April is me finding the sparks again. 

Losing another close friend for the second time, I questioned the purpose of living. The second time doesn't make the hurt any less. 

I tried to do everything to bring back the sparks of living again. Hobbies, I traced things I used to love. I checked out all the lists of how to make your life more enjoyable. I read on Substack. 

Nothing helped. 

It’s like if you've been taking antibiotics your entire life, like a multivitamin, and they keep you cheery and active throughout the day, but when you acquire a high fever, your antibiotic no longer serves its intended purpose. 

April is me tracing what brings me joy again and perhaps finding the reason to live. This is why I love consuming media, whether it’s a Substack, a song, or the comfort I find in fiction. 

Reading Substacks feels like someone fluently breaking down what I’ve been feeling lately, like a manual giving step-by-step guidance I never actually received. 
Watching movies transports me back to places I used to love and care about.
Reading my favorite authors feels like returning to something familiar. 

Maybe I just needed another form of language to understand what I’m feeling, and to slowly feel alive again.

<substack>

date people in the same emotional bracket as you: This article had me nodding my head all the way to the end of the paragraph. It resonated so deeply that I just have to re-share my stance on dating someone in my previous post. Think of your emotional needs like that treacherous blind spot, the exact one you must consciously check before switching into a fast lane. So often, we blindly change lanes in relationships, completely overlooking the internal emotional needs we are about to crush.  


To the woman who always knew she was meant for a bigger life: Whenever you feel stuck or stagnant, think of yourself as an urban planner taking charge of a vast, desolate plot of land. When you focus too closely on building just one residential property, your world shrinks to the raw textures of rough bricks and wet cement. You find yourself anxiously staring at a rigid Gantt chart, desperately tracking every milestone. You start to stress and wonder why on earth the progress is so painfully slow just to erect one single house. 

But you need to fly a drone once in a while. Send it up into the sky to look down at what you have actually built so far: a lush green park for recreation, a school built to nurture knowledge, and a hospital to treat everything from small cuts to deep wounds. Stop feeling restless at the sight of the soon-to-be-developed neighboring land. Zoom out, see the bigger picture, and take pride in the entire landscape you have already achieved.

Your phone is the reason you have no identity: I can't claim my hands are completely clean of the obsession with the trend train. Occasionally, I catch myself wearing the matching fit; Uniqlo linen line with blue jeans with my colleagues at the office. I walk into a mall and I encounter a few girls wearing the white-and-black pair of samba shoes with a Brik bag slung over their shoulders proudly supporting a local business. Why do I care for such petty detail? Because I had my eyes on them once too. 

Right now, everyone is raving on linen clothing. I'm not against linen; it's a good thing that we're going back to natural sources for clothing instead of being stuck in the unsustainable polyester. But the point of naturally sourced material is to adopt a sustainable lifestyle and practice mindful consumption. And buying ten linen pieces just to dump perfectly wearable clothes in the closet defeats the original purpose of living a sustainable lifestyle. 

Perhaps, it's time for us to take a step back, and reflect, for each item on the trends, 
"Does this suit my lifestyle, or am I doing this because everybody does?"
"Is this what I wanted to maintain for ten years down the road?"

<book>

Beartown: If you love the cozy autumn vibe of Gilmore Girls, try reading Beartown as its chilling winter sibling. The book revolves around the community in one small town called Beartown. A town centered around the frozen ice rink, sticks and skates, and the bang sound of pucks as their pride and joy. The town that united because of their love for hockey. And the town that divided because of their pride and their star hockey player. 

Maya is fascinated by the way he always seems to be living in the moment. On the ice he doesn't seem to think anything but hockey, and off it he doesn't seem to think about anything at all. He lives on instinct. She wishes she could be like that.

Kevin likes the fact that she's different. That her eyes never quite stop moving, that she's always watching. That she seems to know who she is. He wishes he could be like that. 

