Jump to content
  • entries
    46
  • comments
    26
  • views
    521

About this blog

Every day, I write a letter to my younger self—exactly one year ago. Think of it as creative journaling through time. These entries aren’t about predicting the future, but about offering hindsight, tenderness, and hard-won truths to the version of me who’s still figuring it all out. It’s a way of documenting growth, unpacking memory, and equipping my past self with the tools I wish I had at the time. This space is mostly for me, a mirror across time—but if you find something here that speaks to you, you’re welcome to sit with it too.

Entries in this blog

Friday 11th July, 2025

Hello beautiful,   It is Friday night and I am home all alone, and you know what? It doesn’t feel bad or lonely at all. It feels nice. I just got off a two-hour phone call with Johnny and caught him up on all the wild things that are happening in my life, and afterwards, I felt a sense of closeness with him and a dopamine rush as well. That feeling of being mattered. That I exist.   After watching recent movies like Dear Evan Hansen and Thunderbolts, where the theme is loneli

Philip

Philip in Everything

Wednesday 2nd July, 2025

Hello beautiful,   Just a quick message today, as there wasn’t too much that happened. At work, I was practicing my pitch training. I’m getting quite used to it now and can do eight notes while hitting each one fairly consistently. Sometimes, while aiming for the C note, I’ll hit a C sharp instead, but I’m getting better at correcting myself. It’s just using sounds like “Na” and “La” at the moment, since replacing them with words makes me hit a different note. But I’m reminded of what

Tuesday 12th August, 2025

Hello beautiful,   My messages to you have been rather sporadic lately, and I’m trying to get back into the discipline of sending them daily. I had a singing lesson today, and it went pretty well. One of my piano coaches taught me to smile and laugh whenever I make mistakes—as a way of showing compassion and kindness to myself—and I carried that into my singing. Each time I slipped up today, I just smiled and laughed, and my teacher smiled along with me. It made everything so much ligh

Philip

Philip in Everything

Saturday 5th July, 2025

Hello beautiful,   I went to Ikea today with Agia and it was okay. There was a lot of traffic in the late afternoon; usually, I would go a lot earlier so that I could come home earlier, but Agia had to do his shopping and weekly errands, so we had to push it a bit later. I was pretty tired by the time I got there. We hugged and I gave my signature kiss on the cheek (you’ll be doing this a lot whenever you meet new guys on a date, by the way), and we walked into the showroom. I felt a m

Saturday 12th July, 2025

Hello beautiful,   The first part of today was a bit hectic for me. It was basically covering basic life necessities like buying medications, underwear, socks, and winter clothes that I’ve neglected for a while now. It makes me feel like an adult when I get all this basic stuff covered lol. I also bought the present for Phil too, which is coming up in less than three weeks—some nice bowls and plates. I think he’s going to love them!   Remember the rule for buying gifts for ad

Philip

Philip in Everything

Monday 7th July, 2025

Hello beautiful bastard,   A couple of updates for today. I’m making it a rule now to first and foremost share any news and updates with you by sending you a quick text throughout the day, even for the small, mundane things. Then, I will share it with the world. Sometimes, I catch myself sending things to people first and waiting for them to reply, and I feel a bit sad when they don’t. And I think to myself, why did I do that? I could just share it with myself first (you), savour the n

Sunday 29th June, 2025

Hey buddy,   How’s life treating you?   I met up with Cô Bình today for coffee. After Kevin leaves for Vietnam, you’ll grow closer to her, and I can see why he used to confide in her. She’s retired, but very wise. We went to a coffee shop in Airport West, and it was such a good feeling when I sat down with her—I just felt at ease, calm, almost sleepy. It was as if my parasympathetic system kicked in, like she was an old friend I didn’t have to perform for. I could just be mys

Philip

Philip in Everything

Monday 30th June, 2025

Hello beautiful,   Today at work, I was listening to this book called The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddie Jaku. I didn’t really know what it was about going into it, so imagine my surprise when I realised it was an autobiography about the Holocaust. Now, I’ve read a lot of books over the years about this tragic event, but the way the writer retold his story really struck me. I think he wrote it in a way that wasn’t showing off his vocabulary—just raw, honest words—and I really liked tha

