I’m Connie Veneracion, and this is my website.

I’m a lawyer by education (retired), newspaper columnist by accident (retired), writer by passion, photographer by necessity, and forever a lover of good food, coffee and wine.

I’m mother to two grown daughters, wife to a man with a curious nickname, and abuela to two four-legged creatures, Penny and Chicken Joy, who are both a delight and a nightmare.

So, yes, I am a real person, not some AI-generated character, who loves to tell stories — about what I cooked, what I read, what movies and shows I watched, what music I enjoyed, what hobbies I’m busy with, my impression of places I’ve been to, and everything in between.

Old school journaling, as it were. That was how I wrote when blogging was new, SEO games were in their infancy and establishing oneself as an “authority” in a specific niche drove serious publishers to create compelling original content.

That was a quarter of a century ago. Yes, I’ve been publishing stories for 25 years. I started with a blog about politics and government, and it landed me a twice weekly op-ed column in a broadsheet. Then, I created a food blog, the first in the Philippines, and it got me a weekly spot on the Lifestyle section of the broadsheet too.

It was fun for a while, but I hated the deadlines and the pay was bad. So, I left, focused on my food blog and learned to play SEO games seriously.

But now I’m just unhappy at how the web has turned out. The memes, the sound bytes, the click baits, the fake news, the scams, AI-generated content, and AI bots scraping stories and images from human publishers.

Even “blog” has acquired a different meaning. According to today’s definition, this is a website, not a blog.

I’m enraged, frustrated, burnt out and bored all at the same time. Ironically or not, I still have this longing to feel the rush that only real writing brings — the kind that drives me to think and feel, and translate thoughts and emotions into narratives that people still capable of reading will actually want to read. Do such people still exist? A handful, perhaps, but that’s enough for me.

Beyond that, the thought of developing brain fog in my twilight years creeps me out, so I write to keep a stimulated mind. And in a web dominated by AI, I’m frantically contributing to the effort to resuscitate the fast fading art of real writing by a real human with no AI contribution.

Sometime soon, when I can be bothered to brush my hair and wear something nicer, I’ll take better photos for this page.

I’m Connie Veneracion, and this is my website.

Friday, 06 November 2026