For years, I thought I was waiting for my life to begin. I was waiting for love, waiting for the right person, waiting for prayers to be answered, waiting for a career that felt right, waiting to leave, waiting for something to change, and so on. And while I was waiting, I complained. I complained a lot! I know this because I have the receipts and they’re all over this blog.
I Found My Old Self in My Own Blog
When I started going through The Other Side of Mae again, I found versions of myself I had almost forgotten. There was the woman who wrote about becoming an “old maid.” The teacher who questioned whether she had chosen the wrong career. The single woman who grew tired of waiting. The woman who spent Christmas thinking about goals she hadn’t achieved, questions about why she wasn’t married, and to all the boys she liked who didn’t feel the same way. Some of those old posts make me laugh now. Some make me cringe. Some make me want to reach through the screen, shake the old Mae by the shoulders and say,
“Hey, look around you!“
But I can’t be too hard on her. She was writing what she genuinely felt at the time.
In On Waiting, I wrote about how torturous waiting felt to me. I complained. I grumbled. I protested. I wanted life to happen according to my timeline.
In Feeling Old and Sentimental on Catholic Teachers’ Day, I openly admitted that I complained about teaching, questioned my career and wondered whether it was too late to change direction.
Yet in that very same story, I also admitted something else. Despite all the complaints, I had found fulfillment. There were students, their achievements, their surprises, and the memories. Those little things were actually which kept me going.
Definitely, beauty and frustration were existing in the same life. But I just didn’t always give them equal attention.
I Was Always Waiting For Something
For a long time, I thought the problem was simply that I was single. Looking back, I don’t think that was really it. I think I had developed a habit of believing happiness existed somewhere ahead of me.
When this happens, I’ll be happy.
When that changes, I’ll be happy.
When I meet someone.
When I change careers.
When I leave this place.
When God finally answers this prayer.
When my life looks more like the life I imagined for myself.
In 2017, I wrote A “Not-So” Christmas Reflection. I was frustrated by unrealized goals, questions about marriage, an unreciprocated crush and all sorts of things that seemed very important to me at the time. Then I heard that a former neighbour—a mother of three young children—had a brain tumour. Suddenly, I saw my own life differently. I was healthy. I was with my family. I was loved. Those things had been there before I heard the news.
Nothing about my life had changed in that moment.
What changed was what I noticed. Perhaps that should have taught me everything but it didn’t. Not yet.
The Good Things Were There. I Just Didn’t Always See Them.
This is the strange part about going through an old blog.
You don’t only rediscover what happened, but you also rediscover what you couldn’t see while it was happening.
I had students who remembered me. Friends. Family. A business. Travels. Photographs. Stories. Accomplishments.
Ordinary days I would eventually miss.
Beautiful things were happening around me while I was busy wondering why other beautiful things hadn’t happened yet.
The beauty wasn’t necessarily absent. Sometimes, I was simply looking somewhere else.
I Thought I Needed More
For so long, I thought I needed more. More certainty. More love. More success. More adventure. I imagined a different career, a different place, a different future.
Perhaps I believed that if enough things changed, I would finally find the life I had been waiting for.
And eventually, one of those things did change.
I left the Philippines and came to Canada.
My life changed dramatically. Drastically! But starting over in another country didn’t suddenly give me all the answers I had been looking for.
Instead, Canada changed me.
Just not in the way I expected it to be.
Then Canada Stripped Everything Down
Moving to another country sounds exciting when you tell the story quickly.
New country. New opportunities. New places. A fresh start.
But starting over doesn’t always feel beautiful while you’re doing it.
I had already built a life in the Philippines. I had an education, a profession, a business, teaching experience, and an identity I understood.
Then I came to Canada and became an international student trying to pay tuition, rent, and living expenses. Suddenly, the titles and accomplishments that once helped define me didn’t matter quite as much.
During my first Canadian winter, I felt lost. Winter wasn’t beautiful to me then. It was cold. Lonely. Uncertain. Far from home. I spent much of that season worried about money and wondering what on earth I was doing in Canada. I had become so consumed with working, studying, and surviving that I had neglected things I loved—writing, creating, yoga, meditation.
