Procrastination as a prelude to productivity?

 Yeah, I have something else to do right now.. Typical, huh?

However, I find that doing a bit of creative work like this immediately before doing the more important thing kind of resets my mind for the more arduous task at hand. I have been sitting on this plan to prepare a presentation about my recently concluded paper for a couple of days now, and I just can't seem to get started. It seems that I am having trouble with initiating important tasks, and instead fall into the technology trap of browsing soc-med ad other frequented sites instead. (No, I do not consider Blogger to be a soc-med site. I hardly ever come here except to bridge myself into working shape)

So, now what?

I really didn't have a topic in mind as I began this post, as I find it therapeutic to just sometimes let my stream of consciousness flow.

I now am seriously contemplating the question "What do I get out of blogging in the middle of procrastination?"

Lately I have found myself struggling to find focus. Practicing  a small bit of the mindfulness I mentioned in a previous post, I noticed that when I write creatively, it helps me focus on myself as I type away. I begin to zero in on the keyboard, the letters, the grammar of what I want to say (although not too much, since this is a stream-of-consciousness thing). I was never a touch typist, nor will I ever be because of certain physical limitations, so I tend to look at the keyboard as I type.. Ad now I find looking at the keyboard quite soothing.. It's just me, my thoughts, and this platform on which I will put them up on.

Part of me is tempted to go into another long tirade about the evils of social media and how it affects the modern way we do things, but I don't think that would be appropriate at this time since there are other more pressing matters that demand my attention and effort. I don't have the time or energy for another angry rant. 😅 

Going forward, when everything has been said and done, I have decided to follow a 31-day blogging plan, which I hope would increase my creative output. Hoever, if the topics scheduled may seem too personal, I may just abandon the project altogether. I dunno.. we just have to see what traspires in the coming weeks..

Panic calendar activated!

 Image source here

It it presently a little over two months before I approach another great hurdle, and there's still tons to be done..

Training ended more than a month ago, and I realize that I have been mucking around too much.. 

I will make this brief then. Just a little something to help me get used to typing stuff again and to jumpstart my mind..

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I had this moment of introspection as I was taking a shower a while ago. First, I realized I have not been taking care of myself as well as I should have. A prime example would be putting off bath time just because I wasn't going out. It may not seem like much, but he uncomfortable feeling you get when you haven't cleaned yourself was already weighing on me, and I just didn't realize it yet. I have also been spending way too much time doing a host of mundane things, but these are things that do not add value to myself and instead burns up precious time.. I realize I had been fooling myself that I was accomplishing things, but in reality I was just straying from my goal by procrastinating.

I know that it sounds like such a cliché thing to say nowadays, but I guess I needed to get into a bit of mindfulness to help myself get through whatever this funk is. Looking up the definition, I came across this:

noun

: mindfulness

1. 1.

   the quality or state of being conscious or aware of something.

   "their mindfulness of the wider cinematic tradition"
2. 2.

   a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.

I guess its a way of meditating? Of pausing and looking into yourself to see and acknowledge what you are feeling, in order to be more comfortable with who you are and what you need to do. It may seem like a lot of psychiatric mumbo-jumbo, but it makes perfect sense.

I now realize that I have been procrastinating all this time because I was afraid. Afraid of failing, of doing poorly, of not finishing my goal.. But this begs the question, why aren't you doing it then?

Depression can sometimes strike without warning. One day you may be "feeling" fine, but the next day you find yourself suddenly crippled with apathy and anhedonia. I read a statement yesterday (don't remember source, sorry) that depression may be a symptom of what lies beneath. For me, the underlying problem is the uncertainty about the future. About how things will play out during the boards, and I have to admit that I'm a bit anxious about resuming practice after having been out of the game for so long..

Now that I have identified the problems and issues though, I find myself strangely refreshed and ready to tackle all these things head-on. I'm gonna wrap up this pesky study and finish all of them bothersome requirements so I can really study in peace, and I have no intention of letting my bad Soc Med habits get out of the way. I have done it before, and I sure a heck will be able to do it again.

That's all for this entry. I still have a paper to write, which I predict that I will successful finish by tonight. Let's do this! 💪

Here we go again..

 Sigh..

 Another month, another spike.. The Delta variant is truly here in the country. Numbers seem to be going up all across the Philippines. Hardest hit are the provinces that are experiencing a really bad surge, similar to what we experienced a few months ago here in the metro.

