“Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.” -Mother Teresa

Another great month ended. The routines, plans and goals that I set for the month of July are now done. I am happy that I’m on track of my goals and I achieved every target that I set for myself. Every time I marked done my goals and targets, I feel like I am making a step closer to my goals. Before, I’m just dreaming a kind of life that I have right now and as I move forward, my goals keep growing as well. The moment I achieved a certain goal, my mind automatically shifts to another target. That process keeps going on and I believe it became a good habit that helped me to persevere and do my best. A lot of people that I knew usually told me the same thing which is, I’m too busy making my ideal future happen and I forgot how to live my life in the present. It’s actually the truth before. I spent most of my days planning my future and making it happen. Little did I know, is that I already forgotten the present life that I’m within. I rarely hang out with anyone and I spent most of my days at home planning things.

After the pandemic, that’s when I realized the importance of making memories because everything is temporary. The time I spent mostly doing things in my future, took out the time that I should spent happily. Gladly I was able to realized it sooner and that’s when I started to prioritized work and life balance. I always thought that it’s impossible to do it at the same time but by putting efforts, you can actually make it happen. When the year 2021 started, I slowly incorporate things that I can enjoy in the present such as doing workout, hanging out every other month, visiting new places and other activities which I didn’t do before. As soon as my life went like that, I gradually see the changes that took place. I became happier, motivated and inspired to see every single day as an opportunity to work on my goals and the same time enjoy the moment. By the year 2022, I started to wrote down different memories and experiences I acquired on my journey. I did that because I wanted to remember those special moments in my life by looking back on this blog. Although I still have a journal, I still wanted to have a detailed story about that experienced which I can do digitally.

“We must use time wisely for our development and advancement; so that when we are old, we can look back and recollect the pleasant memories and deeds that we have achieved.” – Michael Lee

Within the past six months doing a recap of events that happened in my life, I realized how time passes by so fast. There are things that we usually just forget instantly, and only some memories are left with us. The journal that I’d been doing since high school, inspired to list my experiences every month. Since that’s my only chance reminisce every moment in my life, I started it consistently this year. Now, the seventh month of the year is now ended. On this blog, you’ll see the highlights of this month. I am happy that I was able to spent every single day of this month happily. I achieved some of my goals that I set for this month and also followed my planned routine. It takes efforts, time and dedication to do all of these things. By doing it consistently, everything became my habit. The first time I tried to be productive was a struggle. I keep failing to do my plans since I’m not yet used to that kind of lifestyle. By repeating the whole process over and over again and by taking notes of how did I failed, it became my key to achieve the mindset that I have right now.

“Science has proven that people who regularly jot down their thoughts in a journal are less likely to have cognitive and memory loss as they age.” – Christian J. Borg

I believe that these memories that I’d been collecting in these past months, will help me to reminisce the feeling that I felt on that specific event. I know that my future self will be happily reading my recap blogs and will thank me for starting it. I still have a long way to go to make all of my goals happened, but this blog, will remind my future self that I am living my life to the fullest. I am not the same Lea Pearl who focuses 24 hours of her time thinking about her future. She now learned to balance things and enjoy her journey at the same time. One thing for sure is that, her determination to achieve her goals is still there. She won’t stop until she makes all of her plans possible. Little by little, slowly but surely. The Lea Pearl who’s working right now to achieve her goals will soon be in the place that she’d been dreaming to achieved since before. During that long process, she will continue to be the best version of herself which she can be an inspiration to everyone. She will continuously pull someone else up, inspire the rest to achieve their goals and lastly be the instrument of God to share His words.

“Memory is a record of your personal experience. It is a record of trial and error, defeat and success. Past failures will warn you against repeating them.” – Wilfred Peterson

Now let’s see the things that happened in my life this July 2022. It will consist of both negative and positive things that I’d experienced and on how I was able to surpass it.

1. Shuuja Badem Birthday (New friends!)

As soon as I worked alone overseas, I rarely made close friends unlike when I was in high school. Since my preferences doesn’t match for most people same of my age, I always ended up being alone and outcast. This doesn’t mean that I’m not friendly at all, I actually can converse well and still be friends with them, but I just don’t prefer to have a very close relationship with anyone. The factor I think is that, the way I think is different and I value quality conversation so much. I prefer to talked about plans, goals, targets and anything which makes me more inspired to do my best. That’s why it is rare for me to find friends who have the same way of thinking. When I started in my 3^rd company, that when I came to know Shuuja who’s born and raised in Kashmir India. Within months spending time with her, we both talked about good a lot of things regarding our plans. Because of her as well, I became motivated to work out and take care of myself. Every time I feel down, she makes me realized my worth and my achievements. The months that we spent together helped to grow closer together. Now, she’s like my sister whom I shared my worries, stories and plans in my life.

