Appraisal

Okay. So I'm a little fucked now.

I have a deadline in eight hours, I should be doing some major serious thinking tonight. Instead, I had two beers, fell asleep like a baby on the couch, and now I can't think right at four in the morning.

Then again, maybe this is the best time to make a decision. Again.

Fuck jet-lag.


(Ah. This time, I realize one of the best, and first, feelings of home-sweet-home after a dreary long week and an even drearier long flight comes in the hot shower.

Nothing feels as warm as the water that spouts from the shower, nothing feels as familiar as my Johnson's baby bath. The good ol' blue one, no less.

Or maybe, it's just because I've lived a week in a handicapped room, with a handicapped bathroom, where the old-fashioned shower hovers somewhere just around the boob area. I will not be nice again.)


Right. It's just about seven hours left now.

And considering the fact that I am also warm beneath my blanket, listening to J and to the pitter-patter sounds of the rain outside, and that I might just fall prey to the zzz monster anytime again, I think I'd have to make that thirty minutes instead.

(I'm back in love with the zzz monster, because just hours ago, he finally gave me some good ol' shit and not one of them horrid dreams.)


When you come to a point where you have a couple of choices laid out in front of you and you're forced to make a decision, and the choices are no longer as simple as they are presented to you because you find yourself starting to have to think about the other larger implications in your life each choice entails, now that becomes possibly a turning point in your life, no?

It's not a chicken-or-fish decision. It's more like a chicken-now-or-never-again kinda of decision.

And it kinda frustrates me, because I'd wish to have beef instead.


The Libra is done with the pros-and-cons shit, the bane of her life. And life is not a mathematical equation.

There is more certainty than uncertainty about one; there is more uncertainty than certainty about the other.

One makes me feel like I am taking a step back to the comfort zone from which I seemed to be running away; the other makes me feel like I am marking a bigger step forward into a barely begun adventure, of which I really know nothing.

One is do-and-probably-not-die; the other's do-and-maybe-die-or-maybe-bloom.

One entails a micro, practical view of today-versus-tomorrow, which I am already bad at assessing; the other entails a broader, idealistic view of now-versus-future, which I am only good at imagining.

I have perfectly logical reasons for one; I have only the silliest reasons for the other.

I have my mind on one; I have my heart on the other.

Do I want to live to survive? Or, do I want to live to live life?


It is strange that somehow, I get to this crossroad just about days shy of my one-year anniversary.

I remember the uncertainties I battled then, and this seems to me a forced appraisal of sorts.

Right, woman. You sure about this so far? You seem to be facing quite some crap in your life now. You sure? You wanna turn back now? You can, you know...

I remember also, how I got past the uncertainties and convinced myself I deserve some journey of my own for the first, and probably only, time in my life.

I had a plan. A big plan with no details. I think I still have it.

Things have come along my way over the past months. Things I have not quite expected, things that have made me laugh, made me cry. Things that I still can't even figure out. Things that have made an indelible mark in my life.

But they are all part of the plan, I hope. And I have laughed way more than I cried.


"Just follow your heart, Cheng."

Just when I was getting tired looking out for signs around me, this came to me out of the blue, at the unlikeliest of times, while I was almost dozing off in the middle of a ridiculous traffic jam on a Friday night thousands of miles away from home. From the unlikeliest of people, someone whom I've known for a year now but whom I barely know.

Someone who seems to have it all going, and makes that sound oh-so-easy.

Well, the thing is, for people who look for signs, anything could be a sign.

And for someone who looks for signs and always believes that following one's heart is not exactly a stupid thing to do, that was as sure a good sign as it could be.

I live only once. I'll be thirty, or thirty-one, or thirty-two, or whatever, only once.

My heart will stop beating for me one day - and I don't know when.


No one will probably understand. No one ever understood, anyway.

I have my heart somewhere already.

But I fear being left alone.

Then again, when that day comes, maybe things will come to a light.

Somehow, things will just work out.


I wanted an adventure. I still want the adventure. I don't want to live without stories.

Following the heart is a stupid thing to do in the corporate world.

Then again, I never really belonged to the corporate world.


Okay. I can feel the fire now.

I think I'll write that email, six hours' from now.