Day 90: A Letter To All Young Girls, Wild and Free

And since it is Monday, I would like to reminisce what my Mondays were like, some years back. I always considered Mondays toxic. A majority of us would. So I applied this saying together with my other friends:  work hard, party harder. So we had wine or alcohol nights every Monday. Never mind that we have to report to the office the next day. It didn't matter. Mondays were stressful. We have worked hard. We have earned the badge to party.

Photo from www.colorfully.eu.

Work hard, party harder, they said. It would be fun, they said.


That motto did not apply only on Mondays. I lived it by heart. Yes, that is exactly what I did. 

I worked hard. 

Earlier in my professional life, I worked around twelve hours a day at the minimum and go to the office even on weekends. That was voluntarily -- that was how much I loved my job. Sometimes, I skipped lunch. Then I go home tired and what I thought was the beauty of living on my own is now backfiring. 

Living on your own without your parents spelled awesome (In hindsight, not that much fun anymore). You can sleep whenever you want to. Go home anytime you want to. You can eat whatever you want and in my case, since I was too tired to even move a muscle, my dinner would consist of fast food takeouts, pancit canton, inasal or whatever express food that was convenient to prepare. On weekends that I was free, I slept the whole day. That was my body conking out and me giving in to it.

It was only imperative to give myself a pat on the back -- to reward myself for all my hard work. So, I partied even harder. I was proud that I can handle my alcohol. I know for a fact that my ex-boyfriend (now husband) was also proud of that, too. Vices are sooo fun when you are young.

It never dawned on me that it would jeopardize anything. I was young. Besides, during that time, no one really told me that this could happen. I only knew about these crazy immune disorders now. And to add to that, I had friends who smoked all their life, quit when they were pregnant and went back to smoking immediately after birth. No complications. I have friends who drove their car amidst this crazy Manila traffic up to their ninth month. I had friends who worked until their water broke. I had friends who were allowed a cup of coffee a day throughout their whole pregnancy. So this really, was never a concern. Everybody seems to get pregnant easy. You just have to want it, and when you are ready, boom! – you will just bloat like a balloon.


And then, I got smacked into this whole thing. Yeah, it is true. Regrets really come last. I took care of my career, somehow assisted my family. Took care of everything except my body. When I hear about healthy lifestyle before, I scoffed. I am not unhealthy!!! There are people worse than me - people who do drugs or what-not. Hell, I don’t even get sick!

 

So, in retrospect, how was I extremely unhealthy?

• Vices
• Not enough sleep because I claimed that I was insomniac
• Coffee
• Fried food
• Very little veggies and fruits
• Very little water
• A red carnivore (I love lamb, steaks, everything red meat)
• Coke everyday (the softdrink!)

Yeah, I may not have consumed alcohol every day but my eating habit is really bad. My husband always told me that this will be the source of my sickness. But I always thought that if I would die, better eat everything that is good. 


But I didn’t die. And now, I want a baby. And my past habits are haunting me. Oh yes, perdition indeed. 


So what steps am I undertaking? I will tell you –

• Stop all the vices. No alcohol. Not even a puff of cigarette. No nothing. Cold turkey. So this is how it feels. Not that bad actually. Given the right motivation. I thought I could never quit.
• Lessen consumption of red meat. The husband prepares my nutrition plan. For today, he prepared chicken, salad and kimchi. Oh, this is going to be fun!
• No more coffee and Coke. This is my greatest struggle. I replaced water with coffee and Coke. Now I have to go back to water (and juices, and herbal teas). Good luck to me! From all these, coffee withdrawal is the thing funks me up. I am so dependent on coffee. Now, I am having tension headaches. Hopefully, this will come to pass. I have been replacing coffee with tea and fruit juices.
• Sleep. This was easy. I did not bring work home anymore. They say that you have to prep your mind for rest. The more that you do something before bedtime, the more you drive Mr. Sleep away.

So, I urge you, those who can relate and who live vicariously through these experiences, to just think a little about your future. I am not a hypocrite. I won’t tell you to stop. But if you see a baby in the years to come, then you know what to do. 

Sometimes, you think you would never want a kid but all those will change when you would finally get married. When you would finally yearn for a baby. When you would want to complete your family.

In all honesty, I did not. Babies were actually the last thing on my mind. But trust me, you will want to. Unless you plan to be single for the rest of your life and you are 100% sure that you will be a eunuch, you will want to create a family – and a precious little one is part of that.

