racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

When I was working at NEDA, I used to drive my pawis steering* Mitsubishi Lancer to work every morning, and then to grad school class in the mid-afternoon, and then back to the office again to wrap up some work before returning home. It was a round-trip, actually since my place was near UP Diliman. When I wasn’t driving, I took the MRT—I walked the half kilometer distance between the Shaw MRT station to our Amber drive office back and forth.

When I moved to dotPH, I walked the half kilometer (or was it) distance between the Ortigas MRT station and Emerald Avenue both ways every day—lugging my eight-pound ThinkPad at that! It was also at dotPH where I learned to drink water instead of juice and coffee, and to eat packed lunch instead of the greasy, fatty fastfood or canteen fare.

When I quit the corporate grind to be a freelancer and a problogger, I usually stayed at home when I didn’t have meetings and events to attend—which are actually quite infrequent and irregular. I found myself going out only once in a while to do my banking transactions—those I couldn’t do online—and to take the wife and kids out during weekends. And then there are the cupboard raids for sugary and salty snacks, and of course the unlimited supply of coffee.

In short, turning problogger has caused me to live a sedentary lifestyle, compared to the relatively mobile and healthy daily routine I had before. I watched my waistline grow a couple of inches from its usual. I also sometimes feel sluggish because my muscles have atrophied from non-use! (Okay, exaggerating here.) The only muscles I get to exercise these days are my typing fingers and my coffee mug-lifting arm.

*Pawis Steering: A play on “power steering,” intended for cars without this feature. Pawis is a Filipino term for sweat, hence the phrase implies that the driver exerts so much effort in steering. Yes, the tropical climate, plus sometimes malfunctioning airconditioning systems and the wide 15-inch wheel rims makes one sweat at times.

Working Out

During our college days, Caren and I used to work out at a small gym near our respective homes. It was great. We felt healthy and happy. We didn’t get to achieve those ancient Greek god physiques, but we were active enough to keep our bodies and minds healhty. And just recently, we did what we’ve been wanting to for a long time now—we signed up for membership at a nearby gym! And we just started working out (again).

It’s a both an achievement and a challenge. I’ve always thought that if I ceased to follow the demands of the bundy clock, I would have more time to attend to life’s niceties. But working independent and having no time to follow might sometimes mean working all the time, actually. And this can sometimes be stifling to one’s creativity (and on one’s personal life), particularly if you set no boundaries between work and personal life.

Activity Begets Creativity

Boy, am I glad we took this first step to doing something out of the ordinary. Perhaps this way I’ll get to boost my creativity and productivity. Pumping healthy blood into my brain would sure help get me those fresh ideas!

I’ve always believed we become more creative the more we get to immerse ourselves in reality. Art imitates life. The more we experience life, the more interesting ideas and perspectives we get out of it, even from the most mundane of things.

So if you’re thinking of going into the problogging business, don’t think you can just sit around all day sifting through your RSS feeds and doing the click-copy-paste routine. Again, go out and live life!

So alcohol did not work in kicking up my creativity level (though I was able to conceptualize a handful of stuff—if only I already had that cool Moleskine notebook a gracious reader promised to send over, I would’ve had somewhere to write them down aside from good ol’ notepad.exe). The good stuff messes you up well, and makes you take on fresh perspectives on othetwise mundane things. From this point, it’s all about keeping the flow, and being able to put into writing all those ideas inspite of the Kaliedoscopic state of events in your head.

It’s a Friday and people are out partying and celebrating the end of the work week. Good for them. It’s great for people to get well-deserved treats or rest after slaving hours off as corporate drones for people who probably don’t give an effing damn about their welfare. Whoops, sorry for the rant. I just feel so thankful I’m no longer part of that system (the corporate world, durr!)—at least not now, while I’m in this profession called blogging (and as well a host of other online stuff I’m involved in, I’ve started or would like to start, like that isulong seoph contest I probably won’t win but have entered anyway). No parties for me, though (birthday parties are for kids).

