How to be you po?

How to be u po?

That's one of the comments I often receive whenever I post something on Facebook or sometimes here on my blog. I'm not a celebrity or something. But I believe every blogger, regardless of the number of followers, has certainly experienced the same.

Not that I think our readers and followers worship our curated and seasoned lives on social media. But then, I think it's fun to answer that infamous question once and for all.

How to be me nga ba?  Here are 39 ways:

Seriously, you would never want to be me

To be me, you have to look younger than your age and act younger than you look.

To be me, in this world of gandang-gluta you should be that proud morena who wouldn't mind getting even darker because you will spend most of your days hiking a mountain or swimming at the beach.

To be me, you shouldn't be afraid of spiders, snakes, horror movies, being alone, blood, needle, or 49 missed calls from your mom.

But a sight of frog should scare you enough to leave you pale and rigid.

To be me, you should hoard notebooks and pens and (almost) never use them.

To be me, you should be messy and disorganized in everything except your bookshelf.

And you should read a lot of books too.

To be me requires a lot of neurons because you will be interested with a lot of things like Geography, Astronomy, and Anatomy.

But you should hate Math.

To be me, your wardrobe consists only of shirts, pants, and sneakers. You're no fashionista. Deal with it.

But you can slay a dress when the situation calls for it.

To be me, you have to sneeze and burp loud enough for everyone across the room to hear.

To be me, a boredom-strikes kind of selfie done once a month is not bad and should be enough. Take selfies only when you're on a date with Mother Nature.

To be me, you should have a weird obsession for pandas, penguins, and potatoes.

To be me, you should not like dairy products such as milk and cheese. But you love yogurt and cream cheese just because they are sour.

To be me, you should have an obvious liking for bacon, green salads, nilagang okra with bagoong, tomato ketchups, sashimi, vinegar, and onions.

To be me, you should eat a lot. And never get fat.

To be me, you should love dogs and cats. And you also fancy exotic pets like a tarantula, a bearded dragon, a caracal or a serval - you should own at least one of these.

To be me, you should always be active and play sports.

And be equally lazy to other things.

To be me, you should always be late. Except on those 4:00 am assembly time of planned hikings and other outings.

To be me, you roll your eyes on KPOP, Korean Dramas, Twilight, reality shows, and anything that makes the girls go gaga.

You shouldn't even be watching TV.

To be me, you should be the loser everyone thinks who has not tried Starbucks yet.

And those beautiful Starbucks planners don't excite you because you're too spontaneous, planners simply don't work for you anymore.

To be me means being a huge fan of Harry Potter. You should read all 7 books and watch all 8 movies a thousand times and still not outgrow it.

To be me, you should be able to quote the whole Mean Girls movie or else you can't sit with us.

To be me, you should know how to speak Bisaya, Ilocano, and Ilonggo other than Tagalog and English.

To be me, you should have a green and dirty mind. But you should not have a foul mouth. You do not cuss nor curse others.

To be me, you should do fine with 3-4 hours of sleep daily.

To be me entails a lot of guts. You are a thrill-seeker and you get excited at the sight of a mountain's knife edge or a 50-foot cliff. And you do not hesitate.

To be me, you should have high tolerance for pain and higher tolerance for bullshit. You should not get mad easily and petty annoyances should not bother you.

To be me, you have to be confident. Which means...

You should not give a fuck about what people say especially when it comes to singing. You are tone-deaf but you will sing your heart out when you are given the floor on a videoke night. And you're not afraid to sing Backstreet Boys, Westlife, or any mushy boy band that people deem as corny and uncool.

To be me, you should have the quick wits to rebut any argument, counter offensive punchlines without being offensive, and contradict anything you think is stupid.

To be me, you should not fantasize love stories as seen on movies or those plotted by Nicholas Sparks but you are a hopeless romantic.

To be me, you have to live simply but would love to take on any complicated challenge.

To be me, you should have the same exact DNA as me. And you know that's not going to happen.

And a single blog post cannot cover everything how is it to be me because it's freakin impossible, ridiculous, and no amount of words can describe how wild and crazy I can get.

Simply put, if I have to sum up everything I've written here, it only means to be me is to simply be yourself. Gasgas na ang linyang ito but it holds true all the time.

You are your own kind of beautiful. You are your own quirk. You are you. And there's no other way to put it.