January
My tinnitus started to bother me immensely at the beginning of the year. It took all my attention, energy, and time almost the entire January. I was able to survive this tough challenge through the help of Lea, family, and my friends. My two trips to Antipolo: one to Pinto and another to the Ginhawa Well-being Retreat further helped me cope with my situation. This month, I also officially became a hearing-impaired PWD. Despite the tinnitus, I was relatively functional. While I didn’t work this month, I was able to work on some creative projects, perhaps owing to good sleep. I was even able to challenge myself and attend Clyne’s wedding!
February
This month, I turned 28. While I was still suffering from the psychological challenges of the tinnitus, I was able to embrace my 28th year with joy. I owe this a lot from Lea but also my drive to make each day worth living for. This month, I met a lot of friends, traveled a lot, bonded with family and took responsibility of my healthcare. I also decided to go back to work, another proof that I was still functional despite my new reality.
March
Half of this month was spent continuing my intention to live each day as if it was the last. I traveled myself and joined Tita Villa and our family in trips around Pangasinan. However, on March 13, while I am slowly picking myself up from the tinnitus, my life would again change dramatically. Just after getting back with Lea, we were again forced apart due to the COVID 19 pandemic. We will not see each other in person again for the next 300 days. Meanwhile, I was stuck at home with my parents and my sister, which, although initially fun, also created tension. Despite this new challenge on top of my tinnitus, I was able to write and publish a lot of essays this month.
April
The lockdown forced everyone into social isolation, and this has a profound influence particularly for people like me who are melancholic in nature. Furthermore, almost all of my friends are from far away, and I can’t see them. The only form of social connection I had this month was with my immediate family: Papa, Mama, Bernice, and the pets. Here, Rem’s poetry class, Tungko ng Tula was a life-saver. Twice a week for nine weeks, I had a social gathering of aspiring poets. There, I was able to practice expressing myself creatively in a safe space. I built friendships with complete strangers, most of which I am yet to meet. Aside from Tungko, I also started exploring gamification during this time. This was partly because of the book Reality is Broken. My intention was to learn gamification to incorporate it into my life design. I also started exploring Laurie Santos’ course The Science of Well-being. Aside from poetry, I also started explored blind contour drawing by featuring Filipino icons and comedians. I also launched Mantaltaliwa, a platform of purely Pangasinan works. The biggest challenge I faced this month was the tension inside our house particularly with Bernice. This tension would ultimately lead to my decision to leave Pangasinan for good and start a new life of my own.
May
My adventures at home continued and extended towards the immediate environment outside the house. Due to the barangay quarantines, it was difficult to ride my bike far every day. So, some days, I would just walk in the fields at the back of our house and explore the terrain. This is a place that I have stared at since I was a child, but never truly explored, so I was happy to finally see it now. This month, I also helped Lea transition into freelancing. But my original intention was just really to help her provide for her family while the pandemic rolled out. We cooked a lot at home and I felt like, one day, I will need to learn how to cook, so I took the time to study some of Mama’s recipes and cooked them. This was the month that I also started exploring newspaper blackout poetry. I also started the Kamustahan newsletter series and my tradition of drawing friends during their birthday, by drawing Joji (although I drew her not on her birthday).
June
Quarantine measures relaxed this month, so I got to ride my bike farther. It also meant that my father, mother, and Bernice can now leave Sta. Maria, transfer to Cablong, and leave me mostly alone with the dogs at home. Although this would teach me that I can actually live by myself alone and be okay with it, this would also lead to a lot of emotional challenges, amplified by the fact that Tungko ng Tula ended this month, which would convince me that I needed to transfer somewhere else and start a new life. Despire all these, this month was also the beginning of my translation of Thoreau, setting up my new Macbook Pro, and my project of establishing a minimum viable life system. Also, one of my best achievements this month was getting off of Facebook for more than a week. This was in application of what I learned in The Science of Well-being.
