I just got off the kitchen literally a few minutes ago. I had sauteed pork cubes for menudo and chucked it in the slow cooker with the tomato sauce mix, fish sauce, chopped tomatoes, bell peppers, snow peas, carrots, and potatoes. Cooking it for at least 8 hours.

That’s food prepared with love for my small family. In the morning they will wake up to the smell of menudo wafting through the air. They will bite into a melt-in-your-mouth meat poured over piping hot white rice.

That’s love.

Because nothing beats a home cooked meal prepared for hours.

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I finally—FINALLY—I chipped through my huge to-do list. I was able to finish my car registration for 2023. And finally, I didn’t have to process it for a week, like last year. It only took me an hour today.

My rants on TV and Twitter last year had made an impact. LTO got its shit together. Doing renewals at the extension office instead of at the Main is wiser since the crowd thins out past 2 pm in the former.

Also helped push out two stories today. I’m so done for the month of January—the longest month of the year. It felt like this month went on and on forever and I had to deal with anxiety over so many things, a big chunk of that is my staffing problems. Although I did get CVs and I will be interviewing two candidates on Friday, I need to get more candidates because don’t just want to hire people because I didn’t have a choice. I need to work my butt off this week and gather more candidates.

Then the other nitty-gritty admin work and other stuff that managers do, like weekly calls with the commercial team, then calls with the bosses from the other side of the globe who suddenly flew to HK and decided, hey, we need to have this call. So I would be up to my neck with calls tomorrow until the evening.

Set up interviews for my stories. Then writing my pending articles before they go stale.

Then I had to ferry my children and their friends to UP Diliman for their picnic tomorrow afternoon.

That’s just all for Wednesday (today).

And Thursday I need to drive to my hometown to apply for a water connection to my house and I have no choice but to work from there and have a pre-interview call with a Singapore company.

OK, breathe.

Breathe.

I don’t have time for myself.

I think I need to work in Makati and meet friends next week. While I love that I no longer have to battle the horrendous traffic everyday, the isolation from the hum of business is driving me mad. I told my fairy gaymother, K, that we need to have dinner with our friends as I would be giving away bookmarks.

He said, why don’t you sell them?

Are you insane?! I’m not good and there are amazing artists on Instagram and Etsy doing just that. I feel like a scammer next to them, I told him.

I need to draw everyday to improve but I barely have time for that.

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A friend just sent me this through FB Messenger a few hours ago:

Flowers (Miley Cyrus)

I told her, it’s a struggle and it requires a steep learning curve. I’ve been working at this for the past two years. Self-love requires a massive dose of self-confidence as well. As I said a few days ago, the little wins I had can quickly be eroded by insecurity and self-doubt. But hopefully I will be as solid as a rock and won’t have to deal with momentary vulnerability like that.

I just have to teach myself how to be numb and just work on being a superwoman.