Today is already November 4th by default. 4:07 pm as of this writing, less than 24 hours before my 24th birthday (which is tomorrow! Argh!!!)

Yet, though I wanted to take time off, I simply can’t — yet. I’m battling with my emails, working on emergency assignments again after leaving my email inbox unchecked for almost a week. But I can say I can breathe normally again now. I’ve made the assignments and turned it over to the managing ed.

I just hope things will work.

Okay, so I’ve been dreading tomorrow. I’ll be 24 and it scares the hell out of me. I actually start to feel that I’m getting older — inch by inch, day by day. And as I come close to a wish list that I made two years ago when I was 22, I looked at it to see if anything changed. The list actually contained shallow musings like:

But it also contained serious thoughts. And I never imagined I could write them at 22 and still be serious about it till now:

And as I ponder by these wishes, I went to think, most of them came to me early more importantly that dream of becoming a published writer before reaching 30. I was 21 when I first got into corporate writing but the thought of fulfilling the dream just dawned on me two years after. While dream number 2 of being written in a newspaper happened while I was in Baguio (getting my other utmost dream while competing) when I was 20.

Now, I realized, I set aside the dream of going to Disneyland which was formerly the first in my list. In exchange to serious wishes like a career, my writing as well as getting married to a wonderful man and having children. Things that I never thought I’ll take into consideration seriously for I was a marriage skeptic before; having fears on the what ifs which in time faded and disappeared eventually. And I’m happy I got to overcome my marriage-skepticism that at 23, I realized, I also have the right to get married and in my own way, be the best future wife-slash-mom the way that I wanted. I’ve always been the same person who longs for the simple and not elegant things. I only pray for the same stuff — safety and blessings for my family, continuous assignments for my writing career, a good career and a stable relationship with my beau.

For now, just like the nights before, I am praying for a nice surprise that God would give me for tomorrow’s big day.