Lawyer by education. Journalist by accident. Writer by passion. Photographer by necessity. Coffee and wine lover forever. 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.
In this blog, I tell stories. Stories about what I read, what movies and shows I watched, my impressions of places I’ve been to, and everything in between.
That was how I blogged 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 blogging 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 realized that I had too many not-so-nice things to say about print media (I still do), I hated the deadlines and the pay was bad. So, I left and focused on my food blog. I played SEO games well, I established myself as an authority in the food and cooking niche, 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, the thievery and AI-generated content.
I’m burnt out and bored 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 dementia 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.
No, reviving this long-dormant domain does not mean I’m giving up my food blog. Blogs, actually, because there are currently three: recipes, cooking tips and food stories. Since I’m veering away from niche blogging, I will move all three food blogs here soon. After that happens, the stories in this blog will be about what I cooked, what I read, what movies and shows I watched, my impressions of places I’ve been to, and everything in between.
