Growing old is like a perennial battle against hubris. In your early twenties, you’d strike first and you’d strike anywhere. You are not bogged down by hypertension, migraines, lower back ache and all the other gifts of physiological aging that typically begin to happen sometime in midlife. It’s only in midlife where you learn how to optimize, declutter your time and energy and headspace, and begin thinking about other things like passing on good things to the next generation.
It takes me, on average, 2-3 months before I get wind of a social media trend or news. My other family members who still have active social media accounts are the ones who would clue me in on it. I was at a work-related conference on AI recently and the guy I was speaking with was asking me what life without having a regular social media account feels like. It was during that moment in the conference where people were exchanging Linkedin profiles that I realized how differently I use my internet connection now.
I am close to reading 50 books for the half-year, and I am excited about the things I am building quietly. Recently, I invested in improving my environment design. I set up a walking pad near the television, I have a posture corrector in my chair, and I have an aluminum stand that makes sure my laptop’s screen stays at eye level when I do my work. It is amazing how these ridiculously small environmental changes make a huge difference to how I approach my daily grind.
Life has been good. Chill but Consistent Movements It’s been a half-month of predominant light walking workouts. I think this is the time where I really learn the value of slowing down. Brain fog is gone, the junk food consumption is starting to taper off naturally, and the weight is slowly but surely shedding itself along with it. I have a 2000-step minimum daily on my temporary smartwatch, and the current challenge is maintaining good sleep hours for recovery.
If you told me last year that watching 6 seasons of an awarded medical drama show is part of my learning and self-improvement for 2023, I’d probably scoff at you. But that is precisely what is happening. I remember watching one season of this show when I was still in college. That was a long time ago. I had some classmates who were psychology majors that time. They got inspired to become real doctors because of this show.
Summer is about to end here in Manila and we are experiencing the occasional drizzles ushering in the June rainy season. But my fever for my newfound routine has been going along swimmingly. The walking pad I bought from Shopee has been a godsend; even on days I did not hit my 8 hours of sleep, I still manage to do a light physical activity to jumpstart my morning. Much of the brain fog has been reduced, my usage of my gadgets have been intentional, and nobody has been hijacking my attention on my inboxes lately.
I do not think there is ever a mother who never had to deal with a child’s fever. It is a rite of passage. Lucky you if it falls on a work day where you spend the evenings doing sentry duty with a thermometer and paracetamol. I consider myself fortunate that I have flexibility of hours to take breaks to administer meds and log symptoms during the day. There are others who have to commute after not sleeping for nights.
I had a different 2023 summer. The previous years had been more eventful. Today, I am at the end of my coding and project tasks and will be on my way to visit the wake of my bestfriend’s brother. My bestfriend just came from a long flight. It’s surreal when the person who died is 6 years younger than us. I kept remembering the time he helped us get to the hangar for my bestfriend’s Balesin birthday weekend.
Daybreak in Zurich It was autumn and the middle of October. I was looking at signages in German and relied on icons and arrows to get me to the right places. The second part of the flight was delayed. Some random (and likely bored) guy was broadcasting angry smileys and weird pictures via Airdrop. It was midday there, few people knew I was awake since 2 am because I had grad school classes in Manila.
I am currently on a two-week break for my health. After I hosted the 2021 Pista ng Mapa (Philippine Festival of Maps) last Saturday and finished grad school finals week with a grade of 99%, I crashed and found myself running on empty. Actually, I was no longer running by Sunday evening. I was just emptied out. Forced to rest in bed and let go of my usual Herculean work load, I finally had time to reflect in my solitude and unpack the events from the last 12 months of my life.