An overactive immune system caused by the toxins and acute stress that it has to constantly battle is sooo expensive to treat. Trust me, I am having that problem now so I know. The reason may not be totally  because of this (research has no conclusive results yet on why people develop autoimmunity and other immune disorders), but I believe that it is part and parcel of everything that I am undergoing (not to mention my over-compatibility with my husband’s leukocytes)!



I think that the new motto for young ambitious girls shouldn't be work hard, party harder. It should be work hard, rest harder (a vacation, a walk in the beach, a rejuvenating massage to give you a sense of relaxation).   Doesn’t seem that exciting, but boy, you would thank yourself when the time comes. 

Writer's Note: I know that this is supposed to be a post about happiness or hope as this is my 365 days of happy. However, I just want to do this writeup because as I mentioned, everything about repro-immuno disorder is becoming my advocacy. I still consider this part of my project because in my own little way, I hope I am paying kindness forward (to all young girls out there) especially because I have received many random acts of kindness over the past months that we have discovered about our condition.  Also, this is a late post for Monday.

xx, 
Corporate Junkie

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Day 13: HappIER At Work

I am happier at work. I WAS happy at work but now, I am much, much happier. I will tell you why – 

All this time, I have had this mantra which I came across a favourite book but it’s only now that I am actually, trying to live it -- 

“Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you're keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls...are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.”

― James Patterson, Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

I am (hopefully, was) Corporate Junkie for no reason. I loved my work. I was addicted to it. When I started working at 20, I was relentless.  There was no other motivation except my own. It was not because of money or a promotion. It was because I had a dream when I took up my degree in Marketing and Mass Communications – someday, I will be a great marketing person.

And so live that dream, I did. 

I stayed in the office for more than ten hours without overtime pay. I worked on weekends not because the bosses asked me to nor to kiss ass but because I wanted to finish so many things. I brought work home, I skipped meals, I obsessed on making my brands bigger. I dreamt of my brands, in giant-sized versions of themselves hounding me because they were not market leaders. My whole entity was 90% my career.

Perhaps this was the reason why I was not able to establish real or probably, deep personal relationship with anyone. I have this incessant need to be able to control the things around me. Humans scared me. They are unpredictable, sometimes volatile. They hurt you or backbite you or say nasty things about you no matter how you please them. My Excel and PowerPoint files do not disappoint me. They render the results that I want to see without any complaints. They do not find faults, they just execute. We had a very close relationship, me and my work files.

At some point though, I had to stop my work obsession. The tipping point, maybe, was when my husband blurted to me in exasperation (or irritation) that  I do not text, I do not reply, I just simply zone out when I am at work.  He was so frustrated about it. There was also a time when my office friends hesitated to invite me to after-office sessions because all I talk about is work! Of course, I shrugged it off at first. How petty can this be!

Later did I realize that it was a glass ball reaching its breaking point. I learned my lesson in a hard way.

I have changed somehow (or at least, so I think). I have come to terms with myself and the idea that I can actually do my job without sacrificing other things in life – like friends, companionship, my health. Social media helped a lot and of course, all these messaging apps which connect people no matter where they are. I was just lucky that I have some REAL friends and a very understanding family who actually understand my quirks this whole time. 

I have resolved my issues. I tell myself that I have already reached the pinnacle of that college dream. Based on my own standards, of course. During my time, all the brands I handled were market leaders. Call it luck or whatever you want. I do not claim the glory, please pardon me if that is how this sounds like. All I am saying is this -- I was in love with my brands. I wanted to be great at what I do. It has already been given to me for the past nine years of handling wonderful brands from C2 to PowerShot to IXUS to VIXIA. I have done my share. I have lived my dream.

Now, I appreciate so much what is on my plate. What I do now is wonderful. Doing projects that help people, promoting a brand that has long established its name in the crevices of this world. More than that, it helped me let go and live. To go home to my family. To take care of my dog, to talk to my husband, to do other things than just obsessing on numbers. To actually enjoy lunch time with my team mates and have the time to goof around. 

I could not be more grateful. I keep on thanking God for bringing me to where I am now when at first, I was resistant to the change He was bringing into my life. I never thought I could live not being a marketer. But I am now. And I am enjoying it.

xx,

Corporate Junkie

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