life – Anachronistic Dreamer

Untitled, 2024

Just like a broken record… It’s been a long time… yet again.

I have multiple life updates at the back of my head but I don’t quite know how to begin this entry.

And yet some things don’t change. Writing at goddamned unfriendly hours for one. But oddly inspired.

My creativity is a stuck cog in the wheel as I’ve been trapped in the cage of technical writing for quite some time now which is why I’m having trouble getting the words out.

I want to force the words out but my mind feels dead. And wasted. Because it’s goddamned 1AM.

But I can’t sleep. So I got up to study but I found myself here instead. Yes I’m back at school. Back at work. THAT work. Long story, some other time.

I’ve been listening to Taylor Swift as TTPD just came out a few days ago. Very much inspired. It regurgitated my desire to write from the deep bowels of… whatever it is. I’m turning 36 in a few weeks and I’m still questioning life choices. It doesn’t really end does it? The questioning…

It’s just white noise.

[In Quarantine] A Life Update

I left my job by the end of last year. I figured, I should post about this for closure given my previous In Quarantine posts about being on leave. Initially, I was hush hush about it on my socials because I wasn’t comfortable talking about it to… people. Well, the common reaction I got was shock. Like, why would you ever leave a permanent high-level position? In government? In the middle of a pandemic? It’s unthinkable!

For one thing, it wasn’t sudden. It was actually something I’ve decided upon the end of my 20s (almost) 3 years ago. I had one of those lightbulb moments after going through the clichéic quarter-life crisis. I realized, I had something I wanted to do, not just something I felt I had to. That my position and the direction my career was heading into were no longer in line with my passions. But I didn’t know how to suddenly switch over so I decided to prepare for it slowly while in the meantime, work was still hectic. Fast forward 2 years later, pandemic happened, all hell broke loose, and I was spiraling downwards.

Moving on, the pandemic got me thinking about my priorities which led me to finally take that end-of-my-20s-decision seriously. Also, since my workplace was in a hospital (but I’m not a frontliner), I didn’t want to continue physically reporting when work-from-home was no longer an option, while I’m living with senior citizen parents. I was losing my mind trying to juggle everything that I felt the healthiest thing for me to do was to give up something, and that was my job.

By the way, that end-of-my-20s-decision isn’t anything grand. It may seem like I’m building it up into something amazing when actually it’s really not that big of a… thing. I just don’t want to announce it so often so as not to jinx it.

Anyway, yesterday, the Mother asked me “Nagsisisi ka ba na umalis ka?”. Thinking about it, I’ve been with that job for 8 years! There were definitely fun times. I made life-long friendships, learned a lot, and literally grew up in it. And honestly, this job isn’t totally unrelated to that end-of-my-20s-decision-which-must-not-be-named thing.

But it’s funny going from a corporate uniform and being called Ma’am by juniors to an oversized t-shirt and shorts, being called Beh by my sukis in the neighborhood talipapa. My call log, previously from clients and superiors now replaced by calls from Shopee deliverymen. And as I was reading a previous post where I said I was nowhere near okay at the time, I realized that not just being okay, I’m actually happy now (and calm!). It’s not a perfect happiness and I don’t know about the future but… I’m happy. And I don’t regret anything.

Isn’t that how life should be? Not living to work, but working to live.

[In Quarantine] What I Learned Last August & September

I know I’ve mentioned previously about wanting to post more regularly but August was too cruel and I was unable to update. I realized though that my mental faculties are becoming dull and I had to use my brain.

I was sick the whole of August until September 1st week. What started as allergies turned into an entire digestive system flare-up. I don’t know what exactly triggered the first symptoms but it was like a series of dominoes crashing down from then. There was pain, some blood, and excessive belching which turned out to be GERD (I thought I was just gassy) that just wouldn’t go away for days. Later on, the acid lacerated my throat and I couldn’t eat properly for almost a week.

