Still Busy

Yes, it's been a while. I did mention that I would be occupied for at least a couple of weeks, after all.

The strange part is that, while I did expect work to take up a good amount of my daytime, it's also taken up a significant amount of my evenings and my weekends as well. This is a bad precedent; while I do think that the job is interesting, I don't want to get reduced to spending every waking moment fiddling around with job-related tasks.

I suppose that I should have noticed something wrong when I was told that I would get some regular vacation leaves after my six-month probation period... but that I wouldn't be able to use them for at least another year. I'm pretty sure that there's some law against that. It's not a question of indentured servitude as much as it is the prospect of working oneself to death.

That's a misconception, by the way. I don't think it's possible to work oneself to death. It is, however, quite possible to be a miserable human being who is practically working himself to death.

I haven't written any fiction for quite some time now (due to my hectic schedule), and it looks like I'll miss the Palanca Awards this year. I have too many things on my plate right now, I think, although I do have at least a couple of interesting plots in mind. Strangely enough, I'm thinking of horror stories on the verge of May, although that's probably my inner manager talking.

I'm not afraid of losing my touch. I did put down the pen for a couple of years before, I think, just before I picked it up again and started writing where I left off. That's another paradigm shift right there — you shed whatever insecurities you used to have, and fill the gap with all those things that you picked up over the last couple of years. Peel the first layer off the onion and you'll see that it's full of words.

Someone asked me what my motivation was the other day, and I did wonder about that for a few seconds. It's just strange, how things shift and turn at the drop of a hat nowadays. Maybe I'm in it just to see what lies around the next corner. Or maybe I'm just looking for material for my next pieces.

Either way, I'm still around.