Carljoe Javier's Blog, page 5

Isn't it All Fanfic?

I don't know if this counts, but I like to think that it does. My earliest acts of fan-fiction were as a kid playing with my action figures. Like a lot of kids, I got toys from different franchises and pantheons and smashed them together. One of my favorite toys was B.A. Baracus from The A-Team, who, in my first act of creative crossover, I would have drive the KITT car from Knight Rider. And though the action figures we had ranged from Ninja Turtles to Ghostbusters to G.I. Joes to...

The One Friend Request I Can’t Approve

Here’s an essay about my Daddy Issues, and how I’m seeing things on that front, which will be included in the Essays@30 project. It’s kind of heavy on the family drama, you’ve been forewarned. Read on!

I have more than 1,500 friends on Facebook, a few hundred Twitter followers, a small but steadily building group of friends on Google+, and I’m the kind of person who adds anybody who sends me a Friend request. I’ve got nothing to hide (generally) and I don’t feel the need to hide my movements,...

The One Friend Request I Can't Approve

Here's an essay about my Daddy Issues, and how I'm seeing things on that front, which will be included in the Essays@30 project. It's kind of heavy on the family drama, you've been forewarned. Read on!

 

I have more than 1,500 friends on Facebook, a few hundred Twitter followers, a small but steadily building group of friends on Google+, and I'm the kind of person who adds anybody who sends me a Friend request. I've got nothing to hide (generally) and I don't feel the need to hide my...

The Literary Career

Jonathan Lethem wrote, "I was what I would be if I wasn't a writer." He had been a bookstore clerk before attaining literary fame. This idea made me stop and think about my own career trajectory and whether I wound up where I should be, and what I would or could have been.
After all, good friend Ken Ishikawa once told me, "You know Carl, you don't really spend too much time in any one job." This I thought, was being adventurous, trying out new paths, expanding one's horizons and capabilities, ...

On Clocking In

There are some advantages to working in the office, in the same way that I think that there are advantages to having meetings. (I like small meetings, of at most five people or so, the kind where once you all stand up you've reached a consensus and there's action that can be taken. Big meetings are a waste of time, and the bigger the meeting, the more of a waste it is. You invite people who are irrelevant, and you invite digressions, and you invite people who want to show off or work on...

Where I Was Once Immortal

This is the first essay in the book that I just suddenly decided to start writing earlier today. I've been working on a novel, and I feel like I might be better off working and shifting back and forth between the two. Like when I get stuck on one, I jump to the other, and back. Who knows, maybe it'll work right? And so here's the essay:

Thirty and the years around it are usually the beginning of exposure to health issues. Of course there will be certain complications before it, but it's at...

Upcoming Release: The Hundreds!

Hopefully in time for BLTX 2 on March 2 at Ilyong's, The Hundreds will be released. The Hundreds is a collection of 100 pieces about love, by 100 creators, all of them limited to a word count of 100. The books is being released by the UP Writer's Club, and it's been co-edited by Adam David and me. We hope to come out in both digital and print formats. And we hope that the book generates some love, as well as inspires some more writing and some more love in the world.

When we first thought...

Favorite Procrastination Activities I Do Instead of Write

Unlike a lot of more focused and productive people who write (or perhaps like a lot of other people who write), I spend a lot of time procrastinating before actually writing. Sometimes I have good excuses, being sick for example (like I've been since the turn of the year, so Ha! I am excused!), or doing research, or allowing things to gestate in my head (okay, so sometimes that's true and sometimes it's just an excuse). But most of the time, I'm just screwing around and not getting to it...

New Year's Cold

When I was a kid my family took a vacation to the Philippines. I was young at the time and so the memories are unstructured but comprised of visits to Fiesta Carnival (us and cousins and other relatives tumbling out of big vans), excitement at riding a tricycle and pedicab, amazement at drinking soft drinks out of plastic bags, the heady buzz of catching a Shake Rattle N Roll flick, and most importantly for this entry, a sudden interest in fireworks. I couldn't get near fireworks in the...

Should Exposure to and the Capacity to Create Art Lead to Living a Better Life?

This year has been a particularly conflicted one, with amazing high highs and saddening low lows. This is the time of year when people take stock of their years, take stock of their lives. They come up with a year-end report and make projections for what their life will be to come. I am in that kind of frame of mind, but I've found myself wrestling with certain ideas and questions and I guess rather than run over what I think I've been through in the year, I want to sort of think and ramble (...