The Blog

It was December of 2011 when I won my first, and at the moment only, Philippine Blog Award. If you ask me for a moment in my life when I felt the happiest, most fulfilled, or even just the most memorable moment, that would be it, for a number of reasons. It was the first award I ever won for anything, and to have it be for something I worked so hard for made it even sweeter. Winning a Philippine Blog Award was once a distant dream for me, and so for it actually come true at a point in my life where I was confused about a lot of things, reassured me that my work has not been in vain, and that I have some semblance of a future in this.

However, my win is memorable also because it made me reconsider why I even blog in the first place. Up until the moment I saw PRN flash on screen and my name called, I blogged mainly to win awards. I also blogged because writing relaxed me, and I can’t write fiction at all. Very selfish reasons, to be honest with you. But you see, when I finally won the award, I realized that I actually accomplished my biggest, most impossible dream, and because of that I had to find new reasons to blog. It made me realize that while awards and recognition bring me to bigger audiences, it's not really something I can make into a long-term goal. My win made me realize that I have to think in terms of the future if I'm really planning to do this for a lifetime.

I now run Pop Reviews Now around two main goals, goals which are not only near to me, but which have shaped me as a blogger, writer, and as a person. As I write this now in early 2012, with four years worth of experience behind me, these goals are far from being accomplished. However, it’s because of these goals that I continue to write. I have a passion for writing, and I want to show people just how far that passion can take me.

Before anything else, I think it’s important that I tell you a few important facts about myself, which have greatly affected the two points I’m about to talk about. First, my parents are both professors of art studies/humanities at the University of the Philippines, the country’s premiere university, a university that puts liberal thinking and informed, intelligent actions above all. As a child I was exposed to more art than a lot of other people, and that gave me a wider perspective, as well as a more “modern” way of looking at art. Second, I also grew up witnessing music being made, and eventually had a hand in music history. As much as I was on the receptive side, I have also seen both the popular and “formal” industries as a practitioner -- unlike other writers, I know exactly what goes on behind-the-scenes. Third, I cling to writing during my darkest times, and it was one of those dark moments that led me to take writing seriously. Fourth, I’m seventeen years old as a write this, I turn eighteen in September of 2012, and I started seriously writing when I was thirteen. And finally, I am an award-winning blogger, and I have worked for a total of three major news outlets in the last three years.

My first goal is incredibly ambitious -- I want to change the way lay people think about popular music, and popular art in general. I’m currently a student at the University of the Philippines, and as I said earlier my university puts a lot of weight on liberal thinking. Even so, I realize that not everyone had the type of art education and exposure that I had as a child, and even up to now. In the course of my first year at university, I have met countless people with very narrow perceptions of art, and people who still don’t see advertisements or pop music as legitimate art, and some who even separate literature and music from “art”. And I’m sure there are so many more people like that. I want to show those people, I want to show everyone, that popular art can, and should, be taken seriously. That pop music has the ability to spark critical conversations, and that it takes a certain degree of intellect to fully understand it.

How do I do it? By thinking critically myself. By writing on Pop Reviews Now. By speaking intelligently to my readers, and by not underestimating their intelligence. My readers are not stupid, regardless if they’re eight or eighty, and they deserve to be treated as such. However, as a formally-trained journalist I also understand that complicated musical jargon and concepts are not common vocabulary to many -- if I want people to think, I have to make them understand first.

As both a writer and a literature student, I do not subscribe to the idea that using complicated words automatically shows a higher degree of intellect. In an age where word processors have built-in thesauruses, it’s extremely easy to just substitute simple words without actually thinking of the context, or the article’s readership. In my opinion, a wide vocabulary should not be used to show off, instead it should serve as a way to better comprehend, and even simplify, words.

Because of this, I also simplify a lot of my thoughts in such a way that while the words are simple, they are still strung together in a meaningful and critical way. I like to think that I write with brevity, and that I pay attention not only to what I write, but how I write it.

Unfortunately, this is not something I can achieve on my own. However I believe that by continuing to write, and by reaching wider audiences as time passes, that audience will start thinking critically as well, and influence even more people. It’s a chain, and it’s a chain I want to be at the forefront of.

My second goal is one that is even closer to me than the first, because it has to do not with my intellect or variable factors, but with my age. As I mentioned a while ago, I started writing seriously when I was thirteen -- when I put up Pop Reviews Now in 2008. Pop Reviews Now made, and continues to make, up majority of my teenage life, a point in time I will never be able to repeat. Believe me, it was hard enough to put up a blog, but it was even harder to keep it alive for four years. For the longest time, and even up until this very moment, people look down on me because of my age, because I’m “just a kid”.

Just because I’m young, people assume that I don’t have the ability to think critically and articulate those thoughts into words. That narrow-mindedness has sent me over the edge so many times, so much that I cannot count how many times I’ve cried over stinging comments about my age and “immaturity”. I don’t say this much in an attempt to put a brave face on, but it hurts. It hurts so much more than a lot of people imagine. Why? Because here I am, trying to do something with my life, trying to make something of myself, and people immediately dismiss me because of my age. Would you rather I do drugs or become an alcoholic or a delinquent student? Why is it that when a thirteen year-old can solve calculus problems at the blink of an eye, that’s considered pure genius, but when another thirteen year-old knows how to analyze popular music, that’s immediately shot down with no consideration as to the quality of the work?

The main driving force of my writing is my need to prove those people wrong. I want to prove everyone who ever dismissed me based solely on my age that I’m capable of doing something on my own. I want to encourage young writers to try, to develop and show off their passions, that age doesn’t have to be hindrance. I want to not just tell, but show, them that it’s not wrong to have a passion for arts, and that as long as the initiative comes from you, the younger you start the more you can do. If I did this throughout my teenage years, all while dealing with high school and living in a developing country, then you have an even bigger chance of succeeding.

I may be biting off more than I can chew, but then again that’s what people told me when I started Pop Reviews Now.

Originally written in March of 2012