something new

A new blog that evolves from this one -- more exploratory and also more specific themes: writing, making art, following one's bliss, daily life lessons, among others.

There are also new works posted in my art blog:

bed-weather wednesday

But I was up early enough to not feel hurried through the morning.

And so far my pace is quite agreeable. 

I am discovering new depths of joy from working with watercolor, dip pens, and ink:

Not to mention that I am absolutely loving my return to the good ol' filofax. Updated with chronodex scheduling and inspired by John Winchester's demon and monster diary. I love the flexibility of adding and removing pages as well as rearranging them. 

I am way behind my word targets for NaNoWriMo but I remain optimistic. This year's novel has been harder to shape than the first and I admit there have been too many distractions and causes of dismay (i.e. Dayjob).

I have gotten around to printing inspirational pegs for my art-making, something that has been on my to-do list for ages.

Being focused and centered, even for the things that you sorely, desperately want and love, can be a challenge in the midst of daily demands that chip away at your strength and resolve. What has been helping me through is writing. I write when I am shaken and I write when I am lost. Somehow the words help me find my way again even if it is only as far as the next tiny step. Sometimes the writing simply helps me stay afloat on the worst of days, either days of raging storms or days of death-like stillness. Between the two the stillness is the more unnerving, when nothing seems to move and you even begin to doubt if the world still breathes. I write through it all, carving paths through the emptiness, holding up the oft-flickering flame of hope that keeps my own heart alive.

a semblance of control

So this is how my calendar and daily list look like. The digital ones at least. I have a back up little army of notebooks, notepads, and post-its to cover everything else in-between.

I have this need to see things done. I crave for tangible results. Perhaps that is why I am constantly drawn to creative arts and book writing because the output is very visual. 

I love seeing checkmarks nestled happily into check boxes. Tick marks of time that tell me where my hours went. That is why it can be so depressing to realize that I have spent an hour on social netwroks and nothing really much to show for it, at least nothing that would have honestly improved or enhanced my well-being, not for that whole hour at the end of which I sometimes feel a niggling doubt about the way my own daily life is going.

Anyway, I start on a dayjob work project tomorrow and I am hoping for another pleasant success. It will be tricky and interesting since it will be my first time working in my new nook. 

This is what I really want to do all day: gather inspiration and then transform some of the ideas into actual drawings, paintings, poems, or stories. 

Maybe if I sort through the tedious details of preparation for tomorrow and finish it early enough I might actually have time to do what I really want.

do more happy

Yes, yes, I should be working not sneaking another blog post.

But this particular project I am working on has been triggering all my inner alarms. It has even led me directly into an old Evernote entry where I made a first attempt to craft my Life Purpose according to Jack Canfield's Success Principles plus a host of other inspirational books.

My first attempt was true but trying too hard. It was unwieldy.

This time's attempt is clearer and it gave me that feeling of rightness.

And here it is : MY PURPOSE IS TO USE MY CREATIVITY AND IMAGINATION TO INSPIRE PEOPLE WITH STORIES AND IMAGES IN ORDER TO ENCOURAGE AN AUTHENTIC LIFE LIVED WITH MEANING AND MAGIC.

And you know what, it starts with the very example of my own life. Which brings me back as to why my inner alarms were sounding so loud. The path that I have been considering is not one that makes me feel happy or fulfilled. My logical mind can argue for its financial benefits but not much else. There is admirable leadership within that path but the day-to-day realities that will impact most on myself, my sanity, my purpose, are where the not-too-happy feeling is coming from.

A dear friend called me up from Indonesia the other day and she has given me a lot of good advice to think about. But one important thing she made me realize is appreciation for the amazingness that is my life right now. It may not pass social standards of a typical successful life but it does pass for the many people who have expressed their desire to be able to do what I did -- to take the captain's wheel of my life and navigate it through a temperamental sea. To be willing to throw so many things overboard. To leave the safe harbor.

It has not been an easy journey. I will admit that there were many many times I considered heading back to shore. 

