Greed

"How much can a Medill grad earn?'' a colleague asked today.

I told him that an US suburb paper would pay about 20k. We would be waving our hands in the air and shouting "yooohoooo" if we get 35k. I also told him that in the same college just one block away are our Kellogg mates who would be earning 150k to 200k upon graduation even though we pay a tuition fee that is equivalant to theirs.

An education in journalism gives you the smallest ever ROI. I sighed.

He laughed.

This morning, Phantom asked me why I let go half of my pay to be a journalist. I told him I was too young, too idealistic to realize that there is no such thing as the right job. Now, I am not sure whether I would make the same decision. Maybe I would not have done that, I don't know. Maybe I should be a fundie who has an earning power of as much as $500 mil. I sighed.

''My cousin is in your previous line and he is earning a few millions per year,'' he added. I sighed.

I looked at the share price of a stock that I bought and sold at a 10 percent a few weeks back. If I had kept them for a few more weeks, I would have gained 60 percent. I sighed. Maybe I have to add a few more years to my retirement age.

I wonder why I am punished for not making decisions out of greed.

It's a hazy world out there

I hardly touched my glass of wine tonight. The cab sau merlot was good, my kind of seed varietal mix, but I didn't finished it, not even half of it. When was the last time I down six glasses and a tequilla shot in a night? It was too long ago.

I miss those godless days when my problem solving skills only involved running away and drowning myself in alcohol weeks after weeks and being in mindless chatting with people who carried in them an equal amount of alcohol in their bodies.

I miss those days when I could get so high that I couldn't even walk up the stairs to my place and would sometimes be tempted to just sleep, clinging to the railings of the stairway. The following day, there would be this massive headache that seemed it could rip my head off anytime. More than half of my day would be gone by the time I woke up, and sometimes I would have to have, against my will, coffee with friends who would fill me in with details of what I had said and done the night before in my almost drunken state. Some, I remembered and some I couldn't quite remember.

It was a great way of passing days I didn't feel like living.

Now, without that easy wayout, I am lost. I am forced to face things I can't stand facing. There isn't this ruby-red liquid that I could have that would make my senses hazy and hampen my ability to care. Without it, I am a functioning human being. Without it, I care, I desire, I crave, I can be disappointed, I can be sad, I can be anything but a person with a hazy view.