Perspective after another year on Earth

Last Thursday marked yet another birthday of mine. It was my second since moving back to the US and my first here in our new home.

Since I turned 30, I spent a lot of time looking back on my life and dwelling on the past. But now I've decided to stop the dwelling and to focus more on what's ahead and what I have to look forward to.

So I'm writing down a few things I want to either accomplish or to be hopeful about.

Here they are:

- Having my daughter visit us here sometime soon.

(We constantly pray that her mom will open her mind to it.)

- Being more active in my son's school.

(My wife and I are joining his school's PTA.)

- Getting back in shape and losing the weight I've gained since my back injury.

(My wife and I have slowly started an exercise regimen.)

- Paying off at least one of our car loans.

(This may take a while, but it would ease a big financial burden.)

- Enhancing my career growth.

(I'm looking into taking classes in order to "raise my stock".)

- Becoming more active in Church.

(My wife and I are hoping we can work around our schedules to join the choir.)

These, of course, are just a few of things that I've been trying to focus on. Some of these are tougher to accomplish, but just changing my outlook keeps me driven and optimistic.

Helpless

Over the past couple of weeks, my family here has watched numerous videos and saw countless pictures of the devastation caused by Typhoon Ondoy in the Philippines.

To say that we've had mixed emotions would be an understatement. Although we felt lucky that we did not experience the disaster, of course we felt concern for our friends and relatives and extreme saddened for those hardest hit.

The worst feeling though is the helplessness. If my wife and I were still there I know that we'd be on air promoting the heck out of relief efforts. I'm sure that our friends in the media back there have been doing a good job of that, but it's still hard to handle.

The only thing we can do, i guess, is to continue donating to the recovery and praying for the country.