Up all night

Posted on January 27, 2023 by admin

*Building a new work desk. Photo by* *CallMeCreation.com*

I suddenly had a brilliant idea of going to Ikea this afternoon to buy myself a new work desk so I can give my old one to Twin A because hers is tilting dangerously and is falling apart. I would have a bigger problem if it suddenly crashes.

I had been up all night since the new work desk requires me to build it myself. I started at around 7 pm and finished at 1 am.

The dimensions are almost the same as my old desk: 120 x 60 x 70cm. I was initially aiming for the 140 cm long Lagkapten to accommodate my printer but I realized my room in my new house is much smaller even though I made provisions there for a 140 cm desk. If I find myself wanting more surface area, I could always order another Alex drawer. Or I can mount a wall shelf and place the printer there.

I also have better cable management.

My desk now matches the oak finish of my cabinetry in my tiny house. I just need to make the cables tidier by buying that spiral pipe cord protector/organizer so I can place my workstation in a command position facing the door in my new room. There’s nothing more stressful than seeing unruly cables when you enter a room.

I chose not to update my girls’ desks because I will have theirs custom-made together with their loft beds. I will just buy them additional Alex drawers (and more DIY for me) so they will have more storage.

This weekend I will start throwing away old stuff that we have been harboring under the stairs. Then we will start eliminating things that we wouldn’t be bringing to our tiny house.

I’m sleepy. I will collect my thoughts later…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I’ve been selling my ETF in tranches this week because the outlook is bad in the coming months. While I have already completed the payments for the entire contract with my builder last week, there are extra expenses that I have incurred because of additional posts and making the laundry/utility area downstairs more decent. So I needed to draw down from my stock investments.

This is the reason why I don’t spend on luxury bags, designer clothes, and other unproductive things. Bags are not an investment; an investment is something that will help you increase your earnings—not to boost your ego. Besides, these luxury houses target the insecure middle class customers who want to be perceived as rich. It’s aspirational.

It’s so superficial.

I buy a lot of bags–some expensive, some are just so-so because I often break my bags. I rotate them so as not to tax one particular bag and destroy it before I get my ROI.

I’ve been investing in the stock market since the great market crash of 2008. This enabled me to build my house debt-free. Although it’s small, I have the option to enlarge it later but then I don’t want a big house to clean…At least I can get off the rental market now and build wealth faster. One of the killers of wealth-building is consumer debt and rent. I don’t have both. This recession is a buying opportunity, granted that I don’t lose my job or some other catastrophe happening like illness.

So for those who look down on me for not having designer bags or designer everything–I want to pose this question: Do you already have a retirement fund? Are you fully insured? Do you have emergency funds? No? Then come back to me when you already have one/some.

Little changes

Posted on January 23, 2023 by admin

It’s a new year and I have again changed the position of my bed, hopefully this can help with my very problematic sleep. I also wanted to have my workstation removed from a vulnerable position i.e. back facing the door, because there were many instances when my girls walked in during my calls because I forgot to lock my door. Even though I have my virtual background on, it’s still unnerving to have them walk in on my calls and webinars unannounced.

*So this is the first thing you will see when you enter my room. Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

*My bed is at the farthest corner of my room. CallMeCreation.com*

I could have turned the bed perpendicular to the window…but that was the old position of my bed and it carries undesirable memories, so nope. I would have gotten more space with the old bed position–but nope.

*My workstation’s back is facing a less vulnerable position. Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

*But the background is still not Zoom-worthy. I have to stick to virtual backgrounds for interviews. Photo via webcam.*

*Hopefully this is a cozier spot for the bed so I can have better sleep quality. Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

I’m going to miss these big white walls where I can put a lot of artworks and photos. My tiny house has limited wall space for such things so I have to rotate frames depending on my mood.

There are now 50 individuals (mostly from government agencies) who have signed up for the data analytics training I helped organize with the graduate school of my university. That number includes my friends. The dean told me that they are prioritizing my group when it comes to scheduling since it was my idea to have this training for journos/communicators.

The unfortunate thing here is I could not commit yet to specific dates because of my travel itinerary, which still hangs by a thread. What is definite is that I need to to go to Singapore in April; I would have to assign the Bangkok coverage (two conferences) to my senior reporters in May because I would be moving houses (5 days off). I decided that I would only use 5 days off in December 2023 so I can have 5 days off for that training then another 5 days off in October for my birthday leave (that hopefully I can finally use for travel abroad).

Or I can ask for a study leave since this is a legit professional training.

Let’s see.

I didn’t work today. I could have but I decided not to. I declared my own holiday. Well, none from Southeast Asia i.e. Philippines submitted a story anyway. So what did I do the entire day? I really don’t know. It’s surprising how I can pass the day without remembering what I did. I think I watched videos of watercolor painting the entire day???

And I was also planning in my head how I would place the furniture in my tiny house so that required a lot of daydreaming.

