the infinite stuff

There is no lack. The gifts of the universe are limitless. Be grateful. Know what you want. Be the best you can be. Be authentic. Be true to your passions. What is yours will come to you if you truly believe. Have faith. Life is always good. Be patient. Follow your true path. Find your North Star.

my very own Project Life

I am inspired by Becky Higgins and her Project Life. But I cannot afford her beautiful templates and kits plus at some point I still want to do a bit more hands-on when I put things like this together. I also want space for my writing, lots of writing, not just photos and images. So I decided to design my own Project Life by getting a plain ring binder, printing papers, magazine scraps, old decorative calendars, and the like to help me get started. It is also a great way for me to have a hard copy of all my digital journals and blog posts -- my own way of securing myself a copy of everything I have written with a computer and thus taking away the fear that they would all be lost in cyberspace when the zombie apocalypse comes around.

There is a lot of cutting and glueing and doodling and coloring involved. Very therapeutic. I also find myself re-reading old journal entries and realizing that I had worked out some things that have been troubling me without realizing it at the time. I also enjoy discovering the patterns in my writing topics which help me with whatever it is that I am struggling with at the moment.

Right now I would love to do this all day but I need to get some work tasks done. How I wish for the day when I will never say those words "need to get some work tasks done"! How I wish that all I need ever say is "need to finish writing the latest book" or "need to complete the pieces for the next exhibit"!

my very own creative retreat

More than a month ago I grabbed up a plane ticket on sale (only Php2,500, roundtrip) so I could go on vacation next month to a bee farm by the beach with its own organic cafe. Since it is the post-summer low season, the bee farm's rates are also pretty good and I was set on spending a week there. I had planned on doing a lot of reading, writing, photography, drawing, meditating, and simply being free from the usual demands of daily life. No chores, no work, no distractions. Just me and my creative muse.

But then my mom got sick and the small budget I had allocated for the trip (scraped from various savings here and there) went to paying the hospital bills instead.

There are, so far, no new work projects in the horizon so I have to hold on to the funds I have right now. And I also have to make adjustments given the big bite which the hospital bills took. Thus, there will be no more trip next month. I'll just have to write off the plane ticket as a loss.

But what to do in that suddenly empty calendar week? I do not think it will be good for my own overall well-being to write that off as a loss too, that time allotted for myself and my creativity.

So I thought, can I still take some kind of trip out of the everyday?

And the answer was, yes.

I designed myself a week-long creative retreat in place of the bee farm trip. A week spent at home and without spending any money. There will be no chores (I would have pre-frozen cooked meals for re-heating and I would use paper plates so there would be no dishes) and no work (I would declare a vacation week to my clients) and no routines (I would spend the bulk of my waking time to very specific creative activities). I would also be offline from my social networks except for occasional blog posts. I will probably step out once or twice though to do my walking meditation exercise around the neighborhood.

I made myself a little brochure to add a sense of occasion and to emphasize the fact that this could even turn out to be a much better thing than the trip itself.

How do you turn plans-gone-awry to plans-turned-amazing?

it's a brand new day

Every day is a brand new day. Yet today is somehow more magical that the last few ones that have gone before. Something is shifting inside me, my soul compass pointing to its True North. The clouds of doubts and fear clearing from the sky of my dreams. The oceans of my heart pour in with the tide, pulled by the moon. The moon is my heart, sometimes broken in half, sometimes whole and brimming with light. The morning is an ally, the sun is the hand that holds me all together, fire melding all my broken parts.

Today I feel myself venturing farther and deeper even though everything seems to look the same. The words call, waiting to be poems. The colors swirl with excitement, waiting to be anything on a blank page. The muse sits just beyond the ordinary, a hand held out, and her sigh is an endless music.

Day 1 : Draw Yourself

So here goes my first day of the 30-day drawing challenge. I first sketched with pencil then completed the drawing with oil pastels. I have a fondness for pastels because of how the colors layer on thick and bright and intense. At the same time it blends. I love the waxy feel in my hands and I love how the color spreads on the paper and layers over as the color stick itself diminishes -- visible transformation from medium to artwork!

So this is supposed to be me. It's how I look inside anyway, how my spirit looks like. The retro wild child flavor is something that has been distinct about me, with just enough dash of weird and a generous sprinkling of geek. I used to not like those aspects of myself when I was younger because I thought they made me weak and uninteresting. I even did not like wearing glasses (I have been nearsighted since high school). But now I realize that they make me what I am, and what I am is strong and creative and beautiful in ways that are beyond popular standards.

