I used to be sold to the idea of sharing economy. Uber, AirBnb, and not owning things. It fits well with my minimalist lifestyle.

I distinctly remember trying my first Uber ride. At that moment, I thought “Why would I need a car? A car that I have to maintain, and buy insurance for”. I even considered limiting everything I own in a backpack, which would allow me to move wherever I want, whenever I want.

Owning a car

Sure, owning a car is more expensive overall. But it buys me freedom. Uber is convenient only to places where they operate, at the time when there’s a demand. With a car, I have the flexibility to travel on my terms, have my own private space. I don’t have to worry about whether I can book a ride to the specific place I want to go at any given time.

Owning a place

“Most people, Kamala, are like a falling leaf, which is blown and is turning around through the air, and wavers, and tumbles to the ground. But others, a few, are like stars, they go on a fixed course, no wind reaches them, in themselves they have their law and their course” — Siddhartha

Sure, being able to move at whim seems nice. Having tried it though, I felt lost. “What the hell am I doing? What am I trying to prove?” is what I remember thinking when I was moving to my 4th hostel.

Having my own place allows me to establish roots. It gives me a home, a space where I feel at ease and can be myself, doing things that suit me. Unlike renting, where even something as simple as putting a nail in the wall requires permission, ownership offers the freedom to make decisions about the space without constraints.

Owning a decision

Ownership extends beyond material things, it includes decisions too. When I own a decision, I take responsibility for the resulting outcome. Regardless if it’s good or bad.

If in my mind it’s somebody else’s fault, how the hell can that help? Owning a decision puts myself in a position where I can correct myself when I acknowledge I made a bad move.

Ownership comes with higher costs — more money, more responsibility, more time and effort. However, the sense of having more influence over the direction of my life makes it worth it for me.

I’ve been wanting to write and publish for a while, but I’ve been overly critical about what’s worth sharing or not.

I often consider things that, in hindsight, prove to be unnecessary, such as:

It has to provide value

I learned that sharing my personal experiences in itself have value. It brings up visibility on my interest that might resonate with other people too.

It has to be worth other’s people time

We’re clearly bad judges of our own creations. We should just put them out there and let the world decide. - Derek Sivers

I could not possibly know what’s worth other people’s time. It’s an imaginary audience in my head that put unnecessary pressure on me. Publish and let people decide.

It has to be structured, easy to read

At this point, it doesn’t matter how my posts are structured. The goal is be comfortable on publishing and sharing stuff. The goal is to keep on sharing. It could be a single sentence or a well-thought of piece. It doesn’t matter.

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In general, writing does not have to be for other people. However, the thought that someone else might read it forces me to structure my writing enough that it makes sense. If I were writing solely for myself, I would write things that would not make sense even to me a few weeks, months, years from now.

Writing for other people is just an excuse to force myself to extract clarity out of what’s inside my head.

I’m actually writing this on Jan 2nd already, but family stuff happened and I’m okay to back-post to fulfill my new year’s resolution which is to publish everyday.

Publish everyday, no matter how insignificant my update is. Why? I feel like I’ve been keeping too much stuff inside my head. Stuff not written down only fills in my limited head space. Once I write it down, I’m free to let go of it. Or look back with what I published when I feel like I need to.

Bad start, but it’s okay

Here’s to a bad start of posting late in the first day of the year. But forgiving myself and still doing it anyway.

Let’s see where this takes me.

For a couple of months now, my days are mostly filled work and family time. I feel guilty with the amount of time I’m spending at work. What I do is every time not spent working is spent on family.

No time to slow down, let alone to stop.

This has been detrimental to me on multiple aspects.

Mentally

With my days filled, there’s minimal wiggle room for exploration and mistakes. This puts unnecessary pressure to myself. With pressure, I don’t operate optimally. Even the simplest tasks take a long time to get started and push to completion.

