If you’re swamped with work and you feel you can no longer survive another day in the office, don’t give up.
If work-related stress gets the best of you and makes you want to blow up the office, hold that thought.
If you’re too caught up with work that even your closest friends think you’re already dead, don’t fret.
Learn to appreciate your work. Think of how scarce job opportunities are today. It’s so scarce it will soon be grammatically correct to say that job opportunities is scarce. Don’t give up that job yet. There’s a way you could have social life and yet still perform at par with others. The answer is proper time management. Remember how your boss urges you to always give 100% at work? Well, with proper time management you can do that. With proper time management, you can give 100% at work at another 100% for your personal life.
Last night I met with the few friends I had in college. As with all other reunions, we talked about each others’ and other people’s lives. Catching up – a valid excuse for middle aged men to engage in tsismis. It would’ve been more fun had everyone in our group was present. I remember all 6 of us sharing the same locker. We had this log book which we individually filled out each day with almost everything we could think of may it be serious (a.k.a love life. that’s the most serious concern we had those times) or trivial. At the end of the day, we would go over each entry and accord it or its writer the customary smirk, laugh, and/or curse. Sadly, one was in Mexico, the other we couldn’t reach or would not let us reach him, the last was at work (damn the call center working hours!).
We had 3 liters of beer (well I had about 6 glasses and was already half asleep and ready to “call the crow” just a couple of hours after) and talked some more while listening to Madonna (Vogue still rings in my head now). Wait! No, we were not in a bar where ladies wore knee-high leather boots which they slam on the wooden platform every time they do a split. We were at Gerry’s TriNoMa. And why they were playing 80s songs that time escapes me. At the last liter, we were already talking about our plans. We were talking about possible business ventures and investments. We were talking how we can make it big. We were talking about serious things. It was amusing, interesting, and surreal. A few years back we talked about nothing but pranks and jokes during this kind of gathering.
After that, we dropped by at Club Industry (Bellagio Square, Tomas Morato, QC), the Managing Partner of which is a very close friend. 11pm is considered early in party people’s standards so there weren’t much crowd. We enjoyed the lights and sounds of the fastest rising party site in QC. My friends downed a couple more beers before calling it a night – well, to be exact, it was dawn. We neither had the energy nor the freedom to stay up and wait for the onslaught of crowd estimated to arrive at 3am.
And so it ended. We parted ways. Shook hands. Shot each other mild personal jokes and vowed to keep in touch and see each other again. On my way home, I realized, we are at the crossroads of adulthood and maturity. Suddenly, the burden isn’t as light as it used to be.
