The time is 8:43 AM. After cooking and serving us a pack of Pampanga’s Best and rice, my wife lies asleep on our bed. Our daughter and our son lie sleeping as well, all three resuming their slumber.
I was set to continue pursuing my forty winks as well. And yet, here I sit, in my overweight glory typing on the smallest keyboard I have ever owned.
The past 22 months of our lives have been quite the story. Well, the plot twist (COVID-19) may be similar as everybody else’s in the world, but ours has been of quiet and living. Since 2020, we have stayed indoors for the most part. Only going out when necessity demands. In the first year of this pandemic, my hands had enough fingers to count how many times I went out for work.
But, here in 2022, we’re facing the odd struggle. My whole family has recently been infected with the latest surge of COVID (my doctor parents suspect it is the Omnicron variant) despite almost two years of safe and secure health practices. Thankfully, me, my wife, and my two kids were spared from the illness. And what’s good is that my parents, my siblings, and my nieces are fast on the road to recovery.
But this is not about the disease and how it has wreaked havoc on the world. Not how it has recently invaded and lived within our midst.
This is actually me, a soon-to-be 35 year old pausing to reflect on his life thus far.
It is not a jest nor a falsehood when I say that I had always felt I was meant for great things. Well, it could have been hubris but, what would a six year old me know of that concept let alone be able to pronounce the word? In my elementary years of schooling, achieving high marks and winning academic competitions were a normal thing for me. Sure, I wasn’t part of the top in my whole batch but, show me a kid who was consistently in their class’s top ten every semester for twenty-eight consecutive times over seven years without much effort and I’d tell you that was me.
My high school and college days were a different matter. Unaccustomed to actually putting effort to study and hit academic goals, I chose music to latch on to. I sang for a rock band with my friends. Oh, we spent our glory days playing to a mix of acquaintances and other bands’ friends in dingy bars where beer was only P19 a bottle (for a San Mig Light no less!) but I loved it. To teenaged me, there was no better feeling in the world than singing on stage. I felt like I touched heaven whenever I closed my hands around the mic head and closed my eyes and drew courage to belt out the latest cover of a pop song my bandmates eagerly practiced. Back then, I thought: “Yes, this is the path for me. Booze, bars, and (soon) babes”.
I thought I was going to be a rock star. I was a (try-hard) poet. I had the swishy emo air. I was (arguably) cute enough. And I was the damn frontman of a pop-punk/emo/screamo band! Recipe for success, right?
Wrong. It wasn’t my calling. Oh well, I guess there were some circumstances that proved to be an obstacle to attaining the rockstar life but, I chose not to in the end.
Work was different, and I guess what opened my eyes to how the struggle to earn is. I started a job working for a hospital’s marketing department and learned the ropes there. And by learning the ropes, I learned how to interact with people in a toxic, corporate environment. It was a snake pit of ambition, greed, and backstabbing. There were unsavory practices that I saw that I will never wish for any fresh graduate to experience.
The highlight of my stay there – and I guess, my life – is that I met who would be the love of my life there. My best friend, my wife.
We got married soon after we started dating: a whirlwind romance unlike ANY you may have heard of. The mountains we moved and the enemy we faced was… unconventional to say the least. It is a story worthy of its own writing that I may or may not get to. Heck, at this moment, I do not even know if this entry is something I will publish anywhere! Truth be told, this is the first journal entry (or possible blog) that I have written in years!
But, suffice it to say that, we got married and started a family. We blinked and the years passed. We struggled, we enjoyed, we laughed, and we loved. And now, here I am in 2022. I have achieved some of the goals that I have set for my corporate career – when I was 22 years old, I told myself that I would be the head of my own marketing team. Seven years of grinding later and I was the manager of my department. Today, I am the head of marketing for a whole country in a startup setting of course.
But, I am unsatisfied.
There are dreams that I had when I was young that almost moves me to tears when I think of them. That, I do not have the energy, the talent, the skill, nor even the willingness to go for.
At times, I feel like I have wasted my years in thankless jobs trying to impress my co-workers for all those promotions and raises. And when I face myself at the end of the day – I still feel unaccomplished.
I feel lacking.
But then, another day rolls by and BOOM off to the grind again. Wear the mask of the hustler, the manager, the one who gets things done because he believes in the company.
But, and this is something I have only realized and will only put into words NOW: perhaps I let myself believe more in others’ dreams and others’ visions… because I don’t really believe in myself at all.
And that breaks my heart.
Shit, I cried.
Despite all of my claims of being a corporate kind of guy, despite all the responsibilities I choose to shoulder from my career, I believe that the biggest burden I have … is myself.
And I can’t seem to get out of this loop.
So, Julian. 2022 huh? Turning 35, huh? Planning to live elsewhere, huh?
Believe in yourself more. Others believe in you or have believed in you in the past.
You should, too.
WORK-LIFE WARRIOR 