I didn’t expect this moment.
After her long day of tattooing, I crossed paths with Apo Whang-Od while walking through the village. No setup, no schedule. just presence.
I showed her the work of her apprentice, someone continuing her lineage, carrying the history, wisdom, and responsibility of this tradition forward for the next generation.
This was never on a checklist.
Way beyond anything I imagined.
A reminder that the most meaningful moments are often the ones you don’t plan for.
16 hours of tapping.
16 hours of breath held between hurt and healing.
16 hours of asking myself why… and answering it with who I am.
Even now, in the quiet, I still hear it.
tap. tap. tap.
Pain has a way of introducing you to the parts of yourself that comfort never could.
Somewhere between the first strike and the last, fear left my body and strength moved in.
But that last hour…
feverish, vision fading, my eyes rolling back,
somewhere between this world and the next.
And in that space, I felt them.
The ones who walked before me.
The ones whose blood I carry.
The ones who survived so I could be here.
No grand speech.
Just a knowing.
You are on the right path.
Keep going.
If I can sit through this, I can sit through anything life tries to place in front of me.
The mark is on my skin.
but the lesson is in my spirit.
A good café just hits different on a Saturday morning ☕️
You know it’s a special spot when the coffee is great, the people are even better, and you leave already thinking about your next visit.
Coffee lovers!!! what’s your go-to café order right now? 👀 And if you know a slept on café in Rhode Island, drop it below… I’m building my weekend list.
#CoffeeLovers #CafeHopping #RhodeIslandCoffee #SpecialtyCoffee #CafeVibes
What we bought to survive a 16-hour flight… plot twist: business class 😭✈️
Meanwhile I’m up there pretending I belong in the front of the plane trying to act cool… thankfully the merino wool actually kept me cool 🤝
Shoutout to my fav @woolandprince shirt for surviving the long haul without getting swampy, wrinkled, or smelling like airport stress.
#WoolAndPrince #MerinoWool #BusinessClass #TravelStyle #LongHaulFlight
Cloudy Sundays are for slowing down, not checking out.
Rest day fit: the Wool & Prince sweater polo, relaxed trousers, coffee in hand, and a few quiet miles around Providence. Learning that recovery doesn’t always mean sitting still… sometimes it’s just moving through life at a softer pace. ☁️☕️
This might be my favorite kind of menswear lately… comfortable, understated, and easy enough to actually live in.
#Menswear #MensStyle #QuietLuxury #SmartCasual #mensfashion
Rhode Island has sleeper cafes… and today’s find might be one of the most interesting yet ☕️🍌
📍Little City Coffee & Kitchen
Tried their latte with banana milk; a non-dairy banana milk paired with espresso, and somehow it just works. Creamy, slightly sweet, and tastes like coffee met banana bread in the best way possible. One of those drinks that sounds weird at first… until you take a sip.
Definitely a sleeper cafe worth stumbling into.
#ProvidenceRI #RhodeIsland #SleeperCafe #CoffeeTok #CafeHopping
Found a sleeper café in Rhode Island and I already know I’ll be back. ☕️🇵🇹
📍Cafe Alma in East Providence — a Portuguese café serving authentic pastries, meals, and coffee. I tried the Pastel de Nata Latte… and yeah, they literally put a whole pastel de nata on top. Might be one of the craziest latte combos I’ve had.
This is your sign to stop going to the same cafés every weekend.
#RhodeIslandEats #RhodeIslandCafe #CafeAlma #ProvidenceRI #foodiefind
Ten years ago, she took a chance on a younger guy who was still figuring life out, unsure of where he was headed, but completely sure he wanted to spend most of his waking moments with her.
She was about to graduate and follow her passions. He was still searching for his. Somewhere in the middle of all that uncertainty, they found something steady in each other.
Swipe through and you’ll see it all. The early adventures, the memories that shaped them, and if u swipe all the way to the end you’ll see a moment where a 17 year old her looked at a 13 year old him and said “ew” … Honestly, fair.
Ten years later, life still isn’t all figured out. She’s back in school chasing new dreams. He’s still building and becoming. But now he gets to do it by her side every day, spending his time trying to be better for her and for the life they’re creating together.
Same love, just deeper. Different chapters, still choosing each other.
No two jeepneys are the same.
Each one carries a different story, painted in color, shaped by the hands and lives that built it. What started as something uniform became something deeply personal.
And yet, they all move together. Same roads, same stops, different journeys.
Maybe that is the point. We are all built from similar pieces, but we choose how we are seen, how we show up, how we carry others along the way.
There is something different about standing on land that knew you before you knew yourself.
The same streets, the same air, the same quiet corners that held my childhood. This is where I learned who I was without even realizing it. Where life was simple… but somehow shaped everything.
I used to walk this place as a kid, not thinking much about time. Not thinking about how one day I would leave, grow, and become someone new.
And now im back… not as that same kid, but as someone who carries him.
What makes it different now is not just the place.
It is who I brought with me.
Because home is no longer just where im from.
Home is who im with.
To walk my ancestral land, the place that built me, and to share it with the person I chose to build a life with… there is something sacred in that.
It feels like two timelines meeting.
The boy I was, and the life im creating now.
And somehow, in this moment, it all makes sense.
I consider myself a collector of pauses. A quiet hoarder of time.
It started with my old iPhone 4. Nothing crazy, no intention behind it. Just snapping things that felt worth keeping. Somehow that turned into 90k photos later (yes us have 88,260 in my camera roll)
But I realized it wasn’t really about the photo.
It was about the pause.
That split second where life slows down just enough for you to say, this matters. Even if you do not fully understand why in the moment.
I keep a mental memory when I take the shot. A feeling, a presence, a version of me that exists only right there.
But memory fades… It always does.
Photos wont let it disappear so easily.
Because when I come back to them, I dont just see an image… I replay a moment. The energy, the people, the air, the silence or the chaos, all of it finds its way back to me.
So maybe… I am not just taking pictures.
Maybe I am building a way to return
to every version of myself I have ever been.
