Because I get that feeling a lot and I’m feeling it right now as I wade into my past journals again for the slightest bits of ammo I can use to get back into writi—shut up Trisha, we’ve been through this, stop bringing this up because every time you talk about trying to write more often again you end up doing the exact opposite of that.

Sorry, self-talk over. Where was I? Ah yes. Past voices sounding alien.

This particular thought was brought on by another particular thought I apparently had back in 2016:

I just… WHAT DID I MEAN? I’ve reread this ten times and I don’t know if I was intentionally trying to sound cryptic (I probably was) but I wish I also expounded on what I was thinking to at least assist future me (a.k.a. me right now) with deciphering what was going on in my head at the time. I have a vague idea of what I meant but it hasn’t solidified yet and I don’t know if it will anytime soon.

I’ve since given up on deciphering what I meant (tabled for a later date, or a later point in time, or a point maybe at the conclusion of this post in which I’m hoping I can wrap this all up in a cool, nonchalant, non-awkward manner), and hopped on a new train of thought: how the present me has absolutely no idea what past me intended.

How, almost every time I read thoughts and pieces from years ago, I barely recognize what I was thinking. How sometimes past Trisha feels almost like a complete stranger.

This ties to a post I recently saw on social media:

“You will never find the same person twice, not even in the same person.” The original quote seems to have been translated from one of the works of Mahmoud Darwish, a Palestinian poet, but I can’t find the exact poem it’s from. I saved it to my phone because it’s just one of those truisms that hits you when you see it, because… it’s true.

I haven’t stopped thinking about this concept, of change, of growth. And there are so many references in the art and media I’ve loved and consumed since I was a kid as to how every single moment of time pounds into us and shapes us into something just a teensy bit different than the moment before.

Pocahontas in the Disney animation sings (in my favorite Disney Pocahontas song, yes, I love it more than Colors of the Wind fight me), “What I love most about rivers is, you can’t step in the same water twice. The water’s always changing, always flowing.” It’s funny how in the next line, she ruminates how people, supposedly, can’t live like that. To be safe. But that’s exactly it. People are, themselves like that. Never the same river twice. Never the same person.

And then here’s an excerpt from Hunter Thompson’s letter to Hume Logan:

When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you. Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.

A Watsky lyric in Limo 4 Emos points out the sadder side of this change: “We pay taxes, we live frugal, wear new suits to old friends funerals, have true loves until they’re false”. Because sometimes, it’s the person you were years ago that your partner is in love with. Or maybe, the person you are now is almost a completely different person from the person they’ve built you up in their mind to be. Both very real situations. Both terribly lonely.

But my most recent favorite reference to this change comes from Bella in Poor Things: “I am a changingeable feast, as are all of we”. I typed this line down furiously in my phone notes as soon as I watched this scene, because I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS. Mark Ruffalo’s twisted, strange-spoken Duncan confronts Bella about how she now reads too many books and has lost her “adorable way of speaking” (barf, ew, barf, repeat) and Bella replies with the best line possible.

I am a changingeable feast, as are all of we.

We are all changingeable feasts and that’s the most beautiful thing.

It’s both sad and wonderful that we are constantly growing, to the point that sometimes we find it hard to recognize even ourselves after particular points in time.

Maybe I’ll never know what 20-year-old me meant by what she said on Wednesday, May 4, 2016 at 8:54 PM. But isn’t it cool that the current 29-year-old me can interpret that sentence now in any way that I want to, this time colored and shaded and stippled by the nine years that I’ve been through since then?

“The instantaneousness of the now is teaching us to stop trying”. To me now, this just means that sometimes we get those sudden moments between peace and a decision that violently shove us to stop attempting to do things and just do them.

Maybe that’s exactly what I meant back then. Maybe it isn’t. And the fact that I have absolutely no idea is pretty cool, isn’t it?

🌻

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.

🌻

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

Just. Write.

🌻

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.

