10

Ten years. A decade. Ten little fingers. Ten in the bed. Ten little monkeys jumping on the bed. Nursery rhymes playing in my head now ‘coz the baby is now a toddler. Today marks my tenth year on this little space of mine in the blogosphere even though I consider myself as a semi-retired blogger. Adulting and motherhood consumed me the past year, plus the COVID-19 pandemic, but there’s no room for whining. Every gising is always a blessing.

The past year was a blur. It felt like we’ve been in house arrest for more than a year now since my maternity leave in September of 2019. Twenty-four hours a day is never enough while I juggle lots of different things; work-from-home setup (yes, I’m still teaching in public school), work at home (because no yaya, as if we plan on getting one in the first place considering our tiny home in which you could navigate in less than ten seconds), exclusive breastfeeding (17 months and counting), Netflix (and chill), and Friyay drinking sesh with the husband (because we love beer and our weekly “us” time). We’re stuck at home and I’ve never been happier to share every waking moment with my two boys.

My last trip before this lockdown was in 2019 when my friends and I did a 6-week backpacking trip to China, Mongolia and Russia. That was around four months before I gave birth to Akira. It’s almost two years since then and for the first time in many years my itchy feet came to rest and I’ve never felt more contented with my daily routine at home even though my only “me” time is literally my time spent inside the bathroom.

Our stay-at-home status led me to back up all the photos for my eleven years of traveling which is really important. I learned from my husband that you need to have a duplicate or even triplicate copies of all your photos because once a copy is ruined, all memories will be gone forever (actually, he’s been telling me about this for years now). Aside from organizing my photo storage, I joined and won an online blog-writing contest about life during the pandemic last year. Those two feats are quite an achievement for the “busy” me during that time.

Now, as I scan my photos on Instagram, I try to remember the spirit of adventure within each of those squared memory. It was fun to reminisce how we tried to forget our lives back home once in a while to chase temporary highs before going back to our roots again. But the feeling of having a little person who keeps on discovering new things and seeing him grow every single day is quite a journey in itself. Akira is the epitome of how someone should live his/her life—to live in the moment and focus entirely on what is in front of you.

So I dunno if I could go back to writing my past adventures like the way I used to. And I really don’t know when this lockdown and pandemic will all end. Oh, well. Akira is waiting for me to read him a book so maybe I should not worry about those things at all.


Happy 10!