you are doomed

I am screwed.
I am lost.
It's over.

The worst thing about the adulthood is that we cannot just walk away.

I mean, we can, but that'll be very irresponsible, harmful (to others) and, well, rude.

So considering those who will be affected by my quitting or giving up, despite my accumulating and apparent incompetence, I cannot just 'get up and leave.'

The new plan must now be my way out. A way out with some dignity, and a job.

How is it possible that at the age of 45, I still don't know what I want? And all I do is complain? to the point that I alienate some of my most previous friends? I have turned into a whinny middle-age lady stuck in the middle management with self-inflicted calamities. Both at work and at home.

But all of it, literally all of it, can be classified as a first-world problem. IOW, I have nothing to complain, really.

Miles are covered one step at a time

Stressed or distressed or depressed.
Can't really tell the difference at this point.
I am facing, as usual, the massive consequence of my failure, inadequacy, shortcomings, whatever.

The biggest mistake I have made is, accepting to do more than I could handle.
Pretending to have the answers I don't have.
Failing to say 'no.'

But if I had admitted to not having solutions. If I had said no and stayed within my small comfort zone... Could I have seen and experienced what I did in the last 12 months? No, I could not.

I will take the plane tomorrow. It will most likely be the most humiliating and uncomfortable trip I have ever had in my professional life. Worse than the one I had a month ago. I will be ridiculed, maybe blamed. Why am I doing this? What have I got myself into?

Here I am wishing for an accident, that will let me 'off the hook.'

I am tired. Maybe, I am just simply, really really tired and the reality is not as awful as I perceive. Maybe, just may be, I am not as pathetic as I feel. Maybe, I will not be received so poorly on the other side of the ocean. Maybe I will be granted the forgiveness that I so crave. Maybe I don't even need to be forgiven.

Why is it that I am always in the position of being forgiven? I never have to forgive others because nobody ever, or hardly ever, wrongs me. I am surrounded by honest people who are wise enough not to promise what they cannot deliver. They don't have to beg for my forgiveness. I, on the other hand, am apologizing constantly. Non-stop. To everyone. For causing them pain, obstacles, extra work, nuisance. Why am I so imperfect?

I deserve whatever is coming my way. Resigned, I go. I will take the plane. To my dreaded, humiliation. Oh, my friend, will you forgive me?

Miles? more like 6000 miles. one step at a time, sure,  but I will by flying at 800 miles/hour. 6000 miles away, awaits my doom. The doom I deserve. One giant step at a time, I go. I plunge, with a defeated smile. I am tired.

The road appears under the feet of the one going

It's 5:30 AM. It's the first day of school (and work). I wake up with a pounding heart like a school child. Because I didn't finish my homework. Being 45 years old and no longer a student, I will not be scolded or punished by the teachers, of course. Rather, the endless to-do list, the low production rate and disapproval and disappointment by my colleagues will do the job of a teacher.  Sleep deprivation for the next several weeks, no months. Yes months 'til mid-May this year. I have not even sorted out my to-do list to determine what to do first. In fact, it has gotten too scary to make the list.

What scares me the most is my diminished mental capacity. In 2015, I have lost the ability to juggle between the parental and professional duties, while I appear to juggle between various professional tasks (at work) just fine. But I cannot get hardly any work done once I come home. I become a mother (not even a wife) and .... that's it. I cannot complete a single task for my work until the next morning. If this is a form of "burn-out" it has lasted over 7 months now. If it is not, then I am suffering from a sort of dementia. A scary thought, indeed.

No matter. I will have to show up at work in less than 3 hours. And I have to start getting the job done. Must make that lengthy To-Do list that I dread making, reading, then adding more. It will be not be an easy, or even an okay start this year. It will be a busy, confusing, and likely an impossible start. But it's a start and I have to life my leg, turn my brain on and get going. And I pray to no one in particular that my brain will start, then may the road appear under my feet.

Firm friendship is the key to your success

Twice. Two fortune cookies in a row tell me this.
On this day of Thanksgiving, I am grateful for my friends above everything else (except my parents, my husband and my kids, maybe).

Everynight, I lightly wish I were dead or be close to the end of my life. For trivial reasons, mostly related to my unsuccessful events at work. And I don't want to face problems or fix them. It seems much simpler to just leave them behind to someone else. Of course that will be unprofessional and morally wrong. But if I am dead, how can anyone blame me?

I have no basic "survival, fighting to stay alive" sort of problems. I am healthy. People whom I care are mostly very healthy. None of them are suffering from maltreatment at school, work, etc. I have a steady job with a fair amount of challenges and opportunities. More than some, less than others. Average, or slightly above average when compared to other people in my profession among the first world countries. We own our apartment. There is no civil war in the country I live. Just occasional terrorist attacks, like most other industrialized countries who go and airstrike terrorists on their turf. The city I live in is very safe. I can walk home from a nearby train station passed midnight without fearing for my life.

