8:25 to 2005

it is exactly eight hours and 25 minutes to go before 2005 comes and i am here at home, sitting by the pc, listless, sad, lonely, tired... alone.

i know it's a pandemonium out there in the streets and in the malls with people going crazy with last minute shopping for food and fireworks for their New Year's celebrations and rituals. i was out earlier this morning to do some last minute food shopping my self.

but now, all is set to welcome 2005. i have bought the food and the fireworks yesterday, i made the fruit salad last night and the maid is cooking the paella arroz valenciana now.

my eldest is asleep, after spending the whole night downloading The Nightmare Before Christmas and other musicals on the net. my two younger ones are out playing and running around.

i am surrounded by papers to correct and materials to file, i have my To Do list left over from 2004 still a page long and not a single To Do checked, i'm supposed to be finishing proofreading a client's final thesis, the car's radiator is waiting for the mechanic to come over (i should make that call again to the mechanic)... but here i am tuning out on the net, going back to THOSE SITES again, just feeling hornier and lonelier than ever. thank God there is tim's site and his recent poems, which helped me not feel so alone in this situation at least!

oh, one good thing: i have finally decided to quit my department chairship position in 2005, so i can have more independent time to pursue my passions and interests and even improve my income potentials from them.

that decision opened up a major release valve in me. i think it is the biggest stumbling block so far to my following my pleasures. i love my faculty and my students but i hate the drudgery of administrative routine and the pettiness of administrative politicking, even as i thrive in putting out other people's fires. still, it won't get me to my goals and my dream, which is having an internationally thriving career earning from home doing what i love to do best-- writing, speaking/lecturing, research and consultancy and travelling-- by the time i'm 40. the family business i've recently got going with my mom and uncle whetted my appetite for working from home.

(i can't believe it but i am actually doing a kolzen now, just bitching and bumming and talking about nothing and everything! ;D ... and it feels good, just dumping on a blog like this, surprise, surprise!)

oh well.

at least i'm feeling better now. better get back to those papers and To Dos.

it will just be another New Year's Eve, after all. (enter Barry Manilow crooning: "it's just another New Year's Eve, another night like all the rest... and when you're through, this New Year you'll seeeeeee, you'll beee just fiiiiiineeeee...")

yeah, i've lived through worse.