Again, I was barely productive

To help me to get through the day.

Nah. This is just a fancy type of red grape juice from Spain. If I let it ferment in my fridge for a couple of years, I think it will become red wine. Until I get cleared by my GI specialist whom I would see on Thursday, I won’t drink any form of alcohol. But playing pretend helped me to get through today.

Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I know it’s bad to have meals in front of the computer but here I am, violating that rule.

Cold soba with tsuyu (from my Mitsukoshi stash) and kimchi for a vegetarian dinner. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I really needed a lot of help to get me focused on the task at hand today. It’s like pulling a tooth. At least I was able to push out another story today, co-written by two other colleagues. All I did today is 1) beg for the son/child of owner (COO) of a Southeast Asia conglomerate to grant me an interview but he demanded an F2F one so I need to fly to Singapore for that; 2) interview a candidate and administer tests to other candidates; 3) respond to a thousand emails. But I never got around to finishing that story today when I should have.

I am paralyzed. I can’t write anymore.

It was just like in 2014 when I quit my local news job and in 2021 when I was swimming in the depths of my depression.

I remember my therapist telling me it’s anxiety that kills my creativity so I keep pushing away tasks and procrastinate so much that I end up with too many backlogs. It’s anxiety that is keeping me from doing the very basic of things that used to be second nature to me.

I just had a chat with another bureau chief from another region and he is in the same boat: this hiring and staff shortage are killing us. It’s not our jobs to be HR managers. He was told to poach from other departments because we are freeze-hiring. And he tried some analysts for the journo gig but in the end, one analyst/journo candidate cried when he submitted his writing test. It turns out he can’t write. My colleague/fellow bureau chief said it was easier for him to rewrite the whole thing instead of editing it. It was that bad.

We are already too stretched. When I told him, “I said there’s no way I can hire the “quality” candidates they’re looking for,” he told me he almost burst out laughing in the coffee shop where he was working. Because the top people think we’re in the same league as the big media companies that candidates would make a beeline for us. Or that we can poach from them and the candidates would just come running to us and jump ship.

They’re so delusional.

It’s so taxing. I’m tired. He’s tired. All of us are.

We have lost many headcount and yet we are pressured to keep productivity and engagement at the same level. This is ridiculous.

Oh God, please me help write tomorrow. I can’t go on like this–the fight, flight, or freeze response to stress.


And then there are the nasty people who feel so entitled that they think it is imperative that we make a story about them or their company. They pester us for coverage when there are more important things to cover/more interesting things to feature/write about. Then when we can’t give them the immediate response, they turn nasty. HEY, WE DO NOT OWE YOU ANYTHING! If we do not return your correspondence in two months, that means your story is not compelling. Don’t harass us or throw us some attitude.

I remember a friend telling me about the same situation with a guy who pestered them for coverage for months. She granted that interview to shut him up after he showed an attitude. She told me no more interviews/favors to that person from now on.

X-mark, she said.

Some people can be so…

Hello! We’re not a free billboard for ads.


It’s only Tuesday but it feels like it has already been an eternity.

I could not pick up a pencil to draw. I’m drained emotionally. There’s just too much anger towards management. I just hope we can get through this desert. This is already too frustrating. We love what we do but this is just getting more ridiculous.

To relax myself. A Sting concert before I go to sleep. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

The daily rant

A colleague from another region was messaging me while we were attending one of our regional townhall meetings today, ranting to me about his line manager who doesn’t get what is happening. So he asked me what is really going on. Then that messaging spiraled down from there, to the usual rants about how incompetent the manager is…

So when it was time for Q&A, I asked the global head about travel. “During the presentation earlier, you said TRAVEL. Can you expound on this one? You mean there would be no restrictions on travel in terms of cost?”

The global head said, “I’m not sure what you’re talking about. We didn’t have cost restrictions before. We only had travel restrictions because of Covid. We encourage you to travel if there is a business case, like meeting sources, having our brand out there.”

And that colleague from another region said: Ha! So she doesn’t know that we had budget restrictions.

I wonder who was really keeping me from staying longer in Singapore, which is technically where my office is located, therefore I should be completing all the things I should set out to do whenever I’m there? Who is keeping me from going to Singapore this month so I can meet the sources that my colleague is passing on to me, interview candidates, and do more stories from there?

I have to confront my managers about this in the coming weeks. This shit can’t go on.

