This is a beautiful prayer, which came from a notebook of Martika’s writings. Prince re-worked the words, which reflected his spirituality. He always believed that he was very blessed and this song encapsulates his feelings about God in a form of a prayer.

I first heard (or rather paid attention to) this song in elementary when I was over at a friend’s house and being tutored by my friend’s brother who was a math major. I had since associated this song with Terminator 2 because this tune was wafting in the background while my friend’s TV screen was playing the Terminator 2 trailer. Or perhaps it was the entire movie on VHS? 🤔 It can’t be because in those days it takes a while before a movie goes into VHS…

Anyway, this song stuck with me since then. I always thought this was beautiful and the artists (Martika and Prince) didn’t mask it; it was a praise song without being labeled as such. It went to become a Billboard chart topper in 1991, proving that a pop spiritual song can be enjoyed by everyone, not just by the religious.

I don’t know how this song popped into my consciousness this morning while I was driving Twin A to school for her volleyball training.

Maybe because it was a lovely morning, with sunlight being filtered through trees that lined up the road leading to my children’s school. This has pushed my brain dig up the words in Love The Will Be Done. Maybe my soul wanted to give thanks for this beautiful morning and everything I have.

Love, thy will be done
Since I have found you my life has just begun
And I see all of your creations as one
Perfect complex
No one less beautiful
Or more special than the next
We are all blessed and so wise to accept

Love thy will be done

And it just struck me that, yeah, I feel complete. There is no longer a gaping hole that I needed to fill. I don’t need to chase love to fill that void. I don’t have to run.

Love, thy will be mine
And make me strive for the glorious and divine
I could not be more, more satisfied
(Satisfied)
Even when there’s no peace outside my window
There’s peace inside
And that’s why I no longer run
(I don’t know)
Love, thy will be done

And tears started running down my cheeks with this realization. It was so overwhelming that I started singing. Yes, I’m at peace. This is the reason why I haven’t searched for another partner or do anything that would lead me in that direction. It isn’t bitterness that led me to celibacy. It is not fear. It is not rejection of love but rather it is because of love. Love for myself, for everything that God wants for me.

And this connects with what I also told fairy gaymother K at almost 1 am today. I sent him this this song by Cynthia Alexander and said, this is me these days. This song sums me up.

I walk down the road
I look up at the sky
Now I know why
Reasoning has conquered me
I can’t and won’t deny the fact
My heart beats a special drum
Only for you
But I’m glad to be on my own
I have never been this free
From all suspicion and the pain
Grown year upon year

I had to go through hell and back to achieve peace.

Walking in the rain then seemed beyond conception
But I’ve never been so alive
So much in love with life
And from the grey, grey sky
Fell the tear of all tears

Anger and hatred would only go away once the void is filled with love. Not romantic love from another person—that’s conditional and fallible—but rather it’s love for life itself. You know that I could’ve retaliated and hurt back those who hurt me. To seek chaos and damage to those who sent me to hell. But you know what? I didn’t. I walked away from it all and decided that the best revenge is to live life the best I could and be truly happy.

And the tears that rolled down my cheeks this morning were tears of happiness. Singing Love Thy Will Be Done is my thanksgiving.

Love, thy will be done
Thy will love be done
Love, thy will be done
I can no longer hide
I can no longer run
(No, no, no)
Love, thy will be done
Thy will love be done
Thy will love be done
Thy will love be done

I learned a new term that has been bandied about on social media these days: Married Single Moms.

No, it doesn’t pertain to my current situation right now, which is being a single mom who is still legally married but is already separated; divorce is still being debated in Congress so she is still stuck. (Annulments are hardly granted here unless you can bribe your family court judge, which many people had already done. How do you think politicians and celebrities here can have speedy annulments?).

So what are MSMs? They are women who had been like me prior to the separation—they have husbands who do not contribute to anything in the marriage and family life.

It’s only now that I realized that I had been an MSM all along…I was a solo parent ever since the girls were born. Given that I was the only one doing all the lifting, it was easy for me to leave because I was the breadwinner and I already knew how to run my household and raise my children single-handedly. The only difference between married and separated was that I had one less source of headache after I uprooted ourselves.

I remember the time when my girls’ preschool class visited our house (since ours was the second nearest one) as an illustration of how a typical family looks like. The teacher asked her class, in the family what does the father do? My girls, who were three or four years old at that time, cheerfully said, “he lies on the couch and watches TV!”

