(Not) Happily Ever After, But Happy Nevertheless

For the first time in two years, I attended my first large-group work gathering. While meetings had been back to normal since the start of the year, I have often begged off attending. I have not had COVID and it is still something that I am very careful about. 

My boss had been trying to convince me to attend meetings, telling me that people have been looking for me constantly and everyone wants to see me. I have been able to dodge a major convention recently but because the recent meeting was coinciding with a visit to the wake of someone that I respected a lot, I had no choice but to finally attend a meeting.

It's That Day

This month marks another year since my father died. Even after all this time, his passing still feels like it happened yesterday. The events of that day and the weeks after that felt like a huge blur, like a dream that you faintly remember once you wake up. You cannot remember the details, but you could never forget that it happened at the same time. I wish it were all a dream, but sadly the death of my father was very real.

All these years in but I still feel the loss of my father. There have been so many times when I have said out loud or thought in my head that I wished he was still here. I have repeatedly wondered or imagined his reaction to the things happening in the lives of me and my sisters if he was still with us.  Sometimes, in my most vulnerable moments, I still shed tears thinking of him. 

Why I Deactivated on Facebook

In an earlier episode of The Fandesals Podcast (currently on Google, Apple and Spotify and also on YouTube), we discussed the topic of social media platforms. I have since left one of them: Facebook. Here's my take on it. The episode on Spotify is embedded at the end of this post. Enjoy!

In October of 2020, once people started filing their Certificates of Candidacy for the coming elections, I decided to deactivate my Facebook. I was starting to see people taking sides and posting their political opinions on the app and I felt overwhelmed by it all. I decided that it was time for me to take a break from it, at least until the elections were over. It has been nine months since then and if not for the fact that I still actively use Facebook Messenger, I would have deleted my account already. The only times I have been back on Facebook were limited to around 5 minutes at most, and were only to try to transfer the accounts where I used the app to log in to the more traditional username and password format (as well as to update my profile photo, which you apparently cannot do via Facebook Messenger).

How do I feel right now without Facebook? Surprisingly calm and fine with it, actually. 

Cornelia Street

One of my favorite songs from Taylor Swift is called Cornelia Street. In particular, I am a fan of her Live from Paris version, which I discovered on Spotify. I am a Taylor Swift fan, and there are so many of her songs that I could say are part of the soundtrack of my life. 

Cornelia Street is just one of the many of T. Swift's songs that I love, but it is also one of my favorite songs to play and sing along to at the moment. According to the singer herself, the song is about memories and the nostalgia that we feel about certain locations and the things that have happened to us in those places.

The first time I heard the song, I immediately began reminiscing about the places, people, and events from my past. Cornelia Street had a melody that brought me back instantly to one particular part of it the first time I heard the song in full.

Just like the song, there was a time when I hoped to never lose a particular person in my life. I had wished that the moments with that individual never ended. The song made me think and reflect on how certain moments in life become memories that can make you both happy to remember them but sad at the same time because you know those moments will remain in the past forever.