With one loyal community behind your back, you have nothing to fear. 
One loyal community against you, and you doubt yourself. No matter what the truth is, you start second-guessing yourself. 

The side of truth depends on where the community chooses to stand. It doesn't matter if you're right; if the community says no, you are wrong. 

People often choose the easiest lie over the hardest truth. 

This story parallels closely with the biography I once read, Know My Name written by Channel Miller. Maya acts as a fictional surrogate for Miller, channeling her experience of being sexually assaulted by one promising athlete and was punished for it. How netizens accused her of hindering the future of the promising athlete. That people would go as far as dehumanize you, the victim, for the sake of taking the perpetrator's side.

But here's the real question to ponder. 

Who is actually hindering whose future? 

I'd recommend you to read Know My Name if you're interested in reading it.

<film>

The Lizzie McGuire Movie: I've been wanting to watch Lizzie McGuire the movie ever since my last trip to Italy. And now I know where the viral TikTok audio "maybe I am an outfit repeater but you are an outfit rememberer which is just as pathetic" originally from. The teenage version of me would relate to the reckless Lizzie Mcguire. Fleeing to another country in hopes of redeeming herself. On the surface, this movie is everything every teenager dreams of. Touring around ancient, beautifully maintained architecture with a sweet gelato in hand, riding a colorful Vespa, and being drenched by a golden sun. It triggers you to pack your suitcase immediately and do the scene remake of Hillary Duff's concert at the Colosseum. 

But being young and impressionable, you're susceptible to being molded by people with deceitful motives hidden behind endless sweet talk and empty promises. 

"because you shine like the light from the sun" 

Until the end of the movie, Lizzie learned that maybe you don't need to look far to find the things you needed, maybe what you're looking for is in front of your eyes, but you never take a look because you've been taking them for granted all this time. Perhaps falling flat on your face is what you needed to notice what has been in front of your eyes all along. 

How to lose a guy in 10 days: Everyone needs a bit of romance to be part of their life. At least mine does. 

I need that typical cringe romcom movie where the male lead falls in love with the authenticity of the female lead despite their twisted motives at the beginning of the relationship. Predictable? Very. But sometimes that’s the comfort of it. 

The premise is that men quickly pull away whenever women become emotionally invested too quickly. 

Not everything has to feel emotionally devastating all the time. Sometimes you just need something lighter for once when your mind has been stuck in a whirlpool of thoughts for too long. 

Deepwater horizon: This movie had me subconsciously running the root cause analysis of what led to the massive explosion and mentally forced me to resuscitate every piece of jargon that has been drying up like a houseplant after not being watered for years. It's terrifying how one misdiagnosis cost 11 lives and resulted in manslaughter charges. All because to chase delayed timelines and to save cost. But does it compensate for the 11 lives lost? 

Suppose you are not Donald Vidrine or Robert Kaluza, and you aren't responsible for 126 lives. But the truth is, each of us is responsible for something in our own corners of the world. How lightly do you take your daily accountability? Does the crushing heaviness of what you owe to the people around you ever hit you once in a while?

<song>

Because I watched The Lizzie Mcguire Movie, its main track keeps ringing to my ears. 

Have you ever wondered what life is about 

Lizzie went all the way to Rome to figure out her life, but,

You could search the world and never figure it out 
You don't have to sail the ocean 
No no no 

Perhaps, what you actually needed is to experience the lessons, that, 

Happiness is no mystery, it's 
Here and now, it's you and me 

Perhaps the point of travel is to extend your mental horizons and discover that what you're looking for is already within you.

But one thing I learned is to look at blessings from a different angle. Blessings do not only come in the form of things you love having but also in the things you are grateful not to have. 
Clear traffic. 
Good health. 
Distance from toxic surroundings. 
Financial stability that allows you to buy your own meal without owing anyone. 

Reconnecting with old friends, catching up, learning new things, and even the moments where you made mistakes but were still given the chance to learn and make up for them. 

Sometimes, blessings arrive quietly in the form of problems that never happened.