These past years I have found myself telling other people that if there’s a problem, throw money at it. I don’t know when it happened, but I have an idea why I started turning into this materialistic person who prioritizes anything that will allow her to throw money at problems -- but this blog is not about that. Anyway, face it: you receive better treatment, get you way more and can make yourself feel more successful if you have money. It’s not like I have a child I can be proud of, or even something that I have achieved that makes me smile when I think about it. Really, it has been the ability to buy things that has made me feel set apart from other people. Even as I write this, I am having doubts about publishing these mortifying realizations about my character and values of late. But I have to say it. I have to say it here like I have said so many other things I know I shouldn’t hide.

I got my wake up call when my friend got married last Saturday. I must have spent more than a month’s salary for this wedding – it’s not even my wedding – what a moron I am sometimes.  Clinging stupidly to my notion that money solves my problems, I signed up for intense yoga to lose weight, spent plenty of money on clothes, shoes and make-up, and generally turned my life upside down. I have never done so little work in my life, only because I have to run (sometimes literally) to the studio right after work to sweat it out, or hurry to fit my gown, or go shopping for something that I need to complete my look.  I didn’t want to become the 30-pounds-overweight-single-person-friend-of-the-bride-brontosaurus that usually turns up at these events. I see this girl at other weddings  (there’s one or so in every wedding) and I pity her. I didn’t want to go there in one of my off the rack dresses, wearing no make-up except for lipstick on my mouth and cheeks, hair simply blown dry because of my allergies to chemicals. I have looked this way for five years at all the weddings that I have been to. But I was saying these past months, ha ha, no more of that washed out crap. So I wore a gown especially designed and sewn for me, these gorgeous shoes that were hidden under it, and took twice my dose of Medrol./Zantac and Aerius (plus one more Aerius) so I could be covered in make-up. Make up that I had to pay for twice because the first round was just to establish that I wouldn’t go into shock because of it.

I got compliments during the wedding for the dress and the make-up but there was absolutely no reason for those compliments. Was I or was I not still 30 pounds overweight and looked like a column of lard swathed in satin? Was I or was I not still edematous and red eyed from the make-up and hairspray? Did my hair retain its curl or did it fall flat an hour before the wedding? Did I or did I not look like a pregnant person despite my efforts, my money, and my dearest wishes not to look like a pregnant person?

If you look at my pictures from other weddings, the ones where I just turned up in whatever was in my closet with the face and body that I had at the moment, I looked better in most of those weddings than I did last Saturday. It is utterly depressing, but I really needed this thing to happen to me because I couldn’t go on being the person that I have been lately: a deluded idiot. So it’s back to the drawing board.

If I could take it all back, I would.

The whole sorry episode ended on Sunday, with my gown hanging behind the door of my room. Whatever doubts I had about whether I did the right thing were settled when my brother, looking at the gown from behind me, asked, is that the gown you wore to the wedding? He said he asked because he thought it would have been a much better gown, someone having designed it for me especially and all. Oh yes, I was thinking the exact same thing. What a relief to know I’m not the only person in this world whose expectations were not met. Good.

There’s another wedding two weeks hence. I had a gown made for that wedding, and was going to have two or three more gowns made for the other weddings that I plan to attend this year. I’m going to rethink the whole gown buying frenzy. I’m also going to rethink my life and how I spend my time and money. I have yet to find the thing that makes my life worthwhile, which should frustrate me, really, I’m already 30. But right now I’m just glad to discover that buying essentially useless things isn’t the highlight of my existence.

So I'm thirty now, not dating, burnt out, emotionally spent, suspicious of the future, and hungry because it's lunch time but I'm not moving anywhere because I have no one to eat with, and do not have enough incentive to leave my office on a Sunday morning/afternoon.

Despite knowing my spiritual obligations full well, I stayed up until about 3 AM today talking to my good friend, the woman with a man's name, about my troubles.  Might as well -- until this morning, I would not dream of coming home late for any reason aside from bone-crushing, spirit-robbing, mind-numbing work.  If I'm riddled with all these problems, surely I should spend some time sorting them out, especially because the non-work problems keep me from being my efficient self in the office.  Tsk, tsk.

And it paid off, this investment, because my friend pointed out to me that I have it all wrong -- apparently, I'm not lonely.  After all these damn blogs saying that I am lonely, she helped me realize that I only think I'm lonely because I failed to recognize how unsatisfied (or dissatisfied) I am with my life.  That's not really loneliness.  Otherwise, you'd have to spell lonely D-I-S-S-A-T-I-S-F-I-E-D.   

