i feel the need to explain my choice of blog title, so here goes.
i picked "i am jose claudio" because that's who i am. i have two first names, jose and claudio. jose is my grandfather's (mommy's dad) name. claudio is my father's name. my parents originally wanted to name me after my two grandfathers, but my other grandfather's name was rizal, and if they kept to the original plan, i'd end up having the same name as our national hero. so my parents scrapped plan a and picked plan b, jose claudio. (several years ago, i found out there was a plan c. mommy wanted to name me jewel. oh to go back in time and cast my vote.)
jose claudio appears in all of my official papers: my birth certificate, identification cards, my passport, credit card, payslip, and byline. and it is this last item that has to do with this blog. whenever i publish anything, i use my full name, jose claudio b. guerrero. this causes problems because only a handful of people know me by that name. for most everyone, i am butch guerrero... or a version of butch. for some reason people refuse to accept my monosyllabic self. (i am always expanded to butchie or bootchick or butchiki or booboo or butchelles. when i was fresh out of college, dr. consolacion alaras christened me butchibutch, and to this day my friends from the philippine centennial commission call me by that name. )
since i very rarely publish, this non-recognition hasn't been much of a problem. but now that i've decided to take this 'i am a writer' thing more seriously, people will have to learn to connect me to jose claudio. so the next time you come across a jose claudio b. guerrero byline, do me a kindness and connect it to butch guerrero.
and come september 1, when the don carlos palanca memorial awards for literature is given out and they announce jose claudio b. guerrero, believe that it's me who won the first prize in the essay in english category. i am jose claudio. (wahaha! forgive me if i sound like i'm bragging. hmn... maybe i am. haha. but hey, i think i've earned it. it took me years to muster enough courage to join the contest. and it also took me years to revise that essay.)
this will do for now.
