SERIOUSLY.

I'm sitting at the dining table, laptop open to my digital planner, the week of August 2nd through 8th. I scroll to the bottom of the page and glance over each day. Some have a task or two checked off. Others have a checkbox with nothing written next to it. A few are completely blank.

How is tomorrow already Saturday?

I feel a breath catch in my throat. That day has nothing listed yet. What I usually do is review what didn't get done over the past week and decide how to distribute the remaining tasks — into the weekend, into the week after. I scroll back up, eyebrows furrowing. Which tasks are actually important to get done sooner rather than later? Which ones can get done quickly, and which ones need a solid chunk of time?

Job research isn't written anywhere on the planner. It never is. The mental note has been sitting in the back of my mind since before I even arrived in the Philippines. And somewhere along the way it stopped being a task I forgot to write down and became a task that lives invisibly on the checklist — on purpose. It's the most daunting, time-consuming, outside-of-my-control thing I have to face, and I don't want a daily reminder of it. Because it will just tell me that I'm failing.

I huff and close the tab. I'll deal with it tomorrow.

I open my blog instead and scroll through everything I've written lately. This collection covers a lot of ground — I've gone deep on so many topics. What haven't I written about yet?

One subject comes to mind. Job research.

But I need that writing time to actually look for jobs, I tell myself. Work on applications. That's why I'm not writing about it.

Seriously.

What actually stops me from opening a new document isn't so different from what stops me from opening the job boards. I don't know where to start. And underneath that, if I let myself think about what I'd actually write, a smaller, meaner voice answers first: what's the point? It's not like it's going to lead anywhere.

I know that's toxic. I know it's the exact thought that keeps me stuck. But I've been at this for over a decade — the pursuit of the creative job — and the thought doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from rejection, self-doubt, imposter syndrome, or worse: silence. Stagnation. The quiet temptation to just give up.

A couple of years ago, I applied for a photo editor position at a well-known media company's office in DC. The title suggested more than the job actually was — less photo manipulation and retouching, more research through stock image sites, archive organizing, fact-checking, proofreading before publication. Still, I knew how to do all of it. And it fit the vision of what a successful, stable, creative job is supposed to look like from the outside — full-time, in-office, photography-adjacent, cookie-cutter corporate-America respectable. The kind of job I'd actually hate to find myself stuck in. I wouldn't even be editing photos. But I wanted to be able to say I was a photo editor. Crazy, in hindsight, how much that mattered.

I built the profile, refined my resume, answered every question, submitted the application. Weeks passed. Then the email — polite, generic, the kind that's clearly copy-pasted for dozens of applicants at once. Unfortunately. That's the only word I need to read to know the rest isn't worth reading. My qualifications didn't match what they were looking for, but they'd keep me in mind if other opportunities opened up. The hollow consolation never quite softens the fact of not being chosen.

Chosen. Embarrassing to admit to, like the job was someone I had a crush on, someone I wanted to be seen as worthy of. But looking at it honestly, it's not that far off.

It taught me something, at least. Applying for jobs I have to stretch to make relevant to what I actually want is a red flag. A near-guarantee of an unfulfilling work life waiting on the other side of the acceptance email, if it ever comes.

The dream I keep circling — moving somewhere different every few years, immersing myself in a new country, making a home there, then leaving to do it all over again somewhere else — started over a decade ago, the first time I traveled abroad alone. It woke up a curiosity I didn't know I had: to live inside different ways of life, to find new versions of myself in each place, to keep searching for the place I'd eventually call home.

Maybe that search started even earlier than I give it credit for. I'm a Filipina American, born in the SF Bay Area, raised on the East Coast near DC, and now living on the land my mother grew up on. I know what it's like to call many places home and still feel like I don't fully belong to any of them. Depending on where I am, it's my appearance, the language barrier, my ethnic background, my mannerisms — something always marks me as not quite from here. Fascinating. Devastating. Maybe both at once.

So I think the dream isn't really about collecting countries. I think it's a slow search — one home at a time — for the place where all of that finally resolves. Where I stop being asked, one way or another, where I'm really from. And when I find it, I'll stay.

Here's the part I don't say out loud very often: if I don't research jobs, I can't apply to any. If I don't apply, I won't get hired. If I don't get hired, I can't earn or save. If I can't save, I can't afford to travel or move again. If I can't move, I won't ever reach the place I'm searching for.

So — in a way I didn't let myself see clearly until I wrote it down — not having a job isn't just a financial problem. It's the thing standing between me and belonging anywhere at all.

Whoa. That's deep.

Last year I read a book on manifestation, a seven-step process for calling in whatever it is you want. Most of it landed with real resonance. But one step still trips me up, even now. The author calls it the hardest one, the one you'll likely have to return to again and again before you can move through the rest: overcoming fear and doubt. Naming what you're actually afraid of, and pointing out the thoughts, behaviors, and actions that keep you stuck.

Just reading the step felt overwhelming. But I held onto the rest of what the book was trying to tell me: what's truly meant for you will not miss you. It's doing everything in its power to find you. You have the power to receive the thing you most desire — you just have to get specific, down to the smallest detail, and embody the feeling of already having it. How it lives in your body. The way you'd think, the way you'd speak to yourself, what you'd believe is possible.

For a while, that feels encouraging. It really does.

Then I try to apply it, and whatever you want to call it — the universe, God, fate, life — seems to let discouraging things happen instead. Or worse, says nothing at all. And it starts to feel like I'm the obstacle standing between myself and the thing I want most. So I think: I just need to believe harder. And I do. And it still feels like nothing is happening.

I keep going anyway. I hold onto hope. I still think manifestation works, somehow — I just don't know if I'm doing it the "right" way.

Am I simply in the middle of the story?

That's the question I keep asking myself, in different forms, mostly to keep from giving up.

I close the laptop that day and tell myself I need the time to work on applications instead. Seriously, I say, like I'm convincing someone. I'm only convincing myself, and not very well.

Here's what's actually true, the thing I didn't let myself say that day: it was never really about the time. It's that naming this — even just to myself, let alone here, on a page other people could read — meant admitting how much has been riding on it. How long I've been carrying it. How far from resolved it still is. I made myself a rule without noticing I'd made it: I'll write about the job search once I have something to show for it. Progress. An offer. Proof. Until then, it stays where I kept everything else that scared me — unnamed, unwritten, invisible on the checklist.

I don't have that proof yet. I still don't know if I'm doing any of this the "right" way — the job search, the manifesting, the waiting. I still don't know if the life I'm trying to build — a home in one country, then another, then another, until I find the one that finally feels like mine — is actually going to happen on any timeline I can live with.

But I wrote this anyway. Not because I've earned the right to, not because I have an ending to offer. Just because the avoiding had gotten heavier than the writing ever could.

The fact that this essay is here at all counts for something.