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This may sound trite, but I do look forward to hearing from you!
Tag: blogging
To write
When I was little, I sat next to my Tita Migen’s portable Olivetti typewriter and lovingly trailed my fingertips on the keys. I wasn’t allowed to use it. I was told that it wasn’t a toy. My aunt was a writer and she wrote short stories and articles for various women’s magazines in the Philippines. One of her poems (it could be more than just the one, I can’t remember properly) was published in an anthology of poems written by the great and the good of Philippine literature.
At 9, I wrote an updated version of The Little Match Girl for our school Christmas party. I remember that I called the main character Marina. I don’t even know why I called her that. But my “writing” the script for the “play” necessitated making several copies of the script. So my aunt relented and allowed me to use her typewriter. I loved it. I loved the clickety-clack sound the typewriter made as I copy-typed my handwritten script (I was a two-finger typer, of course!). I loved the smell of paper and onion skin (this was of course the mid-80s) and the way you had to be careful because you needed to make sure the carbon paper wouldn’t smudge the onion skin and your fingers. I loved it. I loved putting my words down in typeset. It was the most exhilarating thing I’d ever done (not too hard to top as I was, after all, only in third grade).
Whenever I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said I wanted to be a doctor. But writing always niggled at me. I always asked myself “what if I could write for a living instead?”
One summer, I think I was thirteen or fourteen, having read all the summer reading books (Nancy Drew, Sweet Dreams teen romances, the classics, of course) I had access to (I daren’t attempt to read any of my mum’s Mills & Boon books because I was told those were for older readers), I took one of my composition notebooks and started writing a story. It kept me out of trouble that summer! After reading what I wrote, I covered the notebook in wrapping paper and plastic cover and promptly forgot about the story. Years later, my sister told me she read my “novel” and she said it was good. My sister is the writer in our family, so I took that as a compliment! I also fancied myself a poet (yes, I didn’t know whether I wanted to write poetry, prose or opinions!) and wrote stream-of-consciousness poems in a brown wire-bound Hello Kitty notebook which I bought from a bookstore called Alemar’s (don’t ask me why I remember those details, I just do!). I’d love to read those poems again. I’m sure they’ll be cringe-worthy but it’ll probably be a good laugh!
I am thankful that blogging has become a platform available to everyman. Because it has helped me indulge in my creative efforts. Not that I have actually written another story, short or otherwise, since my last foray into novel-writing. I’m just thankful I can write and send my thoughts out there. I may not earn my living from my thoughts but there is a certain satisfaction in being able to write down what you’re thinking and sending it out into the cosmos.
I would love to earn my living just talking about what I think about things. I would love to be able to express my opinions and make a living out of that. Ha! Does anyone want someone with verbal diarrhea? I know we all have to be very PC these days, and admittedly, I can be extremely un-PC, but I would love to just be able to talk about anything and everything under the sun! Or write about it! And, of course, get paid for it.
I’m putting it out there. I’m sending it out in the universe. Because I want to do something other than sit at a desk and work as an executive assistant.
Looking around
I used to have a lot of time reading other blogs. I miss it. But as with everything, growing up has this really strange ways of changing one’s priorities. I was quite the voracious blog reader and I used to visit blogs and put my two cents in (because I always thought one’s opinion was always welcome…I mean hello, why post a blog publicly and allow comments, right?).
Times have changed. Sometimes I am saddened by the fact that I no longer seem to have the time to do the things I used to love doing. But I did promise myself that I would make changes to my current behaviour patterns because I noticed that I wasn’t, really, very happy anymore. I didn’t feel very creative anymore. I became caught up in what I thought were more adult things to do (make dinner, clear up, laundry, ironing, vegetate on the sofa staring somnambulistically at the telly or whinge about how tired I was). I think it affected my appetite for life…either in real life or online. I was quite social. I realise that now, I am making myself sound so old!
Anywho, the next Blogging 101 assignment was to visit the neighbours. To read what people were writing, to get inspiration. I laughed because the assignment gave me permission to be nosy! And well, to look at other blogs so that my blog would know what it wanted to be when it grew up!
One of the blogs I came across (thank you Stylist!) was Sara Tasker’s blog Me & Orla. I can’t remember how I came across the Stylist article. She’s one of those amazingly creative people who have managed to quit the day job and do what she loves because of Instagram.
The blog layout is amazing in its simplicity. It’s crisp and clean. Because she takes amazing photos (hence her success on Instagram), the photos take priority. I love “the voice” of her blog. When you read the words, it’s like you’re included in this weirdly personal conversation. I like it though. I’ve also downloaded her pdf on her virtual Instagram retreat. I love how some of the new internet creatives are so generous with their experiences. Some people won’t share because they want to keep the niche they discovered on the great WWW their little secret monopoly.
