Clichéd as it may sound, I really want to be a better person. I want to start focusing my energy into something that doesn't involve sex and inappropriate men for a change. My friends would roll their eyes if they read this and for good reason. I've had this bouts of reform ideas before, and they usually last a couple of days on average. But I'm 25 now. I'm not getting any younger, and I feel like I'm chasing my tail around in circles. So, for the past few weeks, I've been doubling my efforts at being an adult.

I find myself in the office more and more often now. I even come in on my days off. I've clocked in hours and hours of overtime to catch up on my work and earn those precious extra pesos so I can pay off my credit cards faster. I finally bought insurance. Though I still travel as much as I can, I have cut corners in some of my usual senseless expenses. I'm even taking my writing more seriously. Since I pretty much realized its something that I do often enough, I figured why not start earning from it? I needed the extra income, and it would officially make me a professional. I imagined myself saying, "Hi, I'm Iris. I'm a writer." and I got the chills. So, I networked. I met this fabulous girl, Chin, in Multiply (She's awesome and I've become a huge fan of hers.) and worked up the courage to ask her for tips on how to get freelance work. She showed me where to start and got me on the right direction, so now I have a part-time job. I practically had to beg my new boss to let me start small, just 2-3 articles a day, and she was kind enough to let me. I've barely even started, and I could already feel the pressure of meeting deadlines and writing about things I absolutely know nothing about. I can't imagine how I could do 6 articles in a day, which is what would be required of me in a couple of weeks. But strangely enough, I've never felt so alive. And nothing could have prepared me for what I felt when I finished my first ever article. There are no words to describe it.

This week I've barely sleept four hours each day. I'm tired and cranky as hell. I've got QA work to do and articles to finish. But I'm not complaining. For the first time in my entire life, I know I'm finally growing up.

So I'll be thinking it over for the next few days. Maybe I'll get used to these ugly Google ads. Maybe they will miraculously disappear. What I do know is, if I'm going to make a move, I'll have to do it soon while the number of posts I have are still under control.

I have just finished scrubbing my share of the agents' CSAT (customer satisfaction) data for March. (Scrubbing means cleaning it up, obviously without the use of brushes, Zonrox, muriatic acid, and what-have-yous.) There are almost two thousand lines of data that we need to painstakingly go through. I've been at it since 5PM and its now past midnight. I am cross-eyed and disoriented from staring at Excel for too long.

We have a new call list this week, meaning I have new agents to rate. I used to have 15 agents under my bucket, and at 6 evaluations per month, that's already quite a stretch. Now I have 25 agents. 25! I haven't even started on a single one because that there are supposedly more pressing matters to attend to. I take one look at my list, and I want to weep. On the bright side, I am finally free of a certain agent who has been the bane of my entire QA existence. Don't get me wrong. I love my agents. I cut them some slack as much as I can. But this woman is just impossible. She's older than everybody else, which is probably why she's so difficult. She has the lousiest communication skills and her grammar is just off. She starts out all sweet and syrupy, then suddenly becomes rude and sarcastic. She doesn't comply with the standard spiels and has the worst analogies possible. And her voice, well, don't even get me started on her voice. For 3 months, I suffered with her on my list. And for 3 months, she hasn't passed a single evaluation. Not one. She's that bad, and I'm so glad I don't have put up with her any longer.

I'm currently on the night shift, validating the agents' upsells real-time. Its boring work. All we do is sit around and wait for the agents to call us. I would have liked to use the time to squeeze in some evaluations but it totally sucks when you get interrupted every so often to listen to agents reading a script for "compliance and auditing reasons". I swear, I can recite the whole spiel in my sleep. If we miss the upsell calls, then we have to search high and low for the recordings and validate those. God forbid that we don't find those recordings because if the agents are whiny, their Team Leads are whinier.

Oh, how I long for the days of old when we QAs picked our schedules and spent our hours sleeping, malling, and generally doing nothing. Yes, some good things just never last.