There's much work to be done, but the immediate actions have to do with being kinder to myself, less ready to find fault -- which I addressed today by recoloring my time sheet.

Recoloring my time sheet.

Recoloring my damn time sheet.

I have an Excel file in which I track how many revenue hours I put in a day.  I made a calendar with cells to fill in my total time.  If I am not able to put in 7.5 revenue (as opposed to merely billable) hours a day, I color the cell bright yellow.  That way, I don't even have to look at the contents of the worksheet -- I just see the bright yellow standing out is a sea of white, telling me I'm a failure on certain days.

Today, I decided to color any cell in which I put in more than 7.5 revenue hours on a weekday or any number of hours on a holiday or weekend olive green.  Why has it never occurred to me to see the good that I do?  Now my worksheet is almost all green -- definitely more than the yellows and the whites.  And this is just step one -- step one a to be precise, because I'm going to color all previously bright yellew cells white -- based on the universal truth it's not a crime to log less than what you can in a day.  Step two is to tear up that piece of paper in my head with the note to equate my worth as a person with my revenue hours.

I'm making the action list as I go along.  I don't know if I can ask for help for things like this, but if you know of any ways to dig me out of the hole I dug for myself, call me.

Last night, I got a literal pat on the back from one of the partners.  It was... reassuring, I guess.

That's pretty much all that I can say about the incident.

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On a completely different topic, I was reading my post on dreams and will now attempt to list my Lanky dreams (aside from the one where we had the baby that I gave away):

1.  The one where I snuck into his room with 2 other friends but when his mother caught us, she only screamed at me and called me a slut;

2.  The one where we were climbing a steep hill, he and I with the guy we will call the Ghost;

3.  The one where we finally got together and everyone was congratulating me like I won the lottery and I was too afraid and embarrassed to say I was actually not happy about it;

4.  The one where we were getting married even if he didn't ask me to -- he just sort of assumed I would go along with it.  When I tried to call it off, because all these elaborate preparations were being done without my consent and I was barefoot and wearing a hideous white dress with black lace, his mother screamed at me and asked me to pay them 20 million pesos in damages.  I told Lanky, well, in that case, I guess I'll warm up to idea eventually.  Fine, let's not call it off.

5.  The one where he rescued me from or smuggled me out of a Middle Eastern country (Saudia Arabia, I believe) by hiding me in the back of an old black Mercedes.  I think this is part one of the same dream where...

6. ...he and I climbed the Chilean Andes, where his extended family was having a reunion.  The different branches were wearing color-coded shirts, and I was wearing a printed shirt and wanted to hide or run down the mountain;

7.  The one where he embraced me and I panicked silently because I didn't want him to, but didn't want to hurt his feelings;

8.  The one where the Ghost said we should give our relationship one more chance.  I agreed and told Ghost that I was just going to get my bag.  On my way to the place where my bag was I fell into a ravine and Lanky was down there, too.  I really, really, REALLY panicked and started telling him (well, more of "yelling at him") to get away from me and just in case Ghost catches us, he is to say that I didn't follow him in there.  Then I tried to climb out of the ravine using some thick vines that hung overhead thinking, please don't find me in here, Ghost.  Please, please, please.

There might be more, but these are the ones I remember.

I guess this is how you know you broke your spirit.

I dreamt that I received the death penalty and had to tell my parents.  For some reason, I went to a theater where someone mistook me for a member of the chorus of Les Miserables.  She pushed me onstage, forcing me to sing with the rest of the cast.  I tried to exit the stage after the song but could not get backstage in time.  Because the next scene had started, I had to sit and wait near the edge of the stage by the curtains and pretend that I was meant to be there.  While seated facing the stage, I looked behind me and caught sight of my mother in the audience.

I approached my mother to tell her that I was going to die.  She told me to look for my father to tell him.  The problem was, my father had been abusing cigarettes and not been  eating healthy food for years -- his body had wasted away, but he was somehow able to transfer his mind and soul into a shell that looked exactly like my mother.  When I finally found him, it was like I was looking at my mother, but I knew that she was actually my father -- I even felt that it was him.  I spoke to him -- it was strange to talk to my mother in the way that I spoke to my father.  I was, in effect, by talking to my father's shell, opening up to my mother for the first time, but only because I knew I was actually speaking to my father.  I told him that I was afraid to die but knew there was no other outcome.

I walked with my parents to the place where I was to be put to death.  I could see myself, walking with my parents who were identical in appearance, sad, resigned.  Then, I woke up, feeling really strange.

