Oranges are not the only fruit

Years ago, when I was an editor at a beauty magazine in the Philippines, my life consisted of going to events, yoga class and getting goodie bags from makeup companies. The women I met at that publishing house (who edited titles like Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, etc) were strong, brilliant, waaay smart, all talented and beautiful.

A bunch of us lived minutes away from our office building; we called it the ‘single girls’ strip.’ We often got together often and dreamed about different things: living on the beach, writing novels, living for art. But at the time everything we were doing was glitzy and glamourous. We loved our jobs and loved our lifestyles.

Most of us don’t live in Manila anymore. Maya is in Singapore editing a travel magazine. Apol lives in the south of France. I am in the Midwest. I think about my past life with nostalgia, mostly. Obviously I don’t remember the traffic, how claustrophobic Manila society was, how doing the most inane tasks took forever.

But this post is about Apol, who, after being editor-in-chief of Good Housekeeping and Real Living, hied off to France to write and sew. Being that she IS brilliant and talented, though, her being low-key still means high profile accolades for her writing and sewing. Her Etsy shop contains “little objects that tell stories and make you dream” — all handmade and filled with awesomeness.