Get Lost 2.0: A New (Mis)adventure in Zambales
“You’re so brave!” most people would tell me. Oh, believe me, I am scared out of my wits.
We started Get Lost as a passion project, a way to put together our core memories in one digital journal. Since our main line of work at OTT involves family members, we get to combine work and play when we go on location for projects. And having a trigger happy family means a lot of content in our hard drives. What a waste if it just lives there, so we decided to put it all in one diary of (mis)adventures.
It took a decade and a pandemic to get most people to understand and appreciate what we do at OTT. While photo and video production have been around for ages, the popularity of live streaming boomed just a few years ago. Ten years after we started live streaming, it finally bore fruit in the middle of a pandemic.
And it’s work for OTT, plus the lack of travel, that put Get Lost in the back seat. But then it also made us think of the kind of life that we would want our family to have, backed by the business that we have now. We’ve had the opportunity to take a pause during this pandemic and realize what’s important to us. The desire to set up our lives the way we want to live for decades to come became stronger as we grew weary of our humdrum city lives.
What pushed us to go beyond our comfort zones? That lingering feeling of knowing that we have another purpose to fulfill. And with virtual work finally becoming the norm, we took the big leap in 2021 towards our new adventure. What has been all talk back in 2018 is now our reality.
“If not now, then when?”
Uprooting our family and leaving city life comforts got us a lot of raised eyebrows and negative comments.
“Are you sure you want to live there permanently?”
“Why not keep your city house and just buy a rest house in the province?”
“I don’t believe your kids are ok with this.”
“What kind of work are you going to get there?”
“What if there’s a tsunami?”
“That’s the West Philippine Sea. You’ll be one of the first ones hit if an invasion happens.”
I could fill up a whole page with all the questions that we got after people learned of our plans. And I admit that a lot of these questions crossed my mind as well being the paranoid person in our family. The unexpected and the unknown can be difficult. But isn't it the same way for anything new?
“A lot of questions arise with the approach of any new adventure, really. A surrender to uncertainty is the strongest path forward, a way to accept the truth: many of life’s questions don’t have an answer at all. We’re just here to witness, to watch our lives unfold.”
Thanks to my 16 y/o daughter Natalia, a lot of the FAQs got answered via her Inquirer articles published on 10 April 2021 and 27 August 2022. It helped in getting our loved ones to understand our decision to pursue our dream. And what about my own fear of the unknown? It's overshadowed by the thought of my family feeling regrets of inaction had we decided to stick to the safety of the status quo.
“You cannot live your life in fear, or you will forsake the best parts of it.”
As we put down roots in our new home, we decided to come up with Get Lost 2.0 ….. less of a travel blog and more of a lifestyle website focused on documenting memories in Zambales (for the most part). And not just my family’s memories, but also yours!
We would love to share with you the beauty of our new neighborhood! Let our Get Lost team capture your moments while you enjoy your vacation.
We envision Get Lost 2.0 as the playground of our junior creatives and training ground of Zambales locals. Maybe this new project will even take us to other places like how we used to do it pre-pandemic. We're always eager to take on new adventures!
My husband Miguel has always been a proponent of the decentralization of Metro Manila. If everyone with the dream of success left their families to go to the metro, EDSA will end up worse than it already is, if that is even possible. Rather than simply talking about it, we all decided it was time to walk the talk. So far, we have discovered there is so much untapped talent here - this is backed up by our recent trip to the next town to visit Alon and Araw, but that's another story for another article altogether. Hopefully, more will follow suit to help us build new jobs for the community.
