The Beauty Of New Normal

There's no doubt that this pandemic has taken its toll on most us be it financially, physically or mentally but if there's one good thing that this new normal has given us it's perhaps rediscovering the pleasure of leisure walking from work going home.

I've worked in Ortigas Area for almost a decade now and it's always been a the commercial district that it's known for but when people started working at home, public transport became restricted and 24-hours establishments became a thing of the past, this once busy spot suddenly became a haven for leisure walkers.

Not all the time you'll find calm and quiet but given the fact that I live about 15 minutes away from the office and work during nighttime, I get to experience strolling around and feeling relaxed despite the threat of Covid-19 just around the block.  I often joke about this time being the time wherein we'll just hope for our guardian angels to be strong enough because there's really nothing much we can do aside from practicing social distancing and wearing masks all the time, but this new normal thing has really taught me what are the really important things in life.

To live simply, to appreciate the things that you have, to make it a point to seize the day because you'll never really know what tomorrow will bring, these things, these are the things that I took for granted before this pandemic happened and this kind of realization is in fact the beauty of this new normal.

Surviving The Graveyard

Working night shift as a BPO employee has been my bread and butter for more than a decade working mostly during night time.  We’ve all read and heard horror stories on how working night shift affects us negatively and how the experts suggest that we cope with it.  It’s a no easy feat but for those who may be reading this who recently entered the yard (yeah, I’m referring to the graveyard shift) or who have been in the industry for a while but still finding it hard to adjust, here are some of the things I learned along the way that I hope may be useful at some point.

Your physical health is the foundation.  

As Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs states, physiological needs top it all up and that’s most true if you’re working at night.  Eat good food, lessen the vices (if not eliminate them), move your body and exercise, I’m pretty sure by now we all know how to take care of our physical well-being; what most of us don’t know is the “Why” behind it.  Imagine having a high value asset in your possession, will you store it in a low quality storage? Your mind and soul are most precious, take care of its vessel.

Your mental health is important. Social media? Not much.  

With the revolution of internet and smartphones, there’s just a lot of information out there both willingly and unwillingly fed to us and social media is where the latter goes through.  Imagine going home from a night shift and you scroll around your Instagram or Facebook feed and you see how much your friends enjoyed their night light while you’re out there trying to put food on the table? Imagine seeing those picturesque snapshots your former colleagues took during their vacations while your vacation requests were not approved? We may not admit it, but even little by little, it’s taking its toll on our mental wellness.  The fear of missing out of FOMO as what most of us call it nowadays is real and very dangerous. Perhaps we can talk about this further in the next few days, but let me just tell you, social media isn’t bad, we just have to use it with moderation and full awareness.

Break away from the hamster wheel

When sleeping during daytime while the rest of the world goes on with their lives it’s easy to fall into a trap of a work-sleep cycle. We can break this by finding something to do that will both nourish our well being while at the same time giving us a break from the corporate hamster wheel.  Read a book and keep track of your reading list, you’ll be amazed how fulfilling it is to realize that amid your busy and mostly crazy schedule, you finished x number of books in a year.  Learn photography, you don’t need an expensive SLR or smartphones for this, photography is about light and composition and there’s abundance of it during your off-work hours.  Work on crafts and visual arts, if that suits you better, then go for it. Whatever floats your boat, do it, not for everyone else, but for yourself.  Break the cycle.

I hope I somehow made sense with these things, if you think otherwise or have other suggestions, drop me a line below.  It’s always a good thing to share our thoughts in an engaging and fruitful way. 

Our Skirmish Amid Covid-19

About 3 months ago, President Duterte placed the whole Luzon into Extreme Community Quarantine and like what most of us have done, we’ve had ourselves glued in all kinds of news media to check on how things are going. For the past 3 months, we’ve seen the best and the worst of people from selflessly devoting time and effort to help those who are in need to those who took advantage of others’ desperation. I won’t go preaching and citing incidents related to these shenanigans because just like what I said, we’ve all seen the news.

We were hit, or should I say still being hit, by this pandemic Covid-19 and we fought and still fighting.  This is a war between nature and man, if you’ll pardon the exaggeration, and in every war there are battles, skirmishes - small encounters not seen by the Generals.  We have our own battles in the midst of this war against the pandemic - the battle for our sanity.

Centers for Disease Control quoted, “The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic may be stressful for people. Fear and anxiety about a new disease and what could happen can be overwhelming and cause strong emotions in adults and children.”  It is to no surprise most of us have felt like we are all going loco. It’s normal, that’s how fear and anxiety play their cards and this is the season they get to play it right.

If for some reasons you’re reading this blog because perhaps you’re bored and still under lockdown finding some ways to kill time, please right after reading this go and shut down your computers or put down your phone.  I’ve experienced how liberating it is to enable myself to get out of boredom without the help of my smartphones and computers.  Read a book, learn still photography and take snapshots of your common household items, call a friend and have a chat, play with your pets or like what they always say, do whatever floats your boat.

The government may have relaxed the quarantine but the threat of the virus is still out there so if you really have nothing much to do outside, just stay home.  We can win this war, we should.

Image by Philip Barrington from Pixabay

Between Sundays and Mondays

Gobbledygook is what this post will be all about. I guess I'm just trying out how it is to use a desktop or in my case, a laptop, once again to write something outside work.  I'll try to revive this Blogspot account although I'll opt to create a new site instead.  It's nice to see my old blog sites from more than 10 years ago well-preserved under this Google account. 

Anyway, here's a photo from my early WFH (walk from home) experience.  Sunday is a breeze, we all need a day between Sundays and Mondays though.