Because I could manipulate spaces in my head, my contractor told me that I saved myself about PHP 20k since I was able to draw my plans in 1D but could still picture in my head how my sketch would translate to 3D or in the actual space. We were able to understand each other when I was showing him on-site where and how things will be positioned. If I didn’t have the capacity to imagine the spaces in my head, he would have to have the plans rendered in AutoCAD/Autodesk or Sketchup, which is an extra expense. Maybe it runs in the family 🤔. My uncle is an architect and he designed the blueprint of my parents’ house. It didn’t enter my mind to try my hand at architecture or interior design but I have always been interested in it. I always thought I didn’t have a knack for it.

Now that I have designed my own house, I think I can say I did it!

I would just have to invite my uncle to my housewarming to show it off and see his reaction. 🤣

Discontent brews

Posted on January 16, 2023 by admin

*Another bookmark in the works. Art and photo by CallMeCreation.com*

I just got off from Microsoft Teams after chatting with my colleague in Japan for more than an hour about our colleague (L) who just resigned. You see, I held a farewell call for her during our team’s weekly call. Then after that I sent an email to APAC editorial mailing list about the Kudoboard for her, announcing her resignation.

Anyway, my MS Teams chat went from one topic to another and my colleague (N) was ranting about xxx and yyyy. He threatened to leave and told my manager about in February 2022. His former manager, M, who left us in March last year for some consulting firm, told him to stay in journalism. He said he sensed M misses journalism. M told him that in hindsight, her years with our company wasn’t so bad at all compared to her current company now where she is managing director.

It was a matter of the grass is always greener on the other side, I guess.

I told N that I also feel that discontent sometimes when I feel like the company is being unfair to me. L and I had been chatting as well and she was sending me names of companies that are hiring. I was looking at the job descriptions and nothing excited me. She said, maybe you would like to try something new. I said, I think I’m happy with journalism. And if I want to try something new, it would be data journalism/analytics that’s why I’m going to enroll in a training program for data analytics. Besides, none of the job openings are remote.

OMG, I didn’t realize that remote working is so important to me now, like it’s on top of my criteria. 🙀

During this chat with my Japanese colleague, N, we were talking about our angst about certain things. Then I sent him a photo of me (actually, my laptop) with a swimming pool in the background (the one I took after Christmas). He couldn’t believe I could work by the poolside or by the beach. I said whenever I feel shit about my job, I look at photos like this and tell myself that being able to work anywhere, according to my pace and comfort level, is something I cannot quantify yet. That flexibility as a single parent is very important, I just realized. Being able to turn off my Outlook or ignore it during the weekends is critical that most of us take for granted.

Even though being a journalist means you are always “on”, I can still afford to tune out when I need to.

Being at home to see my children and cook for them is precious. My kids always drag me out of my room to have proper meals with them at the table. It’s important to them.

L told me to just go through interviews, just to see what’s out there and how I compare against industry. Yes, she makes sense. But deep inside I feel it’s too exhausting and would just be wasting my time doing all that when I’m not ready to jump yet. I would know if a job description will click within me.

N said, you are doing good. You are where you’re supposed to be.

I don’t know how to turn off the confusion sown inside my chest. I don’t know how to quiet it down.

I don’t know. This disquiet is fueled by this desire to earn more so maybe if the company grants me the 8-point agenda I sent my bosses, maybe the noise will die down?

*Twin A’s bookmark artwork.* ❤️ *Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

This morning my thought was “If only I could just continue creating like draw/paint and make things with my hands, maybe I won’t be having this anxiety every Monday morning…”

Again, I don’t know where or how to reach that happy compromise.

Productivity whuuut?!

Posted on August 29, 2022 by admin

*New mechanical keyboard arrived. I’m waiting for the new keycaps.* *Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

Yes. Forgive me. I’m spending my money on useless things that aren’t really helping with productivity. They just make me enjoy typing and some occasional game playing.

*The underside of my new keyboard. Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

This CPSTECH RF84 mechanical keyboard is much better than Royal Kludge when it comes to modes of connectivity. Its Bluetooth, 2.4G wireless dongle, and wired connections are working well whereas Royal Kludge is only usable on wired mode. It has ghosting and freezing issues when used as a wireless (both dongle and bluetooth) keyboard and it gets into conflict with my Logitech mouse (which is on 2.4G dongle). Plus the lack of arrow keys is a deal-breaker since it’s hard to edit articles. I always needed to use Fn+?, Fn +Win, Fn + Ctrl to be able to use the arrow functions. It slows me down significantly.

However, I’m keeping the Royal Kludge keeb because I like the blue switches. They’re clickety-clackety.

*First, I cleaned the older Royal Kludge RK61 because I saw that there were cat hair in between the keys. Lots of it. Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

I was swapping the blue switches of the RK61 with the Otemu red switches of the RF84 but I had been bending the copper contact points whenever I installed each switch so I stopped this foolishness.

*And I succumbed to temptation. I gave up. You just don’t walk into Mordor…Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

Then I downloaded Lord of the Rings. Goodbye productivity.

