The previous months brought huge upward and downward waves of emotions into my life. I was feeling very down in the past months but recent events drastically changed my mindset and dragged me up to be game again with life.

The Lesson The Guitar Taught Me

I bought an acoustic guitar, a very cheap one, years ago. It stood behind our PC in our room collecting dust as time passed by. I play it sometimes, tune it from time to time and then return it to its place. I don't know why I didn't have the motivation to actually learn to play. My fingers sting after just a few minutes of practicing.

But one night, due to typhoon Glenda, we had no electricity and I was left with nothing much to do in the darkness after eating dinner. I went and grabbed the guitar and played the chords that I have learned to play from long ago. I played for about an hour. Unsurprisingly, my fingers were stinging red after. I thought, how do regular guitar players do that? How could they play the guitar in concerts for hours looking like it's the easiest thing to do in the world? I yearned to learn their secret so I practiced everyday aiming for my muscles to memorize the arrangement of some basic chords. That's when I noticed that my fingers did not hurt that much as compared before, and I began to tolerate longer playing hours. I have discovered and acquired their secret -- finger calluses.

The skin on my fingers felt tougher now, and playing chords feels almost painless now. I don't know but this experience kind of left me awestruck. So this is how our body adjusts from pain. It transforms as protection from the pain. This mechanism does not apply on the physical kind, but also on emotional pain. This totally changed my perspective in life.

Most of my life I've been hiding behind the walls that I have made to protect myself from the harshness of the world. I played safe and avoided risks on most aspects of life. I am proud to say that I have started to crawl out of my comfort zone and now that it just made me realize the essence of doing so. If I don't want to be affected by the things that I am most afraid of, I have to go out and stare at the enemy face-to-face. I have to expose myself until I become immune from them. That's the point wherein I can say that I have actually protected yourself from the cruelties of life.


Developing Maturity in Life

I just had my first anniversary at the office! I have been working there for a year now (how can time pass by so fast?!), and I have been always telling myself that I am very blessed to have been part of the family. I am learning a lot of lessons from them career-wise and in life in general. I am the youngest in our team so I look up to each of my teammates for guidance and support. I admit the first few months were culture-shocking to me because I have never been with a bunch of people with such great maturity and attitude in work and in life. We are mostly female in the group, some of them are already mothers and have a family. They were able to share with me lots of priceless lessons on dealing with life's greatest struggles, planning for the future, and in having a great attitude at work.

For instance, our manager is such a wonderful person. She never fails to impress me every time I get the chance to work with her. I have seen (I think) her best and worst side and believe me, you would never want to get to deal with her dark side. I never knew you could have a friend-like and buddy-like relationship with your superior, but at the same time maintaining the respect that of course needs to be there because of her authority at work. Honestly, I am comfortable with her, enough to have a one-on-one chat with her about anything at the pantry or even spark a conversation with her without having to be intimidated (knowing myself, I am very easy to be intimidated haha). I really don't know how she does it, but I guess it's just her talent and appeal, that she can be friends with everyone in the team, at the same time being treated with respect, which is without doubt, earned from each one of us.

I am mostly at awe with how she communicates with our client. I don't know but it's like she can do magic with words. She knows what's the right thing to say, which produces a good agreement between us (the development team) and the internal employees of the department (our customer). Maybe that's really the skill that all project managers have. I remember my PM at my previous work. I highly respect him because of his communication skills with the client. As of now I don't see myself becoming a PM in the future, but I would love to have those soft skills in dealing with customers, which would surely be applied also on how I would be dealing with the other people in my life.


Ready to Move on With Life

Everything seems brighter to me now because I have learned lots of timeless lessons in the past months. I am very flattered to have been recognized for doing things that I have taken initiative for the company. I've been thinking of ways to give back to the community because they have hugely helped in shaping my future and in placing me on where I am on now (I am proud to be a product student of public schools from elementary to college, having studied in UP Diliman with a DOST scholarship) so technically I am here because of the community, especially in finishing college (God knows what hardships our family had to go through just to send me to college, even with the presence of help from the scholarship) so I thought of finding ways to give back.



And now my company is thanking me for the help, but the truth is that I am the one who should be thanking for all the help. To think that I am at my worst during the past months, that recognition just gave me realization that I was still able to do something good and beneficial to others during those days when I was so depressed and everything felt so wrong. I don't know, I might be just being too emotional right now, but I am really happy. :)

I know for sure lots of challenges will come in the future, especially near the end of this year. I just hope I survive the challenge. Universe, please guide me!

Just like my motto for this site, everything happens one step at a time. I have successfully lifted one very heavy foot to make a huge step forward again, and I just need to continue to do this each and every day. For sure I will be arriving to the destination that I want, regardless of how long it will take to get me there. :)