Last July 6, she invited me to her villa so that we can celebrate her birthday together with other of her closest friends. Their compound is not quite far from us so as soon as I finished my work and task at home, I went straight there. Also, I asked first for permission from HR just in case there will be an issue. I arrived around 6:45 pm and she was only there at first in er villa. We talked about few updates from our work and around 7:30 pm, her flat mate Sujata arrived. We shared a lot of funny stories together and ate at around 8:30 pm. We took a lot of pictures together while joking with each other so when Ms. Lheng arrived at 9:00 pm, we slowly sort out things and went back to talk about a lot of topics. It was really a good experienced because I made new friends (Sujata & Trupthy). The three hours that I spent there was full of experiences and happiness. I saw how their accommodation is way better than us and I feel so happy for them. I hope that I can join them if God will let it happen so I can experience having my own room as well. Regardless of that, I will continue to put my best effort in everything I do so that I can achieve that kind of benefits as well.

Here’s the pictures that we took on that day:

Don’t let the “good old days” be your memory. Make each day a good day so as you are growing older life is an adventure to be enjoyed not a memory.” – Catherine Pulsifer

2. Iantot is finally home! Small reunion with relatives.

After almost a year of being a way at home due to his work, my brother went home last July 8. The original plan is that we will surprise my father who will go home around 11:30 in the evening. Since he’s nightshift that day, we just decided to surprise him as soon as he enters our parent’s room. We thought that everything will ok and everything is set-up, but little did we know is that everything will be an epic fail just because of AVOCADO! It was really a funny situation because we all are excited to surprise my dad and my sister even set up the camera so that we can shoot his reaction. They’re all waiting in the house until my mom saw that our garden lights are open. She feels worried right away because all of my brother’s luggage are kept there. She hurriedly went there and saw my father enjoying his avocado without minding the luggage kept there. He actually didn’t realize that there’s a luggage there! My Mom hurriedly told Ian to come on our garden and they forgot to film it. In the end, my father was still surprised but the original plan wasn’t followed. He ended up laughing and asking why we didn’t tell him and they decided to rest first because they’ll be attending a small reunion the next day.

The next day, my family met up with my other relation from father’s side to have a triple birthday celebration for my dad, Uncle Epi and Uncle Danny. They first had their lunch at the farm that my Uncle Epi purchased and spent around three hours there. After that, they went to a home which my Uncle Danny rented out for a night. There they continued their stories (marites), and had their dinner there. The place is really nice and very convenient to have gatherings. That Airbnb house gave me an idea in the future to have the same kind of investment. Who would’ve known I can also have multiple properties which I can put on rent on a daily basis? Hopefully in the future I can make it happen.

Here are the pictures that they took on that place:

Seeing them makes me feel a bit sad because as usual I’m not there again, but having their smiles on their faces makes me feel happy and grateful that they’re ok. Even though I’m always absent on their life events, that’s how I feel more motivated to pursue my life goals so I can finally settle down at my home. I need to try every single opportunity comes on my way and see every hour of my day as a chance for me to work on it. My journey will still be long but I’m pretty sure that I’ll get there.

“Live your life one breath at a time. Take a moment to dance in the rain, laugh loudly, and love with every inch of your heart.”

3. Hang out with Labi!

After two months without hanging out with each other, we decided to spend the day together this month. As soon as we got our salary on the 27^th, we proceed on planning our day so that we won’t be clueless. We first decided to stay in West Bay and tour around the area, after that, we went to our favorite restaurant which is shanghai garden located in city center. As we spend time together, we talked about a lot of things such as our plans in the future, current happening from our life and a lot of funny things that we shared together. Looking back on the first day that we met, we never realized that we’ll come so far and even reached almost four years together. We started literally at the bottom and we slowly saw our growth together; him from being a housekeeping to waiter and now a butler, and for me who started as a commis to demi and now as a kitchen admin. Within less than four years being together, we both grow and progress by having each other’s back to lean on. The love and experienced that we shared together help us to achieve the position that we have right now.

Through these years, we experienced ups and downs as well. It was never a flower path for both of us but one factor that made it all happen is we choose to always stay. We believe that love can change through time and it’s up to both of us if we’ll choose to work it out. Like what most couple said, you don’t actually love the person constantly and it will surely change given the challenges present in our life. What we have in control is to choose to stay or leave the relationship. Given the fact that he’s my first ever real relationship after 23 years of living, I really value our relationship as my first and last. I want to protect it as if its my last chance to have one. As I’m about to reach 30’s, I should not waste my time looking for someone else but work on our future together. I have faith on him that he won’t hurt me, and I’m pretty sure that I will never do it to him as well. We already started our plans together and we both should take care all the efforts we put into our relationship.

