Just Like My Tyipcal Day

.... excerpts from "Of Balance & Choices" by Rene M. Samaniego, M.D....

Two o'clock in the morning. Post midnight-snack stretch. Eyes intently fixed on your laptop screen.

For a moment, you pretend to pause for possible last-minute add-ons and alterations on the final Powerpoint page. It is, after all, a presentation for a very notable corporate client due the following day.

So you finally get ready to hit the sack for a surely challenging shuteye, maybe three hours if you're lucky enough not to have one of your stress-induced insomnia spells. You swiftly play out in your head how the previous day at work turned out, an exceptionally productive one no doubt. But you might as well have spent the whole day at home, at this time suffering a hangover from a B-movie marathon on cable, hastily waning into a subterranean funk.

Just a few hours back, you were euphoric with workplace adrenaline, and now as you lay yourself down to sleep, all that is imminent is the smell of melancholy and gloom, as though the sheets themselves herald the onset of a downcast stretch in your so-called life.

And despite the recognition that you are again about to up the benchmark with your carefully crafted production; despite the awareness of having a scaled and settled in an enviable position in the corporate ladder, you cannot help but feel uncertain about your own verve and chutzpah.

You then have an earnest glimpse of your life as it actually is. You come to a disconcerting conclusion that, in the face of having gone full steam ahead with your career, your personal life is in a downward spiral.

Inconspicuously, you admit that you belong to the career-oriented lot: those who are full of zip, conscientious and competent in their preferred domains, and yet immensely struggling as they edgily keep their equilibrium on a tightrope and prevent themselves from plummeting to the ground...