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The Sunday Currently, v5

Published by Justine

Can’t believe it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these things! A year, to be EXACT. What a coincidence.. and I didn’t even plan for it to be that way. I was just reading my previous one and I realized, wow a lot of things came true. How my friends visited me, how I changed my iPhone, watched That Awkward Moment shortly after that entry, had a good trip to Jakarta last December, actually working on my money matters and how some things never change because I STILL am wearing my old Victoria’s Secret tee and polka dot shorts which was THE EXACT same thing I was probably wearing last year. Entry in a bit! I’m on time too because it’s exactly an hour before Monday comes through.

Reading my previous Sunday Currently! You’ll see what I mean. I’m also reading This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz. It’s a fairly short book, but I’m taking a long time to wrap it up because I’ve been very busy the past week.

Writing this entry and rediscovering my old listography, and I feel like it’s so nice to have some stuff to look back to so I’ve decided to document some things this year and rediscovering old favorites.

Listening to Katy B’s A Broken Record. This song will always be one of my favorite songs of all time.

Thinking about a certain person or activity that is definitely not worth my time.

Wishing for this week to be a good one. I can feel it to be a very busy week, with all the work I have waiting for me.

Hoping for my packages to arrive already! I have a few of YS shoes, a couple of Colourpop Lippie Stix, a humidifier and 40 Days of Dating from The Book Depository coming up and I am very impatient and excited.

Wearing polka dot lady boxers and an old Victoria’s Secret tee.

Loving my chill Sunday at home. It’s been a pretty crazy past couple of weekends.

Wanting to get in touch with a certain person again. I need to stop taking things for granted sometimes.

Needing a nice warm hug. It’s a very breezy Sunday night.

Feeling bloated. I had Jafar’s for dinner. Missing it was an understatement because it was my 2014 happy food. It’s been a while!

The original Sunday Currently appeared here.

2014 Year In Review, Part II

Published by Justine

21. What was your most common mental state this year (e.g. excited, curious, stressed)?
Anxious but resilient.

22. Was there anything you did for the very first time in your life this year?
I didn’t go out of the country for a span of 12 months. I even thought 2014 would be the first year in about 20 something years that I wouldn’t get to travel. Somehow, I was fine with it.

23. What was your favourite moment spent with your friends?
MY BIRTHDAY WEEK! Beach, mountains, beach again, island hopping, my birthday dinner, parties. I was probably the most blessed in this category.

24. What major goal did you lay the foundations for?
Financial discipline. I’m past 25, I need to start taking my finances seriously.

25. Which worries turned out to be completely unnecessary?
Worries about how I will get through the day/week/month/year.

26. What experience would you love to do all over again?
MY BIRTHDAY WEEK WITH JAKARTA FRIENDS. Sand, sun, beach, fun, the water, food, friendship, love. And so much more.

27. What was the best gift you received?
My Jakarta friends all flying out to Cebu, my mom being cancer-free for the 6th year in a row, makeup and clothes and so many shoes. My weakness. My neon Roshes from my aunt.

28. How did your overall outlook on life evolve?
I don’t think it evolved drastically, but I learned just to appreciate what I have despite people telling me I could do better.

29. What was the biggest problem you solved?
I don’t think I solve a lot of “big problems”. This would have to relate to work or something of the sort. Otherwise, I was busy solving little problems in hopes of them not getting any bigger.

30. What was the funniest moment of your year, one that still makes it hard not to burst out laughing when you think about it?
Damn. This is hard. I laughed a lot this year.

31. What purchase turned out to be the best decision ever?
My iPhone 5s.

32. What one thing would you do differently and why?
I would have made the first move.

33. What do you deserve a pat on the back for?
For just getting through each day. I have a lot to be thankful for and there are days that is overlooked by my internal demons.

34. What activities made you lose track of time?
Partying! My Korean variety shows and reading.

35. What did you think about more than anything else?
“Will I ever find someone?” Not even gonna lie. “How am I gonna get home?” also tops this list.

