Hey guys, seriously, we thought we would start today’s blog post by making an apology for going “off the grid”, but as it turns out, there’s really no need for us to apologise. We had been away from this platform for the past couple of weeks because there were a lot of stuff that we had to deal with, not just on a personal front, but also on the professional front (well, depending on how you choose to look at it).
So much has happened in the weeks since our last posting, so don’t be surprised if we say that we’ve forgotten some of those details along the way. So, rather than trying to wreck our brain 🧠 over what has transpired in between everything else, we’ll just share the major highlights instead. If we do think of something else that we missed, we’ll be happy to revisit this posting and make the edits.
Because there is so much that’s been going on, and with the CNY being the most current event, we will talk about those highlights/updates in the order of what is latest to earliest.
That means…
- CNY greeting + navigating our first CNY as a collective, and without a “shell”, while also dealing with disconnection, isolation and loneliness.
- We made our very first mission-oriented investment since 2017 by getting a two-year hosting plan from Hostinger. 👈 We have added a referral link here. When you sign up for a web hosting plan with Hostinger, you will also help us to earn 20% per sign up. And you get 20% discount as well.
- Our mission to build a new professional website and custom CMS that is going to be better than anything we have ever crafted, design and built over the years. And yes, we’re going to make it at least the same standard, or better than a lot of popular, mainstream CMS/Website Builders.
- A chance to discuss our recent “Deprogramming” breakthroughs.
- Finally, we’ll end by introducing our current Operating System, which we have called, “Lighthouse OS 2.0”.
Wishing Our Subscribers/Readers a Happy Chinese New Year 🧧
Gotta be honest here, personally, we’re not having the best CNY holiday. That’s the honest truth because it is the very first CNY that we are navigating the world around us without the old “shell” anymore. At the very same time, we are also already in the process of grieving that disconnection and isolation that we’ve been experiencing with our family. And that loneliness that results from it. So, we are not going to pretend and fake it like we’re having a great time during this holiday season. In fact, it will be the loneliest time of the year for us, going forward.
Just in the past three days alone, since reunion dinner, we have already been faking our “smiles” at the gatherings. We did our best not to interact because we know that under the circumstances and environment, the urge/temptation to “fake it” would be stronger if we had tried to initiate those conversations. So, we did our best to find the balance.
We brought our tablet device along with us to these gatherings/visitations, and then we would find a place at the sofa area and we would spend our time on it, catching up on our Medium reading list, as well as doing research on the web hosting plans (more on that later). The only time we would engage in a conversation is when an aunt or cousin are the ones engaging with us. Even then, we would keep the things we say about ourselves to a minimum. Key is to share as little as we can. It’s all part of an effort to maintain this “acceptable”, “less-than” reality that our family is willing/able to accept.
Anyway, just to be clear, we have nothing against others having a great time. Honestly, if you are having a great time this CNY, we are happy for you too. It’s just unfortunate that due to our circumstances and challenges, we wouldn’t be able to celebrate it and enjoy it the same way that others do.
Our First Mission-Oriented Investment since 2017
Time for us to remove all of the noise—that means anything that doesn’t carry a greater priority that our purpose and mission. This is just like our first core philosophy, “Does this decision/action/investment align with our purpose/mission?” For those that have been following our journey would know that we are currently in the midst of a 180-Day Mission. You can read more about it if you want a more in-depth understanding of why we started this mission in the first place. Currently, we are on Day 46.
Important Notes
- Missions: We are officially switching out the term “goals” with “missions”. The reason for that is because we find that the word “mission” tends to carry more weight than say, “a goal”. When it comes to setting goals, somehow it always seems to provide goal setters with room to fail, quit, or even reduce it’s scope just to make it more achievable. And also, when you fail at a goal, it feels like consequential than if you were to fail at a mission. But mostly, we decided to switch because we felt that this would also make us more accountable about the “missions” that we have created for ourselves.
- Mission Objectives (aka “Waypoints”): When you think about the metaphor of being an explorer, trusting only a compass to guide you and without an actual map, or even a complete map, that is when we begin to think in terms of “waypoints” as well as how we would navigate from one “waypoint” to the next. Now, from a mission perspective, some “waypoints” could turn out to also be a mission objective. But not necessarily so. Some “waypoints” are simply things we need to do/explore/research so that we can reach another “waypoint” that is also an objective.
No Compromising. No Shrinking. No Shortcuts.
