Welcome to My Life

What if you could live your life all over again? I was thirty-three, clumsy, frustrated with life and terrified of fatherhood. I went years without a steady job, which really ticked my wife off because she was forced to work 12 hours a day so she could give our daughter a better future.

Our apartment was a messy two-bedroom located on the third floor of a very old building in downtown Manila. It was filled with college kids and the landlord was accustomed to haggling over rents. She was fifty-two but looked forty. A skinny woman with short brown hair trapped in a boring, sexless marriage. I'd spent hours in that little burrow wondering if I could steal her away for a weekend.

Not very long ago, I looked at some classy townhouses down south fit for a young professional. I'd dreamed of working in a high-pressure environment filled with great minds. I was sickened and saddened by what I had become, and I was astounded by the speed at which I had fallen.

But I vowed not to give up. I told myself: "Sure it's a rough and tumble world out there...but I will prevail. Sit on your butt around here all day and you'll starve to death." I promised to do something different and reinvent myself. That's what I did.

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Eric van Straaten's 3D-Printed Statuettes

I can't remember when I first became entranced with Eric van Straaten 's 3D-printed sculptures. I think I stumbled onto his work through tumblr when I was searching for new artists to follow. Eric's attention to detail is pretty amazing, and the image of the eroticized child-woman is familiar throughout his work. Most of his hyper surreal pieces are 3D-printed in sandstone material, which are created by laying down a thin layer of gypsum powder and using a binding agent and color inks to print a pattern onto it. Once the entire model is printed, it is withdrawn from the print bed and the excess powder is removed. The model is then sealed and ready for display. "I think that the girls I create in my work are visualizations of my own feelings, fantasies and thoughts," the Dutch artist explains. "The girls actually look like someone I (used to) know and the different ‘portraits’ tell something about what I think of myself in regards to her or women ...

Where Bad Space and Good Music Collided

My first apartment was in Malate, and calling it “small” would be generous. I lived there with two girls and one guy, and to this day, I genuinely don’t know how we all fit. It felt like a magic trick. Or a health hazard. We were a musical mess. One roommate lived and breathed ’70s classics. Another was permanently blasting Korn and Slipknot. One survived solely on cheesy love songs. And me? I was floating somewhere between new wave and folk rock, pretending that made sense. Somehow, despite the noise and the chaos, we all lived together in this weird, mismatched harmony. No murders. No lawsuits. A win, honestly. My music taste now is nothing like it was in my twenties. Not even close. But I’ll always be grateful to Jacqueline for introducing me to this song in particular. It was playing when I woke up from a very memorable sleep in 2002. I was 21, half-awake, probably confused about life, and that song stuck. It still hasn’t let go.

The Adorable Sculptures of Yen Yen Lo

These images are from a series of wall sculptures created by Yen Yen Lo . Here you can see her intricately textured ceramic pieces, looking downright adorable. Yen Yen Lo's eye for the unique and whimsical is delightful. Apparently they are not intended for kids under 16. Fifteen-year-olds cannot be trusted with fragile stuff. Get them a Funko Pop instead.

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