Hanging in ...

Sometimes, life throws you curve balls. Real curve balls. Not the occasional curving minimally ball. We're talking balls that can swing off the continent before coming back towards you kinda curve ball.

While my eyes burn painfully, I can't fall asleep. There are so many things to worry about. There are so many things I have to do. So many things I need to finish. So many things pending. So many worries to look into. I could use some support. I could really have used some tonight, but it wasn't to be.

The kind of stress levels I'm at now, I'm surprised I haven't turned back to the bottle. Or got myself into some deep funk. I would have done that a few years ago. Perhaps it's a testament to maturity, perhaps it's just realisation dawning that those things don't solve problems. Or release stress. But it's getting desperately despairing now.

Yesterday, I destressed by taking self potraits. Today, I have nothing to fall back to. One stressful phone call followed by another. Work isn't personal. Work is simply work. It piles. It gathers momentum. It requires your every attention to detail, but it comes to you with careless abandon.

Maybe tomorrow, I'll read this and think - "You silly boy ... how could you even think of this ?" - but right now, just walking away from it all isn't such a bad idea. Even dying doesn't appear to be all that bad, seriously. But I'm probably right - it's probably a really terrible idea a tired, sleep deprived mind throws out to self preserve.

I just remembered why I used to turn to the bottle in the past, even when I knew the things I know today. It's simply the convenient thing to do. It was easy. It was simple. It wasn't too hard to get drunk. The brain doesn't function after that, and your problems go away for that little while. Just a little while.

Anyways, I've been quite sober for a really long time now. The new mentality of tackling problems head on might need to change - I think I just realised I can' solve all the problems in the world. I'll just have to pick the ones that are important and work on them.

And of course, there are real reasons life is worth it. You're one.

Oh well. Here, I'm putting this burden down. I'm imagining that I'm taking a huge boulder off my shoulders.

And yeah, if ever anything were to happen to me, I wanna use this picture I took of myself yesterday as my potrait. Seriously.

Busy just gets busier

I bought myself a Blackberry. And that's just because busy is getting busier.

Having a Blackberry device frees me up for a bit more mobility without tying me up to a laptop.

It's quite funny - once upon the time, it was considered a liberating experience to get yourself a laptop ! Suddenly you can work from home ... no more getting stuck to the workstation !!! I remember the first laptop I had - it's a heavy Toshiba with enough weight to help you build very nice shoulder muscles.

Then, you can download your emails via dial-up connections. Then you disconnect, then you answer all the emails offline, and you dial-up again, then you send all your emails.

One day, my neighhbour showed me his broadband connection. And since then, I've had broadband (and all its ups and downs, and all the high blood pressure risks that came along with it), and I've never looked back. At first, I have wired broadband at home - I need to sit 3 feet from the ADSL modem because that's how long the cable is.

Then, one day, my company gave me a home wireless router to try out. And since then, I've been running a wireless network at home. It gives me the ability to move about the house and still be connected online - of course, I have to bring my laptop with me.

Granted my laptop is very light, but it's still a bit of a bummer. I can't really put my laptop on my lap when I'm in the washroom. Of course, you really don't wanna have to work or do anything online when you're doing some more serious business, if you dig what I'm saying.

So, enter my Blackberry. This simply means that I get to be online even more often, and I'm going to be more connected. Bad? No, I think not. Everytime I've added more connectivity to my life, I've been fearful that I'll loose out on more of the better things in life.

But the contrary has happened - I didn't need to be in the office all the time, I can work from home where it's reasonable. And I didn't need to be connected at all times. I can do simple tasks on the move whenever those work comes in, and that means I don't have to sit at one place for a long time to clear my work.

I hope that busy getting busier isn't going to mean I'll lose touch with all good things in life.