some apartment love

What with final exams several weeks ago, the holidays, and now the frantic job hunt, I've really been neglecting tending to my tiny apartment. My friend Elle was visiting today, so I  figured it was a good opportunity to get back to keeping it bright and stylish. If there's one thing that helps to put me at peace during times of stress -- yes, even the stress that accompanies the constant refreshing and emailing regarding job searches -- it's a lovely, organized workspace. 

Picked up some cute wooden boxes from the eternally convenient (and cute! and cheap!) selection at Daiso for my desk and my succulents. Daiso is one of those stores where, upon entering, I will have a strict list of three or so household items I need -- but more likely than not I will end up leaving with a few additional items. No room for buyer's remose, though. There's no better place to go to add some charm to the home without breaking the bank.

I also stopped by the plant nursery to pick up some purple flowers for the bee house. 

   

happy new year!

Happy New Year! Due to my lack of holiday decoriations (and, let's be real, holiday spirit in general this time around), the New Year festivity will somehow have to be visually expressed through the above photos: an adorable box of cookies from my landlord, and a train selfie from a while ago. Bear with me!

Here's hoping that 2016 brings you wellness, success, and the unlikelihood of bugs creeping into your home this winter. I'm certainly hoping for the first two, because unfortunately that last wish has already failed me, as there happened to be a spider in my bathroom.

I've been having a very quiet New Year, and not entirely without its stress: spent both the eve and holiday alone in my tiny apartment, cleaning, job hunting around the clock, doing some errands here or there. Still, it wasn't without its redeeming qualities. I now have an excuse to buy a new, cute desk calendar (I've been browsing Etsy). When I wasn't sending out one resume after the other, I was replaying my favorite video game of all time, and enjoying the comforts of Elementary season one episodes with my boyfriend. Oh! And trying to brush up on some beginner's guides to inviting and hosting bees in the garden, because...

...My friend Alex got me a lovely house for bees as a Christmas gift! Maybe 2016 will finally be the year where I go from finding bees cute to finding them cute enough to want to try raising them in an urban backyard:

I checked this morning: no bees yet, but then again, it's probably too soon to expect any. I'm planning to set a nice, small pot of purple flowers nearby sometime soon. (Bees loving the color purple is probably one of the cutest things about them, ever. That, and festooning.)

Anyway, New Year's stuff aside, I've got a couple of ideas that I think I could get a really good use out of, in regards to this specific platform. The usual lifestyle stuff, of course, since it is a personal blog, but there's something about this medium that leave Tumblr read-more text posts in the dust. Bee updates? Yes. Insights on the creative projects I'm really eager to kickstart this year? Definitely. All those personal essays and reflections (and even poetry!) on race and relationships that I've been dying to put down somewhere, anywhere, for the sake of my well-being, and in hopes that it might help someone reading it? Hell yeah!

2016 might be off to a stressful, strained start, but I've got a good feeling about it. If 2015 was the year of firsts and first steps, 2016 will hopefully be the year of plot progression and security.

knock knock?

Hi guys, long time no see. Not sure if anyone's still around to read this update, especially since it's been over a year, but I figured I'd check back in to do some cleanup, and to write something up real quick!

First of all: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Doesn't feel like them in the least, on my end. Maybe next year will be better. Unfortunately this time around, the holidays brought with them far too much stress and not enough of that holiday joy that everyone talks about. Is that even a real thing? Seriously, is that even a real thing?

2015 certainly brought with it several events that, had I still been using this regularly, would've seen a string of paragraphs dedicated to them. I moved into my first apartment (in San Francisco!) in August 2015, for example. Got my first tattoo (of a bee, to no one's surprise), had a Harley Quinn Halloween, tried out fitness kickboxing. Battled many bugs in my home, tried to keep several houseplants alive (mostly succeeded), consulted an embarrassing amount of wikiHows concerning basic domestic duties as I adjusted to life alone, struggled to maintain at least a sliver of a social life, got out that self-critical bubble and finally put up an online portfolio of my artwork, yadda yadda yadda. Oh, and I applied for graduation. That doesn't feel quite real yet, since I'm fresh out of finals stress.

When's the last time we heard a story about a 22-year old who had it all together, anyway?

Still, I suppose if I want to be optimistic about the past several months -- and I do, I can definitely muster a genuine desire to -- the good and the bad are, in that strange way of theirs, oddly balanced. Creative energy? Wondefful, in fact it's all over the place: too many ideas and projects, which is always a delight, although I'm scrambling to get them all down somewhere. Money? Not great. Did the occasional commission or gig this year, but now that class is over, I'm currently pushing out as many job applications as I can. (Merry Christmas to me!) Style? Maybe I'll write more about later, perhaps, but yeah, I'm still lusting after that Allsaints jacket I've mentioned in passing a few times here. Love? Lovely, for once, and I'm very much all daydreamy and impatient in regards to the future. General wellness, mental health, recovery, stress management? Alright, could be better, getting by, and so-so, respectively. Life's funny. Whether it's ha-ha funny or everything-you've-been-dreading-coming-true funny, though, is a painful rite of passage I figure most twenty-somethings will undergo, and slowly. 

All that being said: I'm thinking about what I can possibly do with this space. I've made it too cute and had too much fun using it in the past to toss it away entirely. (I'll promise I'll never forget you, Livejournal.) I'm still writing the occasional personal post on Tumblr; however, it never quite takes the same tone as these entries do -- which I'm completely fine with. In fact, I appreciate that I can assess my day-to-day life in a variety of voices. Someone's got to, and it's the only life I'm gonna have. And let me tell you, my sidebar bio here applies just as much today as it did the day I wrote it. (Not really: my desire to discuss and talk about the things I want to say increase with time. Also, I'm a Gemini, but that may or may not be related to that tendency.)

This blog took on a lifestyle/fashion/music focus during my days at Collegefashion, and those are all things I don't think I'll ever stop rambling about. There are so many subjects I want to talk about that I can use this space for, after all -- everything from turtleneck sweaters to skincare, race and feminism and what life has been like growing up Filipina in America (something I've been wanting to discuss at length for years), the horror project I'm hoping to kickstart next year, the Filipina superhero I've needed growing up and therefore have started writing, the unbearable whiteness of media, recovery and self-care, tattoos and tattoos and more tattoos...

Anyway, quick update (yeah right) aside, I hope it won't be too long until I check in here next. I'm figuring things out, dusting off much-neglected online platforms, dipping my feet back into this corner of the digital pool. Keeping my eyes open, speaking up. 

It's like I said -- life's funny. If I say everything I want to say, and help people out along the way, someone like me won't have to be the punchline anymore.