Realizations and New Frontiers

Ok, that's just one cheesy title. Only because I can't think of a better one right now.

Realizations...

Two weeks ago, I joined (for the first time in my entire life, as far as I can recall) our local Parish Youth Ministry recollection. (For those who don't know what a recollection is, think: talks, sessions, meditation, processing, etc.) Well, of course it didn't turn out to be the kind of recollection that I was used to, but it was both fun and meaningful. I'm actually looking forward to the next recollection. But probably next time, I'm gonna bring some heavy gear, like the ones American football players wear.

Anyway, one of the sessions involved some visualization and imagination (and some soothing, though unrelated, music). You're on a ship with your family, on your way to a dream vacation when, suddenly, everyone panics as the ship begins to sink. In all the confusion, only one slot was left for on the last lifeboat. Your family chose you to be the one to survive. You were given a few last minutes to say farewell to your family. You remember the times you shared, the good and the bad. You recalled how you sometimes fought and disagreed with each other. And yet, despite and in spite of it all, they chose you. They have decided to give you the gift to live on, to do what you still could and wanted to do, to carry on their name and their memories in your heart.

This was probably the most significant part of that day for me, regardless of the fact that the focus of the entire day was really on team-building. It was, in a way, a sort of a personal wake up call (again). The biggest question that ran in my mind that time was, "Why wait for such a tragedy to happen before I realize how special people are and how important the time I have really is?" I guess I've spent more time planning and "visualizing" what I want, and never really got down to doing the things I planned for. Planning is good, but it's not everything. I guess I should take up that motto again: Do it NOW!

New Frontiers

Someone (I'm not saying who, as I doubt that he'd want that) was kind enough to share with me some web hosting space and to give me a domain name, for a whole year, for free! And this is from someone who I've only met online (IRC) and have been with for just 3 months. So now, jucato.org, while still a bit empty, is available.

This means, though, that I'm dropping some of the online services I've subscribed to. I've definitely decided to drop Multiply.com, even before I got the free web hosting. I realized that it was hard maintaining and customizing 3 separate sites (Friendster, Blogger, and Multiply) and decided to just focus on Blogger and Friendster, with Blogger being my primary blog. But now, I'm not sure whether I'm going to keep even Blogger. I already have WordPress installed, and that gives me (almost) absolute blogging freedom, with everything that WordPress has to offer. Although, I haven't seen any "limitation" to what Blogger offers that I didn't like so far (except for the abscence of WordPress-like static Pages). This makes the decision a bit more difficult, again...

Anyway, this setup is certain for only a year. After that, everything depends on whehter my friend will renew his subscription, or whether I will look for a webhost of my own. Who knows? Maybe I'll host my own stuff, on my own home server, in the future.