Emotionally

Even if I’m physically with my family, I cannot be fully present. At the back of my mind, there’s this anxiety of things I need to do.

Not being fully present makes me feel more guilty.

Failing to deliver things on expectations I set hits my self-esteem. A lower self-esteem results to failing to deliver more.

It’s a downward spiral that takes a lot of self-awareness and willpower to get out of.

Physically

With feeling limited of time, exercise was one of the first thing that went away. Without exercise and pushing myself hard, I felt weaker and unprepared for day-to-day challenges. I easily get ticked-off, I easily give-in.

It’s counterintuitive to slow down when I have a lot of things on my plate. But it’s exactly what I need when my days are filled.

If your brain is a highway and you are filling yourself with work, after a while you start to slow down. Your mental rush hour gets longer and longer. You find yourself struggling to accomplish even the simplest tasks.

Today, I took time to stop and reflect where I’m at.

One of the first steps to get out of this rabbit hole of always pressured, always in a rush, and failing to manage expectations.

Hopefully, I get back on track soon.

“Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be.” - Charles Bukowski

For this year, I’m explicitly deciding to put myself first.

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Self-care

I can’t expect other people to take care of me. It’s a nice-to-have, but I shouldn’t really rely on it. Other people already have their own set of priorities and problems, I can’t reasonably expect another person to put me first.

To change: Prepare and have the capacity to take care of myself

Be a less agreeable person

It’s easy for me to empathize with anyone. This leads me to being an overly agreeable person. By default, I put other’s people needs over my own. It’s genuine, but I’m at a point that I feel it’s a disservice to myself. I’m here to lead a good life, to be an example to my 3 sons. I’m not here to please.

To change: Put my needs first. Less empathy, more enforcing of boundaries. Embrace tension, conflicts, and disagreements. Don’t tolerate any form of disrespect. People may cut me off, and that’s okay.

Indulging myself

Spending for other people is infinitely easier for me than spending for myself. I’m thinking it might be a symptom that deep down I feel I don’t deserve to have nice things. I don’t particularly like the word “deserve” because it reeks entitlement , but in this case I think I deserve it.

To change: As long as I fulfill my duties and roles, I’m allowing myself to indulge guilt-free to things I need, want, and prefer.

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Everything here sounds too selfish to me, but I have to remind myself: The better I take care of myself, the better I will handle life, the better it will be for people around me.

So starting this year, I’ll put myself first.

One thing that significantly changed in me when I had kids is the willingness to build wealth.

My family is never really about luxury. We’ve never really envied other people who has more than us. My upbringing is heavily biased on being contented with what we have (thanks Ma!). There’s natural resistance to excess. And that’s how I am up to now.

Bringing kids to this world though, have this good burden of wanting to provide and secure them the basic necessities of life. That’s how I see my primary role now: a provider. However, there’s really no guarantee up until when I’ll be alive. The best option I have is to build wealth as fast as possible that can cover their life up until they are capable of choosing their own path.

At the core of what I do and why I’m motivated to work hard is actually a disguise on being ready to die anytime.

How I’m preparing to die

The best way I effectively work is when I have a crystal clear vision of what I want to achieve. I’ve identified two goals that, when achieved, I can go peacefully:

1. House and lot per kid - with a lot of luck, I was able to achieve this recently. Whatever happens now, at the very least they will have a place to live in.
2. 5m per kid - to cover basic necessities and education up to college - this will take some time to achieve. My strategy for this one is get to a term-life insurance until I get to this point. Regardless of what happened to me, they will still be covered.

Of course I want to provide them more than material things. I’m figuring those out along the way. I just consider this as the baseline of what I’m aiming to provide. 

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There’s this line in one of my favorite song when I contemplate about death: love is watching someone die — so who’s gonna watch you die?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWeYOtyyypo

I sure hope that my kids are the ones who’ll be there. Already equipped for whichever path they choose and ready to whatever challenge the world is going to throw at them.

