ArchiveOctober 2021

Day 12, first bad day

D

After a good eight-hour sleep, I woke up today feeling abnormally out of sorts. Over the past week, since my second weekly chemo session, I’ve been physically feeling minor aches and pains all over my body when I come out of slumber. But typically, after getting out of bed, moving around, and eating a good breakfast, the rest of the day passes without drama. So that is what I was expecting today...

Message from I Ching

M

Have you heard of the I Ching? From what I can tell, not many know much about this ancient Chinese classic, either in China or elsewhere, and only a talented few are masters in its application. Called The Book of Changes in English, this is one of the oldest Chinese texts, estimated to date back over 3,000 years. You might say it’s a divination manual. Or a book of timeless wisdom. I first...

We’ll do what you want. Not.

W

When did (some) doctors go from thinking of themselves as demigods to being wimps refusing to be decisive and accountable? It’s quite possible that my medical oncologist is intimidated by me. (I expressly put that in the passive form.) Maybe he’s not used to dealing with knowledgeable, independent thinkers and straightforward speakers like me as patients. Maybe I’m reading him wrong. We’re both...

The power of prayer

T

For the second time in our over three decades together, my honey has set up an “altar” to solicit the help of our departed ancestors and Guanyin. This time it’s for getting help to return me to wellness. Neither of us are regular prayers; neither of us subscribe to any specific religion, and definitely not any institutionalized one. Neither of us have strong ideas about what there might be beyond...

You have a negativity bias

Y

Yesterday I had cause to remind a friend not only to look at his unpleasant situation in a negative way. It was my nudge to remind him things may not be as bad as they seemed to him. It got me thinking about how different our initial impulses can be. And how these impulses can color our thoughts and perspectives. I’ve always known, just from life experience, that some people have the tendency to...

Unsubscribing

U

In my effort to keep my fingers on the pulse of online business, I’ve subscribed to possibly hundreds of email lists. Hourly I have emails pouring in from internet marketers, social media experts, business coaches, life coaches, specialty coaches (nonprofit, publishing, etc), authors, copywriters, news, oh, you name it, I get it. Looking at it all from my current perspective, it seems a bit crazy...

Silver linings

S

Silver linings can be odd sometimes. Today my honey and I ventured out of our home in southern Metro Manila to drive to Intramuros (meaning “inside the walls), one of the oldest areas within Manila. Our mission was to pick up our renewed residency cards at the main immigration office. We felt lucky that the excursion took less than three and a half hours, even though the round trip was under 40...

Want to know when I post?

Enter your email address to subscribe to my journal and receive notifications of my new posts by email.