Category: journal

on the first of May. I am always grateful to have been born on Labor Day, and grateful for a life I live contingent on so many hands who have built for me, as distant as the world tries to pull us apart.

• I don’t want to say I feel punished for being born in the Philippines because there is no truth in that—that identity is all that I am and all that I will return to. But on turning 26 and seeing how difficult life is and will continue to be, I wonder if all of it was necessary.
• I am distant from the world and owe everything to it, and nothing of it I owe.
• I continue to fail, and fail, and fail; I continue to disappoint, and break, and hurt people; I am weak, shallow, and incomplete.
• I love the dignity of work, and I want everyone to find a sense of sanctity in what they do.
• I think the relations most people have with other people is something I will never have, and that is ok
• I must continue giving all of my life
• I am so unfortunately a product of my environment: when the world is very cruel to me, I feel myself getting disgusting, small, virulent, snappy
• I was once reaching a lot towards vague gestures of the internet and poetic web because it is the place I spend all my time in and continue to spend time in, and I have always been making about the Philippines in the very uninteresting to other people way, but it is all I think about because the history of the internet is so entangled with the history of my people—the Filipino people, so obscured; and that any work about the internet will find its way and hand back to this, that the infrastructural and material is so embroiled in ours, and the Philippines and America in conquests have been so embroiled over the past century and the next century will be a continuation of that
• I saw my family members AI generating photos of my grandfather who died a few decades ago, and it has given me this sorrowful sense of urgency
• I am appalled at how the work of software is not seen as sacred, material, creative, etc. and I will live to change that
• I also celebrate 10 years of Developh this year, it has largely been a failure and I feel I am incapable of bringing people together always
• I’m considering hiring someone to make reels for me (jokingly)
• I have been a bit sad talking to some Filipinos here who have very immature, naive feelings about their Catholic faith, which has affirmed mine more
• It is kind of impossible for me to travel or whatever if not entangled in work or the logistics of sufficiency or existing
• I am the most unfundable person in the world
• I am in a crisis of legibility, I am in a crisis of isolation, I am in a crisis of meaning
• Is what I’m doing at this very moment part of my vocation?

On May 1st.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how my whole life has been about proving people wrong. I am not the type of person that people hold faith in, not since I was a child, nor in recent times. If there’s something that will mark 24 to me, it might be how mundane this casual cruelty has become to me: being completely unable to receive any type of sympathy, waking up with dread every single day, my hair falling out in clumps, proving myself in mundane tests, failing people who have been generous. Maybe this is the most crushing thing outside of the material cost of the world; I think it’s why I’ve grown particularly withdrawn, skeptical, and distrusting of people over the years. I don’t think my goal is to be that type of person (a subject worthy of belief)… but I’d like to be a believer. Not necessarily the type of belief that destroys the shell that I’ve rightfully drawn, but one that far deeper.

If there is anything I’d like to hold close this upcoming year, it is to be more faithful in all around me—perhaps so much so that it might be misconstrued as delusion. Yes—I’d like to be faithful.

24 felt like decades, but also strangely stagnant. I was thrusted into work with more agency, traveled more than I have in a long while (not truly for leisure–with the way my life is going, I don’t think I’ll have a real vacation until I’m 28), stretched my body with performances… defined more what I was walking towards. A few months ago, I was home again to show KAKAKOMPYUTER MO YAN at Art Fair, but I felt a bit sick coming back—like I had failed. It’s been strange and sinking ever since. At the same time, I’ve spent countless nights sick, delirious, loving the work, wanting to be excellent, believing in myself when no one else would… like this was knowing the world, and no one would take it away from me. Then, there were the few precious times also, where I could sit slowly with myself, and hear things pristinely, clearly; understand the smallness of my body but the wholeness of all I could have.

Less things matter; the few that do appear larger than life. I just had the biggest product release of my life (we launched Figma Sites, but still have much more to do)—I think it’s something I’ll look back at when I grow old, and see that I tried. I took a few days to breathe before throwing over a hundred sketches from the past year into a new work to screen at Tate on the 16th, and hope I get more time to build things that shape up to the thoughts and heart I have. Farther ahead? I’d like to get Developh to a meaningful place, start explorations for a potential company (!), continue developing my art practice with intensity & rigor to have a body of work, research, and thought to culminate in an exhibition (!!!!), be an excellent & sharp designer that knows what it takes to grow, handle some logistical woes with Visa/immigration status that have inhibited me for a few years, and continue with voracious, unfettered belief…