2024: There and back again, but different

Seems I've reached the age where a lot of things that happen in my life tend to feel deja vu-ish. Is this normal, like a common, growing older kind of thing? "History repeats itself", as is often said, so maybe it is. 

And 2024 felt a lot like history repeating itself, but with edits. 

After four years, I feel like I finally got my pre-pandemic life back in 2024. I went to Kpop concerts (Bobby and iKON), travelled (a little beach road trip, Japan, Iloilo, and the Great British - and Welsh and Scottish! - trip), and most importantly, saw more of my friends.  I did bits and pieces of these in that last two years or so, but they always felt uneasy and a little alien. It was only this year when they really started to feel normal again. And I loved being able to take back these aspects of my life that the pandemic kept away from me. I'm happy to report that going back to the things you love is a lot like riding a bike - you never really unlearn them, you just lack a bit of practice. 

But I have to reach further back - eight years, to be specific - to talk about the other big, deja vu-ish thing that happened to me this year. In 2016, I left corporate to pursue a passion project. In 2024, I also left corporate to pursue a passion project. 

Now, the edits. I left my job in 2016 voluntarily. With minimal savings and the audacity of someone in their early 30s, I thought, "if not now, when?" and just did it. I won't go into detail, because I already have in this post. Suffice to say I believed I was fully in control at the time, driven by my YOLO tendencies, corporate burnout and sellout guilt. 

This year, I left corporate involuntarily...with my consent? They say be careful what you wish for, and at the end of 2023, I watched the Stories of a friend who was impacted by their company's re-organization and spent a month (or two?) travelling in Europe. We chatted about the exciting months ahead of them, and I inwardly wished it would happen to me. 

Well, it happened. Haha. I spent nine months of 2024 coming to terms with the bombshell that my role at the company I worked at for 7 years was being redundated. I tried to find other roles in the same company and outside, came close to a new one but ultimately decided not to pursue it because...YOLO? 

If not now, when? But I asked it with more fear than excitement this time around, in my old age of my late 30s, hehe. When I left corporate in 2016, I was confident I could go back if I wanted or needed to. I think a part of me knew I would have to. This time around, it didn't help that the idea was forced on me. I was content with my job, though I was recovering from burnout that I suffered in 2023 (again, won't go into detail because I already did here). Admittedly, it was starting to feel repetitive, but I valued the stability, and it allowed me so many benefits I never experienced in my previous companies - I was working from home practically 100% of the time, the people I worked with were great, I was happy with what I was getting.

But nothing is ever truly stable in corporate, is it? So when I realized I was losing my job, it felt a lot like I was taken out of my orbit forcefully, that the rug had been kicked under me - even when just a few months prior I was kind of wishing for it, mind you! - and it was honestly an emotionally harrowing experience. 

I say "emotionally harrowing" with the awareness that it was a privilege to be all dramatic about being redundated. Some people in a similar situation would've had to just suck it up and find a job, any job again. So I know - and knew then - that this wasn't going to be the end of the world, but it was still difficult to go through and my mental health definitely took a hit. In the end, I realized I had to make sure I was owning my decisions - that I wasn't being forced to make them, but that I was making of the circumstances around me what I wanted of them, moulding them into what I needed them to be. It took a lot of months, a lot of borrowing grief from the future (which I said last year that I didn't want to do in 2024! huhu), A LOT of voice messages to friends, not to mention the long lunches. Finally, at the end of September 2024, I left corporate to pursue my passion project. 

Again, the edit: this time around, it's not a passion project, but a more all-encompassing passion. The dream of building a cafe was a youthful passion project, but my writing, I now truly and wholeheartedly believe is my passion, and my life's work. There is literally nothing else I want to do as much as this. And while going through the stress of impending unemployment, there was a silver lining in my severance: for the first time ever in my adult life, I have been given the means and the time to actually pursue it, without needing to do anything else. 

Isn't that such a gift? If my math is correct and my spending is managed, I have a year or so to really pour my time and effort to my writing. It won't be a side project, a weekend activity, or an after-office hours thing.

