NO RAINBOW, WITHOUT A LITTLE RAIN

Woke up with a heavy heart today and I realize that there are times in my life when I need to reassess myself... slowing down and readjusting my life's trajectory. Lately, I have been encountering burnouts that people can't see or don't notice in me. I have had several road bumps lately that caused me prolonged stress and I battle it every day. 

Over the past years I have blogged about burnouts especially in my case that I am one human being that's 24/7 online owing to my profession. I have written about life management difficulty especially when there are things in our lives can turn our worlds upside down leaving us totally worn out and helpless, physically and mentally. Everything just seems look bleak and it is hard for us to gather all energy to care or let alone, do something to get out of it. Way back 2010, I confessed about experiencing burnout as an SEO... caused my world and my life to tilt fast. It is a vicious cycle. Yes, in my profession and most of us in the internet and social media, we struggle on this everyday after all, social media never really sleeps and that's what most people don't know about us..

It is just difficult to handle such a thing with technology interfering personal lives, personal activities and especially when one would get a punctured heart may it be owing to jealousy, an unfulfilled promise to loved one, not having the time for any intimacy, and so many more that a human heart experiences. This renders us to have this lack of emotion or apathy... the emotion is there though...all bottled up and waiting to burst. It's just dangerously nerve-wracking.

Here I go again, struggling to cope and overcome burnout. I know exactly what I need to do. I've been there before so I just have to hang in tough and continue to do what I need to do. Focus may be difficult but all I need is to slow down, pause, relax and re-evaluate my goals and priorities once more.

I am a toughie. I've always been. I can do this over and over again...it may take days, weeks, months to fully overcome. When a damn usually bursts, all I have to do is swim... no but's and if's. At the end of this all, I'm gonna smile again... a smile that takes only a special few to know that deep inside, I am okay and back on my feet. Nothing in life is not manageable and as as wise men used to say, "There is no rainbow, without a little rain".

BLUES! BLUES! BLUES!

In the past, I have blogged about burnouts and life management difficulty... things in our lives that can turn our worlds upside down. Everyone of us gets emotional breakdowns once in awhile and with all the festivities last December followed by hectic work and heavy responsibilities last January, I succumbed to one by the end of January.

I suffered from burnout making it difficult for me to handle some important things in my life rendering making me completely useless to myself and to others. Despite of little blessings and joys I got for January, I fell into an abyss of boredom, laziness and depression till I found my way out of it again.

This time, I resorted to photography. One day,, I brought my camera during a night out. Instead of me being photographed at a club, I turned myself into a photographer.... getting individual snapshots of people and uploading them and shared to friends at Facebook. To please my then dying brain cells, I made sure that for each photo, I wrote captions of my own that I feel best depict my shots. Here are some of them...

I have a new philosophy to foster peace and harmony in the universe: GIVE ME WHAT I WANT WHEN I WANT IT. Peace, yo!

No matter what amazing things you accomplish or how fantastic you are, a cat will always think it is better than you.

The world is a stage. I failed the audition. Now I sit in the audience, and they call me a cynic. 

I don't get intoxicated and delusional. I get drunk and confident. 

To pay for gas, I'm selling tickets that allow people to get lost in my eyes for 15 minutes. 

Men and women are obviously different. Men have trouble expressing their needs. On the other hand, women will express their needs, every fricking need for every fricking minute for every fricking day!

Like a lawyer with the way he is always trying to get you off. 

So you see... we can always get out of blues. There is just absolutely nothing in this world that we can't laugh about and friends are usually the cure.

FEELING WHAT I WANT

There are times in my life that I get sad, unhappy and depressed. Things go wrong and I couldn't help it. These emotions however, always help me live through life and these makes me feel eventually, what I want my life to be.

Before you go on reading, let me amuse you with this great dance video to set you in the mood as you read along....



But what is it that we usually do or should do whenever we are suffering from these emotions?

I've enumerated below things I do whenever I am sad, unhappy and depressed which might be of help to you just in case you fall into such condition...


I Dance, I Exercise 
Getting into an activity that requires me to sweat is the most effective method of feeling better right away. I just either play a dance music and dance into it or I go outside and just start running. It doesn't matter how fast I ran or how far I ran for as long as I get my heart pumping and my blood flowing. It works wonders as sweating releases endorphins that makes me feel better especially if I do these under sunlight and fresh air. When I'm done with these, I always find myself catching my breath that nothing else seems to matter. Yes, there is something about struggling for air that makes all troubles seem very trivial.

I Laugh
Although it's not always easy to laugh when I can't find something funny, I just look for it further. Life has so many things to offer there is absolutely nothing that we can't laugh about. Laughing releases endorphins, it makes me feel better and it relaxes me.

I Reminisce
I think of good old memories.... I think of moments when I was truly happy. I spend at the end of each day recalling good memories I have that before I know it, I start relating everything to those happy times. What happens to my sad memories? They end up being a vague recollection of the past.

I Do The Things I Love
As I do the many things that I love about in life like singing, dancing, swimming, doing sports activities, writing, travelling, taking photos etc.... I take them all in and really appreciate it because it makes me feel great and alive. 