And yet, somewhere in that difficult season, little things began happening. A child noticed my freezing hands one winter day and held them between her warm little hands. The chemical engineer and former teacher in me knew the science behind it: heat transfer. But what stayed with me wasn’t the science. It was the kindness. That tiny moment eventually became Warm Hands, a story I would look back on years later and realize was teaching me something I hadn’t yet learned to name:
Pay attention to the small things.
In the same way, Canada challenged my identity too. I went from the professional life I had known in the Philippines to working jobs I never imagined myself doing. At a hotel in downtown Toronto, I became a housekeeping manager and eventually chose to step down to room attendant. On paper, it looked like I had moved backward. But in A Beautiful Surrender, I eventually realized that the experience had given me something titles couldn’t: friendship, humility, acceptance, and a deeper appreciation for people.
Then there was Bob. I met him because I desperately needed work. He was a 90-year-old former film director who needed a personal assistant. What began as a job slowly became a friendship. And when he died, the man who had once been simply my employer became what I called my first heartbreak in Canada.
A child’s hand.
A housekeeping job.
An old man I happened to work for.
None of these seemed like extraordinary things when they entered my life. But they became stories I would remember years later. And perhaps that was one of the quiet ways Canada was changing me.
It was stripping away many of the things I once used to measure a good life and teaching me to notice what remained.
People.
Kindness.
Connection.
Small moments.
Stories.
Even that first difficult winter eventually became something different in my memory. In My First Winter in Canada: Dancing My Way Back to Myself, I realized that the season when I thought I was losing myself had also been quietly leading me back to the parts of myself I had neglected.
Writing.
Creating.
Reflecting.
Being still.
Maybe Canada wasn’t simply teaching me how to start over. Maybe it was teaching me how to see. And I didn’t know it yet, but years later, those lessons would become the heart of The Other Side of Mae.
Maybe I Was Noticing All Along
I titled this story When I Didn’t Care to Notice but as I went through my old writing, I realized that wasn’t entirely fair to the woman I used to be because I did notice.
I took photographs. I wrote stories. I reflected. I remembered.
Perhaps the problem wasn’t that I never noticed.
I just kept forgetting to notice the life I already had whenever I became too focused on the life I thought I was supposed to have.
Maybe many of us do this. We wait for the job, the person, the money, the trip, the fresh start—or simply for life to become less busy.
Then I’ll enjoy it. Then I’ll be present. Then I’ll be happy.
But what happens to all the days in between?
Then I Became Quiet
For years, this blog had been where I put everything—my travels, frustrations, dreams, complaints, and lessons.
Then I became quiet.
Life in Canada became less like an adventure to document and more like…life. Work. Responsibilities. Adjustment. Starting over.
And somewhere between 2023 and 2026, I kept wondering what The Other Side of Mae was supposed to become.
A travel blog? A personal blog? Photography? Self-discovery?
I spent years thinking about my niche and my brand.
Then, in 2026, I returned to my old stories and suddenly, I saw a pattern.
There were all the places I had explored—from the Philippines and Asia to Canada, where even something as familiar today as Niagara Falls once felt like a dream coming true.
And I realized that exploring beautiful places had always been part of my story. So, the first pillar was born:
Explore Beautiful Places.
Where we go.
There were the small things I had stopped to photograph and remember—flowers, snow, changing seasons, warm hands, morning light, and ordinary moments that somehow became extraordinary. Sometimes, noticing something as simple as a Christmas display in Berczy Park could lead to an unexpected story of its own.
I had also been discovering everyday beauty without necessarily calling it that. So, I gave it a name:
Discover Everyday Beauty.
What we notice.
And there were all the experiences I kept trying to understand through writing—waiting, love, career, loss, surrender, starting over, and becoming myself again. Some stories took me back to places I had visited, while others took me further into memories, relationships, and experiences that continued to shape who I was becoming.
Through writing, I had been reflecting on the meaningful stories of my life all along. And that completed the three pillars:
Reflect on Meaningful Stories.