🌻

In a few hours (at least from the time I started typing this), I’ll be switching from my blue, self-bought, expensive, severely underutilized 2023 journal to a new leatherbound, gifted-by-a-friend, thick-leaved (thick-leafed?) 2024 journal which I will be using to death next year – I can still say next year because it’s 21:03 right now, just around three hours to another new cycle.

Right now I’d like to repeat an old high school ritual of mine: make a playlist-slash-train-of-thought-journal-thing focused on one theme by picking one song from all my liked songs, turning on shuffle, and letting the algorithm work its mystical algorithmic wonders.

The song I’m choosing to start the playlist off with is Pinegrove’s Aphasia, from their live at the Wellmont Theater in Montclair, NJ. The songs I put in are going to be interspersed with my thoughts and reflections in a semi-complete documentation of what I’m thinking (I will try to edit as I type and maybe after), so… this is going to be long. Sorry.

But that’s alright and I’m excited. I haven’t been writing since April, so I shall now abuse my power as blog creator and writer. Now, without further ado, here goes the thought party.

The songs (and in between, the mess of thoughts)

(1) Aphasia (Montclair, NJ) – Pinegrove

I feel like once every 50 times I listen to Aphasia, I get hit by a new epiphany. My latest one was a few weeks ago during a particularly emotional personal moment. I listened to Aphasia when I was calming down, and somehow its meaning completely shifted for me. The first thousand times I heard it, I thought breakup song, but now, nope – that’s not it. It became a song about self-realization and control and personal freedom on a level even higher than I’d initially thought. Now that I’m typing this down I feel like this should go in a whole other post. (Note to self: make this a whole other post)

So instead of digesting and regurgitating out the entire interpretation, I’ll just talk about my favorite part of the song (if this is even possible where the entire song is at favorite level) starting where Evan scream-sings “But if I don’t have you by me then I’ll go underground.” And then with a slightly softer certainty, “Nah but what you got was in your reaches all along | Plus one day you’ll be reaching for me and I’ll be gone”. And then the instruments slow a tiny bit and Evan croons, “So to help remind myself I wrote this little song”. AND THIS NEXT PART which Evan and the crowd scream-sing and which I have never failed to sing without my soul choking on its tears rooted from some inexplicable emotion:

One day I won’t need your love | One day I won’t define myself by the one I’m thinking of | And if one day I won’t need it | Then one day you won’t need it |

And then the guitars and the drums and everything just swell and it’s even more something in the Montclair live and I wish to my deepest core that I was there or at least that I get to attend one, just one Pinegrove concert in my lifetime, because this is sacred, and it’s this moment in this song and in other special songs that I love that remind me of a line I love from Tiffanie DeBartolo’s How to Kill a Rock Star (which I need to remind myself to cover in an upcoming series I want to start here on revisiting nostalgic favorites and whether they hold up, Note to Self #2) – sorry where was I, the line:

But the guitars made sounds guitars didn’t always make. Symphonic sounds. Sacred sounds. The music dug in so deep you didn’t hear it so much as feel it, reminding me of a dream I used to have when I was a kid, where I would be standing on a street corner, I would jump into the air, flap my arms, and soar up into the sky. That’s the only way I could describe the music. It was the sonic equivalent of flight.

Reading this description in the book for the first time in high school lent me the words to flesh out and expand the emotions I got when I listened to certain songs, and the entire entry turned into a measuring stick, a rubric that my soul ended up starting to use to decide on whether a song makes it into my throneroom – no not throneroom, that doesn’t feel right – my temple of favorite songs.

This playlist entry alone has taken me almost 30 minutes to write, and the entire six-minute-and-forty-six-second song has been on manual loop the entire time. It’s 22:08 now and I hear occasional fireworks, loud enough gunshot-like bangs that I hear them through the blaring of my earphones.

I’m 3 minutes and 46 seconds into the song now. Just let me listen out the last 3 minutes of flight and I’ll continue with the shuffle and the plan.

