just like starting over

playing the guitar in my childhood bedroom, 2023

circa 2023
Las Piñas, Metro Manila

After LA, I found myself back in my childhood bedroom. I didn’t have a job during this time. Any sense of direction I had had gone out the window.

And so I had nothing to lose.

One afternoon, I was watching someone play "Eleanor Rigby" on the piano on YouTube. I immediately purchased a children's keyboard from Shopee. Afterward, I asked my mom to retrieve a guitar that had spent nearly twenty years in storage.

I was playing with thick rusty strings, and it was torturous. I assumed this was part of the artistic process and that musicians enjoyed suffering. That is, until I started taking guitar lessons; my teacher Dave told me to stop being a masochist and replace the strings so I could actually enjoy what I was doing.

Clearly, I had no meaningful experience whatsoever. Nonetheless, this struck me as an excellent foundation for a musical career.

---