Hello there fellow Hivers! How are you doing today? I hope all is well with you.
Ahh, I miss writing that introductory greeting in my blog. It’s been a while since I published something here on Hive. My last post, almost a year ago, was about the unfortunate hacking of my funds when malware infected my laptop. Sadly, that's one of the reasons why I lost interest in posting blogs here. I felt that the fruits of my ideas, effort, and time just slipped through my fingers, which discouraged me from continuing what I used to do.
Today, I am gladly writing this blog after a long hiatus. To be clear, this decision to write again was not a result of a sudden urge to yap and earn from it; it took several months of thinking about how I would start again. In fact, for the past few weeks, I have been mentioning my plan to return to writing to 
Now, I will continue this blog by sharing a glimpse of my life in the past year of being inactive on Hive. Without a doubt, almost a year is a long time. In that span, a lot of things happened. If I were to summarize it, it would revolve around my partner, family, friends, academics, and self-improvement.
To begin with, let's talk about my romantic relationship. It's been a rough road, but I’m glad we have come a long way.
I love the way things have turned out for us. Despite the uncertainty that lies ahead, people who are special to us have accepted our relationship. For instance, my partner’s family, on both his mother’s and father’s sides, approved of our relationship. I also had the courage to confess to my mother that I’m in a relationship. At first, she didn’t agree with it, but over time, she’s slowly starting to show her support, and I am grateful for that. I really appreciate it. Although sometimes I feel she’s still hesitant, I understand since this is something new to her. Moreover, some of my cousins on both my mother’s and father’s sides also know about this. However, I’m still conscious of being open with them since some of my relatives, especially my father, still don’t know about us.
There is still a long way to go. Undeniably, it is a challenging yet exciting journey.
In terms of my relationship with my family, I feel more connected to them than ever. For example, I can talk to them about the things happening in my life, even the most unserious things. I can see that they’re trying their best to understand and make sense of it, and I appreciate them for that. 😂
Also, these past few months, we often traveled to different places. Just recently, we went to Ongpin and Chinatown in Manila. I believe these travels together gave us more opportunities to bond with each other.
Moving forward, I also became focused on academics. I enjoyed studying so much that I somehow got addicted to it. 😂 Sometimes, when I am not satisfied with my professors' discussions, I ask some of my friends if they have additional information about the topics so I can read about them. Actually, there was a point where I doubted the quality of education I was receiving because I felt that I was not challenged enough, lol.
Despite being a self proclaimed nerd, I have been able to build strong friendships. Who would have thought that someone who values education deeply would find people who share the same values and also love to have fun?
As you know, in movies, students who value academics often get left behind, have a boring college life, and become loners. But I am thankful to have friends who help me balance my college life. These people don’t take things too seriously and always find a way to alleviate stress. In fact, I can say that I have a perfect circle of friends. Just recently, we grouped together for our programming class and built an inventory system using C#. We successfully defended it to our panelists. Everyone did a good job and contributed to our project.
On another note, I also became fixated on improving and removing old habits that hinder my potential to better myself. I started first by changing my sleeping routine.
Next, I started to do some exercises, focusing on light cardio. I read in a medical journal that heart disease is becoming more common in younger people, and it might be explained by our sedentary lifestyle. Well, I still have a lot of goals to reach, and I don’t want to put my existing achievements to waste. It would be a waste of effort to die young, so just keep going and continue the fight.
Finally, I started building my skills since I realized that my hard skills aren’t that competitive yet. Especially in the IT field, competition is so strong that I need to show my future employers that I have a better edge compared to others.
Right now, I am focusing on web development, especially front-end development. I chose this field because I am interested in building and designing websites. This is perfect because I am also leaning towards learning graphic design. Front-end development and graphic design sound like a perfect match, right? 😂
On the other hand, aside from improving my hard skills, I am also working on my soft skills. These are also important for building my reputation at work. For example, hard skills are useless if you don’t know how to communicate your ideas with your teammates or organize your thoughts to build a plan.
Now that I shared these happenings of my life during the past months, from personal growth to academic pursuits and professional aspirations, I realize how much I’ve evolved and learned.
I believe that this new version of myself is better compared to before and I am optimistic and excited about the future challenges and opportunities that await.
Welcome back to blogging, I guess? Cheers!