What we learn along the way.
It took me years of trying to find my niche before I realized:
Maybe I had already been writing it all along.
And that realization gave me a reason to write again. I wasn’t returning to The Other Side of Mae simply to revive an old blog. I was returning with a clearer understanding of why I wanted to keep telling these stories—and what I hoped they might offer someone else.
Where We Go. What We Notice. What We Learn Along the Way.
Today, these are the three pillars of The Other Side of Mae. But to me, they’re more than blog categories. They’re connected.
Where we go. What we notice. What we learn along the way.
Perhaps that is one of the greatest things Canada taught me.
I travelled halfway around the world looking for a different life.
And somewhere along the way, I started learning how to see the life that was already happening.
If you’d like to see where this journey has taken me, begin with 20 Beautiful Places in Ontario That Could Capture Your Heart. It’s a collection of places I’ve explored, photographed, and grown to appreciate—not simply for their beauty, but for the memories I’ve made along the way.
But I Still Forget to Notice
I still get busy.
I still complain.
I still worry about tomorrow.
I still catch myself looking ahead instead of looking around.
And I don’t believe noticing beauty means pretending everything is beautiful.
Some seasons are genuinely hard. Some dreams don’t happen. Some people leave. Some days hurt.
Gratitude doesn’t erase any of that.
But I have learned that I don’t have to wait until everything is right before allowing myself to notice what is still good.
All those years when I thought I was waiting for my life to begin?
I was already living it.
Maybe You’ve Been Waiting Too
Maybe your waiting looks nothing like mine.
Maybe you’re waiting to meet someone, find a better job, earn a little more, buy a home, take that long-awaited trip, or finally reach retirement. Maybe you’re hoping for a fresh start or an answered prayer.
Or maybe you’re simply waiting for life to slow down.
It’s easy to tell ourselves that we’ll enjoy life more when things are different. When we have more time. When there’s less to worry about. When we’ve finally reached whatever it is we’ve been working toward.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting more. There’s nothing wrong with dreaming about tomorrow. I still do.
But I’ve learned that while we’re busy building the life we want someday, the life we have today keeps moving.
And I don’t want us to miss it.
The ordinary mornings. The people sitting beside us. The changing seasons. The small kindnesses. The places we pass every day. The moments that don’t seem important now but may someday become the ones we wish we could return to.
Maybe we don’t have to wait for life to become extraordinary before we start paying attention to it.
Because sometimes, we don’t need more.
We simply need to notice more.
What If the Beauty You’re Searching for Has Been Around You All Along?
This is why I created The Beauty Around You: A 7-Day Guide to Slowing Down, Noticing More, and Finding Meaning in Everyday Life.
Maybe I created it for you but perhaps I created it for myself too.
For the old Mae who spent so much time waiting and for the present Mae who still sometimes needs reminding.
For seven days, the guide invites us to do something simple:
Slow down.
Look around.
Pay attention.
Through simple prompts and thoughtful reflections, you’ll begin noticing some of the little things that often go unseen—and finding meaning in everyday moments you might otherwise pass by.
Not because everything around us is beautiful.
But because even in difficult seasons, there may still be something worth noticing.
→ Get The Beauty Around You — Your Free 7-Day Guide
This is The Other Side of Mae
When I started this blog all those years ago, The Other Side of Mae was a place for me to reveal pieces of myself through writing. But maybe the name means something different to me now. Maybe The Other Side of Mae isn’t only about showing you another side of me. Maybe all these years of travelling, waiting, complaining, photographing, losing, working, starting over, writing and beginning again have been teaching me to look for the other side of life.
The beauty beside the struggle.
The meaning inside the ordinary.
The lesson hidden inside the detour.
The story waiting inside a moment we almost didn’t notice.
I don’t know where the next part of this journey will take me.
But this time, I want to pay attention.
And perhaps, as you journey with me, you’ll begin noticing a little more of the beauty around you too.
Explore beautiful places.
Discover everyday beauty.
Reflect on meaningful stories.
Where we go. What we notice. What we learn along the way.
xo,
