2024 Vision Board and a Look Back at 2023

I made a vision board a few days ago as I was fixing my Notion pages. And this was the best thing as it finally completed my 2024 Journal cover page! I was struggling with how I could complete it and was running out of ideas. I don’t exactly remember what actually prompted me to make one. Maybe I was scrolling through Instagram and saw some reels about it.  It’s still a work in progress though, I keep changing it out bit by bit when something hits me that I want to add to it. I don’t really know if that’s allowed (who makes the rules here??). Maybe I’ll give myself until the end of the month for these modifications.

This wasn’t supposed to be a full-on blog post, and I was not really planning on reviving this blog full time. I was just supposed to be drafting my 2023 photo dump posts on IG, when I thought about the vision board I created. So, here we go. I will be breaking down the viz board while I look back on 2023 to kind of explain what prompted me to put these on the board.

First things first, what is a vision board?

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The first of many.

I have been quite busy these past two weeks so I was not able to edit the photos and videos from my boyf and I’s trip to LU. I might post more photos of our trip, or of other events that happened this month, in the next couple of days.

I never thought that I would see the day
That I’d decide if I should leave or stay
But in the end what makes it worth the fights
That no matter what happens we try to make it right

I was listening to this playlist I made in February 2019 on Spotify while I was in the shower earlier when Ben&Ben’s song Leaves played. I’ve listened to this song multiple times on car rides with the boyfriend and I never really internalized its lyrics and the meaning of the song until this moment. It took me three years to realize that this song was more than the lines “all will be alright in time” and “you never really love someone until you learn to forgive.” Now I feel like this song was written for me and for what I’m going through right now.

The past days have been really hard because I finally voiced out my frustrations in our relationship and somehow by distancing myself, put myself first. Funny how it even slipped my mind that today was a 13 and was genuinely surprised when the boyfriend greeted me this morning. We’ve been together 5 years and 7 months today. I’ve been emotionally scarred by his betrayal for 13 months today. And I’ve been struggling to heal since then.

Wounds of the past will eventually heal
And all will be alright in time

I really hope though, that in time, every one will heal, and everything will be alright, whether we would still be together by then, or not.

Photo Series

Through the years, on Instagram, I made a few photo series. It was an avenue to post old photos I took which I have not featured online yet (at that time I haven’t discovered Unsplash yet). The first one was in 2019 and it was on flowers and it was titled #SpringSeries.

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It has been difficult these past two weeks. I have felt grief, loss and heartbreak before but I have never felt this much pain. It’s saddening how just one day, one moment, can diminish all the hope that we have been building up these past months. I think that’s what makes it more painful, we believed in this movement so much that we put our everything into it. We built our futures around it without even thinking of the what-ifs. We were tunnel-visioned for this bright future and now, after giving it our everything, we feel empty and spent.

The first few days were a blur of posts and messages as I scrolled through social media, making sure that I was not alone in my grief, mostly anger, and somehow, the collective sadness made it bearable. It felt better knowing that I was not alone, though it was still so hard to get up from bed and just do something, anything that could make me forget reality for a while.

The following days were a neverending cycle through the different stages of grief. I managed to get into the acceptance stage fairly early but just the first notes and words from Nica del Rosario’s Rosas immediately brings me back to anger and depression as I start overthinking again and again and again, and asking myself, “What’s the point?”

25 May 2022

The last post on this blog was dated November 28, 2019. It was about how to read books. A brainfart. I don’t exactly remember now why I abandoned this blog. I think I just got busy so much with pursuing my Master’s degree that I just forgot all about this.

But now we’re back. After 5 long years, we are back. Thinking about it, I left this blog around my 2nd sem in grad school, and I decided to come back now that I am nearing the end (hopefully) of Master’s thesis. There has been so much that has changed since then. I love this. I have reason to look back and see how much I changed and how much the world changed in the past 5 years.

I do not think you should take good care too much of books.

​I do not think you should take good care too much of books. Care just enough not to get pages or entire chapters lost. But rabbit ear the page, use flowers as bookmarks, keep a note in them. Mark your memories in the pages as much as you can. Share who you were while you were reading it among the sentences if you could. 

Hey June.

Wow how are we at the end of June already? It has been half a year already and I still have not finished my INC in Micro??.

Kidding aside, I am working on it!

Just like everything this month is me ‘working on it’. This month was literally a roller coaster of emotions for me. After enduring so much for the last month of the previous semester, I was suddenly taken aback by all the time I had.

February.

This was written and published originally on February 2019. Re-posting in 2022 because it was posted as a page and not a post.

This time last year, I was ecstatic that finally, finally, finally January was over. And to add to that, finally, I got to my last day of work.

This year, January went by so fast. No thanks to the numerous experiments I had to do re-starting on my Special Project for Microbiology. Also, the numerous requirements for my enrolled classes this semester just piled on top of everything. But, by the end of the month, I finally get some free time.

And how do we start that? We go home!