I had no idea how bad it was getting until I came across this image:

Picture came from a post by the Autoindustriya.com FB page

 This was apparently a shot from the exterior of a tertiary hospital in Cebu, where you can see vehicles lined up outside adjacent to oxygen tanks supplying much-needed O2 support for suffering patients within the vehicles. With hospitals filling to capacity, the patients have little choice but to wait it out in their cars until there would hopefully be a vacancy.

It struck me as a particularly shocking scene because I never imagined that it would come to this on our shores. You see images from India where they faced this grim scenario only a few months before that seemed unreal. 

This is similar to the initial outbreak, but the vaccine is the gamechanger here. According to a news report I read earlier, the PGH is nearing capacity for COVID, with a sizeable chunk of patients who were unvaccinated, and only 2.6(?)% were breakthrough infections of fully vaccinated individuals. Even more striking was the fact that the fully vaccinated only had disease of moderate severity, while those unvaccinated were the ones fighting for their lives as severe cases...

Now we face another lockdown in the metro, with the hope of stemming the tide and letting the vaccinations catch up. Keep safe at home folks! Let's all ride out this storm together. 😷

 

 

 

 

Olympic Moment, and a lot of rage (as usual 😅)

 Lemme change things up for a second as I take a break from not doing my case report. 😅

😜😜😜

 Anyone here in the Philippines who is not living under a rock would probably know of the amazing feat that the local weightlifting fairy Hidilyn Diaz was able to accomplish.

Yup, I'd say it's hella difficult to miss posts like these on your feed.

I am no stranger to getting swept up in national pride, and for the first time in so long, I genuinely felt it again. This woman has gone through so much, and trained so hard to get to where she is now, and she really did it for flag and country! Watching her cry at top of the podium while singing the national anthem as Lupang Hinirang played for all the world to hear, gave me goosebumps as I felt an entire plethora of unexpected emotions.. 

I shall never forget this image, and will tell stories of it to my future children.. (Image source here)

The fact that she was praising and thanking God in the middle of it all was so touching and inspiring (Image source here)

To paraphrase and add to what a friend said earlier, she has lifted the country on her shoulders out of the depths of fear and uncertainty, even for a brief moment, to remind us of who we are and what we should stand for. It is just unfortunate that all this happened under the shadow of the pandemic, but that does not diminish her achievement at all. She bested powerhouse China, of all nations, to win the first ever Olympic gold medal for the Philippines.

Looks like Team China wasn't too happy about being beaten at their own game by the country they have been bullying, eh? #SorryNotSorry (Image source here)

I have to admit that I wasn't really an avid fan of Philippine Olympic participation the past years. My earliest memory of interest in the Olympics was when Masueto "Onyok" Velasco Jr. won silver in the 48kg boxing category during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Sadly, Onyok terminated his olympic campaign to capitalize on his popularity by acting as a comedian in local sitcoms. The unfortunate story can be read here.

The first Pinoy Olympic hero I was exposed to (Image source here)

Be that as it may, Onyok, like all the other national athletes representing or who have represented the Philippines, also primarily fought for flag and country. Hidilyn's victory made me do some introspection, and has led me to regret supporting another boxer a few years back.

No, I won't be posting a picture of him here, as I do not wish to waste any effort on him, and neither will I mention him by name, because this post is to honor the real sports heroes of the country.

I realized that said boxer was nothing more than just a paid mercenary, fighting not for flag, but for the purse. Filipinos, by nature, gravitated toward him and saw him as a champion of the people. We deluded ourselves that his fights were fights for the country, but that was nowhere near the truth. We threw our support behind him, showered him with praise and adulation. Heck, the army even gave him a substantial honorary command rank in the reserves, all because he was fighting for the millions of pesos that he would pocket after every bout. When he wins, he wins for himself. He brings recognition to the country, sure. Indirectly at best, but bear in mind that it is not an achievement for the nation, and nor should his wins be a source of national pride, kasi pera-pera lang naman yan eh. Our country becomes the "idiot nation" where said mercenary was able to charm the population into voting him into higher public office despite having nary a hint of competency for governance. And no, you can't justify that you will just learn on the fly, kasi hindi ito boxing, gago. The things you do in office will have an impact on populations of people. No wonder developed countries are laughing at us for being a backward banana republic. We put the wrong people in office turn a blind eye to them enriching themselves while the same people moan about how bad things are and how government should do more for them.

