Rae’s Ramblings

33 on 33

👩🏻‍💻 Rae — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 06:17:00 GMT

10/24/25 08:31AM eating breakfast on a bench in the middle of rittenhouse square, philly

funny thing - before i got set up to actually start writing, my [fountain] pen fell to the ground. i gasped… and just whispered “oh well.” a few years ago, if this exact same thing happened, i would have probably [become so annoyed], called myself stupid [for dropping an expensive pen], and let that define whatever the mood was for the day. but today, i didn’t. i just whispered, “oh well” and went on with writing. if that isn’t a clear sign of the growth [i’ve gone through the past years], i don’t know what is.

i grew up thinking grandiose things are mandatory for birthdays even though i’ve only ever had 1 or 2 parties myself (that i can remember right at this moment). but today, i’m spending the morning just enjoying simple things - buying a matcha latte from a cafe i’ve never tried before, sitting on a bench in a park i’ve never been before, and just writing down what i have in mind, reading a book i’ve never seen (only bought it yesterday because the title seemed so apt for today), all while listening to one of my favorite artists i’m going to watch tonight. i don’t think i’ve ever done this before.

it’s so different, but i needed this… there is peace & gratitude in my heart at this exact moment.

today, i turn 33. a year older and hopefully wiser. i look back on all the things that i have learned over the years. i used to do this a lot when i still had a blog and was pretty consistent so i figured i’d do it again this year. i can’t even remember the last time i did this… probably seven or eight years ago. i’m hoping to tone it down to a sentence or two.

33 on 33 - thoughts i have & things i have learned over the past few years

the best weight you can ever lose is the weight of other people’s opinions [about you & your life].
rest is still productive.
age doesn’t equate to maturity. some of the older people i know are some of the most immature people i’ve ever met.
sometimes, actually more often than not, your worst enemy is yourself. love yourself as much, even more, as you love those you value.
no matter how much you want for something/someone to change, you do not have control of when it’s going to happen (or if it ever’s going to happen, really). you can’t do anything about things you can’t control.
with that said above, only focus on what you can control. things will actually shift, you’ll see - although it may not be the shift you prefer to see.
keeping things to yourself will do nothing good - it will eat up your mind and affect how you behave towards those you love and care about.
if you don’t set your own boundaries, others will do it for you. you won’t always like it.
sometimes, people just need someone to listen to them and not lecture them.
be kind - you never know who needs that.
relationships - all kinds of it - are two-way. both parties need to do their part for it to flourish.
having faith and believing in God is one of the major reasons why i’m still here.
the way a person grows up - their childhood, their environment, the family culture etc. - says & defines everything as to what and how the person will be as an adult.
related to what i said above - yes, it’s not your fault if you grew up with an unhealthy set-up. it’s what you do about it once you’ve made the realization that changes everything.
it’s okay not tho have everything figured out. you will eventually have the chance to work through it.
do things afraid when you can - but also be mindful and prepared for what happens next.
deciding to work on yourself - healing, getting better, processing unresolved trauma & issues - is one of the best decisions you can make for yourself.
yes, you can have friends and loved ones who have different opinions - but having different morals is another story.
talk to yourself the way you talk to your friends. you’ll find that sometimes, we’re kinder to others than to ourselves.
stop letting anyone else define things for you - your happiness, success, love. people have different lives than yours.
don’t let other people make you feel bad about your hobbies and all the things you love. you’re not performing for anyone if you really, really love them.
grief comes in waves and sometimes it’s a tsunami. yes, you can try to learn how to ride it. but other times, you can let it just swallow you whole - feel the pain. it’ll pass.
friends come and go. be grateful for all the time and love once shared.
nothing good ever comes out of your mind or your heart after midnight. better to just hold your pen and write, than to hold your phone.
there’s nothing wrong in changing your mind about certain things - especially if it’s for the better.
you can love someone and still feel like you never know them completely.
there are some things better left unsaid - but if you’re hard-headed like me, you will end up blurting it out anyway and realize that it’s not so bad.
it’s never wrong to voluntarily pluck yourself out of a situation that doesn’t add value to your life.
don’t let the fear of getting embarrassed or messing up hold you back from trying something new - how else are you supposed to find out whether it’s for you or not?
you can share a lot of things publicly and still be able to keep a lot of the things going on in your life privately.
picking up a book and spending time on hobbies are the obvious better choices instead of picking up your phone.
you are made up of all the little things you’ve experienced, a huge puzzle of pieces from parts of people who you love(/d) and have love(/d) you. you will always end up being changed no matter how brief the encounter is.
unlearning is as difficult as learning things - but it sure is worth it.

