I’m an autodidact, maybe you’re one, too. It means that I’m good at teaching myself how to do things. This is how I ended up becoming a graphic designer even when I graduated with a business degree. Graphic design was my happy hobby since I was ten years old. Some of my happiest memories as a kid involved figuring out how to do things on Paint Shop Pro and coding my website on Notepad.

A lot of the design principles I know in adult life were learned through mentors at work or through people and articles on the internet. There are many design-y things I geek out on still so I got the idea of documenting the things I’m currently obsessing over. I never had a formal design education but that doesn’t have to stop me from learning.

Today I want to talk about Madame Grès, the sculptor turned haute couture designer who became famous for her masterful draping and cut-outs. Before I get to that, I have to come clean and tell you that I didn’t get to know her through fashion books or through other designers.

I first encountered her name in Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan. I have a weakness for glamorous, high-brow soap operas (Downton Abbey! Outlander!) and Crazy Rich Asians is a book equivalent. The plot is glorious and cheesy but the aesthetic references are legit.

Alix Grès, the former Germaine Emilie Krebs (1903-1993) attempted a career in sculpture but shifted to costume design, making her name in the play The Trojan War Will Not Take Place. Now I don’t know if the play featured Grecian gowns, but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it did. Her work was first noticed there and whether it was due to her sculptor background or not, she became known for her genius pleating and incredibly well-constructed tailoring. These dresses with the crazy folds and cut-outs stay on and that’s a testament to ridiculous engineering skills.

I love looking at these gowns because of the clean, graceful movement. It’s not just the designs themselves that are timeless but also the color palettes. You see these vibrant shades of orange, marigold, burgundy, emerald and subdued taupes, aubergines, and grays. The seemingly simplest things tend to have the most thought behind them and her dresses exemplify that beautifully. You see her style being replicated through different eras and after you start perusing her work, you’ll now recognize a Grès when you see one.

“For a dress to survive from one era to the next, it must be marked with an extreme purity.”
Madame Grès

Photos Courtesy of The New York Times, Style Clicker, Brabourne Farm, Covered with Stars, Garance Dore

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Photos by Joel Darwin
(except the one of him, I did that)

I still have a hard time believing that we’ve been married for three years. Three years is infinitesimal but it can feel like a lifetime sometimes. We dated for almost a year before we got engaged so we’ve been in a relationship for four and it’s the longest one we’ve been in. Joel surprised me with a quick trip out of the city for our anniversary last August and he refused to tell me where he was taking me until we were on the highway.

I asked if I could make vague guesses. “Are we going South? No? North? No?”

We’re a road trip couple, in the sense that we don’t mind being stuck with each other on long drives and we’re pretty good with maps. When Joel hesitated when I started asking if we were headed east or west, I knew we were going somewhere that we haven’t been to before. I guessed Bataan when I eliminated everything else as too far for an overnight trip.

I love how Joel knew that I would appreciate being around old houses. Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar is a seaside resort town that features restored heritage houses that were “rescued” from ruin or thoughtless gentrification. These houses were carefully dismantled and then were reassembled back Lego-style. A lot of these houses have amazing back stories to them and daily tours go by the hour.

The whole property has workshops that equip Las Casas to be able to construct, furnish, and restore anything they need. Joel and I spent the second day touring the workshops and renting bikes to visit all the houses. My mother’s family is from a heritage town (Vigan, Ilocos Sur) and I grew up with old houses and a fondness for Filipino furniture and craftsmanship. Even my parents’ house in Manila harks of it and I was and am never too far from solihiya and heavy narra tables.

Joel is an old soul and this is one of the things we like experiencing together. I’m convinced we’ve shared lifetimes in rural areas because as much as we’ve committed to living in the city, it’s too easy for us to romanticize dropping everything and living off the land. It’s a dream that will forever lurk in the back of our heads and I wonder if there will ever be a time where we’ll be able to do it, even just for a bit.

My big wish is to be able to see more of the Philippines every year — preferably by road. It’s during those zips down SCTEx and TPLEx that Joel and I have some of our deepest conversations happen (some of our most intense fights, too — and there’s no escape!).

If there’s one thing I’m very grateful for in our three years of being married, it’s the fact that I have the best conversations in the world with Joel. We’re both very sensitive and emotional people, so when we bare our hearts, we usually end up in tears, either by way of spiritually connecting or of laughing at something really disgusting. I’d like to think this is one of the best features of marriage.

