Such An Eventful First Month of 2024

And just like that, January 2024 is done.

The first 36 days of 2024 were eventful. A summary of the first month of 2024:

• My family and I went on our first family holiday since we (our daughter and I) arrived in New Zealand. Our daughter loved swimming; she swam at the Maruia River, in a paddling pool in the middle of the city, and in the thermal pools at Hanmer Springs. Yes, she is a water baby.

• I learned a few new recipes in cooking and baking. I have yet to perfect them, but the food was edible.

• Oh! I got an extremely short haircut! The shortest haircut I have ever had. I am contemplating whether I should write a separate post about this. Hmmm...

• In my New Year's Day post, I mentioned that I was looking forward to opportunities soon. The opportunity I was referring to was employment. I sent my application for the Teacher Aide role at my daughter's school last December 2023. On the 11th of January, I was interviewed and accepted for the role on the same day. As of writing, I am officially employed as a Teacher Aide.

• I also mentioned in my New Year's Day post that we will move to a different farm. Well, I have an update on that too. My family will no longer be moving because my husband will be moving up the ranks. My husband will be the only one from their current dairy farm team staying and managing the farm. This is good news for me, as my employment at the school won't be cut short. I was worried about moving because I would have to look for another job after recently accepting one. But now that we are no longer moving, it is a relief that I will be working at the school a little longer.

There are hiccups and frustrations amid the good updates, but at the end of the day, these are my small successes moving forward.

And that is all the update for the first days of 2024. I am looking forward to sharing more stories in the future.

Ciao~

Half the year has passed... an update

Half of the year has passed and it has been an eventful one. At the start of this year, I was wondering what this year will bring me. Now, I would like to give a short summary.

January - I got my certificate for Caregiving Course.

February - Idle month.

March - Philippine Red Cross First Aid and Basic Life Support Training. It was also my first time donating blood.

April - I had an appendectomy a week before my birthday.

May - The busy month!!! I started volunteering under Philippine Red Cross. One of my first duty was during the National Elections. I volunteered for Sunday Mass duty and Free Medical Check-up duty for the succeeding weeks.

June - The most eventful month!!!

        - I was able to find work as a Caregiver. Though I got the connection through our local Red Cross Chapter, the reason I got work was that I am a Maryknoller and I have trained as a Caregiver.

        - My daughter also started her "schooling" this month. This has been a great concern for me since 2020. But now that she has started, I am more relieved and confident about my daughter's future.

        - My daughter and my niece celebrated their birthday this month. As expected, preparations had to be done. During my daughter's birthday, we invited the sons of a family friend. This is the first time that we had guests for my daughter's birthday since she celebrated her birthday here in the metro. The girls call them brothers.

        - It was also my first time having a Sunday Mass duty at St. Joseph Parish Church for Philippine Red Cross, and during my duty, it was my first time responding to a minor incident on my own.

July - At the moment, this month has an uneasy feeling. There are impending changes at work that are creating a rift between me and some people I am working with. The changes at the end of the month will most likely affect my work schedule, my volunteer schedule, and of course my management of my daughter's schedule and schooling.

In the past, this feeling of uncertainty would bring me anxiety, but this time around, I feel calmer and more accepting of possible changes in the future. My assumption is that I have gained back some of my self-confidence in the past few months.

Note to self: "You are moving forward and getting somewhere Bea. One step at a time. I have all these dreams I would like to fulfill, one day I will MAKE IT REAL*"

*Make It Real by Generations from Exile Tribe

Just a quick post: Preferences

 Recently, I have been discovering my preferences.

I have always been a fan of tea and green tea latte. For about a month now, I have preferred loose tea leaves over the ones in tea bags. I am now more specific in where I want to buy my green tea latte, unlike before wherein any green tea latte is fine.

I used to put milk on my hot tea, even before the milk tea fad, but now, I would rather take my tea on its own.

Even the types of stories I read and the movies/series I watch are now different. Some plots have become predictable for me and now I am trying out genres that I never considered before.

I also thinking of changing my wardrobe to more neutral colors but still keeping some colorful and vibrant pieces - maybe limiting it.

I am going through a lot of small changes recently. Honestly, I don't know how to take it all in. I think it's the Taurus/Horse in me that has difficulty in accepting changes, but part of me is also "enjoying" the changes.

At the same time, I also noticed that I am looking back and returning to some of my preferences when I was in my late teens to early twenties. 

This is all rather confusing. Hopefully, I could elaborate on these changes in the future. I would like to share it here, but right now my words are limited and I still have a long "to-do" list.

Till next time. 😏

Update (January 2021)

It's the new year, and I was hoping to progress more with my plans. But the way things are going, there seem to be other plans for me in the future. There are many self-doubts, but I try to stand for what I have decided. Moving forward and continuing what has started is all I can do for now. It is nerve-wracking, but I hope and pray that I made the right decision. It is not just for me but for my family.

The level of stress and anxiety was not as high as in previous months. Productivity is low for this month. I have been waking up late for this month. I am not sure if it is because of the weather or I have no drive to do anything.

Either way, I have to increase production for the rest of the year. As for my anxiety and my temper, I need to have a better grasp of it.

I guess this is part of my goals this year. I won't expect sudden progress. But I hope at the end of the year changes can be felt and observed.

Let's all face 2021 with a little strength in our hearts and the courage to move forward.

