I turned 55 in May this year. I am not young anymore, “just old enough,” but not yet too old for anything. It must be the added year that brings with it added wisdom, or a recent story a friend shared with me about pursuing her thespian dreams also in her 50´s, that I find some more clarity and courage to acknowledge I, too, have another unfulfilled dream. This dream is to express myself and my ideas creatively, and earn from it, too.
It has taken me 55 years and 55 lives to see this clearly and acknowledge it, too. The past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic have shown me up close, how fragile life and the current world order can be. Thus, I must try to give that dream a space and a chance to see more light, starting now, while I am still here. I have been and will always be busy with something important, so I would have to be creative enough to find spots for this dream´´ to thrive in the space-time continuum that I have control of.
Each year is a new life, at least that is how I look at it now. I have been the same person with regard to a lot of things, but yet, each year and its set of unique inputs and outputs have changed me. The person I was when I was one-year old was a baby who needed much care from the adults. At five years old, I could do a lot of things by myself. When I was 13-16, knowledge acquisition was my main interest and hobby, and knowledge flowed in like honey. At twenty-three, I was already financially independent, and I studied some more of economic theories. At twenty-five, I wanted to explore the world of work, to see how the theories I have learned in school would work out. First, it was economics, then it was marketing research, and later it was information and communications technology (ICT) and journalism. I did not plan it, but I also met good friends from both my economics and ICT-journalism work circles. At 38, I decided I could marry someone and could try living outside the Philippines, and that was when I met my hubby and moved to Norway. In my 40´´s I decided I can work with accounting and the public sector, and I studied again and again. In my early 50´s I continued working with the public sector and numbers.
It looks like I would always have a thing with “the public,” both here and there, then and now. So after 55 years and 55 lives, I will have to test new waters again that also concerns “the public,” even as I continue to work with the public sector and number-crunching to support my lifestyle, my new personal ventures, and my ageing parents in the Philippines.
Blogging, video blogging, podcasting, and the like, let me make you as my “new” multimedia tools to express myself and my ideas, especially in helping to build a world where politics and economics would be more inclusive, and climate change would be more manageable, sustainable, and people-friendly.
Now, let me start researching on the best tools I can invest on to start my new digital-based personal ventures. Bye-bye leather bags, and welcome ICT tools.
