He's my Strength

Whom have I in heaven, but You?
There is nothing on earth I desire besides you.
My heart and my strength, many times they fail,
But there is one truth that always will prevail

REFRAIN:

God is the strength of my heart.
God is the strength of my heart.
God is the strength of my heart,
And my portion forever, forever, forever, forever.

HARDEST FEELING

- when you don't know where you stand in someone's life...
- telling yourself you don't need the person when you actually do...
- teach yourself to move on, when you actually cant...

How soon is NOW???

BORING could be a good description of the last two days.

Two uneventful days with many thoughts and dreams as I tried to convince myself that everything in my life will eventually workout just fine. When you were alone in your room for that long, you would know that missed opportunities were the worst. And they will keep you up all night with silent shadows nagging your head in silence but still hope and pray, that maybe, in some far distance someone is telling you one thing " It will be all right my daughter, you don't have to worry".

I admit, there are those inevitable moments when a thought would haunt me back. Those moments when I would feel that undeniable longing for that person, for that someone .. One thing I realized was that, the longing and sadness I felt at that moment will not go on forever. It will wane and with a lot of help from above and some good friends and family will eventually rest.

Except for those times when it would hit me hard, I would came close to a realization that it didn't felt right anymore. That I don't wanna let it rule my life anymore.

An old entry from my friendster blog would say "Do not put all your conditions for happiness and fulfillment in one elusive, most likely non-existent person. Not only that you fail to appreciate the simple joys LIFE has presented to you everyday which in the end, is what you will have to LIVE through."

So what is my point? That in every event in your life, there is a good number of people or enriching experiences in it, all moving in perfect synchronicity that will help you move on.

All you have to do is decide and will yourself to immerse from gloom and start living your life which I bet I often forgot to consider.

And my timer ... would start ... NOW!

Closing Cycles

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.

Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long lasting friendship ended all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill. None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back. Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away.

That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place. Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.

Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the "ideal moment." Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person - nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.

Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are. - by Paolo Coelho

KUDOS to Scott!

A colleague of mine, former teamate and a friend ( i hope he considered me one of his own ) wrote and submitted this entry to the Daily Inquirer column YOUNGBLOOD and got published recently... and because I'm a proud and jealous friend, I'd like to share this simple yet full of so true facts as we feel the same way about our long awaited resignation from work and thread greener pastures...

Youngblood : Losing connection
By: Scott James Roxas / Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 03:56:00 07/04/2009

Filed Under: Employment

If you check my Friendster account, you will find a testimonial courtesy of a very good friend of mine telling the Worldwide Web that both of us are dying to be call center agents in the future.
He wrote it way back when the local business process outsourcing industry was still in its infancy and being a call center agent was considered one of the coolest jobs around. I was still in college at that time and had no clear post-college plans.

Now, several years later, I find myself sitting in the office and looking at the phone which indicates that there are about a hundred calls waiting, some of which I’m supposed to attend to. You would think I am delirious with joy over the fact that I am now a bona fide call center representative. But I am not.


A very irate customer has just shouted at me over the phone after realizing that he was so stupid as to have booked the wrong flights. He assumed that I had to take the blame for his mistake.
By the end of the shift, as the sun slowly peeks between the towering buildings of Makati, I will be giddy with excitement to get out of the office, but I still have to fix a major flight schedule change involving airlines no one has ever heard of before. I can go on and on, but I am sure you get the picture. I have been here for almost two years and I am this close to hurling the Avaya phone across the floor before rushing out of the place.


You may be wondering why I’m still here, still trying to make out what the Chinese girl is saying on the other line, still dragging myself to work each working day, still struggling to keep my numbers up, still missing family parties and dates, and still sporting heavy eye luggage. The truth is, I am not sure what keeps me from resigning. Like many other employees out there, I have been planning to get out for the longest time. Yet, for some reason, I never get to do so.
For some people, this job may be an answer to a calling (pun not intended), while for the rest of us, it’s a career limbo. Somewhere between graduating from college (or not) and figuring out which career direction to take, being a call center agent provides a worthwhile option that may just help one realize his potentials as a professional, tax-paying citizen. It’s something everyone from different educational backgrounds must try. Along the way, some may realize that arranging honeymoon trips and summer vacations to Europe may be more fulfilling than tending to sick people in that continent. You just wouldn’t know. Whether it’s an industry you intend to be a part of for the rest of your professional life or something temporary, I guess the important thing is that you are making the most of your time—and by this I don’t just mean consuming as much local, Hollywood and/or office “chismis” (gossip) during free time.


My friend and I must have been thinking that this job only requires her to speak in English in front of the computer while she twirls her hair around her finger and stares blankly into space. But apparently, being a customer care representative in my travel account is more challenging than that. You have to speak in English in front of the computer while twirling your hair around your finger, and stare blankly into space even during Christmas and New Year’s Eve! Oh, and you also have to sound as if you are actually smiling while being verbally attacked by a customer.
Seriously though, a day at work is no stroll in the park. Physical, mental and sometimes spiritual strength are vital in getting the job done. It’s not brain surgery, but it certainly involves a lot of thought processes.


Imagine waking up to the last sunset of the year and you are all alone while the rest of your clan is in the province preparing for a festive New Year shebang. You go through the motions and head to work just the way you do every day. Lacking sleep and wishing you are somewhere else, you get a call from a screaming lady who is about to lose her mind because her flight is 15 minutes delayed.


Love it or hate it, whether it’s something you do for the time being or it is going to be a long-time affair, being a call center agent is an experience worth trying. At the end of the day, we owe it to ourselves to make each second count through heavy queues and long call-free periods.
God knows how long I will manage to stay, but until I start pursuing greater passions, let me enjoy long “avail times,” short calls, great friends and colleagues, and rest days.


(Scott James Roxas, 22, is a journalism graduate of West Visayas State University. He works as a call center representative in Makati.)