everybody’s free to wear sunscreen (the 2016 version)
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, reef-friendly sunscreen would be it. Reef-friendly sunscreen doesn’t have oxybenzone, so it doesn't contribute to coral bleaching.
Moving back home is unnerving and humbling. You don’t make a Plan B so you make Plan A work with everything you’ve got. This decision straddles between stupidity and bravery. Funds won’t raise themselves and partnerships don’t just happen. The press coverage, international speaking engagements, and pretty infographics are products of meetings, taping receipts on bond paper, living out of a suitcase, encoding expenses, and writing letters, proposals, and reports.
YSEALI SEA Camp-Boracay, June 2016
Malapascua Island, February 2016
For the first time ever, you consider quitting. You begin exploring other career options.
Sleep. All the sharks in the Philippines won’t die if you sleep more than 5 hours a night. The work will still be there in the morning.
The elections will disrupt your timeline, especially when your political ally loses by seven votes. Don’t let it disrupt your vision, or your love for country and her people. Don’t join the noise online – focus on your advocacy. The current political climate makes your and your colleagues’ advocacies more important than ever.
YSEALI SEA Camp-Summit, July 2016
Your students will be your best teachers. They will teach you terms like “tovma,” ask questions you don’t have answers to, and show you what love and persistence mean.
With 2015 and 2016 SEA Campers, Bantayan Island, December 2016
With the 2015 and 2016 Mindanao SEA Campers, Zamboanga City, August 2016
With 2015 SEA Campers, Talisay City, November 2016
Not singing in public for seven years can apparently cause adult onset stage fright, which of course only means you have to sing again. The stage will always be your first love, your Big Magic. The actors you last shared the stage with will always be family.
Surprising the cast with “For Good” with Kakki Mof during One Night Stand: We’re Still In This Together, July 2016
There’s no such thing as too many lipsticks. There really isn’t.
Trying not to buy all the Matte Me lipsticks with Chely, August 2016
The end of a five-year relationship is quiet, painful, and more terrifying than you’d like to admit, but it is sure. As Sugar said, you have to “be brave enough to break your own heart.” You cry during the breakup and never again. The morning after, you get up at 7AM, put concealer and red lipstick on, and go to a high-level meeting -- one most crucial to your career -- like everything’s okay.
But a space inside and around you is created by the absence of your ex-boyfriend/best friend. You fill it by singing “Kiss the Air” over and over again when stuck in traffic, working (and there is always work), traveling, and stranger flings.
A broken heart still beats.
The Big C is called the Big C because it is big and consuming. Your disposition, defiantly optimistic by default, is gnawed by thoughts of worst-case scenarios. Your Big C -- Courage -- has to be bigger. Kick the shit out of the Big C with your Bigger C, together.
There are friendships not worth keeping, no matter how many years you’ve been friends (or “friends”). Really. Because there are other friendships worth nurturing -- those that greet you good morning with selfies;
Selfie time! My morning routine with Gold.
send Whatsapp voice notes during rush hour;
With Lynn and Chely, April 2016
hold you accountable to your dreams, aspirations, and statements like, “I’ll only have one drink, I swear!” or “I won’t reply if he texts me!”;
With Donna and Anya, August 2016
With Vince and AA, Dumaguete City, November 2016
and with those who live thousands of miles away, but still know the recesses of your thoughts.
With Jam, New York State, November 2016
With Ding, San Francisco, September 2016
Family is the foundation you build your life upon. You are always leaving, always gone, for reasons not all of them quite understand. But they will always be home, and remind you that your heart lives outside your chest.
Kuya’s wedding, Kawit, Cavite, June 2016
Dinner with Lola, Silang, Cavite, October 2016
Next time your tita tells you that there are many fish in the sea, tell her 10/13 fishing grounds in the Philippines are overfished. Also, there are so many creepy men out there.
Send postcards. Take photos of these postcards (front and back) just in case they don’t make it to your recipient.
Postcards sent from Hawaii, September 2016
Don’t let grades be the measure of your worth. Society may have other definitions of success, like a “stable job with benefits,” e.g., health insurance and a 13th month pay, and/or “two kids by 30.” Only you can define what success is for you. Own it. Embrace the suck. You are, after all, known to say, “Stop global whining.”
(Although it would still be really, really nice to have health insurance and a 13th month pay.)
During a conversation about solving marine debris with a group of strangers in Honolulu, it hits you that there is nothing else in the world you’d rather be doing than thinking of ways to decrease marine debris; writing ocean-related puns; reviewing environmental laws; working with youth; and operationalizing the country’s first shark and ray sanctuary.
With the Save Philippine Seas team, Dumaguete City, November 2016
For the first time ever, you allow yourself to say that you are proud of yourself. Your work has legs; it will stand on its own. This realization makes you burst into tears at 10 in the morning.
Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.
Peak of my training for the 5k Caramoan Swim Challenge, August 2016
And trust me on the reef-friendly sunscreen.
Danjugan Island, November 2016
The 2009 version | The 2010 version | The 2011 version | The 2012 version | The 2013 version | The 2014 version
Original lyrics of “everybody’s free to wear sunscreen”