I get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of places we can readily go to now compared to before. I’m all for new experiences, escapes, and exuberance but there’s something to say about the universe of stories and rumination that end up pouring out of you when you travel. About the possibility of never being the same when you come back. About the clarity we pick up when we start seeing God’s hand weaving through our lives, past, present, and future.

I overthink it, I know. I’m not sure I’m making a whole lot of sense, but I know Joel gets it.

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Photo by Joel Darwin
(I was taking an actual nap, the splayed limbs and the big butt are real)

How are you guys holding up? I’m barely feeling October and I’m terrified that I’ll blink and I’ll be nowhere ready for our trip out of here in November. We’ve spent three nights out of this work week doing overtime way past midnight and we wake up already trying to sort out our deadlines for the day.

The two of us are basically locked up in here with testy emotions and stacks of to-do lists. I would squeeze as much naps as I can in between client feedback and Joel has resorted to singing and playing Yo Yo Ma in the apartment to stay sane. It’s so hard trying to stay motivated when you’re already burning out. Joel also works as an English trainer part time and lately he’s been decreasing his teaching hours to put in more time into our business and this is the first time where we’re perpetually together working round the clock.

Our work weeks don’t always look like this but we’re in this crazy position of trying to take on and finish as much as we can before we go on break from the end of November to the first week of January. When Joel and I have an opportunity to go on vacation, we go balls out. Because we’re going to be gone for that long, we really have to tie all lose ends and clock in more income for our pocket money and for the Manila bills we still have to pay for while we’re gone.

This week has been making me reflect about pushing ourselves this hard. I get that rewards feel so much better when it’s earned but I’m wondering if there’s a better way to go about it. I’m a snarling bear when I’m stressed and the last things a snarling bear wants are hugs and Rumi quotes. I feel like punting woodland creatures when I’m stressed.

We started ordering lunch from one of those affordable meal delivery services that have been getting popular these days. It lifted a huge weight from our shoulders when we didn’t have to prepare lunch or wash dishes. We’ve been ordering from a vegetarian kitchen too so we don’t have to shovel junk down our energy-depleted bodies. Actual lunch eating has been reduced to 20 minutes (I timed it), so we can actually devote the customary remaining 40 minutes to resting.

I squeezed in two Theta Healing sessions this week and that cleared up my emotions as well. I don’t know how it is with other people, but I think stress is a emotional and spiritual problem. I’ve become much more aware of this when I started working on my own. My inability to compose myself with grace under pressure or my naiveté with taking on more projects than I can handle are all rooted in inner juju problems. It’s everything. I can be a bit of a control freak and and lose my shit when my days don’t go as planned — chances are, I’m like that because of a bunch of past experiences and belief systems.

In the spiritual realm, Joel and I start and end the day with prayer and we’ve made a habit of waking up and reading the bible. The latter is something recent. We took it as a challenge to read the Bible from start to finish. We’ve been enjoying Genesis and its wonderful tellings of rape, incest, and douchebaggery.

Kidding aside (or am I?), Bible reading has become an exercise for us to get to know the character of God and humanity and more often than not, it becomes more freeing knowing you can rest in the universe and that there’s something so much bigger than money, status, and deadlines.

For my emotions, I’m a big advocate of talking things out and unearthing past baggage and issues. When you dig through your emotions hard enough, you’ll come into contact with all your debilitating beliefs and thoughts. We do this in all sorts of ways. Writing and sitting quietly in traffic helps me with this, but I take it a step further by doing Theta Healing (it’s a new age healing modality), intuitive tarot readings, and meditation. You’d be surprised how much your intuition knows and how much your subconscious stores up. Whether we like it or not, emotions can get in the way of productivity and personal (family, friends, self-esteem, etc.) issues have this magnificent, pathetic way of ruining work flow.

I’m a really introspective person and it follows that it’s the intangible things that I focus on mending. It’s not good to stay here too much though and I’m realizing I should throw myself into more physical activities. I have a lot to learn from people who love their endorphins and I’m hoping that I’ll usher in a period of moving my muscles soon enough.

For now, I’m going to stick to playing Arrested Development in the background while I work.

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We shot Mikey and Marian just a few weeks after they moved into their apartment. They just got married and I was so excited to be able to document this season in their lives. I’ve known the both of them for a while now, primarily through the gig scene and Mikey and Marian are as creative as it’s going to get. Both of them are musicians (Ciudad! Hannah + Gabi! Soft Pillow Kisses!) and they also have fun day jobs  — Mikey does music for a production house and Marian is a writer for Every Nation.