If you have time, go and visit her website!
I might do this on a regular basis. Look at blogs and write about them. It’s good for content plus, it’s the perfect excuse to be nosy! Not that I really need an excuse.
Who am I and why am I here?
I’m late to the Blogging 101 Party but I thought I’d still work on the assignments. I need to redirect my blogging efforts and relight the blogging fire so to speak. So in this case, this start is better late than never!
Those two questions are probably the scariest questions a blogger can face…well, to me it’s very scary. Because sometimes, I forget to focus on the who and the why.
I remember starting a blog on another blog host site. It was mostly a journal for me. I place where I wrote about my rants, where I made fun of people who made grammatical mistakes, where I talked about me. I’m not exactly sure that’s where I found my voice…if I’ve ever found it at all. But I’m a lot more serious about this blog. Because I think I’m much more selective about what I write and share online. I find that as I grow older, I’m more sensitive to how what I put out in the universe affects other people – ripples in the water, and all that jazz.
So, why don’t I just write my thought down in a journal. I don’t know is the answer to that question. Sometimes it’s just knowing that you can send things out into cosmos and somewhere someone goes, “Oh I get that completely!” I think it’s a deep-seated human need to fit in, to belong or just feel like we’re not so different – am not entirely sure that that’s a good reflection on my individuality because it speaks volumes about my need to conform to the mores of society!
I write because I want to talk. I think I write because I want an audience. But at the same time, I sort of want the imagined anonymity. I mean I can hardly be anonymous if I use my photo as my Gravatar image, now can I? But it’s the ease of putting stuff out there. Of seeing if anyone finds what I have to say interesting.
I also want to talk about my food journey. I love to cook and bake and I want to share what I’m learning. Food for me isn’t just about the physical nourishment. It also holds a lot of happy memories of family and friends gathered around a table. Food is an intrinsic part of my growing up, so being so far away from my family, a way for me to reconnect and cheer myself up.
I also love to talk about Filipino food, which I think is a long-ignored Southeast Asian cuisine. I thought if I wrote about Filipino food then people would see a new facet about the Philippines. I want to get people talking about Filipino food. I mean I know that Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern have both visited the Philippines and they rave about Filipino food. So we have been featured on TV. There are a lot of tutorial videos about how to cook Filipino food floating about on the internet but I want to add my voice to that. I want people to know how good Filipino food really is. We need to be as known as our other Southeast Asian neighbour’s cuisines: Thai, Malaysian, Indonesian, Vietnamese.
I have no idea how the blog is going to help me turn my food passion into something that I do everyday. If that is even possible (yes, I know it’s been done, but in this saturated market, can I carve out a little niche for me?). But I’d like to find out what is out there, if there are opportunities.
I think the first goal is to connect to other people. See blogs that I have a lot in common with, actually read them, learn from them. Refine my writing style. Find my voice. Fall in love with blogging again (I used to blog everyday…sometimes even more than a blog post a day!). Find out if this is something I want to take further of this will evolve into something else. I want to hear from other people. I want people to come to the blog and say things, react to what I have to say. If it’s negative, please be gentle, but thoughts are welcome!
I’m excited again. That’s a brilliant start.
Goodbye January!
Sooooooooo…it’s the end of the month…and, if you live in the UK, the deadline for filing your self assessment tax returns online (I can’t help it! I work for accountants, we had tax return submissions coming out of our ears!) is TODAY! I certainly hope you’ve already filed your tax return. Anything filed after today will incur a penalty. Just saying. And that ends my public service announcement!
I’ve been busy blogging this month. I’m (desperately) trying to make good on my New Year’s resolution to write more. My next task on the blogging to-do list is to ask for feedback. The plan is to ask my blogger and writer friends to look at the blog and ask for their feedback on the new theme and the layout. I am absolutely TERRIFIED though.
I signed up for Blogging 101 and haven’t worked on ZERO writing assignments! How bad is that?!? I have high hopes for the next few days because I intend to work on the assignments! I am done prevaricating and procrastinating. Sort of. Ha!
The List amendment
So I’m looking at my list and I am struck by the niggling feeling that I left something out. I know I said that it was a working list and that things would be added. But as I kept rereading my list I kept asking myself, “what did I forget to write down?” And I took the biggest intake of breath I’ve ever taken. How could something so important, so integral in my life be left out? How could I forget?
My faith and my relationship with my God is a fundamental part of my life whether I talk about it or not. I would, however, love to talk about my journey in faith much more than I do. I’ve always been afraid of sounding too preachy or “religious”. But why should I be afraid? Why should I not talk about a part of me that strengthens me, that more often than not, carries me through my life journey?