I will fight until I have nothing left to fight for. If they didn’t listen to me before and will not listen again to me this time, then it’s time to move on. I’ve been fighting to keep this team afloat despite the difficulties.

I will play this song over and over until I get some kind of enlightenment.

Yeah, Breaking Benjamin has been my voice of encouragement for more than 12 years now.


Some words of wisdom from my social media feeds today.

Hurrah for narcissists! May you destroy more lives in your wake.

Of course I’m being sarcastic. That’s the only thing you can do now after surviving narcissists, right? Being tongue-in-cheek about things that had killed you.

And this post deserves a near-perfect rendition of my favorite song of defiance.

Another Breaking Benjamin song, this time in acoustic.

Cheers!

Better things ahead.

So enough of the boo hoo episode and I must forge ahead. I read some past entries under the tag “anger” and what I’ve written last night is the recurring theme and I keep saying the same things over and over.

That means I’ve exhausted the topic. Eventually, I will get tired of it and I will no longer have any fucks to give.

Good.

The fact that I am no longer triggered with what I wrote last night (unlike before when I still get triggered everytime I did write about him) means I’m getting there. Take note, I’ve been off my meds since July and the topic didn’t send me palpitating nor I was sleepless. In fact, I fell asleep easily last night, with my phone on my hand as I dozed off while watching a reel. So this means the topic is no longer that grave as before.

Cheers to me!

Yes, I’m still angry but it’s no longer the heaviest weight on my mind, unlike before when it was occupying so much headspace. I realized now (after ruminating over this) that forgiveness is not needed for me to become indifferent to him. Just like with my past exes (and boy, they did some despicable things), I just grew up and no longer cared. I didn’t have to forgive them—I just didn’t care anymore.

I think this thing with J will just go down the same way…my anger will just dissipate, not because I had forgiven him, but because I no longer give a fuck anymore.

So yeah, the self-help books may be wrong with this one; they keep on saying need to forgive the person (or yourself) to be able to move on. I don’t have to because one day I will just stop caring since it will no longer have any bearing on me. And besides, it’s ok to keep that anger because that will keep me from engaging with such people.


Today we just ran errands and kept within the 2 km radius of mu apartment because OMG the traffic was really bad today. I keep hearing it being talked about while I was in the supermarket and reading about it on some FB and Twitter posts.

Here I was, waiting for the girls to finish their Kumon session. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

The girls went to the Kumon center for their last session for the year and I followed to fetch them so we can go grocery shopping.

The most ridiculous thing today is that my onions cost PHP 250 for less than a kilo 🤦‍♀️

My contractor sent me these photos. Yey! My house is almost complete.

My window and fire exit.
Tiny kitchen window.

Let’s see if by next week there will be more significant progress…

This will be a long and difficult soliloquy

So meta, right? Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Let me start off by saying I needed a drink to write this down because this entails eviscerating myself.

I had a long chat over Messenger this afternoon with my friend (friendship dating back when we were 9-10 years old), about family (I know her entire family and their quirks and the generational issues) and how far we have come from where we were 2 years ago. It would be her supposed wedding anniversary tomorrow while it would be my 2nd year as a dumpee.

She told me about how her ex-husband just trashed all the things she has done for him, how she supported him when he had nothing, how she lifted him up because she loved him. However, he said he is happier without her. His insecurities led him to cheating and choosing women who would make him look good because he is superior over them vs my friend who is an overachiever.

I told her, unfortunately, the value you put in all of the things you gave him is not the same value for him–if he valued it at all. That’s how the world works, especially with narcissists, and with her ex-husband, he thought that what she did for him was an obligation and/or he was entitled to it, therefore, has zero value at all.

I told my friend, it’s just like when we adopted this niece (from a cousin) and she lived with us throughout her college life. We treated her like a sister, like a daughter. Then now she talks shit about us, especially on social media. We don’t know what we did to her to earn her hatred but at least she could have just shut up, in deference to how we treated her, right? My older sister said, apparently the value we gave to how we offered her a home and how we made an effort to make her an immediate family to us was zero for her. There are just people who are like that. I’m still hurting over that but what can I do, right?

Just the same with her ex-husband and just the same with my ex.

