Year: 2026
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The waiting period is a chaotic place to be, filled with emotions that tumble and jumble all over you, even causing turmoil inside of you. And then, as this disorder builds up within you, you develop the urge to expend energy to maintain it. For me, it was the Ph.D. application and award—and the waiting…
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When I started blogging in 2014, I didn’t know anyone who shared the same enthusiasm—staring at a blank screen, typing away until words became something alive and breathing. I was alone in it, at least within my circle of influence (or so I thought). It would have been nice to have someone with similar interests,…
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Woke up to a tray of lemons my mother-in-law picked from our backyard. I’ve never seen this many lemons freshly picked, which reminded me of the lemonade stalls I used to pass by at Area 2 in UP Diliman. The lemons were visually inviting every time I looked at them, and thought about how sour…
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One morning, I decided to start my day sitting on the outside bench with my e-reader and a hot cup of decaf coffee (please don’t judge). Surrounded by trees under the cloudy blue skies, I was able to hear more of the morning. Normally, I would begin my day by reaching for my devices and…
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When asked about what’s next, I begin to imagine things like leveling up (in finances and time flexibility) and accomplishing a Herculean task. But why do we always want to become something more? When do we stop wanting to have more? Would we ever stop? It feels like to be happy in our short lives,…
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My work as a freelancer has changed in ways I didn’t quite anticipate. When I first encountered AI tools at work, my job was straightforward—I did all the prompting, fed in the inputs, and let the AI generate the writing and the images. I was the one steering, doing half the work while the AI…
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Today, I decided to declutter my phonebook and ended up deleting ~200 contacts. I was even surprised that I didn’t recognize some of the names anymore. Some of the phone numbers were ones I acquired and saved back in college—numbers of classmates I haven’t been in contact with since graduation. I can’t imagine how different…