(2) Crystal Clear – Hayley Williams

I smiled as soon as I heard this intro. I included Crystal Clear in my butterflies playlist, a playlist I dedicated to my feelings for Ed and the relationship I saw with him and wanted to start. We listened to the playlist together in his car on our first date, the first day we met in person. It’s been over three years since then. I included this song for its resonance with my inner conflicting feelings at the time: that I didn’t want to rush into things, but I didn’t want to slow down either, that I wanted to keep things as they were, that I wanted to give our relationship a try.

A lot of this still holds true to this date. In fact no matter how deep I go into you the water is crystal clear. Ed and I have grown closer through experiences, through fights and arguments and disagreements and compromise and a lot of messiness, but a lot of clarity and candor and sincerity and respect and love. And through all of this, yes, the water still is crystal clear.

(3) FLOAT – Watsky

Smiling again: I am so happy how these first three songs have been three of my favorite artists.

FLOAT is one of Watsky’s newest songs, and to be honest this is the first time I’m going to be giving it a good following-along-with-the-lyrics-type-of-intensive-listening. It’s still one of those songs that are initially alien, that don’t hit the memory mark immediately, but then the artist’s voice or some distinctive feature comes in and it’s an auto-grin.

Lyric that hit me just now to the point that I have a strong urge to have it tattooed on my skin:

I wrote a note to self | I hope it helps | Can’t ghost yourself

Ok maybe I’ll hold off on the tattoo, but I definitely want to write an actual note in my journal now. With the song on loop in the background. Give me a minute or two.

Alright, that’s a good start to this 2024’s theme. Can’t ghost yourself. I won’t ghost myself. I’ll stop ghosting myself. I think I have a better vision of what I want to do with my journal now.

(4) Cadmium – Pinegrove

It isn’t possible to have too much Pinegrove in a playlist, so I’m grateful.

I hadn’t been writing for the past few minutes because I just started decorating, (here’s what it looks like so far!)

Yes, I’m aware that I used the word decorating but have only accomplished the placing of tape. Tape, by the way, that is purple and supposedly decorative and that I bought back in college.

Okay, a line in Cadmium made me look up and smile:

More every year | I shine a light on edges I tried to unfeel | But we gotta do better than that

Yes. I do gotta do better than that.

(5) Bizarre Love Triangle – New Order

This is the latest song (or one of the latest songs) in my oh so that’s what it was playlist.

Side note, wow I can’t believe it’s already 23:01.

(6) I Need You – Lynyrd Skynyrd

Alright time for an experiment: chalk on leather (soft leather? faux leather? I can’t tell, to be honest) and then covered with sealing nail polish.

I’ve had this chalk since… I don’t remember if I bought the box in high school or college.

I did an attic run (I’m going to call it that from now on) earlier and found the chalk, all still in this old box a friend gave me. I remember buying one of those big boxes of chalk, the square boxes that have multiple smaller compartments of chalk. I don’t remember where I used it, but at least I have this small pile.

(7) I Don’t Wanna Die Anymore – New Radicals

Ok I don’t think the sealing shine nail polish finish thing works and lets the chalk show through

(8) Anything, Anything – Dramarama

(9) Resolution – Matt Corby

(10) Hamza – House of Waters, Priya Darshini

(11) Violent Pornography – System of a Down

(12) The Chain (Life from Webster Hall) -Ingrid Michaelson

(13) Family Still – Told Slant

The dogs are scratching on the door right now, afraid of the occasional loud bangs. I love my mother and how, with her usual tough guy front, can be so soft. She’s comforting Salty and Eleph, telling them it’s okay.

(14) Landmines – St Vincent

It’s going to take a few moments before I reply to people again. By a few moments, I mean hours. A few hours. Less than a day, I hope.

(15) Julie June – A Silent Film

Time check: It’s 23:48. I’m pausing the music for now to check on my baby boys outside.

Time check: 00:47. Happy New Year. The dogs are alright, Eleph is hiding under the table and Salty’s taking it like a champ. The fireworks have subsided. Soothing music is playing to calm them down.

I have made progress on the cover.

And I’ll continue the music. Next step, reflecting and reminiscing.

(16) Brighter Than Sunshine – Aqualung

Wow, this is perfect.