I remember right after J threw me off the balcony exactly two years ago from tomorrow, I had an interview with a company owner in Thailand he introduced to me. I think we set the interview in early January. That said, my interviewee enjoyed our conversation so much that we had two interview sessions. I took the opportunity to promote J as a good advisor that he should hire. He got so much boost from me—me being stupid, thinking that it was my last act of love towards somebody who I eventually discovered was screwing me over for a very long time, even from the beginning.

What a fool I was.

I thought I had forgiven him. Apparently no.

Because I dreamed about him this morning, but this time, in my dream I was in a quandary about how to kick him out of my house. We just got off the car and he was going ahead of me in some conference we were both supposed to attend. I whispered to a friend that I “still couldn’t do it, you know kicking him out,” but I know I had too because he was already treating me badly and was sucking out my light. The dream ended there.

So my dream was like an allegory of my anger that I still harbor and couldn’t still let go of. I haven’t forgiven him. I don’t want to label this as hate because I don’t want him to have that kind of power over me…because the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Oh I wish to God that I’m already indifferent but I recognize that it is a long process and it’s not easy.

If I were a horrible, vindictive human being, I could have destroyed him because we move in a world where a good reputation is the most important thing, especially if you’re after contracts and high quality networks. This is very much true if you don’t have much of a track record compared to others in the same space. But I just said to myself, I won’t stoop to that level and just let the universe do its thing. Karma comes back biting your ass, I believe.

Besides, he has already destroyed himself within my network by his own doing, dallying with that ex-reporter girl. He underestimated my network, how far my arms can reach, what my ears can hear. He can no longer use my network even if I chose to be quiet because that’s the most dignified thing to do. I just let the universe do its thing.

I was used and I realize now that was from the very beginning. I took it hook, line, and sinker. I believed what I wanted to believe and ignored the red flags. He used baits like “Will you give me a home?” schtick so that I would give him everything that I had, believing he really wanted to be with me. I accepted him for what he was and when he was at his lowest, I tried to give him the world, with all that I had. I supported him with everything—moral, financial, professional…

I recognize and experience that relationships sour and breakups happen. But what I found unacceptable to me were the deceit and the lies. The way he treated me especially in the end. And what makes this healing difficult is that I am trying to live my life quietly but things still come unraveling to me even until February-March this year, about 14-15 months after the breakup. Like, what the fuck?! What did I do to deserve this?! He just kept throwing all these curve balls on purpose. Typical narc.

All I did was to love unconditionally, but loved the wrong person. Very wrong person. Now I don’t have anything left to give to anybody and I don’t think I have the energy and love left. I realized that love is not infinite.

So healing is not linear. You go take one step forward, two steps back many times in the course of this wretched stage. At the same time you are forced to “adult”. If I were still a theater actress now, I know I would be able to bring more depth and gravity to the characters I will play because I finally know now how it is to die and come back from the dead. Well, for me that’s how the past two years felt like. I died and come back from the dead several times.

Through this past two years, I learned how invaluable professional therapy is. Not just the woo woo group therapy (those New Agey things). You know, grief messes you up and chemically, your body changes and it short-circuits you. As my doctor said, it’s trauma and left unaddressed, the short-circuiting continues. Long Covid didn’t help either. Depression and anxiety are not trivial. It’s not a sign of being weak and/or lack of faith in God. Some people are predisposed to it due to heredity, environment, and/or it’s just how they tick. I realized that I’m an empath and I absorb the slings and arrows of everything and everyone around me–that’s why I have the double whammy. Artists (even not good artists like me) are prone to such things—the twin evil named depression and anxiety. That’s where we get our mojo. That’s why I could draw better when I was down and out. I could write the most heartfelt piece when I hurt. We draw our power from our gut and as a consequence we expose our innards only to get bruised more.

J may not understand what I went through and would think that I had just been melodramatic if he only knew (so that’s why it was really better for me to be scarce and disappear), but that again boils down to how differently we valued the relationship and one another. To him, I was just a tool and a means for him to reach his goals, one step at a time; for me, he was my world—at that time. So again, he would never understand.

So in summary, the past two years had been a long difficult process. It was walking through fire barefoot. It was like having an odontectomy but local anesthesia does not work (and yes, this literally happens to me). It was like battling with a Balrog in the depths of Moria, dying and coming back as a white Maiar, bleached by pain and death.

But bouncing back as a more powerful wizard.

I have found my inner strength and a new-found love for myself. I had found my voice again.