Marian is also one of my favorite girlfriends and one of my birthday twins. We share the same strange quirks about friendships, relationships, peeves, and being aloof but secretly emotional Aquarians. So when she got married, I found it really cool that we still have similar parallels. We both live in itty bitty apartments filled with musical and arty ephemera and we both are breaking so many married coupledom stereotypes.

Bia, Wanggo, and I spent an afternoon over their place where we drank beer and watched Wanggo Just Dance!

Photos by Bia Catbagan

Is there a room that is solely yours? That you designed yourself, for yourself?
Marian: Our home is a studio type condo unit, so the entire place is one room and we share everything—the couch, the bed, the bathroom, the kitchen. When you get married, you just have to prepare yourself to give up some space.

We got this unit furnished, so everything’s pretty much set when we moved in. We just displayed a couple of artworks made by friends, along with posters from previous Attraction! Reaction! gigs. That’s the extent of our home decorating because we’re not really staying here permanently. We’re actually moving out in a couple of months.

Mikey: Since our home is a studio unit, the whole place is my room, and hers. Aside from the Attraction! Reaction! gig posters and the artworks from friends, I put my whole video game collection on display on the big cabinet along with Super Mario action figures I got from McDonald’s Happy Meals.

What room do you do your work? And can you work while the other is present?
Marian: We rarely work when we’re at home. Mikey makes music for a living, so he walks a couple of blocks to his studio when he needs to work. I’m a writer but I’m #blessed to be working in a place that doesn’t require me to bring home workstuff. The rare times I do have to work at home, I use our dining table as my workspace. Then, I block off Mikey with my earphones. I can’t really write when he’s present, unless he’s asleep.

Mikey: I rarely make music in our home because we don’t have the proper space and equipment. But I do have a small room in the studio where I work. In fact, the studio is considered a second home to us. We hang out there sometimes outside of work hours to get free air-conditioning and internet. Sometimes, she stays with me in my little arrangers’ room while I work. I don’t mind, she’s just on her laptop. Once in a while I ask for some feedback from her, and often, some lyric suggestions.

When you know your partner is working, do you do anything different to help them?
Or do you just disappear in the background and let them be? Or do you go out of your way to make the place more creative?
Marian: Mikey kind of disappears in the background by playing video games with his earphones on, or he stays in bed and ignores me. That’s how he helps me when I need to work, because I need silence or good music when I have to write. He brings the occasional glass of water to me, though, when he sees I haven’t moved much from my laptop.

Mikey: Marian always needs peace and silence whenever she writes, so I give that to her. It’s my opportunity to catch up on some video games. Sometimes I run to the convenience store to buy her some chips and drinks. Sometimes I sneak in a hug to let her know that I’m still around.

What has changed in your creative process since you moved in together?
Marian: When I was single and had no roommate, I would stay up late and listen to different kinds of music to get new ideas. Nowadays, it’s not really possible to stay up late without him waiting for you to go to bed, as well. It’s probably a newlywed thing. Like your bed is empty without the other.

Mikey: A lot of household chores now get in the way. But that’s the reality of married life and adulthood, and I’m not complaining.

If you had to describe your home, how would you describe it?
Marian: It’s very basic. When we moved in, we were just happy to have a place in Makati all to ourselves. We didn’t really think long term about its size, or our future kids’ rooms, et cetera. We knew we weren’t going to stay here for more than a year, so we didn’t really bother decorating much. We just made sure we could function, so we have the usual newlywed things—silverware, glassware, microwave oven, washing machine, fridge, oven toaster, rice cooker, et cetera. When you enter our place, you’ll notice Mikey’s collection of game consoles and video games. Then, on the other side of the divider, you’ll see all my clothes and shoes. So, our place is literally our single lives combined.

Mikey: It’s a “transition” place. Of course the goal is to have a bigger space of our own in the future.

What are your future plans for your home? What’s missing? What do you want to improve on?
Marian: We’re preparing for our own home soon. We have a lot of ideas for that place, like an entertainment area where all the gaming and music playing will happen, a rooftop for parties, and a bigger kitchen. That’s our main concern now as newlyweds without kids yet. We also want to be able to invite friends over for dinner or drinks, so there will definitely be a space for that. Eventually, we know we should set up rooms for our kids in the future, but that’s not what we’re thinking of now. Haha. (Sorry, mom and dad).