First half of 2020

“What is the most useless material that was bought in 2019?

...

A 2020 Planner”

This... is partly true.

The ash fall from the eruption of Taal volcano at the first month of the year, shutdown establishments, highways and airports. Limiting most of our movements due to the air being unsafe.

We thought this was just a little bump at the start of the year. Everything seemed to have been back to normal after a few weeks - or so we thought.

Come March, everyone was forced to a lockdown/ community quarantine due to the pandemic. Half of the year has passed and some areas are still in community quarantine, though some business have been reopened, most areas still feel like ghost towns as there are only limited number of people allowed in establishments.

Wheeeeeww!!!! That was depressing.

To make things a little lighter, I would like to share what I am grateful for despite the first half of the year being unpleasant.

At the first two months of the year, my daughter was able to visit to at least one province from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

Let me elaborate on that. We moved from Abra to Manila last October 2019. So our home base is now Manila.

So for the first day of January, my daughter and I were in the Province of Abra in Luzon.

A few weeks later, late January, we went to the Province of Zamboanga del Norte in Mindanao, with my husband who was on vacation. This is my husband’s province. We were there for about a week.

Mid- February, we went to the Province of Cebu in Visayas, to accompany my aunt who was visiting from Australia.

Despite the months after the being shitty, I look back and still feel grateful that my daughter and I were able to travel. Though, truthfully the only reason we were able to travel is because we had family matters to attend to.

What I am trying to say is, at least my daughter was able to see different places before she was home-locked due to the pandemic. 

It is within this first half of the year that I started to return to blogging and tried to revisit some of my forgotten hobbies. This is a work in progress.

That is all for now I guess.

I wonder what the other half of the year will be.

Till next time.

—- 

PS. There are other things that happened within the first half of the year, but these are family matter that I cannot share in my blog.

PSS. To those saying “ang yabang naman” or “check your privileges girl”...

I want to make it clear that the travel to different provinces were opportunities that I decided to take for my daughter to be able to see places. We don’t usually travel, it just happened that we had to go to these places and it happened that we had/ we were offered the resources for it.

I acknowledge the fact that we are one of the “lucky ones” who, despite the pandemic is still able to live comfortably. Though that does not mean that we don’t go out of our way to help in our small ways - we simply don’t post in public the kind of help we provide.

time for love

"Make every heartbeat count." -Nutschell Anne Windsor

Time is ticking. Take every opportunity to LOVE MORE

backtrax

for three consecutive days i have been listening to 90's music on the radio. (^_^)

been getting nostalgic recently because of this.

but i still haven't gotten used to the fact that the songs i used to listen and sing to are already in backtrax/backtracks. (^o^)

now i know what my parents feel when they hear songs from when they were younger,

and the present generation only hears it in backtrax/backtracks. (^o^)

it gets more awkward when you start talking to your friends about shows you used to watch when you were still a kid.

you realize how old you are,

how far you have gone,

how you have changed,

and you appreciate everything that has happened to you. (^_^)

22 years and still living and surviving the game called life. (~_~)V

yume - dream

i few nights ago, i had a dream. rarely do i remember my dreams. but this one, i definitely remembered because of the people in the dream and the circumstances of the events in the dream.

i was in a classroom with eiji-senpai. the class was obviously about medicine. i failed in that subject and i felt so bad about it that i just quietly walked out of the room. i wandered in different corridors. the corridors were not familiar to me but they were not dark or anything. just a typical corridor or hallways of a school. i felt lonely and lost in thought while walking. i then entered a fire exit door. i saw a narrow stairway. it was neither dark nor light,  normal lighting. i don't remember seeing that staircase before but the feeling felt warm, comfortable and familiar. i saw 2-3 people coming up the stairs and passing by me. they seem to be in a procession of some sort and someone was carrying a statue of mother mary. i then saw my first year high school christian life teacher, Sir Rod Pino. i followed him ( he was also in the procession) and we followed the procession of the statue. we went up the stairs. we paused in one side of the stairway (like a mezzanine), we knelt and we prayed. after a while, we stood up and continued the procession up the stairs. only a short time passed, when i saw myself  kneeling again and praying (another mezzanine?). this time i heard the prayers of those with me but i could not distinguish what they were saying until i heard a familiar female voice behind me. she was praying for me, she was crying... for me. she hugged me from behind. i then felt that i was crying but i felt very comfortable wrapped under her warm arms. she was asking me to come back, be myself once more, forget my worries and be happy again. it was from my second year high school english teacher, Ms. Nutschell Anne Windsor.

other than being my english teacher, she was also one of the founders of the Campus Ministry Auxiliary, my main spiritual support when i was in high school. i had great respect for her in different aspects.

as i felt her embrace gently fading away, i felt more sure of myself. there was a change in the environment. i was was walking towards the classroom i mentioned at the start of the dream. i felt lighter and everything around me seemed more fresh and relaxing. i saw my professor in medicine walking towards me. she was saying something about my failure but i did not seem sad about it. i even smiled at her and said something good. she seems to be taken aback and she merely walked away.

that's all i could remember of my dream. it was like a moment of enlightenment for me. i realized how different i was years back. i've remembered how important the people in high school were for me. how they have changed my life, in a good and bad way, but most definitely in a good way. (^_^)

changes

there will be a lot of changes that we will be experiencing from this day onwards.

please wish us all the best.

thank you. m (_ _) m