Hello.
So it's 2021, and I am happy to report that I am still alive. Barely, though. Up to this point anyway.
As some of you may know (if by some miracle you have read this space a number of years ago), I have this filthy habit of spewing the mundane and uninteresting thoughts occupying my mind for public consumption on this ye blog. I'm not proud of it, and have not in any way shared this site to anyone outside of my inner circle of friends. I'm too afraid of being found out and ridiculed for dumbing down anyone who happens to read this. So for the past years, I have not published anything, not to say that I have not written anything on this blog, because I have, with much guilt, and have just decided not to publish them. For this entry in particular, the jury is still out.
Suffice to say, a lot of things have happened since... 2012? I can't recall the last time I published anything, but without looking at the history, I would say 2012 feels accurate.
*****
So I took up golf, again. Still suck at it, sadly. I took a hiatus from the sport (is it a sport, really?) sometime around 2013 because my then girlfriend (now my wife) did not care for it and questioned why anyone would want to play golf. So I quit.
Then 2021 came around, and my wife (who was my girlfriend back in 2012), out of boredom because of all the restrictions caused by the ongoing pandemic, decided to "try" golf. Then she realized that golf was fun. And has taken a liking to it, to put it inaccurately. She has bought in to the whole golf lifestyle - buying the clubs, hiring the coach, ordering the shirts, the skirts, the shoes, the arm sleeves, the cap, the tees and the balls, everything. I hate her for it, because now I look back at all those years that I was not able to play golf and am now playing catch up. Though, I can't really afford to buy into the lifestyle, because I'm cheap. So I have second hand, severely used clubs, drastically marked down sale merch, and a terribly inconsistent swing.
The thing that makes me bitter about all this, is that golf was supposed to be "my thing". It's not supposed to be a couples thing! It's my thing, not our thing, mine! She can take tennis or billiards or yoga or high intensity interval training or some bullshit like it, but not "my" golf.
Well, there's actually a list, of "my things". There's golf (already mentioned), jogging, trail running (things which I'm not really good at, though), hip-hop abs workouts... well, that's it. Not much of a list, I guess.
Maybe (very very likely) I'm in the wrong here, because aren't we supposed to create all these shared experiences and stuff? But as every 40-something man knows, you will never outgrow your selfish 12 year old self. It's that clubhouse where girls are not allowed, or the incredibly violent arcade games which are for boys only. Sure, we've all fantasized about that cool girl who was one of the guys - but she's the one who's supposed to be the exception and off-limits to everyone, or a lesbian. How dare she?!
But there's nothing to be done. I am smart enough to know that there isn't really any "my thing", and that 12 year olds aren't that smart, specially 12-year old boys. And that if my wife ever reads this she'd probably mock me for a good number of months (fortunately, she doesn't know about this blog, nor has any interest in it, for good reason). All I can do now is suffer the bitterness silently, like that time when a room full of mostly female student nurses made up an audience at my circumcision.
*****
A few days ago, during a lull in my online meetings, I was updating the family balance sheet. It's an annual thing I do, where I try to figure out how poor I/we are and get depressed at how much money we have been flushing down the toilet on really frivolous and mundane stuff (like spending PHP 130,000 a year on "fuck it I deserve this because of the crappy day I'm having" doughnuts). At the end of the activity, it's always that shitty feeling of helplessness and anguish at how much I could have saved up. Then armed with all that guilt, I approximate the monthly budget that I should be hitting and naively smile at the potential riches that would be saved up and invested. This year is similar, but for a few exceptions, pandemic-related.
Last year, I have finally put some money in the stock market. It's something that I have always thought about doing, but never really got to - partly out of laziness, but mainly because there wasn't a lot of disposable income to invest. With the pandemic, without all the planned expenses of birthday staycations, or that trip to Disneyland, or that vacation in the US to visit relatives, I found a bit of savings. So I thought to myself, why not just put it in the market, just like every other successful friend has been advising me about for years? And so I did.
Now that I have some money in the "market", I noticed a change in myself - I've become an "expert" all of a sudden. Strange, but now I have developed my own personal fool-proof theories about the movements in the market. Armed with all the tools from hours of watching Youtube, I have devised a smartypants strategy for beating the market, of outfoxing all those clueless traders and hedge fund managers and finding value bets and growth portfolios.
I looked in the mirror, and found Randy Marsh on the other side.
Now, after a year of being the self-proclaimed expert, I grew my investment an astounding 0.8%.
Fuck me.
*****
Well, not everything is depressing on the financial front. I'm quite pleased to report that after 19 years, from the time I entered the job market and was no longer subsidized by my parents, I am finally debt-free.
Yeah, I'm that dumb, and that poor, and financially irresponsible. It took me almost 2 decades and a global pandemic to finally do something about all those interest rates and guilt and forced poverty. I figure that in that span of time, I could have already started the foundations of my retirement fund and have been living off the dividends of my early investments. It wasn't out of ignorance - I was fully aware of the powerful impact that debt had on limiting personal financial freedom. But - YOLO.
Don't worry, this isn't going to turn into a manifesto, lecturing you on the value of getting out of debt and the power of financial responsibility. I realize that Starbucks, doughnuts and Jollibee are just things that make life worth living, albeit pretentiously at times (We all bought that grande-whatever-fucking-ccino-no-whip-with-cinnamon-powder so people would think that we were just so cool and cultured and all that shit). After all, I can't say that I've cut doughnuts off from the 2022 budget. They are still there - plus the 5% increase allocated for inflation and supply chain complexities as a result of the pandemic and climate change action. I need those doughnuts.
The point is, it's ok to do things at your own pace. It's ok to graduate from college an extra year or two, or three, or four and a half year even. No one really cares. Except maybe your parents, specially if you keep on whining about how small your allowance is despite overstaying college because of all those parties and beers and the cool pager or teeny tiny Nokia that you just have to have.
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My kid turned 4 a few days ago, so naturally, it was time to think about school and stuff. As a parent, you sorta have to figure these things out. Sure, you can delay and tell yourself that there's really no pressure for the kid to start school a few years later than everyone. But long term, do you really want that parasite to keep living in your house for all those extra years? You just have to do it for your own sake, and sanity.
So as I was saying, the kid just turned 4 and we realized that this little bugger has to get something useful into his brain. Trouble is, we just didn't have the confidence that he'd be a good student and all that. We couldn't even do potty training right, so school was really this big fucking mountain that we had to somehow figure out.
Being in a pandemic, we checked out some online school options and found one that seemed to be good (read: affordable). But there was pressure - we didn't want to be labeled as the "bad" parents. You know, the kind of parents who couldn't control their kid (we can't) and don't do anything about their kid's possible attention deficit disorder (we don't) and probably let the wanker stay on their iPad for hours just to selfishly and irresponsibly have some quiet time (we do). So we set some things up to have a trial school of sorts. I rearranged some stuff in my home office and called up my sister (who thankfully is a teacher) so we can have an hour to see how things would go.
As expected, it was horrible.
No amount of pleading, praising, threats or bribes could get the kid to sit still and play along. This wasn't even ABC or 123 stuff, this was just trying to get him to stay still long enough to watch a god damn video. The hour was mostly me trying to save him from killing himself and his mom desperately pulling out all the tricks we knew to catch his attention for more than 10 seconds at a time.
Mercifully, the session ended with him still alive and us having managed our blood pressure. It was a good teaching moment for us, and we think we can do a lot better next week. I'm pretty confident we will be ready by then.
By the way, if anyone knows a store or company selling shackles and a straight-jacket that would fit a 4-year old, for the love of God please comment with the link. Thank you in advance.