What do you see in your inner mirror?

a catch-up and then off i go

Hello! I must say that life has taken some subtle but significant turns for me these past couple of weeks. Most of it were triggered by me and my decisions to take charge of my life and to pull myself out of unhelpful default modes.

I am glad to say that I have overhauled the foundations of my life (I even took a two-day personal retreat to really ponder and plan on things) and while the house isn't finished, I know that I am standing on solid ground. I will write more about this particular journey in my next posts but for now I would like to share the peace of mind I have gained in simply making decisions and taking time to have clear strategies of executing them.

What are the decisions I have made? Many of these will sound so normal or ordinary, and some may even say ask why am I only thinking of these things now? Believe me, I have been plagued by these matters throughout my life but I have just always resorted to band-aid (short-term) solutions -- most of the time I never realized that I was just masking things and not really resolving them.

What made me make the decisions in the first place? Call it metaphysical unease. Call it life dissatisfaction. Call it fears about the future. Call it a hotpot of all plus more (maybe even throw in a scoop of midlife crisis). I found myself generally feeling like I should and could be doing more and making more happen. I also felt that I have not been operating at full potential. There were things I wanted but then I already knew they would not be enough because I used to have them before and my happinesses were often short-lived.

I found myself gravitating towards "inspirational" and "self-help" books that I would not have probably given a second glance before. I found myself re-reading books that once gave me useful directions but are now giving me new, more challenging tasks and at a deeper level. It was both a new experience and also a humbling one to learn/ re-learn the basics of everyday life. I thought I always knew what to do and most importantly I thought I always knew what I wanted. Maybe I did but I had forgotten quite early in my life, especially when society applauded me so much for being such a team player for doing what was expected and retail therapy masqueraded as my best friend.

So what decisions have I made?  I decided on what I really wanted. Without guilt. Without fears. I matched that with my desire for everlastingness -- my mark in the world, how I want to be remembered when I die. Surely I do not want a eulogy that goes something like "she was so smart she helped sell a billion packs of fruit juice."

I followed my heart in a meditative journey and we swam through the sludge of my history and past decisions. I encountered moments of epiphanies that fell by the wayside, hit and run casualties by the devil of distraction. I saw beggar dreams from my childhood hungry and ignored looking up at me expectantly. I saw the gravestones of lost opportunities, massacred by fear. I saw a wasteland choked with procrastination, discouragement, regret, distrust, anger. And fear. So much of the stuff is floating around, cloaked in so many colors and called by so many names.

But my heart knows what it wants and all I had to do was listen to it. And I must not judge it. And I must let go of my fears. I must not say "That's ridiculous, it's too difficult to do! It's not going to happen" or "Is that even possible?" or the worst of all "But what would other people say?"

So we mapped my history, rescued some dreams, cleaned up as best we could. We made note of what could still be changed and made peace with what could not. The hardest part was self-forgiveness. My heart did most of that. My mind was all sharp logic and skepticism.

Then we took out a fresh new piece of blank paper. This time, for the first time, I let my heart handle the cartography of my present and my future. So much unfamiliar territory yet also so much of what's familiar with new paths. So many tasks and challenges. So many commitments. So much faith required. And yet, I find myself starting to feel... better. So much better. And more certain. Clarity and purpose that are true to one's nature and attuned to one's heart are blessed things to have.

So that's where I am right now and what's been filling up my days on top of, beneath, and through the daily (new and improved) routines. No roller-coaster rides like the fleeting feelings of falling in love. Instead, a lively-enough pace that fills me with serenity, gratitude, and sprinkles of (rediscovered) magic.

Have a great day everyone!

a practice in battling myself

One unresolved aspect of my life is my kendo practice. I keep on telling others and myself that I do it for the whole "spirit" thing, that whole idea of conquering yourself and your fears and challenging yourself to do things you don't normally do. They are all true but they are not the whole truth. I'm not even sure yet if they are even half the truth.

I started kendo practice in July of 2007. That's four and a half years. That's one of the longest I have ever committed to anything that does not exactly make me feel like the best of myself. It takes a lot from me. As an introvert I am not a fan of too much social interaction. I never joined any clubs in college and I was an expert at minimizing my presence and participation in company events. For me to show up every Saturday and actually confront an opponent -- that is something. I surprise myself every time.