Mikey: One of our requirements for our future home would be a space big enough to play Just Dance on the Kinect!

On the flip side, what do you love about your home right now?
Marian: I love how it’s so close to everything. We live near a park and a Family Mart, so wow, plus points for location. I also love our landlady, who happens to be a good friend of ours. One time she sent their household helpers to tidy our place for free, and when I got home, everything was spic and span. I will definitely miss that special treatment when we move out.

Mikey: This is our first year of marriage, and the first place we ever shared together. So even though the place that we have right now is not really that spacious and well-decorated, I know that in the future, we will always look back to this with good memories and much fondness. #BLESSED

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I’ve always had a Kennedy fascination, but if I were to examine what drew me to the Kennedys, it would be Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. And if you look at Jackie’s pictures long enough, you’ll notice her sister Lee Radziwill as her sartorial partner. The more I learned about her, the sooner I became obsessed. Lee Radziwill is a chameleon. She epitomizes the elegance of New York and Paris all in one go, with sly nods to a devil-may-care past. She has been linked to some of the most enigmatic personalities of her time (Mick Jagger, Peter Beard) and was a muse to Truman Capote and Andy Warhol.

T Magazine did a feature on her last year and I spent some time reading her interview — it doesn’t disappoint.

Photos Courtesy of T Magazine, The Huffington Post, Mark D. Sikes, Style Sovereign

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Photo by Joel Darwin

It’s one of those days. I’m wishing I could backpedal to an earlier part of my twenties so I could have plotted out a more different path for myself. I’m hoping for path that would allow me to wake up to a reality where I have a bigger apartment, where I have someone from Masterchef as my in-house cook, and where I discover that I am a part-time cheesemonger.

I have this awful problem. I’m easily addicted to putting a lot of unnecessary pressure on myself, to nitpicking choices I’ve made in the past, and to comparing myself to other people. It’s an addiction because once I allow myself to go there, it will take a lot for me to yank myself out of it.

I only incorporated my business this year and even if I’ve been doing independent graphic design for a while (2 years part time, 1 year and eight months full time), I feel like I’m only doing it for real now. I feel like I spent too much time watching my hair grow and gazing at my navel; that if I had the gumption, I would have gone indie much earlier and I wouldn’t feel like such a rookie at age 28. I dig myself into this hole because I cheer and gawk for every new wonder design kid that’s doing amazing things in and out of college, and I start remembering what I was doing at age 20, 21, 22… those were really gross years for me.

I had a pretty long extended adolescence and I feel like I haven’t forgiven myself enough for it. For every instance I feel like showing Past Me love and encouragement, there would be more instances where I feel like whacking her on the head.

I have a hard time respecting my pace. This was the right time to incorporate. I wasn’t ready last year because I had to prove that I could make money at a consistent, steady rate every month. I wasn’t ready a couple of years ago because I still had to battle my colossal ego and I wasn’t equipped with even half of the skill set I possess now. I would only open my e-mail inbox once a week in 2009 (unthinkable!). It was my time with New Slang that got me indoctrinated with leaving my e-mail tab open the whole day.

I’m also addicted to glossing over my achievements in favor of holding magnifying glasses up to the things I haven’t accomplished. So even if yeah, I got much more ace with the Pathfinder window this year, I’m still wailing over the fact that I can’t draw or do lettering.

I’m even more afraid to talk about my personal life. I eat two square meals a day. Two, not three, because I don’t do a good job of regularly shopping for quick breakfast fixes, and I’d rather sleep an extra hour than wake up to cook breakfast. I do not work out. I have a special hatred for everyone’s Crossfit selfies because you and all of your grandmothers will be able to outrun me during the Zombie Apocalypse. I’ll get medals for sleeping through an apocalypse though!

I actively perpetuate this cycle because it hasn’t yet occurred to me to love myself more in this department. This eats at me because it’s a daily reminder of how I’m not doing a stellar job of taking care of myself. If I’m not taking care of myself, how can I take care of other people — specifically little people, the ones that I will eject out of me someday.

The best part of me knows that these are lower level emotions that do pass, if I just allow them to wash over me. I’m really impatient and I’ve gotten used to clearing one goal after the other that I can’t take it if life has me tied down for longer spells. Things I want aren’t happening fast enough and more than anything, that really just speaks of my inability to accept that I’m not really in control of my universe.

