Be a Mad Hatter to Survive!

There is a place. Like no place on Earth. A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger! Some say to survive it: You need to be as mad as a hatter. - Mad Hatter

Blogging is not a stranger to me, but it was never really a friend. I’ve tried to do it but, more often than not, it turns into a public diary then, eventually, ends up as a dump for hormonal frustrations. I’m not sure if this one will be different but I intend to try. 

I’ve read a blogging guide somewhere that says: to have a good blog, I must have a specific topic. It should be a “blog about something” not a “blog about me.” I have a lot of interests but only a few that I can be articulate about. 

Travel is definitely not one of them. 

I find that describing a landscape Tolkien-style very hard—if not impossible—even though I have been writing for a living. I tend to use cliché words like beautiful, scenic, serene, and the likes.

But this year started with me traveling to one of the best places in the Philippines. This is followed by a couple more beach adventures and finally a family vacation in Beijing, China. My friends are encouraging me to create a blog for all my adventures and my photos can help me if I run out of cliché words.

So I thought, why not? I have also created a photography blog which ultimately failed. Why not just dump some of my photos into entries about the place where I took them?

Hence, this blog.

Another interest of mine is writing—a given since I am a graduate of Creative Writing.

For our undergrad thesis, I wrote a 70+ page novella set in a fantasy world called Asandia. The story is crappy; the fantasy world crappier. Ever since I started writing ideas for this novella, I have been haunted by my inability to create a believable and consistent image of my world. Until now, I buy books about pre-colonial Philippines, fantasy how-to’s, and mythologies that will help me fill my world with different cultures.

Recently, I’ve been obsessing over my world building again. This is brought about by my boredness at work and the after-effects of finishing Dragon Age: Origins for the nth time. 

Once, I also created a world building blog and you also know how that ended. This time, however, an epic e-book will be helping me build the foundations of Etharion (yes, I renamed it).

I also plan to take pictures of sceneries, places, and—if I’m brave enough—people that will populate my world. 

Hence, this blog.

I wonder what this blog will be like. From what I said above, this will look like Alice’s journal from her travels to Wonderland—a mixture of reality and fantasy. 

But that is how I am. 

Mixing real life with make-belief; always looking at the clouds for a chance to get a peek at the world behind them; always wondering if I’ll end up in a different dimension if I go through an alley; always dressing up comfortably in case of a zombie apocalypse.