he was born this 20th of july which is literally only yesterday, and he's sharing the same birthday with my closest high school buddy. how awesome is that. aahhh i'm super thankful for all the blessings in life. huhu. i can't thank God enough. He is the ever merciful Father. ♡

and i actually intended this post to be some little life update, but quite honestly i couldn't really remember anything superb to share, except this adorable little boy. i mean, life has been really pretty much just a routine these days, especially that going out and traveling is still pretty restricted.. and as of writing, the covid cases in our area has not been getting any better yet. i am just praying for better days. always. and i hope and pray that we could thrive and get through this challenging time.

on another note, last weekend, i had the wonderful chance to meet up with a friend that i have not seen for quite a little while now and it was pretty much a very fun time catching up with her. the level of the community quarantine in our town was lifted from MECQ to GCQ. thus, we grabbed that opportunity to meet each other and made sure to stay in an uncrowded open space. good thing, there was this cafe that exactly fits our liking, except that they don't have a satisfying customer service. i mean, their staff were nice, but we were outside and it suddenly rained so hard but they never really bothered to offer us an umbrella to get inside the building. they didn't even checked on us, but they were looking at us the whole time from the inside while it was raining! mygoodness. there was a canopy tent, yes, but the downpour was really heavy that we were already getting wet. we were only able to transfer when the rain subsided a little. not to mention that the vicinity is a little wide and we were seated quite far from building. anyway, when we transferred, we saw some of our high school friends coming into the vicinity. what a coincidence! so then we caught up a little, and then had to spend time on separate tables far from each other sometime later because of the... well... you know it... covid-19 restrictions. it was a fun time, though. i'm praying for more weekends like this.

@marizdlcruz my saturday — 17th of july ✨ #fyp #vlog ♬ original sound - riz

so that's pretty much for this update. this is still some disorganized thoughts right here. just typing them down as they pop because i am only typing them down right now while at work, so i'll just leave it here for now. i'm hoping for a much planned and organized blog post or life update, but maybe we can reserve that for some other time.

and oh, before i forget, i am finally on tiktok, you guys! after resisting it for so long, i finally created an account on that app. haha! but i basically contemplated it for so long before i was able to come up with a final decision. since i kinda enjoy taking videos of my day to day life, and compiling them but couldn't keep up with the youtube thing, i thought... maybe i can do it on tiktok this time because tiktok only allows a maximum of 3-min videos. so yeah, in other words, the very main reason why i created my tiktok account was for me to upload some short vlogs there, and also other videos of the things that i love. i'm making it as some kind of another creative outlet and another little place for the memories that i collect. ♡ i am marizdlcruz there (which is pretty much my username anywhere ha!). i don't advertise my tiktok account anywhere except this blog, though, because i don't want it to be too known to everyone i know in real life. but if they happen to come across it by chance, that's pretty fine too! =)

hey, how's life for you? is there anything that is keeping you excited these days? life, in general, has been really hard but i'm grateful for the little precious moments of each and every day.

i've been making a little bit of some mid-year resetting since this month started. i wasn't satisfied of my first six months of this year because i was still pretty much like finding my way out of some maze. i was a little lost in the past six months -- lost in a way that i have been asking myself if i am doing enough to purposefully live in this earth, so i've been really pondering nonstop. i've been thinking of ways to make myself and my life better. i've been trying to build myself into an independent and strong woman who needs no validation from anyone or anything. of course, it was not and will never be easy and i am never there yet, but i'm proud of the progress that i've been making.

if there's anything that i'd like to prioritize this year, it would definitely be my inner peace. i want to be at peace with the chaos around me. i want to be at peace with my nagging insecurities. i want to be at peace with the people that i have hurt in the past -- that may be intentionally or unintentionally. i want to be at peace with who i am and the person that i hope to become.

i want to be my best version every day, but "best" doesn't mean perfect. "best" means having flaws (lots of them), but trying to work on them little by little, one step at a time. "best" doesn't mean that i have to wake up at 5am every day and never laze around. "best" means living my life one day at a time with the purest intention of growing and thriving. it means acknowledging the hard days and getting my way through them. no escaping. "best" is just simply living life, enjoying the little things, acknowledging the fact that things will not always go my way, focusing on the things that i can control instead of those that i could not, and working on myself to become better at least 0.01% every day.

i'm really thankful for where i am right now at this very moment. it wasn't a smooth road on my way here, for sure. there were days that i really felt like giving up, days that i had to deal with my difficult attitude, days that i don't want to keep trying anymore. there were also days that i just want to runaway and just simply escape and days that anything and anyone annoyed me to the core, but those were the days that developed me to be who i am today, and i have to acknowledge the possibility that those unpleasant days were not completely gone yet. they may come back in the future. i may come across to one of them or all of them at one time in the coming days, but hopefully by that time, i already know better. i'll be dealing with them with strength and courage and kindness in my heart.

i am pretty much excited to where this life could take me, but for now, i just have to enjoy the present and appreciate the small but certain happiness in life.

and i'd like to mention... thank you to Anna Jo for introducing the "small but certain happiness" to me through her previous blogs. this has been my most favorite phrase since. ♡

and oh, hello there if you've reached this far! i'm happy to share what has been on my mind lately.

praying for everyone's peace, including yours! happy wednesday! ü

i'm not sure if i still know how to blog, but surely, i miss this thing. i've been contemplating what to write on here. i've also been weighing things out -- should i continue blogging or should i stop for good? this has actually been some lingering thought lately.

i've been coming to a point where i don't want to share too much about my life online anymore, thus the thought of leaving the blogging world for good. however, every time i get to revisit my blog and reread the things i have written, i get this pleasant feeling of reminiscence. it's pleasurable to walk down the memory lane, and imagining my future self, i'd still want to get this same feeling when i get to visit this blog 10, 20, 30 years from now. so when half of me has already kinda given up this passion of mine at some point, the other half is still holding on and wants to make moooooore memories with this blog still. thus, i'm torn.

and that's why i needed to go back to my "why" again. uhmm. why did i even start blogging eight years ago? the answer will always be simple -- to document my life. so what makes me want to stop now? maybe the thought of other people reading my blog, especially those people i know in real life? why? what's the matter when people get to read my blog? uhmm... maybe because i don't want to give people an access to my life at all anymore and i'm afraid that when they get to read my blog, they'll have the impression that they already  have access to my life when, really, they don't? but would that even matter? well, thinking about it now, i think not? i mean, people will always have impressions of me. even me, i have impressions of other people and other people's lives, but that does not necessarily mean that those impressions are right. i can never control what other people think. i can only control what i do and what i put into this blog. and why would i even be afraid of doing the thing that i love doing just because of the thought of other people? if i continue blogging, would they even care? if i stop would they still care? hmmm... actually no? i don't think they care about me and my life the way i thought. they have their own lives to care about and have enough worries of their own.

so what's the plan now? should i continue or should i stop? oh, of course, i will continue blogging. this blogging thing has been with me for more than eight years now, and actually nobody really cared so much about it. and when my friends actually get to visit my site, they would always tell me how proud they are of me and of the growth that i had over the years. so thinking about it now, i don't think i have any valid reason to stop  blogging.  everything is just all in my head. it's actually just self-sabotage.