I’m lucid enough to also recognize that when I fast track things that I’m not ready for, they fall flat on my face. There are seasons for risking and those are the ones make me feel so alive, but there are also going to be seasons for waiting. It’s hard identifying which is which but a good rule is, if you’re being met with a lot of resistance, it’s a waiting season.

It’s too easy to dismiss the lessons you learn in waiting seasons. In my case at least, it’s here that I’m forced to think long and hard about my life. These are the periods were your soul is that one that’s being molded, not your skills — and in a lot of cases, the skills emerge because your soul was made ready for it. Because I’ve been bestowed with more wait than risk these days, it only means that my character is the one that needs more attention. Things will never be on my own time when they’re matters of character.

It’s one of those days.

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Photo by Joel Darwin

It’s been a year and eight months since I resigned from my last day job and pursued my graphic design practice full time. My last day was on January 31, 2013. Then I celebrated my birthday the next day on February 1 (my birthday’s on the 3rd though). Because of how balanced the dates are, I will always remember when I first jumped off a cliff and trusted that I would come up with a flying contraption on the way down.

The last time I experienced such a feeling was when I agreed to get married at 25 with nothing to my name. Marriage has everything to do with my business because I wouldn’t have been able to make the jump if my co-pilot wasn’t there with me. Joel is my project coordinator — the Richard Hendricks to my Erlich Bachman. We’ve been using that metaphor too often and it’s causing a bit of an identity crisis because we function more like Jared and Richard, but I possess Erlich’s visionary and asshole qualities. (All my references point here; please watch it, it’s an amazing show) Don’t jump without any support!

I was beginning to lose track of how long we’ve flown solo and it’s good time to start jotting down some of the lessons I’ve learned about quitting your day job and working from home.

1. NO OVERTIME: A LIE
   I wanted to leave the office because I wanted to achieve this mythical idea of a work-life balance. I wanted to end work early everyday so that I can pursue the more relational aspects of my life. What I didn’t realize is that if you’re not yet savvy with hammering deadlines and being able to “pivot” (I love you, Silicon Valley) when things don’t go as planned, you will be working late into the night. Sometimes you’ll be working on weekends! Sometimes when you’re on vacation, you’ll still be thinking about your deadlines!

   The wonderful thing though is that when you’re doing overtime in your own house, you can work in the comfort of your pajamas and not worry about commuting home. Because you’re already home, boo yeah!

2. NO MORE COMMUTING: ENOUGH OF A REASON TO LEAVE YOUR DAY JOB
   I am horrified at the state of the MRT. With my last job, I used to take a jeep, then the MRT, then a trike to get to my office. It was already uncomfortable then, but I was able to bear it. Since I started working in Makati, I have never been stranded anywhere and I’ve been able to walk home from a lot of my meetings and presentations. Now that I’m realizing how much time commuting ate up, I will never come back to that. If you can telecommute, do it. If you have the option to live where business happens, do it.
3. WOW, I GOT STYLE, SOMEWHAT
   I used to think my aesthetic was all over the place, but working on my own allowed me to discover my taste and it helped me become more sure of my voice as a designer. I’ve been getting my inspiration from other creative fields like interior design, food, and fashion (and I used to hate fashion!) and it has given me a vocabulary. Developing your own voice will prevent you from drowning in trends and copying other designers (hey, admit it, we all start that way). While I’m not a total original and my environment influences what I do, I discovered that my voice is a quirky and playful one that likes to interact with clean, utilitarian frameworks.
4. WORKING WITH YOUR HUSBAND WILL BRING OUT YOUR WORST
   It’s not for everyone. Work adds another dimension to your relationship and it can get difficult dealing with your issues in a business scenario. I don’t know about everyone else, but it is in work where Joel’s and my insecurities and identity issues come out.

   It’s here where I saw clearly what my relationship towards money, society, and prestige are like — and if both of you are not looking at those three things in a compatible way, there will be fights. This is why it so important to decide on your values and what your roles are. For our family, accountability ends with Joel. With our business, accountability ends with me.

5. OUTSOURCING IS THE FUTURE
   I seriously thought that I could go on the way we were without accounting and lawyer services. I knew I was supposed to be filing taxes but it was a possibility that I put off as long as I could. When I couldn’t avoid it any longer, I bit the bullet. I knew there was no way we were going to read up and tackle the Philippine tax system on our own (Joel still tries, bless his heart), so we needed help.

