I left my house at past 9 am and reached Ortigas 11:40 am (a few stops along SLEX for gas and RFID loading). It wasn’t bad considering it’s Monday. However, it was a different story when it started to rain. I told myself earlier today that I needed to leave at 4 pm before it starts raining—how wrong I was. I left a little past 5 pm because I needed to file a story from the presscon.

I was scared of driving through floods because my sister’s Toyota Vios I was driving today had very low clearance. You see, driving a sedan in Metro Manila is not wise especially during rainy season because the megalopolis is forever flooding. Metro Manila has a lot of estuaries (esteros), especially the city of Manila, to drain floodwater into Pasig River, Marikina River, and Laguna de Bay, but urbanization and lack of proper zoning left these canals buried under cement or shanties.

So no, Metro Manila, I don’t miss your streets.

Before the presscon, an ex-colleague (former journo who crossed into PR) told me today is his last day as media relations manager of this company I covered today. He said his third bout of Covid has wreaked havoc to his health. He lost 10 kg in one month (his last covid was in June). It made his air passages narrower, nodules were found in his lungs, and now his heart valves are leaking. His doctors couldn’t say when did he acquire these complications (second or third bout of Covid) but what is clear is he is no longer healthy. He couldn’t breathe properly anymore. A cardiologist asked him how old is his son. He said 12. This doctor told him, “don’t let it be that his last memory of you was when he was 12 years old.”

The following day he filed for his resignation. He said, you can always earn money but you only have one life. Everything else becomes trivial when life is already at stake. He is doing this for his son. He said he can take consultancies but 9-6 jobs are no longer working for him.

I felt sad for him. We’re of the same age. Although it’s not really a death sentence, but his state of health really puts things into perspective, of what’s important in life.

There are times when I doubted myself, whether this move back to the province is wise. But hearing this ex-colleague talk like this reinforces my initial belief that I made the right decision. Life is too short to spend it inside the car, stuck in traffic. Life is too short to be stressed all the time because city life is just full of congestion, pollution, and it robs you of precious time for family and leisure. Life is too short to be staring at the concrete jungle all the time.

At 40-plus years old, do we still have anything to prove? I don’t think we need to prove anything anymore. We should be reassessing our lives, where we’re headed, and if have we spent meaningful moments with the little time we have left. We’re lucky if we push past 59 years old. My father died at 57 years old. He had so many regrets. He was not a happy man and he was far from healthy.

I don’t want to be like that.

I think this is the happiest and most content I had been since—since before I turned 18. I didn’t have to prove anything anymore. I don’t have to be that driven and no longer need to be workaholic so I can be where I am today. I think I had stopped attaching my identity to my profession—and this is just a recent thing. Before, I thought I would lose my essence if I stopped being a journalist. My work was me and it ate me alive. When I stopped working after I gave birth to my girls, I lost my sense of self.

But I was willing to let that go for the sake of my children. I looked for jobs that allowed me to have fixed work hours and not be all over the place so I can be with my babies before dinner. I applied for a faculty position here in my hometown (they didn’t have vacancies at that time). However, it wasn’t meant to be because journalism always found me.

Twice.

The second time was in 2014 when I had a hard time keeping nannies because after a year they always quit to get married or they got pregnant. I had no one to take care of my toddlers (aged 3 years old). I was about to quit journalism again and I was at the last stages of my pre-employment assessment when it suddenly fell apart. Journalism came knocking on my door again.

I didn’t join the leadership program of my company because I don’t have any desire anymore to move up. The training requires me to be in London, New York, and HK. I no longer have the bandwidth to do that. I just want to do what I love and not be stressed by being a manager—be it handling 50 people or thousands of people.

I just received an email tonight about an upcoming training in HK in Sept for public speaking (part of the ambassadors program that I just found myself to be a part of). The trainor is a theater actor. That’s my cup of tea 🍵 that’s why I need to book my hotel and flight tomorrow.

Just do the things I enjoy or love.