But then every morning there is a beautiful sun that rises from the horizon, turning the water around me into gold.

what i want

But I have had to do a lot of errands and work even over the weekend. I did manage to read and finish Why We Broke Up (third book from top of pile) but felt so horribly guilty and stressed afterwards because I read instead of working. I hated the feeling.

Hence I worked all Sunday, only pausing to celebrate Father's Day with my family, and I secretly envied everyone I saw in the restaurant and in the mall because they did not have to go home to work.

I was feeling so low that I could not even appreciate the books in the book shops, nor was I in the mood for any indulgent snack. The work kept bouncing around in my head and I was busy convincing myself that I would get it done.

I did buy myself a little something to remind me of why I got myself into this bit of a mess in the first place, and at the same time also to remind me of the resolutions I have come to in the past four days. I dug up an old Evernote post and everything was there, all the answers I have been looking for.

"To be 'on purpose' means you're doing what you love to do, doing what you're good at and accomplishing what's important to you. When you truly are on purpose, the people, resources, and opportunities you need naturally gravitate toward you." (Jack Canfield)

"Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." (Steve Jobs)

My dream of London is as big and as strong as ever. But there are many ways and many paths to get there. It does not have to be a sacrifice, or a costly trade-off of time and passion and joy. The obvious most logical choice does not always mean the only way or the best way. There are off-beaten paths. There are paths behind wardrobes. There are possibilities inside blue boxes.

monday meanderings

I really should not be meandering. I am up to my eyeballs in to-dos and I have been having bouts of hyperventilation since this morning from sheer stress over work.

Taking power naps help to calm me down, as well as eating. Then there's sneaking in a few chapters from a book and stealing a few minutes to paint.

For the rest of June, my work schedule will be rather tricky. Three projects overlapping. I know I mentioned sometime ago that I would not even attempt doing TWO simultaneous projects and now I have three. What can I say? The bills have to be paid and one of those three projects has proven to be a profit loss for me so I have to make up for that loss by stuffing in two other projects.

Bills and day-jobs can really be major killjoys sometimes.

a sunday cat, and some sunday thoughts

I have been trying to get myself to work since this morning. So far I have ended up writing pieces that had nothing to do with work, and watching the last episode of Downton Abbey, and reading a book.

It is impossible to work on a Sunday. One can feel the holiday-ness of it. Even the sun is a certain shade of gold that meant Rest and Play.

I thought I have not made any art for weeks so I took out my little Moleskine plain notebook and made this:

I was hoping it would get me energized to work. It didn't. Why do I even bother to try to work in the first place? I think I feel guilty for being sick last Friday and not being able to work at all.

I also do not trust my immense capacity to:

Work pains me. At least the kind of work that takes me away from the writing I want to do and the art I want to make. It would not have been so bad if it were simple work, nothing that taxed me to the point of exhaustion. But the nature of my day-job demands a lot of mental effort, and mental effort is exhausting. I also have to exert extra effort to make up for my lukewarm heart.

I am reading this book on the science of success and I can understand perfectly what it is trying to say but as simple as it sounds, it is very difficult to practice. My mind is a noisy babble of anxiety and impatience that possibly slows me down towards the life I want.

I must not be distracted. The day-job is a means to an end. I must be careful not to get trapped as if it is an end in itself. I was in that cage once. I must never get caught again.

"Play your roles, but KNOW that they are NOT YOU." - Joseph Campbell

snapshots

Bills to pay loom every month. I have to keep working to keep paying. I wish there was a better alternative to all this.

I badly want to make art but I am struggling with work.

A little bit made for someone whom I really like and admire so much and who has been inspiring me no end for the past eight years.

My NaNoWriMo novel is getting some good treatment in between heavy loads of work. 

Recovering old titles I had and loved and sold years before to raise funds for a trip.

Discovered and loving Snapeee, a photo app.

What I hope to do more consistently every single day.

A Working Weekend

It is no use fighting it. I must work really hard from today until Tuesday.

The most I can do to help myself is to have a clear and clean desk, energy drinks stocked in the fridge, food ready and easy to prepare, no interruptions and distractions.

Break activity options are: reading one short story, Twitter, Instagram, or a power nap.

It's amazing how our lives can look so interesting with a few filters and careful curation.

