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Between the Pages: You are allowed to outgrow your past

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the past is part of you, but it doesn’t have to be your entire story I recently went back to my annotations for The Courage To Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi abd Fumitake Koga, particularly the chapter about living without being controlled by the past. It’s interesting how revisiting something you’ve read before can make you see it differently. Some ideas I wrote years ago, actually makes sense as I grow older and experience life for yourself. One thing I took away from this chapter is that the past is powerful. It contributes to who we are today, influences how we see the world, and sometimes shapes the way we approach relationships, decisions, and even ourselves. We can’t simply escape our past. It follows us in ways we don’t always notice. Sometimes, it even haunts us in our sleep. We cringe at the slightest flashback of every stupid thing we’ve said or done. We remember the decisions we wish we had made differently, the people we wish we had walked away from sooner, and the moment ...
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The courage to be genuinely disliked and incorrectly misunderstood

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I'm sitting at the desk in my hotel room in Lahug, Cebu for our team's team building, feeling incredibly grateful that I get to experience this before the year ends. It's one of those moments when I find myself appreciating how far I've come and how much life has allowed me to experience. I caught up with an old friend over breakfast earlier, shortly after arriving, and she shared something I wasn't particularly prepared to hear. Apparently, some of my former coworkers strongly disliked me and had tarnished my name because they thought I was "maldita." It hurt to hear that, especially after all this time. I thought I had already put that chapter behind me, but apparently, there are still things that can bring back feelings I thought I had made peace with. I'm not going to pretend I was without faults. I know I had my shortcomings, and I'm certain there were moments when I could have handled things better. But I genuinely don't remember lashing ...
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Musings of a twenty something adult

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I'm in my late twenties now, and suddenly I feel like I'm too old to be reckless but too young to have it all figured out. So instead of pretending I've cracked the code, I'm sharing the lessons that kept me sane, keeps me grounded, and occasionally laughing at myself.  This isn't a guidebook or a checklist, just a collection of thoughts I've picked up along the way.  1. Do not take things personally.  Most of the time, people’s reactions say more about them than they do about you. Protect your peace by not absorbing every comment or action as a reflection of your worth. 2. Laugh at your mistakes but learn from them. Embarrassing moments make the best stories later. Smile at the slip-ups, but don't forget to take the lesson tucked inside. 3. Manage your money wisely. Avoid overspending. Think of it as giving your future self a gift. In my early twenties, I have been half-reckless when it comes to my purchases, and half-stingy or prudent. I was always savi...
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Conversations over dinner

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Patrick asked me over dinner, "How satisfied are you with your life right now, mahal?" As a girly who compartmentalizes everything,  I obviously had to clarify first. I asked, "In general? Or for every aspect of my life?" In general, I am very satisfied.  I'm at a point in my life where I can provide for my loved ones. We can do our groceries without looking at the prices of the things we put in our cart. I'm able to share the overflow with our friends and family. We can buy things we want without feeling guilty about splurging once in a while. Being able to do these things feels really good because I know how much work it took for me to get here.  It's not even really about being able to afford things. It's about the feeling of being able to give without worrying if I'll have enough left for myself. To be in a position where I can say, "go let's get it", without having to overthink it. That kind of abudance is something I'm gen...
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Journal Prompt: How a lack of authenticity breeds contempt

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We live in a world that is obsessed with presentation. Every day, we scroll through feeds filled with lifestyles and creative projects that look effortless. It is completely natural to see someone doing something beautiful, whether it is painting, baking, or starting a blog, and feel a spark of inspiration. Most of the time, that kind of imitation is just a normal part of life. But there is a sharp line between being inspired by someone and trying to mirror their identity. When we pick up a hobby, a style, or a voice simply because we saw someone else get attention for it, things get complicated. You cannot fake a real connection to a craft. Genuine interest is built over a long time through personal memories, history, and real curiosity. When someone tries to replicate the outer shell of someone else’s creative outlet without having that same internal drive, the project eventually starts to feel empty. That empty feeling is exactly where the trouble starts. When people realize they ca...
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Radical acceptance and on running a race I never signed up for

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Adulthood has a weird way of handing us a scorecard the moment we cross the threshold. We are taught to measure our value by a rigid checklist of ages and titles. If you hit a milestone at nineteen, people call you a prodigy. If you land a specific job by twenty-three, you are labeled a success. We are constantly pressured to compare our speed to everyone else, as if life were a sprint with just one finish line. For a while, I let those external metrics make me question my own direction. Don't get me wrong, if you've achieved all of these early on, I'm happy for you. You got there because of your hardwork. In school, I always knew my potential. I graduated high school as the Valedictorian of my batch and earned a scholarship at MSU-IIT, which is a place that demands a lot from its students. But as life moved forward into my twenties, my timeline started to look different from the people around me. I finished my degree at my own pace at age 26, and in a completely different ...
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Journal Prompt: The Perfect Rainy Day

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Out of boredom, I asked AI to generate some writing prompts for me. It has been a while since I wrote anything here, and I really wanted to give my mind a little exercise. The system gave me a lot of suggestions, but one specifically caught my eye: Describe your perfect rainy day. I figured it would be interesting to look at this through different phases of my life When I was a kid, back around 2007 to 2009, a rainy day meant sitting right by our window to watch the pitter-patter on the glass. We were living in a small subdivision at the time. My late mommy Belen absolutely loved flowers and plants, so whenever it rained, I made sure to sit there and watch her garden get watered by the downpour. Looking back, this is probably the reason why I recharge in isolation and love silence. That was basically my childhood. My family was never really sociable, and we kept to ourselves most of the time. Socializing is actually an aspect of my life that I am still actively working on in adulthood....
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