In a perfect world, I’d wanna say that the year that was anything but different, were nothing life-changing occurred.

But this is not a perfect world. The year 2017 AD have seen great changes to my personal life as I slowly progressed through my late twenties.

Check out my first “Look Back” entry here.

A. Lack of Blogging

First off, I’d like to express my disappointment in myself for not marking the decade anniversary of The J-Blog Files with the kind of funfare I’d otherwise would have. To say that I’ve written no less than 5 entries under the blog this year is an understatement. I always have things in my head that I’d like to put into writing but I never got around into doing it. The loss of my laptop this past year only made things difficult on top of the things that have made me so busy than ever before.

For that, I deeply apologize.

B. Life Changers

In other news, my big brother finally proposed to his girlfriend. As far as I can recall, they’ve been engaged for less than a year, but they’ve already set a date sometime this March 2018. In my head, I thought it was too soon, but my brother and his fiancée have been together for a lot longer so I can’t really complain.

Perhaps it’s due to the fact that our eldest sibling, my ate, have been engaged to her now-husband for at least longer than a year before tying the knot back in 2015 as my sister was still in the middle of finishing her thesis.

Speaking of my sister, she’s pregnant, and well into her first trimester. My nephew/niece is due to be born in June of this year.

I’m not sure how I’m able to cope with all of these changes happening to our household. We barely could adjust to my sister’s now permanent absence in the house, and now we have to deal with my brother’s impending pagbubukod as he prepares to leave the nest to live with his future wife in their new humble abode in Rizal.

In the end, it’s just gonna be me and my sangko Jorge as the only siblings left in the house with our parents. It’s not like it’s a bad thing, but it’s gonna be a new reality for us.

The neighborhood that has been my home for 27 years is also seeing some major changes. Due to the road elevation that occurred the year before, a couple of houses have started renovating their turfs to accommodate the change. Our house is due for a major facelift as well but my dad is still drafting plans on how it will look like.

Whatever the case, this is an inevitability I need to get over with, as much as I love our house the way it is now.

C. Work Work Work Work Work

Now, I’ve been in my present company for more than two years now and I’ve been busier than ever. I’ve been enjoying what I’m doing and I couldn’t really ask for more. I felt so invested in the marketing aspect of my long-running project with my client that it pains me to learn that an in-house team on their side has been set-up to take over some of my responsibilities.

Fortunately, I still get to do the long-form ones which really tests my abilities as a video editor. Motion graphics is a weak spot of mine but I never let that deter me to make the best. In fact, I’ve been training a young protégé to help me out with my work. He is much more adept with the motion graphics stuff that he’s able to execute my concepts while at the same time, help him edit things down to meet expectations.

My true strength lies in non-linear editing and, honestly speaking, I’m scared of how much in the zone I can be once I get a hold on materials.

And it seems my hard work is slowly paying off as I’ve finally got myself regularized after being in the company for a long enough time. I joined in 2015 hoping I could last longer than my two previous job tenures combined, and looking back, it’s just unbelievable.

D. Ispotipay

I haven’t been listening much to new top 40 music since my days as an intern in the old defunct 99.5RT. In the years following its fold-up, my ears have wandered off to new pastures.

This year, I got me a premium upgrade for my Spotify account and I’ve made great use of it throughout the year. Having been into the unusual, much of my playlists are filled with Euro-pop and Spanish-language artists. Nothing on the OPM side has piqued my interest at the moment but hopefully a great one comes along so I could listen to it on repeat whenever I’m commuting to and from work.

E. The Pursuit

I actually have a “Runner’s playlist”, containing tracks that makes me wanna move and, of course, run. But I haven’t been hitting the gym nor running around the park since much of the latter half of the year.

As I’ve come to realize, waking up extremely early to make it to work three hours before in-time is taking a toll on my health. I always arrive at the office feeling sleepy and I had to make up those lost hours of sleep just so I could function well at work.

It was never the case when I decided to carpool on my dad’s car early in the morning every day, as I’ve been fairly consistent with my workout routine before officially going to work. But ever since my brother’s worktime shifted to a 6 a.m. to 3 p.m schedule, we’ve been leaving the house much earlier so that he could be on time. My continuing torture with the morning commute will likely end once my brother moves out.

I know this has been said and done before, but I really need to go back to my old routine again, and even perhaps change it up this year. I’ve been seriously considering this gym trainer’s offer to help train me, but I always worry about how much that “help” would cost me. Hopefully, this is an investment that will bear fruit as I don’t want this gut I’ve been having to last a whole year.

With the recent increase on all things sweet, perhaps it’s high time for me to cut back on the sweet drinks. I survived half a decade without a single soda so I can definitely do this.

F. Un paraffo sobre mi educacion de la lengua español

I’ve been attending Spanish language classes for a year now and I noticed I’ve been able to slowly but surely  say some things in Spanish with confidence. I still have issue with comprehension and being able to understand accents but I’m getting there.

Helping me as an aide is a podcast on Spotify called Así como suena (“As it Sounds”). The podcast is like an audio-version of a television news magazine show, covering a wide array of topics from politics to human interest stories. The show is in Mexican Spanish, which makes it easier for me to comprehend better with the language compared to Castilian.

G. Lakbay

2017 marks the first time I get to travel on my own, using my own money. This year, I went to Cebu and Bohol on Labor Day weekend. As much as I enjoyed the entire trip, hard lessons were learned which no doubt will come into play with my future travel plans for this year.

So what does the year 2018 have in store for us? I guess we’ll just have to live it to find out!