My first foray into blog writing was in 2008 on MySpace. My writing was primarily to promote the record label my friends and I started. I decided to take the shotgun approach and write about any and everything that came to mind. I placed no premium on quality control. As a result, our modest following (family, significant others, and friends from high school) read unfinished short stories, half-baked political essays, and meandering streams of consciousness. 95% of what I wrote was terrible but at least I posted somewhat consistently.
A couple of years later, I moved on to a Blogspot. I like to think at that point my writing had modestly improved, if for no other reason than the simple fact that I had written a fair number of blogs by then. My writing went from terrible to slightly less terrible which is a big deal in my book.
After I graduated from college, I moved back to Lakewood into my mom’s house. She needed help with the bills plus I couldn’t afford to live on my own. When I wasn’t commuting from Lakewood to Seattle to my two different jobs, seven days a week, I tried to write.
Finally, after months of feelings of post-graduation stagnation, I decided to take the huge step of finally buying a domain name and start writing “professionally” or rather more professional than I had been up to that point. The topics I wrote about ranged from the complexities of race, public speaking, and current events. I put more effort into these blogs which really meant I proofread more and took a long time to find the right word for each sentence.
Then the blogs started drying up. I’d go years without writing anything. My website became a gym membership that was never used. A tinge of guilt would wash over me when I occasionally thought about how I was throwing money away each year renewing my domain name. But for some reason, I could not bring myself to write. So much time had passed, so much had changed in my life and the world around me, I became fearful to express my mind. I was no longer the person I was when I started my blog and I wasn’t sure how to venture forward.
Enter global pandemic.
Being quarantined for the past five months has afforded me plenty of time to evaluate my life. I want to work for myself. I want to create for a living. I want to share my art with the world. And in my heart of hearts, I know that writing will lead me to this deliverance.
A little bit about myself:
- I am a husband and father of two little boys both in diapers.
- I am a biracial Filipino American from Lakewood, Washington.
- I am in my second year of law school at SU.
- I have over twelve years of public speaking experience.
- In 2016, I gave a TEDX talk. Check it out here.
- I am left-handed.
- The corner three was my spot during high school basketball.
- I was a college dropout.
- I became an executive director at age 32.
- Ten years ago I would have never imagined I’d be where I am today. I wrote about it here.
- My American Revolution– a short memoir.
- My favorite food is pizza.
- I want to change the world.
- I’ve dedicated my life to self-improvement
- If I could have one super power, I’d want to heal people from simply touching them.