To better understand our most recent investment decision, we gotta bring you into the past. For the past two decades, we admit that we have been accepting a lot of compromises and shortcuts. Apart from that, we have also been constantly shrinking ourselves as well as what we needed because we thought it would make us seem more “prudent”, “responsible”. After being really honest with ourselves in recent weeks, we know that we’re simply performing an “acceptable”, “approving” version of ourselves. After all, that is what the “shell” was all about.
The “shell” that we had created and chose to live with for over 20 years was a means to “fit into” the world that wouldn’t accept and recognize us for all that we are. Right from a very young age, we have already been told that there was something wrong with us for being “queer”. And so, the “shell” become a way to cope with the world on the outside. This “shell” would eventually serve the purpose of making ourselves smaller so that others would accept us. It also served to dim our brightness 🔅 because when we were shining brightly (naturally), it would make others around us uncomfortable.
So, for years, almost 80% of all the decisions, actions and yes, investment, spending have been scaled down in order to make us seem more acceptable. But in every single one of those times, we also realized that shrinking our needs and investments, we ended up limiting our own opportunities and capabilities.
The other 20% of the time? Well, we went all out. We invested and paid for the best that we could afford at that time. The best way to look at it is “future proofing”. By future proofing ourselves, it opened doors to opportunities that gave us the chance to challenge ourselves, and to grow and learn. We attracted opportunities that were more demanding than our capabilities of that time. It allowed us to tap into our untapped potential at that time.
It is better to have something and not need it, than to need something and not have it.
Following our core philosophies, we began by prioritizing our purpose/mission. We asked ourselves, “What can we spend/invest on right now that would help bring us closer towards fulfilling our final mission/purpose?”
On Day One of CNY, our “inner compass 🧭” directed us towards researching into “web hosting plans.” Bear in mind that at this very point, we still don’t have a complete picture yet. But we trust our “inner compass 🧭” so implicitly that we didn’t waste our energy second guessing. The more we continued our research, and finally landed on Hostinger’s Website Business Plan, that is when everything started to become very clear to us.
A Chance to Build Something Better 👨💻
Just to be clear, this isn’t the very first time that we have paid for a web hosting plan. We have over the past decade or so, supported GoDaddy on multiple occasions. And yes, we do have quite an extensive experience when it comes to hosting management as well as building and maintaining websites, be it for past clients or for ourselves. But when it comes to the creation and management of our own professional websites, for years, we have fallen into the trap of convenience. When the “shell” version of who we are looked at WordPress, it saw an easier option. Easier than having to build an entire CMS from the ground-up. What would’ve taken a year or more, could end up taking only 6 months (as an example). So, for years, we would create our professional websites using WordPress.
We have been proud and open about our past successes and accomplishments as a WP Master. In the years that we have own WordPress websites, we have built professional sites that have been regularly featured. We were that good.
But here’s something else that is also true: while we were really great at creating, maintaining, and managing our WP sites, we also knew in hindsight that if we had trusted our own capabilities enough, we could’ve created something on our own that would’ve been far greater.
And so, that is what this is now. Investing in this new web hosting with Hostinger isn’t just about having a professional website for the sake of having one. For us, this is a chance to finally create something that we know we are capable of creating. In fact, our mission over these next 12 months is to create a website and custom CMS that will also push the boundaries of what is possible.
Like the new terminology that we have coined recently—Content Management Experience—we will be exploring new ways to redefine what CMX is (and more importantly, CAN BE).
Hey, that work has already begun. We look forward to sharing more in the months to come. For now, please know that we will continue to use this WordPress blog site as a temporary place for us to share regular updates. Frankly, when the subscription expires in March, if we do not yet have the means to renew our basic subscription, we’ll glad allow it to expire.
With a new professional site that we can prioritize our time and energy on, this blog site will no longer be our highest priority. For those that have followed us since the very beginning when we started this blog site, they would know that our original intention was always to use this as a temporary, stepping block onto something better. We just didn’t have that means or clarity to do so until now.
Still, the expected design and development of our new professional site is estimated to take 12 months, so don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere just yet. You’ll still hear from us. Just a little less active that’s all. But yeah, you can expect us to retire this website, or at least stop maintaining it after February 2027.
Our Most Recent “Deprogramming” Breakthroughs
Since our very last entry, a lot has been going to be honest. But what we really want to share is the “deprogramming” breakthroughs that we’ve been experiencing. We called them “deprogramming” because that is precisely what needed to happen after spending the past 20 odd years of life being programming to think, feel and behave a certain way. A lot of our programming can be influenced by external factors, including our upbringing, school, friends, social life, work culture, societal norms, cultural norms, and more. But there is also part of our programming that comes from the things that we keep repeating to ourselves over the course of years, sometimes even decades.