Whenever I’m in a tough situation, it has become my habit to ask “what’s the worst thing that can happen?”

Let’s say I got delayed on a project. What’s the worst that can happen? I get fired. Then what? I will still be alive by then, I could find another job. I also know that I’ve minimized my risks enough that I could live the same lifestyle for a few months without any income. There isn’t really something to be anxious about.

I read that the fear we feel didn’t evolve as human’s circumstances improved. The fear we feel getting fired is irrationally similar to being in a life-and-death situation.

Fear’s primary purpose is to keep us from things that threatens our lives. If it’s something that can cause irreversible consequences (total disability, jail, death), sure it makes sense to be afraid. But if it’s not, fear just becomes a hindrance to think of solutions. So how do I lessen it?

Acknowledge the worst outcome

Explicitly acknowledging what’s the worst that can happen makes myself realize that hey I ain’t gonna die. I can move on to thinking how I can actually rectify my situation. A significant amount of mistakes can be corrected.

For a delayed project, most people just want to be updated. Sharing what’s the cause of the delay and how I plan to stay on track is a very good first step to do.

I don’t have control on how they will react. But regardless if they understood my situation or the worst actually happened, I’m prepared. The important thing is I was not paralyzed by fear, I started moving again.

For the past few months I’ve been buying tiny PCs in FB Marketplace because I’m planning to create a homelab Kubernetes cluster for learning. I’ve purchased a lot in the marketplace before and everything went through. Most people are trustworthy. But of course, there are exceptions.

What was the scam?

The seller presented himself as company employee. I was told that they have a warehouse and a procedure of payment-first to process orders. This is a red flag in itself. However, when I checked the pick-up location, the company really do have a warehouse and it’s registered under the company name. This addressed my first concern.

The way the messages was structured was it addresses any hesitation that might come up. It looks like they really do have a standard procedure. I went ahead and transfer the amount agreed to.

And then he’s gone.

At first I felt my anger building up. Then shame slowly creeped in. I felt stupid for falling for it. My initial thought was to keep it to myself. Sharing it would only validate my stupidity.

I somewhat knew that if I kept things to myself, the bad experience will just linger at the back of my mind for days. Even if it’s embarrassing, I shared it to Julie and my friends.

What could I have done next time?

There are multiple ways to catch this con. It’s a little more hassle but for large transaction it’s worth it. Here’s the thing I should have done instead:

• Call the company to verify person employment
• Ask for an I.D. and live photo of the items
• Most sellers offer payment only when the pickup service has arrived — insist on doing this
• Avoid large transactions on Gcash/GrabPay because they specifically exclude swindling (transferred money but unfulfilled order) to their protection coverage

What good did come out of this?

I’m actually getting addicted on finding good deals in the marketplace. Even for things I don’t need. There’s this instant gratification in same-day shipping purchase. It’s getting harder to control myself especially when I’m stressed out and my willpower is spent. Now, I have natural aversion on buying. I don’t visit the marketplace any more haha.

Another thing that was surprising is how I was able to regulate my emotion. In less than an hour I was able to accept and acknowledge the situation. I knew that getting angry or feeling shame wouldn’t make a difference. It will only make my loss bigger (by being emotionally invested in something I don’t have control of). I was able to resume my day as planned.

This was good exercise on how I’d react when real bad things happen. I’d say this lesson is well worth ₱15.9k.

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Here’s the details for SEO: Golden Dragon Enterprise 09334498092 09687683535

I heard the idea “fake it till you make it” back in college. I tried it a few times. But every time I do, something always felt off. The whole interaction that comes after is usually stressful. I put myself in a position where I have to be careful with my words, where I can’t be fully myself, or share challenges I encounter with what I have to deliver.

It’s a big disservice to the other person because expectations were not properly managed. If they knew I couldn’t do certain tasks, they could’ve tap other people to do the work instead.

