There has been very little activity from me in the online world lately and while I do leave remnants of myself in bits and pieces on my Instagram stories and Facebook posts, they are mostly videos of me being a clingy fiance or just random bitching about Grab drivers these days. I sort of took a step back without warning anyone, right when the podcast was doing great & The Rich Girl series was just taking off. I stopped going to events as much as I could and now I am left asking myself, “do people still even know me?” and then I end up gagging in spit because honestly, I don’t fucking care.

I questioned whether or not I owed the world an explanation, which I still believe the answer to is no, but heck, I am a “creative”, I am a “writer” and nothing seems real or as official as writing something down- so that is what I am going to do. My blog has always been a reflection of myself and my thoughts and my life anyways so, this is really for myself more than anything or anyone else so in an attempt to get over my slumps, today I am actually going to write something.

I’ve mentioned it in bits and pieces but never as a whole but this year, I formally launched H & S Clothing. No, it’s not a new business or a content creator move, but it is something I am extremely proud of.

I was raised surrounded by fashion. My parents owned a manufacturing business were I would spend summers packing & folding uniforms and the like. My aunt’s were either huge retail brand owners or fashion designers and I spent most of my childhood watching them from the corners, impatiently waiting to one day be like them.

I never started Issaplease because I wanted to be a famous personality. I started this blog because I so desperately wanted to live out my love for fashion despite having to take up nursing in college. I knew that I wanted to take over our family business but first, by showing that I had the fire, the veracity, the passion- which I mirrored on to Issaplease.

5 years later, I am finally at that point where I have been entrusted with the very business that not just put food on our table, clothes on our backs, a roof over our heads but also allowed me and my siblings to live a very privileged life. It may not have been a constant privilege, what with the economic crises, but we soldiered through.

Taking on a 19 year old business is really no laughing matter. I envision that H&S clothing will allow me to provide for my families needs one day the way it did for me and having said that, I needed to and still need to put 100% in it. 101%. So if you’ve been wondering why I haven’t been attending events, filming and editing videos, doing the live sessions, blogging and the like; it’s because I’ve decided that right now at least, I need to choose where to put my energy in: the business & my family.

In exactly a month from now, my family will be leaving me once again and this time for good, to fulfill the lifelong plan of one day returning to the mother ship, the land of obesity & gun violence- the big U S A. Although there is a promise of coming back every year, we all know very well that it starts off with one missed summer/ holiday and the next thing you know, it’s been 2 years and many balikbayan boxes later to make up for the absence.

I don’t have a lot of friends and I’m sure no one is surprised by this. I like to spend my days working, with Paolo or with my family and that is all by choice. I would rather walk around the mall with my siblings and/ or mom the entire afternoon rather than brunch & gossip with friends. I love my family and so you can imagine the great deal of sadness I am overcome with just by the thought of my brother no longer asking me if he can come over after class to raid my pantry or just to hang out. Or my mom picking me up from work to have lunch and just vent. Or my sister helping me with outfits (for 4 months, at least). It is all just so sad and I don’t know how I am going to handle it.

On top of running a business, dealing with separation anxiety, my weight gain and nicotine withdrawals; I am extremely stuck in terms of content- I can’t even begin to tell you!!!

I’ve tried to sit down and come up with video ideas, I have backlogs up to my butt but somehow, nothing has been coming out of my noggin lately. It’s been about a month and even posting a photo is painful. My time offline has gratified my hate of Instagram because of how superficial it is and how hard people work to get likes on a photo. It’s not even a real thing. It’s intangible. It’s a joke. But because of the nature of my job, I need to do it. Hey, everyone has their battles.

I know this is a pretty senseless post but I figured, if I wrote about the things that were weighing me down, maybe I could free myself and finally get back into the right groove. Maybe I can finally stop feeling sorry for myself and actually do what needs to be done- watch what I ate, exercised, posed for a photo, write a story/ script and basically just start feeling like my normal self again. It shouldn’t be that hard, should it?

Well, it’s taken me about an hour to write this and it was an hour that I needed so let’s leave it at that and call it an accomplishment. Small victories.

We’ll see what happens from here.