Almost 40 - 02.20.2020

I’ve been wanting to write blog posts. There were many mornings during bath when my brain comes up with excellent (to me, they’re excellent) sentences to post on my blog then forget about it the moment I step out of the bathroom. I was supposed to use the word shower, but I don’t shower because we don’t have a shower. We have the all time classic timba at tabo (pail and dipper) to bath and do things in the bathroom.

I’ll be forty in July, and I know I should be grateful to have reached this age, but….I’m grateful, to be honest. But….I’m only human. I am human most of the time. Weak, insecure, and, insecure. Well, not all the time. Forty is milestone. If you stare at the figure, yes. But looking back at my life, the only event that I consider milestone is the time I got married because that was when my whole life changed. I’m grateful, yes.

And forty is a big number. Four decades, my God! What have happened in those years. Wait, let me take inventory of my used time:

I went to college. I watched tv. I finished college, watched less tv. I did nothing for hours. Lie in bed, drink coffee (there was not a day in my life where I did not drink Nescafe, well I tried other brands but I always switch back to Nescafe) I read books, I spent hours doing nothing. Got a job. Went to work.  I had boyfriend. Got married. Spend hours doing nothing. Slept, ate, watched tv. Attended church. Then came internet, social media. Lived with in-laws. Went to work. Worked for hours. Waste hours at the malls. Wasted hours. Watched tv. Watched pirated movies and tv series. Daydreamed. Read ebooks. Laundry. House chores. Took long baths. I think I should have typed repeat. And, oops  I went to grad school.  And the middle of all those things I did were worries, joy, sadness, smiles, tears, laughter, anger, pain, pleasure, hatred, and many other emotions I could not name. In my thirties, I learned self-help.

I figured, maybe my life was supposed to be that way. Just small and simple little things. I had ambitions. I took steps. But I failed. And each time I try again, I failed again. Looking back I feel like my life is so much better now than before. Though I did not get a better paying job, or got promoted, or earned big money. It’s so much better. And the moments where I feel the need to have some more money, change to a higher paying job (each time I get pissed at the people in my work) and get appreciated for what I do, getting recognized and respected, feeling the need of having enough money for retirement comes back to me all over again and I’m still figuring out life until now.

That’s forty years.