Happy Pride 2026. There’s no parade nor a celebration to honor the people who paved the way for all the things I have had to enjoy today. All this author and poet wants is to pay it forward through words and stories centering on the people who live at society’s fringes. They are the disenfranchised, the invisibles, the ones who didn’t matter. They do matter. All of us matter.

When the body says rest, you rest. I’ve been playing tennis MWF then pickleball TTh almost every week in the past month. I try to take naps during the days to refresh before stringing words into stories. Of course, I eat junk food and sweets. I don’t diet as much as I can and I can feel it every now and then. With all the maintenance for high blood sugar, cholesterol, high blood pressure and at times, gout, SLEEP is also important in healing oneself. Also, another therapy is to wake up in the morning, do some Tai-Chi and walk Macjoe to do his dainty needs and to catch the early rays of the sun, smell the dew-dropped flowers by walking around this subdivision, as well as meeting the other furparents who walk their babies out and about. I also try and work on the yard, and have been thinking about growing plants I see on youtube. Though these are all about the senses, I can’t leave learning and using the brain to get motivated. Hence, it is still important to rest and sleep when I can.

My short story book is still up and running. Now am on the revision phase, after the beta-reading phase, then it is off to the editors to do their work. It’s happening on a turtle’s pace because I am either on writer’s block, or that laziness crept in or just uninspired, and there’s just a lot of things going on. There’s no excuse, mind you, for these has been an ongoing writing project since I finished Creative Writing school in 2019. It is 2026 already so spank me! I deserve it. I’ve at least 12 shorties at the moment and I am still writing at least two more. The pages will be around 200+ and the words may total close to 75000+….

I miss playing scrabble. I can’t find anyone to play with here. The ones I thought I’d rely to meet on a weekly basis aren’t all that – reliability and word power. We normally don’t play by the rules, though we should. We put in the tiles, and if we were stuck, we look at the dictionary. There’s no challenge if there is such a word at all. This is easier to learn about new words.

There’s just one thing I need to say about the two souls who met their untimely death on a useless orientation sports ritual. No matter how much spin one uses to reframe this incident, it won’t make those two beautiful human beings who tried to go after their dreams and families’ lives better ever come back. Obviously one questions IF there is any ounce of protracted conscience from the establishment’s authorities. It happened on their watch. They have to be accountable. You think prayers and paying for all of the dead’s siblings’ tuition will be enough? JUSTICE DELAYED is JUSTICE DENIED.

Why and how do parents manage to let their children bring guns to school? They are still under their parents’ purview. I am deeply saddened on this state of affairs. RIP to those who had died and my sympathies to those who had have to bear the trauma of this event all their lives.

I try not to blow my car horn everytime a slow moving vehicle is in front of me while I am in a rush to go somewhere. But there are just some instances where JUST I cannot help it. Yeah, I get that these drivers are either unaware, don’t care, or just too full of themselves that everything has to revolve around them and nothing else. I get that these drivers are making a living, slowing down to be able to catch a fare here and they but do they have to park in the middle of the street to let their fare in or out? I take a few deep breaths, honk the horn and be over with.

That June 8, 2026 earthquake was traumatic. At a magnitude of 7.8, that’s one for the history books. Yes, I am fully aware that there are three trenches that landscape the beautiful island of Mindanao. Underneath this land of coconuts, beautiful beaches, stunning flora and fauna, are so many fault lines that intersect one another that it is hard to predict where and when fate becomes surreal. Though having been used to the ground shaking back then in California, the ones here in the Philippines are at a higher state of traumatic experience. I now feel hyper sensitive to movement when I sit on my throne at the bathroom, look down from my balcony and terrace, and/or even the slight wisp of wind blowing through my ears. Might need to have this checked by my physician…

Yet, thank you god for giving us another day to live, another breath to breathe, and to smile and enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Enough Said!

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