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2017 Theme

January 3, 2017

I’m too much of a pessimist and procrastinator to set resolutions. Like many, I don’t make them because I know I don’t stick to them but for the last few years I’ve been coming up with themes for the year. It’s something I started after attending a Joy Workshop for work.

In 2014 my theme was: living a life of joyful purpose. I stuck with it. We got married, I left a job I was unhappy at and I followed my heart to the Bay Area to be closer to family.

In 2015 my theme was: just do it. My procrastination and head often get in my way so I decided to focus more on not overthinking things and just do it. In that theme, I got a new job and we finally were able to build a life in the Bay Area.

In 2016 my theme was: happy, healthy. I think I focused more on the happy than healthy but overall I stuck with self care and doing what felt good for me.

This year, my theme is  intentional living. In the daily hustle, I often get caught up with work and the world that I don’t always remember to focus on what is most important to me. I have a wide range of interests and rather than enjoy them, I get overwhelmed and put them off for another day. I’d like that to stop. I know how short life can be and I want to get a lot out of my short life and I want to make a real impact in the world and with the people in my life.

Some of the main values I want to be at the forefront are family, health, my community, religion and my culture.

  1. Family – I love spending time with my family, I plan to keep that up but also I’m hoping to start one of my own. I’d like to get pregnant but if that doesn’t happen I’ve always wanted to adopt, so seriously considering that in the next few years if I can’t have a child myself.
  2. Health – Not just the weight on the scale but nourishing my body with the right foods, drinking enough water, getting enough sleep, keeping my mind right with learning and releasing the negative energy.
  3. My community – education, politics, poverty, equality, race issues those are all things that are important to me and rather than listen to other people make a difference this year I want to do more locally and in my community to contribute and make real change. With the incoming President and Congress, it has me real nervous but I’m not going to be paralyzed by that. I’m going to act.
  4. Religion – every year I want to work on this area. In 2016, I started attending a great connect group as part of the new Hillsong SF church. The church isn’t even formed yet but the connect groups are starting to build the community and I really enjoy going. In addition to connect group, I need to go to church more, read my Bible and pray more.
  5. Culture – I’m Filipino and Mexican but more so I’m American. I took Spanish in school but retained nothing so I want to learn to speak my native tongues and I want to visit both countries.

I’m excited to be more intentional this year and I hope I can stick to those areas and really grow this year. I’m exciting for the road ahead. If you’re interested at all in being more intentional, this is a good place to start: The Helpful Guide to Living an Intentional Life.

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About me Life

Goodbye 2016

December 30, 2016

2016 was a roller coaster of a year. So many good things but also a lot of bad. On the personal front, it was a good year for me and my husband. Our family went through some tough times with health issues and some family passing but we pulled through and were able to spend a lot of time with them.

For the US and frankly the World, 2016 felt like a disaster…I’m not really going to get into it here on this blog because I’m trying to manifest positive energy in my life but if you’ve been hiding under a rock, Google it. I’ve been obsessed with all the news, especially listening to Urban View and Progress Radio on Sirius XM. It boils my blood and gives me anxiety.

Enough said, to focus on myself…I’ve identified the top lessons I learned from 2016.

  1. Travel is an essential part of my life. We’ve still haven’t traveled internationally together (my husband and I – we were broke students for a long time and then worked happened and we just never made it a priority, which in hindsight was a mistake but we can’t go back now…) but in 2016 we made some fun trips and adventures together and with my family. We started the year by going to Monterey with my parents, sister and nephew and checking out the aquarium, he’d never been. We traveled to our second home, SoCal, several times and did a lot more exploration of the Bay and NorCal. Overall we had fun but we’ve been eyeing all the places we want to go and it’s a long list. In 2017, we are making it more of a priority.
  2. Making friends as an adult is tough. I’ve lived in the Bay Area now for over two years and prior to that we were in LA two years and besides people I talk to at work, I haven’t made any new friends that I hang out with outside of work. It’s not for lack of wanting to or trying. It’s just tough and I’ve read about it a lot. I’m sure some of it has to do with my introversion but I just find that responsibilities, families and distance are tough to get past. I hope in 2017 we can make some genuine new friends.
  3. Keeping friends is hard. Life happens, I get it, but distance makes keeping friends hard. I’ve moved around a lot in my adult life. After high school I lost touch with a lot of people, then I moved to San Diego and it was even harder to keep in touch. I made most of my good friends while living in San Diego for college but even with that group, when we moved to Pasadena it was hard to stay close. Since then, I still have a group of girlfriends but we hardly get to talk. Even my best friends are distant now. I don’t have kids but I notice, after my girlfriends had kids I lost touch with them. I understand but it still makes me sad to think of all the time lost, which goes to my next point…
  4. Life is short and you never know when you’ll lose someone. This isn’t a new realization but it was a huge reminder this year, that life is short and you really have to cherish the time you have with people. My Uncle, my mom’s brother, died and a cousins wife who was near my age suddenly died of a brain aneurism. We had some close calls with my mother-in-law, my grandmother and my husbands cousin this year. It’s been a whirlwind on the health front.
  5. Self care and overall health needs to be a priority. On the health front I have heart attacks, heart disease, strokes, HBP, diabetes, high cholesterol, anxiety and other health issues in my family so I really need to get my weight and stress levels under control. With my family history and my hope that I get pregnant this year, I want to make sure I take care of my health. I want to be in the best shape possible pre-pregnancy and I want to be able to effectively handle my stress this year. I’ve been going to a chiropractor regularly and plan to go to an acupuncturist too. It’s all about getting in tip top shape physically this year.

