I feel like I haven’t been in the road in a while. Four months without a trip seems too long, but in a way, I still have my calendar full. I haven’t been writing too, just scribbles here and there, and every time I get this urge to sit and just write because I just can’t not do it. It comes with photographing too. I decided to rest last month, catch up on my reading and finish on my watch list. It’s a breath of fresh air, a resurfacing from when I was drowning myself in my schedule, but all the while I just wanted to hold on to my camera, look through the view finder, and look for something magical to put still forever. But the rest was much-needed, to recharge and rethink, a necessity to move on with a clear mind, so that’s what I did.

Now, I have another direction. Resting was the answer. This year, I’m going to rest and continue doing what I started and planned. Next year though, I will step up and be the grown up that my youth has prepared me for. 24 is still young, I know, but it is neither 21 nor 22, where I was more allowed to be the “younger adult” that I was. Next year, I will push through with my plans of joining the cruise ship industry. Traveling has been in my heart for as long as I can remember, and I swear to the stars that I’m sure it will not change even when I’m 70. It will be hard work or even more (long months of not being with family, the hardship living on your own brings), but with a camera on hand, even if I wear silly costumes, I know it will be rewarding. I wanted to pursue both dreams – travel and photography, and it was this idea that sunk in early last year when I was watching a National Geographic feature of a Filipino staff on a cruise. A traveling photographer, or in the industry term, a cruise ship photographer. This is my seed of a dream last year, and with the events that occurred the past months, it has bloomed into something definite that I really need to prepare for.

I’m daydreaming about it, wondering what will happen when it comes true. I will save up. For my parents, my siblings, our future, and for my travels. When the ship docks from port to port, I'll get a glimpse of what's in the foreign place, I can travel. I can build my personal travel itinerary by then. Then in my off months, I can bring my backpack and go explore Asia, even if I’ll be on my own. I want to tour Europe by train, on my own. I want to reserve a seat on a boat that will cruise through the New Zealand fjords that I’ve been dreaming of since I was 19. I want to see darkness that just lasts for two hours, to witness the auroras, to see the stars when it’s darkest in some snow-capped mountain. I want to meet likeminded people, travelers, and hitch with their itinerary. I want to save up for it all. I want to go, I want to live for it all, but I know it cannot fulfill unless I’m doing something too to support my family. I was born and raised Filipino; I can’t live only for my own. And so, this ideal job.

So what about what I started here? I’ve been reflecting on all this, and I’m sure it will not go to waste. I tried the wedding industry, but my heart isn’t there. It’s funny how I’ve explained it to my friend as “because I haven’t been in love yet.” As for events, it so-so, but sometimes I admit I have to drag myself into editing. Portraiture for young girls for their predebs is much more closer to my heart, and it is an option to pursue while I’m here – to be the girl photographer girls run to for expressing their hearts and states of mind in a picture.

I have no idea how it will be. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all a big dream. But I know my Dream Maker has my back. I even think that my being in the same industry as this one is His idea, with the training that I have despite my degree, and the people that I have in the workplace now. He is working in the background, and I’ll be lucky if I know 0.99% of it. He is in the future too, so I encourage myself not to fret.

I think to top it all, my life would be the same – having a main job, taking photos, and traveling. What. A. Grand. Life!

To my 23rd, you are the much-needed pause I’ll forever be thankful for.

And so I say to the universe, let me live this dream.

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

Paulo Coelho

“If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds.”

My Dream Maker, Matthew 6:25-26, MSG

Pictures while I was on a bus, April 2012, on my way home from the Mountain Province