I wasn’t there when that happened; it was just reported to me by my nannies. That must have made the teacher realllly uncomfortable.

Then she asked again, what does the mother do? “She goes out to work. She takes care of us!”

That sums up my marriage—or sham of a marriage.

Then there’s another term that I have learned from social media again: trad wives.

This has been popularized on Tiktok (based on what I read so far) by mom influencers who cosplay as the perfect 1950s-type of traditional housewife, who go through the motions of keeping house in perfectly turned up dresses. They play into the Stepford Wives fantasies of (usually) alt-right men/conservatives.

So what is the connection now between MSMs and trad wives? The real “trad wife” are the real stay-at-home moms who are not perfect as what these mom-fluencers portray. Fine, if this makes you happy, then go for it. But those who are sold this fantasy should always remember that they are just one accident/death or affair away from being destitute. Once the man has an affair/divorces you or he gets sick or worse, dies, then you are left with no income, no skills, no bright prospect for employment outside the home.

MSMs, on the other hand, have survived and can survive when shit hits the fan. It’s really difficult and exhausting to be an MSM but then they are equipped to go solo. It’s just a matter of recognizing they needed to walk away from that toxic situation to improve their lot.

Some of the best pieces of advice on marriage were given to me by newspaper women. One was a friend 10 years my senior. We were both covering the central bank at that time and before I went on leave for my wedding, she told me to save up—just as I have saved up for my wedding—for shit-hits-the-fan situations like annulment. She said it gives you some kind of security that you will have money for emergency or for filing for annulment if things go south.

I did listen to her. She was so right.

The second advice was given to me by a lawyer-columnist who I used to follow. We were in a junket trip abroad and one time at breakfast I talked to the author (JD) of the book about mistresses and told her my sister loved her book. JD said, tell your sister thank you and you should let other women read that as a warning—the signs that husbands are straying and all their shennanigans. JD should know—because…

Anyway, this lawyer-columnist chimed in and told me that the “best protection you can have is to have your own money and the means to earn to your own money.” Share expenses in the house and have a joint account for that, pay for the things that you are willing to pay for, but always have your own bank account. 

Those two things have always been in my head. These two things pushed me to finish my master’s degree and made me chase career advancement. I’ll never know if and when the time will come I would have to cleave, journo friend told me.

She was right. They were right all along.

I took Gorilla to the vet for her unresolved colds and sneezing. Luckily her brother, Socks, is not dripping with mucus nor sneezing even if they sleep together.

She will be given an antibiotic since the mucus dripping from her nose is still yellow and her eyes have the same kind of discharge. She will also be given supplements so her body can beat the viral infection that caused this in the first place. So ok, the diagnosis is suspected viral infection w/ bacterial infection.

I can’t buy the 4 medicines after the clinic appointment because I need to jump into a call on Teams.

I edited until past 7 pm and had to chase The Generics Pharmacy because they close at 8 pm. My cats’ medicines are the same ones used by  humans so it was better check out TGP first then jump to Mercury if they don’t have what I need.

Ugh! I need to administer via syringe 4 kinds of medicines to Gorilla. Everyday. One of them needs to be given 3x a day. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Oh well, that’s what cat ladies endure just to keep these furbabies alive.

Meanwhile, their sibling, Ninja, now known as Brownie, looks healthy and lovely.

The interview left me perplexed. Either the talent acquisition (TA) specialist who interviewed me has no idea what the job is about or the job is not clearly defined yet. I have qualms about this now.

If I get to the panel interview, I will have a better understanding of what this is really. 🤔

What makes this more puzzling is that the TA told me my application in April was routed somewhere else and they only got my docs when my friend endorsed it. It left a bitter taste in my mouth, this disorganization or incompetence. I’m at a loss for words…

When she asked if I had questions, one of the things I asked was, why did they open this to outsiders and not do an internal hire considering this is a pretty senior position? She told me no one submitted internally.

That is probably a red flag.

I guess transfering companies is not yet in the cards right now. Everything sounds bizarre from this TA. Even my friend was surprised.

It just left me more confused about my current job (do I hate it? Or just my boss?) and about my future (is this still what I want to do?).

This is disturbing.

