These past few years I started questioning myself if having a blog still has value.  I never really earned money here, people don’t seem to be interested at all in reading more than a few paragraphs at a time, and most of all, it costs me money to keep my domain.  While I can’t answer for now how long I can keep spending for my blog, I do think I’m lucky to have started documenting my life in my blog before social media took over.  Sure, social media sites make it so easy to just capture just about everything in your life on a daily basis as everything is free and practically unlimited, but blogs are more personal and there’s really effort to keep one surviving for so long.  And now as we start with the ‘20s, I have an online journal I can look back at and see what craziness I’ve done during the past decade—more than photos and quick captions, but with context.

Without really digging so much details, 2010 would easily go down as my craziest, most active year of the past decade.  That year, I scaled the highest peak in the island of Luzon, did a bunch of marathons and ultramarathons!

2017 follows closely as my blog got its first million visitors, and I got to be “braver” as I joined an underpants run for the first time, running just in my underwear.  That experience taught me to remove the inhibitions I have with showing skin (especially when swimming) and be prouder of my body.

2012 was when I had my first official recognition as online media with my first coverage of a triathlon event.  It also marked the steady decline of my running mileage.

It was 2013 when I started the Visita Iglesia tradition that I do annually during Holy Week.  It was also the year that I become an ambassador of a notable fitness club and finally learned how to swim—at least in a pool.

It was in 2016 when I finally acquired runningpinoy.com.  It was a hard lesson on brand value as the year before, someone registered that domain and created a separate Facebook page and website.  I was worried of identity theft and thankfully I got the domain registration as soon as it expired.

2018 was also a great year, definitely not in terms of running, as it was when I first became comfortable floating on open waters (with life vast on).

For some reasons, I was not able to write a yearly summary for 2011—the only one I missed.  It was a turning point in my life as I left the company that gave me the gift of a work-life balance.  My running mileage has never been the same ever since.

2014 was a unique year as it seemed like food was the year’s theme and it was in 2015 when I started the “Best Nine” yearly summary, which ended recently as my year got more boring.  And as the last year of the decade, 2019, came, I had reached rock bottom—no vacation, lowest tracked running mileage, fewest post in a year.

The past decade really took its toll on me—from a hyperactive guy in his 20s doing roads and trails, fun runs to ultramarathons, to a guy in his 30s that became too lazy to join fun runs.  I guess it’s a challenge when you lose your work-life balance and aging begins creeping in giving you joint pains even if you hardly do anything.  But as with every new year that comes, the new decade gives us another chance to rectify our shortcomings.  And I hope that when I look back at this journal next decade, the me in his 40s would meet or even surpass the 20s version of himself.  That journey starts now!

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