What's more, I'll be able to do it but also have time to rest, make sure I'm taking care of myself and my creative well and pursuing other hobbies for fun. At the end of 2024, as I was getting used to my new life, I had this DM exchange with a dear friend:

Me: So I'm trying to do this thing where I finish my work at 5PM every day kasi otherwise I just keep going hehe. Success today! Medyo nasobrahan pa but I clocked out at 530 and I've just been looking at stuff online hehe. I'll have dinner, watch a movie with Kyle, then go to bed!

Friend: Congratulations! You've worked hard to afford a slow Monday like this. Enjoy it my friend. 

I'm eternally grateful for friends who are able to give a new perspective on things. Because it was true! Isn't it such a privilege, to be able to have time to rest? I never had 8-hour days. I had eight hours for work, and the rest for my writing and other pursuits. Rest was always few and far between and felt stolen from the things I should be or had to be doing. And to have this gift before I'm even 40? Not just making lemonade out of lemons, but lemonade with elderflower bubbly and a splash of vanilla.

At this point it's pretty clear that my 2024 can be summarized into this: same same, but different. Hehe. Here's a quick list of the "different" things that happened this year:

1. A full on, emotional meltdown. Haha. As can be insinuated from all my year-end posts, I'm not exactly the most stable person, and I'm quite emotional. But this year I really had a tipping point that would've been emotionally manageable, perhaps even trivial by itself, but after everything I was going through this year, unravelled a lot of scar tissue and emotional sinew. Again, and they probably won't read this, but I'm ever thankful to my friends, who in my meltdown I realized was the only constant in my life. In my moments of doubt this year (and I had plenty), they were always there to provide support and genuine belief. I hear so much about the difficulty of finding adult friendships, and I can't help but feel so darn lucky that I have a handful of them. Not to be Gen Z about it (because I'm not, haha), but I find it pretty cool that "Birds of a Feather" came out this year, the same year I truly realized how much I value and truly love my friends. In my emotionally fragile days this year, I was unable to listen to that song without getting teary-eyed, but just yesterday in our New Year's Eve festivities I was able to sing it through karaoke, so I think that's progress! lol

2. I got property! Another piece of land to my name, in a beautiful island, next to that of a friend! One I look forward to making a home away from home in the future. 

3. I don't know how I feel about travel anymore. It's something I'm still trying to understand. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely LOVED my trip in the UK. If I had the means to do it, I would come back every year! I had the best time with friends and alone in the UK. Seoul, South Korea has been replaced - the entirety of the UK is now my favorite travel destination. But the planning can be stressful. And the world we live in is so different now, so I don't know. One thing I do know, is the kind of travel I prefer. I'm certain now I would give up going to tourist spots and "go to's" if it means I can spend more time soaking in a place by living in it for a few days. Maybe that's not travel anymore - maybe it's taking a break? A change of scenery? Not necessarily going, going, going, but staying still, somewhere else. I'm still processing this and I'll get back to you next year, when I will hopefully have more answers.

It hasn't been an easy year, but I've also been uniquely blessed in 2024, I guess. I've just had to dig deep and toughen up emotionally and mentally to get to the good parts. It broke me, too, but I healed. I don't want to make any proclamations for 2025, only that I hope for a slow and gentle year. I say that, while I try to end this post so I can move on to planning the year ahead, hehe. You can take the girl out of corporate, but sometimes you can't take the corporate out of the girl, hehe. So I'm a bundle of contradictions -  and as I type this, I have a very distinct feeling I've also written that about me in an older year-end post. 

Same same, but different. Happy new year!

P.S. You know what else is different? I can't be bothered to post pictures on here anymore, lol. There are plenty of those on my Instagram, and even more videos on my TikTok. We move with the times!

2023

The thing about 2023 is my plans for it were derailed almost as soon as the year started because of work. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I had to devote the first half of my year entirely to a campaign we were about to launch while our team was heavily understaffed. Adjustments were made, but because of unplanned circumstances and a deadline we couldn’t push back, our team really just had to put our heads down and get the work done. 