(17) Umaapaw – Ang Bandang Shirley

Almost everything that’s played has been something I associate with my relationship with Ed. Is this a sign for something. HMMMM.

I’m feeling a tad teary after rummaging through some of my journal inserts from 2023 and seeing Mial’s meal stubs from her hospital stay last January-February.

I can’t believe my baby survived surgery this year. I can’t believe we went through all that. We made it.

Paused again, and now continuing. Talked to Ed. It’s a good new year.

(18) My Friend – Hayley Williams

(19) Burn, Baby, Burn – Sea Power

Ah yes. Disco Elysium, one of my favorites on my list of things for 2023. Which I will be posting. Later today? Or tomorrow. While the hangup is still new. Again.

(20) Bubbles – Yosi Horikawa

While reviewing my 2023 journal, I found that I hadn’t filled in the pages allotted for holidays and budget. At all. So I removed them. I’m planning to put them into the 2024 journal and put the pages to good use.

(21) Galit – Bullet Dumas

(22) BCKYRD – Hot Mulligan

(23) Achilles Come Down – Gang of Youths

(24) & (Audiotree Live Version) – Pinegrove

(25) Never Let This Go – Paramore

(26) The Love Wouldn’t Die – Trevor Hall

(27) Appointments – Julien Baker

(28) Blood Brothers – Iron Maiden

(29) Cardboard Castles – Watsky

(30) Misty – Ella Fitzgerald

(31) Fade Into You – Mazzy Star

(32) Rejoice (Audiotree Live Version) – Julien Baker

(33) Last Hope – Paramore

ALRIGHT I’m finally done with initial prepping of my journal!

It’s 3:57 right now and I guess I really need to sleep, and I do feel the tiredness starting to seep in but dammit at least let me finish this post haha.

(34) Smoke – Moddi

I’m uber suspicious of this algorithm by the way. It’s been playing songs that are somehow… nostalgic? In a sense? I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe I’m just surprised because it hasn’t been playing the usual songs that come out when I rely on the algorithm. It’s refreshing.

Alright, now I just need to go through the post and make all the formatting edits then I can publish, baby.

Am I sure about this? Yes. Releasing more of the chaos of my mind? Yes.

(35) Surround Me – LEON

(36) Bittersweet – Lianne La Havas

The house is quiet now, and not eerily so. The music fills my head with no more banging, no more Amazing Race (parents were watching the latest season earlier, they’ve always been huge fans), no more YouTube game commentary meme something video (Mial), no more scratching or barking (the dogs). The candle’s flame is getting weaker, slowly. Twenty minutes tops and it’s going to die. Maybe that’s a good indicator of when I should stop and go to sleep. When the flame goes out.

The photos finished uploading. Now to put the final touches on this weird ass first post of the year.

(37) bedroom community – glass beach

(38) Hold Me Like a Grudge – Fall Out Boy

(39) Little Lion Man – Mumford & Sons

(40) Formidable – Stromae

(41) Earth – Imogen Heap

My eyes are getting heavy and the candle is really almost out.

(42) Dark Blue – Jack’s Mannequin

I’m yawning and my eyes are starting to tear. Just need to finish attaching links.

(43) What is Grief, if Not Love Persevering – I Am Dreamer

(44) Irokousui (色香水) – Yoh Kamiyama

Yes. Horimiya. I love Horimiya, it’s a gem and I’ll write more about it in another post.

(45) If I Get High – Nothing But Thieves

The candle’s out and I’m nodding off. I’ll finish this when I wake up and cap at 50 songs max!

(46) 7 Billion People All Alive At Once – And So I Watch You From Afar

Dear lord it’s 4:51 and I still haven’t slept. Stop. Side note: I’m putting the Live with Ulster Orchestra version because that’s my favorite.

Time check: 4:54. I’m regaining a bit of energy. Awesome.

(47) H. – TOOL

(48) One Song Glory – Adam Pascal

(49) Innocence – NoisyCell

(50) Asleep – The Smiths

I KID YOU NOT, this came up for our lucky number 50. Algorithms are modern day gods who see all and try to influence us mortals through their media calculation suggestion things.