Beyond this, faking doesn’t align with my values. I value truthfulness (even if it hurts). If I don’t practice it myself, how can I expect other people to do the same? This incongruence with how I want to live versus how I’m living makes me uneasy. It’s essentially lying to myself.

A better alternative: face it till you make it

The way I approach it now is saying what I’m lacking upfront. I’m straightforward with things I don’t know. I’m more willing to appear like a fool now. No one is expert on everything anyway.

I lay all my cards. I share what I’m good at and how can I help them achieve their goals. I share my plan on how I’ll address my lack of skills.

It’s a risk if they want to continue to work with me. But it’s a risk they can decide for themselves. The other person can make an informed decision.

If they do decide to go ahead, I’d be grateful for the trust. I’d go extra mile to deliver what they need. If not, that’s okay. There are countless other people. I just need to match with people that will benefit with my current expertise.

Gaining self

In my younger years, my goal was to be self-reliant, self-sufficient, self-made. Focused mostly on self. I want to be able to accomplish things without relying on anyone. And I was fairly becoming good at it.

The mindset I had was anyone can leave me anytime and I’ll be fine. It seemed like a nice idea at that time. However, this has limited the relationships I had to reach up to surface-level only. I was always on guard. It was very easy for me to cut people off as soon as there’s unpleasantness. There was no chance for relationships to grow.

The older I get though, the more it’s evident that self-sufficiency at a cost of relationships isn’t worth it. Okay, I can manage by myself. Now what? It turns out that dealing, facing, fixing the unpleasantness is a big part of what makes life a more meaningful experience.

Losing self

The second lie, is that I can make myself happy. That’s the lie of self-sufficiency. As anybody on their deathbed will tell you, the things that make people happy is the deep relationships of life, the losing of self-sufficiency. 

The lies our culture tells us about what matters — and a better way to live (David Brooks)

I’ve accepted that I can’t do it all. I’ve been learning how to depend on other people. I try to share my problems even if it’s not natural for me to do. I do this to let them know that they’re safe to do the same. That they can depend on me when they need to.

I also actively reach out. I intentionally keep connections open. I show up to their life events. And it’s worth the effort.

I realized that losing of self-sufficiency is actually expanding of self. There are parts of me that shows only when I’m with people I trust and depend on. I did not lose anything. It’s quite the opposite. I gained a better understanding of myself.

I’m taking a two-month break of taking in new projects. Not out of burnout, but out of desire to try a different direction. I have this itch of starting something of my own initiative. This is especially hard for me because I’m not a visionary. I’m more of the person someone would trust executing a vision.

Timing also feels right as I’m turning 30 in two months. This is the kind gift I want to give myself before starting my next decade.

My focus for the next few weeks

• This website
  • Create structure/framework/process that makes it real easy for me to publish and share
• Create a habit of sharing of things I’m doing and learning
  • I love to teach. Sharing my journey teaches other people too.
• Create a habit of writing and publishing
  • Publishing is the notable change here. By publishing, I’m forced to articulate my thoughts in a way another person can understand it.
• Optimize on producing, not on consuming

I have this guilt that I’m doing so well with Coronavirus’ quarantine. The only thing that changed with my routine is I haven’t been able to go to Starbucks to work. It feels unfair and wrong that a lot of people are in a bad place.

I know that, by nature, people tends to help those in need. The problem is there’s a lot of people in need and it’s obvious that I can’t help them all. There’s this choice paralysis on how and who to give assistance to.

The strategy I adopted to workaround this is: fill your cup and let it overflow around you. 

First, I make sure that my family are taken care of. This means that I feel secure that we’ll be able to weather the crisis in the next few weeks despite the uncertainty. 

Then, I give away the excess I have to people around me that I’m aware needs help. Relatives, employees, coworkers, old classmates, kapitbahay, friend of a friend, kapitbahay ng friend, it doesn’t matter who. As soon as I knew about their struggle and I know how to help, I do it. I even reach out and ask about their situation.

