Category: Life Lessons

How To Follow Through With Your New Year’s Resolution

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Lilac Penafiel (@me.lykee)


I admit that I’m not the best person to give you tips on this because I’m not really the type to list down New Year’s resolution and stick to it. But I guess, as someone who doesn’t really stick to New Year’s resolutions, I can give you tips from my experience what worked for me.

Continue reading “How To Follow Through With Your New Year’s Resolution”


Not So Crappy 2020: Appreciating the year clouded by negativity

Covid-19 pandemic, bushfires, Brexit, natural disasters, political and government disasters. The year 2020 is the worst year ever. Lockdowns, quarantines, worries over job stability, worries about food depletion, being away from loved ones, our loved ones being sick or worse, losing them, it exhausted us until the very end. It’s constantly whacking us back to back to back.

And so, we wish for the year 2020 to end. It’s just a cursed year. We hope that 2021 will be better. It’s already the end of the year and I know that many of us are itching to get over it but why not reflect back into our 2020 and see the good things that we have overlooked, dumped underneath the worry. Also, since it’s such a depressing year, let’s look at our resources we can tap into to uplift us and make us smile.

I’ve made a simple worksheet for that. You can save the pictures or download the PDF file as you please and print.

Continue reading “Not So Crappy 2020: Appreciating the year clouded by negativity”



6 Non-Hospital Gigs I’ve Tried With My Nursing Degree

A medical course is a dead-end course.

A stranger I met once  told me this. He said that being a nurse like me or a doctor like his father, having a medical degree means you’ll just end up in a hospital with not much flexibility to branch in other areas. Somehow, he did eat up his own words when he told me his father was more of a businessman now (probably didn’t really realize it until then) and about a doctor colleague when he did his military training who taught him how to do an emergency chest decompression  in the field.

There are more opportunities for nurses that we didn’t realize until we resigned.

A chat with a friend led us to this realization. We both started and ended at about the same time in the hospital we worked at after serving for about four years. Post-resignation, we’ve worked on a couple of part time jobs, most of which are related to nursing. Huge income aside, we found sidelines wherein we still used our knowledge and practiced our skills as nurses. Continue reading “6 Non-Hospital Gigs I’ve Tried With My Nursing Degree”



Good Art Ain’t Cheap: Dissecting Never Not Love You from an Amateur Freelance Graphic Artist’s View

Disclaimer 1: No, this post is not a critique of the art as seen in the movie or of the movie in general. I don’t even know what point I am making in creating this post. Probably, to see the worth of freelancers. Or this might just be a random rambling.

Disclaimer 2: I guess I can call myself a freelance graphic artist because I earn from making digital art, so yeah.  I’m just speaking from an amateur’s point of view. So, if there is anything I’ve said about the freelance graphic design world that was in any way not true or partly untrue, then, please, enlighten me.

Watched Never Not Love You. Triggered by a scene where Joanne’s father sort of devalued Gio’s being a freelance graphic designer, living on just gigs. Had a conversation just recently explaining what exactly I am doing working as a freelancer currently. Piece these all together and here’s what I came up with. Continue reading “Good Art Ain’t Cheap: Dissecting Never Not Love You from an Amateur Freelance Graphic Artist’s View”


Three Life Principles

Adulting is hard. You are forced to navigate life and move forward even though you can’t really grasp the why and what for of it. It leaves you confused, distracted, and depressed most of the times.

I recently found my Mind Map notebook where I just jot down ideas and thoughts that come up in my head every now and then. One page is this:

I didn’t really force myself to establish life principles. I guess, as I went through life, I just tried to learn from past experiences and hope that I live my life meaningfully with these principles I set for myself as guide. Continue reading “Three Life Principles”


3 Benefits of Being a Transcriptionist

A transcriptionist, or a transcriber, is someone who listens to an audio and types whatever is being said. And no, you’re not typing while listening to a live call unlike what most people who asked me what type of job is it thinks. It’s a recorded audio. I think it’s a simple job, you listen, you type. Done.

I like being a transcriptionist because I think it’s a lazy job, and I have plenty of lazy days. But before any transcriber/transcriptionist reacts negatively to this, it’s just my thought, but of course, you know the truth about this type of work. It’s lazy but it’s strenuous—in the mind, eyes and fingers. Continue reading “3 Benefits of Being a Transcriptionist”


The Entire History of My Blogging

After years, I opened my Blogger blog again, not this one, but my very first personal blog. I guess I owe it to my subscription to Arriane Serafico‘s newsletter. No, that’s not an affiliate link you got there. I genuinely want to share the benefits of following her.

That particular newsletter is about the New Year. We usually write resolutions over and over and get depressed about not achieving our goals the previous year. What she encouraged to better do is to start with looking back at your 2017 wins.

I thought, then, aside from my longest long-term travel (just almost a month), creating this website last year was one of my top wins. Humans my age were buying gadgets, buying houses, creating families and babies. For my 27th birthday, I gifted myself a domain and started my blog. Continue reading “The Entire History of My Blogging”


Malaysia-Singapore-Indonesia Trip for 28 Days for less than P50,000 All In: Part 3- Bali, Indonesia

Note: I’ve written a comprehensive itinerary about the whole trip in the post 3 Asian Countries, 28 Days, and a P48K Budget All In.

I mentioned in my previous post that I met a Filipino couple back at a hostel in Singapore. We learned they just finished the Indochina leg of their trip with Malaysia as their last destination. They’d be traveling for three weeks all in all.

At the back of my mind, I was jealous. Indochina was really my goal so I can visit my friends in Laos but eventually, my travel plan changed. And wow! Three weeks! That’s something. Until I realized, oh, I was just one week in on my own travel schedule. Doing the math, I swallowed, the thrill of 20 more days of traveling hasn’t quite seeped in yet. Continue reading “Malaysia-Singapore-Indonesia Trip for 28 Days for less than P50,000 All In: Part 3- Bali, Indonesia”