   We already have a lot of fixed monthly expenses as it is (yes, believe it, everything adds up) and the idea of having another entity to siphon our meager resources was painful. I thought that we weren’t making enough to afford accounting services — but if you’re going to be in business, a lot of things require faith. Joel and I don’t come from wealthy backgrounds (no trust funds, no manas, no stocks, no rent-free apartments, etc.) so the stakes are even higher because everything we use is from what we earn. You know the feeling, right? We’re much more touchy when it’s our own stuff on the line.

   I wouldn’t believe me if I told Past Me that I pay for an accountant every month. Our earnings have been able to support the new additions and the crazy thing is, as you level up, so do the kinds of clients you get. We use Full Suite.

   My philosophy is that I want to keep my overhead as low as possible and that means outsourcing tasks as much as I can.

6. KNOW WHY YOU’RE IN THIS
   I got inspired to write this entry because one of our clients ended our meeting with her imparting business advice. She was stressing the importance of being grounded and avoiding debt as much as possible by identifying the things that are really important. There’s a lot of pressure in the design business to look and behave a certain way.

   This one year and a half of running our own business has taught us about who we are. I’m realizing that you don’t have to make yourself out to be a certain way to fit into an industry. The industry is big enough to handle a myriad of personalities so there’s no excuse not to let your freak flag fly. There will always be standards (good grasp of typography, knows grids, loves white space, lets culture and history inform the aesthetic) but we don’t have to subscribe to what culture expects of designers. Designers will attract the kind of client that jives with them, I’m a huge believer in that. Socialite designers attract socialite clients. Cool designers attract cool clients. Edgy designers attract edgy clients.

   I’m in this because I’m a competent designer and the other things I love in this world fit in nicely with what I do. e.g., I’m intuitive and I love to read people, so that gives my work a more human touch or I’m a big fat nerd, so you can count on my references to come out of nowhere and know that they will be just right. I think I’ll have a home office for a while because that’s just who I am. I haven’t exactly narrowed down into one word what kind of designer I am, but I’m hoping I’ll be attracting people who are good, authentic, articulate, and nerdy.

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One of my earliest memories as a child involves leafing through Life coffee table books. I was already an introverted kid and disappearing into pictures and books was one of the first coping mechanisms I learned. I still like going through the Life archives online and I like the idea of sharing my favorite sets.

This documentation of a coming of age story in Post-World War II Japan has always spoken to me. I love rock music and the ’60s. It’s youth culture rejecting the sins of its fathers and struggling to find its own way. It’s interesting how this particular set of young people set themselves free to rock ‘n’ roll yet their eyes still looked so sad. Anyone who had their own rebellion years can relate, but only a few of us can say that we looked this amazing doing it.

Photos Courtesy of Life Magazine

CAPTION FROM LIFE “Sometimes [Yoko] goes down to the port in Yokohama to watch the ships sail off to the places she only wishes she cold go. At sunset, her ‘day’ begins again.”

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I should start off by introducing myself. I’ve been planning to write again for the last two years and I spent most of 2014 procrastinating on it and ironing out all my intentions.

I’m Marla and I’m a graphic designer for a small design company I run with my husband. I got married and got involved with entrepreneurship around the same time, and the last three years swallowed themselves up. I also moved out of my parents’ place that year. It was the first time my husband and I were completely on our own. We bought our own furniture and our first car. He learned how to fix toilets, I learned how to cook in lovely Le Creuset imitation pots. We renewed passports, applied for visas, registered our business, hired an accountant, bought life insurance plans, and yet we still feel like we’re faking adulthood. We just hired our first intern last week and I can only pray that we keep up the adult charade as long as we can.

I wasn’t always like this. It was too long ago that I squandered all my earnings every month, lived with my parents, hitched rides with my mom to the MRT every morning, and drank all my sorrows away with the greatest set of friends anyone can have. I also wrote a lot. 1,200-words-of-creative-non-fiction every month a lot. I have the hardest time remembering 2011-2013 but 2009-2010 still hit raw nerves, because I wrote all about it.

I needed a creative outlet again. The unique format we did with my old site New Slang intimidates me now and I want to see if I can play around with a new medium. I knew I woke up every other day with something I needed to get off my chest. I knew I wanted to experiment with different kinds of content, instead of rambling about my feelings. I knew I didn’t care about native advertising and unique visits — but I also knew that should it start factoring in, I’ll let Future Me deal with it.

