Crumbling little by little

Sometime through the past 3 months, the line between my work and personal life got blurred.
Work affected my personal life. In turn, my personal life got in the way of work.
My official 8.5 hours per day could never fit the responsibilities I had to fulfil. So it became 9 hours, 10 hours and eventually the weekends were not spared. I used to tell myself to draw a clear line between the two. Leave what's undone in the office, your family and friends don't deserve to suffer the shit you had to go through. But as responsibilities piled on, my resolute to keep that principle disappeared. Then I started questioning myself.

Have I gone all soft and laid-back?
Am I less capable than I was?
Am I being fair to myself? Is it what I'm supposed to do?
Why was it that I felt I could take on the world previously and I feel so incompetent now?

Slowly but surely I realised I am falling into a downward spiral. I can't find a way out. I know it but I just can't get out.

When IT does not equate to higher efficiency

Came in to office to see a whooping 878 unread mails. Just from 1 day's leave. My mailbox was closed due to the overwhelming mail volume since last Saturday. When I finally picked up my jaws to face reality, then it struck me that it was the dumb Outlook's fault. It had sent me the error message for an undeliverable mail EVERY SINGLE minute since I sent the mail. No wonder my mailbox's been full.

Dumb. But yes it probably saved me from emails I rather not receive.

6th Valentine Day and counting

Both of us took the day off to relax and just enjoy each other's company.

This weekend has been a pretty fulfilling for myself and him too, I hope. Had my colleagues and our hall friends over on Saturday. MJ, card games, MJ, WII, more MJ, food. You get the picture. Was tiring but fun to see everyone meet up casually out of the office setting.

It also gave me a deeper appreciation of my dear who was helping me through out the entire time. Preparation, entertaining guests, clean up. It's reassuring to know he is someone I can rely on, whether I ask him to or not.

So the feeling spills over the entire weekend until V-day, where we enjoyed a good lunch at Itacho, did some window shopping (and I finally bought my boots for 19 buckaroos only!!!), had coffee/tea at starbucks and simply lazed the afternoon away together on the ipad.

Simple, but sweet nonetheless.

人日but working like a dog

When you thought 人日 was to celebrate your life as a human, you feel like you are worked to the bones like a dog.

Where's the justice?!?!

Frustrations with Blogger Part II

Now that I have finally come to terms that I may never recover my original blog, I am painstakingly transferring the old posts via the "cached pages" from the archives, one at a time.

After an hour, I've only backdated until 2008. 4 more years to go and that includes my most active year in 2007. I'll make sure I export my blog this time round in to my harddisk. Just in case Blogger screws with me again.

Frustrations with Blogger

While I wait for my original blog to be restored, I'll have to make do with a temp blog (in a worst-case scenario, maybe it'll become a replacement).

I can still continue to rant with a new address, since I don't really have any followers. But it's all the memories and thoughts I've gathered all these years since 2004 that just disappeared due to some "steamroller" detection that irks me. First I get a notification saying there's suspicious activity and days later my blog goes poof.

FML.