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Friday’s 10 Happy Things, v5

Published by Justine

I’m happy that my happy things entries have finally reached the 5th version! Let’s not waste any time..

  1. Busy busy week! The upside to a busy week is that time flies by really fast.. I had to run so many errands this week in between my 3 jobs (phew)!
  2. Signed resignation letter. This was one of the hardest things I had to do this year. So much decision-making took place since the beginning of the year and I finally decide to hand it in. This is really for me more than anyone else.. and I hope this decision takes me to great places.
  3. Yoga. Woohoo!! How happy am I? The last time I did yoga was about a month and a half ago (one of my longest hiatus ever since I started). Yesterday’s class was a lot slower than the usual flow so it was a bit taxing on my hamstrings.. BUT ALL GOOD. Ahhhh.
  4. The Six Pack dot co. My best friends and I decided to start a blog about our friendship and post about our lives. I can’t wait to see where it goes! We’ve already started scheduling posts between the 6 of us. Do check it out.
  5. A conversation with a good friend I haven’t talked to in a while. Distance does things to a friendship.. if you let it. I had a good friend moved to the States last year and this year we both went into transitions in life that made our communication falter (she doesn’t have social media, unlike me) a little but talking to her again felt so great that I cried a lot of happy, grateful tears.
  6. A step to good health. First full week since the beginning of July that I haven’t gone to the hospital, seen the doctor, or sent to the ER for anything. Let’s celebrate.
  7. Planning for upcoming travels. Sometimes I get so caught up with the negativities of life that I forget to realize there’s so much ahead of me. I have a few travel plans lined up towards the end of the year and a lot of planning is being made. Crossing fingers they all turn out well!
  8. Midnight cab rides home. I was just thinking about this last night. It’s going to be my last month in my favorite shift (I live for the mid shift) and I realized I need to savor the midnight cab rides home where there is no traffic and the city is quiet and there’s a familiar sense of solitude. I may be overplaying the whole scenario, but that’s just me.
  9. Fujinoya. Because of Foodpanda I’ve been ordering in a lot and Fujinoya has been my go to restaurant mostly because they have everything. I love their sandwiches and selection of simple and delicious cakes.
  10. Positive uncertainty. When I decided to leave my current job to start a new one completely different from anything I’ve ever done before (remote with a little bit of travel), the whole uncertainty initially bothered me like crazy. Then I realized this is a decision I made for myself.. and will hopefully lead me to better and bigger things.
Ditz Revolution

What Have I Outgrown?

Published by Justine

outgrown

What prompted me to write this was the usual recurring thought that came up: If I have ever changed in the past few (or 10) years or so. I’m constantly living and trying to get through each day that sometimes I forget I’m actually growing, changing, improving (or not), and most of all, learning.

In a little notepad the other night, I listed out the stuff I’ve outgrown hoping that I would be able to elaborate them in the form of a blog entry. It’s weird because as I am typing this, my heart is actually beating faster than usual. Anything that has to do with change is always an unsettling yet exciting feeling at the same time.

Binge-watching TV shows
I haven’t done this in such a long time that I even forgot the last time I did it. In fact, I’ve hardly watched any good tv shows the past year or two. I remember I could go 2-3 days marathoning shows and finishing a season in less than 48 hours. Now, I can’t even watch an hour-long TV show anymore. I’m not entirely sure what brought upon the thought-process of outgrowing this but it seems like I haven’t been watching American TV shows. This year I started taking on more than 2 jobs so I have less time to watch anything. I admit I do miss it, but can’t be bothered to catch up with everything anymore.

The need to know EVERYTHING
I remember 3 years ago when I could read through more than 1000 feeds on my Google Reader every day. I subscribed to EVERYTHING and tried to read them all. From music, to technology, entertainment, politics, sports, art, design, local news, Korean entertainment I had to KNOW IT ALL. I wanted to be up to date with everything and that even included watching TV shows. Now I just focus on what benefits me the most because aside from a maturing brain that can’t handle too much information, I realized I could do something more productive than trying to be updated with every little thing the world has to offer.

Pirating music
When I feel strongly about an artist or an album I always buy their music physically or digitally. For all other songs, there’s always “free” downloads. The minute Spotify pre-launched in the Philippines early last year, I immediately bought a subscription and my music downloading stopped. I even deleted my whole iTunes music library early this year and celebrated losing about ten thousand songs from my hard drive. My laptop breathed a little better too.

Pulling all-nighters
Who am I to say this, really? Here I am at 2:53AM, writing this blog post when I’ve been working from 9am to 12am the previous day. I have to be awake in about 6 hours for work #1 then get ready for work #2 after. But really, I value sleep much more now, and not just sleeping in during mornings.. but actually sleeping RIGHT. I used to pull all-nighters a lot because I didn’t want to miss anything (cue The need to know EVERYTHING as stated above) but now I keep it to a minimum, or none at all. It feels good to wake up knowing you had enough sleep.

There are quite a few more that I wanted to add but couldn’t find the right words to elaborate, like eating junk food, or drinking til’ you drop (which I think I probably will still do provided my health stats are great). Even though all these didn’t necessarily happen this year, but in retrospect, the realization itself has been good for self-improvement.

