sunflower city

2024 was a crazy year. I started writing this post as a favorite things list but then realized maybe favorite wouldn’t be entirely accurate. It’s more of a compilation of things that happened last year, good and bad, and I’ve been going through my journal and notes last year to mull over everything. So here are some things that happened, things I consumed, and reflections about things.

This time in chronological (not really) order of consumption and/or experience:

The things:

1. Starting a weight tracker on January 1st last year with only one entry. But that’s okay because I just found an article showing that the scale isn’t the most effective way of measuring your health by Edie Horstman”).

2. Realizing that I work best in the world when I don’t view success and happiness as end goals to strive toward. (Which is what I actually put in my notes. I wonder what I was doing at that time.)

   

   True success and happiness, for me, are fulfilling accidents you discover you already have when you’re satisfied with where you are. Or maybe “success” in the way we understand it doesn’t actually exist. Note to future self: Might want to write about this.

3. Doing the most spontaneous things with friends and/or Ed. Like an early January spur-of-the-moment night trip to Asin.

   

4. Rereading guilty pleasure romance books featuring strong independent women, like the dark urban fantasy Kate Daniels series, and getting the idea to write a blog post about them. Soon.

   

   • On that note, rereading Kristin Cashore’s Graceling series, or rather rereading the first two and reading the next two for the first time. My favorite is still Fire. Next is probably Bitterblue. I like how it put Graceling and Fire together.

5. Getting a behind-the-scenes look at the local indie short film scene, thanks to my law office boys pitching in to help as extras-slash-supporting actors in Don Josephus Eblahan’s Vox Humana”).

   

6. Discovering eerie, beautiful, otherworldly abandoned places right in my hometown.

   

7. Reconnecting with old work friends. Naomi, thanks for being honest and being you (if you ever somehow manage to read this, feel free to barf). Aya, thank you for the reading and also for being you.

8. Paying a visit to my psychologist for the first time in years. Before this, I’d been an anxious wreck and I was taking my horrible mental state out on myself, with Ed getting the very undeserved brunt of my irritation and emotional outbursts. Almost a year after this, and I’m doing so much better.

9. Finally removing the plywood covering the office windows and giving the place a good cleaning. Look at that glow up.

   

10. Mial’s birthday. Much less lowkey than the past few years, but still a birthday. She’s nine now. Years after the surgery, and she’s perfectly healthy, apart from the occasional cold. All the anxiety and struggles back in 2022-2023 seem so far behind, thanks to everyone’s help. Words aren’t enough. Thank you again, everyone.

11. Rewatching the Sandman and realizing that Hob Gadling is my spirit animal.

12. Watching a lot of other things. A lot of my work routine last year involved watching something passively in another window while doing mindless data entry, and I ended up having some thoughts about:

    • Percy Jackson and the Olympians. I was pretty happy with how it turned out and how faithful it was to the spirit of Riordan’s books.
    • Anne with an E and how wonderful it is to searching for more Amybeth McNuity content on YouTube to discovering the music of Lia Pappas-Kemps, who I feel is a great example of modern grungey nostalgic pop singer-songwriters who are severely underrated.
    • More Cinema Therapy and jotting down a good line on relationships from John: “Healthy sacrifice is putting your partner before yourself. Unhealthy sacrifice is putting your partner instead of yourself.” I think this was them watching Patrick and David from Schitt’s Creek.
    • Season 23 of The Voice. I ended up writing a very, very comprehensive essay on the human desire to feel wanted as a result. I was going to post it here but I haven’t finished the piece yet.
    • Tons of anime. But more on that in a bit.
    • A lot of Frank Watkinson on YouTube, specifically his cover of Creep. The depth of emotion he’s able to convey in his covers and original songs gives me the chills 100% of the time.
    • Soaking in the absurdity of Filipino telenovelas. I watched Wildflower, and lol at Episode 49 with the infamous gun scene.
    • I watched Catch Me if You Can for the first time with Ed. Or rather, it was my first time watching it and his umpteenth time. I vaguely remember watching it as a kid with my parents on their movie nights, but truly watching it for the first time as an adult was an experience for sure.
    • Nobody Wants This.
    • Getting back into K-dramas with Lovely Runner and Doctor Slump.

13. Or maybe more on anime now. And manga.

    • Reconsuming Saiunkoku Monogatari and how stories can shift and transform between mediums. I read the manga and was very satisfied until I got to the non-ending and couldn’t find the continuation, so I rewatched the anime. It was perfect, but it was also a sort of non-ending, so I looked for the light novel, which was the original, which was devastating.
    • Rewatching Hotarubi no Mori e, still probably in my top five anime movies. My only gripe about it is that I wish it were longer.
    • Jigokuraku or Hell’s Paradise.
    • Dr. Stone.
    • Manga. So much manga. Jujutsu Kaisen. Jigokuraku. Dr. Stone. Tomo-chan wa Onnanoko (manga is better than the anime). Doctor Elise: The Royal Lady with the Lamp (anime is better than the manga). Solo Leveling. Oyasumi Punpun. Oshi no Ko. Monster. Delicious in Dungeon. Homunculus. And my favorite manga read of the year: Claymore.