For us, we know that in many areas of our life, we sometimes have 20+ years of programming that we need to overwrite. Build new neural pathways. But overriding 20+ years of programming is not something that can just happen with a snap of our “fingers”. Some deeply rooted programming can take months, maybe even years to truly replace.
Just to be clear, these deprogramming breakthroughs we are about to share, may have been deeply rooted for many years too, but thanks to our recent career breakthroughs and professional endorsements, they have acted like a catalyst too. They help to make the transition/flip easier.
So, we won’t dive into those “Deprogramming” breakthroughs individually here because that can form an article all by itself. But here’s the list of our breakthroughs so far:
- Core Identity : We now know who we are, and what we can do. And as a result of being fully aware of our Core Identity, we no longer feel bad or feel the need to shrink ourselves or our needs/asks.
- Core Purpose/Meaning: This means, finally being able to see ourselves as a “Human Lighthouse”. We’ll talk a bit more about this in the next section of this blog.
- At Peace with Our Core Identity & Purpose: Most recently, we finally understood that we never needed a reason to simply exist. In fact, we never had a “visibility” problem if you considered how we’ve always been a “Human Lighthouse”, even if we were unaware of it at that time. A lighthouse never has “visibility” issues. It’s others who decide if they want to look at the light and go towards it. All we have to do is keep existing.
Every single time that we experienced a “deprogramming” breakthrough, we could sense this “chasm” widening, and making the gap between who we are now, versus who we were (as a “shell”), further and further apart.
The best way we can describe it is like having a switch that gets flipped. Just to be clear. It’s not really as simple as that. But it does help to make our point. “Deprogramming” for us has been a process. Sometimes, it’s almost like we’re stumbling in the dark, looking for the right switch to flip. And then eventually, we would be able to find it and turn the lights on. And yeah, every single “old programming” is like a room of it’s down. Sometimes the room is bigger and takes us longer to find the switch, and other times, the rooms are smaller (less years of programming to overcome).
Honestly, if you were to ask us, we think we have many more rooms that we haven’t discovered yet. And therefore, numerous “switches” to flip. And some of those “deprogramming” process might require a familiar smell, something we overheard, or some kind of trigger (as is often the case so far). Some might be triggered tomorrow. Some could be triggered months from now. Others, maybe even years later.
The key thing we’ve learned is to not ignore the work. Don’t sweep it under the rug and say we will have time to deal with it later. These “mental & emotional processing” when delayed turn into “debts”. Trust us, you don’t want that.
Lighthouse OS 2.0
One of the most meaningful breakthroughs that we have experienced this last few weeks is our understanding and rediscovery of our own OS. We believe that everybody runs on some kind of Operating System. But at some point in our lives, we have all operating on the same one, called “Grind OS”. This seems like the “Windows” version of our human OS. It’s the default OS that most of us have been taught to operate on.
But it was in 2011 that we first began to question if the original OS was working for us. And so we began to exploring something else on our own. Back then “Lighthouse OS” didn’t exist yet. And so, being an industry pioneer that we are, we began to explore with something totally new. We began to focus on a few things:
- Focus on honing our skills.
- Stop chasing after work opportunities, acceptance/approval/permissions.
- Start focusing on shining at our brightest (ignore how uncomfortable it makes everyone else feels).
- Be still, be present, be ready.
When we began to practice all of those things, that is when we started to experience some of the biggest career breakthroughs. Between 2011 to 2015 was kinda like our Lighthouse OS Beta Version. And then finally in 2015 to 2018, that is when we tried to operate v1.0 of the OS. It was hugely successful. But because we were still living behind a “shell”, it was hard to notice what was happening. It didn’t fully registered at that time.
Now in 2026, we are finally ready to fully acknowledge and recognize our own unique OS. Lighthouse OS 2.0 isn’t just how we operate, it is a part of our core identity. It is who we are. And so, that is how we intend to live & work from now on.
Closing Thoughts
Man, today’s update has been a really lengthy one. So, if you are still here reading this, we want to say thank you for the support and readership. We think we have said so much today. We’ll not trying to make this post any longer than it has to be. One thing we will do is to expand on our “Deprogramming” subject in a separate article in the near future. So look out for that one. We think this is something worth spending more time on.
Alright, we think it is the perfect time for a nice hot shower🌡️🚿. It’s 5:46 PM, and it’s been raining all day today. Take care my friends.🫰
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