36. What topics did you most enjoy learning about?
I enjoyed work a lot and how big companies work after being a part of one.

37. What new habits did you cultivate?
Nothing that particularly made a huge impact.

38. What advice would you give your early-2014 self if you could?
You should have laid out the cards even if it meant destroying you.

39. Did any parts of your self or your life do a complete 180 this year?
Fortunately and unfortunately, no. That was reserved for 2012 and 2013. 2014 was all about stability.

40. What or who had the biggest positive impact on your life this year?
My sister. Even though we have our differences.

2014 Year In Review, Part I

Published by Justine

I came across this blog entry a few weeks ago when I was looking for posts to write on introspect and retrospect about how my 2014 went. I feel like it went by too quick that I needed to write down things I felt, things I experienced and memories that came with it. Into-Mind is such a great blog as well, I’ve been following its points on minimalism and how to simplify life bit by bit and just being conscious with my approach.

I’m going to divide this series into 3 entries. This is Part I, then another set of 20 questions for Part II, and finally the last 10 questions that I will answer about how I want my 2015 to be. I’m looking forward to it.

1. What one event, big or small, are you going to tell your grandchildren about?
I’m going to tell my grandchildren that I grew up with the best possible group of friends and that it is possible to maintain great friendships for up to 20 years! Also, that I got to swim with whale sharks for the 3rd time in my life.

2. If you had to describe your 2014 in 3 words, what would they be?
Fast. Awesome. Memorable.

3. What new things did you discover about yourself?
I discovered that I was (still am) able to say no to things I didn’t want to do and that’s definitely okay.

4. What single achievement are you most proud of?
Knowing what I want (or what I don’t) and sticking to that decision.

5. What was the best news you received?
My Jakarta best friends visiting Cebu for my birthday weekend actually happening, and my mom being cancer free for another year (that’s the 6th year in a row now!).

6. What was your favourite place that you visited in 2014?
I was just glad to be in Cebu; with my family complete, my best friends, people who made my year. Jakarta also takes a spot and it was such a bittersweet visit with the whole time vs memories thing. I also visited quite a few beautiful places last year that involves a lot of Vitamin Sea.

7. Which of your personal qualities turned out to be the most helpful this year?
The positive front that I put out. I feel like it actually yields favorable results.

8. Who was your number one go-to person that you could always rely on?
My sister Jana. Despite our differences (and similarities), she is always there for me. ALWAYS.

9. Which new skills did you learn?
I learned the whole app submission thing! I learned the basics of app development for Android and iOS and learned how to submit an app to Play Store and iTunes Connect. It was actually a very fun and rewarding experience.

10. What, or who, are you most thankful for?
I am most thankful to my parents for always understanding and supporting me all throughout. Cliche, I know.. but it’s true.

11. If someone wrote a book about your life in 2014, what kind of genre would it be? A comedy, love story, drama, film noir or something else?
Funny, I’d like for it to be an autobiography or self-help; based on some “issues” I struggle with.

12. What was the most important lesson you learnt in 2014?
If people love you, they will pull through for you.

13. Which mental block(s) did you overcome?
I did a blog challenge last year, which re-kindled my love for writing and sort of “cured” my being at a loss for words most of the time when it came to blogging.

14. What 5 people did you most enjoy spending time with?
This is too difficult to narrow down so I’ll make it into a group.

Work – Mich, Miming 🙂
Chill/Party – Matt, Juna, #TeamYolo, #TeamSpntns
Shopping – Noemi, Jana
Vacation – FAMKADA, FAMBAM

That totals to about more than 20 people, if you think of it.

15. What was your biggest break-through moment career-wise?
I have yet to find out.

16. How did your relationship to your family evolve?
Better. It’s something I can never complain about because it’s so good. Although there has been underlying pressure from them to settle down that’s been coming up quite a few times recently.

17. What book or movie affected your life in a profound way?
I would say Haruki Murakami’s Tsukuru Tazaki. It was simply written with a beautiful story and a lot of symbolism.