I Pick Happy Friends
Having a lot of naturally happy friends work wonders! They make me happy randomly over the long term, I start to learn why they are happy and learn the source of happiness for myself, they have happy friends also and so I get to meet even more happy people and they introduce me to activities that make them happy! I pick happy, smiling people... and I hang out with them on a regular basis because happiness is infectious! 

Life sends various negative emotions to me at times but when I want to feel what I really want, I throw caution to the wind and let go of it all because there is always a spectacular side over negative ones!  


Thanks to Vincent Garrucho for my party images here at Time in Manila.

CHRISTMAS STRESS & HOLIDAY BLUES

Good and bad stress usually takes its' toll on us humans especially during Christmas Season. I've had good Christmases in the past but this year, even if it's A-okay for me, I can't help but think globally... I think of people all over the world... how Christmas 2010 will be for them. I believe for most, December 2010 is full of stress and depression.

I made a survey on a couple of friends from off-shore and in the Philippines as to what would be the usual and most common causes why we get Christmas blues, depressions and / or stress.  Hereunder are what I perceived based on my little survey as well as my own experience in the following order (top to bottom):

1.  Economic / Financial Difficulties
This is number 1. With the global economic crisis hitting major countries world-wide, millions of families face financial problems this season of love and giving. Christmas adds an extra burden to tight budgets which means, there's not enough money to buy food for the festive season, presents and clothes for Christmas. People around the world actually tend to use more money than we can afford which worsens our financial situations even more. This leads us to gain more weight, headaches, depressions and financial overdrafts after the season is over.
 
2. The Absence of a Loved One
Despite of the merry-making with family and friends, we can't help thinking of some beloved persons in our lives who are far away which brings us loneliness and depression. Even when we see everyone else having a good time, we just couldn't help but feel the pang of yearning, missing them thus; this situation can get worse. 

3. Physical Fatigue
We usually get intense stress everywhere that we tend to feel there are so many things to do in such a period of time. Even though we try to make activities pleasant and enjoyable for others, various situations can take its' toll on our bodies i.e., Christmas rush, traffic, shopping amongst millions, the inability to find the apt gifts for loved ones, presence in social parties and other obligations. 


All top 3 reasons bring emotional disorder to each and everyone of us. I, for one, am starting to feel it and so I believe that it is very important to acknowledge these reasons why people tend to be stressed out and depressed during the holidays because all it takes for each individual to survive Christmas stress is love and understanding. 

Emotional support... patience, love and understanding from our families and loved-ones can help fight depression and stress during the holidays.

Life and things in life are not  perfect... it is not as beautiful as seen on TV and movies. We shouldn't expect too much from it. Life is simply unpredictable that the only way to make us happy is focus on things that are most important to us and live each day thinking positive for a better future. Breaking free from the past.... preparing for better years to come is all that I'm going to think of this holiday season 2010.


May I remind everyone that in the past, we made Christmas too materialized.... it's not about the money... it's all about the time and thoughts spent with family, friends and loved-ones that matters most to them. Cheers! 

I'd like to say advance Merry Christmas to all my readers just in case I forget to do so later on! :)

LOCKED UP ON EMOTIONAL PRISONS

There are times we yearn for more intimacy in our lives yet, we aren't really certain how to get what we want that sometimes, just when we get to be close to getting what we desire, we build walls.



I had a good discussion about this with my cousin last night about his being vulnerable in the past and building walls. Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable is dangerous as being one implies we might get hurt. No one wants to get hurt or to hurt another.

What is intimacy? It's a step towards a possible relationship because a relationship without intimacy is not a relationship. It's what you call "friendship".

With this, we talked about who builds walls more... the men or women. My cousin built walls and I built my own walls too. However, for me, it's the men. As children, girls wail about physical pain and they're allowed to do so while the boys brought up to think it is not manly to show the pain. This caused little boys not talking about their feelings. They grow into men with an emotional vocabulary less developed than that of the women.

Men in general often have trouble naming exactly what they feel and often more vague in describing emotions. I remember an ex-boyfriend who would often be anxious when the whole topic of emotions are being brought up while I was more comfortable talking about almost anything else!

Some men talk about feelings as if they live in fortresses with walls as high as The Great Wall of China! A few were allowed to walk in but these are the ones closest to them. Although they felt safe within the confinements they built, they feel as if there is essentially no one with whom they can truly be themselves... which is really sad. Some men i know including my cousin overcame and break down their own walls because they realized it gets too be too lonely.

So many of us confuse thoughts and feelings. Feelings are words, not explanations. We all live in a time when depression is rampant in our time. Depression isn't always feeling sad. Depression is at times, just feeling numb or very little thus; we build walls which is not good.



Defenses though aren't bad. Without these, we would be vulnerable and some experiences can be very painful. If our shield is always up, we should always think not just with our thoughts but feel our feelings. When we yearn for intimacy, we need to acknowledge our feelings. When something happens, we take a deep look on it for we never know if what we are feeling is actually more than one feeling.

I keep my defenses up all the time but there are instances that I lower them to find out what could actually be because I don't want that one day, I'll forever wonder what could have been, what should have been and what might have been with a particular person or situation. After all, everything is a risk and pain... we just gotta let it ride out or we wouldn't feel human at all!



Life is just way too short to worry about so many things!

Thanks to Vincent Garrucho for my own photos :))