The Philosophy of Composition

It's been awhile since I last checked in. But I guess that's just how life works sometimes.

The last month or so has been mostly spent at home, but the return to office kicked back in, and admittedly, I was glad to see my coworkers since the stay at home mandate because of the energy crisis in the Philippines.

I appreciated getting to stay home and save on money. It also let me keep a close eye on my Dad, because the heat index has swung within the range of 33°C as of last week and 45°C projected for this week. I've already had coworkers rush family members to the hospital for heat stroke and that's made me decide that I don't care if my electric bill shoots up this month. I'll make it work somehow.

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In other news, I turned 41 earlier this month. It's still a little wild to think that I've been on this earth for over 4 decades. Admittedly, it got me thinking about what my mom must have felt like when she turned 41 the year I turned 16.

I've been thinking about her a lot since last year; almost daily. November 2025 was her fourth year death anniversary and the grief hasn't gone away, just changed shape, I guess.

I wish she was still here. I wish she could see the certificate of registration hanging on my wall now; the one issued by the National Book Development Board. No book yet, but I had enough historical artifacts, like the anthology I was included in back in 2010, to get through the door. Oh yeah, and my manuscript. For the chapbook. Which I've decided to push back in terms of it's launch because I want to build credentials first.

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I dug up an old folio from my senior year at St. Scho. The writing is... very rough. Like I had so much to say and it just kept on spilling out of my head onto my fingers. Back then, I think I was definitely still wrestling with a chip on my shoulder.

I've never shared this with anyone before, but after 1998, I'd opted out of wanting to apply to to a conservatory for college. As young as thirteen, a high school freshman, I already knew that my piano studies wouldn't put food on the table. It was easy to dismiss it as me being a teenager at the time, but after looking through old journals and old writing, I know myself well enough that when I don't talk about something that was clearly still a huge part of my day-to-day, it's a sign that I was distancing myself.

So yeah, I remembered this one moment in junior year when someone asked me why I wasn't considering applying to UST. I must have looked so strange to them. Because between the ages of 6 and 15, the only thing my batchmates knew about me was that I had a schedule that was so structured, that the moment the bell rung I would trek over to the Music Department. And it was never something I resented because one hour every Tuesday and Thursday meant sitting in a tiny room and the piano keys under my fingers.

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I've gone to bed lately, wishing that I could show Mom what I've been up to.

Been taking a chance on submitting my poetry to lit mags and international journals despite feeling really late to the party. I only learned over the last couple of months how the rules in the global literary scene changed post-2020. Doors that used to be firmly closed, rooms that were exclusive and tied to geography are now open to someone like me.

The first win for this year was submitting (my smart band warning me that my HRV was high) to The Eunoia Review and learning in under 24 hours that the editor accepted it. It didn't feel real until my poem finally went up last month.

And now, I just keep on submitting, hoping that the poems I've picked out are a good fit based on the research I put into the vibe of the journal they're meant for.

( Here's the poem, btw. It's very different from my usual work. )

It's... not easy. It honestly feels like failing when the rejection comes in—and I've already experienced my first wave. The first one sent me down a really bad spiral for about three days, where I had to white-knuckle reporting for work and write for other people. And then I washed my face, figuratively put my big girl boots on again and dug my heels in.

If this is what being a poet in 2026 is like, then I've already mentally prepared myself. I'll cry, I'll crash out in a chat with my best friends, I'll write the wins down here (because Dreamwidth has seen wins, fails, records of my teenaged angst years; as a notebook that never runs out of leaves).

I had to walk away from the performing arts. I'm not going to do that to writing.

That's it. That's the update.