Chronicling life

This guy is 100% right. Ever since I started drawing and keeping a sketchbook, I began to see the beauty in ordinary things. I always think about how light and shadows fall on an object and how I would render it on paper. Instead of doom scrolling on my phone, I make my brain busy by thinking about how I could draw it and what colors I would use. My daughter once caught me staring at something and she asked me why. I said I was thinking of how I would draw that. She may have thought I was nuts.

I was like that when I was into photography—I was looking for the beauty in the mundane. I was always looking for a better angle, better way to frame a scene.

Bantayan Island. 2010. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

This is also the reason why I always carry a notebook in my bag. My passport size Travelers Notebook is where I keep my musings while waiting for my turn at the doctors’ clinic or at the bank. When a thing happens while I was standing in line, I always thought to myself how I would write it in my notebook.

It’s just like this blog. There’s no reason for me to continue blogging but I still do it because this is for myself. It’s lovely to chronicle my life this way because I can upload photos, videos and whatnot—like a scrapbook of my daily life. I don’t have to print photos to make a point. When I was writing about things that happened in a day when I was in high school, I had to write the news for that day (“Today Miriam Santiago lost to FVR”) and had to describe/lift passages from newspapers. I had to cut out photos to document the day properly. Now I can look back and see how I was in January 2021 and read how I was a different person back then. I’m still the same person and yet a different person, too.

So this reminds me I have to finish that sketch of that view from UCC. As this guy on the video said, it doesn’t have to be perfect and beautiful; what you’re doing on your sketchbook is for you. I always have to remember that.


So today is a little bit less brutal compared to yesterday. I only had to deal with three edits and rewrite my own story, which my boss had to return to me because she’s demanding so many things.

I rested a bit at lunch—that’s when the world suddenly went dark. It rained heavily.

Starting to rain. I opened the window to feel the wind. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

It was so dark that it looked like it was already 6 in the evening.

This is how my room looked at 12 noon today. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

It was conducive for a nap. I slept on my tummy because I was scrolling through my emails. I think I’m a half-panda; I could fall asleep anywhere.

In between edits, I took the car to the aircon shop to have its AC cleaned. It’s an annual thing so that the evaporator and condenser would not grow molds and smell bad. Tomorrow, I’m gonna have the auxiliary fans and belts checked and buy a new pair of Yokohama tires. I have to make sure that my car is in tip-top shape before our Pico de Loro holiday and for the rest of my vacation leave that I would be spending in my home province. I talked to my bestfriend while I was on the way home from grocery shopping tonight and checked if she would be free for an overnight stay in lake Caliraya. Ah, we have to schedule it the following weekend since she’s still busy computing grades—I almost forgot, it’s Hell Week = the week before the semester officially ends.

In my grocery cart. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

Mommy duty called. I had to fill our pantry with supplies again and this is the only big shop I will do for June because I have no time. The rest will just be top-ups of meat and vegetables in smaller marts because supermarkets are full on weekends.

Harassed mommy waiting in line at the grocery cashier for an hour. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

I then found one little big girl playing with my phone while I was having dinner…

Playing with three pairs of my sunglasses. Photo by Twin I.

I have like 8,000 photos on my phone so I had to order a new SD card (500GB) because I would run out of space at the rate I’m snapping photos/my kids are snapping photos of themselves.

The Philippines is ours

The World Tonight: China’s Coast Guard, missile boats pursue ABS-CBN News Team’s boat in West PH Sea.

I have so many things to be angry about these days, hence, the constant blogging. I do not have anybody to talk to in-person about these things these days and I can’t just constantly vent my anger on social media since I’m trying to avoid social media as it’s been adding to my anxiety.

This bullying by China is one of those things that’s eliciting so much rage inside me, which has attracted a lot of Chinese bots on my Twitter account. I don’t care if the CCP has been monitoring me. I don’t think I’m going back to Hong Kong soon.

‘Infuriating’, ‘heartbreaking’, says Robredo as Chinese ships chase Filipino vessel in West PH Sea

MANILA— Vice President Leni Robredo said Friday she was enraged and heartbroken that a Filipino vessel was driven out by Chinese ships inside the West Philippine Sea. 

“When you watch the video, nakakagalit, nakakadurog ng puso na nangyayari ‘yon (it’s infuriating and heartbreaking that it’s happening) within our territory,” she told ANC’s “Headstart”.