Here are the pictures that we took on that day:

I’m pretty sure that we will face more challenges in the future. As long as I will face it with him, I know that everything will be ok. Our goals will help us to be inspired and God will surely protect us along the way. We will be our own team mate that will help each other to achieve our won personal dreams in life. I hope that once I look back in these precious moments that we shared, we are already there in that place we’d been dreaming to be. Although everything will still take time, I trust God that my partner right now will be the same person that I’ll spend with for the rest of my life.

“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.” — Victor Hugo, from Les Misérables

4. Dad’s Birthday

Last July 27, my family celebrated my father’s birthday. He’s now 56 years old and he only have four years until he reaches the retirement age in our country. From all the sacrifices that he’d been through, we all know that he deserves to receive blessings and love from all of us.  It was another heart-warming celebration and as usual I’m not present again. It has been so many years that I missed a lot of important events of our family. After choosing to work overseas for my goals, I’d been considered as “absent” during our family events. For the first couple of years that I’m working, I feel really sad every time it happened. Especially for the reason that I’m working in the hospitality industry, we are always busy during occasions which makes me feel so physically tired and lonely during those days. Gladly, I got used to it and I don’t feel that much sad anymore compare to the past. Here, I realized that adult life is literally hard.

• You need to choose challenging options for you to be mature enough in making big decision in your life.
• There are moments when you need to sacrifice your time with your love ones.
• You will not be always physically there in all the important events of your family and close friends.
• You need to stay strong all alone every time you experienced hardships because you don’t want them to worry.
• Most of your lifetime will be spent working without realizing the limited time that your parents and other older relatives have.

Even though I’m not there to celebrate it with them, I just need to be patient for few more months and I will finally be there. For sure within those 30 days, it will be filled with a lot of good memories that I will surely share here on this blog. My plans are all now set and I just need to secure the requirement needed for vacation. After two months, I will finally see them all and enjoy our time together. For the mean time, I will first work on preparing all the things for my return so everything will be ready and I won’t feel rush anymore. I hope that with that celebration, my dad will feel love and happy. Once I reach all of my goals, I wanted to give him all the things, time and moments that he deserves. For the meantime, I will continuously pray that he’ll be bless and protected by God and also for the rest of our family members.

Here are the pictures that they took on that day:

5. 2^nd House Renovation Project Sent

In my previous financial blog, I shared that I will reduce my budget to make room for my September vacation. Now that everything is sorted out and my parent’s agreed on that amount, all I was left to do is to send the money at the end of July. I am happy that I already secured the amount beforehand and I was able to send it earlier to make use of high currency exchange. Even though my money almost reduced in half, I still feel happy about it because finally I succeed in making my ultimate goals for this year which is to renovate our existing house rental. The whole experience requires efforts and patience specially to come up with the amount needed for it. It took me almost two years to save that money and I sacrificed some of my happiness to achieved that. Despite of it, I know that it will be one of my best decisions I’d done in my whole life. Not only I acquired a passive income flow which can help me to make more investment, but it also helped me to gain the necessary experience and knowledge that I’ll be needing in the future. This year 2022 is surely be one of the challenging years, yet a period where I achieved a lot of things from all the efforts that I put into my work.

With this first step that I’d done in this year, I will make it sure that it will be followed for the next years that will come. Once I at least secured a minimum of P30,000.00 income per month, I will start to engage on another business venture. During that period, I will take time to nurture my skills and learn more to be able to reduce the risk of failing. As of now, I made a list of possible businesses that we can do in the future and I planned to have thorough research for it. By doing that, we can be prepared to set the business since we already have the necessary resources and information that we need. Actually, my sister and I are both sharing opinions about starting a business. Since she also wanted to pursue a business, we decided to look forward to it once we are both financially ready and settled. Our tentative period to work on it is when both of us are married and we’re done with any big financial responsibilities that we are having right now.It’s been a while since we had our date in Yellow Cab. Since my partner is staying quite far from my accommodation we just decided to date once in a month so that we can also save up money. In this month, we decided to had our dinner in Yellow Cab since we moved our planned staycation next month. The location of this restaurant is only a walking distance from our accommodation so after my partner reached our accommodation at 5:45 pm we just walked and arrived their pass 6:00 pm. Gladly it’s not that hot so we managed to enjoy our walk sharing a lot of stories.

I hope and pray that this goals that we are currently working on will soon happen. Within this period, we’ll not waste any single hour but to formulate new ideas that we can input on our dream business. I believe that with the right planning, everything will go well.

Here are the current pictures of that house that we’ll soon renovate:

“To live with no regrets.”

Not all are memories last forever, because some are meant to be forgotten. Our brain’s capacity to store information and events is limited and not enough to cover all the things that happened in our life. For me to be able to not missed any important events I experienced, I made used of this blog to store events which I can always look back anytime.

Another productive month passed, but this July made me experienced a lot of things that I will surely missed. Regardless of taking things all alone right now, it made me realized that I’m actually ok with it. I’m happy all alone and the few people whom I trust are more than enough for me to go on with my life.