i didn’t really have something clever to end that journal entry. but let me end this post by saying that it took me yearsss to actually realize and learn the things i’ve written above.if you’re currently or ever at a point in your life where you feel stuck and everything just seems so bleak, know that i was in that same spot five or six years ago. a lot can happen - don’t rush things. you don’t have to have it all figured out all the time immediately. there’s no fixed timetable for everyone. anyone who tells you you’re supposed to know everything once you reach a certain age don’t even know what they’re talking about.

heck, i’m already 33 and i’m more than happy to admit that i still don’t have it all figured out. and that’s ok. because i know when i’m finally ready for whatever “it” will be, i will have been equipped with all the things i need. i’m pretty sure you will too. x

i need to get off of my desk and go to sleep,

rae

Guess who forgot they had Substack?

👩🏻‍💻 Rae — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 03:45:37 GMT

I’m hopeless - the first chance I get to throw in a Taylor Swift lyric, I shamelessly grab it and put it in the subtitle. I had all this great comeback intro about my return and the last minute, I decide to just do this instead. *drags drafted intro to the trash bin* Anyway…

Hi. You’re probably wondering why you’re getting an e-mail or a notification from me. To help jog your memory: this is a newsletter I decided to create in November of 2022 back when I was unemployed and wanted to get back into writing - if you want to reread that, here’s the link. Since then (and up until June 2023), you probably subscribed… and then, well, silence. Not that I expected you to sit around eagerly awaiting a newsletter from me. If this were a house, it’d be a haunted one by now, covered in cobwebs and mold from neglect.

I’m coming clean and confessing that title is a lie. I never really forgot about it. I even had the app on my phone but I just wasn’t in the proper headspace and felt like I never was since my last post. It was a very emotional one and part of me found it difficult to follow it. That, and also because I mentioned in my first post that I didn’t want to pressure myself on the frequency of updates for this so it won’t feel like a chore, I never bothered reminding myself to write new posts. But also, everything was crazy the past two years I barely even used a planner. I did attempt to come back in three separate occasions, but in true ADHD fashion, I didn’t write those down or put a reminder for myself to see it through. Or well… I did write them down but kept moving them. Until lo and behold, it’s 2025. :) How lovely.

It’s a bit crazy I felt I wanted to come back at a time when a lot of people are flocking here to monetize their writing. I knew from the get-go that Substack was mainly a publication with paid subscriptions but I never expected even some of the content creators I follow to start their own now while I abandoned mine. And then you have me… dusting off my corner of the internet to… ramble about life. Feels on-brand, honestly.

That’s basically it - I just wanted to say I’m back. This year, I’d like to be more intentional about writing here. I would like to say that I just want to keep myself busy and this gives me the chance to exercise my brain but in reality, I just felt this yearning to write - same as I did back when I started this. So here I am. As with all the personal projects and hobbies I’ve started, I hope I can keep this up.

And now we come to my favorite part…

Rae’s Currently List

Watching: Severance. Finally started after letting it sit in my watchlist forever. I’m hooked!
Reading: I haven’t started anything yet. I’m planning to get back into reading this year. I will let you know in my next letter what I decided on.
Thinking about: the ube crinkle cookies I made. I’m going to go grab another one once I hit post.
Listening to: my Lauver playlist: currently playing as I finish this is While You Were Sleeping
Hyperfocusing on: finalizing my goals for my first 12-Week Year in 2025

This currently list is never going away, btw. :) That’s it for now - I’m saving the “catch-up recap” for the next letter (or two).