I apologize profusely, this post has been getting more and more unhinged towards the end. Blame sleep deprivation.

Epilogue slash sleepiness

Time check: 5:18. This turned out to be more of a journal commentary accompaniment thing. I think I’ll put in lyrics for the other songs, the ones I believe can resonate with this year.

Later. After I sleep. For now, publish – and then update with lyrics after.

5:26. Good night and happy new year. Here’s to better sleep the rest of the year.

Update:

It's 17:57 right now and I just finished fixing all the links. I've decided against filling in the spaces after a lot of the songs, I think I'd like this entry more if it preserved exactly what I was typing, when I had time to type, and when I was busy working on my rituals. It's perfect as it is.

So that's it, then. This is going to be a good year.

Hey, thanks so much for being here. If you'd like to get a heads-up whenever I post something new, you can enter your email below.

🌻

So, being a good listener, I followed his advice and time-traveled into the past again via the box of old notebooks I’ve been keeping under my desk for future use. Of course, I found some good stuff — including this list of “GOALS BY THE TIME I REACH 27” (HOPES & DREAMS?) :)

Fourteen-year-old Trisha probably wouldn’t have batted an eyelash at some of these things but 27-year-old-Trisha-who-definitely-does-not-carry-a-gun-or-throw-a-knife-or-carry-a-switchblade (Lord, what movie did I finish watching before I made this list?) is blinking hard.

Since I am actually 27 now, this discovery is pretty timely. I can also now make my own much more realistic list for before my 27-hood ends.

• Get through the rest of the year
• Release some more songs
• Finish the semester with flying colors
• Run another race
• Exercise more
• Read more books
• Journal daily
• Learn more things

Hey, thanks so much for being here. If you'd like to get a heads-up whenever I post something new, you can enter your email below.

🌻

Three years ago, it didn’t have a title yet. It was just “Song 15” (yes, I have no idea where I got the energy to do all that either). On the OneNote tab I wrote the song on, 25-year-old me had a little monologue to the right where I blathered on for three paragraphs about what the song was about so I could come up with an appropriate title, because titles are my weak spot.

This is what I wrote:

Okay I feel like to be able to make a good title for this, I need to be able to talk about it and what it's about. For me, this song is about being a kid, looking back at those times as an adult and regretting not making the most of them. Because when you're a kid, you don't know what's in store, you don't know how messed up life is going to be in the future when you grow up – and when you grow up, when you get there, it's… a lot.

Sometimes in my head I stop time and go back to when I was able to laugh without thinking of all the heavy things in adult life. I want to go back to when I don't have to think about wanting to stay alone because you're so scared of trusting other people, because when you open yourself up as an adult, you're so much more vulnerable to getting hurt and losing everything you have. By staying alone, you have much less to lose.

But the last line – “All along I never knew that to be fine I had to lose it all” – to be okay, you have to open yourself up to new experiences and new people. “All the things I wish I could go back to just to lose it all” – there's this realization at the end that EVEN if we do go back, it's going to turn out the same way anyway. Things being open to risk. How the world is so much bigger than we all realize when we're kids and inevitably, we'll let people in, we'll let others in, whether we like it or not and we will, in the end lose it all.

That ended on a more somber note than I would have wanted, so I’m going to add my post-realizations after years of having Losing running around my head and doing cartwheels. This is the big thought that I’m summing up things with:

We need to lose in order to gain.

Or maybe it’s we need to be ready to lose in order to gain.

If we’re so afraid of stepping out of our safe places and comfort zones and shells and rocks, then all we do is stay in (or under) our safe places and comfort zones and shells and rocks. Looking back, there have been so many times I could have taken the safer route, but I never would have gotten to do the things I did if that happened. I never would have met all the people I’ve come to love so much. I never would have gained all these beautiful pictures and videos and memories that are, to quote one of my favorite artists, my first most prized possession.

We also gain the most out of our relationships when we’re aware of the inevitability of losing them. Because someday, eventually, we will. When we comprehend that things are ephemeral, that we have a set period of time with the people in our lives, then that makes our time all the more precious.