*I will regret this.* *Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

*Mommy, why are you playing that?–Twin A. Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

And I also bought Worms Rumble…and I always get demolished in every death match I get to enter because it has been 22 years since I last played this franchise! Of course I needed some time to get myself reacquainted with it. I enjoy strategy games better than RPGs. What’s enjoyable with Worms is that the characters are ridiculously cute and absurd while they annihilate each other with weapons of mass destruction. I often chose worms that speak Japanese and English with Scottish/Gaelic accent—that was 22 years ago7🤣😂. I haven’t tried the other languages this time but I got myself a tattoo and some weird headgear. As a worm. 🤣🤣🤣

I remember my father commenting then about my “weird” games whenever he caught me playing until 2 am…

Meanwhile, I think I need to buy myself a controller because I plan to buy Stray.

The reason why I get killed all the time in Worms is because I get slowed down by the keyboard + mouse combo. I guess my fate would be worse in Stray. I don’t want a cat to be eviscerated on screen just because I’m slow on a keyboard.

Oh dear…this will never end. Next thing I know, I will be buying a huge-ass TV and an absurdly priced gaming chair to play these games in our new flat. Then my nephews would be crowding into my living/kitchen area to play because my internet connection would be the best that I could afford while theirs remains pfffftttttt…😂😂😂

I should really, really stop this keyboard nonsense

Now I need a bigger table or a peg board to accommodate all my keyboards. 🤣

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ch2K2qIjt1u/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Food forest

Posted on August 16, 2022 by admin

I will soon achieve this.

Well not yet. I mean it takes years before you can establish a small holding like this. My plan is to have something more organized than this. Like veggie beds under the existing fruit trees that my father and my nephew planted. This guy also gave me an idea what to do the the laundry runoff—I will create a “wetland” to process the grey water from the washing machine since I plan to make my ground level a contained utility area and next to it is the outdoor patio for barbecues with an optional hot tub.

This video calmed me down after the shit I went through again today as a result of that idiotor that had been encroaching on other people’s turfs. Because he misunderstood the corporate structure (because stupid company named several layers the same thing), he messed up and made it look like I got it wrong. He published his own version of the story while I stood my ground and stuck with how we explain things. My manager kept on harping about it and until I drew a chart of the corporate structure and sent it to her and had the reporter explain it. So she recognized that I was right, the idiotor did a shortcut and edited it according how he understood it.

It was a painful way to end the day and my brain was so exhausted. All this hee-hawing while I was editing another story that competition was also chasing. I told another editor-friend that I was already tuning out (it was before 6 pm) as I was already so pissed and my brain was already hurting.

Then I played the piano and sang for an hour. God bless my piano that was within my reach.

*Fedora for the win! Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

For several days now, I had been installing several Linux operating systems on Twin A’s desktop computer because Minecraft doesn’t seem to agree with Ubuntu 20.04 and crashes. This last OS I installed is the latest Fedora version and so far so good, it is running smoothly. The Bluetooth manager is better compared to the crappy one that Lubuntu 22.04 has.

*Choosing wallpaper background. Photo by CallMeCreation.com*

Twin A: Mommy, how did you know how to install operating systems?

Me: I learned by myself. Trial and error.

A: How did you learn Linux systems?

Me: I learned again by myself. I studied by trial and error.

I wanted to add to her that I am a geek at heart and tinkering with operating systems was a hobby of mine before I had kids. I even wanted to have a Raspberry Pi system (the barebones PC setup) to experiment with. I wanted it to be my multimedia machine back when downloading *stuff* was still a thing (now everything is streamed).

I think I can make a smart home with this Raspberry Pi if I learn how to configure this. Something to occupy me—as if there’s not enough to occupy me these days.

Twin I said she saw my door was open this morning (while the AC is running) as the cats let themselves in while I was sleeping. As I posted here before, Sushi knows how to open my bedroom door if it’s not bolted.

My sister-in-law told me over Viber last night that they adopted a black kitten. She is part of the litter that resides near their apartment and SIL said she fears that mommy cat is pregnant again. I told her when we come home this Friday I will bring my cat carrier so we can bring the mommy cat to the College of VetMed hospital to have her checked. If she’s not pregnant, we can have her spayed the following day.

*Black Kitty.* *I want to name her Kuromi クロミ*. Hehehe.

We will be spending 3 days at my mom’s. I hired my nephew to tutor my girls on Fri and Sat for their upcoming simulation high school entrance exam on Sunday. I’m quite useless when it comes to Math because I already forgot how to solve algebra problems, among other things. My nephew, Kuya H, graduated with honors from my high school–the high school that my girls will be trying to get into. At least his memory is fresher than mine. I took the entrance exam in 1991 and of course I couldn’t remember if I had a hard time when I was taking the exam. All I remember was I had no problem with English and my high score there pulled up my Math score 🤣.

OK, another day has ended and OMG I need to cut off all communication tomorrow so I can finally finish my drafts. Like seven of them.

Here we go again

Posted on August 9, 2022 by admin

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.

No more.

Stories from the sidelines

A journalist has a life other than news

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