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On a lighter note, I will list the other nine of my top ten weirdest dreams (in no particular order):

1.  I turned into Garfield and was terrified that the maid would not let me into the house because I was a cat and I am allergic to cats

2.  I had a second Garfield dream where I was in a car with John and Odie, teetering on top of a truck and trying not to move because there was a giant cauldron of boiling green liquid on the truck and we might catapult into the cauldron

3.  Russel Crowe was helping finish my tax take-home exam by watching a video of Cher dancing in a Mardi Gras outfit; the answer to the essay question was on her butt

4.  My law office was an underground layer of hell

5.  I lined up behind a long line of women, which turned out to be the line for people wanting to get married; when I was about 10 women away from getting inside the church, I walked away

6.  A classmate and I had a daughter and I was trying to figure out how to tell him I didn't want him involved in my daughter's life without hurting his feelings

7.  A colleague and I got married on a Friday, and I was trying to figure out a way to avoid him over the weekend until I can get an annulment on Monday without hurting his feelings

8.  I was watching a bunch of women coo over a baby who turned out to be my son, and I was really wondering how and why I decided to give him up

9.  I had a daughter who fit into the palm of my hand and I was stressing out because the stores don't make feeding bottles and diapers for a baby her size

I am 26.7 hours away from meeting the required number of logged hours for an entire year.  I think by Wednesday, I would have met my goal for 2007 -- to work like I never went on leave.  I am sort of happy, which is good, considering the week I had.  I had another one of those moments where I got a good look at my life and didn't like it.

I got all depressed during our firm's Christmas party.  Looking at one of my colleagues -- the one I've known for 10 years already -- made me realize my twenties are over and that I wasted it on not doing too many stupid things like getting married or even getting my heart broken.  I did a really good job doing the right thing for a decade, and I am now fat and alone. 

So, what new goals shall I set?

This is not a blog about carbs and trans fat.  This is not about muppets.  This is a blog about how heavily it rained last Wednesday, and how the water made its way with breakneck speed into the hairline space between the skin of my feet and the lips of my shoes, and how the dye in the suede insteps of those shoes came loose in a shock of color.  This is about how and why I ended up with blue feet.  Wrinkly blue feet, to be precise.

I was dead set on making it to the Bureau of Internal Revenue in time for a morning appointment, but not as dead set as the tax examiners who were determined to leave before I arrived.  My morning lost, and every inch of my body exhausted from the effort of making it first to the office, then to the parking lot where my client was parked, then to the parking lot of the Atrium through a sea of traffic, then to the revenue district office, then back to the parking lot, and then back to the office in a veritable deluge -- I arrived before noon in time for another meeting, and then another.  But how I got through the rest of that day, which started at 7:30 in the morning and ended almost midnight, with my blue feet stuffed in an old pair of dry stilettos, doesn't really surprise me.  I have survived worse things than a pair of discolored extremities.  I have come to work in the midst of worse natural disasters, on non-working holidays that are supposed to be spent with family, in the crux of personal misery, grief and depression, and illness, always staying at work until the last item that has to be done is done.

Right now, I am allowing myself this one chance of being honest to myself after I has given up my chance to resign and join the multilateral bank for a long-term consultancy.  I cannot say that I am completely sure I did the right thing, although I am at least 70% sure that I did.  I'm coming to terms with the fact that there is no way for me to know if I did the right thing -- trading an easier life for possibly more money to be drenched in water and disappointment.  But that's how it is for any decision -- no benefit of hindsight until all is lost or gained.  So what do I do? I trust God, that no matter what happens, wherever I work and however I do it, he will be there to help me.

I realized that nothing has ever been in my complete control in my entire life.  Decisions like which college to attend, who to love and not love, whether or not I should go to law school were all hampered by certain constraints -- the cost of schooling, the character of people, the dismal prospects of life as an English teacher.  But in this instance, I could have walked away from my firm.  I had the money to do it.  Nothing was dependent on my decision, as each job was lucrative enough to meet my needs and that of my family.  Nothing stopped me from saying yes or no, which made the struggle worse, and the ultimate decision a little harder to justify.  I do want to scream and beg for someone to tell me I did the right thing.  But that doesn't mean that I will dignify that part of me that's telling me to call the multilateral bank right now and ask if I could take back what I said about turning down their offer.  It doesn't change the fact that I don't want to resign right now. 

So here I am, finally, with no one to blame and an opportunity to live with myself.