottomless underwear drawer. Every weekday for November, I would get off work and head straight to a coffee shop to write my thesis. Writing is a grind, more so if it’s academic. And when I couldn’t take it anymore, I would ride a bus home and plop straight to bed, exhausted. On weekends, I would get up, head to a coffee shop, and spend all day there (trying) to get my thesis done.

Needless to say, I didn’t have much energy for anything else. Including laundry. My favorite moment all month was when one Thursday, I got home, and was ready to cry because finally, finally there was no choice but to do the laundry if I didn’t want to go commando the next day. And then I opened my cabinet (I keep a hamper at the bottom) to take out my laundry, and lo and behold, amazing grace, I spy a last pair of panties, tucked at the corner of a shelf. I took them out and blessed them (for effect, let’s imagine that I cried a little). Another night that I can sleep instead of washing things. This is probably in effect me telling the world how much underwear I own, but eh, whatever.

2.)  That after-thesis-presentation feeling. How do I explain it? My friends are mostly in grad school, so I’ve never had to explain the feeling of working on a thesis to anybody. For the longest time, I was afraid that I would end up extending and extending, and that this thesis would be unfinished, until I finally gave up on my masters. That is how tired I have been. (Granted, it wasn’t only school that was tiring me out, but still…)

Now, since I was in undergraduate school, I have always resolved that I would finish my master’s degree, the reasons for which may be best left for another post. The thought of me not finishing because I was having a hard time would probably be akin to the feeling of: Romeo thinking that after all that eloping, Juliet still ended up dead; Arthur making it to the promised land of Camelot but still ending up cuckolded by Guinevere; everybody else on this planet believing that Adele would release a happy album, and then listening to 25 and finding out that SHE. DID. NOT. I overact, and that last analogy isn’t an analogy of disaster at all, I guess. But the thought of me not finishing, on my second-to-the-last-sem at that, sounds like a love affair ending. So imagine what I looked like when I found out that I was good to go, and I only have to finalize that manuscript.

That’s all I have. But freedom beckons, and maybe, with it, new things.