Do-do-dooing my night away (please listen to Laufey’s Dance With You Tonight so this closing doesn’t seem weird),

Rae

Of Grief: Year Two

👩🏻‍💻 Rae — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 23:21:26 GMT

I don’t know when I stopped writing to and about you in length - but it seemed to be something I decided to do subconsciously - still quite uncertain. Maybe I lost my way around words a few weeks after the first month - my brain exasperated coming up with all the possible words just to describe how I was feeling - what I was going through. Or maybe it was dealing with my diagnosis of depression - my psych putting me on medication and so the feeling of anguish seemed like it diminished on the surface. Or perhaps it was because it seemed to me that nobody wanted to read about pain and how dare I rain on their own parades of positivity and happiness - how careless of me to put out these raw, unsolicited emotions and thoughts on display to people who have lives of their own.

I was so vocal about how devastated I was when you passed away and felt like I’ve used up all the words synonymous to sadness, pain, and grief. I poured my heart out to friends and family who reached out and already went through the situation I found myself in. But there was a nagging feeling of always having to tiptoe around most for fear of dragging down their moods. So I kept it in and tried to cope with it by myself or with Mum and Ting. I did a pretty decent job, I’d like to think.

My therapist told me yesterday that sometimes, the pain we feel when we lose someone we love isn’t always about just grieving for the loss, whatever form it may be. Sometimes it’s grieving what you pictured your life out to be had that loss not taken your loved one away.

My heart was filled to the brim with regret - it still is now - thinking of all the experiences I will never get to share with you. Of all the music we will never make, all the songs we will never sing. Of all the things I will never even have the chance to give you. And even though we always used to say “I love you”, I still feel like I never said it enough.

In ordinary days, I listen to all the songs you used to sing or play. Watch videos of you or us sometimes. I close my eyes and I can see you singing your heart out, playing skillfully on your guitar. I let the tears flow because I need it.

In my dreams, you’re well and alive. We talk, we sing, we laugh. It’s like you never left - and then annoyance creeps in when I hear my alarm. I hit snooze or stop and the sadness seeps in because it feels like losing you all over again.

You see, even in the most mundane of days, I allow myself to lament. But today… today isn’t like any other day. Today marks the second year of not having you in my life and it already feels like a lifetime. I clasp my hands and cry my heart out in prayer because I need all the strength God can bless me with to endure more years of this.

There’s no one-way street to go through the stages of grief. I keep the faith and hope for the best and take each day at a time. I keep springing back and forth to bargaining and depression when I thought I’m already at the point of acceptance. Grief is very contrary to what a lot of people say. No, it just doesn’t get better. Grief is synonymous to ocean waves. It comes and it goes - and you don’t have a single clue when. Sometimes the waves feel like they’re going to drown me, sometimes I feel like I can just ride it out and move forward… until the next giant wave comes.

June used to be a very happy month for me. But now, when June comes, it feels so heavy. Father’s Day and the anniversary of your passing a few days apart? It’s a two-fold hit and the days in between just isn’t enough to recuperate. I find myself always torn between assuring myself that you’re happier, doing better… because why couldn’t it have been happier… here? Better, here. I ask a lot more of those questions and remind myself that it can’t be undone and that whatever the answer is, it’s nothing my feeble human mind can ever comprehend. That life is fleeting. And no matter how painful it is and how short the years seem to be, I’m just grateful the Lord appointed you to be my father. That I got to experience the kind of love you had to give - it wasn’t perfect, but it was unwavering. In moments where I feel so heavy-laden, I see your smile and bear in mind that there was nothing you wanted more in life but for our family to be happy. So I have to be. I need to be.

