Hello and welcome to 2025!

I know I should probably begin this new year with a post about intentions and goals — and I probably will — but for now, let me just warm up to writing again.

Reader, I seem to have lost any and all ability to function. 😂 The holidays have been so much fun and I fear I might have a hangover from both the frenetic holiday buzz and the lazy, hazy days in between.

One wishes to spend her days eating homemade embutido, meeting with family and friends, and having birthday dinners by the sea.

Alas, the year awaits and we must go

'Tis time to stretch and prepare ourselves for the year ahead!

(Why am I writing like I'm from Bridgerton?)

LOL, drama aside, I am excited to build for 2025.

2024 was a rather slow year. I underestimated the time and effort it took to build new habits and routines in a new home, with a new role, in a new neighborhood. I thought that things would proceed swimmingly after our move— but I got overwhelmed and fell into complacency instead. 

Thankfully, I took a huge pivot in the last quarter of 2024 — and I am so glad I did. It took a hot minute for me to take action, but it gave me the momentum to kick off 2025 with more energy, excitement, and alignment.

Things I'm excited for

I don't want to jinx anything, but here are some things I'm excited for in 2025

Doubling down on content marketing with Copylang

My biz website, Copylang, got a beautiful makeover! Everything is fresh: design, copy, and most importantly, the offers. Look at her go:

I'm super excited about these new service offerings and packages. Like many things in life and business, coming up with attractive offers took a lot of time, effort, and dozens of conversations with my target market. I had to learn how to read the proverbial room and create services that my potential clients would find useful while giving me an edge against factors like competitors and AI. I'm really excited to test them, so please wish me luck!

Growing my community for Filipino writers

In 2023, I launched a support group for Filipino content marketers and writers aptly named Content Marketers and Copywriters Community PH. My goal was to elevate the Pinoy writing industry by providing advice, opportunities, and resources to fellow Filipinos.

I've unfortunately fallen off the grid for most of 2024, but I'm excited to kick things back in gear this year. I've enlisted the help of my sisters to freshen up the branding and post cadence.

I've so many plans for this group and I hope some of them will come to fruition this year!

Check out the group here.

Intentional partnerships and collaborations

Q4 allowed me to work with people who are aligned with my work style and values. After being stuck in a creative slump for the longest time, these intentional partnerships felt like a breath of fresh air. I can't wait to do more of this in 2025!

These partnerships have also prompted me to improve my own processes, from discovery calls to onboarding. I love a good challenge — and I'm excited to see where these habits can take me.

Getting serious about social

Up until this point, I feel like nagduwa ra ko sa social. If shit posting on LinkedIn has gotten me a lot of visibility and opportunities, I'd like to see what happens when I actually put in the work.

Personal endeavors

Health and fitness are a main priority this year. After spending a huge chunk of 2024 stewing in health anxiety, I've decided to be more intentional and proactive with my health. Last year, I invested in an executive check-up package and started my daily 2km walks around our neighborhood. This year, I started with a minimalist fitness program that could hopefully help me build sustainable habits. I'd really like to be leaner and stronger as I age, so please wish me luck!

And so it begins

I'm a bit reluctant to emerge from the holiday fog. The past two weeks have been slow and healing. But we have many things to look forward to as well. The only thing that I wish for myself as we begin 2025 is to sustain the momentum I've so painstakingly built. I'll try my best to keep it up this time.

How about you? What are you most excited about for 2025? Lol I don't even know if my comments section is working but I am curious anyhow.

Farewell for now, internet friends and strangers.

The year awaits and I must go!

I never thought of myself as an entrepreneur.

In my mind, The Entrepreneur is first and foremost, a good gambler. They're good at all kinds of maths and can calculate both odds and profit margins in a little abacus inside their heads. They are outgoing, energetic, and extroverted.

Entrepreneurs are loud, affable go-getters who have no trouble making eye contact with strangers and turning them into bosom buddies in the span of a conversation.

I didn't think of myself as an entrepreneur.

So how the heck did we get here? 😂

I finally registered my freelance practice this year, officially making me a "business owner".

I wish there was an inspiring way to explain this life choice. I wish I could say I'm really passionate about building businesses, or that I want to make lives better through my various capitalist ventures.

I wish I could identify with the version of the entrepreneur that I've built up in my mind.

But here's the truth:

I only ever wanted freedom.

After spending a huge chunk of my adult life in very regimented industries (hello nursing, hello BPO), I just desperately wanted to pursue my interests, own my time, do engaging work, and be paid for my trouble.

And in my quest to be free — financially, creatively, and schedule-wise — I ended up here, deep in the trenches of unexpected, reluctant entrepreneurship. I didn't intend for it to happen. It's just that all roads led here.

