So little time

IF YOU were let off work for a month, what will you do?

I was let off for two weeks early this year and ended up injuring myself. With walking to the hospital three times a week for physical therapy came the admission that maybe the routine of work has kept me in one piece all these years.

Freedom. Imagine. No deadlines snapping at your neck, no assignments nipping at your ears. Just the whole wide world to explore. I did. It cost me two weeks of hospital visits and it wasn’t even because of an accident; just plain wearing off and pummeling of some joints made to undergo repetitive trauma from all the rough rides up and down mountains. Weee and ouch.

“I used to ride my bike from home,” my friend recalled his childhood days when he would be biking all the way from this point to that point, along the highway and byways, without asking permission from his parents. For him, he had a bike and it carries him, far, and so he went far. Nothing to it. It was the epitome of the carefree childhood that in retrospect, as a thinking adult, you would have second thoughts of doing. The dangers, the risks.

“Looking back, I am convinced that I should’ve have at least told my parents where I was going,” he said.

“Okay, next time, I will,” I said.

He looked at me strangely and said, “No, that was about my childhood. What I’m telling you now is… aren’t you supposed to have stopped doing those a long time ago?”

Ha? You mean there’s an expiration date to real adventure?

There would be if you say so. But then, that will be so adult, so boring. I used to escape on my bike, too, even in college. Every Sunday I’d pedal off to this isolated beach behind Pepsi Cola plant in Dumoy all by myself, unmindful of the five kilometer ride through the highway and the kilometer or two of dirt road where very few people pass. Until my mom found out and reminded me that I can be raped. Oh. The solitary carefree rides ended right then and there as fear overcame everything else. Until I found friends to do it with me.

I’ve been hiking, riding, and stumbling off to parts unknown since then, this time in the company of friends and acquaintances. That was what I did when given two weeks to myself, ending up with with a shoulder pain so terrible, I could hardly sleep. Still, the lesson imparted was not so much as to stop hieing off to parts unknown as my friend thought was the adult thing to do, but to be mindful of your arms; that they too get stressed out; and that swinging on monkeybars and riding carabaos like in a rodeo is for kids.

Back to the question, if you were let off work for a month or two, what will you do?

Let’s see… there’s a bunch of half-read books to read, there are two half-finished books to write, half-finished because both need some more travels to complete, and yes, the herbs are waiting, and the dog to train. There’s the house to clean and clothes to launder and the places to go out there waiting because your work schedule doesn’t allow you to be away for more than three days. Of course, there are a lot of other places waving, enticing.

But then… who says all these have to wait? No one. All it will need is for one big push to go and just do it, one by one, for what fun is a vacation when your bones are so retired, they’d refuse to budge? There is always today, tomorrow may not even come. Saving up for retirement should only be saving up for all those maintenance medicines and regular check-ups, and an occasional restaurant treat. The fun should always be for today; the work too. And so comes the resolution to always find fun in the work while keeping a keen eye out for escape hatches for even more fun… it’s 11:30 a.m., all articles are written as I have planned them to be. Now I sneak out f the office to learn the basics of Chinese painting. Before I forget too, I have the half-finished books to write… after I attend to my herbs and my dog, and yes, prepare for Christmas. saestremera@yahoo.com