On the other hand, seeing my daily life this way reminds me of what really matters to me. I am also steered towards the more positive side of things. Appreciation for the little things that would otherwise go unnoticed or be overwhelmed by the not-so-good things which we always tend to magnify.

Sunday Morning

April is not my best month. It started off with two trips out of town for fieldwork (for me that means visiting households to conduct two-hour interviews with consumers) which left me too exhausted to write or make art. Then it has been a mad rush to get things done before another wave of fieldwork comes in at the end of the month. This cycle will last until early July and I have been struggling with finding the time and the energy to write and make art. It is rather frustrating, and it reminds even more strongly of how work can eat up so much of myself.

There was a ray of hope sometime at the end of the second week when I got to talk with a dear friend from years back who is now top boss at an ad agency and was asking me if I would be interested in rejoining the workforce as part of their team. I had half a week to think about it. When time was up I told her I was interested in exploring the possibility further.

So what does it mean? It means leaving the home-based work setup I have had for the past three years. It also means faster savings for London which is the most important and biggest dream I have right now. It means funds for self-publishing my books. It means funds for setting up an art exhibit. (With my old self, money would simply mean retail therapy.)

But more than the money, I found myself looking forward to a new social group. The one I was hoping to bond with in the past three years has proved to be very disappointing. I had thought they were my long lost tribe but I was wrong. It was just like high school all over again with all the cliches and givens and templates. I was an outsider in high school. You get the picture. Heck, I could not even expect a decent reply to a text message. Few things smack of being totally ignored and unimportant as a totally unacknowledged text message.

There is also the advantage of learning new things, and a change of scenery.

However, it must not be misinterpreted that I am bored. I am never bored. And I don't miss agency life. It is more like I see now that it may be time to step back into the old fray as a whole person compared to what I was before and to go into it with my priorities clear and my goals clear. Maybe this time it will finally work with me instead of against me.

I have tried many times in the past three years to consider exploring re-employment but each time the answer from my heart and my core had been a resounding No. This time it feels different, so I finally said Yes. Maybe the lessons have been finally learned. It is Time.

I still don't know how it will all turn out, or whether it will even push through with this agency or another, or when it will happen. But it will happen. I know that now. I will flow back into the system but I will be different. I come from my personal hero's journey, a Wanderer who needed to define herself, and now getting ready to shift into a Warrior, someone with a context and a cause and a purpose. (References from The Hero Within by Carol Pearson - a great enlightening book!)

So these are my thoughts on this Sunday morning as I prepare for some deep working (delving into analysis and interpretation of data) to make progress with the project. I am hoping that having written this blog post I will be able to do some writing with my Camp NaNo stories -- I am way behind and in danger of not completing as I have only written a bit over two thousand words out of forty thousand.

And maybe I can sketch something during my fifteen minute breaks.

How is your Sunday going?

look up

See there among the tabs, one that is titled 365 for 2013. Yes it's my own personal 365 project. It's a humble project, and I designed it to be easy. A picture a day, with a lot of leeway on what kind of a picture it could be. I was inspired by Lisa Congdon's 365 Days Of Handlettering from last year and she even got a book deal out of it before the year ended. Well, I don't think my little project will be book-worthy yet but at the very least it should help establish me as an artist in some distinct and solid way. One of the pictures has already been claimed by a cousin. She offered to buy it but I insisted on giving it as a gift instead. Generosity, especially within the early stages of an endeavor, will go a long way. Good karma always pays.

Meanwhile I am motivated to meet this challenge I set for myself this year. I am still in the early stages so it is easy to get into it but the real test to my commitment will be when work starts to pour in again. I still have my writing to make time for as well as for reading all those books lined up by my bedside table and in my Kindle.

The drawing and the painting soothe me in similar ways as writing does. It is in that momentary transportation into another plane of existence where anything is possible and everything makes sense. Where whatever comes out of the pen or the pencil is real and alive. Where colors speak their hidden names and words reveal their secret powers. Worlds are born. When I am creating stories or images I find peace. I feel a calmness that I could never fully achieve with doing anything else. Writing and making art center me, ground me, keep me tethered to life and just enough sanity to distinguish between this world and the other worlds I travel through when my hand wraps around a pen or a brush or when my fingers start flying over the keys.

