About Me

A rapid-fire account of my entire life in 3 minutes.

Image Credit: Photo Taken by Author

Foreword

I’ve been blogging regularly for the past two months. But I haven’t done a real about me section.

Here are two reasons why:

• I don’t like to talk about myself. For someone who’s been exposing himself on social media, I’m very introverted in real life.
• I’m 33 years old. I don’t know how to distill three decades of breathing oxygen into a short post that won’t bore people to tears.

But finally, here it is.

My Brief Bio

• I was born in the Philippines.
• I lived briefly as a child in Los Angeles.
• I went back to the Philippines as a child and grew up there.
• Discovered that I loved writing somewhere between eight or so years old.
• My first books were a “Book of Trivia” and an unfinished novel about the Loch Ness Monster.
• I reached puberty.
• Emo became a thing.
• Emo became my thing.
• I continued to write, this time poignant lyrics on napkins, math notebooks, and everything that a pen can make a mark on.
• At 17, I became a guitarist for an amateur rock band.
• I migrated permanently to the United States in 2006 as a 17-year-old. My band broke up. Another band member migrated to the United States.
• Nearly went fucking crazy trying to fit into American society as a confused teenager and fell into depression. I started smoking and drinking.
• I wrote a novel and sent the draft to my then-girlfriend. That story never saw the light of day again.
• I finished my AA degree in 2008.
• My depression worsened.
• I finished my BA degree at 21 years old and thought my life was going to be peaches from then on. I was wrong.
• My depression worsened and I tried to kill myself.
• I survived.
• I couldn’t find a job in 2010.
• I worked dead-end jobs.
• I tried and failed to build a business. More on that in the article below:

I Failed in Business Ten Years Ago And It’s Totally My Fault

• I went back to school and became a nursing aide. I learned the hard way what a clostridium difficile infection is.
• I went back to school again and became a licensed vocational nurse.
• I had a child and got married.
• I discovered Medium but didn’t pay much attention to it.
• I worked for about five years and reached a point where I didn’t have to ration my money between gas and food. But somehow my health suffered and I got into a lot of debt.
• I put on 60+ pounds of weight.
• I self-published a book, thought I was going back to writing permanently, and then didn’t follow through.
• I went back to school to become a registered nurse.
• I met a man my age during a clinical rotation. He had diabetes and just got his left leg amputated. I was petrified.
• I vowed to lose weight.
• I lost 60+ pounds of weight in about eight months, about 16 months ahead of my goal.
• I became a registered nurse.
• I had my second child.
• I self-published ANOTHER book, thought I was going back to writing permanently, and then didn’t follow through.
• I got serious with budgeting and wealth-building and was able to pay off nearly $100K in debt in under two years.
• I worked three more years and finally realized that my dream life doesn’t involve me wearing scrubs. I re-discovered my love for writing and being creative.
• Here I am, blogging on Medium. I’d be lying if I said I’m not trying to make money or start a business. Because I am. But I’m not doing it to get rich. The only reason why I threw my hat into content creation is this:

If I’m going to make a living, it better be through something that feeds my soul. Feeding my soul involves sharing ideas, inspiring others, and making people realize that there is no such thing as a shit hole in life too deep to climb out of.

Epilogue

I’m still a work-in-progress.

I will forever be.