I may not be shiny and effervescent like those big-boobed women who go bar-hopping and post their night life on social media to prove that they have attractive, “meaningful” lives. I am also not a high-powered woman executive that command thousands of people with a snap of her fingers.

I am just me.

I can be charming if I wanted to be. I am intelligent and there are no dull conversations with me, if I wanted to. But most importantly, I can offer a warm home with lots of love and care, where someone can belong and grow roots. Because anywhere with me is home—that’s the best I can give to anyone.

And J just doesn’t appreciate that. He is the wrong person.

Soon, I would just wake up and say, “Who was he again?” That’s the best indication of indifference I hope to achieve.

‘Tis the season for cheers and melancholy

I finally installed our parol outside. The fairy lights had been there since last year and I won’t take it down even when we move out. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I was just too busy to do the usual Christmas decorating to cheer ourselves up—well, it’s mostly to cheer me up. The kids don’t care. This is the third Christmas that we haven’t set up a tree because…cats. 🐈

I’m still looking for the Christmas lights that I usually string around the balustrades. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

This is the last Christmas that we will be spending here in this apartment. My neighbor, the quietest neighbor I have who lives next to my unit, will be leaving sooner than us. She will be pulling out their stuff on Saturday. Her daughter will be going abroad to work while she will be moving into her sister’s house in Kamias. They stayed here for 19 years. She said she would have stayed longer (because she liked the location) if it were not for my crusty landlady’s mismanagement of the units. Her apartment (D) is full of termites. She often complained to our landlady about the disrepair of her unit but the latter doesn’t listen. Meanwhile, I don’t take shit for an answer that’s why I get things done. I use my own resources to fix things and bill her later. Oftentimes, I just don’t bother billing her because she will just complain that I’m a very expensive renter. Yada, yada, yada. 🤬 That’s why until now the roof at my cooking area still leaks.

Some people shouldn’t be landlords.

Still waiting for Lazada to deliver my 3x3m waterfall fairylights. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

My mom said the next family that will get this unit will be lucky because I improved the bathroom (and it is pretty, my mom said) and will be leaving a lot of better fixtures like the higher end faucets, a big bathroom exhaust fan, and the custom wooden counter in the cooking/laundry area. And I kept refreshing the white paint and the closet paint. The only damage I have to fix is the bedroom door knob that I destroyed when the cats were locked inside my room.

This has been home for four years now—five when we leave next year. It sheltered us during the most tumultuous time in our lives. It has broken me as well. I will be leaving the bad jujus behind when I shove the last piece of my stuff into the moving truck in May. I will have a sort of fresh start as I won’t have the bad memories that I still carry in this apartment.

Speaking of Christmas and bad memories, I usually look forward to this season because it meant two-week breaks and I can read a lot of books during my off-time. But since 2020, December also reminded me of the toughest moment in my life. And I was still dealing with shit until February this year. Good thing I was still under therapy at that time so I was able to bounce back faster than I did in August. December 2020 was just trash and all the expletives that you can throw at it.

Thank God for art. I may not be good at it but it has kept me sane.

Inking. I’ll ink first before coloring, which is the opposite of what I normally do. I think I’ll use a jaune tone on the church walls. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com

So December is something I look forward to because of the long break and it’s also something that I dread because some bad taste in my mouth remains. I still get triggered. But it will be all right. I have many things to occupy me so I won’t be living in my head again.

Aside from improving my sketching skills, I am also busy with my house.

Photo sent by my contractor.

My contractor said this small cabinet is not the kitchen cabinet but this is something that will go under my TV. 🤔

Hopefully, I will be busy with my new house for an entire year so I won’t have room in my life to brood.

However, the problem with writers is that we think too much. We have this propensity to perform mental acrobatics because that’s what we do for a living. I know several writers who live in their caves/writing dens (like me) and rarely come out.

George Bernard Shaw. Writingcooperative.com

Hmm…I want a writing shack like that.

Fixing broken things

I’m on a mission to fix broken things, saving things worth saving.

Like for example my printer. It was working the entire year after I bought it in December 2020 and the black cartridge became shot because of the printing job I did last Friday. 72 pages of complaint/petition. I went to Greenhills this afternoon to have it fixed and et voila! It was clogged with cars. Like inflation didn’t climb to its highest level in 14 years and people are still shopping like there’s no tomorrow.

