My girls and I drove around the campus last night, the first time in years. Well, they said this former gym of ours is very haunted and my father said the Japanese soldiers during WW2 used this area as their HQ and the entire Baker Field as POW concentration camp. Some people claim that they heard marching of soldiers coming from inside the hall in the dead of the night or saw shadows from the balcony above. Shining piercing eyes looking out from the huge windows. Thankfully, I haven’t nor I want to see/hear/experience such things. Before the Copeland Gym was constructed, this was where we played badminton, volleyball, table tennis, basketball, etc and we had the shower rooms here. As a former football varsity player, I was almost a resident here, playing for the university since high school.

Today, Twin I asked how I did my notes when I was still studying—basically, how to take down notes for studying. So I unearthed my notebooks from my boxes of memories to show them that I was a diligent note-taker during my student days, a skill that is very useful in my job up to this day.

Even I am surprised to see that my notes were really neat back then. It’s just people who borrowed my notes were confused that these were chronologically arranged and not divided according to course 😂😂😂😂😂. So if they photocopied this, they would inadvertently copied my Chemistry notes or Microbio notes for that particular day.

However, I doubt if I was able to encourage my kids to be good with their note-taking because they keep on saying their handwriting is terrible. So I had to show them all my journals that I wrote and kept since 1990 (when I was their age now) so they can see I also had ugly handwriting when I was much younger.

Twin I tried to read one entry from high school, which was just an account of what happened that day, which is similar to what I’m doing right now—only that this is more high-tech. 😂 Keeping and writing on my journals everyday since I was 10-11 years old led me into the writer I am now. Some of the notebooks here are not necessarily just journals; some here are notebooks for my essays that I eventually transfered on Word doc and submitted to the national newspaper I was writing for when I was still in college. Yep, I was already writing for PDI even when I was still an undergrad because I wanted a headstart.

This brings me to the conundrum of whether it was wise of me to be limiting myself to this narrow path of being a very specialized journalist. Or just be a journalist. Some ex-colleagues have jumped into other professions; they have become lawyers, communication strategists, owners of their PR firms, or completely jumped into entrepreneurship.

But then because I didn’t go back to school so I can pivot, it would mean I would be starting from the bottom of the ladder. That is always the case: it doesn’t matter if you were an experienced journalist or an MD or a pop artist—if it’s not your expertise, like fund management, investment banking, or techpreneurship, you would have to start at the bottom of the ladder as an associate and work your way up. My extensive career as a journalist holds little value in a different field and I understand that. So my recourse then was to take CFA exams just like what my colleague is now doing. However, I simply cannot afford to be an associate at this stage because my kids are growing up. CFA certifications or MBA would allow me to shift as a mid-career professional. Even my friend who is a CPA-lawyer with an MBA and niche expertise in tech is still not partner in her firm. She needs to be as seasoned as her seniors in her firm and build a name. She still needs to earn her stripes.

So my dilemma is I have already earned some stripes in this field, more stripes than some of my peers have. I still like what I’m doing but sometimes I cannot help thinking if I’m limiting myself.

On the flipside, would I still want to slave away when my life is already “settling”? I’m soon building my home, taking life more slower compared to a decade ago, and I just want to plan my trips and building the life I want during the weekends. I realized that even if my children can already fend for themselves, they still need guidance especially they’re now entering adolescence—that age that has so many pitfalls that can scar a person for life. I felt this tug today when they told me their friend, who had everything, is still complaining about “life”. Twin A said, “we don’t understand why she’s being like that. She has all the material things she can ask for: she has a cellphone while we don’t have one but that’s ok. She has pets and her parents pay attention to her. She has a father and a mother, while we don’t really have a dad. Yes we have Daddy but…”

I don’t know the answer. I wish I have the wisdom to navigate this treacherous waters. Being a solo parent doesn’t help at all in answering my career questions.