On the other hand, you have the true national athletes, languishing in their dilapidated training facilities, with nary a drop of support compared to the one shown to the mercenary. They only get a mere pittance of an allowance, and the government seems to ignore them unless there is a potential photo op to be had. Now I really feel sorry for not supporting Philippine sports in earnest, mainly because I was generally indifferent to sports growing up. Now I know better, and I intend to do better for them.

Another peeve I have for this boxing mercenary is his corruption of sport, although in hindsight, his actions were inevitable and should have been expected. Said mercenary made waves when he was drafted as a playing coach in the highest basketball league of the land. It was in al likelihood a massive publicity stunt by the company behind the said team, but it really pissed me off. You have this guy, a superb athlete in his field (boxing), who just happens to like basketball and plays somewhat well at the barangay level (I dunno, I never cared to see him play), suddenly shoehorned into a roster spot that thousands if not millions of hopeful players have been training their whole lives to earn someday. Initially I was so disgusted by this act, that he bypassed (and in turn, disrespected) the normal grind that any athlete goes through to reach the highest level, and just pissed on it all just because he got fucking popular due to his fights for money. 

I am no athlete, but as an avid basketball fan, I have massive respect for those who train to get to where they are. To have this total amateur take a free ride to the top just like that was just a slap to the face. I though sport was the ultimate equalizer, that money wasn't supposed to matter as long as you had the skills to compete at the highest level (I am aware that getting good training costs money, but that is besides the point I am trying to get across here). Its a bit funny, because the dude came from a humble background, quite similar to other athletes from the provinces who try their luck in Manila by way of college athletic scholarships. Now I realize that I should not have been disgusted, because that is the sort of thing that I should have expected from him from the get-go.

Bottom line is that he should not have deserved my respect and admiration as a supposed national sports icon. If ever, he would just be noticed because he seemed good in winning fights for prize money.

Before I end my piece, I would like to share another thing I saw that got me triggered all over again:

Now this is just pathetic. Coming on the heels of Hidilyn's historic win is another case of Filipinos trying to ride the coattails of someone who does not represent them. No disrespect to the athlete. A win is a win, and this post by no means aims to diminish the achievement. Congratulations all the same. What I'm hitting at is the attribution of the achievement. Wake up guys, the person is still classified as a foreigner who plays for another country, so it's cringeworthy to see putting #Olympinoywalangimposible hashtags underneath this, because she ain't Pinay in the Olympic sense. Kahit pa sabihin niya na Pinay pride siya or whatever, bottomline is ang panalo niya ay hindi para sa atin, kundi para sa Amerika! She does not represent us, and it makes no sense that you are trying to foster a sense of ownership and pride over something that is clearly not ours. That above post should not have been done, or at least could have been handled a bit differently. We go from praising Hidilyn as a true local hero, to lumping her together with all these Fil-Ams and their wins for other countries. We should have more national pride than that. We should not be riding the achievements of people who are not truly "one of us", because they did not really do anything tangible for the country, na nagkataon lang na may lahing Pinoy. Ang pathetic lang kasi.. Nakakahiya na.. Yun lang.

The challenge of productivity amidst bed weather..

Image source here

 I have been here at my desk for the better par of the day, attempting (without any success) to continue the case report that I have (thankfully) started working on yesterday.

But hey, at least I'm not lying on my bed snoozing the hours away. 😅

As the title implies, it's just so hard to motivate oneself under such soporific conditions, which is why I took a dose of caffeine this morning. The net result was that I didn't need to sleep, but I had to pee more often (as expected). 😅

And yet I was still unproductive. 😅😄😄

Which is why I'm blogging this down right now, to acclimatize myself to using the keyboard again as I struggle to complete this requirement before the weekend is over.

The rain has been on and off lately, contributing to a cool, relaxing climate that can easily lull your brain to sleep.. I just hope that the reported flooding around the metro resolves soon.

