Still working past 9 pm. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
When my body says it must rest, I should heed.
But no, I didn’t. I still took an edit and now I’m paying the price. It’s already past 9 pm and I’m still editing a story that needed an overhaul. Stupid me. I exacerbated my headaches.
Why did I take that edit? Because my stupid company doesn’t plan to hire more editors. Because of the Great Resignation, we lost 2 bureau chief/senior editors, 2 junior editor-reporters, and one first editor. They haven’t been replaced. So we remaining editors have been working overtime and if one of us gets sick or goes on holiday, there would be long queue of stories for editing.
No, I shouldn’t be taking on more jobs because the company is being stupid.
“Quiet quitting doesn’t actually involve quitting. Instead, it has been deemed a response to hustle culture and burnout; employees are “quitting” going above and beyond and declining to do tasks they are not being paid for...
...”For employers that are dealing with workers who may be exhibiting signs of quiet quitting, Zitron has one simple message for them: Pay them for extra work…”
Enough is enough. I’m sick. I’m tired. I shouldn’t be picking up the slack.
I don’t have a fever but I’m inexplicably tired. I wanted to sleep but couldn’t because I spent almost 12 hours sleeping. I couldn’t drive myself to get an RT PCR because my mental faculties aren’t present and I may just kill myself. Home service costs PHP 4,500—expensive for something that is just to confirm/refute the result of my antigen test this morning.
A single, negative antigen test result does not rule out infection. To best detect infection, a negative antigen test should be repeated at least 48 hours apart (known as serial testing).
So I will just test myself again on early Sunday. For tomorrow I will just sleep. I will just order GrabFood for us since Saturday is Ate C’s day off.
This may just be ordinary flu and my body is just signalling to me that I should stop pushing myself too hard at work. My company doesn’t care for me anyway.
I was supposed to go out at 6 pm to do some grocery shopping but I was feeling sick. By 6:30 I was already in bed. 11 hrs later I woke up and did the test. Headache and feverish feeling gone but my body still aches. Throat is still scratchy too.
I can order grocery online but how can I continue with my LTO car registration today?
I am thinking twice about going to S.Korea this October. A lot of people I know now have Covid and the cases are rising exponentially again. The girls said their dad has Covid since his sister and her entire family caught it on their way back from Switzerland.
Data from the Department of Health.
Some friends and colleagues abroad are sick with Covid. My cousin in Ireland and her husband got hit, too.
Data from the DOH
The positivity rate does not tell the whole picture because a lot of people I know just used antigen test kits at home so these positive cases via antigen don’t get reported to DOH as they just elect to self-isolate.
Today just broke me.
Too many things going on and this added to my busy-ness. I was uploading a digest, I had to chase after a deal that I had been after for months years will soon be announced (either tomorrow or early next week). At the same time, I am tracking some news across the region, which my team and I are trying to piece together. And on top of that I was editing three stories at the same time…To my annoyance these were badly written ones, with missing context or ownership structures are not explained well, details missing, etc. It really tested my patience.
On top of this, I was having an argument with our company database keeper in London. I told her we cannot have the UK entity of the global company that is based in Luxembourg to represent the whole group because that is just the UK entity. The one who made the deal is not the UK entity but the Asia one and since we don’t have the proper company record for the Asian entity of the private equity firm, we must use the global one, which is the Luxembourg one. BUT NHOOOOOOOO! These guys in our London office are UK-centric—thinking that the world revolves around them—so we must use the UK entity. WHAT THE FUCK?! The funds used in the deal are Asia-specific funds, therefore, using the UK entity, with its own UK-EU funds, is legally wrong. Why can’t they understand that???
My boss in our Seoul office said I shouldn’t reply anymore because it was not going anywhere. I replied that I no longer have the energy to do so, yeah I will let it end there. And if the global entity sues, I will show them the long email thread of our argument.
By 4 pm I was so exhausted that I fell asleep despite drinking teh tarik. Caffeine was not enough to keep me alive. I woke up 2 hrs after and ordered pizza for dinner.
My Greek-letter organization brother, who just got back to Chicago where he has been living for two decades or more, contracted Covid. He said he never had Covid or got sick the entire time he was here in the Philippines when he was taking care of his parents for three months. He said people in the US treat the pandemic as something that is already over and he’s pissed that people refused to wear masks. People are dying again because they simply refused to have boosters/vaccination and wear masks. It’s simple.
It’s inconvenient but my goodness I will have all the inconveniences that come with mask-wearing than suffer another bout of Covid. The variant that hit me last year was nasty and it took months before I could fully recover. I’m glad that Asia hasn’t dropped masks yet. Ever since we got hit by SARS, mask-wearing has become second nature to us. It’s courtesy to other people so they may not get sick from whatever virus or bacteria we’re harboring, especially if we’re taking the public transport.
