who says workaholics can’t have fun? yesterday for our team event, we went to horseshoe bay and rented out four powerboats. we cruised along howe sound and some people jumped ship to swim. i volunteered to steer the boat so i could feel the wind against my cheeks. i wish there were more activities like this that takes me out of my cube on work hours.

after the almost 2 hour boat ride, we had picnic – potluck at the nearby park and played ultimate frisbee and boche. i wish it will just stay sunny like this forever. then i wouldn’t have to fly away to distant shores looking for warmth. but well, we can’t have everything. i’m just thankful for one beautiful day at a time, and for the good people i meet everyday.

when i got back to the office, i noticed my support phone was gone. great, i thought, just when i got a voicemail about some qa defect. well, there’s only one place it could be, probably at the floor of the van i carpooled with on the way back. no worries, i’ll get it tomorrow. no support for tonight, yay!

snippet from a conversation at the office today:

*wm = workmate

wm: “are you completely bored with your life right now?”
me: “no not really, i’m happily enjoying my life right now”
wm: “well we don’t want too much of that, i’ll give you something interesting next week”
me: “ok”

well, so i guess it’s not really interesting to have too much of happily enjoying life ^^ hehe. let’s see how interesting next week would be.

found a new place just five houses away from the old one. my room has a window that has a great view of the building where i work. reminds me everyday why i’m in this city. that’s my only purpose here after all, to do my job, and nothing more. sometimes it gets dull and monotonous or too much and too stressful, i just remind myself that i chose this and i’m just reaping the consequences of my own decision. no time for regrets, just carry on and wait for the next daybreak.

getting back up to speed after a holiday is usually the toughest part but it gets easier everyday. especially when there’s people who make it more bearable. just keep things in perspective i guess, i don’t want to be too involved anymore. i can’t believe i actually lost weekends of my life for a project that will never see the light of day, now i just want to be detached. never give your heart away to work, work will never love you back, it will still be there tomorrow, uncaring, unfeeling, insensitive and totally not what i should be wasting my life on.

i should go explore the vancouver sun, after all, this is the middle of summer.

there are only 24 hours in one day. too few for all the things i want to do.

let’s say an average person sleeps 8 hours a day, and works 8 hours a day, that leaves him only 8 hours to actually do something interesting with his life. ok how about subtract an hour for travelling to and from places you have to go, another hour in total for all the meals you have to take, and give or take another hour to groom yourself. that’s only 5 hours left to change the world or appreciate the snow falling on window sills, or marvel at the cherry blossoms. its all about one of those abstract concepts – “money” that will allow me to “buy” stuff that will make me “happy”. too many unfathomable words in one sentence, it’s giving me a headache. is sleep necessary? well maybe, it gives me energy to wake up the next day and do more work, which will give me money, which will help me buy stuff, which will make me happy. now how about the shuffling from one place to the next, the eating, the grooming, yes they are equally “important” – now even that word lost its meaning for me, well we do need to spend time giving our body nutrients and to keep ourselves presentable and yes getting from wherever “home” is to work and back (most important thing) does require time too.

so what happens if we have to do more work? i cant sacrifice my 5 hours of bliss, something has to give – sleep would be it, what’s the use of sleeping 8 hours a day? that’s like sleeping a third of your life, a big chunk which you could have contributed to something more worthwhile, and so these days i sleep at most 5 hours a day – i would be lucky to get 40 hours of sleep in a week, i dont want to miss anything this life has to offer. these are the best years of my life, when i can actually walk and run and jump without any aches in my back or shortness in my breath, when i can just fly from one place to the next at the speed of thought, when i could actually do more and be more, now why would i choose to spin in place whenever i have those “free” time for myself?

life is too short, i need to rearrange my perspective if i want to have meaning and relevance. i dont want to be like those people who suddenly wake up and find out that their whole life just flashed before their eyes. work is not equal to life. and so i am so looking forward to going home, and bumming around on an island with no internet, no computers, no iphones, i wonder how long i will last.

today i found out that i needed a dental xray to see how my wisdom tooth is growing, it was hurting so much that half my face was numb and i woke up with a fever. i couldnt sleep nor eat, let alone get up and do anything. i was wasted. funny how one small tooth could render a fully grown human being totally useless. i resolved not to take any ibuprofen, none of that sissy stuff eh? pain, after all, is not the worst thing in the world. (so what is?) feeling something, anything at all, only means you’re still alive, and being alive means having hope, hope that the next day will be better than the last.

i’m still a month away from going home, a visit to my dentist is imminent to finally put an end to this misery. extraction would probably hurt tenfold but at least that’s temporary. nothing lasts forever anyway, not even pain.

for the past 16 months, i’ve been around airports more than 40 times, that’s almost once every 10 days on the average. airports are where emotions are so real. you see people launghing, teary eyed, hugging each other, kissing, whispering nothings, mumbling promises, holding on for dear life.

on one side there are those patiently waiting, holding flowers, looking up expectantly at each passenger walking out, wishing the next one would be the one they’ve been dying to see – and finally when they do come out, their faces would break out into smiles, all sorrow forgotten, as if no time or distance was ever lost between them.

airports are places where people come and go and never really stay. exactly how i feel about my life right now, just like how i felt 2 years ago in Makati, when my friends just took their leave and went on to lead different lives. i feel that i’m this relic, this institution where people just go to learn something from, and then when they’re done with filling their jars with knowledge, they just leave and go on their ways.

i’ve been to dozens of airports for the past few months, rushing from one city to the next, met new people and left them without cutting a piece of my soul. it feels better to be the one coming and going into other people’s lives for once, to not be the one left stuck in the same old hole, waiting for something new to happen, only to realize later that the “something new” will not really be there constantly, or else it would turn into “something old”.

last week i was at the airport, trying to turn the old into new, giving this thing another chance. every inch of my body wants to just fly away and be done with it but i want to try something different, something out of character. i want to challenge myself, see how the cookie crumbles.

just be nice, it’s not that hard.

today i resolve to be someone better. i’ve been spreading myself too thin in so many aspects of my life right now that i end up way below mediocre. this isn’t even anywhere near who i ever was in my past lives. it’s time to start being more squiggly.

last friday we had this workshop where we were made to choose which shape we liked best among the following:
it was obvious, i picked that one that looked like a strand of hair, because it was interesting and out of the ordinary. this may very well generalize the characteristics of all my other choices, or my affinity to unusually weird things. hmmm what does that say about me? the paper described me as spontaneous and fearful of boredom. how very apt. but it also meant that i’m disorganized, easily distracted, and frequently careless about deadlines. not ideal characteristics of a good employee.

but of course, every realization of a flaw brings with it the power to make the most out of the situation or turn it around into something constructive. and that’s what i’m doing right now. i’m being creative. i can’t make something work, so there’s no use cracking my head open and picking out my brains, i would much rather go and do something else which has more probability of success. it’s always tough to see the silver lining at times, but all it really takes is planting my own garden rather than waiting for someone to come and give me flowers.

i had a point to make when i started writing this crap, but somewhere along the way i lost it, it doesn’t matter though. life is, that’s all it needs to be. why complicate things. we all do our best, and it has to be good enough. if it isn’t good enough, it has to do.

these are the thoughts that clutter my head when it’s midnight and i’m home alone. gotta keep the ghosts away by staying up. =)