18. What was your favourite compliment that you received this year?
Classy. I don’t really see myself as a classy person.

19. What little things did you most enjoy during your day-to-day life?
Catching up with my favorite Korean variety shows, because I feel like I never get the time to anymore!

20. What cool things did you create this year?
I created friendships with fun people who made my year colorful. This being my 3rd year in Cebu and starting from scratch on the social front, I was really grateful that 2014 was the year I forged friendships.

New Year, Clean System

Published by Justine

One of my goals (I don’t really say resolutions, see previous post) this year is to completely zero out my MacBook Pro and start from scratch. Everything that’s in there has been around for almost 8 years or so, since I bought my very first MacBook then bought my second one and did a Migration Assistant from the old one.

It’s been a long time coming, really. I hardly use the apps I used to hoard, I hardly listen to songs from my iTunes collection (hello, Spotify!) and the files that are inside are remnants of my sleepless nights in college writing countless essays and reports and marketing research and the likes. Needless to say, stuff that I’ve grown out of. I have a separate hard drive for my movies, tv shows, documents and photos, so I dumped everything in its rightful drive and proceeded to do a clean install. It was a very productive Saturday in, and it felt good.

Now that it’s back, I’ve listed out some of the things I’m going to do to preserve the life of this little buddy of mine.

1. Will not re-download iPhoto anymore. I have a hate-hate relationship with this app. For me it doesn’t serve its purpose because I really like sorting my photos manually and I feel like no matter how many times I select the option to NOT duplicate my photos, it still does.

2. Will re-upload files that are from 2012 and up only (not including music). I have some stuff that dates back to 2005 and I feel like it should stay in storage, where it belongs.

3. I’m still debating on whether I will be re-uploading my awesome and metadata-clean music collection or keep iTunes as clean as new. I think I’m fine with Spotify for now so I don’t think I will. Maybe with the exception of a couple of Taylor Swift and K-pop favorites.

4. There are some apps that I use daily and love and actually purchased, but are now discontinued (CoverSutra and Reeder to name a few). They were still inside my Applications folder so there’s no point in re-downloading them anymore. Time to part with the ones that are gone.

5. Thanks to Microsoft Office online and Office for iOS, I think I will wait until the 2015 version of MS Office. This may make me use Numbers, Pages and Keynote more!

Point is, it’s time to simplify, simplify, simplify! It’s gotta start somewhere and knowing how much of a procrastinator I am I decided to do it STAT. I hope this means better life for my MBP. Next step, social media purging? I did a few of it last year so this year I’m going to make sure I just keep the ones that I actually use. Here’s to a simple 2015!

On Holidays and Goals

Published by Justine

The year is coming to a close and before I leave for my much needed Christmas holiday I’d like to take the time out to write a little in this blog.

It’s been a while since I’ve learned to write for myself in this little avenue of mine. I certainly still do it with the thought of people actually reading it (although not as much as before) but I really have learned to keep writing and writing even though I don’t do it as often. It’s the reason why I still have the blog, so I can still write, because God knows much writing I get to do in the “outside” world that doesn’t involve work emails, tweets and product proposals.

In 2015 I won’t make a resolution, instead I will create a journey. A journey that will hopefully lead me to positive things in my life. I haven’t really formulated a plan, but I will list out the things that I have started on before the year has started, and hopefully this will continue to grow for the betterment of myself. The most important things are:

1) Financial (started!)
2) Health
3) Mental health
4) Eliminate most negativity
5) Love life

Notice how love life is the last? I didn’t even begin to worry or think about it until I’ve been feeling the pressure from friends and family this year. I’m not doing it because of their pressure but I’m doing it to take some pressure off me because pressure from the outside means pressure from within as well. I know people want the best for me so the least I can do is try in that department, right?

I don’t hope to achieve everything by 2015 but I want to make sure I get started. I want to make better choices to create lesser (better if none) regrets as I grow older. I think that should be a good goal in itself, right?

Happy holidays and I hope you enjoy the rest of the year with loved ones! 🙂