Today and on all other days, I let myself grieve what could’ve been, would’ve been, and should’ve been. But know that there is also hope and love in my heart. Right in that big, gaping, you-shaped spot that will never get better. I’m just learning to live around it.

I love you, my jolly old soul. I’ll spend the rest of this life missing you.

Of Recent Fixations

👩🏻‍💻 Rae — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 01:12:06 GMT

First of all… wow. Twenty-four subscribers. That’s fricking cool. When I started this Substack in November of last year, I was expecting at least only 5 people to sign up for it. I initially only wanted for this to stay hidden so I only gave the link to whoever said they were interested (decided by a very prestigious decision-making body aka an Instagram poll lol) but now I’m more comfortable with sharing and also people stumbling upon it. So yeah, thank you for taking interest in my little hub in the world wide web and getting your dose of me - because hello, this is called A Cup of Rae. Ha. So much for introductions - I’ve never been really good at it.

I was in the mood to write something today so I figured I’d share with you what I’ve been hyperfocusing on for the past few weeks - the very list of reasons why I haven’t been consistent with my Substack entries the past month and a half.

Hyperfocus, if you’re not already familiar with it, is “a common — but confusing — symptom of ADHD… the ability to zero in intensely on an interesting project or activity for hours at a time. It is the opposite of distractibility, and it is common among both children and adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.” Definition from Additude Magazine. This is a word that’s being used abundantly in the productivity and career/professional community but fellow ADHDers take this to greater heights and have a very personal love-hate relationship with it.

I’ve been including a segment in my Rae’s Currently List since the birth of this newsletter so I’m pretty sure you’ve encountered the word here at least once (I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you’ve at least read one entry all the way to the end *wink*).

Now that’s out of the way and I’m certain you have the context of what this is about, here are five things I’ve been hyperfocusing on the past few weeks! Just a warning that it’s all about to get so geeky after this point. 🤓

Building better financial habits

This is on top of the list because I’ve been doing a lot of subtasks centered on this. To name a few:

learning how to build my credit score (thankful my job has made me very much aware of how important credit scores are here in the US)
familiarizing myself with personal finance vocab
comparing options for a better way to save money (enter the past few weeks I’ve been looking up the best rates for a High-Yield Savings Account (HYSA))
looking for books to read about money management, building wealth, and anything else related to it
subscribing to podcasts related to finance
following personal finance accounts on Instagram
starting to research more about investments

Another thing that I’ve been working on is building my own finance tracker in Coda. I’ve been working on this the past two days so I can minimize the apps I have on my phone and I didn’t want to do it in Excel (trust me, I tried it before, it just felt so boring and tedious - my brain craves dopamine). Initial version I have right now can automatically add my subscriptions, bills, and some initial budget items I have every pay period - without me having to do anything else aside from setting it up the first time.

WIP for my Pocket Wallet/Money Hub - IDEK what to officially call it yet.

Personal Knowledge Management System

I’ve been trying to work on this for the longest time since I find out about Building a Second Brain from one of my close friends. During the months that I was unemployed last year, I’ve already brainstormed a bit on how I wanted to approach this and even bought Tiago Forte’s book to dig deeper - but Coda kind of ruined it all for me - in a good way, I guess? Coda is a very powerful tool that I discovered while trying to look for Notion alternatives because the latter was blocked on our company laptop and I needed a tool for taking notes and work organization. It can handle calculations and automations more in-depth than Notion without having the need to sign-up for an additional service. Both have its pros and cons so I’ve decided to still keep Notion. I’m still trying to figure things out and I’ve been spending a lot of my time obsessing over that. I really want my second brain to be more functional and I want to be more intentional in the way I approach this - no offense to a lot of Notion content creators but I just want more than habit trackers and simple planners with the complexity of my neurodivergent mind.

