Stress level hit the roof before I signed off from work tonight. I received an email from HR regarding the contracts of my reporters and damn, here we go again…

I emailed my managers and asked them, why are we back here? If this keeps on cropping up, I will lose people. I also would be put in a precarious position and if push comes to shove, a competitor will love to have me and this company will just eat my dust.

Thank God for cats. They help me get rid of stress, albeit temporarily. They lower my blood pressure.

I don’t know how people can last long in this job. I remember an erstwhile bureau chief quit and asked to be demoted because she said she could not keep up. She just had a baby and there was no way she could balance being a mom, wife, and bureau chief. The only two good things about my situation is that I can work from home and I don’t have a partner. The rest are crap—in the sense that I manage the second largest if not the largest of newsroom in APAC just by the number of reporters I have. Moreover, I must be on top of the situation in 11 markets—five of them are very active whereas the others have only one or two markets (Aus and NZ) that they cover. I must monitor 11 laws/rules and regulations, 11 political situations with their own idiosyncrasies and only two markets use English as an official language—the rest are incomprehensible. AND YET I could not travel freely to these markets; I have yet to test the waters and push the envelope.

This day is just…😤

Meanwhile, a little victory due to our pushback against this Bible-thumping liar, history revisionist, and overall bitch apologist of the Marcoses.

And here are the feedback of some sellers. A friend who has a store on Shopee says this is all true. She lost customers. If there would be orders, it would be for an PHP80-item, hardly a thing that would move the needle. All the big spenders are gone. Nothing happened during 10-10 sale. She says she’s stuck with a high inventory and she couldn’t open a TikTok store or an IG store because that requires regular content. She has no room in her life for content since she’s taking care of her baby. She said this is not a matter of life and death for her since she’s just doing this as a “passive” income (her definition) since her active source of income is her online job. This boycott really hurts the sellers who are relying on Shopee for their main source of income.

Another stress-reliever of mine is planning my house.

I probably have my dimensions wrong again since I’m not working on grid paper. But this is the latest layout that my contractor and I have agreen on. Just this morning, we reduced the width of the girls’ bedroom. I’m not entirely sure if I got the girls’ doorway right because I just based this on my conversation and gesticulation of my contractor i.e. there would be a corner there for their door and for my closet. But I couldn’t understand how my closet would not block their doorway. I must have misunderstood something. Anyway, I would be able to see once the partitions are up next week.

My girls prefer to have this shelving unit in their room instead of a full-blown closet because they want shelves and more shelves for stuff and books, not clothes. I have already bought them drawers for their clothes.

On Friday I will pick up in Paranaque the Rockwool insulation/soundproofing for some dry wall partition to deliver to my construction site. That was an extra expense (around 22k) but I want this done well. If I can have granite kitchen countertops, why not have a soundproof partition wall?

This is how my future home looks like viewed from space…

Yup, that entire forest at the back is my view. I will clear some of that in the near future when I’m ready to have my vegetable beds. That red encircled part of the red duplex is mine—at least the second floor part. On the extreme left in the yellow circle is the garage but that would be extended to be a communal garage to accommodate two SUVs and a sedan.

Let’s see on Friday if the house is already taking shape.