Writing and making art are the refuge of my heart when it is besieged by doubt and fear. How I wish and hope that I will one day sustain my physical life with my creations! To get up in the morning eager to work because work would be walking into my studio to add products for my popular art shop or to prepare for a small exhibit or sitting in front of a half-finished book for which an advance has already been received. Blissful indeed.

What dreams are you dreaming this year?

sunshine within the storm

I am being thrown about by financial tornados and heart tsunamis. I crawl my way into the eye of the storm and anchor myself with a paintbrush, a pencil, and a pen.

Colds and cough kept me at home today, with not much to do because sudden movements made my head hurt and make me want to throw up. A low fever flits in and out, undecided whether to camp for the weekend or just treat me as a pitstop.

Things certainly look more dreary when you're sick. I surrounded myself with the comfort of my books and made myself busy with art-making. I slept when my eyes started to hurt or when my skin started to burn again.

Watercolor and charcoal is fast becoming my favorite combination. Here I recreated a set of lucky fish that used to hang from my ceiling. I got rid of the fishes when they got torn and too dirty. I don't know if it was coincidence but the money-making projects dried up after that. So I recreated them by hand and will hang them in my home again. Just to be on the safe side of universal rules and schemes and energy flows. Just in case.

This one is a bit of a play with words and ideas and feelings. 

I did not get to do much work-related tasks today. My head hurt when I tried to steer my mind towards serious thoughts that required strategy and rationalization and very careful crafting. After a few failed attempts I decided to put off the work tasks for when I am feeling much better and when my head is more cooperative.

a summary of September

I hardly made any posts in September but I realize that quite a lot of interesting things happened.

-  I painted a lot in September. Much more than I have ever painted in my whole life.
-  I found my long lost glass dip pen.
-  I received an unexpected gift of a vintage fountain pen from a friend.
-  I watched The Help with my mom and my sis at my place one Thursday afternoon and we had a happy time.
-  I made delicious Southern Fried Chicken (inspired by the movie).
-  I bought a tin of fruit-flavored loose leaf tea.
-  I invested in a small box of gouache.
-  My family and I went to the annual book fair and we had lunch at a Japanese restaurant. My sister and I shared our favorite affogado dessert.
-  My sister and I attended the Bloom Arts Festival where I ran into an old crush, got four new books, and had free dinner, coffee, and dessert.
-  My sister and I had a three-day garage sale to help raise some extra cash. I had ice cream and ate lots of street food.
-  My mom, sister, and I attended the ceremony where my grandmother received an award for being the oldest woman in town. She is 91.
-  I single-handedly cooked lunch for four including baking a fruit pie for my dad's birthday.
-  I got my first Fashionary notebook.
-  I finished reading two books: The Sensualist by Barbara Hodgson, On Writing by Stephen King.
-  I wrote a lot and finished a notebook so I started a new one.
-  I had a few work meetings for potential projects.

How was your September?

Open Sign

I posted this on my Facebook today. I am now considering day-job options in line with the plans I have set for the coming new year. I will be sharing in future posts some of my thought-process while deciding on this particular course of action.

What are you setting in motion today? :)

keeping the faith

It's a challenging time for me this month. Some big changes will need to be made while staying true to what matter to me.

A part of me marvels at the nuances of these new experiences. There are insights and lessons to be learned in the situation I find myself in. The test of faith is at its most difficult. Things WILL get better. The tide WILL turn.

Meanwhile I will do what I can and wait for everything else to unfold in its own perfect time.

the gifts of clarity

Ever since I have been clarifying aspects of my life in the past few days and acting according to that clarity, there have been little events that demonstrate how things can fall into place.

No it's not magic or superstition. The way I see it, because I am clear with what I want and where I want to go, then my own awareness is attuned to that clarity. As a result, I am better able to spot opportunities or to recognize the things, people, and events, that can be helpful to my cause.