I realized early on (like in late January / early February) that the only way I was going to get through the campaign sane was to accept the circumstances I found myself in and just brace myself. So that’s what I did. To be honest, I had gone through worse work conditions. This time around, the work, though heavy, was still confined within the eight hours (alright, sometimes ten) of my work day. I never worked on weekends. I was still able to get time off (and even got to go on a much-needed 8-day vacation to El Nido which was perfect, and a few more beach trips and day trips). It was really my mindspace that I just couldn’t devote to anything else that required me to be productive. Unfortunately, that meant that what I had to set aside for the first half of the year was my writing. 

But by June things at work were close to getting back to normal. I thought there were no more surprises that would come our way until the launch of the campaign, but I was wrong - the week before our launch, on our busiest week, Mom got Covid, and eventually Dad too because he had to look after her in the hospital. So on top of work, I had to look after the house and also run errands for my isolated parents in the hospital. It was the most trying week, and I particularly recall the Friday night of that week, as we were working on the finishing touches of the campaign before launch (if you’re in marketing you know those last few hours are the most intense). It was raining hard, thunder and all, and I was on a call with a counterpart in Germany, getting approvals for German translations I had worked on with an agency (imagine? I was working on German and Dutch materials without knowing either languages, because our teammate who spoke German fell ill and was on medical leave while our Dutch-speaking teammate had just resigned). At the same time, because of the heavy rain and thunder, Elio was cowering and shaking, under my desk, afraid of thunder. So there I was, trying to stay in the call and sound completely calm and focused while my counterpart was politely telling me that the translations the agency made were very faulty, and could not be published, all while comforting a very scared dog. Looking back, it didn’t seem so intense, but because it happened towards the end of a very intense six months, it felt like a very big, dramatic deal. 

Thankfully, my parents recovered from Covid without any lasting effects, the campaign was launched successfully, and my company and teammates were understanding enough that for the rest of the year, things were a little more relaxed. In a way, the stress and workload for the year was frontloaded to the first half of the year, which has its perks, because it freed up the second half of my year. 

And that was when I was able to focus on my writing. I didn’t wait for NaNoWriMo - by September I was already prepping, and by October I had started a routine that I carried on until November. I thought I would be able to continue until December, but I realized you can still get burnout even if you’re doing what you love, so I decided to give myself a break. This, while I also had two other non-related big projects I wanted to get started. 

A lesson I still have to teach myself regularly is the lesson of allowing myself to take a break and rest. I had gotten so used to using my time out of work to work on my other projects that I don’t know how to use my downtime for time to actually relax. But I was able to do that in December, over the holidays. And being able to rest and relax meant watching the shows I wanted to watch, reading the books I wanted to read, getting back to playing video games, and getting enough sleep. I did all of those in December! That said, as the year and the holidays end, I’m still getting flashes of guilt about not getting any work on my manuscripts and my other projects done, so it’s still a lesson I’m trying to learn. 

Another thing I made sure to do during the second half of my year was take care of my health, knowing that I didn’t do it during the first half of my year. Similarly, I made a promise to myself in 2022 (after I spent a week in the hospital) that I would avoid hospital visits and look after my wellness in 2023. Thankfully, my annual medical exam results showed improvement from the previous year, but there is still a lot to do, and I still need to be more consistent. BUT, I also don’t want my journey to wellness to be miserable, so that’s another thing I need to watch out for. 

It’s my age showing - already talking about health. It’s really not something anyone can escape, and the passing of time will find ways to let you know that all of our clocks are ticking, something I was exposed to more times than I have been before, and in succession. It’s still something I’m trying to come to terms with. Something that weighed on me in the last few months, if I’m being honest. 

But you know what? Maybe it’s something we should look at in a different way. I read something that stuck with me this year, about not borrowing grief from the future. Because that’s what worrying is, isn’t it? I’m quite good at not having regrets about my past, but not very good at not worrying about my future. 