July
As the quarantine measures relaxed further into MGCQ, I was able to experience the “new normal”. The biggest challenge of this month was the problems that Gripo and Oreo exhibited. Both of them probably were poisoned. I took care of Oreo but soon experienced compassion fatigue. Their situations will worsen, but despite this, this month was still fruitful as I began exploring and pouring myself out into Caroline Miller’s goal-setting workbook. I coupled this with studying Tiago Forte’s Annual Review process, which I turned into a mid-year review. From his process, I realized that I needed to set scarier goals and that my bigger project was not really building a philosophy of living, but building a life system.
August
This month, I faced three setbacks that really challenged my emotional equilibrium: Gripo’s death, Oreo’s death, and the LPR. The death of the dogs will lead me to really study stoicism. The LPR would force me to go through a strict diet that would make me lose 30 pounds. This month, I also transitioned into a new Macbook Pro as my favorite bike trail started to disappear. Perhaps the biggest win of this month was Lea’s surprise dinner date with four of my friends, which will be the inspiration for Fruit Salad.
September
This month was filled with wins that it could have easily been the best month of 2020 for me. First, I lost 6 kilos from dieting. This was also the month where Lea and I celebrated our first anniversary as a couple. I was able to put the finishing touches of my minimum viable life management system by studying and articulating a project management system. After ending this major project, I felt empty and realized that a life management system is not enough to make me happy. I need to cultivate happiness habits every day and pursue projects that actually enhance my happiness more directly. One such project was inviting friends to meet weekly, which became Fruit Salad. Within Fruit Salad, I would first work on a workshop on the creative process of Thoreau. Another thing that really made this month rich was the beginnings of my deeper exploration of nature. It was partly influence by watching the film, My Octopus Teacher, but I was also heavily encouraged by Thoreau. One important lesson I learned this month was: Being yourself is already a service.
October
This month was a month of exploring nature. I started discovering some new bike trails. While outdoors, I started taking photos of plants and I identified them through the iNaturalist app when I got home. I wrote down all my observations for the field work then processed them back at home. I also started reading the weather through clouds and studying bird intelligence. I discovered new vantage points in the Lobong CIS and I started calling it my Walden pond. Overall, I tried to replicate Thoreau’s field work process. This was a month where I also started applying what I learned from the Stoic Challenge. I wrote a grief fantasy story to process Oreo’s death and watched the film Paterson, which encouraged me to write poetry more easily.
November
This was the first month I started writing my monthly highlights. It was a particularly creative month. I started the month by presenting an introduction to Thoreau’s creative life and process to three friends and Lea. I also revived my Weekly Newsletter alongside daily blogging, trying to imitate Austin Kleon. My goal was to use unschooling as an approach to my daily and weekly creative process, where in I create a little structure, which then allows me to enjoy lots of freedom within that structure. It was also a month of insights. I realized that while I do a lot of things, there are some things that are more important than others because of their closer proximity to the organizing principle or overarching mission of my life. Through Rem’s workshop on facilitation, I also understood that poetry and storytelling are more facilitative ways of writing as compared to essay writing.
December
The last month of the year prompted me to read books so they could make the cut off for my hero books of 2020. This month, I finished the following books: LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring, How to Take Smart Notes, and Dept. of Speculation. Through Rem, I discovered Rofel Brion’s poems. I bought two of his books and tried to finish one so it could make it to my 2020 hero books. But I didn’t want to rush reading it, so it didn’t make it to the list. My most important breakthrough for the month was discovering zettelkasten and studying Sonke Ahrens’ book about it. This lead me to trying out Roam (among other apps) and Andy Matuschak’s note-writing system. Creating a zettelkasten is an important part of my life management system. Since it was the holiday season, it was also a month of connecting to friends and family. Migs went home after passing the boards. We bonded together and I also got to see my friends in Binmaley. Bobet told me about carpool services, which changed my life for the following weeks. I am not living in Los Banos and reunited with Lea because of him. The Tungko also got together before the end of the year, and I received a beautiful poem and a blind contour drawing from Maui. In my creative life, I released an article detailing my multipotentialite journey. There I first admitted to the public that I only work 5-10 days a month. While the article was received well, it also received some criticism, which I accepted gracefully. I also finished reading Thoreau’s journal this month. During this month, I tended Doji’s wound. I also received a potential credit card fraud problem, which I handled with emotional maturity.