As opposed to being vague and uncertain, even if all the chances were given me, I would fail to recognize them as opportunities because I would not be sure that they are indeed opportunities. There would be doubt and there would be fear and there would be a lot of hesitation.

I am not even referring to grandiose desires here. Even with little things this whole formula of clarity leading to paths does work. When I am sure and clear then I am better able to discern what the next best step would be. And it is not about knowing exactly how and what the next step is for the whole stretch, but simply knowing at that exact perfect moment that it is time for the next step. My intuition is sharper. My gut-feel is more solid.

One of the first things I became clear with is my desire to literally write better and write more. I mean writing by hand, improving my penmanship, creating more handwritten works such as letters and postcards and design in general. I have been greatly inspired by a friend and role model, Leigh, who has very beautiful handwriting (and who also happens to be a passionate pen collector). I have been shying away from acknowledging my own enthusiasm for pens and handwriting until I actually lost patience with myself and decided that I want to nurture that aspect of me. Hence I made that post openly acknowledging myself as a pen enthusiast and its natural relation to a fondness for calligraphy and lettering.

So that became clear to me : I want to learn more and practice better handwriting, I want to eventually be able to do some level of calligraphy, I want to have my own modest pen collection, I want to integrate my writing skills into my artwork, I want a stronger handwriting habit in my daily life, I want to have a decent foundation of knowledge on pens and inks and their applications.

One of the first things I did was send a personal message to Leigh to thank her for her very enlightening blog because reading her posts definitely helped steer me in the right direction -- very useful since I really had no idea how to begin. In response, she gave me a vintage pen -- which for me was like a blessing and a welcome and a recognition all rolled into one. Her generosity helped dismantle the last few traces of any hesitation to move forward.

The note was written with the pen. Sadly I cannot yet reproduce the same quality of penmanship. :D

On that very same day, my mom stumbled upon my long missing glass dip pen -- it has been missing for years.

Today I took a walk around the neighborhood and found myself in a Surplus Shop specializing in items from Japan. I left the store with:

Five Ink Brushes at only Php10 each. 

A brush pen (also at Php10) that looks like it can be refilled with ink. It writes beautifully.

From deciding to evolve the literal act of writing it naturally followed that my own writing, the poems, the stories, the journals, also took a step to level up. It is like a whole Writing Revolution in my life, my writing is expanding itself and deepening itself, both inside (content and meaning) and outside (penmanship and calligraphy).

Already I am beginning to feel its ripple effect on other aspects of my life. The next thing to be bathed in the spotlight of clarity is my desire for baking, which in itself has always been on a defensive half-baked stance. I have started to sort it out since last night, and the resolution of the matter will be the subject of another post.

Have a great weekend!

where i am

"…just start where you are. It's a luxury to be in the mood to write. It's a blessing but it's not a necessity. Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what."
- Julia Cameron

I have made up countless rules for myself in order to write. Conditions that I somehow believed to be prerequisites to writing. I have this illusion of a perfect piece of work emerging only when these conditions are met. For instance, the house must be clean and in order so that my own thoughts will be in order. There must be a huge chunk of free time stretched out ahead of me so I will not feel rushed or pressured. I must not be disturbed in any way. The temperature in the room must be just so, not too hot, not too cold. It must be early in the day so I will feel like my writing is fresh like the morning sun. There must not be any work to be done after, no errands, no obligations. Meals must be satisfying but not exhausting nor time-consuming to prepare. Also, the dishes must somehow be magically washed away or else the sight of a full dirty sink will distract from the writing.

Needless to say, trying to meet all of these conditions means that no writing is ever done. Five days would have passed and I would still be planning and preparing to write.

The paper must be smooth. The pen must be perfect. The ink must be an exact shade of turquoise.

Handwritten is better than typing. I should wait until my fingers lose their stiffness from playing too much Assassin's Creed. I must not be sleepy, so it will be better if I lay down for a few minutes and took a nap.

I must finish all the items on my to-do list for the day before I can write. Or else all those to-dos will keep on marching back and forth before me on the blank pages.

