Before I started working as a freelancer, I absolutely, from the depths of my heart, hated the commute. Metro Manila traffic and public transportation are simply too horrible to even describe, let alone go through, so I really found a way for me to be able to work from home.

The great thing about working remotely, at least for me, is that I don’t have to do the commute thing. Which means that I am not annoyed or haggard when I start working, and that I don’t worry about battling my way through commuting hell after work.

The challenging thing…

If someone would map my career, that person would probably shake her head in wonder. My path is not what you’d call straight. Or steady. Or even with a discernible order.

Faking it

After getting a degree in Economics, I started working at a consulting firm at age 20. I worked 75-hour weeks talking to Sales Directors and CEOs and Country Managers of FMCG companies, selling our services, building sales training manuals, observing field trainings, and generally dealing with clients, trainees, trainers, and all other logistical considerations of running a training programme.

Since I was young, and most of the people I…

When I started therapy about 2 years ago, I started experiencing the full extent of my complex PTSD. The way my doctor describes it is that everything is locked tight in a growing ball of knotted string (emotional isolation and regulation as defence mechanism). What we are doing in therapy is slowly unraveling this ball of knotted string, forcing me to take a closer look at it, and finally being able to react.

I’ve experienced many different reactions or manifestations of my PTSD in the past two years. …

4 weeks

It was summer. It was fun. And for the first time after a long while I started feeling right again. Not like before, no. But not too wrong either.

Nights were filled with laughter as we tried each other’s cooking and talked about where we’ve been, where we want to go, what we’ve been through, and our mutual love for ice cold beer and the Oxford comma.

The days remained the same, though underneath the sameness there is such a desire to rush the hours so we could be together.

I didn’t have a single nightmare those 4…

One of the most disconcerting things I ever experienced is to face the Bogeyman every week and try to figure out how to get myself out of its hold.

Oh, I know what caused it to appear. My head knows exactly why the Bogeyman is here and my overthinking, decidedly mutinous brain refuses to believe that talking it out with someone who knows me only from the evaluations of three different shrinks will banish it.

I went anyway. Because my overthinking, contrarian brain loves to argue with itself.

Not that I made it easy. I’m afraid I’ve been downright bitchy…

I used to be the youngest person where I worked.

Now, at thirty, I am one of the eldest. It’s mind-boggling, really, realizing that.

That realization was brought solidly home when we were out for lunch one sunny day and I excitedly mentioned that All Saints will be releasing a new album.

All I got were blank stares. It’s such a sad thing.

Then we started talking about the huge difference a handful of years make in terms of work ethic, life perspective, and interests. And that got me thinking. Millennials have been receiving a lot of flak from the…

Life is eternal movement.

I found this line in Radhika Jha’s Smell when I used it as my book report for an Asian Literature class back in college. At 18, I thought it very profound. At 29, I’m living it.

Let me backtrack a bit.

See, I keep a journal. I don’t write on it regularly (months would sometimes pass between entries) but I make a point to write something on two occasions: January 1st and May 16th. My January 1, 2015 entry included this:

I know it’s wrong of me to think this way but I feel like everything…

Today, I turned 28. I refuse to fall under the stereotype of women who deny their real age (though opinion may change when I do get older — ask me in 10 years). Apart from the odd existential crisis moments, I actually like getting old. It makes me feel that I’m doing life correctly because I haven’t died an embarrassing death.

When I was 18, I was an opinionated college student who thought she had her life figured out. …