2021: A Year for Discovering New Things, Cherishing the Constants, and Removing the Unnecessary

"For last year's words belong to last year's language, and next year's words await another voice. To make an end is to make a beginning."

This is a famous line by T. S. Eliot. The past year has been everything but predictable. A lot of things happened and a lot of other things didn't. Personally, I'm grateful that my family, friends and I are still alive after 2020. This 2021, I want to do three things that I think will be able to help me become a better version of myself.

Removing the Unnecessary

For most people, including my past self, cutting ties with people and habits is a very difficult thing to do. But as I have learned from the past year, my own sanity and peace of mind are more important than what other people will say.

Fake friends. I am embarrassed to admit this but having a lot of friends was one of the things that defined my self-worth before, even the number of my Facebook friends. Getting through the last quarter of 2019 and through 2020, I realized that only the people who care for me are the ones who should matter. And yes, I also unfriended a lot of my Facebook friends. Being connected to just few select friends also helps me to easily interact with them. Now, I no longer need to think who among my "friends" are available for lunch or dinner, badminton sesh, or just a nice chat over coffee. All I need is to simply reach out.

Toxic relatives. Those relatives who have always something to say about what I said, posted, bought, ate, and how I looked like. I don't need those kind of nagging and negativities in my life. So, to permanently shut their negativities out of my life, I decided to just stop communicating with them and just focus on my relatives who really care about me, not just because they could get something from me.

Too much screen time. Being alone in the middle of a pandemic has spiked up my screen time, be it on my phone, personal computer, and even TV. Marami sa atin ang talagang ito lang ang paraan para maka-cope up with the pandemic. In my case, ito lang ang pinaka-safe at pinakamadaling paraan to keep my sanity. But I think it has to be left in 2020. I can think of other things na pwede ko nang gawin this 2021, aside from playing badminton.

Cherishing the Constants

Being with people who are important to me and doing the things that I love are the most rewarding life experiences for me. This year, I'll make sure that I get to spend more time with these people and commit to get better at doing the things that I love.

Best buddies. Shout out to my constant buddies in lakwatsya, badminton sesh, at kain. You guys have always been my rock during the difficult times of my life. I cannot find the right words with the appropriate intensity to say how much I'm grateful to have you in my life. Basta all I can say is, I LOVE YOU ALL. Basta let's have more lakwatsya, game days, and food trips.

Sunday gameday. In the last few years, I've been playing badminton every Sunday since I already have a circle of fellow badminton enthusiasts. I'm committing myself to playing badminton at least once a week starting February, I just have to fix some things in my schedule for the first month of the year. Yes, I also plan to constantly play on Wednesdays. I want to improve further my skills in the court. Probably, I'll be watching more tutorial videos on YouTube and enroll in training camps.

Reading time. Lately, I've been struggling to finish a book in a month. In 2021, I'm allotting at least an hour a day reading a book. I still have plenty of unread books in my To Read shelves so I'll just focus on finishing all of them first before buying new books. I also want to publish my reviews of these books here on my blog.

Discovering New Things

I think I am a person who can be called an adventurer. Well, at least 'yan ang gusto kong paniwalaan. To a lot of us, a new year can offer a lot of things, the perfect time to start new things, and most of the time, just simply an excuse to do the things that we're not able to do in the previous year. HAHAHA.

Investing in stocks. Last year, I already started investing in mutual funds and saving for some of my other financial goals. This year, I want to invest in the stock market, at least those stocks that offer dividends since I'm not planning on trading stocks on a daily basis. My simple strategy is to buy 5 shares of three stocks per quarter for the next five years. Also, I'll sweep YouTube for the best investing strategies and probably be able to share them here.

Acquiring new skills. Professionally, I want to explore new avenues where I can gain some extra income. To be able to do this, I will enroll myself to free online courses offered by some universities abroad. And perhaps take advantage of the trainings that my current employer offers. I goal to have another income stream once I hit my 30s and acquiring new skills will pretty much pave the way to this goal.

Healthy cooking. This year, I want to focus on having more vegetables and fish in the dishes that I will cook and further explore recipes for chicken breast. Last year was more of a pasta year. Though I was able to cook and come up with variety of pasta dishes, I still feel that I need to do more to achieve a healthy cooking style.

I'm ending this goal setting here to make sure that I'll be able to focus on them and be able to master them in 2021. Here's to hoping that we'll all have an improved and productive 2021. Cheers!!!

My History of Loving Tea

"For someone like me who is living alone, stress and anxiety can come and go any time of the day. So, coping with them is something that I take seriously."

Some of my friends when they first met me asked how I was able to keep up with life while living alone. And my answer has always been as simple as "I find ways to keep myself grounded". Since my first job, I learned how to cope with stress and anxiety in a way that my body and mind can easily reconnect to my reality. One of my coping mechanisms is having tea while reading, writing, or doing nothing at all.

I started to have tea in my day-to-day life when a friend, from the university organization that I was once a member of and I talked about our morning and night routines. She told me that whenever she had difficulty falling asleep at night, she would drink at least a cup of hot Chamomile tea.

Also, that time was the start of the milk tea craze in my area, and my best friends and I used to hang out in different milk tea shops near our university. We even came to a point where we were researching different teas that could taste great together. We also had milk teas that represented the three of us. There were also instances, maybe three days before exams, when we would stay in one of our two favorite shops for at least two hours to compare and review our notes.

Before, I used to buy boxes of tea packed in individual bags but when I realized that those bags were just another waste in my bin, I decided to buy loose leaf packed in reusable tin and glass containers. I have a couple of online sellers from whom I buy my supplies. They have very good customer service and their teas are just as good as what I expect them to be. They even give me samples of the other teas that they sell. But for now, I'm enjoying Chamomile, Jasmine, Hibiscus, and Assam.

Whenever my friends go out of the country and ask me for something that I want, aside from the go-to "I LOVE" shirt and ref magnets, tea is always my answer. And yes, whenever I give gifts, most of the time, it has something to do with tea, either the tea itself or some tea wares.

The next things on my list that I want to do in my tea adventure are to develop food recipes that involve tea and to grow my tea. So watch out for that in this post and my coming posts.