Because there was nothing to edit today. I didn’t feel like writing two pending stories that had been stewing in my computer.

Because I missed painting.

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I did another version of this painting, same angle, same subject. The first one I did a few months ago was more crude than this but this is still not satisfactory.

Why did I repeat this? Because I couldn’t get the clouds and waves right. I need to practice how the light is reflected on moving water. Dang it, it’s really hard.

I need to practice more. 🫠

I did a refresh of my workdesk tonight so I will be motivated to work later today—because I’m in no mood to work. 😢 So I hope a clean desk would inspire me to be organized later this morning and push myself to be productive. Ganbatte がんばって !

I got rid of the old gaming laptop that I used as a desktop for the past three years or so to free up space. It wouldn’t turn on anymore. 😶 Good thing I was able to retrieve important docs before it completely conked out. However, I still have some files there like interview recordings and similar stuff that I would like to download and transfer to my external hard drive.

Ah well, goodbye old machine, you served me well.

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What was supposed to be a slow day for edits became a hectic one as I was informed by my friend, G, that the opening of the bids for the rehab of NAIA is ongoing. I went online to attend the opening of bids and quickly drafted a story.

The opening of bids is still ongoing as of this writing.

So much for taking it easy today 😶

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This is my last glass of sparkling red grape to keep me sane today. This is my third bottle. I pretend that this is alcoholic because I can no longer have any of that. I haven’t had any coffee or tea for three weeks now. Occasional juice drinks but in small amounts. Got to be careful as stress triggers my stomach acids and I am a bit stressed today.

Workday is done, got my story published at 8 pm or thereabout. My girls are with their cousins in a hotspring resort and will spend the night there. My tiny home seems spacious now that I’m alone.

This morning Twin A attended a manga drawing workshop. It’s nice that I can finally let them go on their own without me having to ferry them to and from wherever they needed to be do whatever they need to do. Activities for teenagers are just within walking or short jeepney rides. In contrast, in QC they were so dependent on me; and if I’m too busy, they will just be stuck in the apartment and be on their computers the entire day.

So enjoy moments like this. I get my me time while my kids are enriching their lives. ❤️

We just lazed around yesterday and stuffed our faces with food. I was alternating between reading a book and watching Youtube videos. Sleeping in between. Lots of sleeping. We can’t go anywhere as some friends have reported on social media, going from our town to the next town northwest took at least two hours. That’s just more or less 10 km. Our highway was clogged with cars of families going in and out of hotspring resorts. I don’t want that kind of stress when I need to recharge.

So going to Tagaytay for some cool weather feels is out of the question. It’s bedlam out there.

I’m supposed to do some advance writing today because tomorrow I will be editing stories from China and Japan (and probably a little bit from SEAsia since our Vietnam reporter didn’t go on leave). There would be a little window left for writing and I don’t want that.

I woke up to Kimchi sleeping on the pillow beside my head, while Sushi was at my foot. It’s lovely to wake up to clean, fluffy pets who seek comfort in me. ❤️

I’m just collecting my will power to get out of bed and start refreshing my work desk.

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I found this on my cousin’s reels. It seems like she just split from her husband—has been posting cryptic messages on her IG and has deleted her Facebook. That’s her coping mechanism, I guess. Poor thing. 💔

It’s hard to have your heart breaking at this time of the year. A time when your world shouldn’t be falling apart and pretend everything is all right in front of your parents and sibling. Been there.

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I remember writing this shit three Christmases ago. How can I had been so wrong? I guess that’s my coping mechanism back then, telling myself lies, intellectualizing it when it was just a simple case of cheating and all that crap that came with it. Oh the amount of lies I believed!

Then this was followed by writing about the concept of home. It’s still true that I no longer feel like my mom’s house, the one I grew up in, is home for me. What I created in QC was home—for a while—and as I said in a post a week ago or so, I’m still conflicted about my feelings about that apartment.

But what I have now is my own little space in this world. This is home now.

The day after Christmas 2020, I walked for 2 km or so at 6 am and contemplated about what to do with my life after it has fallen apart. I asked myself where do I go from here?

Is it the pursuit of happiness? Umm, probably not. Happiness may be incidental, something that happens. You cannot be constantly happy because life fucks up. And chasing happiness is…fucked up as well. Maybe the best thing I can think of right now is the pursuit of contentment. Being content is not equal to being mediocre. Contentment may be reaching a high bar that you have set for yourself. But never being content may be equal to unhappiness and may launch you into this endless pursuit of nothingness.

So where do I go from here? I don’t know. And it’s ok.

The next day (Dec 27), I made up my mind to move to the province and build a small house. At that time I said I will be building it by the sea and have a condo in the city. But I guess that will take a while. I have to build wealth first instead of going into debt for a house that is unnecessary.