How's it going so far?

Sa true?

I'm thankful for it. Self-employment affords me many luxuries I didn't know I could take. For example, I can go on brunch with my parents when they're not too busy. I can run errands on a weekday. I can work from home, have time to exercise, and cook meals. And on top of that, I can earn a decent living without working myself to the bone — or leaving the country.

Self-employment has also been a gateway to self-improvement.

I don't want to sound like a self-important guru, but being self-employed also comes with many lessons I don't think I could learn in a traditional office setting. For one, these lessons can be applied in many aspects of my life. Resilience is a good example. Through self-employment, I realized that I am capable of doing difficult things — and that I can do them well.

Other things that I've been learning:

• Building processes for myself
• How to be a better service provider
• How to mentor others
• How to give and receive feedback
• Financial literacy and preparing for retirement
• Marketing and selling
• Creating and shipping offers
• Consistency
• Human psychology
• Communication
• Building relationships
• Balancing all this

Finding community

What I've been doing so far

Planning for the future

So mao to siya

Wala ra gyud damha nga maabot tag ingun-ani nga kahimtang, but I am thankful either way. I am thankful that we have this choice. I'm thankful for making it.

I don't think I'll ever be "the entrepreneur" I've previously envisioned, but if there's one thing I've learned, this whole entrepreneurship is a fluid thing. There's no one way to approach it or to succeed in it. I can mold it into whatever fits my goals, values, and personality.

I know it's a long journey ahead. It will be full of starts and stops. But I'm excited.

Maybe I'm not so reluctant about entrepreneurship after all.

1. You get used to doing the difficult things

2. It’s called a comfort zone for a reason

3. This is all the time we’re going to have

4. You can’t love what you don’t know.

5. The Philippines is not its government

6. You blink and you’ve suddenly become the adult.

7. Our parents are aging and there is nothing we can do about it

8. Action leads to clarity, always and forever.

9. Question everything.

10. Be open to unlearning.

11. Sustainable habits come from deconstructing old ones.

12. Be resilient against disenchantment.

13. Recognize patterns. The quality of your life = the quality of your decisions.

14. I love the idea of traveling, but don't actually like traveling LOL

15. Self-employment is self-improvement.

16. Fight nostalgia.

17. The worst has already happened and I am still here. So let’s get the fuck going.

18. Being kinder to myself.

19. Inertia is so hard to beat. Keep moving.

20. I don't mind spending on two things: health and experiences with my family.

21. No one’s coming. 

22. I have unfair advantages that I can use to make my way through life

23. ROI rush. I want to do more of it.

24. One needs spiritual practice, but it doesn't necessarily have to be religion.

25. You’ll miss older versions of you sometimes - but the only way is forward.

26. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that I get paid to do what I love and excel at.

27. We keep seeking purpose.

28. Rest and relaxation aren’t as rewarding if you don’t do anything prior. 

29. I crave community. I am not a full introvert after all.

30. Different kinds of rest, different kinds of nourishment. The key is knowing what you need.

31. A good cry is always welcome.

32. Immigration took my community away from me.

33. Focus is precious. Social media sucks balls.

34. Ideas are not precious.

I gotta be honest, I've been struggling with a lot of frustrated feelings lately.

Most of it comes from not being able to pursue some — well, most — of my creative endeavors.

Earlier this year I promised to do a lot of big, exciting things:

I was going to work on new projects.

We were going on our first international trip.

I was going to focus on building my personal brand and lean into creative entrepreneurship.

I had plans to revive my YouTube channel and maybe create a whole creative ecosystem around it — complete with a newsletter, a brand-new spanking website, and maybe even some info products on the side.

I was supposed to go all in.

But then I blinked and realized that it was already September.

Dear reader, imagine my frustration when I realized that the year is almost over and I haven't finished half of what I'd set out to do!

Ugh.

I've since tried to sit with my rage and think long and hard about why I feel this anger so acutely. I can break it down into a couple of things:

1. I don't like feeling like I've wasted my time

I feel like the year just whooshed by and I have no creative achievements to show for it.

As a recovering hustle girlie, this is an immense struggle for me, especially when I compare this year to last year's milestones.

When I don't hit my goals, I feel like I haven't achieved anything worthwhile, and then I feel like punching a hole in the wall like Adam Driver from Marriage Story.  😂

The funny thing is that I am cognizant that these feelings are not objectively true. I know that I have done many worthwhile things this year — and that simply existing is worthwhile. But dang, the knowledge doesn't make the frustration any less acute.

2. It's a pattern, I fear

I have a pattern of complacency. I like staying in my comfort zone — until I realize I've built gilded cages around myself.