On being part of the system, why don’t we all give our kudos to Jolo, a.k.a. Avlack, a.k.a. the person who created the bad-ass original theme for The J Spotter, our resident designer, TXP lover and advocate of strict XHTML compliance. He recently, well, xacked up with Xackup, the latest Philippine-based startup promising to put out cool software and Web apps in the near future. That kid’s living the life! It’s like the local version of Silicon Valley or something. Free foodies, free massages, free corporate housing, take-home laptop, no time-in/time-out requirements, regular drinking sessions, stock options. The works!

With Jolo on board, I have no doubt Xackup will be looking good when the time comes for it to, umm, Alpha-release its products (release early, release often as my favorite open-source adage goes). Got to work with Jolo for a while (and we’re part of some blogging projects, too), and I can say he’s one cool dude. I do hope his Valley environs don’t make his head swell too much. Heheh.

Hey, Jolo, that sure is a world of difference you’re experiencing there compared to before, eh? Same here.

So where was I? Oh yeah I wrote on the title field “Friday Blues” because I couldn’t really think of any more appropriate title to describe what this Friday is. It’s probably the birthday nearing—existential meanderings again, or because I’ve a lot of things in my mind I’d like to do or achieve sometime soon. Chris P. would probably kick me in the head for typing in my headline first, but that’s how things are (okay, I’ll try to vary my workflow sometime for a change).

If you guys plan to greet me on my birthday, think first whether you’d more or less been a good person to me the rest of the year. If so, then greetings are very much welcome. If you’d been an arse the rest of the 364 days (365 on leap years—an extra day to be an arse), well then what else can I say? Take your greetings elsewhere, you hypocrite.

This being a Friday, it’s probably good to leave you with links to other interesting stuff. I’ll still be writing over the weekend, though, mostly on my BloggyNetwork blogs and probaly here also.

• Janette has published episode 5 of her Digital Filipino Podcast.
• Taorist welcomes Robyn into the world (I can never get enough of being a dad).
• Chris P. writes on why Deal or No Deal contestants should learn math and statistics.
• Here are some Grammar lessons from ZDNet UK.
• I wrote some tips on bMonitors on how to keep sane and healthy while computing.

If this post turns out to be as serendipitous as the last “blues” roundup, then that would be awesome!

(Things do tend to turn out differently than you hope or originally intend. It’s sometimes fun, and sometimes downright annoying to watch how things go in the end—that depends on the turnout.)

Do you believe in fate? Do you believe that there are forces outside of your own control that can somehow govern your destiny? Well, most would probably argue to the contrary, and I would be one to argue such. After all, even though there are indeed forces outside of our own volition that can influence how things come to be, we humans still do have the free will to ultimately decide each action (or instance of inaction), and ultimately what becomes of us. That is God’s gift to humankind, isn’t it?

However, as for Serendipity, that’s another thing. Sometimes when you set out to do something and for a certain goal, the results can turn out to be quite surprising.

A week ago, I posted about having the blogging blues and went on to link to other sites that I found interesting. I do a lot of blog reading, after all and I thought I’d share with my readers (all three of you) what I’ve been reading up on lately. I intended to divert the attention from my stuff, for the meantine, to other people I find to have more interesting insights than I do.

However, things usually go beyond how you intend them to be. And now, after one thing leading into another, I’m glad to say I’ve had two of those people I linked to—Phillip and Ia (or is it supposed to be “Ia and Phillip?” Bah!)—working with us in one of our major undertakings. I’ve gone into dealings with them several times over the past couple of years, but I didn’t expect we’d be working together on something (and something quite financially rewarding, too).

Actually, I’ve been seeking out people for this purpose (you might remember references to “headhunting” in some of my previous posts). I had been looking for creative people, and I can say I’ve approached quite a few so far, but our work didn’t seem to be the good match with ‘em goodfellows. The good match was right under my nose all along. These guys can sure weave magic with words and imagery each on their own! But as a team? One word: synergy (which in this case is something that’s beyond my comprehension, by the way. Go figure!).

So here’s to our creative team. Here’s to great works. And great deeds.