RJMarmol.com

Wow. Hi. Bye.

—

,

Is it TikTok? Or Reels? Shorts? I don’t even know anymore. Suddenly lazy. Perpetually bored. Giddy and happy with access restored. Doomed at the prospect of tomorrow. Hanging by an invisible thread of sanity.

This whole AGI talk feels forboding but not in an existential sense. It seems more like a death not of life itself but of the higher meaning of it.

Progress is alluring. It’s shiny. It calls out to you like a siren out in a sea of damnation. Is this your saving grace? Or the hastening of your predestined demise? Nobody knows. Do you slow down and savour every minute of your last days — after all what is there left to lose? Or do you rush to the end, the written, the inevitable?

If you’ll die anyway, does it matter how? If you’ll lose anyway, does it matter when?

Dealing with a certain intelligence that could exceed ours and yours and of everyone before and after the you’s and me’s seems both exciting and frightening. Will it lift us up? Or drag us down? Fix our ills or make them worse?

But I think more interesting and pressing than this is the fact that no other time in our human history have we ever faced something we’ve created and thought, “I’ve created the death of me”. Or maybe we have, but certainly not at this scale.

One moment we were unstoppable. Moon? Yes. Mars? Yes. The next minute, we’re pondering if it was really “smart” of us to build something “smarter”.

AGI is here. Longer than you and I think. Longer than anyone with actual access to it would dare to admit. Should you care when you absolutely don’t have agency in the matter? Should you just walk along in peaceful resignation and say, “Oh well, we’ve had a good run”?

Humanity is not at a crossroads when it comes to AGI. That ship has pitifully sailed. We are now in the midst of it — breathing it, eating it, drinking it, drowning in it — it’s just not that obvious to many and probably never will to some.

Humans have sought and arrived at the best and worst the spectrum covers. And hasn’t that always been the goal? To max, to optimize, to advance, push boundaries, the cutting edge, the bleeding edge? Wow. Hi. Bye.

Let me know what you think… :)

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● About Me
Cecilia Regina Aquino Blanquera Marmol aka RJ Marmol profile picture

I’m RJ Marmol — writer, musician, and independent creator based in Manila.

I write songs, essays, and books about the messy overlap between money, overwhelm, creativity, identity, and rebuilding. Much of my work circles around what happens when life stops feeling manageable — and how we try to think clearly, make decisions, and keep moving anyway.

I’m also the author of Rebuilding Under Debt: Thinking Clearly When Everything Is a Blur, a nonfiction book published under Steady Hand Press. The paperback edition is listed under my full publishing name, Cecilia Regina Aquino Blanquera.

On the music side, I release work as HeyRJ. On the writing side, this site is where I gather my books, essays, notes, and whatever I’m building next.

Music

HeyRJ is my sonic soul project. I create raw, minimalist-style and deeply personal music interpretations that feel like a late-night conversation with your truest self.

By blending lo-fi acoustic textures with poetic honesty, my work explores love, loss, grief, healing, and the quiet in-betweens of life. Each song is a letter — a journal entry — a gentle companion for when the world feels too loud or too quiet.

While my catalogue began with intimate cover renditions, my work is increasingly being shaped by original writing, drawing from years of poems, lived questions, and emotional survival.

“Stuck Home Syndrome” released on March 20, 2026 is my first original 20-track album written during a period when time felt compressed and days began to blur into each other. The songs came from sitting with thoughts that had nowhere else to go — unfiltered, repetitive, and sometimes uncomfortable. It’s a concept album that isn’t built around singles or polish. It’s closer to a continuous inner monologue, recorded with minimal production and very little ornamentation and meant to be listened to as one cohesive body of work. The goal wasn’t to resolve anything, only to document how it felt while it was happening.

On May 29, 2026 I released new original singles – “Rapturous”, “Uh Huh”, “Look At You”, “All That” and “Blew Print”. I continue to release both original and cover songs and intend to so for as long as I can so check back every once in a while — you might. just find something you’ll like.

For business inquiries relating to music, email me at: heyrjmusic[at]gmail[dot]com or my personal email at: rjmarmol[at]gmail[dot]com.

Books

Rebuilding Under Debt: Thinking Clearly When Everything Is a Blur

A nonfiction book about what debt does to the mind — and how to begin functioning again when financial stress has made everything feel blurred, urgent, and overwhelming.

Rather than treating debt only as a financial math problem, the book explores the emotional and cognitive realities of financial distress: shame, decision fatigue, avoidance, panic, relationship strain, and the difficulty of making sound decisions while mentally depleted.

Published under Steady Hand Press. It’s available worldwide in ebook and paperback formats on Amazon. Bookstores and libraries can also be order it wholesale via Ingram.

Contact

For book-related inquiries, media requests, bookstore questions, or discussion-group invitations, you can reach me through the contact page on this site or send me an email to rjmarmol[at]gmail[dot]com or hello[at]steadyhandpress.com

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