Automation

Related to both items above - I’ve been digging deeper into automating some of my day-to-day stuff not only for work but for my personal life too. The automation I’ve done for adding what I call “Daily Defaults” in my work planner and creating my own time tracker with timesheet has saved me a large amount of time over the past two months. I’ve tried to dabble with automation two years ago but as I said above, Notion wasn’t really built so much for it so I had to look into Zapier and Integromat and both required separate subscriptions and that wasn’t something I really wanted to prioritize then. With Coda, I’ve been trying to explore how I can use it outside of work since most of the processes I’ve set up in it are more work-focused and all the integrations/packs I need are already included in my subscription.

Workspace Set-up Daydreaming

Aka wishlisting. Aka basically me adding to my Notion Inbox all the things I see that I want for my new workspace set-up. We’re about to move to our “own” place soon - quoting and unquoting it just because I used own in the context that it will only be me and Karl soon but the place isn’t technically owned by us but my father-in-law’s. We’re going to live there while we save up for a house of our own eventually! (I don’t really know why I felt the need to explain it but then again, of course I added a side comment to this because I can’t focus on just one trail of thought). The past few months, I’ve seen a lot of pretty, nifty items but when the time comes, I’m going to sort through my Inbox and just decide which ones are necessary and reasonable for me. I’m just so excited to have a bigger table eventually - I’m getting used to my current set-up right now but I still feel limited in terms of space.

Taylor Swift

Buying merch, reading up on Reddit and Facebook threads about theories for the easter eggs since Midnights’ release, obsessively reading up on the possibility of when Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) will be released… I mean - at this point, almost everything on my feed is about Taylor Swift. I’ve been trying to search for better seats for the Eras Tour on May that we’re going to - very hard to do when all the scalpers have monopoly over almost all the ticketing apps/sites available. The opening night videos on Tiktok just made me more excited for the concert and prompted me to have a Taylor Swift only listening spree since last Friday. I reconnected with my Swiftie side since the pandemic and I’m just really grateful I get the chance to see her live soon!

Rae’s Currently List

Watching: Criminal Minds S13; and at this very moment, Olivia Rodrigo’s Tiny Desk concert for the nth time
Reading: Kindle: The Simple Path to Wealth, JL Collins; Audiobook: The Atlas Siz, Olivie Blake
Thinking about: what I’m going to talk about next - I really enjoyed writing this entry!!!
Listening to: The Eras Tour playlist I made from the opening night setlist
Hyperfocusing on: updating my finance tracker in Coda right now

Welp. That’s a wrap! I know I probably geeked out too much above but I just find joy in these things and sharing it with others - I hope you learned a thing or two from today’s entry!

Now going back to playing with Coda,

Rae

So What Did I Miss?

👩🏻‍💻 Rae — Sat, 21 Jan 2023 05:25:53 GMT

I can’t think of a better way to start this than to share with you what my Monday mood was this week. Hint: It’s the title of this entry.

I’m a working girl again after six months of being unemployed. *insert all the yays here* I started work on Monday - still the same company I’ve been with for the past eight years and I’m just glad to be back. Not only am I back, but I was offered a higher position now than what I had when I left. I won’t get into too much detail about all the legalities and the process of how I finally got my work permit - trust me, it’s so tedious. I’d skip it myself IRL if I could.

Karl was so concerned about what I was going to use for work because my start date was the 16th and my laptop wasn’t here yet the week before that. I told him I could use my iPad just in case it arrives late and the surprise on his face was a mix of shock and confusion. For the past five and a half years we’ve been together, he never really understood what I did for work and the fact that I could do work on my iPad baffled him.

My laptop got delivered two days before my first day. Things still worked out in the end - as they always do.

