Hello there. It’s been a while. Are there still people who visit this blog? Are there folks still reading this? To be honest, I don’t think those questions and their answers are that important. The important thing for me is: I’m still here, though definitely not as much as I should have been.

I only posted one ☝️ thing in 2024 and it was an old thing I wrote many years ago… That’s pretty much my blog update, haha.

With that out of the way, here’s a quick overview of fun and interesting things I’ve done in 2024.

Life Updates

• Attended my first ever concert – It was XG’s First Howl Concert in Manila and I had sooo much fun! A thing I’ve established early on in my adult life is that I don’t want to go to concerts unless I like at least about 85% of the artist’s discography. Concerts and music festivals these days are honestly so financially and physically exhaustive so I don’t tend to use them as a way to discover music, rather as a way to support the artists and musicians whose work I thoroughly enjoy. Suffice to say, XG is one of those few musical acts whose entire current discography I thoroughly enjoy. I’m really hoping they return to the Philippines in a larger arena.
• Went on multiple trips with friends – Learning my preferences in long trips with friends as opposed to ones I have with family (which I think are completely different). Learning patience and asking for one (lol).
• Climbed a mountain!! – It was a local peak and one of the many trips I had with a friend last year. Admittedly, both of us were heaving our lungs off before even reaching the halfway point, myself especially. I was so grateful to our local companions for being so patient with us. This was me learning patience and asking for one as well haha!
• Watched Six the Musical – Honestly my top favorite musical of all time and I am so so happy I got to witness it live in a theatre. The queens were so good!!
• Bought a CD player – I haven’t been pleased with the changes Spotify has been doing on their platform. I got a bit of a scare when a few songs I listen often became unavailable all of a sudden. I still don’t know what happened. But that incident just made me more and more convinced in my needing to further establish my physical media collection and to include my favorite music albums in said collection. At the moment, I have four CDs: Jubilee by Japanese Breakfast, Hold the Girl by Rina Sawayama, and Escaper by Sarah Kinsley which was a preorder and one of my favorite albums of this year. I also bought the Original West End cast album of Six the Musical as it was on sale at the venue.
• Went to a cinema by myself – Loved it. Will absolutely do it again. I watched The Wild Robot and I was one of like three adults who were there without a kid. All three of us cried our eyes out.
• Visited the National Museums for the first time – Fernando Amorsolo and Juan Luna, the artists that they were!! I was only able to peruse the first floor so I’m really hoping to go back to the Museum of Fine Arts the next time I get to visit Manila.
• Went on my first ever solo trip overseas – This was one of those trips I planned with friends but, because of some events that were out of any of our control, they were not able to go and it ended up becoming a solo trip. I had to mentally prepare myself that I was going to Korea solo two weeks beforehand. Still, I got to learn more about what a comfortable and fun solo trip I would like for myself and I did enjoy it!! Though, I don’t think I’ll return to Korea solo – I find I might enjoy the country more when I’m with friends. Hopefully, we get to go like we planned.

Now onto something I talked about last year…

On Consumption

Being more intentional and thoughtful of my media consumption was one of the things at the forefront of my mind the past couple or so years. I honestly thought I wouldn’t have any significant progress to this in 2024, but upon putting together my private media tracker for the year, that is not the case at all!

For, perhaps, the first time since I started tracking my media consumption, this year had the most balanced number of media I read, watched, and listened. Whilst I pared down the number of manga, anime and film I consumed, a lot of them do feel more memorable by the time I was rounding things up on 31 December. I do want to keep this little momentum going and have a healthy balance of consuming comforting media vs ones I rarely reach my hand for. I also want to be more proactive with what I consume (which I will explain further below).

On Making Art

Like all the years before, I like to set an intention for the year ahead. For this year, I want to be creating more while consuming less. I’m hearing the phrase “create more than you consume” and while the idea is wonderful, I don’t think I’m at that point yet where I can create more than what I consume. I want to tackle the things I actually consume first. Have more time to sit through them. Hopefully, bring a little more creating into the mix as well via writing my thoughts out or making fanart or posting a review, or doing annotations. Consumption and creation are so intimately intertwined, I find, and yet we often usually see it lean more on the former rather than the latter. But you can definitely create with the things you consume! Does that make sense? I don’t know haha

I expect to be busy in many things within my personal life this year. But if there was one lesson that absolutely positively slapped me in the face last year, it’s that art and making art is inherently vital to me as a person. Which is why I want to make more time to create and not just finished piece but also to return to doodling, and making nonsense blog posts that no one will read. I also want to dabble in more tactile arts like crochet (which I got into last year), and perler beads, and baking. There’s twelve months ahead to enjoy and explore. ♡

I hope this past holiday has given you time to rest and I hope you have a more hopeful 2025 ahead!

Photo by Liana S on Unsplash