There's a part of me — probably the one still recovering from deep financial trauma LOL — that wants to stay in these safe spaces, even when they don't serve me anymore.

Good old Seth Godin calls this our lizard brain. In his book Linchpin, he says:

The lizard brain only wants to eat and be safe.

The lizard brain will fight (to the death) if it has to, but would rather run away. It likes a vendetta and has no trouble getting angry.

The lizard brain is not merely a concept. It's real, and it's living on the top of your spine, fighting for your survival. But, of course, survival and success are not the same thing.

The lizard brain is the reason you're afraid, the reason you don't do all the art you can, the reason you don't ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance.

I thought I'd finally controlled the lizard brain when I started freelancing. During that time, I learned how to be comfortable with risk, get over limiting beliefs, and steer clear from making fear-based decisions.

I thought that I'd already learned my lessons, but it turns out I haven't. Or maybe I'm still learning.

Either way, the frustration of realizing I'm making the same mistakes feels bigger than the mistake itself.

3. I have everything I need but I'm not making the most out of them

I recognize my privileges. We're a dual-income household with no kids. I get to work remotely. All things considered, I have all the tools I need to pursue my creative endeavors.

And so it's doubly frustrating when I don't act on my plans.

It seems like there's always something holding me back: distractions, chores, work, my ever-dwindling attention span. I feel like I'm getting in my own way.

Being your own enemy is the worst.

4. I'm not getting the right stimuli

When I expressed these frustrations on Instagram last week, our good friend Le-an recommended that I look into my human design chart:

Now what?

Don't look back in anger

It’s too easy to compare yourself to others:

Why are they more successful?

Why is their career path moving so much faster than mine?

Why do they have all the cool connections?

Wake up, girlie

You're comparing yourself to people who come from a privilege you've never known — and never will.

You're comparing yourself to people who play golf with CEOs, have Ivy League educations, and have dead grandparents with fat trust funds. The system has always been rigged in their favor.

You, on the other hand —

— Oh my god, you’re a person of color, someone from a "third-world country."

The odds are stacked against you way before you were born.

You don't have the connections. 

And you are living in a society still reeling from colonization, besides.

You are not the same.

And yet

And yet you persevere, so cut yourself some slack.

Your determination has put you here. Without connections. Without money. Without the privilege. So stop comparing.

You've had to make your own path with nothing but skill, determination, and maybe a bit of delusion.

But you're here now, against all odds.

You've cleared the way.

Now get to work.

The older I get, the more I feel the need to romanticize my life.

In the wake of a pandemic that shattered my worldview, threatened my safety, and forever altered society, I realized one thing: I well and truly did not — could not — give a fuck anymore.

Protect your energy

After witnessing how it could be easily snatched away, I became fiercely protective of my time and energy. The pandemic changed how I viewed success. Deep in my heart, I realized that having one entity control my limited time on God's green earth was wrong. I learned that there were other ways to exist apart from the 9-5.

I did not want to clock in or out of work anymore. I did not want anybody to "approve" my free time. I did not want to spend my life in vignettes of 2-week vacations and the rest of it in front of Zoom meetings that didn't seem to end. I didn't want to climb the corporate ladder — because there was no fucking ladder at all.

This was my life. And at last, I'm going to spend it how I like, how I want.

A month after getting COVID, I quit my job and dove into freelancing. I wish I'd done it sooner.

A hair story

My favorite days

Buy a hotel dinner

It’s so easy to forget that Cebu is an ancient city. 500 years old and that’s only what we know from the colonizers.

When Cebu is empty, like today, it shows its age. You see how the old trees grow, roots breaking through asphalt, canopies covering entire streets. When downtown is empty in the wee hours of the morning, you see not the bustling heart of a global city but a relic from older, slower times: Art Deco buildings, grime that doesn’t come off, Chinese signs on old stores, alleys that go nowhere and everywhere.

Cebu is an old girl. On these islands, people walked around covered in nothing but tattoos. The bravest, most cunning were covered from sole to eyebrow and they earned each one. People dyed their teeth black and inlaid them with gold because they believed only wild animals had white teeth. Imagine what they’d think if they saw a toothpaste commercial.

In these old islands, people didn’t worship the Sto Nino as the Child Jesus but as a little water deity — the diwata of the Spanish — a tao-tao they put in a little raft to pray for rain during droughts.

We forget that Cebu is old — that she’d been here for hundreds of years — and that perhaps she’d stand for a hundred more, long after we are gone.

Island people have short memories and fickle hearts and maybe even feet that can’t wait to sail away. But I think it’s important to remember that we’re not the first ones on this ancient island…and that maybe saving some of Cebu’s old-world magic is worth the trouble after all.