Friday’s 10 Happy Things, v4

Published by Justine

When Helga tweeted a reminder yesterday to do this week’s happy things, I realized it’s been over a month since my last one! I just got out of the hospital AGAIN after a 2-day stint (3rd time this year) so this week (actually the whole 2 months of June and July) has been a challenging one. Here I am still powering through! Let’s get it on.

  • Post tonsillectomy recovery. It was a rough couple of weeks but this week was the opening to my full recovery. Goodbye, pain!
  • FOOD. I am finally back to eating normally. You don’t know how happy this makes me.
  • A new company phone. After months of struggling with Java enabled WhatsApp on my old Nokia, my boss in Singapore bought me an Android! Ah. The start of better, productive things.
  • A weekend at the beach. It wasn’t just a weekend at the beach, or my parents’ hometown, or a place that I always go back to.. it was a chance to spend time and bond with my parents for a relaxing 2 days. My dad left for Indonesia again 2 days ago so it was a great opportunity for me to spend that weekend with him because while he was here, much of my time was spent in bed recovering.
  • August. I’d like to think that a new month means a renewal of sorts and a cleanse from all the bad juju of the previous month.
  • A new friend. I’ve been a social recluse lately but I gained a new friend who I am learning a lot from.
  • Foodpanda. Your cravings right at your doorstep. I ordered food while I was in the hospital and they delivered it right to my suite! One of my best friends just became FP’s Operations Manager in Cebu so that comes with supporting him too. The best part is, they take online payment (debit/credit card, PayPal) so you don’t have to scramble for money to pay the delivery guy.
  • Paying bills on time. I admit I’ve been losing track of time lately and have just been paying my bills randomly without following a set schedule. I’m now on my way to tracking my finances right so I don’t lose sight of which bill my money went to.
  • Core Girls Group. Last night was a noisy WhatsApp group night and I almost couldn’t keep up! I’m glad I have my girlfriends even though we’re all spread out across different cities. Cebu. Manila. Jakarta. (sometimes) Singapore. It’s crazy but after almost 2 decades we still have each other.
  • Life’s challenges. As much as I wanted to NOT put this on the list, I realized I have to. These past 2 months have been a major test in my life. Challenge after challenge after challenge. It hasn’t been easy and continues to be a test to myself but knowing I can still wake up the next day and attempt to turn things around should be motivation enough to keep powering through with a smile. This is just temporary.
Ditz Revolution

My Journey to Tonsillectomy Recovery

Published by Justine

It’s officially day 13 of my road to post-op tonsillectomy recovery. I wanted to write about this whole ordeal so that I’d have something to look back on when I’m feeling shitty and make myself realize I’ve been in a shittier time such as this. No joke. Even celebrities who went through it can attest to that (yup, it’s good emotional band-aid for what I’m feeling).

 

The people close to me who went through tonsillectomy as adults are all men: my dad, and 2 Titos (uncle). They said I’d be fine. That tonsil-free life will be breezy, that I would only lose the ability to eat for a few days and it will all be happiness and ice cream for a week tops. They did NOT mention the pain.

Here are the things I’ve had to go through in the past 13 days of craziness:

  • Tonsillectomy recovery in adulthood hurts. A lot. I KNEW that it would hurt. Prior to my scheduled surgery I would go through twitter’s #tonsillectomy hashtag and read tweets from people suffering during their recovery process. I took it all into heart but didn’t really imagine the kind of pain I would be dealing with.
  • Surgery was a breeze. I was given general anesthesia then zapped into the realm of nothingness while they did shit to my throat. Waking up in the recovery room with all the pain suppressants administered during surgery starting to wear off was the start of my agonizing journey. Pre and post-surgery I could not eat or drink anything. From Friday morning to Sunday morning (or about 30 hours in total) all I had to put in my mouth were my meds and the tiniest sip of water to help it go down. I am serious. The IV drip was my lifeline.
  • I admit I have a pretty good threshold for pain (brazilian wax is almost a walk in the park, not afraid of needles) but this wasn’t really all about the pain. It was more about daily survival because it isn’t the kind of pain that just hits you once then gradually ends in a few hours or so. It literally lingers for days (weeks now, in my experience) on end and that’s where I had the hardest time, I think. Dealing with it all. It messes with you mentally and physically.
  • Reading this recent entry about another blogger’s tonsillectomy recovery process, I found myself agreeing to most of the things she mentioned. This inspired me to make my own.
  • Social media was my punching bag through it all. I would post about my struggle every waking moment on Twitter and update my Facebook friends about how I was going through hell. It became my therapy for when I wanted to scratch my eyes out from all the discomfort I was feeling.
  • The first week, painkillers were my best friend. Then came a point where it didn’t work as well as it did anymore. That was also a struggle in itself. I also have this fear that I would become so dependent on them so I never did once ask for an increase in dose or re-filled my prescription. Powered through the pain.
  • I experienced bleeding last week. Suddenly I felt blood in my throat so I spat the weird feeling out in the sink and there was blood, then blood clots, then I started feeling/tasting blood all over my throat. It freaked me out so much, then suddenly I felt like my throat had just been slit open by a small blade and I couldn’t talk because it would sting. So all I did was cry and ask my mom to call my ENT. He said to just keep eating ice cubes and if it persisted go to the ER. I don’t know how many ice cubes I ate that night. For precaution I still did go to the ER even though the bleeding gradually subsided. Good thing there was no active bleeding anymore once I reached the ER but when the doctor let me open my mouth to check on it, I then gagged a blood clot out. That seemed like the last of it. What an ordeal. I was sent home half an hour later with a prescription to stop the bleeding. The next day, no more blood.
  • Tonsillectomy recovery doesn’t hinder you too much to do things outside of eating.. you can walk, do normal things as long as it doesn’t take physical effort, do work provided that it’s in bed (I did a lot of remote work from bed otherwise I would have gone crazy thinking about the pain) but because your diet is so bad, you’re hardly eating and/or not eating right, you feel so weak and the pain just keeps you from doing anything! Of course the whole thought of trying to avoid a bleeding scare was also a good reason to stay put and keep yourself busy with things you can do in bed. Thank goodness for technology.. and books! Reading while in the hospital kept me sane throughout all the pain and the inability to talk.
  • I am known to have a volume when I talk. Post-tonsillectomy, that all changed. I could barely talk with my usual volume, it became challenging to speak with my usual tone and for a good week I hardly spoke. If I needed to, I spoke really softly without exerting any effort into my vocal chords. Somehow any vibration would hurt my throat. It was rough. Literally.
  • Don’t even get me started on yawning, burping, coughing, or sneezing (in that order) because that was hell. Yawning, in particular takes the cake. In the first week of my recovery I made sure I slept a lot so I hardly yawned, but during the second week I started going to work half days so yawning was more frequent, and more annoying. I just yawned right about now and even though I consider myself to be on the road to full recovery, it still hurts like fuck.
  • My diet for about a week had to be cold, soft, and not spicy. Ice cream was a good remedy but it was still annoying because it produced a lot of snotty feels inside my throat. Ice was my best friend. Porridge was my diet for a good 10 days. Not pretty and I don’t think I can look at another porridge for a while now. I lost weight, somewhere around 10-15lbs (HOPE I KEEP IT). How could I not when there are times I did not eat for a good 40 hours. I could survive. Because even hunger couldn’t win against the pain I felt every time I tried to swallow something.
  • I have a cold right now. My throat is so fucking itchy and my snot very liquid that it falls on its own. I keep sneezing too. It’s not a pretty feeling but it’s bearable. A fellow tonsillectomy survivor on twitter told me that this is probably opiate withdrawal (especially codeine my bff for a while). I stopped taking my pain meds because I didn’t want to be too dependent and as a result, I am met with this cold. And cough. A full-blown flu, basically. It sucks.

I guess this will all end soon, right? Day 13 and counting. I hope when I create another entry I will have better things to say about this ordeal. For now, that’s the rough journey I had to go through to reach this point. In retrospect, time seems to pass by pretty quickly and the next thing I know, I could be pain-free. I cannot wait.

Around The Web #2: Inspirational Edition

Published by Justine

I’ve been reading a lot of “feel-good” or “get back on your feet” stuff online and it gave me the idea to do an Around the Web entry. This stemmed from the realization that no matter how shitty, down, lonely, depressed, helpless, low you feel, you are not alone. You are not singled out from any misery in life.

I came across a lengthy status from an old college friend on Facebook about how she was having a hard time, that she had no one to talk to, no shoulder to cry on, and despite having a husband and 2 lovely children she has never felt more alone than ever. Having a bit of a hard time myself, I told her that while I do not completely understand her situation, I know it’s not easy. That we all go through these tough ropes at some point in our life, but we have to constantly remind ourselves that this is all temporary, and at the end of the day we are all we have so we have to do our best to nurture ourselves, take care of ourselves, and most of all love ourselves.

Here are a few snippets from around the web that I hope will inspire you as much as they have been an inspirational read for me.

If your heart is beating, if your lungs are breathing, if you are still alive… then it is not too late to do something kind, creative, generous, satisfying, and courageous. Today.

It is not too late to behave like the person you want to be — instead of continuing in a cycle of behavior that you will regret.

The commitments you make to yourself are just as important, if not more so, than the commitments you make to everybody else.

Recently, I read this very powerful quote by August Gold: “To enter the conversation with Life we only have to change one key word: We have to stop asking, ‘Why is this happening to me?’ and start asking, ‘Why is this happening for me?’ When we can do this, we’re free.”

”Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

The well of loneliness may have run dry, but in its place there are pools of possibilities, lakes we have yet to dive into, oceans we can allow ourselves to drown in. Most of the time it still feels like the current is against me—there are still a lot of blank screens and empty pages—but on some days, good days, I can float on the assurance that my words are still safely within me, only swimming in a way that’s different and exciting and daunting and new.

Every person faces setbacks in life, I don’t know anybody whose not had face something difficult to get where they are today. There are so many circumstances that we cannot control but how we come back from them is totally in our power. Just because you’ve had something set you back doesn’t [mean] you’re a failure. We should never let those situations define us.