Initially, I tried to deal with it through the typical Filipino way of enduring. At the end of the second week, I finally messaged an SOS to my brother to hook me up with his doctor friends because it got to a point where I kept waking up every 2 hours for consecutive nights.

[In Quarantine] D-136 Update

Reached peak brain fog this weekend amidst allergies and taking supposedly anti-drowse meds. A moment of clarity came when my computer chair broke and I fell backwards short of banging my head hard on the floor. No injuries but it did cause a bit of paranoia that I would suddenly pass out and… you know. Anyway, I slept fine that night and woke up after dreaming about mass spectrometers, laboratory experiments, and politicians.

Continue reading “[In Quarantine] D-136 Update”

[In Quarantine] #bekind – Part 2

If I were to be asked about a near-death experience, there’s this one memory that easily comes to mind. It was a few years back when we were on a trip to Siquijor (a stunning place by the way) and we were at this waterfalls. It was not a very tall waterfalls and has quite a unique structure as the water from the main falls was cascading onto these rocky steps, very much like a big, wide, and deep ladder, creating a series of mini-waterfalls downwards.

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[In Quarantine] How Am I? – Part 1

It’s 2:47 am right now which is also the time when I started writing this post. It’s the 3rd night in a row, I think, that I’ve had a bit of trouble getting to sleep. Counting sheep wasn’t effective anymore. I have my lights turned off and the only sounds I could hear are the dripping of water, the whirring from the electric fan, and the blasted alarm notifications from this tablet which I had to immediately cover the speakers of and set to vibrate to prevent every body else from waking up. The typhoon has passed I guess, for it was quite peaceful outside.

This post was just written on a whim. So like most whims, I may or may not make sense. And I may or may not finish it. My main objective was really to tire out my brain for me to be able to sleep.

Continue reading “[In Quarantine] How Am I? – Part 1”

My Honest Thoughts: Why I Decided to Blog Again

Sadness never really goes away rather, it burrows deeper. You get lonely easily but it’s not like you want company. You cherish the rare moments of joy. Memories your treasure; time your enemy.

I was sifting through the mess of my files when I chanced upon the above paragraph which was something I’ve written God knows when. I was being pensive about getting older and I reckon, I must have been real sad though I could no longer remember the why or if anything happened in particular. What I do know was that they were (and still are) my sincere and honest thoughts.

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stranded lo b(att)

This entry will or may never see the light of day.

It was a Thank God It’s Friday mood and we didn’t feel like going to our usual coffee place after work. I remembered what my friends said and social media posts about how this movie, Sakaling Hindi Makarating, was a must watch so when my officemate asked me if there were any good movies to watch I said taralets watch Sakaling Hindi Makarating.

Wait this post is NOT about the movie (the movie WAS okay by the way). It is about what happened to me after. Right now, I’m alone inside a branch of my usual coffee place near the mall where we watched the movie. When my friend and I separated, I thought it was still quite early (a few minutes past 9 pm) for me to book an Uber home so I stopped by FullyBooked and bought blink by Malcolm Gladwell and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami.

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an epiphany

Today, I had an epiphany.

I realized a problem at work I have not seen before and was wondering what I could do to solve it. The solutions I’ve been thinking were methods I’ve tested before and they weren’t really as effective as I wanted them to be.

And then it hit me (while I was in the washroom staring at my face, having an internal monologue).

Why not CHANGE the way I do those methods. I’ve been following the procedures AS taught to me. Why not start something new and see if it will solve the problem.

And then it got me thinking.

All my life, I’ve been following a set pattern and I’ve avoided straying from it thus far. But maybe the problem therein lies from my “not straying from it” and instead what I need to do is CHANGE the way I perceive things and believe that straying from the “sure path” could be the very solution I’m looking for.

Like my work problem, it could improve things OR make it worse. But I definitely won’t know unless I try.

Too busy looking “inside”, we fail to realize the answer might have been “outside of the box” all along.