Manic Monday. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I started working at around 8 this morning and I had non-stop calls from 11 am until 4 pm. A lot of talking and graph display had taken place. I haven’t had any chance to write my own stories—all admin work today. Arrrghhh.
And here I am, still sifting through hundred of cards that I got in Singapore and I have to make sense of all of them. It will take me days to sift through and email all these people and seek re-connection.
And yes, I have two keyboards. I use both, depending on my mood. My new key caps for my Royal Kludge will arrive tomorrow. I’m looking at this GammaKay 65% and Rakk 65% keyboards. Just because.
I think I had been feeling ill the past few days because my body is withdrawing from escitalopram that I had stopped taking on 24 July…about 2 weeks ago. And I feel really bad: I feel like I’m floating and have this nagging dull headache somewhere. It was a bad idea to skip it. I took a half pill today and I don’t know if it was psychosomatic that I felt a bit better. Having less triggers doesn’t mean I’m fully cured; it just means I can manage myself with less synthetic chemicals in my brain.
It has been exactly a year this week when I learned about J and that silly young journo, plunged into darkness, and had alcohol for my companion. I had sunk so low, as low as when I dug myself a hole in December 2020 – January 2021. When I started barfing on my toilet after downing a whole bottle of wine by myself, that’s when I decided I needed professional help to sort me out. That’s when I learned that what I had been experiencing was post-traumatic stress. I wasn’t properly healing and I just kept on putting on a brave front but deep inside I was crumbling. Seeing my therapist was the best thing I did for myself. Putting a name on what I was going through helped me sort out the tangles inside me.
Trauma. That’s what my therapist told me. The word trauma helped me heal; it was a validation that I was not being melodramatic about the whole thing. Whatever devastation I felt was legit. I was dealing with a lot of trauma, for being betrayed despite giving my all. For losing myself into something or someone who gave so little. For the abuse that I received: I let a Dementor/Nazgul suck the life out of me and I received no love in return. I was just a human appliance.
Mental health is very important and taking care of it is as equally important as taking care of the rest of your body. Just like when your body received huge blows, it has to adjust to the trauma and heal before it can fully function again.
I can’t say I’m fully healed—I don’t think you can ever recover from such trauma—but I was already able to get back on the saddle to fight for survival for another day. I have gotten better compared to last year when I couldn’t even write. I was back again in that deep, dark pit, trying to claw my way up. I couldn’t sleep since my mind couldn’t stop thinking about what happened. What’s sad is that Covid was the only respite I had. Because of Covid, I was able to sleep and recover all the lost sleep since the breakup.
I’m much, much better now. I’m now in that place where I can say I’m content with life—at this point. Of course this can change tomorrow. But so far, I don’t feel the need to have a partner because even just the thought of having one exhausts my brain. I am in control of whatever I have in my life right now. No one is leading me by the nose anymore. No one is being unkind to me anymore. I don’t have to bend backwards just to earn crumbs of affection.
That second booster was nasty. I was sick and spent a very restless night, waking up almost every hour. Then I slept the rest of the day today and did nothing else. I’m still aching, still in a foul mood, and I still want to kill people. I must be having my pre-menstrual syndrome as I want to bite everyone’s heads off. I’m a hazard to humanity so I’m locking myself up here in my room in the meantime.
I didn’t want to think about what to serve my kids for brunch so I opted for the easiest, which is omurice with leftwovers combined to make fried rice. We’re supposed to go to the health center of a nearby barangay for my 2nd booster shot later in the day.
Omurice. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Surprisingly it was easier to book Grab today. Probably because our destinations are all nearby.
Coming back from the barangay health center. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
Unfortunately for the girls, the booster shots for their age group haven’t been approved yet. So they just had to settle for a trip to the salon to fix their disastrous haircuts.
Twin I with a better haircut. She’s quite happy. Photo by her.
We had an early dinner at the nearby Vietnamese restaurant because I was feeling sick after the booster and was not in the mood to cook.
Pho and fried spring rolls. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
I took a nap after this as I was already aching all over, my head was pounding and that my eyelids were ready to shut. I thought the booster #2 would be easier. Nope, I was still feeling sick despite having 4 vax shots now.
Meanwhile, my journalist group chat has been discussing that the Imelda Marcos-style living is back in Malacanang, without any regard for the citizens who are suffering from high prices and struggling with high transportation costs or the lack of means of transportation.
It will be a very long 6 years.
Right now I’m not in the mood to be sociable and I just want to shut myself in my room. The girls are going to be fetched by their dad in a few minutes. I’m so irritated with the world today. People think that just because you’re responding to them, they can just take you for granted.
I’m tired of it. It happens again and again. So no, I choose myself this time. Goodbye.