And maybe that’s my biggest resolution for 2024. I realize it’s much easier when you’re young to not worry - but as time goes by and as you get older, worrying finds more effective ways to rear its ugly head and take up space in your mind. Maybe we shouldn’t let it. There’s probably a difference between planning ahead and borrowing grief from the future. It’s something I want to do better at in 2024. 

And, I want to travel again. After the pandemic, I’m ready! Thankfully, I already have a few trips planned in the coming year. 

To end on a lighter note, I’m also pretty happy at all the content I consumed this year, lol. Weird flex, but I think it’s indicative of how I’ve been able to take a step back, relax and unwind! 

The books I read are on my GoodReads account so I won’t list them here (I read/listened to 55 books this year!), but here are the shows I watched:

• Succession Season 4

• The Last of Us Season 1

• The Gilded Age Season 2

• Yu Yu Hakusho Season 1

• Artful Dodger Season 1

• So many episodes of Gilmore Girls lol

• Only Murders in the Building Season 2

• Queens of Mystery Seasons 1 and 2

• Miss Scarlet and the Duke Seasons 1 and 2

I’m pretty sure I watched several movies this year, but only one made an impact: Saltburn. I will say, I quite enjoyed all the Hallmark and Hallmark-adjacent Christmas movies I watched this year! 

I think I’ll end this ramble here - see you next time, in 2024!

2022

I was struggling to start to write this year-end post, mainly because I was struggling to make sense of the year I’ve had. Normally there’s some big lesson or theme or idea that stands out in my year, but this year has been a strange soup of many different events and thoughts with no clear conclusion, no clear message. So many things happened, yet it feels like there’s nothing new to write about; I’m certain I’ve done a lot because of how tired I’d become by the end of the year (thankfully the holidays have been restful and rejuvenating), yet I don’t feel accomplished, necessarily. There are none of the markers that I would often write about in previous year-end posts: I didn’t travel much (thanks to this still ongoing pandemic) and had no big trips, work was the same old thing in bigger volume, and I didn’t publish anything new. 

Then there was the part of the year that I’m still trying to come to terms with, though often, I’d still opt to not think about it instead.

I’m done trying to make sense of this year and trying to wrap it in a box and tie it in a big pretty bow. I’m just going to look back to the year as it happened.  

I started 2022 hopeful, if a little distressed, which I know now is pretty common when you commit to a cause bigger than yourself. When you want something, need something to happen but you’re faced with so much uncertainty – worse, when you’re facing horrible odds. 

Still, I – and a lot of people – persisted. And there was happiness and joy and pride in that persistence, and for months it buoyed me, helped me keep the doubt and distress and thoughts of doom at bay, hoping if we shouted louder, sang together, we would be heard, and what we wanted, needed to happen would happen. And we were fighting for the truth, for good, so it was the worthy fight and we were all in, and I really thought we would win. Actually, more importantly, I wasn’t ready if we lost. I didn’t even want to consider the possibility. Me, who always needs a Plan B. 

And then we did lose. The one time I fought for something and went all in on something without a Plan B, and we lost. And it was traumatic. And I genuinely think I went through (maybe I’m still going through) the stages of grief. And maybe it’s a large part of why it’s hard for me to close this year. I usually end the year writing about my victories, but this year I can’t help but write about defeat. 

I found ways to cope – a quick trip to my favorite island with friends, which truly was healing and couldn’t have come at a better time. I found comfort in books, and visiting coffee shops and reading books with Kyle. And I was able to create a bubble of peace, and it was good for a while. 

Then I got sick. I caught dengue and for the first time in my adult life, had to stay in the hospital. I stayed for a week, and had to rest at home for another. I was glad it wasn’t any worse, but it did take a toll on me. 

Then as soon as I got back to work, my work load got incredibly heavy. I worked non-stop for three months. I came near my breaking point work-wise, which hasn’t happened in years, since I rejoined corporate. I contemplated starting my villain origin story or quiet quitting because it go so bad.

Luckily, I’m in a company and a team that helps address a toxic workload, and the help came just in time before I could really reach my breaking point, and for that I’m so thankful. 

