Why Am I Always Tired?

“Why am I always tired!!!?”

Too often I hear this complaint from well salaried folks, folks whose annual income wants me to turn green with envy.

Perhaps I was being naïve by thinking money should bring comfort, not stress and has figured these complaints as mainly a slang of the rich. But I have, since then, grown wiser and had begun to see that more than often, the cause of this fatigue is self inflicted.

We are tired because we over spent, tired because we lived beyond what we can truly afford, tired because we take on a profligate life style.

According to Dave Ramsey, fun can be bought but not happiness. I think the mistaken notion that happiness is a commodity has people chasing after the wrong goals only to discover their joy lies elsewhere.

This can probably explain why our dresser has more shirts or dresses than necessary, our closet more bags than we will actually use and our shoe cabinet more shoes than we need.

In my mind all this is a consequence of want, which is spontaneous and often superfluous, disguising itself into a need, which is a valid condition, and whatever line that differentiates them has been blurred.

Sadder still, with the midnight madness sales, buy-one-take-one offers, zero-interest options, the line gets even murkier that for some of us, want has mutated into a need. Consequently, we become disoriented and our priorities gets bent.

There is really no reason to be buried in debt. But the humongous cash flowing out of those ATMs can, indeed, inflict one with the I-Can-Afford-This Syndrome or perhaps create some sort of foggy confidence that there is always the next salary to cover any spending oversight.

And while the aim of all our disbursal is to achieve happiness, we still are not. Instead we find ourselves wallowing in an even bigger debt.

I personally believe that to spend is also to understand the value of money. Unwarranted spending is the effect of ignorance of worth which, consequently, leads to a life lived beyond our means.

And so we remain tired.

Photo Cred: vonichi of cpb/armanSrivera

The Birthday Registry

I am turning 52 in a few days. I do not know if senility is starting to set in but I feel I am becoming more and more sensitive about birthdays.

2 years ago, I never knew I was turning 50 and that being 50 was big deal. It took a surprise birthday gift from Cecille, a trip to Boracay actually, for me to realize something unusual is afoot, that a chapter is being started, that I am old.

And old I think I am which is why anything birthday related is contentious topic.

Like birthday gifts.

For some reason, it has become a habit for friends and relations to ask what the celebrant wants to have for his birthday only to give him something "they" want rather than what "the celebrant" himself wants. You know I love to bike, why the long sleeve office shirts? Very puzzling indeed.

Which is why I think weddings are easier.

Many wives may strongly disagree with this timid view but I personally feel weddings always turn into truly memorable events because it has “The Wedding Registry.” The new couple are assured they won't get twice as many punch bowls, twice as many wall clocks or electric fans or frying pans or self cleaning flat irons.

Above all, they can also safely bet that no redundant wedding gift from someone's else's nuptial will find itself “re-wrapped and re-presented.”

Wedding Registries should be the envy of birthday celebrants. Nothing beats writing what you think you need and then actually getting it. Wedding registries are very much like owning a genie in a lamp.

Imagine that happening on birthdays. Imagine if there is also such thing as “The Birthday Registry.”

Think about truly receiving that stuff you have been dreaming of and drooling over for the last 11 months, not something which was hurriedly paid for and then wrapped without much thought accompanying it.

At last you can be sure you will be getting biking shorts and not neckties.

Yes, I am old and am, indeed, getting very sensitive about birthdays.

Occupation

I hate being stumped.

And I get stumped every time someone asks me where I work and had to say I am a stay at home dad.

It is not a very pleasant experience the way they sometimes respond to that reply. For some wicked reason, domesticated for them means pet.

Which probably explains why I hate filling up forms. It is a deeply excruciating experience trying to figure out what to put on that line that asks: “occupation”. For years I just left it empty and consequently, for years I have been unfairly regarded as a nobody.

Recently Cecille was involved in a painful accident that needed 5 surgeries. I was left to fill out all the medical as well as accident report forms. And there I was, face to face with that line that asks the dreaded question: occupation.

Strangely, this time I found myself bravely putting in “writer”. It was perhaps faith on this thing that I love doing that moved me to label it and then put it as an entry on that once frightening line.

I may not be in the same league as Seth Godin or Rajesh Setty, a Tom Peters or John Wood nor am I a Dave Ramsey, all of who I deeply admire and whose styles I try to emulate.

But like them, I suppose, I was blessed with the skills to tell a story through incessant and often (particularly in my case) emotional thumping of this keyboard. To tell a story which, in the words of Anne Jackson, the world needs in order to be complete.

I am a writer who loves talking of life experiences and share the tools for living I pick up along the way in hope it brings enrichment to the world around me. I am a writer because I love doing work that I believe matters.

Penelope Trunk wrote that what's important is to be kind, and be gracious and do it in ways that make people want to do that for someone else.

Hopefully, through my writing, I am able to do just that.