2012

Maybe it is because I had a really bad week.  This is not exactly the best way to open my blogs for the year but ...  So the Water Dragon entered and I was down with a bronchial infection.  Three other friends of mine were also stricken by some respiratory ailment or another, blaming everything from pollution in these parts ... to the destruction brought to our biological systems because of climate change. Whatever.


Somehow we are not expected to answer all these questions fruitfully. And even if the bad week is now over (as I am present progressively recuperating after days of gulping down enough water to fill up a pool and so much dosage of CoAmoxiclav and paracetamol to beat this infection), I still believe 2012 is going to be a great year.


While in this semi-pathetic state of feeling perennially sluggish and suffering chills for almost a week, I have also realized a handful of very important things.  Call them morsels of wisdom fed to you while lying on a curtained cubicle at the ER of Saint Lukes with a kind nurse puncturing your left hand to insert the intravenous needle: you can only be as miserable as you make yourself to be.


Now wait: do not get me wrong. I did not get into an entire "I Whistle A Happy Tune" state of mind.  Nor did I start warning the sweet nurse that if she comes close to going beyond my threshold of pain (I also warned her about my fear of needles --- or just the sheer act of being punctured) that I would scream loud enough to give a cardiac arrest to the patient situated in the adjacent cubicle who is suffering from severe food poisoning (as far as I gathered eavesdropping from his conversation with the attending ER doctor --- it was the dinuguan he ate last Sunday lunch, still taking effect on a Wednesday evening. I surmised he was worse off than me).  Instead of feeling oh-so-sorry for a) being all alone in the ER chilling with fever and being hydrated and fed with paracetamol intravenously and b) hearing all these whimpering, crying, suffering patients overpopulating what must be the busiest department of a major hospital in Quezon City --- I told myself, well, it could have been worse.


Besides, despite all my obsession for working out and the fistful of supplements I take everyday (name it, I gulp it down: Multi-vitamins plus extra dosages of Vitamin C and E, Soy Lecithin, Fish Oil, garlic oil), your body's gotta give sometime or the other.  And who am I to think that despite my religious devotion to the gym and the way I particularly watch what I eat that I will not succumb to the ailments that have struck the rest of the mortals?  These things just happen. And, yes, we take all the necessary care and precautions ... but the bottom line is still ... yes, we are like the rest of the mortals.


I decided to do something drastic for the rest of the week.


I pushed aside everything I had to do and decided to go back to the burbs and take a rest.  Yeah, yeah: I know it is going to mess up the rest of my schedule for the following week but ... I would rather be up and about with the right frame of mind and in better health than to play the suffering martyr dedicating my life to work that may and can kill me. A good friend of mine once said, "We all work hard to have a good life ... and a good life is not one which is only about working hard." Makes a lot of sense.  He is the same friend who once entered my hospital room more than ten years ago when I was confined for internal hemorrhage and said, "So this is what you've been working for? Well, at least you have a beautiful room to be proud of. I bet your coffin will also be splendid considering how hard you are also working for it." 




Yeah, I got the message ... you bitch!


Now, at my age, I have come to realize that I am in a line of work in which no studio or network will pay for my hospital or funeral bills ... or worse, even invest premium in the work I give the moment I stop bringing in the money.  Oh, come --- we can get stuffed down our throats with all the slogans of camaraderie, one-ness, we are family and all that crap ... but the point still remains: this is part of business and we only get personal when it is useful to do so.  


So I am spending the rest of the weekend finishing an entire season of Big Bang Theory and The Voice. I am also taking my sweet time blogging. And I am already feeling better.  


How can I not say that 2012 is going to be a friggin' great year, Honey?