Category: Blog

After a decade living in Cebu City, my partner and I made a move to settle on the island.

The city that I love and cherish is not the same anymore after the pandemic.

The events I look up every weekend are no longer active, the places I hang out have shut down due to high operational costs, and most of my friends are now busy with their families or have relocated abroad.

Some remain the same, but most of the things I look forward to are no longer there.

Besides that, our rent is getting expensive every year.

Making a move to Bantayan Island is a practical decision economically and for healing my burnout.

It’s still my one week here as of writing this post, and I haven’t chanced to talk to any locals yet unless I go to the market to buy something, but it’s just transactional.

Let’s see how things will turn out after a month. Because, as much as I am keen to explore the island more, my unfinished work from the city is a hindrance to my exploration.

Soon, when I clear some of my work, here is the list of things that I want to do:

• Gardening – My partner’s land still has a space for me to plant and grow a garden.
• Cycling from Madridejos to Bantayan to Sta. Fe – As for someone who doesn’t have experience for a long ride, it would be an achievement if I could make it someday. Maybe I’ll start in Madridejos and go to Bantayan first.
• Go deeper with my SEO – When I rebuild this website. I don’t have a plan to be found online, as I was very clear that this site is only for my personal documentation, but I’m considering it now because I’m now open to connecting to the people with common interests and appreciate what I’m working on.
• Read more books – I haven’t updated my Book Notes project for a while, and it would be a waste if I discontinued it.

There are many projects and activities that I want to do here on the island, but I will keep it to a small list for now.

I’m personally writing this for myself, but I’m also hoping that this piece touches the hearts of anyone who finds it.

For many years, it’s been my desire to express myself in every possible ways; it could be in the form of producing a video, photography, or writing a blog.

I have no problem expressing myself in a blog because I know that only a handful of people may stumble upon this website, but expressing on my personal social media account? That’s an obvious no-no for me.

• I’m afraid that I might offend people
• I don’t want to look foolish in public eye, especially for the audience that personally know me
• It’s cringy

When I think hard enough of why I really want to express myself and share a piece of me with the world. I asked myself, what do I really want from this? Do I want the potential money or fame out of it?
I suddenly answered my question back. What I need is the community of enthusiast to something and influence in some way.

So, now that I’ve got my answer. Here are the things I did and will continue to do and expand to have a number of community that I want to belong:

• Be helpful: If you help, people will tend to help back or at least get inspired by you. They will also sometimes follow you, your advice, or maybe hear your point of view. If you are helpful and always deliver, you deserve a follow because people wants to know the way you take care of things.
• Checking on events: I usually check events on Facebook and find interesting things to attend too, and I also met some amazing people in the past events I attended. What I like about Facebook events is that they are localized and serve as a go-to platform for everything in the Philippines; however, you can also use other platforms like Meetup and Eventbrite.
• Creating a brand new social media account: This one is on my to-do list and I want to try it on instagram, threads, and substack. Having a brand new social media and not following you know is another way to express freely.
• Cold Email: Reaching out to blogs that I genuinely follow and thank them for writing and creating their blog, maybe, exchange ideas.

My ending thoughts
There are many ways to express and it doesn’t need to be loud, it can be chill, subtle, and messy. Because of that, I will plan to expand and update this post in the future or maybe, extend it to another post as I test and experiment along the way.

I first got the domain markymaligmat.com around March 2021 for the purpose of putting myself online and somehow introducing my web development service.

I’ve recreated, redesigned, rebranded, and shut down this website a couple of times because I don’t feel the voice in every reiteration I made. I’ve followed countless influencers, implemented the best practices, and watched a lot of YouTube videos to get inspiration on how I will design it if I’m going to offer my service, but then again, I don’t see my soul in every iteration.

This time is going to be different.

I’ll unapologetically write just for myself, add as many pages as I want, not beg for SEO or algorithms to work in my favor, add many layers of topics along the way, make it wild, improve as I go, and welcome imperfections.

Why do this approach?

• This is the only approach that I can imagine if I want to reminisce on previous events and maybe tell myself in the future, “I couldn’t believe that I wrote this before,” or “Did I actually support this stupid idea?”
• The commitment: Since I welcome imperfection and fixing things along the way on this website. It simply means that this personal project is going to be a lifelong commitment.
• Aside from what I’m doing for a living, I think it’s a good addition to my introduction if I say, “I talk to myself on a daily basis by updating my personal website.”
• Last but not least, I want this mini-project to be my helpful companion against doom-scrolling.