About this blog
Hi, I'm Dartegnian Velarde and this is one of my many blogs. A Meaningful Struggle is my one and only active blog, and I'm the sole author here.
I launched this blog on my server in August 2022. This site is built upon the Ghost CMS platform and uses a fork of the default Casper theme, which I developed on my own and open-sourced for anyone to use.
Why "A Meaningful Struggle"
One of my closest friends, Lynoelle Kyle, taught me about life's constant struggles and the importance of finding meaning within them. In 2022, when I was entering my own meaningful struggle, she sent this:
A meaningful struggle is simply learning even from failures. For example, in entering a relationship, we don't hold the future to know how will it work or not. So you enter in a relationship with a mindset that whatever happens you take in lessons along the way. I think that's how you wise up naman talaga. So when it comes to a point, it failed, it is still meaningful.
To add some "positive animosity", we really have no choice but to struggle as we live in this Earth. Lugi ka pag pinapahirapan ka na tapos wala ka pa natutunan to do better. Nasa cycle ka lang of repeating the same mistakes when you don't learn and find meaning sa hardships mo.
What LK said years ago still holds a lot of weight in my current life. I've noticed that, ever since I started blogging, I write more often when facing adversity. And so, I dedicated the name of this blog to the sole lesson LK imparted.
Dynamic color
You'll notice that, on every post you visit, the color of the site changes. That's because I've implemented Google's "Material You"/M3 color design system into this site. This is a standard feature on my main website and I have worked hard to bring it here so that users of my sites can have a consistent experience.
No comments
Unfortunately, comments aren't enabled for this blog. All of my past blog sites have comment systems integrated into them, yes, but comments for this site will remain disabled. The reasons are: one, I had a prior incident with someone commenting stuff on one blog and, two, I don't really get comments that much anyway. It's not worth the hassle of maintaining them and the overhead it brings for theme development is a net negative.
Small (grammatical) mistakes here and there
English is my first language, despite being a full-fledged Filipino. I use English in my day-to-day work, I compose all of my emails in English, and I even use English when thinking or internally talking to myself.
That said, I'm no grammarian. I don't have Grammarly installed in my head. Even though it's tempting for me to go back and retroactively correct the grammatical mistakes of my old posts, it defeats the purpose of preserving them. I wrote those things at a specific point in time, with my mental state being preserved in them. The best way to show respect to them is to publish my old posts as-is, with no edits or corrections made. By reading my old posts, you are reading them with the same text as when I wrote them years ago.
All of my best posts
Blogging has been a hobby of mine ever since high school. I have been continuously blogging ever since October 2013, more than a decade ago! Throughout my life, I have posted on several blog sites—3 of which are notable:
- My high school blog, The Metro Diary
- My college blog, A Better Tomorrow
- My early adulthood blog, A Stowaway Seagull
I have reposted the most relevant posts from those 3 blog sites here. My goal is to provide one place that can provide a cohesive understanding of who I am as a person.