September Blues

Baker’s Note:  In light of that deadly storm that passed through the Philippines this past weekend, I hope this message finds you and all your loved ones safe and in good health.

This blog ain’t dead.  It just seems like it.

This month has proven to be a very exhausting one for me.  I haven’t been able to find the time and muster the energy to either finish pieces that have been in draft for quite a while or to start writing new ones.  I’ve been doing a lot of writing at work, business writing that is (memos, reports, and appraisals) on a daily basis that by the time I get home in the evenings, I find myself too mentally exhausted to do some blogging.

I have the September blues too in a number of ways.  Summer has ended here.  The nice, warm days are over and the cold weather is starting to settle in.  The trees are starting to shed leaves.  I’ll miss the greenery and the warm, sunny weather around me for the next few months.  The cold makes it much harder to get up in the mornings.  Dressing up becomes a chore because of the number of layers one needs to put on.  I want to spend more time in bed but I can’t for fear of missing my bus if I do so.

My weekends had been busy too since they were spent helping my cousin get settled in his new apartment.  I helped him shop for furniture and other stuff that he needed in his apartment.  It was exhausting to do all that moving of furniture from the car to his fourth floor apartment.  As a result, I have been suffering through some aches and pains throughout my body for weeks now.

September also reminded me of my own mortality.  My blood pressure has been at an elevated level since early last year.  My doctor has so far refused to prescribe any blood pressure medication to bring it down and has only recommended a lifestyle and diet change at this point.  It bothers and depresses me quite a bit because prior to that, my blood pressure had remained at a normal level for quite a long time when compared to a lot of my friends and other people my age.  But I guess that’s part of life.  Somewhere along the way, things happen that remind us that there’s a limit to our stay in this world.

And as September drew to a close, Typhoon Ondoy suddenly came and battered the country with rains and floods not seen for decades.  All the concerns I wrote above are nothing when compared to what a lot of people lost in my home country.  The town where I spent my elementary and high school years was one of the hardest hit.  A lot of childhood friends and their families still live there.  I hope and pray they’re ok.  I’ll find a way via some friends and high school classmates based here and in the Philippines to somehow extend help.

Thanks a lot for all the visits and the comments you have left in spite of my rather long absence from these pages and from your respective blogs.  I will make up for such absence somehow sometime, hopefully soon.  I need to regroup right now given the demands on my time and energies these past several weeks.  But I will surely be back.  Until then, I wish you all well.