People who have these issues appear to want to continue living... from distance, from where I can see that's how it seems. They want to survive. They want to live. I, on the other hand, take my life for granted and I wish for "success." But apparently, I would rather "die" than make the necessary effort to be successful. Oh, my. I am spoiled.

I don't have to make any effort to stay alive. That's extremely fortunate because if I had to fight to live, I probably would be dead very quickly. Or perhaps, I will surprise myself by becoming a real warrior and show tremendous will to live. Perhaps, that's how most (or many) people are. We only become motivated when our lives (or the lives of those who matter) are in peril. Then even I will show some sign of life. Otherwise, we become life's lazy freeloaders. I certainly am.

Ah, if I can convince myself that I am actually dying, I can gather my **it together and fix the variable temperature insert, review that article, write more articles, read more articles, make that call to the market research lab, setup the stereo microscope and cook decent dinner for my kids.
 

Integrity is the essence of everything successful.

While I do not fully agree, I admit that the lack of integrity is catching up with me.
Loose ends are coming back to haunt me. Karma?

Excuses and catchy phrases I threw in here and there, now seem like "small lies."
And I find myself making more excuses. This has to stop. I have to stop. Need to stick to what I can handle. I am not cut out for treading water in a big ocean on a stormy day. I am 45. I write like a 23 looking for her best career choice. I am too old for this. I should be too old for this, no?

4am, 3am or 5am. Dreams with giant spiders and ants. Days spent on manipulating and sending out excuse messages for failing to manipulate. Those spiders, blocking my way. The doors without knobs that I cannot get back inside, FedEx delivery men coercing me to sign a dubious paper. I don't want to fall asleep, unless I am too tired to dream. My work days are a mess ... for I lack integreity to finish any job. And in between the dream world and the real world, its the worst territory where I sit awake not wanting to go back to either world.

3am and then 5am.

I need some sleep. 

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

That's what we do everyday. It's called "planning in anticipation" and we all work darn hard to plan our moves in anticipation of others' moves. "Others" include every entity outside our own mind, including our own bodily functions, natural phenomena, pure coincidences, whatever.

Looking back at my past plans and looking harder at my present conditions, I must say some plans did work out. I must say, I have been pretty lucky living in the world where so many have fallen vicitm to civil wars, religeous opressions, extreme poverty, etc., starting in their early childhood. I, on the other hand simply led my first-world and middle-class life, protected by my parents, respective governments, and the civility of my neighbors. And even under these circumstances, my plans, long-term and short, have seen non-negligeable success rates. So no, I do not complain. I still think I could have done better, but no, no complains.

Plans are similar to weahter forecasts. Your chance of planning well and being able to execute accordingly falls of exponentiallly with a time constant of anywhere between one week and a year... multiplied by a coefficient that takes in account the number of external factors involved in the plan. If I had too much time to waste (errr, what am I doing right now? never mind) I could probably build a statistically viable data set on "plans made" and their "completion (partial)" to find a correlation function with a more accurate time constant. Perhaps, I should have been a statistical sociologist who mulls over the fluctiations and dissipations in human lives of the first world.

Well, umm... I am not. 
But as a priviledged, first world member, I should be able to make better plans and thus build my future. Here "better" signifies "more realizable and sustainable."

Another day starts. Use it to build a better future.

Happiness is not about the absence of troubles but the skill to overcome them

I had a minor car accident 2 days ago, 1.5 days ago, to be more precise. It was a small one, probaby 50/50. I will never know because the other person, a moped driven by a young man (boy) refused to file a report or call the police. I filed a pre-plainte with the police. My husband is going to call the insurance company today. But he is leaving for a vacation with the kids this morning, in the car with which I had an accident. There is only a foot wide dent (and a couple of smaller ones) on the front door, and a scratch mark on the back door of the passenger side. Doors close fine.

Since then, I have trouble eating and thinking. Apparently, I am a very fragile person. I consider possible outcomes, negative and bad, from this accident and these thoughts frighten me.

My husband can have a bigger accident... a door flies open while driving on highway throwing my daughter out. The wheels come out. The scooter driver, the kid, has suffered a bigger injury than he had originally reckoned. The kid has a mean streak and comes back to torment me. The list goes on.
 Added to the regular list of difficulties, albeit all First-world kinds, I cannot sleep normally and I cannot swallow much.  

The fortune cookie telling me that my happiness depends on my ability to overcome them does not reassure me the least. I don't want to overcome any trouble right now.  I don't want any, really, I don't. If anything goes wrong with my husband's driving and results in injury and or loss of lives of my family members, I will not be able to overcome such a trouble. It's not a trouble. It's not a challenge. It will be a tragedy of the worst kind and I will not even pretend to overcome.

I wish I believed in God, a sort of God that can interfere and protect people from suffering just because they prayed for it. I don't. Not that kind of God, at least. Not sorts of God depicted by world's major religions. But for this particular trip, I fear for their safety and this makes me want to pray for the lack of better ideas to calm me down. Please protect them.

For all other problems, or troubles, rather, I will overcome them. I am a very happy person with a reasonable list of difficulties in life.