Meritocracy doesn’t apply here. There’s no qualification if someone deserves help or not. No one deserves to be hungry.

Walking the talk: My cup is full. I already gave away more than 100% of my pay this month.

This is an optical illusion called Ebbinghaus illusion. It shows that when you put a circle around bigger circles, it looks smaller. But when you put it around smaller circles, it looks bigger despite that there’s no actual difference in size.

There’s this saying that you are the average of your friends. I think it’s the same thing, because we tend to be around people we don’t feel little in.

We are inclined to avoid uncomfortable situations.

If we want to grow, being the circle with bigger circles is a more optimal position to be in. There’s a lot of room for growth.

Unlike being the circle with smaller circles where we already feels big, there’s no incentive to grow.

When I hear the word unfair, it usually comes from the perspective of the one being taken advantage of.

I didn’t realize that being in an unfair situation has a good side too. We can be unfair by giving more than necessary, by giving benefit of the doubt when it’s not warranted, by being the more loving when it isn’t even reciprocated.

I think this is the unfairness we should strive for. To be on the giving end. To be in a position where we have too much, we absolutely have to give without expecting anything in return.

Life isn’t fair. It’s good that we strive for fairness. It’s even better if we strive for unfairness, but on the giving end. 

I’ve been dreading having another unexpected stressors for the past weeks because it kept throwing me off-balance. Every single time it happens I get flooded with anxiety, which make me not able to function properly. I end up binge watching a Netflix series which only exacerbate my problem, which causes me more anxiety, until I’m at a full stop. My knee-jerk reaction is to wish for a life without stress.

There are rare moments though when I regain enough self-awareness to understand what’s going on. I realized that my anxiety will not be solved by a stress-free life. Stress are inevitable. My anxiety will be solved by knowing that I have the capacity to handle any stress that come my way. Instead of wishing it to go away, it’s better to wish for increased capacity to handle stress. Being better at handling unexpected turn of things. That is the way forward because it prepares me to whatever lies ahead.

How should I deal with it next time it happens?

1. Ask yourself “What’s the worst thing that could happen? R u gonna die??”. If not, consider that your brain is most likely exaggerating it’s effect on your life. If the worst thing that can happen is losing your job or client, you can definitely find another one.
2. Exercise and eat right. Mind and body are obviously connected. The better you take care of yourself, the better you’ll handle life.
3. Reframe stressors as life’s challenges. It’s like a puzzle that’s waiting to be solved. Solving it will reward you a natural high (a flood of oxytocin).
4. Pray. Praying is an exercise of self-awareness. When you pray, you put in to words what you‘re wishing for. Putting it to words makes your thought concrete. A concrete thought gives you clarity and helps yourself understand what you are going through. It helps you focus on things you can do for yourself. For the things that’s out of your control, you can leave it to God. Do your part, then let go and let God.

All these will most likely turn my anxiety to ansaya teh.

Most great things in your life won’t happen by chance, they will happen by choice

Effectivity over efficiency Am I doing things right over am I doing the right things

Adjusting is normal, expected, and encouraged. It means you’re setting a plan, then adjusting that plan as new information arrives. — You Need a Budget: Rule One

This is from a budgeting methodology. However, this also applies to planning in general.

Things rarely go according to plan. But that doesn’t mean planning is useless. Planning gives you enough insight to know what to anticipate. What was planned isn’t absolute. It can and should be adjusted as events unfolds.

Whenever I’m being too sure, naiisip ko na baka ang sarado ng utak ko para hindi i-consider and iba pang bagay.

May nag-sabi sa akin na I lack conviction daw. Dahil yata lagi akong may duda. Siguro nga, pero ok lang.

Kailangan ko kasi ng insecurities para meron akong something to improve on.

Pag dumating na ako sa point na sobrang sigurado na ako, sign na yun ng stagnation.

When you’re green daw you grow, when you’re ripe you rot.

Ewan ko lang.

