I’m coming home-- coming to terms with myself

Posted: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 by Rom in Labels: , , ,
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How many of you guys stay at home working? Or just stay at home doing nothing?

It was a tough decision on my part, through the years life had hurled me tough problems that requires tough decisions and so far staying at home and trying to earn a living at the same time is one of the tough if not the toughest.

I have been working all my life, nearly two decades of office/studio work as an artist going to and fro, traveling almost 56 kilometers home to office and vice versa every day 6 days sometimes 7 days a week, not to mention those extra work I brought home every night which takes me up to 3 am in the morning only to wake up at 8 am and be at the studio by 10. Pretty tedious huh?

Staying at home and trying to earn a living is not exactly 100% a decision of mine, part of it had been decided by the employment situation here in my goddamn country. Where work experiences doesn’t matter anymore if you’re older as 25, employers always have an option of replacing you with new and fresh ones as they have all the liberties in the world to choose young slaves lining up on their doorsteps willing to offer fresh meat to enslave. Work experience and loyalty come second best.

Surrounding hazards adds up too; imagine everyday spending almost 6 hours traveling? 3 hours to get to work and then another 3 hours again to get home? Not to mention an extra 2 hours if you’re lucky enough to enjoy the view while stuck in the traffic.

Through the course of me working for nearly two decades, I have developed some “immunizational” device to shun away such tiresome worries and keep my head intact, for instance, since I lack sleep almost everyday, I have learned how to enjoy sleeping in the bus, I have somehow developed some sort of body alarm that I woke up exactly on the same spot of the road near where I should get off the bus. Breakfast was always depends on the menu of those vendors proliferating the streets selling odd “edible items” or maybe a brunch came in handy after I arrived studio.

Sometimes I wish I can bring my drawing table with me in the bus so as not to waste hours traveling and convert it to income. Working in an animation studio is quite tiresome, pay-per-piece of work, but I love it then. You may ask why I haven’t relocated near work, actually I decided to relocate into the suburbs a nearby town of Laguna that time where I acquired a simple yet inhabitable house, my long time dream is to have a nice place to stay near the mountains where the air is cool and the surroundings are green, so much for a dream, I endured all those daily contrition just to end up abandoning that house—well that’s another story to tell.

Now then, I don’t live in that house anymore, at least not with my ex-wife but I still have my two kids with me and two other more step kids and an equally wonderful understanding, lively, lovable and beautiful inside and out partner in life where spending time at home and trying to earn a living is as equally fulfilling making a career and minding the home at the same time.

It’s hard to keep a juggling act, balancing money matters and maintaining the family intact including keeping the flame of your relationship burning. I have opted to keep out other unimportant people out of my life, friends are always there of course but they are the third or the fourth if not the last priority of my “new” life away from workplace and away from the hustling and bustling crowded city streets of everyday living.

Maybe it’s me getting old, getting tired getting mellow, I don’t have money right now, no retirement benefits whatsoever, still got kids to send to school, but for now living one day at a time gives me peace instead of worrying what to eat the next day or will I have money to pay the rent at the end of the month, this peace I have right now can’t be bought by money, no amount of compensation will be equally satisfying than this.

I don’t care about the new trend in cell phones and all the latest gadgets, nor the fashion and the political bickering happening all around me; I don’t have to put up a smiling face to people whom I don’t know just to please them, wearing shorts and shirts were all there is to make me going around the house while working for side jobs, I don’t need to put up formal or semi-formals anymore, and best of all temptations are of nowhere near me as I shut the front door of my house, but keeping my mind’s window open.

I like it here, don’t you?

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