Showing all posts in Overcasted Mind

When does a break become too much break?
In Life on the Equator, Overcasted Mind, Pandemic Pondering

When does a break become too much break?

Posted on 14 Comments

At the beginning of the pandemic, I had my fair periods of bursting productivity. I completed my step-one fixed step training at work ahead of time, aced my French exam, went to the class twice a week virtually, wrote more than 20 poems for my portfolio website, revamped my childhood bedroom to an adult workspace, started a new obsession with houseplants and even created Excel spreadsheet to document its well-being updates, got myself a piano keyboard and taught myself from zero, regularly read papers and articles about planetary geology, started volunteering again, and the list goes on. Yet a few…

Is gratitude a prison?
In Life on the Equator, Overcasted Mind, Pandemic Pondering

Is gratitude a prison?

Posted on 8 Comments

There was this conversation between Randall, the adopted son of the Pearson family, and Kevin, his non-biological brother in This Is Us S05E13 that had been stuck with me for a while. It’s when Randall admitted that the fact that he was adopted by a family he loves so much makes him feel that he is bound to show nothing but gratitude at all times, while that feeling, truthfully, feels like an emotional prison because oftentimes he still couldn’t help but thinking about all the what-if’s had he been living with his biological parents instead his whole life. And Kevin…

On Impostor Syndrome and My First Work Anniversary (Part I)
In Life on the Equator, Overcasted Mind

On Impostor Syndrome and My First Work Anniversary (Part I)

Posted on 19 Comments

It barely feels like a year has passed since I signed with my current employer to officially land my first full-time gig. With all that had happened in the past year, today I’d like to try to reflect a little bit on this very short amount of time that I have invested in building my career as a geologist. A position that truthfully, I never really knew would fit in or not, that I was never too confident about. Not because I thought I sucked at it, but because I personally never thought that I was exceptionally good at it.…

Winter Wonderland
In Days in Edmonton, Overcasted Mind, Wanderlogue

Winter Wonderland

Posted on 15 Comments

Winter has witnessed me blossoming into a better version of myself, and the opposite. It’s the season where I got to explore new boundaries of what I was capable of feeling. Some of my best days indeed involved a sight of endless pile of white ice, but some of the worst did as well. It has seen some of my loudest laughs and some of my worst cries, and every confusion in between. It brought along some of the days that I’d miss a lot, and some others that I’d rather completely forget. Winter, for me, was a time of…

Undigested arrays of thoughts that come out as a rambling essay
In Overcasted Mind

Undigested arrays of thoughts that come out as a rambling essay

Posted on 18 Comments

I know I can’t be the only person who sometimes goes to sleep thinking about a certain mistake, or embarrassing moment, or something utterly nonsense that I somehow managed to pull even out of a seemingly very casual thin air; wishing that by the time I wake up in the morning it’ll all be a distant memory that no longer matters. Except that most of the time, it does not. The thoughts linger, and when I first open my eyes in the morning, it’s still going to be the first thing that intervenes into my mind. And then I’ll continue…

Coexisting with Coronavirus: Making Peace (Again) with Adjusted Expectations
In Overcasted Mind, Pandemic Pondering, Thoughtful Enlightenment

Coexisting with Coronavirus: Making Peace (Again) with Adjusted Expectations

Posted on 22 Comments

I find it funny that only last year, after a series of turbulence that eventually landed me somewhere where I could say, oh look, life is on my side for once – I finally had the confidence to think to myself, “This is it. I can now manage my resources and time independently towards my utmost craving for travels. There’s no stopping me now.” Then all of sudden, the coronavirus came out of nowhere – sort of. Leaving the world shattered in so many ways, in a blink of an eye. A personal long-term goal of mine included. Until two…