I went to the segunda mano (second-hand shop) I had been patronizing for decades and bought several pocketbooks for my daughters. One of my missions in life is to recreate the library I had when I was still a student, which included Sweet Dreams, Crosswinds, and Keepsakes young adult romances. These are out of print and hard to find. These books are well written and help in expanding one’s vocabulary—unlike the drivel Twilight series, which overused the word “chagrin” as if Stephanie Meyer just discovered the word. Those books were just garbage.

Anyway, my girls skipped the Nancy Drew phase but at least they were able to pick up Percy Jackson and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. They also enjoyed Berestain Bears when they were younger. The problem now is they have so many distractions these days, so much so their book-reading was stifled. In contrast, I devoured books at 10 years old and had classmates who did the same so we swapped books. I accessed the library so I can read the children’s version of Don Quixote.

These pocketbooks allowed me to have a better command of the English language compared to a non-reader. It’s a good thing that I had a chance to be bored that I had no recourse but to read books. By 6th Grade I was already done with Louisa May Alcott’s series (Little Women, Little Men) and graduated from Nancy Drew. However, kids these days don’t get bored. It’s tragic because boredom is essential in developing creative minds.

I’m happy now that Twin I is enjoying these YA pocketbooks and hopefully she will continue to do so. She has been marking the pages that she liked so  she can come back to them. It’s just a matter of time that Twin A will start picking it up. She is still engrossed with manga but I don’t begrudge her that. At least she’s reading.

Finally, shoving books down their throats had resulted to this and I’m happy.

I’ve run out of ideas what to cook for dinner last night that I resorted to the fail-safe K-BBQ.

This photo suddenly popped up on my Facebook memories. This was taken during one of our regular trips to QCity Circle, where I let my toddlers run around to expend their energy and have a restful sleep later in the night. Here they were chasing this boy around and finally got him cornered 🤣.

This was a time I was still sleepless (only 3 hrs of sleep every night) because my babies still can’t sleep through the night and kept asking milk from me or from the bottle. I was a reporter and editor while balancing being a hands-on mom to twins (with minimal help from their father). I don’t know how I was able to survive those years. I was always exhausted and there were times I almost crashed my tiny car into one of the islands along Ayala Ave because I was already falling asleep behind the wheel.

I am now at the crossroads of my career again. While my girls no longer need 24/7 supervision, my physical presence and constant monitoring are still very much needed. But here I am, thinking of jumping from the frying pan straight into the fire with this interview tomorrow. I just got off the phone with my friend who endorsed me to this role I applied for in April. I have a vague idea of what this job entails and whatever I was thinking was correct, based on my conversation with ny friend. To put it simply, the world’s problem will also be my problem—from Trump vs Biden to Gaza to West Philippine Sea and Taiwan Strait. From bushfires in Australia to corruption charges against Bolsonaro and the changing of the tide at 10 Downing Street.

I’ll be back to 24/7 news cycle again.

Well, that is, if they take me.

It’s Friday once again. The days flew by so fast and I haven’t done anything significant so far. I had two interviews that I will not write (one edited, one to co-write) and requests for interviews that got rejected or ignored. Some are still suspended in animation.

My friend from a competitor told me she’s going to endorse my application I sent in April to be one of their global editors. I have completely forgotten about that one and honestly, I’m ok if I don’t get it. If I would get higher or same pay for the same flexibility that I have right now, then I would go for it. I’m frustrated with my company and with my manager but the flexibility that I have now still outweighs those negative factors.

Earlier this year I suffered from burnout and anxiety got the better of me. I scrambled to get away but all I ended up with was the realization that going into PR was something very difficult for me. I’m stuck with this ghost writing gig that I have because I can’t have my own voice. It has been 20 years since I’ve written a PR. I’m mentally struggling with it but I have to swallow the bitter pill and unlearn all the things I learned as an independent journalist.

After I fetched Twin A from her school break volleyball training at 11 am, I had my liquid handwash pumps refilled at this store. I am reusing the containers from the mass market products I’ve purchased from supermarkets to buy more eco-friendly options. Bought 3.6 liters of liquid handwash and that was equivalent to 7 plastic containers that would have gone straight to the landfill. I still have a gallon or so (out of the total 6 gal) of the dishwashing liquid that I bought six months ago (or more). That kept me from consuming and discarding several plastic bottles of dishwashing liquid.

Finally found a home service masseuse. Yey!

My girls are with their dad so I have the house to myself. No need to cook! Wohooo!

Whelp. I have a job interview on Monday. With the competitor.