"Something Just Like This..."

Was getting a bit detached from my dissertation for sometime.  

I had to be with family end of April to mid-May.

A very dear aunt died.  So I decided to  spend quality Zoom time hosting novenas and rosary prayer sessions for my relatives. Weird act from a very Protestant me.  But it was really a good time to catch up with my cousins.

We ended up unloading stories, making chismis. It was like 4 nights of life disclosures within the 9 day novena until the actual Zoom memorial.  We cried lots.

Losing Tita Ely is pretty close. The first death that actually hit me was Jerico's. Christened him as the He-Devil to go with my She-Devil Associate In Arts student. We spent good times at the UPOU community site, offline included. 

Anyways, just a weird thing happened.

I was daydreaming about my auto-ethnography to fill in more discussion points. I was reading more about teacher/ academic identities, and identities of Academic Language and Learning Advisors-- such creatures and possible ways to dig into their epistemic and pedagogical beliefs. I came across an article on the use of metaphors  in narrative inquiry discourses and sensemaking.

So I was trying to reconcile whether I should still maintain using superhero metaphors and actually wondered where the superhero metaphor started.  It was like a weird idea back then to engage my new found colleagues at UPOU to see whether how game they could possibly be. I set up my Scratch Pepper at UPOU Google Sites. I was testing content in tables and I sort of imagined each of them in their future selves at UPOU. I entitled it as

"Lay your Claim". Funny that some of them took a bite :) So yeah, I think I secretly knew that I can grow old with them. But to grow old with them also meant I should be someone they can live with or even deserve to grow old with.

Fastforward, I was now getting ready to let go of the superhero metaphor and use their real names in my autoethnog cuz Im sure they would not mind.

Then came the feedback of internal reader, Dr Karen Spence. And OMGOD, I use a GOD to emphasize that she must be God-sent= a surprise superhero. Gahhd, the 'labor' on my work was obvious. Is she an alien or what?!?
Her pencilmarks, checks and corrections brought me back to my chapters -- and this time, I'm looking at my work and my life from a different light. Yes, it has been my labor of pain and joy, for three straight years. Had to cut ties because of this thing called PhD. And yes it had a way of changing me. 

So I managed to quickly get into this zone of proximal submission with that last major fix-ins & add-ons on my chapters. Why not pick a Coldplay while I'm in this zone-- first time to really get into the tune and lyrics of "Something just like this". May I drown in the beat, it kept me going. Lovely lyrics.  Was trying to relate with the superhero lines. Yeah, it seems like a good match while working on my chapters page by page.

Close to 6pm, I was overcome with emotion --  I guess this feeling that I'm close to submission and that up to the last minute, you get the help you need from this person. I searched her at the USQ website. There she was. She's this mysterious lady whose name I obviously forgot but whose face really stuck to my memory.  My first time to see her felt like the time I first met Kat at the UPOU Facrum.  They both were the quiet and reserved type. She reminded me so much of her...a dear colleague who is no longer with UPOU. It got me thinking also of Jerico, RIP., who is  no longer 'here'.  Like if he were alive today, I know I can count on him too for this thing called PhD.

Going back to OMGOD, I've wanted to make conversation with her but I just felt she wanted to spend her lunchbreak in silence.  Well I guess the conversation took a different form --  Her writing on my work= the quality time she spent reading my work AND my brain was more than what I asked for.  And I can only feel gratitude all over again.

God takes away key persons in our lives because He has other plans for them. 

Or that there are people we have to leave cuz yeah, we were meant grow, take root and outgrow.

God had plans for Kat to be in another university.  Then Jerico and my Tita Ely -- they just had to go.

I've lost some people, too as I just had to move on from one workplace to the next.

That's me outgrowing causes and with that I've lost people too.

Maybe because God has other plans for me too.

And God has this way of giving them back to me, in a different form and at times I least expect.

He filled me up with a Catherine, a Lolita, an Anna, a Barbara, a Sofia, a Karen, a Petrea, a Linda, 

a Nicky, an Earl... a Bruce Wayne to Bane (HBD btw)

In the spirit of Coldplay's  "Something just like this..."

"...Achilles...Hercules...Spiderman...Batman...Superman...
Where do you wanna go, how much you wanna risk

Am not looking for somebody with some superhuman gift

Some superhero, some fairy tale bliss

Just something I can turn to, somebody I can miss...Something just like this

doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo..."