Keeping up with Karissa

What now?

screen-shot-2016-09-25-at-12-24-14-pm — A screencap of the very first entry I wrote on this site.

I spent my Sunday looking through all 120 entries on this WordPress account and realized how different “blogging” was 6 years ago. I kept this website on private for a good half the time it was up but for some reason found a little nudge to put this back on the map today. What I’ll put in it (if ever I do put anything in it at all), who knows? But it sure feels nice to be back ~home, back in this space, back in the realm of confessional writer Kara.

Deleted a few of the more embarrassing entries, too (read: pretentious reviews and #OOTDs–que horror!), yet decided to keep the overly emotional ones just to remind myself of where I started… In Room 3D, with a dying HP laptop, a tolerant best friend, and a then-broken heart.

Anyone there?

I want to get back into the blogging habit (not that I was ever consistent) soon. With my new job, I feel like if I don’t start writing somewhere, anywhere– I might lose my touch.

Here’s to hoping I finally find what I want this blog to be.

When things aren’t what you thought they would be

Looking back at my past posts–on Facebook, G+, WordPress, Twitter (everywhere, really), I was pretty sure I’d end up teaching after college. Barely a few weeks after graduation, I found myself going to an interview, saying yes, and completely turning my back on the hopes of going back to being inside a classroom.

Two months into calling Makati my home, you could probably guess that I am nowhere near teaching. Heck, I’m nowhere near writing, even. This disconnect between my goals and dreams vis-à-vis where I am now (see also: perhaps where I need to be at the moment) troubles me constantly, but I know that I have to settle in and accept all these changes soon.

I’m happy, sure, but I just can’t shake the feeling of wanting to be in the academe.

This career thing is tricky business. Somebody help me!

2012: The year I’d like to remember forever

Francesca, Kara, and Gracie

On most days, I feel like I look pretty much like this… Hope to keep it up!

At Pier 39, waiting for the ferry to Alcatraz Island. L-R, Rachel, Deb, me, Natalia, Van, and Katie

“In a couple of hours, three to be exact, I will welcome 2012 with open arms and a will to let go. I will work extra hard into making this a possibility: no more hurts, no more stress — just a brand new me that I seek to find here, in the other side of the world. Since academics, work, and a few personal things were a difficult juggling act to balance this year, I will do my best to devote time to recharging and moving forward.

Resolutions are not for me, as I struggle to keep up with them in the first place. What I’m promising myself for 2012, though, is that I’m 100% committed to establishing a better foundation for my future—one that is not to be shaken and one that is driven by faith and by hope. Hopefully, love comes along, too—but until then, I’m quite happy with how things have and will turn out. All for the best, as they say. Hello, 2012!”

The excerpt above was from my last entry exactly this day last year. I wrote it in San Francisco (where I spent half of 2012) with a sense of helpless pleading–pleading for the year to be nothing but the best. After a taxing and emotionally challenging 2011, I did not think I would make it if I were to be thrown into another battle much like was it was. In a sense, one might say that I have given up, lost my fighting spirit. But to me, however, it was more of a submission to fate. I was done fighting. I did not want to fight anything in the coming year.

So I decided that this would be my outlook for 2012: accept, accept, accept, and everything will follow. It did. Continue reading “2012: The year I’d like to remember forever”