The statement of the Armed Forces of the Philippines infuriates me even further, that they issued it on this day 79 years ago when thousands of Filipino and American soldiers died defending that last bastion but eventually Bataan fell. When they were defending the country from the Japanese invaders…take note of the word, INVADERS. Araw ng Kagitingan (Day of Valor) commemorates those who were lost during the Bataan Death March but the statement of the today’s soldiers completely annihilates the essence of the word valor. They are allowing Filipinos to be bullied 90 nautical miles off Palawan…IT’S CLEARLY FUCKING WITHIN OUR TERRITORY!

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana was supposed to give a press conference earlier this week but it seemed like he was gagged; he said he is cancelling the briefing because he tested positive for COVID-19 but is asymptomatic. This administration conveniently uses COVID as an excuse whenever they 1) want to gag somebody; or 2) don’t want to face the media and be accountable to what was happening under their watch (I’m looking at you, PNP Chief Debold Siñas!).

We’re so fucked up. We exchanged our sovereignty for vaccines.

If I have a choice, I wouldn’t be taking that vaccine. But it’s Sophie’s choice—it’s between me surviving so my children can grow up with a responsible parent until they become adults or they lose their mother early either to COVID or lasting effects or complications from COVID (if I initially survive hospitalization or a similar set-up).


I remember growing up with so much rage inside me that I usually locked myself up in my room to write in my journal to release my pent-up fury. In elementary, I tinkered with the computer, that big beige box that only had a black screen with green or white texts. I had to boot from DOS using a floppy disk before powering up WordStar to write my journal entries that I saved in 5.25″ floppy disks. I was channeling my inner Doogie Howser.

Screencap by Robert J. Sawyer of arsTechnica

Then I moved on to creating my notebook journals where I poured my soul. My mom said she was worried about me when I was in high school because I was always in my room and she thought I was turning into a some sort of wacko but she didn’t know that I needed solitude to be able to write. But come to think of it, because of this rage, I became a writer.

I wanted to buy my own typewriter then so I can write my manuscripts the old fashioned way. I was so in-love with the image of a writer, and later on of a journalist, hunched over a typewriter trying to beat the deadline. But I had to content myself with just using the communal computer at home to write my short stories and novellas that I distributed to friends. When I was in high schooI, I started publishing in a literature magazine of national circulation. I received letters from readers, even from abroad, who liked my stories. Then I started publishing my articles on the Philippine Daily Inquirer when I was in college. When I tell friends from PDI that I started as a lifestyle journo for their newspaper, they were surprised that I didn’t continue writing for them. I told them I tried applying for Inquirer Libre, the defunct tabloid that they used to distribute in the MRT, but the interviewers didn’t like me. I remember they laughed at the fact that I was a lifestyle writer and mentioned something unflattering about Tim Yap and his ilk (for the record, I didn’t hang out with them–they don’t even know I existed!). That unfortunate interview was a blessing because I went in a different direction–a much better direction, I should say.

So yeah, it was rage that started me into writing. Developing this craft is a lifetime occupation; it never stops. So when somebody asks me, when did you start writing? I would answer him/her, I started at 10 years old, when I was copying Doogie Howser, which was my favorite TV show when I was a kid. Neil Patrick Harris is still a favorite, 31 years later.

I’ve become a boring person

My cat vs printer. Video by CallMeCreation.com

What to do on a Friday night during quarantine, when cases are climbing fast and no vaccination program yet? Watch cats. Specifically, watch cats watch a printer printing and wait for it to spew out paper then kill the paper.

I’ve been printing vintage images to stick on my journal. Because after an 8-hr day of writing and editing, I still do more writing to decompress 🤦🏻‍♀️

My decorated journal. Because I don’t have anything else to do. Photo by CallMeCreation.com

21 years ago, you wouldn’t catch me sober on a weekend night. Now all I want is a nice fluffy bed and a good book.or movie.

If I’m feeling social, I will have a glass of wine or two at Barcino or some wine bar in Makati with friends. Because pre-Covid, driving home on a Friday night is torture as you get stuck on EDSA.

Tomorrow, I cook, clean, garden a little then buy veggies from UP. I’ll coax the girls to come with me to Binangonan for some mountain views and fresh air. If not, then…🤷🏻‍♀️

Planning

At National Bookstore Greenhills

So it seems like everyone is making plans for 2021 after wasting an entire notebook/planner for 2020 because that year was so fucked up.

My 2020 journal was actually almost empty except for some really revealing entries about how insecure my relationship with J was. There were so many things to write about 2020 because anxiety was running high and all that shebang that came with the pandemic but i didn’t. Was too wound up to even write about my anxieties, my feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.

Photo by Callmecreation.com

None of my plans for 2020 pushed through. Well, except for the training part. It’s heartbreaking. I even planned to go to S. Korea with him in May. Coron in February.

I don’t know if there’s still a point in planning for 2021.