The last two lines in Losing go like:

all along i never knew that to be fine, i had to lose it

all the things i wish i could go back to, just to lose it all

Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and spend more of it with the people I’ve already lost. But I can’t. So all I can do now is remember them and honor them and do the best I can to be with the people I have now.

Hey, thanks so much for being here. If you'd like to get a heads-up whenever I post something new, you can enter your email below.

🌻

On an entirely different note, I feel like I’m constantly being challenged by the universe to stray away from my comfort zone. It’s stretching me and pushing me and urging me to grow faster than I can handle, in all the small ways and all the big ways.

I was fully expecting to complete the maximum nine days hospital stay laid out in our package, only to find out we’re being discharged today.

I like having a plan mapped out for everything in my head, with each step carefully visualized: where to fall in line, what office to pay the outstanding balance at, what time to complete this and that, and now I’ll need to readjust everything and work around what I have. It’s as if I’m being trained to map out strategies and plans on the fly all while battling this uncomfortable pit of anxiety in my stomach. Sometimes it’s not just in my stomach, it rises up to my throat and gets lodged in my ears all the way up to my head where it lingers like a swarm of bees made of air.

Okay, I’m adding anxiety to the blog post title.

If there’s anything I’ve been learning throughout all this, it’s to trust that things are going to turn out alright somehow. Dotted Line always reminds me of that. It’s why I have it on my shoulder.

A few years ago, my therapist taught me a tool I could use to deal with my anxiety. She told me to close my eyes and visualize my timeline as a path or road, and then place my current self on that road. Now, I needed to visualize a point up along the road as the future thing I was worrying about. Then, I should imagine myself separating from the me on the road and floating above like a ghost-thing, watching things from a distance. She told me to fly up ahead to view the moment of the worrisome event from up in the air. And then go a bit further up the road, say a day after the event, and look behind me.

“So from where you’re looking at things now, you can see the event you were worried about and what happened after. Was it as bad as you thought it would be?”

It never was. Not when I did the exercise and not when it actually happened.

I found another app that’s helped me navigate through the things I worry about. It’s called Worrydolls. I tell my worry to a doll and it keeps it. I can add thoughts to the worry or let the doll know when it’s finished. Once the worry is finished, the doll asks if the outcome was as bad as I worried, and I can share more about the experience. All my worries are kept as finished worries, and I can look through them and gain strength from the things I worried about that I’ve overcome.

It looks like this originated from the muñeca quitapena, worry dolls in Guatemalan tradition that children can tell their nightmares and fears and sorrows and problems to, then keep under their pillows while they sleep. The doll absorbs their worries and in the morning the worries are gone.

I’m glad my mind somehow went in this direction, because I remembered the road exercise and the worry dolls and I just did both. They helped and my mind is a percentage less jumbled now. Things will be okay. I don’t know how but I’m thinking it’ll all work out.

Hey, thanks so much for being here. If you'd like to get a heads-up whenever I post something new, you can enter your email below.

🌻

I'm sitting on the bench from where I took this picture, waiting for my daughter to be discharged from the ICU. In the room where the light is coming from are women whose voices I can't help but half-listen to as I catch up on reading articles from email lists and newsletters I'd subscribed to that I haven't opened in weeks. Just now, the women have introduced themselves for the very first time after being immersed in many hours of conversation and more hours of sitting in the same claustrophobic space in mixed airs of companionable and uncomfortable silence. Some of them have been here since yesterday; I recognize their faces.

One of the women has finally given her name and asked the others for theirs. The name-giving lacks the usual awkwardness accompanied by introductions, a side effect of having been breathing in (and shivering in) the same air conditioner air for more hours than desirable, and a side effect of being privy to the most intimate details of the past few days of each other's lives. “Maria,” one says. “Fe,” provides the other. “Ikaw, anong pangalan mo?” “Ah, may kilala akong Fe, kaklase ko noong college sa FEU.” “Ah, FEU!” More details pour out, this time not limited to their hospital experiences. More is shared. But before this moment, there was no need for names. Not when everyone still had the hope of staying a mere few hours in the waiting room.