People on a shopping galore. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Greenhills gives me the chills. I’m always reminded of my #$%$#%^&*(* ex because we were often there to have his laptop or mini-PC fixed. Or to buy his Gundams. Or to meet for the weekend so he can drop off his laundry at my apartment—never I get invited over that condo we leased together. Probably the slut was already sleeping over there. Then I remember the time I went to Greenhills to order the girls’ new PCs and I was supposed to go to his condo to bring him some stuff and I was thinking of spending the night there. Then he got unreasonably angry because I was going there when he clearly said he won’t be there because he was supposedly meeting somebody in Megamall or something.

That was…that tore me apart.

So Greenhills is still a sore point with me, two years after.

I’m still fixing myself, getting back my self-esteem and confidence. Trying to forgive myself for letting myself be used in so many ways. Trying to forgive myself for ignoring red flags that this person is horrible.

No person has broken me more than him. Not even the girls’ dad.

I don’t want to encounter J ever again. Ever.

Part of fixing myself is trying to get back in shape. I got stalled during my holiday because I got sick. Then I lazy because…I was I was dealing with a storm and a roller coaster of emotions.

Because I was off from my workouts for a week, I got bloated again. Now I wonder if I could still fit in my dresses that I was thinking of wearing for the cocktails event in Singapore that our company is sponsoring.

Which reminds me that I should look at new clothes to bring to Singapore when I go to Makati on Tuesday for a meeting.

Still on the topic of fixing, I am fixing our lives (after the hiccup with J) by building our future, which includes my new tiny house. While I was in Greenhills, I saw the new area where the furniture and home decor stalls relocated. I checked out some lighting fixtures and…

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Photo by CallMeCreation.com

For some reason I want to hang this in my bathroom. The store owner said this was really meant for a bedroom but people had been telling her they were going to install it in their bathrooms, too. She just couldn’t get why. I don’t understand it either but it looks just right for a ridiculously decked out bathroom.

And the funny thing here is my bathroom is just condo-sized.

There is more space beyond that annoying post and beam that we could not move. My contractor said he will just disguise the post by making concrete shelves. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

To make this more over-the-top, the bathroom door is hardwood–the former bedroom door.

Then I saw this, which was prettier and cheaper than the ones from Ikea.

I’d like this to hang over the dining table. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I just need to send these photos over to my contractor. I think he will have a heart attack when he sees the chandelier. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

And finally, I am trying to fix the broken water system of my hometown.

We arrived at the office of the water utility before 10 am. I didn’t tell the people here that I was bringing along the local broadcast network with me to document the entire thing as a payback for snubbing their invitation to guest on their show because they wanted answers why we are so fucked up.

I also didn’t tell the company that I was bringing the GM of the water district—the government-owned company that was part of the JV and part regulator (yeah, the set-up is messy and I will try to get to the bottom of this).

Only when we were seated did I tell them that the crew I had with me were part of the local broadcasting station.

Long story short—they don’t have any disaster SOPs in place, to capex plans, no systems in place. NOTHING. No record of improvements on infra, NOTHING. Except for this newly constructed office, which I learned was built at the height of the pandemic. Sneakily.

New office of the water utility. Photo by CallMeeCreation.com

I could no longer recount what I said and what others had said because it triggers me so much. My sister, who is a climate change disaster mitigation and adoption expert, asked questions that they could not answer—very important points that every utility and local governments must address.

The GM and the community relations manager (the husband and wife tandem) couldn’t say anything. They knew they were fucked. And it’s all being recorded.

It will be aired tomorrow. Then I will share the broadcast to anyone who would care.

They didn’t know what hit them.

I’ve been in this business for long time and I wouldn’t survive it if I haven’t learned how to be crafty, sharp, and always on my toes. Journalism is a mind game. My guide has been the 48 Laws of Power, which has taught me how to handle people and how to approach people who are higher in stature than me. I have to be two steps ahead of my interviewee and of the principal characters in the stories I am pursuing.

This is why I like strategy games.

In the meantime, I need to rid myself of bad jujus because some heavy work load is ahead of me this week. I’m scheduled to present to the commercial team on Thursday, showdown with a conglomerate (that is part of the water JV of my hometown) on Wednesday, and meeting on Tuesday.

Sigh. *pat on my back*

Everything will be all right. I’m doing good. —> I need to assure myself or else I will crumble with stress.