If anything, the best part of my year has been – surprisingly – my writing and my reading. My love for reading, which was rekindled at the start of the pandemic, grew even stronger this year. I read 40+ books when I only meant to read 12! It’s thanks to my discovery of cozy mysteries, a genre that absolutely suits my preferences. 

Writing-wise, I actually finished three manuscripts this year! One was a manuscript I had started last year, a sequel to my other work. Another one I finished because I finally signed up for #RomanceClass, which was a really great experience, and the third I finished through joining another Storywriting School workshop. I don’t know why I’m not celebrating these enough, because I should. I think it’s because finishing a manuscript is really just a beginning, and I’ll have to put in a lot more work next year so I can follow through. 

I came across a serendipitous tweet while I was thinking about what to write in this post: some years are for sowing seeds. I think that’s what 2022 has been for me. Nothing has blossomed, nothing has bloomed, but the seeds have been planted, and they only need to be nourished to grow. While other seeds planted didn’t bear fruit (only trauma, lol), others brought lessons, and an encouragement for the future. 

I don’t regret joining the cause, though I still grieve that we lost, and I still don’t know how to come to terms or move forward in that regard. While I’d rather I hadn’t gotten sick, I’m thankful for my new lease on life and vow to prioritize my health moving forward. Finally, I’m thankful for the productivity I was blessed with this year, work-wise but more importantly writing-wise, and I’m so excited for what comes next, and I’m so looking forward to actually working for it again next year. 

Here’s another tweet I just came across that feels relevant for this post, too: now that this post is done, I’ll spend the last 24 hours of 2022 looking ahead, not back. So happy new year if anyone is still reading this. 2022, it’s been real (Rosaline’s last words to Romeo – I’m writing this with the move playing in the background), let’s hope for greater things in 23.   

2021

And just like that, another year is done and dusted. Another year that was a lot like the one before it: no trips, no seeing friends, just staying home every day. 

It makes sense, now that I think about it, that my biggest accomplishment for 2021 was being able to put down roots.

My default has always been in motion. Going places, changing jobs, just doing, doing, doing. Always wanting to move forward. Life on a moving train. 

The pandemic became this station where the train of my life stopped, and where it’s still parked. And when you keep something in the same place for a long enough time, it slowly becomes part of that scenery. If it’s not alive, it becomes a ruin, gets taken over by what lives around it, like temples overrun by the jungle or sunken ships taken over by coral. If it’s alive, it grows roots, settles in, takes the nourishment it needs from where it sits. I’d like to think my life in 2021 was the latter. 

I don’t know how I would’ve survived the last two years if I hadn’t moved back home. I’m so thankful it was a choice I could make, an option available to me. Being forced to leave the city and move back with my parents and brother was the emergency brake that put a stop to my train that kept going, but was going nowhere. Who knows how much longer I would’ve taken to make a change?

This year, I failed to publish a new book or make progress on my author career. I didn’t go on any trips. I still have the same job and I’m still in the same company I’ve been part of now for four years. On the rubric I always used to measure my year against, it would be mostly red instead of green.

I was saying as much to my friends over our year-end call just a few days ago. I just didn’t feel like I had accomplished anything great this year. 

But actually, I did two things I had never done before: I built the writing cottage of my dreams, and I now have a piece of land to call my own, to hopefully build another cottage of my dreams in the future. 

Somehow, it didn’t immediately come to me that putting down roots was an accomplishment, and now I think I know why: because while on my ever-moving train, being stationery wasn’t yet part of my vocabulary. Staying still was something I avoided, or something I told myself I couldn’t do just yet.

But maybe I was just never in a place long enough to allow myself to put down roots. But now, I think I am.

So yes, I love my little cottage amongst trees. I can’t wait to watch sunsets in my little piece of the world. I’m grateful for what I’ve done and what I’ve been given this year. 

Of course, it’ll only be a matter of time before I’m pushed into motion again. That’s just the way it is. But for now, I will relish in being rooted, I will be grateful for being grounded. Let’s see what happens next year.  

 

 

2020

To say that 2020 has been a strange year would be an understatement.