Philip

Philip in Everything

Wednesday 9th July, 2025

Hello beautiful,   Alright, so the biggest news of today was me going out and buying the piano, even after having to stay back overtime because one of the machines at work broke down. That’s dedication, buddy! The whole trip lasted three hours. I went into the shop and told the girl at the counter that I was looking for a digital piano and didn’t know anything about it, and she basically went through a number of pianos including her recommendations. She mentioned that I should choose i

Tuesday 29th July, 2025

Hello beautiful,   I want to talk about Jan today. We’ve decided to have our first meet-up this Friday night. I’m hesitant to call it a date, even though technically it is. When he told me he was free and asked if I wanted to do something, I noticed I didn’t immediately get excited or jump at the opportunity. Instead, I found myself wondering if I even wanted to go at all.   The reason is that our conversations through text have felt pretty lukewarm. They don’t really go anyw

Philip

Philip in Everything

Tuesday 15th July, 2025

Hello beautiful,   I had another singing lesson today. In fact, I don’t think we should even call them singing lessons anymore; we should call them therapy sessions with singing as a bonus. I told Elissa, the vocal coach, about the updates—how I’ve taken up both singing and piano lessons—and she did what she does best: deep-dived into how I was feeling about it all. She could sense that I was overwhelmed, trying to juggle everything at once on top of a full-time job.   She re

Philip

Philip in Everything

Friday 8th August, 2025

Hello beautiful,   I’ve been speaking to this guy named Brian. We chatted a bit last night, and it went… okay. He asked quite a few questions and mentioned that he’s more of a night person—he usually messages in the evenings because he doesn’t text much while he’s at work. But for some reason, this morning he started chatting with me, which caught me by surprise. We ended up having a long back-and-forth conversation throughout the whole day, even while he was at work.   He’s

Philip

Philip in Everything

Wednesday 6th August, 2025

Hello beautiful,   I had another piano lesson today, and it was much better than last time. I think the difference was that this time, I came in knowing what I wanted out of the session. Before now, I always thought piano was just about learning songs from sheet music—sit down, master one piece, then move on to the next. That’s how last week’s lesson felt. But after diving into music theory, I’ve realized there’s so much more to it. Music can follow a structure, yes, but within that st

Philip

Philip in Everything

Thursday 17th July, 2025

Hello beautiful,   I want to spend a bit of time today talking about Suf—the guy I’m currently chatting with on Hinge. He’s the one I mentioned where we’ve almost exclusively been sending voice memos instead of texting like normal people. From the start, he made it clear that he’s looking for companionship and nowhere near a partnership right now, which I respect.   Right off the bat, we’ve been exchanging voice messages in the morning, throughout the day, and even right befo

Philip

Philip in Everything

Sunday 6th July, 2025

Hello beautiful,   Today, first thing in the morning, I drove all the way to Ikea again to grab the curtains and the rug. I had a bit of trouble finding the curtains, actually, because it said there were over a hundred in stock, but I couldn’t find any in the location. Even the staff couldn’t find them. I was very disappointed after making it all this way again, and I stood there contemplating whether I should compromise and get something of inferior quality—when I saw the curtains I w

Tuesday 8th July, 2025

Hello beautiful bastard,   Today was the first lesson for my piano, and I want to tell you all about it. The piano teacher is only a ten-minute drive from our workplace and he is Vietnamese too! Except, I didn’t know until the very end when I asked for his name—hehe. We learned through the very basics, going through a children’s book (which I purchased at the end). I still get a lot of nervous energy around him, and I’m not sure if that’s who he is naturally, or if he’s just a nervous