In the midst of my struggles with procrastination, I chanced upon this interesting TED talk by a brilliant 7-year-old girl who was talking about the impact of parental interactions with children during the critical period from infancy to at least age 5. Her talk (like most TED talks honestly) was short but highly informative. She spoke really well for her age, and was able to get her message across quite clearly. Here is the link below for those who want to watch it:

https://www.ted.com/talks/molly_wright_how_every_child_can_thrive_by_five

Watching that talk reminded me of what I aspire for when I give lectures.. To be able to give a highly informative lecture without boring the audience or causing them to tune out because I made it too long or high-falluting. I understand that aiming for simplicity is not as easy as it sounds when you are talking about academic activities as is typical in the medical field, but what is the point of giving a talk if the people you are lecturing to are unable to take away anything from it? I think a lot of people get too wrapped up in what they want to say, that they tend to forget the people that they wish to convey the information to. Now, this is not a knock against the people who speak at conventions, as I have attended my own fair share of fascinating talks by brilliant speakers. Sadly though, there are those few that fall through the cracks and give a barely understandable talk fettered by too much information. The person is always brilliant to say the least, and is typically a top content expert in the field, so the mastery of the content being conveyed is unquestionable.. 

 However, mastery of content does not necessarily equate to mastery of delivery, and far too often, if you are not in the upper ranks of the academic society, you may only grasp a bare minimum of what the speaker is trying to get across, and I'm not even taking into account those presentations loaded with barely intelligible figures and graphs that may only be decipherable by the presentor.

Please don't get me wrong, I am by no means putting myself above these speakers, because I am quite sure that next to them, I am just a potato. The point I am trying to get across is that the ability to teach well is a gift, and not everyone has it. Being a remembered as a good teacher, not necessarily in a formal academic setting, is something that I am really aspiring for. There is no greater reward at the end of a lecture, than when you realize that your audience was actually able to pick up a thing or two from what you had shared. 😉

Crab Mentality

 

Image from here

 I was just browsing my old social media posts when I stumbled upon one of my most favorite quotations of all time. It is just a simple comment to an article, but I love it nonetheless. It pretty much hits the nail on the head, so I decided to also repost it here for posterity.

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 "... Filipinos indeed have this unspoken social protocol of "not allowing others to get ahead". Consider the reverse custom among Filipinos when it comes to celebrating one's birthday. In other countries, your friends throw a party for you (should you be "party worthy" that is), all expenses on them and not on you. They celebrate you being their friend, not as benefactor. In the Philippines, whether to celebrate your birthday or a job promotion, the protocol is "mag-pa-blow-out ka". It's ostensibly done to "share the wealth", but if that were true, then why would people feel resentful if you don't treat "them" during "your" day of celebration? In the process of spending for that blow-out, whatever financial gains you might have had from your job promotion is negated..."

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For those wondering about crab mentality, here is the Wikipedia definition:

"Crab mentality, also known as crab theory, crabs in a bucket (also barrel, basket, or pot) mentality, or the crab-bucket effect, is a way of thinking best described by the phrase "if I can't have it, neither can you". The metaphor is derived from a pattern of behavior noted in crabs when they are trapped in a bucket. While any one crab could easily escape, its efforts will be undermined by others, ensuring the group's collective demise.

The analogy in human behavior is claimed to be that members of a group will attempt to reduce the self-confidence of any member who achieves success beyond the others, out of envy, resentment, spite, conspiracy, or competitive feelings, to halt their progress"

Exit Interview

 

Image source here

I'm roughly a week removed from my official end of training, and I guess it would only be appropriate that I made an entry about it.

I honestly haven't really taken it all in yet, as the previous year was fraught with so many different problems that preoccupied my psyche. It was damn near impossible to do any sort of thoughtful introspection. As a matter of fact, a number of unfinished requirements still bothers me to this day, since I still have a pair of upcoming presentations coming up, not to mention the researches that still need to be passed.. Oh, and let's not forget the logbook and the annual report! 😵

So yeah, there's still tons to do, and I didn't even count the review for the boards! 😱

 Don't get me wrong though. I am really grateful to all my mentors and everyone who has helped along the way for me to be able to gain some semblance of competency in this field. I just hope I don't turn out to be just a big disappointment..

How do I feel?, you might ask.. Well, I guess its pretty obvious that I'm feeling a great relief that the long (extended) year is now finally over, and I will not have to do any more telemedicine consultations for the foreseeable future. Honestly though, I have done enough telemed to last a lifetime. 😅

So yeah, now that I have rested a bit already, I'm now basically working my way through the pile to hopefully get everything done in time to ensure I have enough left for a serious review.

Let's go.