To be quite honest, I had mixed emotions on my first day and coming back to work in general. One of the things I’ve had a love-hate relationship with over the years is change. Me being gone for six months meant that there was a possibility for major changes while I was away so I felt that I had to be quick about catching up. And since technically, I wasn’t a new employee, there was no need for the usual onboarding and training. I had to go through documents and ask around what the changes were. It was actual work right away by the second day. The impostor syndrome immediately kicked in when I felt lost without any assigned tasks or projects - Boss trusts me too much sometimes he figured I’d know what I need to do without him telling me. I went through all the internal initiatives I left instead. On Tuesday, I felt, “Shouldn’t I be doing more?” (Response from my Friday self: Are you for real??? You asked that question on your second day?)

By mid-week, I was slowly picking up pace and had a definite to-do list. The thing that both overwhelmed me (in a good way) and added to the pressure I was already feeling was the positive feedback a lot of people (colleagues and clients alike) expressed when they found out I was back. I was showered with joy and compliments like I won the lottery or something. Two compliments stood out to me because they came from executives in our company. Our SVP of BizDev & Sales told me, “Regina, your reputation precedes you. A lot of guys on the sales team are very happy you’re back.” On my last call for today, the VP of Product Management said, “No, we haven’t really met. But Regina, I’ve heard only great things about you.” when he was asked if he knew me.

After I closed my laptop at 5:15PM this afternoon, I was hit with a surge of realizations. I realized that all the things that I’ve done over the past years were not in vain. That even though it took me six years of working before I figured out what I wanted to pursue as a career, it was never late and I made the right choice. That the way I worked spoke for itself even when I felt like I wasn’t good enough. That I should just lock up that imposter syndrome in a box and throw away the key. That my greatest enemy, is in fact, myself and I should try to see myself from the perspective of others instead of wallowing in self-doubt. That I should remember that even if my tendency to be hard on myself is still very strong, I can snap out of it faster, manage it better, and remind myself that I should be kinder instead. And even if I struggled with being unemployed over the past six months because of the independence I’ve had over the years, it was a much needed break from working straight out of college. I had the chance to do more self-introspection and intention-setting on how I wanted to approach work once I get my work permit. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in the past, I already learned countless lessons.

I’m overflowing with emotions right now. Hopeful for the kind of life that Karl and I can finally start building. Excited about what this year has in store for me in terms of work. Eager to just grow and learn more in life and in work. Inspired to accomplish goals I’ve set for this year. And just extremely grateful that the Lord always works things for good (Romans 8:28).

So, yeah. I think my first week back to work went pretty well. “It’s as if you never left.” as one of my colleagues put it. ☺️

Rae’s Currently List

Watching: have been pretty busy, but we watched The Last of Us on Sunday - it’s a good show!
Reading: Kindle: Stop Calling Me Beautiful, Phylicia Masonheimer; Audiobook: Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard, Tom Felton
Playing: Nope - still haven’t touched my Switch lol
Thinking about: what headphones I’m going to buy after I get paid ha ha
Listening to: A Year in the Bible with Daily Grace; my Of 2023 playlist
Hyperfocusing on: Coda - more of this on a later entry

Something totally unrelated — I am not on Twitter anymore because of the third-party service issue over the past week that has got to be one of the most disrespectful things I’ve seen a big company has done but this newsletter is still connected to that for sentimentality’s sake. So now that I can finally relate to work memes again and have nowhere to randomly share it, I’ll end with this.

I need to log off and get some well-deserved rest,

Rae

Hello, World!

👩🏻‍💻Rae — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 19:46:16 GMT

I was on the drive home with my mother-in-law this morning when I suddenly had an idea of wanting to start a blog again. We were laughing about something my husband said earlier and how he was so worried about my appointment today despite it being a minor one. I don’t know why I decided to start with that but that’s actually what happened this morning and the first sentence is why we’re here.

If you know me (and I’m assuming you do because I’m only sharing this Substack thing first on Twitter and next to anyone who answers yes on my Instagram Poll - both of which are set to private), I had a personal blog I started back in 2011 but I shut it down in 2018 because I just felt like doing so. I was at a point where I just didn’t want to talk about my life publicly anymore (nuks, artista yarn?!?) and writing just felt like a chore. This isn’t the first time I thought about creating a personal newsletter though. When I was on the verge of wanting to start a Tinyletter, I just found out it was already shut down… or it merged with Mailchimp or something… and I was too lazy and not that 100% decided to research more about it. So yeah, that idea went just as fast as it came.