Thursday 10th July, 2025

Hello beautiful,   I’m not going to lie to you, buddy—my days are getting packed and it’s still pretty hard to balance everything. Let’s break it down. To work 8 hours a day and try to get that elusive 8 hours of sleep, I pretty much only have 5 hours of free time left, accounting for things like commute, traffic, eating, showering, etc. These 5 hours are spread like this:   1. Gym 2. Journaling 3. Piano practice 4. Singing practice 5. Walking  

Philip

Philip in Everything

Sunday 10th August, 2025

Hello beautiful,   I spent the whole day today hanging out with Jordan. He’s recently gotten into aquariums and wanted me to go with him to a few around our area to look for driftwood, soil, and rocks so he could work on some aquascaping. Jordan’s someone I’ve wanted to hang out with for a while now, but the opportunity never came up—until today. I’m really glad it did, because I’ve learned that he often feels lonely at home. No one there really cares about his interests; they think it

Philip

Philip in Everything

Sunday 13th July, 2025

Hello beautiful,   I’m feeling a bit sad today. You know, sometimes I wonder how much about the future I should send to you—if you’ll become constantly anxious, waiting for my daily messages, not knowing what the future holds. I ask myself whether I should send you the bad news or let you experience things on your own. I mean, if I tell you everything that’s going to happen, is there any joy left in the unknown?   But then I think about when we read a book and a movie adaptat

Philip

Philip in Everything

Wednesday 30th July, 2025

Hello beautiful,   Let me tell you a story. I had my second piano lesson today with Max, and I think I made a mistake by telling him I’d been practicing at home and showing him my progress. Right after that, he said, “Okay, I want you to play this piece,” and of course, I tensed up and couldn’t play it properly. We kept at it for a while, and once he thought I got the gist, we moved on to the next song. But in the end, the whole lesson felt like me just practicing something I could’ve

Philip

Philip in Everything

Thursday 24th July, 2025

Hello beautiful,   I’m still talking to this guy I recently met on Hinge—his name’s Jan—and I want to spend a bit of time reflecting on him today.   He’s 28, which is right on the borderline for the youngest age I’d consider dating. So far, our conversations have been pretty casual. We talk about music, movies, books, travel, cooking—simple things. I asked him if he ever reflects on his feelings or does any kind of introspection, and he said he only tends to do that during di

Philip

Philip in Everything

Saturday 28th June, 2025

Good evening, beautiful,   Miss me?   I went to Ikea today to buy shelves for our study room, that empty wall we’ve always wanted to fill with something. Well, I did end up buying the shelves, but could you believe it? They had this set of nine nature canvases that I thought would be a great addition to the wall. And it was. I think you’re going to love it, and I’m really glad I didn’t put the shelves there because they would’ve made the space, and the room, feel cramped and

Philip

Philip in Everything

Monday 14th July, 2025

Hello beautiful,   I’ll make you a deal: we won’t be talking about Phil today.   I’ve been chatting with this guy on Hinge. His name is Suf, and the really cool thing we’ve started doing is sending voice memos. He’s pretty good at texting too, but I wanted to use voice more—to express my thoughts in a raw and intimate way—and he was on board with it from the beginning. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m learning piano and singing, which makes me more focused on sound these days

Philip

Philip in Everything

Friday 18th July, 2025

Hello beautiful,   A lot happened today, and it’s not that I don’t want to tell you all about it. It’s just that sometimes, I want the moment to settle into my bones for a little while—to let the experience wash over me, to ponder it quietly before sharing it, even with you. One day, I’ll tell you everything. And maybe by then, it’ll be better—because I’ll have processed it more fully and gained a clearer perspective.   Remember Johnny? One of our friends who’s in an open rel

Philip

Philip in Everything

Tuesday 5th August, 2025

Hello beautiful,   I had another singing lesson with Elissa today, and I thought she would be really impressed with my newfound interest in music theory. Instead, I think she felt a little overwhelmed on my behalf (even though I don’t feel overwhelmed at all). If I could read her mind, I bet she was thinking, “Woah, let’s slow it down a notch or two.” I know people often do that out of care and kindness, especially if they don’t know us very well. But when we dive into something, we re

Philip

Philip in Everything

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and Guidelines. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.