14. Missing Anton Yelchin. Have you ever felt that way, where someone you didn’t know at all passed away and you felt devastated? It’s been years but for some reason it still stings. Pretty strange. I haven’t gotten around to watching all his movies yet, but I plan to. I rewatched Like Crazy last year, and him and Felicity Jones were beautiful there.

15. Losing friends. For the better, I don’t know. I still like to think that for the most part, bridges aren’t meant to be burnt… only ignored, until the right time.

16. Boracay for the first time, thanks to the amazing, amazing Coconut VA. I never thought I’d say this in my life but what a truly kind company. The island was also way more chill than I expected, and so beautifully walkable.

    

17. Taking random-ass tests that made me feel better about myself, like X-Rite’s Color Challenge and Hue Test. Test-taking is very much a guilty pleasure hobby that I’m never going to quit. Y’all at the office collect Magic cards, I collect personality test results, everyone’s happy.

18. Rediscovering Todoist and how helpful it is before falling off near the end of the year (I might organize and get back to it this year).

19. Running. I ran so much and I was so happy about it.

    • Discovering Mount Kalawitan. Hands down the most beautiful mountain I’ve ever hiked-walked-ran (just a tiny bit). Separate post on this for sure because dear heavens the things I learned. I finished last during this trail run and this was—is—still my favorite run ever.

    * Running the first leg of the Hoka Trilogy. What really helped out were super helpful tips from my running community friends, Carlo and Don: my favorite being not to rush the downhills in order to conserve energy for the uphills. What didn't work was the lack of sleep I had the days before that. * Mount Tawid. My very last run last year, and my second run on Mount Tawid. Maybe it was the experience, but I really felt myself peak for this one.

20. Catching up on my games and/or playing new ones and ending up accomplishing an insane 404 achievements in 2024 alone doIneedtogetalifenoI’mhappywiththeoneIhavenowthankyouverymuch.

    • Hades. I started the other year but I got completely into it and last year I achieved 100% completion on Steam because yes. In relation to that…
    • Hades II. It’s hard to believe this is still in early access because it’s already so exquisite, *cough cough* plusihavealmost200hoursonitalready *cough*. I can’t wait for the full release because Supergiant and Darren Korb and everyone working on this are killing it. I mean, the gameplay, the character designs, how this tickles the mythology nerd in me 100x harder, the emotions, the color palette, the world design, how everything is so much bigger now, the SOUNDTRACK. My absolute favorite is Sightless Shepherd, with a personal frisson-inducing moment at 5:22 onwards.
    • va-11 ha11-a. There really is something magical about story-rich games with [really good soundtracks](w6Y9dw)._
    • The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood. Don’t Starve. Detroit Become Human. Cultist Simulator. Hogwarts Legacy (J.K. Rowling is disappointingly problematic, but I wanted to get the game because growing up with the series, living in this universe was my dream, and this game was almost a dream come true, honestly), Ace Attorney. Potion Craft.
    • Stardew Valley. I got into it thanks to Ed, and wow I did not expect at all to get pulled in so hard. We stan Sebastian on this ship.
    • Papers Please. I started playing it in 2016, dropped it because I couldn’t quite grasp the mechanics then (yes I was an idiot but also not super into it back then I guess) but this time it made me feel so, so, so, so, so many things.

    I even made an Elisa x Sergiu pixel edit.

    

    Also, as with everything I get intensely into, I couldn’t let the game go and went spiraling down the Papers Please internet rabbithole. And I’m so glad I did because Nikita Ordynskiy’s short film is *chef’s kiss*. * Spiritfarer. Damn you, Jackie, for making me bawl my eyes out unexpectedly after hating you for the first half. I think I’m going to make a Jackie-centric post sometime. * Slay the Spire. HOW CAN A ROGUELIKE CARD-BUILDING DECK BE SO TERRIBLY ADDICTIVE. I’m not screaming I’m just crazy about this game.

21. Discovering my green thumb and going semi-full plantita.

    

22. The Office of the Solicitor General. So many experiences.

    • I met the most amazing people, and a few lifelong friends. It was my first time sharing a room with two strangers for two months and now they are my baby sisters I will protect at all costs.
    • This is also where and when I tore my knee up so yes.
    • For our yearbook of sorts, I had to look for quotes from Supreme Court decisions. This one from Justice Isagani Cruz hit me hard, and his writing in general is just lovely: “The strength of democracy lies not in the rights it guarantees but in the courage of the people to invoke them whenever they are ignored or violated. Rights are but weapons on the wall if, like expensive tapestry, all they do is embellish and impress. Rights, as weapons, must be a promise of protection. They become truly meaningful, and fulfill the role assigned to them in the free society, if they are kept bright and sharp with use by those who are not afraid to assert them.”
    • Saying goodbye to the Baguio Midland Courier.
    • Spending my almost-but-not-quite-30th birthday away from home but getting high on music and bonding with old friends and new friends and my favorite cousin and his band, while accidentally discovering the most delicious (but expensive. but worth it) Indian restaurant in Makati.

