I grew up in a household that loves playing games. Board games, video games, computer games. Anything that has great objectives or a good storyline. As a child, I would watch my parents battle it out on our now-ancient Playstation 1. They loved Space Invaders in particular. My dad, however, enjoys other games such as Oddworld: Abe’s Odyssey,…

As soon as morning rose to January 1st, the first thing I did was to create a roadmap for goals I wanted to achieve in the next 3 month. One of these goals is to leave my current job. I was tired of the salary cut, the lack of benefits, being ignored and stuck in…

This is Diwa Daily, the second and last blog I’ll ever make in my lifetime. This is a soundboard for everything and anything to do with my passions and personal stories: games, stationery, being a shitty parent but still trying to get good at it, failure, literature, and more. It’s a comeback of what blogging was…

I bought my first domain—stefgonzaga.com—back in 2010. It looks clean and profesh now, but it went through so many identities and changes before this look. From freelancer website to personal blog to creative writing journal, you just couldn’t tell what it’s meant to be anymore. Getting this domain was a HUGE thing for me though…

1 Loss. When all that’s left are the fleeting memories of tall cups of coffee and literary exchanges, an intertwining of passion and hunger for experience. That thin recalling of how your eyes glistened with pride as you displayed your autographed copy of James Tate’s poetry collection, how you managed to earn an afternoon with…

I unearthed a letter from Stephanie of 2009. Written in blue paper and tucked among the letters I kept over the years, she asked the following questions: Did you still look back and wish that things would be different? How is life for you now? Were you able to do what you wanted to do…

Deeply hung over in creativity thanks to Gumroad’s Small Product Lab course, I decided to create, build up, and launch a creative community, an initiative called Makers Club. I thought it would be a fantastic way of continuing the momentum the course had created. On a personal level, creating and fostering a community made up…

I’ve been freelancing for seven years. I freelance because it supports both my life and my creative writing. Writing poetry, fiction, fan fiction, game fiction, and everything literary in between has and will always be the end goal. There’s this growing frustration, however, towards freelancing that’s weighing me down. For two years, I wished, dreamed,…

Are the latest writing apps or the most professional-smelling notebook enough to get you writing? Personally, I think these things won’t do squat if you don’t cultivate and stick to a writing habit or routine. And I’ll be the first to admit that it’s one of my current challenges as a creative writer. There are…

I love creative collaborations. They allow me to work with other creatives to get an amazing project off the ground. Some of the best creative projects were made through collaborative efforts. Refold and Project LOOP, for example, invite artists and designers to transform standing desks and skateboards into works of art. Collaboration is also my theme for this year. I…