My faith and my relationship with God gets me through everything – all the highs and lows of my life are underlined by how I see God working in my life. Why shouldn’t I talk about this wonderful relationship that is a constant in my life?
So the first amendment to my list is this: To write about my faith more.
First bake!
I did say that my goal was to bake more so that I could blog more.
The first bake of the year is my take on the traditional stollen. A stollen is described as a yeasted cake containing dried fruit and marzipan. I love stollen! While it is a joy to bake (the smell of dried fruit and mixed peel soaked in brandy is amazing!), sometimes, one needs instant gratification and a store-bought one provides the instant pleasure. I was gutted however, when I found out that Lidl had run out completely of stollen AND stollen bites. I don’t know about anyone else in the UK, but I think Lidl sources great stollen and panettone! I’m not sure where they source their stollen from, but whoever makes that stollen, they have a cracking recipe. The lack of store-bought stollen necessitated the baking (which wasn’t such a difficulty because baking stollen is a pleasure!).
I used Edd Kimber’s stollen recipe from his second book Say It With Cake (I have written about Edd Kimber’s recipes before. I love his blueberry crumble pie and his red velvet cake recipe is to die for!). Edd Kimber’s stollen recipe is probably my favourite recipe from all the stollen recipes so far. I’ve been relatively successful with it (lately!). But this year, instead of rolling the marzipan into a log to fill the center of the loaf, I’ve rolled the dough into a log with the marzipan forming a swirl pattern when the loaf was sliced. I thought it would be good to spread the marzipan all over the bread to distribute it better so that you didn’t get a huge lump in the middle of the bread. And I think it works!
I think this means I’m going to bake stollen again. It doesn’t have to be Christmas for me to bake stollen, does it?
A look back on 2014
For the last few weeks, I’ve been saying that I can’t wait for 2014 to end because it has been the worst year. I take that all back.
While it has been a difficult year, after looking back, it has been a year filled with amazing things: I went home to Manila twice; with my Abba’s amazing recovery, I have seen what I believe is a miracle; I am so very thankful for the support of family and friends (especially the friends I have made here), because your faith, optimism and positivity (and the occasional “it’s okay to go and cry”) has buoyed us and carried us through the difficult months; and I even managed to get myself on TV (for a total of 2 nanoseconds!)!
I am thankful for all the lessons I learned in 2014. Because while it has been challenging, I learned a lot about myself, my faith has grown, my Abba is much, much better, my family is stronger together and we know that we truly love each other and I have learned that I am made of sterner stuff after all. I know that I am truly, truly blessed.
I can’t wait to find out what 2015 will bring! 🙂
Happy New Year everyone! May you all be so very, very blessed! 🙂
P.S. Here’s a quick-fire list of my blogging goals for 2014: blog more, bake more so I can blog more, cook more so I can blog more, take more photos and post them on the blog…yes, the goal is to blog more!!!
Challenging myself
I’ve been telling myself that I need to blog more often, more regularly. That I need to add more content to my blog.
I have this amazing knack of biting off more than I can chew on a regular basis because I have this (almost masochistic) need to push myself and stretch my boundaries. There are days when I am exhilarated by the challenges I put myself through (I was probably a circus animal of some sort in a previous life because I seem to enjoy jumping through hoops of various heights and sizes); but there are days when I just get completely overwhelmed and I wonder why I started the whole exercise! I usually bang my head of a figurative wall and ask myself what I was thinking!
But blogging is important to me, and I really miss blogging regularly (sometimes mindlessly, and let me tell you, my verbal diarrhea is sometimes not the most pleasant!). I’ve been moaning that I haven’t been blogging much. So, in the interest of developing my writing (an erstwhile goal), I am challenging myself to do BOTH Blogging 101 and Photo 101. I wanted to join NaBloPoMo but I was afraid I’d miss the prompts! I have, yet again, challenged myself to do the impossible. A blog entry AND a photo post every day for a month! Ha! But, come to think of it, I already do Fat Mum Slim‘s photo a day challenge and manage to post a photo a day on Instagram most days. This is just doing that, on a far bigger scale. I spend so much time online anyway that I think it’s just spending a bit more time on my WordPress tab than being nosy on Facebook and reading posts on Twitter (also a “being nosy” exercise).
So here goes everything!
Thinking…
…can be very dangerous!
I am thinking of a redesign of the blog. But I am slightly torn because I love how it looks at the moment. I may have to change the theme but keep the colours.
But everything right now is just a thought and everything is still on a drawing board.
Watch this space!
Yellywelly 