Shifting Currents

Hello, folks. Yes, I’m still alive. I’m just resurfacing from the biggest year of my life thus far – a year of change, upheavals, sacrifices, and dreams come true – which is why I’ve had no time for blogging (or most other things, really).

In a nutshell, I’ve moved continents. From Manila, Philippines, I now live in Vancouver, Canada. I’ve left my family, friends, and dogs behind. But I have gained a new life with my partner, pursuing my dreams of becoming a writer. It SUCKS that it has to be one or the other. There are days when I wonder if it was worth losing a life I loved fiercely. While I love my second home and how it’s slowly shaping me into the person I’ve always wanted to be, my heart strings will never detach from who I’ve been and everything that made me that person.

There are things about Manila I will never not long for. All my loved ones aside, there’s the amazing sense of community, the unrelenting joviality, the culture around food, its unique texture. There are also things about Vancouver I’m still adjusting to, and will probably take a while to fully accept. Like how people don’t spend all day just eating (clearly I have gripes with food). Or how, despite people being warm and friendly, they are still distant and impersonal. Everything has its place here, and while I appreciate that to an extent, it also separates everything all the time. Unlike home where everything is a beautiful, frustrating, glorious, rage-inducing mess. I hated it when I was there; but now I wish I could have some of it again.

I’ve spent most of the past year writing for myself. I know for sure now that it’s where my heart belongs. I’ve explored ideas, themes, and styles I never have before. I’ve grown and realized things about my writing that I haven’t even considered. All thanks to the University of British Columbia’s Creative Writing program, where I am now taking my second BFA. The program has also opened a whole new world for me. And the thought of all these possibilities have been the biggest driving force and one of the best gains I’ve had in my life.

The next months are also shaping up to be quite exciting. I’m now in the middle of an internship doing events for a prestigious local business school. And then there’s the issue of my Permanent Resident application coming up.

By August, I will have been living in Vancouver for a full year. By then, I will be starting the process of making that permanent. And hopefully, not too long from now, I will have the permission to do so.

In the meantime, I’ve found my stable landing and plan to keep this going as far as I can. I plan to blog regularly again – or at least, as regular as I ever have. But this will probably become less and less of a travel blog and more just a journal of my life, in all its glorious inanity and ordinariness. I will also be shifting this more into a photo blog again, like I initially intended all those years ago. I feel like I write too much now, and need to save that brain juice for graded stuff or passion projects. So from here on, this will be the home of my photos or other adventures, with less commentary.

All in all, my life’s currents have shifted, and will probably always be doing so. Thanks for sticking with me. And I’ll see you all back here very soon (I have photos from 2 New York trips aching to be shared).