Nobody really believes that I am a person who gets stressed up over my work, even though I clocked quite some unbelievable overtime last month. Some do not even think that I would get stressed up over anything... especially something as trivial as work, job, career and means of livelihood...

Reasons they might have, examples aplenty too, yet none normalizes anything...

Perhaps I do not have that constipated look that troubled faces share, perhaps I still feel hungry when the skies are about to fall, perhaps I should invest in acting classes so that my boss would think I actually care about this job...

But I do feel inadequate, stretched, tired and demoralized; not from work, but from the things I have chosen to load myself with. Having a job simplifies life enough, allowing one to surrender control of a part of life to a more predictable force, creating a semblance of order and regularity in life often mistaken for monotony. Having a job, perhaps even one that forces one to give up one's passion or life, is beneficial to us who lack the will to control our destiny. The price is there. And it is a price that is highly acceptable.

There is no reason for it to cause any uproar, after all life is about paying the price, the price for your existence.

But the thought of chalking up a debt, be it financial, emotional or physical, that life can never hope to repay is always daunting. Not many, even the most fatalistic, can say with total conviction that things are the way they are meant to be, when catastrophy or personal disaster strikes.

Perhaps then, a risk taker should be redefined as a gambler who borrows without shame and gambles without remorse; a gambler of time, life and future all of which are taken, stolen or advanced.