It’s been six months, ten days, 17 hours, 37 minute, 58 seconds since I resigned from my job (again). After six years of ego-tripping, mind-bashing, voluminous paper checking, and torturous grammar correcting, I finally called it quits… Amen to that.
It’s the Gemini in me once again – a pain in the ass adventurer whose idealism precedes the real self. Fed up. Bored. Unhappy. Hence, getting out of the structured walls of work was the answer.
Freelance once again. In transition, the family roles were reversed. True to form, the pressure in a Gemeinschaft community was somewhat hard to contend with. Duhh… Why do we always have to abide with societal mores and norms?
Example 1. An equally pain in the ass daughter could not accept the fact that I’m working albeit at home, thinking and waiting for a one-shot opportunity for the big bucks. She was already immersed with the idea of gender roles – that an ideal father should always be leaving the house daily for work. So absorbed, too, in the premise that: husbands (in my case, a house-band) should not sport a goatee, more so, a long hair.
Example 2. Another dilemma is the notion of former co-workers that my “shelf life” as a yuppie (yorppie is appropriate I guess – Young Rural Professional) is nearing expiration. Sooner or later, I will be taken out of the job market shelf.
Example 3. Why am I letting my wife to study in the big city and make all the sacrifices for the kids? (A woman-friend told me this. She hasn’t heard of women’s lib and too conservative to accept it.)
Shrugging my shoulders isn’t enough to answer those queries. So too is the fact that rationalizing won’t work as people do not have the same level of understanding. One thing is certain though: they are getting into my nerves!
An erudite friend once told me: “There’s not one thing comparable to the divine nobility of being a father. It is of vernal gift to witness the metamorphosing children and no joy greater than to stand in awe at the fruit of labor as it becomes the vital part of humanity. You have the reason and meaning to live, being a father is more than enough.” Thank goodness, he didn’t puke.
My life as a father is purpose-driven but contrary to the preaching of Rick Warren. Neither would it be Og Mandino’s greatest salesman in the world. Nor living in Coelho’s surrealist world. I guess I’m best fitted with Bob Ong’s antics – A B N K K Su L T N P L A Ko. At Y N Ang N G S Yo Ko!!! (10 October 2008)