23. To elaborate on that second bullet point, losing the full use of my legs for two months, and then getting them back again, but pain. I’m getting surgery for my knee this year after a knee injury where I tore two ligaments. I felt devastated, because I had just gotten so into running and I fell so much in love with it, only to learn that I wouldn’t be able to run for a while.

24. Discovering Betwixt. I’ve always been into introspective activities, and this is the app of apps for it. It helps that its interface is stunning.

25. All the online opportunities to discover more music. Like Gnoosic!

    

    Thanks to Gnoosic, I discovered Hikes’ been thinking, which was my most replayed song of last year because it’s beautiful.

26. Continuing to log my dreams. I use a great app called Lucid on Android, where you can log the dream, add tags, even record yourself talking about it, rate how vivid the dream was, and weigh how lucid the dream was. I’ve been using this app for years and boy, the dreams I have on here. On days I forget to use it, I log the dream on OneNote, like this day:

    

27. Making the decision to leave school. I have my surgery to think of the next semester, and my mind can’t bear the brunt of the thoughts, without getting to run.

28. Singapore. Mental health-wise, I wasn’t fully there and I hate that I couldn’t get the full experience. I wasn’t as stoked as I usually am with traveling, and I definitely want to go back when I’m fully present again. But it was still full of memories I cherish, because of the people I was with.

29. Weddings. Two of my close friends got married this year, and I was a bridesmaid at one and a veil sponsor at the other. I felt very much like a mother giving her children away, because I am at that point in my life where all my friends are getting married.

30. A TON of ideas for blog posts and videos that I of course never got to. But reading them again, I’m excited. I’ll have more time to get to them this year.

This post took a full 15 days of starting, dropping, picking up, dropping, and picking up again but I’m so happy I got through it because it helped me look back and appreciate the past year so much more. Also, now that this is over with, I CAN WRITE MORE THINGS.

Cheers to the rest of 2025.

With that last post, I realized I’d let go of the formatting I told myself I’d stick to when I started this blog. It’s been so long since I last posted—if I had one peso for every time I’ve said those words in my life I swear— that I completely forgot. I was just so excited to write something. AND THAT RIGHT THERE is why I’m going to stop with the standard formatting altogether. My goal is to keep writing.

Note to self: Remove all the barriers that stop you from just writing.

Just. Write.

If I lost my phone, I would cry and hold a funeral for my notes and to-do’s. My photos are all saved in the cloud now, so they're perfectly safe. But these tiny snippets feel like pieces of me I leave behind. They're stories I think of that never get finished, or reminders to tell my partner about a funny moment, or to-do list items that get done one way or another, or things I consumed that I either liked or want to talk about further.

My notes for the past few years have been nothing but one-liners, and when I revisit the older ones, they’re almost nonsensical. Some seem profound, but it’s the thoughtful ones that give me impostor syndrome, like wow this couldn’t have been me I’m not that deep.

And so without further ado, here’s a collection of ideas and reminders and lines from movies or videos or books I liked and things to buy and things to look up and things I finished in perfect chaos:

• I’ve always had a horrible relationship with time
• Next ppt presentation steam achievements
• Dec 29 send armpit spongebob
• Odd thomas series
• Pink oceans
• Staplewires
• Writing: tick tock bleary-eyed heard clock after a moment realized it was a drop of water falling on the room plip plop marveled for a second about how sounds are shaped by minds and now that she knew what it was it clearly sounded like plip plop
• Vastly underrated: platonic love in books Nash and Fire siblingly in Fire, specifically
• Starting december favorite things posts 1-31
• I need to learn how not to destroy my life by accident
• Carpenters
• Dont let the hard days win
• Bar review board game
• Unlimited rice ijay hillside
• I AM A CHANGINGABLE FEAST
• Carps, pics, frog, scoobs
• BUY AMATS SHIRT
• Nalammuyot – nakirsang, nalukneng – natadem
• 129+135 skyway
• Baygon lason trap black 6 pcs
• razor, follow up on removal of gamit, hotdog, bread, cotton buds, laundry, whiteboard marker
• Ok go I won’t let you down
• “Pinagbigyanem”
• Corook
• Big pot
• Loam
• Mulch
• Worry is but undernourished enthusiasm
• I DIDN’T TAKE THE TAXI NAME
• Sudden pain left side 7:11pm Sunday feb 11 5 seconds sharp pulse, faded out
• Buy napkins stat
• Pag iniwan ko kaya mageevaporate ba
• Don’t go blonde, don’t add warmth
• Mind library
• I’m just trying to quell my social anxiety give me a second

I could go on for a million more words, but unfortunately, with the new year and everything, I don’t have the time. There’s so much more this year I’d like to do—and log.

I’m trying out a new experiment to encourage myself to keep writing and post more and care less about things not coming out “perfectly”. From now on, I’m publishing all my drafts in whatever stage of unkemptness I find them in. If I find myself stuck long enough on a draft to the point that it’s hindering me from writing about another idea I’m excited about, I’ll post it. Then I’ll revisit it in the future when I want to add more, and once it truly is finished, remove the (unfinished) label.

That simple. Let’s see if it helps!