I wouldn't want to remember it for its big, world events, though. Instead, I'd like to remember it in the context of my own, little bubble, and the events that happened in my life, irrelevant to the rest of the world, in the last twelve months. 

All things considered, I feel very fortunate. So much tragedy took place in the world this year, yet my friends,  family and I came out of it fairly unscathed, and for that I am so thankful. I am thankful that I write this year-end post not in sadness, but in gratitude. I am thankful that I write this year-end post hopeful for 2021, albeit a little jaded from 2020, too. 

An explosive January (literally)

We live relatively near Taal Volcano and had to leave our home when it erupted. Thankfully there was no damage, just ash fall, and while we went through a stressful couple of days, everything was eventually sorted. 

A second chance at Melbourne

Rissee, Ics and I travelled to Melbourne on what would be my only trip for the year. And what a trip it was! We met with Tiff to eat a lot of good food, visit her house, go on a road trip, go on a wine tour, but most importantly, we watched the Australian Open! 

It was my second grand slam (went to Wimbledon in 2018) but it was the first time I actually got to watch matches. We saw Naomi Osaka, Coco Gauff, Simona Halep, Gael Monfils, Garbine Muguruza, but the highlights of the tournament were getting to see Roger Federer play an epic 5-setter vs. John Millman (which turned out to be his 100th match win at the AO) AND Dominic Thiem (who would eventually be in the AO final AND win the US Open!). 

I loved our Australia trip because other than watching the Australian Open we had a fairly relaxed itinerary. And I loved exploring Melbourne with Ics, Ris and Tiff. My first visit to Melbourne was nothing to write about, really, but this time around, it was really special. Of course, it wasn't without its shenanigans, from a fire alarm going off in the middle of the night at the hotel which forced us to evacuate but thankfully ended up being a false alarm to trying vegemite at Tiff and Carl's wonderful home, to Ics having a meltdown because "we didn't come to Australia to have samgyupsal", to Ris and I being judged by the proprietor of Grain because of our massive brunch bill. Oh! And searching for penguins in St. Kilda! And trying to figure out which borough of Melbourne we'd like to live in, given the option. 

Even if I knew then that it was going to be the last trip I would take in a really long time, I wouldn't  have changed anything about that Melbourne trip. I have nothing but great memories.

Elio

Because of the pandemic, I made the decision before the lockdowns to move back to our home in Batangas. Suddenly, the conditions were just right for me to finally get a dog, so I did! Elio has been a great source of joy (but also worry and headaches, sometimes) not only for me but also my parents (for my brother, not so much. LOL.) I look forward to many more years bonding with him. Look how cute he is!

My first book and the start of my publishing journey

In August of 2020, I published my first book! But before I could even publish, it was a great experience working with an editor and an artist to polish the manuscript and give it a book cover. This wasn't just a milestone for 2020, but a milestone of my life, and I'm truly thankful for everyone who supported me through this journey!

A few days ago, on Christmas Day I also published my second book, and while the book wasn't as perfect and launch-ready as I had hoped (it's taught me never to be too optimistic about Kindle upload deadlines again!), I have many more projects I hope to accomplish in 2021.

Love Monday Cafe ver. 2

Finally, somewhat unexpectedly, another great moment of 2020 was being able to revive my old passion project, Love Monday Cafe, but in a different format. We've only just begun revamping it (and now I have the entire family to work on it as well!) but I'm so excited for how far we can take it in 2021!

I'd like to remember 2020 for its blessings disguised as bad news; for things found to replace things lost; for new habits formed out of ruined routines; for Zoom calls with friends in the absence of overstaying at cafes with friends; for new projects in place of postponed plans. Because despite the shitstorm that was 2020, despite the standstill that we seemed to have been in, life actually moved forward. And for that, I am thankful. 

Here's to a better 2021 - is that a big ask? I don't know anymore. But I will remain hopeful. I will write my goals and try to achieve them. I will continue to pray for my family's, my friends', and my health and happiness. I will continue to push forward to move forward, but when time requires it, to stay still and take a step back. Because everything happens for a reason and they happen all in good time.