Skip to main content

Juggling...

How do you learn to juggle 2 jobs you really like? Factor in a social life you just recently worked on? How about financial woes and reliefs? Obligations? Responsibilities? Enjoyment? Love? These are the things I have to deal with whenever I step out of the house, and into the real world. I've been so "at-home" in an ivory tower of academic engagement in UPLB, that now stepping into the real world is something I have to learn.

Maybe I've had a taste of the real world while I was in UPLB -- relationships, all kinds of people, and mostly matters that dealt with emotions and thoght. But after a few months here in Manila, I feel like a freshman still in this thing called the real world. Or maybe this is just Manila, and the real world is somewhere else? I'll let you know when I find out.

All the different people to meet, to deal with, and to learn from. All the different sights to see and to be part of. All the lives to know and be a part of. It's all new to me, and although I've found a comfortable routine, I'm far from over. I'm far from quitting. And I'm far from liking it.

Maybe in a couple more years I'll get used to this -- maybe what I need is a reality check and finish my BS degree first. Maybe when I get that degree and find better opportunities for myself, I can be somewhere I want to be and someone I wish to be. And maybe, just maybe, I'll be happy juggling whatever things I'll be juggling by then.

But now, back to the real world.

CHill...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

From FOMO to JOMO

Until very recently I believed that I needed to be on top of the latest news and happenings not only in my field (computer science and software engineering) but also in as many things as I can be on top of. This meant subscribing to all sorts of magazines, newsletters, YouTube channels, Twitch streamers, watching TV and live sport events, etc. — I was on top of a lot of the latest happenings, trends, news, interesting developments. I was having fun and I felt busy. What I did not feel was particularly effective nor productive. I felt like I was consuming so much information with the thought that it might be useful someday. When I was younger this wouldn’t have been an issue but I realised that ever since I’ve started taking stock of what I’ve been spending my time on, that a lot of it I’ve been spending just staying on top of things that I really didn’t need to be on top of. This article is about some of the realisations I’ve made in the course of exploring this issue of “FOMO” or

Reconnecting with people

2021 started with a a good sense of connection for me, having spent time with friends and family in a simple celebration of the oncoming year. The transition from 2020 to 2021 and being able to look back at a good part of my recent history got me thinking about how life has been for me and the family for the past decade. There’ve been a lot of people that I’ve met and become friends with while there are those that I’ve left behind and lost touch with. There’s a saying about treating old friends different from new ones, which I do appreciate now that I’m a bit older. It also means that my relationships with people that I get to spend a good amount of time with take a different shape. This reflection has given me some time and space to think about what it means to reconnect with people. Friends are the family we choose ourselves. — Edna Buchman I have the privilege of having life-long friends that I don’t always stay in regular contact with. From my perspective, if I consider you a frien

Appreciating Rizal...

Nope, this is not an academic post. More of a reflective and wrote-because-i-was-enlightened type post. Anyway, I just passed a paper on Rizal's notion of a nation according to Quibuyen (a local writer who devoted a book -- A Nation Aborted -- on his treatise on Rizal). Chapter 6 was an interesting read, and a definite eye opener. Rizal all of a sudden became interesting, especially to someone like me who could care less. It seems that most of what Rizal aims for and wrote about is still evident in today's Philippines as I see it. I wonder why I didn't get to appreciate Rizal and his work when I was still in high school -- might be the fault of the high school and the curriculum, or might be because I was still considerably immature then. I wasn't able to understand most of Rizal's writings though even if I got to reading them basically because they translated from Spanish to Filipino/Tagalog. I don't have problems with Tagalog, until you put it in writing. I