Yesterday, the interactions commenced with someone being bored enough to casually announce how long they'd been in the waiting room, and then

what about you,

and then how long have you been waiting,

and then oh my son or husband or daughter or sister or brother is in there,

and then anong sakit niya ilang taon na siya sino yung doktor niya,

and then sabi ng asawa ko sa akin kanina, mahal iiwanan na muna kita ah, sabi ko, baliw ka talaga.

Yesterday, one of the women cried. Her son is 16. They’re replacing three of his valves, and he has issues with his other organs as well, so much so that the hospital had included in the woman’s wad of contracts a consent form to ask if they could use her son as a case study. As she was narrating all this, she stood up and moseyed over to her belongings with a disgruntled “tignan niyo ‘to”. I was expecting her to whip out the contracts, or even documents delineating the teen’s history of ailments. Instead, she bent down to retrieve a pair of black slippers, which, when she dropped on the floor at our feet for us to gape at, we saw were far too wide and too long to belong to an average Filipino adult, let alone a 16-year-old kid. “Ito ‘yung tsinelas niya!” she exclaimed before deflating back onto the coldness of the metal bench across me as the other women gasped and let out shocked hala’s. She acknowledged the reactions and went on.

She’d been in the waiting room since 8:00 AM. She started crying a few minutes before 6:20 PM. I remember the time because I’d sent my boyfriend a frantic ‘“bb huhu ang hirap umalis dito” on Messenger. Moments earlier, a nurse had just pulled me aside to tell me that my daughter had been successfully transferred to the ICU after her operation and I could now leave the waiting room, but before I could grab my bags and make my way out, everyone had gathered around the woman (and necessarily, around me, a cramped two feet away from her) to listen. Buti pa kayo, she told us between tears, kayo kanina pa inuupdate, ako wala pang update hanggang ngayon.

I mustered up the guts to stand and start grabbing my things a few subsided sniffles later, but I hugged the woman before I left, with a soft ingat po kayo ate. Because all eyes were now on me and my belongings, I offered a bit about myself (naoperahan din po yung anak ko, seven years old siya, babae). In the five hours I’d been with the group before leaving, they hadn’t approached me, hadn’t pressed me to divulge any information about myself. I didn’t need to. Even as I stumbled out of the waiting room, I knew that I did not belong. And not just because I was decades younger than everyone. I was updated three times during the operation. I left on the same afternoon that I entered. I didn't stay long enough to belong.

The woman who cried yesterday wasn't in the waiting room today. As I finish typing this out now hours after I started, all of them have left. The bags in the photo are gone and the cold steel bench has lost its pop of color. I'm the only one here. I didn’t really notice when the talking stopped and the goodbyes started, or if there were even any proper goodbyes at all. People just started hauling their things away in the same giddy oh-wow-I-can-really-leave-now mood that I was in yesterday. In two days, they’ll be back to rejoin their loved ones once they’re discharged from the ICU. If they’re as lucky as I was, they’ll be back tomorrow.

I only had to be away for a day and now I'm waiting excitedly to reunite with my brave little girl who’s been progressing faster than expected. I'm smiling at and greeting everyone who passes by because knowing my kid is going to be okay has recharged half of my batteries. I enjoy all the small ah kayo po yung mother questions and comments of ang bait niya ang daldal niya grabe dirediretso yung English niya ang friendly niya nag he hello siya palagi sa akin ang likot niya. That’s my daughter, alright.

I wonder if any of the women hugged before parting ways; if the sudden onset of intimate revelations for each of them kindled real friendships or if that was all just catharsis. I wonder if they exchanged contact details and if they're actually going to keep in touch.

I hope all of them are safe and with their families and feeling the same unending ocean of gratitude and love that I'm feeling, even if, for a while, they did belong in the waiting room.

Hey, thanks so much for being here. If you'd like to get a heads-up whenever I post something new, you can enter your email below.

🌻

That simple. Let’s see if it helps!

🌻