The big thing I wanted to do though is to meet other people and document their lives. Hence “Darwin Dispatch.” My last name is Darwin and I want to send dispatches. There will be themes that will revolve around the cranky thirty-something demographic but the first one I wanted to do is “creative tandems.” I wanted to meet couples who are doing creative work and who live together. I wanted to know how they’re pulling it off and how they’re co-existing with their respective crafts.

I wanted to peer into people who are just like me and my husband — it’s a sneaky way to learn and to make friends.

I also wanted a sneaky way to hang out with existing friends under the guise of a collaborative project. So I tapped my favorites Bia Catbagan (film maker and photographer) and Wanggo Gallaga (screen writer, writer, and HIV advocate) to spend a Saturday with me. I had Bia shoot and I had Wanggo devise the questions for our creative tandems. Thankfully I was able to get some couples to say yes to the project, but I also want to be exploring outside my social circles in the future. In order to get strangers to be vulnerable, I have to be the one to get vulnerable first.

So, hello. Welcome to our apartment!

Photos by Bia Catbagan

Is there a room that is solely yours? That you designed yourself, for yourself?
Marla: The area that’s totally mine is my work desk. I selected all the furniture and my pride and joy is my replica Eames DSW chair. I had the color customized; I showed the paint guy the color swatch I wanted because there’s only one shade of pink that I like in this world. I hate any other kind of pink. My back is now paying the price but at least it looks pretty. I’m also touchy with what people (i.e., Joel) leave on my desk.

Joel: No.  I wish I had one though.

What room do you do your work? And can you work while the other is present?
M: I stay on my desk, but where my aforementioned back starts acting up, I move to the bed so that I can prop my pillows for support. Otherwise we work fine. We’ve been working from home for a while now and we’re used to each other already.

J: Working with my wife next to me can come with its fair share of distractions (i.e. sharing clickbait etc.), but we’ve figured out other’s ‘in-the-zone’ moments and generally know how to stay productive together.

When you know your partner is working, do you do anything different to help them? Or do you just disappear in the background and let them be? Or do you go out of your way to make the place more creative?
M: I check to see if the dishes need to be done and if the laundry has to be sorted. It’s hard to get to a good pace going work-wise when the house isn’t neat. On the creative front, I have the hardest time buckling down to sort out our deadlines and tasks for the day but I do it because Joel is a mess when we don’t have our to-do lists in order. If we’re working late in the evening, I become the resident DJ and queue up annoying alternative songs from our high school years sandwiched in between our favourite hiphop songs.

J: Marla is a pretty pampered worker in that I’ll try and have snacks available and help her with other things so she can stay focused on designing.  As the first born in my family, serving doesn’t come that naturally to me, but seeing her happy and clicking away makes it fun and rewarding.

What has changed in your creative process since you moved in together?
M: I work best by myself. It got highlighted even more when I used to work in an office and I realized I get so thrown off and distracted when people would keep bugging me to show Youtube or 9gag links. In the offices I used to work, I developed little cues for people to know when to leave me alone (keep my headphones on, wear a hoodie, etc.). When it’s your sensitive, empath husband who wants to show you the links, I’m learning that I should be more of a wife than a worker sometimes, heh.

J: I’ve developed a creative process.

If you had to describe your home, how would you describe it?
M: We live in an Ikea showroom, but I love that it’s homey and warm. It’s always a challenge to make a windowless space welcoming, but we somehow did it. Homey, warm, welcoming, that’s our apartment.

J: Comfortable, colorful, warm and a bit worn down – just the way we like it.

What are your future plans for your home? What’s missing? What do you want to improve on?M: My big, big dream is to have a bigger apartment with a ton of natural light. With the bigger apartment, I want a more delineated office area. With our current space, I would really like a bed frame. It used to be all romantic and fun to sleep on a mattress on the floor but it’s getting trickier to get up to pee in the morning.

J: We’d like to eventually upgrade to a bigger apartment with more living room space and a proper office area.  I think we’d fill it up with a few more bookshelves and plants as well.  We’re particularly partial to succulents.

On the flip side, what do you love about your home right now?
M: I love living in Makati. We just renewed our lease for our third year and I cannot imagine ever leaving Legaspi Village. My mom’s office is on the same street (she retires this year and has been in that office for 35 years) and that has been our urban anchor all my life. This is where I feel safe and I love that I have my own piece of it.

J: It’s got a quirky personality and can take whatever personalites are out there and make them feel comfortable and cozy.

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