Overall, those were the big things in 2016 but in general 2016 was a good reminder that I need to stop wasting time and do it now. The underlying theme of 2016 was “the time is now.”

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About me Life

Happy Friday!

June 3, 2016

Memorial Day Weekend was Monday so it was a short work week. I work from home on Friday’s so I get to work in my “home clothes” all day. I’ll generally get dressed if I need to leave the house during lunch but mostly not. haha. That doesn’t mean I don’t work though, I’ve had some intense Fridays. This may be one of them but it’s the morning so the day is young… I did get up this morning to celebrate National Donut Day. This is actually not just a day made up by social media – it started in 1938 as a fund raiser for Chicago’s The Salvation Army. Their goal was to help those in need during the Great Depression, and to honor The Salvation Army “Lassies” of World War I, who served doughnuts to soldiers. I had no idea, but it’s a great excuse to eat donuts with the hubby. We went to the local shop down the street, nothing fancy – it’s very no frills so I got a maple bar because they didn’t have my fave glaze twists.

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That said, previously I was doing 5 Things Friday so to pick that up I’m sharing my 5 goals fo r this month.

  1. Study/Learn Spanish. Last week I made it a point to open my Duolingo app to learn Spanish everyday. It was a quick exercise but it felt good to stick to something all week so I plan to continue using Duolingo and taking it further by listening to Spanish podcasts everyday. I studied Spanish in high school but it didn’t stick. I remember some of it but it takes me a while to translate conversations and I can’t speak it in full sentences so I have a lot of work to do. I’d always told myself I’d learn it by 30 but I never was active about it so what’s better than the present?
  2. Sleep earlier. I’m a night owl no question about it. I have a hard time falling asleep early. I often stay up until 12:30 or 1 am on work nights (sometimes even later if i’m not sleepy), which makes it hard for me to get up in the morning. I don’t think I’ll ever be a morning person per se but I’ve read so much about the importance of sleep that I want to give it a go. If all goes well, my next goal will to get up early enough to workout before work…we’ll see how this goes first. One thing at a time. haha
  3. Finish a book (or three). I’m a book lover. I love reading and I’m a fan of owning books (I like the feel of them over ereaders). I have no real reason why I don’t read because I have the time. I just don’t make time for it. I picked up the Career Code by the WhoWhatWear girls so I really want to read that first and then see where that goes.
  4. Declutter. In May the plan was to declutter. I was on a mission and then I stopped. I need to donate, sell or toss out my stuff. I have yet to Spring clean and as I work towards minimalism, I really need to go through all my stuff and just edit the items I own. We have no plans this weekend, so I plan to tackle a chunk starting tomorrow.
  5. Cook. We eat out a lot. Way more than we should really. It’s a terrible habit that I chalk up to busy schedules and convenience. We’ve been needing to save more and I need a new car ASAP so this will really help me to save money and hopefully lose weight. I need to meal prep for work but also cook dinner so that we have leftovers for lunch. If we can eat out less, that would be such a success.

In general, my goals are a part of my focus on intentional living. With time flying by, I want to focus on really doing the things that make me happy with the people that make me happy and spending less time on the things that don’t. I guess my theme for 33 is “living an intentional life.”

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About me Life

I love surprises

April 20, 2016

I’m still behind on my blog posts, I need to get a schedule going or some sense of planning what I write so this is a spontaneous post about a gift I received today.

My friend Stephanie sent me a surprise gift for helping her do some updates to her personal blog – she wrote a blog about it: Musings of a Girly Tomboy Gets a Facelift. As she explains in her blog post, our relationship is mostly based off of social media. It’s kind of a long story but we aren’t strangers given she’s related to my brother-in-law. From our social media posts we both enjoy food (and have a ton in common, I’ve learned from reading her blog) so her food gift was super thoughtful.

She ordered birthday cake truffles from Momofuku Milk Bar and had them shipped to my apartment. It was such a nice surprise and it was even better that they were so yummy. As they say on their website, it’s a birthday party in a bite. If you ever have the chance to try them I highly recommend it.

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I love food shows so I’ve had all of David Chang‘s restaurants on my list and I’ve ALWAYS wanted to try the famous birthday cake. I’m so glad she was able to “read my mind” and get me such a yummy treat. They’re NYC based and have a location in Toronto but I didn’t realize you can order them on their website. If you’ve been wanting to try them, I say do it! At this point nothing is stopping you.

As mentioned, we don’t talk often one on one so I’m not sure if she realized my birthday is this month but it’s one week out so I’m starting my celebrating early. In prime Rembulat fashion. To celebrate all month. I guess you can say I already started with my SD trip. This weekend we’ll be in Tahoe for a quick trip so we can see snow. Can’t wait.

Thanks again to Stephanie aka ganeeban for the sweet gift.

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