Thinking about it some more, one of the main reasons why I wanted to go back, created this Substack account 2h after, started writing this first post 5 minutes after deciding I’m going to name this thing “acupofrae” - is because I just miss writing. I used to write 5-8 blog posts in a month, create brain and emotional word dumps on my now-defunct Tumblr, write stuff on paper almost every day - heck, I almost considered it as a career before. I have always loved writing and somehow I just lost touch with it and only find myself writing when I feel an overwhelming want to do so.

The more I dwell on the main “why” of what this is supposed to be, I think about the fact that as you know (again, I’m assuming you do lol), I just recently moved to a new country and most of my friends and family are on the other side of the world aka the Philippines. Time zone difference is a monster - I should know after being tied to a job for 8 years with clients mostly in the US and Europe and being in an LDR for five years - and so sometimes I feel like I can’t always talk to my family and friends any time I want to.

I completely acknowledge the fact that I have never been good at maintaining friendships or any other relationships - platonic or not - over the years (I can expound on this some more in a later e-mail) and me not feeling the need to talk to friends every day is a proof of that. I can’t blame the pandemic and the lockdowns related to it. I know they weren’t the only culprits over the past two years but both of them just made my already bad social battery worse - it made me more isolated and exhausted that sometimes trying to start a conversation seemed to be a daunting task no matter who I needed or wanted to talk to. But for some reason, I can talk (or type) on and on and on about anything I’m interested or passionate about - while trying to just imagine I’m talking to someone. *pretends to look at an imaginary camera like Jim Halpert* I guess, by creating this newsletter, this is me trying to make that into a compromise and make up for the bad trait I am aware I have when it comes to starting and keeping conversations.

So what’s this thing going to be? It’s just whatever I want it to be.

As the newsletter name suggests, it’s me just rambling about anything that I can think of - Rae’s Ramblings. Life updates? Maybe. Random prose? Or even poetry? Wow, sana sipagin. Some reflections? Maybe a list of things I’m grateful for. Or magrarant lang ako sa inyo kasi hindi ko nagustuhan ‘yung movie na pinanood ko (siyempre joke lang kasi ayoko ng spoiler). TV show, book, podcast recos? Basically, chop suey lang talaga. It’s just going to be a reflection of how I am IRL - a chaotic, moody, and talkative person with a penchant for a lot of things. No guaranteed schedules so that I won’t feel like this is a chore but I’ll pop up in your inbox once in a while when I feel like writing - no need to worry about spammy e-mails.

Moving on from that veeery lengthy intro and before I end this, I’m adding a currently list I used to do a lot when I was blogging (with some slight tweaks). If anything, this will probably be a regular thing here and I’m going to add more small segments eventually.

Rae’s Currently List

Watching: Paramore 2022 live videos on Youtube - I really want to see them live next year.
Reading: Kindle: The Meaning of Marriage, Timothy Keller; Audiobook: Maybe In Another Life, Taylor Jenkins
Thinking about: what digital planner I’ll be using for next year
Listening to: Apple Music’s Phoebe Bridgers Essential Playlist
Hyperfocusing on: building my own personal knowledge management system

And here’s a quick photo while I’m writing this (and to prove that complimentary close is not a lie):

I may include more photos eventually when I feel like sharing some more. But for now, I need to end this because this post information thingy in Substack’s text editor is telling me this is already going to be a 5-minute read.

If you reached this part right here, I’m guessing you’re either my Mom or my sister, or you’re just a really great friend who’s genuinely interested in my life and I appreciate you. I promise, not all the e-mails I’m going to send are going to be as long as this one. ;)

Sipping on a 350ml glass of water because I want to reach my water goal,

Rae