Let's Win

Lets’ talk about Winning now 

Because people today seem to either have an obsession towards it or simply can’t break through. 

(Spoiler Alert= This one is replete with idioms)

Apparently, because I really haven’t really thought about it too much, I’m not obsessed with winning at all, sometimes you come to a point in your life when you really have to win out of sheer necessity. And this is the perfect time to do it and with things happening in our global scene, a perfect storm as they call it. Necessity being the mother of invention, I really have to win this time.

I’m not going into specifics. I would rather go into how one would go about it…winning and maybe, I’ll have my personal breakthrough as well. How I consider myself is as a results-oriented person. I have no obsessive compulsive traits about me. I’m not even a workaholic like mommy who pen-pushed her way out of life. I just like to exercise my contraptions at hand.

Here are three words that get you going: juggling, multitasking and focusing. Whether or not we’re fully aware of doing them, we do them everyday. Out of necessity. Out of habit.

There’s a saying: Art is a jealous mistress. I just heard it on Afternoon Delight, so naturally, I had to look it up. The full quote is: “Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man has a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist, poet, lecturer, American. 

It basically means devoting yourself to your craft or work takes away precious time from your family or other priorities in life. To balance work and life, and women are tops at this, they “juggle” between family and work demands. It comes so naturally for women, who bear children but also have to work for a living to support their family and their mental freedom. It happens so regularly, we take it for granted, their difficulty.

Multitasking is another performance women are so good at, even long before the word became a household term with the advent of personal computers. It’s  doing more than one task at a time, simultaneously. Have you ever multi-tasked? I’m sure you have and I’m pretty sure that’s what you’re doing right now.

Unlike juggling which is a strategy for balancing art and life, multitasking is not really good for productivity. You know what’s actually good? At the risk of sounding like a power point presentation, “focusing” is…and I quote Google Search Assist: “ Focusing is essential for achieving goals and success, as it helps eliminate distractions and allows for deeper engagement with tasks. By concentrating on one thing at a time, you can enhance productivity and clarity in your efforts.”

If I’m not mistaken, once I wrote in one of my little notebooks a quote by director Norman Jewison for his acronym for the word FOCUS. It’s Finish Once Course Until Successful and I’ve stuck to that advise ever since. Maybe it’s not his to begin with but let’s just stick with him, as Norman Jewison is easy to remember and I remember him to be one of my fave directors. He was the director of many good films but most of all, he directed Fiddler on the Roof (1971) which of course I played Tevye in a HS play and had an affinity towards the movie musical because I really had no clue what Fiddler on the Roof was all about when it was assigned to our group.

I am the youngest of five children and grew up in a household who didn’t really groom me to be a “fighter” in life, a breadwinner, a career-oriented individual. Heck, I wasn’t even expected to clean my plate after eating and simply let the maids do it for me. I was taught to be “dependent” all my life, my parents thinking they would live forever. Not imposing clear expectations or clear-cut responsibilities from me gave me freedom to focus on my studies which I love doing. 

But in adulthood, your life’s landscape alters. There is a cognizance that you have to stand on your own, you have to fight for your rights, you have to fend for yourself, you have to look for work. I had to learn all of this the hard way. Nobody taught me the ropes in surviving school. Nobody is teaching me the ropes in surviving life right now.

All mommy told me that I can’t shake from my head is this: If you want something to be done right, do it yourself. Mommy was a “doer”, aside from being a pencil pusher and a nagger. She loved doing things on her own but she also loved bossing people around. By people, I mean her minions at the office and maids which we had aplenty then.

Like I told you, I’m not going into specifics, but our current maid is hardly a “maid” to me and especially Macoy who is disabled. She thinks she can boss me around because she thinks that with my “chumminess” towards her, I’m her equal. We hardly have any good food on the table nowadays unlike when both my parents were stlll alive. My only source of income was snatched from me by my own siblings who thought I didn’t deserve my monthly measly pension of P5k from the Apo Rental. I have no real source of income right now. But more than me, I have to support my nephew Macoy who has CP, emotionally, mentally and food-wise. My only money right now (from my SSS pension which I took as a lump some amount has already been completely consumed) plus some personal savings as well as the Security Deposit from our lessor at Apo I took out of anger because my sister was insinuating I am getting money from our shared family business income (which I wasn’t but made me actualize her worst suspicion of me)…well, they’re all about to be spent, drained, consumed, expended. And with my recent fraudulent transaction from BPI that took a large chunk from my remaining savings, my last money (as my calculation with my current spending) will be gone before my birthday in May.

I don’t live in a vacuum and I actually am aware of my reality. I also know but couldn’t care less about the faggot Ramos who guards my every move. When I fell from our roof and did it deliberately, it was borne out of everything that accumulated in my life at that point, every bad thing that happened in my adolescent life all condensed in one moment. And I’m not ashamed to share it with you because I’m obviously a person who has always been aware of myself and introspective. I’m not blaming anything or anybody at this point. Maybe I’ve forgiven those who have wronged me. But as one who values Memory over Alzheimer’s or even Dementia, and I have physical scars to prove it (like a dent in my head or even thoracic compression), I will never forget and will carry this as a badge of honor. 

Instead of shedding tears for me (me included), let this be a watershed moment instead. For me. For everybody. Let’s all win this time. It's about time.