But at least I have my own place now where I can build a homestead and live sustainably. My goal came into fruition somewhat. After I’m finished with Twin A’s treatment and be cleared of anything (reserving my cash for in-case scenarios), I will be saving up for a solar power hybrid setup while building my vegetable garden. The goal is to be self-sufficient for a bit so when zombie apocalypse happens, we can hold on for a while.

From the ashes of 2020, I had built a simple dream. That’s how I coped with heartbreak. Even though I was so lost, at the back of my mind I knew what I was going to do and where I would be going. I didn’t have any idea how I would be able to do it but by the grace of God I was able to achieve something.

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I had been cooking the entire day yesterday and I only had one hour to get ready for church. It’s funny that our family was split going to different churches but—ah well, my mom has accepted that we’re happier with our faith than the one foisted upon us by tradition.

Merry Christmas!

Meanwhile, I’m gonna be like this today until I get back to work on the 27th.

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Twin I and I were watching concerts on my computer this evening and I realized 30 years have passed by in a flash. All the concerts and music videos we’ve been watching were bands/musicians that I have listened to for more than two decades. They say that when you do Youtube/Google search, you do not search for music but rather you search for memories. It’s true…when I hear those songs—be it songs by Gin Blossoms, Korn, or Lacuna Coil—memories come flooding back.

It’s astonishing as well to see how these musicians have aged so much, like Ed Roland of Collective Soul. It seems like the pandemic has advanced the ageing process for many of the people whose performances I have watched over the years. Ummm, well it seems like Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins didn’t age that drastically but James Iha had become that “uncle”.

I have passed down my love for music to my kids and I had always been supportive of their endeavors in this area. I helped Twin I buy her an acoustic guitar on New Year’s Eve 2022. She couldn’t play it well at that time because the guitar was for right-handed players and she’s left-handed. I found a guitar shop here in our hometown and had the guitar shifted to make it left-handed. However, the strings that came with the guitar snapped and I was told to buy the thicker set online. I had been carrying that guitar at the back of my car to have it re-stringed but the I wasn’t able to because it’s either the shop was closed or I was too busy. Then I had the drinks (right before I got hospitalized) with some high school classmates, one of whom was our drummer (R) back in high school, at the time we were covering Cranberries. R talked about the concerts that we have missed in recent years and we touched on the topic of having the guitar at the back of my car re-stringed. He offered to string it for Twin I. ❤️❤️❤️

So here we are, Twin I playing Nutshell by Alice in Chains.

She has become better in short three weeks.

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Meanwhile, I have become a fan of this insane drummer called II from Sleep Token. He’s so in the pocket and I love how he mixes the electronic kit that he has with the traditional one, plus the pock-marked cymbals. Drumeo helped break down his creative process and showed how he played some of their songs.

I used to sing this in our gigs 23 years ago, with the heavier version by Goldfinger. I tried singing the original lyrics but my German is terrible so we decided to stick to the English lyrics. It’s an anti-war song, which was a perfect match to U2’s Sunday, Bloody Sunday that we also covered.

I had been educating my kids about the beauty of the music of my generation—at least they know who Rage Against The Machine and White Stripes are. I just introduced Twin I to this song today and told her this was part of my repertoire decades ago.

We’re housebound since yesterday as it has been stormy and dark. We can’t go to Lake Yambo if it’s muddy and slippery. Our barge may capsize if we try to board it in this weather. I’m not sure how it is in the city—it’s probably wet and dreary—but here in the province it has been cold, wet, and stormy. Perfect time to curl up in bed with a book, which I had been doing since yesterday. There’s an occasional anxiety-triggering email from my manager but I decided to ignore it for now so it won’t destroy my holiday.

This short movie by Disney, which is distinctly Filipino, especially with the word lola indicated there, has tugged at my heart strings.

Christmas without parol (Christmas star lantern) is a bit sad. We Filipinos can do away with the tree because it hasn’t really been in our tradition (American) but the parol has been with us since the Spaniards introduced Christmas to us by way of Catholicism.

I have always been insistent about hanging parols wherever I lived to remind me of Christmases here in my home province and in Batangas, where we spent Christmas holidays when I was growing up. Those Christmases in Batangas were more traditional in the sense we went to the the midnight mass before noche buena, with hot chocolate made from tablea waiting for us in my lolo and lola‘s home. The next day, Christmas day, we would be visiting paternal and maternal relatives, with countless hands of our elders put on our foreheads (the distinctly Filipino mano po). After our grandparents passed, we spent the holidays here, stuffing our faces with food that we seldom get to eat in Metro Manila, where three of us worked after college. I remember spending days re-reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy and other JRR Tolkien books that I had. Then watching the feel-good movies on HBO and Hallmark/Lifetime channels. Temperature drops to 20 or lower. I love reading during this time of the year.

I hope my girls will have fond memories of Christmas holidays, even though they have to split their holidays between my side of the family and their father’s side. I hope they’re not gonna resent me down the road for not having a traditional Christmas where the family is intact, just one unit.

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