Written in May 1, 2012

Mabilis ako magalit. Mabilis din naman mawala. For a long time I considered it helpless. Ganun talaga ako e.

But we are born blank-slate daw. Meaning, I wasn’t born short-tempered. Therefore it’s still possible to change.

That made me look back on occasions I got really mad. Naalala ko there’s always regret whenever I burst out and say/do the most stupid things.

I recognized the pattern: Galit › Stupidness › Regret.

Kaya tuwing nagagalit ako inaalala ko na nagiging bobo ako. Tuwing hindi ako galit inaalala ko na nakakabobo magalit.

Written in March 28, 2012

There is a very old story, often told to fill time during training courses, involving a man trying to fix his broken boiler. Despite his best efforts over many months, he simply can’t mend it. Eventually, he gives up and decides to call in an expert. The engineer arrives, gives one gentle tap on the side of the boiler, and stands back as it springs to life. The engineer presents the man with a bill, and the man argues that he should pay only a small fee as the job took the engineer only a few moments. The engineer quietly explains that the man is not paying for the time he took to tap the boiler but rather the years of experience involved in knowing exactly where to tap. — Excerpt From: Richard Wiseman. “59 Seconds”

Individuals’ efforts to pursue their own interest may frequently benefit society more than if their actions were directly intending to benefit society —Adam Smith

Merong yatang dalawang bagay na unlimited

1. Gusto
2. Excuses

Madami akong gusto pero konti lang ang gustong gusto ko, to the point na excuses are invalidated. 

I think excuses are necessarily unlimited too, to filter out what we want to what we really really want.

Para ang makakakuha lang yung mga taong gagawin lahat para makuha yung gusto nila.

Written in December 27, 2013

I always say, ‘Look, I’d rather you take an extra minute or two and slow up service to get it right.’ Because the one minute behind you are now is going to become six minutes behind because we’re going to have to redo the plate. — For A More Ordered Life, Organize Like A Chef

One of the things that seems counterintuitive is not to rush things especially if you need to rush things.

Rushing leads to low-quality, compromised work that may take you more time in other, not-obvious ways.

I did not know how to do it right, so first I did it wrong.

One thing that prevents me from doing a lot of things is the fear of being wrong. Much more worse than doing something wrong is not doing it at all. Hindi obvious sa akin to dati: being wrong is a really good form of feedback. Kasi it hurts. Ngayon I try to use that feeling as a cue na I need to change something. Feedbacks are key things in getting better. Don’t pressure yourself to do it “right” the first time. If you got it wrong, celebrate! Because now you’ve got something specific to improve on.

Mahalaga pala matuto mag overlook. Of flaws and superficialities, and of things that doesn’t really matter (right now or ever). It frees the mind for more important things.

One thing I learned from Julie is learning how to ask.

I usually over think when I’m about to ask for an extra ketchup or a raise. It doesn’t matter which. I just… over think.

I got from her that it’s just a freaking question and people can just say no if they don’t want to.

Don’t make it such a big deal.

Making it a big deal: This is another thing I need to address. Since I spend a lot of energy before asking, I get offended by those who say no to me. Rejection is something I dread hearing. This one of the reasons why I’m afraid to ask in the first place.

Rejection is fine, don’t make it such a big deal. You can just go ask somebody else. Life doesn’t end on rejection. If you can’t go straight ahead, go find a workaround.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

I got most of it wrong. Akala ko you just preset yourself, your skills, your education and that’s it. It’s up to the employer to figure out how they’ll use you. Dalawa lang daw goal ng companies why they hire

1. Increase revenue
2. Reduce cost

Use that insight for every decision you do about your resume. Pano mo made-demonstrate na you can increase revenue or reduce cost? What do you bring to the table? Make it easy for them to see what value can you deliver Sell yourself kung baga You don’t sell a product (yourself) by what it can do, you sell a product by what it can do to make your (company’s) life easier/better