All the fuss and all the nitpicking for the perfect time to write. Yet all I have to do is to sit down and to write. Ignore everything else. Write as if everything else depended on it. Write for fifteen minutes. Even for five minutes. In five days that would have already been almost half an hour of writing compared to no writing because the windows needed a curtain change.

I have created for myself little superstitions that make writing like some kind of a Holy Grail. I am sabotaging my own path to the creative life I am craving for.

Today I take a burning torch and burn it all away. The rules, the conditions, the excuses. The distractions, the hidden desire for instant perfection, the reluctance to begin for fear of never finishing.

Today I will steal time to write, and to make art, and I will do it every single day from here on. No, I will claim time, for it is the desire of my heart and the calling of my spirit.

Because really, what is it that I dream of, achingly, as I go to bed every night?

To be a writer and an artist, a creator and a crafter.

Then I must live it. Become what I want by doing. To cease all pretense at preparation, to crush every ounce of fear and brew it for courage. To leap into the void of blankness, of possibility, and to make things happen. To make my life happen. To make me happen.

random thoughts

This little piece is a combination of ink and watercolor on Moleskine.

I really love Merida's (from the film Brave) hair. I miss my big wavy hair from when I was younger. Now my hair just falls straight with suggestions of a few waves.

I am intending to revive snail mailing and I have started asking for people's snail mail addresses. I realized that I do not know anyone's snail mail address.

"and so to bed" is a phrase from one of the short essays from A Gardener's Bedbook which got me started recently on a path of gardens and exploring botanical art and also, in some strange connection, medieval letter art and calligraphy including illuminative art.

My grandmother has been sick and I will be visiting her today to cheer her up.

I've been on a slump for the past 2-3 days and mostly I was doing my best to crawl out uphill on a slippery slope to avoid the pits of sadness. I suspect I was gravely affected by the stresses from work and also the storms that raged through and flooded the city. I was relatively safe and comfortable through it all but the news of the devastations, including the death of animals that could not be saved, were really saddening.

On a brighter note, the sun is out this morning.

Today is unplanned chore day. Because I have been lethargic and sluggish and sad I have not been productive much. But today I am feeling better so I need to clean up.

A fresh round of clutter-clearing is so far the best remedy for combatting dark clouds over one's own head.

A trip to the supermarket and the second-hand bookstore always cheers me up.

life in square boxes

I have "launched" a photo album in my Facebook titled "Life In Square Boxes". It's a collection of daily life photography showcasing the simple and mundane details of everyday life but also hinting on the joys and little magics beneath each one.

It's a venue for my photography practice as well as my affirmation practice because in each image I make myself see the seeds of hope that I string together to lead me forward in my creative journeys. Like Ariadne's thread, this string of hope will keep me from getting lost despite seeming dead-ends and collapsed pathways, and even ambush attacks.

It is also an exercise in discovery as the ordinary takes on the perspective of the extraordinary, how little things can lead to big inspirations. It's an enjoyable way to feed the Muse.

How do you find inspiration everyday?

waiting for the rainbow

My mom was hospitalized for three days because of some bacteria that made her immune system go on full war, leaving her weak and sick with fever, nausea, and a very severe migraine. She was allowed to go home last Saturday but was given a host of medications that she will need to take for a month. She will also have follow-through check-ups with the doctors.

She is still not feeling well and her recovery seems to be going very slow. My dad, sister, and I have been busy making things as comfortable and conducive to recovery as best as we could. All our routines and 16-hour plans have been thrown out the window for the moment.

Since I live independently, I manage to slip in some level of normalcy to my routines but not wholly. I was also struck by fever the day after we took my mom home from the hospital. The fever was light but it kept going on and off so I am on a paracetamol schedule until today.  When I woke up this morning I could sense the fever trying to creep in. It could be exhaustion from the past week (especially since I also had a major client presentation last Friday), and it could also be the stress of paying the hospital bills. (The bills definitely took a big painful bite out of my savings.)

There is always a silver lining to every dark cloud. I strongly believe that. Even if at the moment the silver lining is almost invisible. The rainbow shows up after a heavy rain. The sun will always rise after the darkest hour.

Hopefully, the rainbow will have a pot of gold somewhere.