I have had my many issues about practicing kendo. But as I look back on all those years, those issues were mostly things that surrounded my practice. With my limited vision and my too-vulnerable emotions, I often mistook the distractions as the practice itself or thought them to be integral to the practice. I have yet to overcome biases, insecurities, and low self-confidence. The challenge is to let all these mental and emotional clutter disrupt my experience of kendo or I can just focus on the simple miraculous fact that I am doing it at all.

My sister is more into the practice than I am. Sometimes her happiness is triggered by the very act of practice. There is a part of me that still refuses to let kendo have that effect on me because I guess I am afraid of failing it and myself. I know my weaknesses, and there are a lot, and I am afraid that they will get the better of me. But all the inspirational pieces I have read tell me to look at my own strengths and to remember the moments when I did something well. Like maybe that one Saturday when I shocked myself and a sensei by getting a point against him when everyone else has had a hard time doing so. Or remember the times when I am praised for a very good execution of a basic kata.

Today is the year-end tournament and sometimes I fantasize about winning a few times through the elimination rounds, enough to be noticed. Sometimes.

Then I get there and all I could pray for is to not make a fool of myself.

13 Things I Learned After Leaving My Job

When I left my job in 2010, the first thing I did was take a full rest and break from sixteen years of intense, high-stress work. I indulged in three months of doing nothing that had to do with any form of work. Instead I revisited all the hobbies and leisure activities I had neglected while I was neck-deep in deadlines. I caught up on sleep, I read stacks of books, I enjoyed my mom's cooking as often as I could. I also looked into some trips I wanted to take since I no longer have to worry about getting permissions to take a vacation leave.

After three months, I started to pull myself together and suddenly the future before me seemed like a vast expanse of possibilities and I didn't have a complete map. I knew I was going to set up my own home-based business eventually but the options to getting to that point seemed endless.

Now it is one and half year since I left the employed life and I have gone through a whole slew of trials and errors. I have had my successes and my failures. I got discouraged at many points but revived myself afterwards.

Here are some of the key things I learned and now try to live by as I continue to walk along that path to living a fulfilled life outside the conventional setup of being employed. I hope you pick something to inspire you along the way. :)

1

You need a structured schedule just like what you had when you were employed. Otherwise it will be quite difficult to get a lot of things done. Make lists! Invest in a happy planning notebook at the beginning of each new year.

Develop a schedule and a routine that work for you which also allow for the flexibility that you've always wished you had when you were in an office.

Set your own deadlines. Procrastination is your hidden enemy. There are as many distractions at home as there are in an office - the sight of unwashed dishes, the silent call of the soft bed, the bookmarked page in the book you could not put down last night. Keep updated with your chores and include it in your calendar so you don't get to use it as an excuse.

2

Wake up early, start early. I thought I could get away with sleeping in and waking up late but I found myself scrambling towards the early evening to finish tasks. How come it's no different from being in an office? It's because the usual commute time was spent on sleeping instead of being re-assigned to more productive tasks so I was experiencing the same "time shortage".   

Waking up early means even if you have a routine to follow and a to-do list to complete, you will still have enough time left for fun and relaxation. One of my favorite feelings is completing the last task for the day while the sun is still out. 

3
You can still burn out. Do make time to stop and smell the roses. No paycheck and a solo business mean that the income is not predictable. Sometimes it's easy to get absorbed in the need to stabilize your financial status or think too far ahead into the future and worry about it.

Reward yourself, not necessarily with money or things that cost money. Instead reward yourself with time.  When I was employed I complained that I didn't have time even though I had a lot of money. Now since money has become something I budget very strictly, time has become the currency which I have a lot of. But like money I am learning how to spend it wisely.

I give myself a few hours, a half day or sometimes even a whole day free from the routines and the to-dos. Within that time I engage in activities that fuel my creativity or expose me to inspiring images and ideas. It could be window-shopping, or browsing in a bookstore, or even simpler things like reading or writing in my journal. It's time for me to process my thoughts and feelings. It's a time to recover and recharge.

4
You are living a different life now. Don't compare yourself or your life or your current achievements with what your employed friends have. There was a time when I refused to visit my Facebook because I felt bad that I could not keep up with the stuff that my employed friends are enjoying such as trips and new gadgets and eating in new restaurants. But then I reminded myself why I made this choice and that I knew what I was giving up and that I gave them up willingly.

Don't try to keep up the same level of lifestyle you are used to. For one thing, I found all the inexpensive versions of what I used to indulge in when I was in a high-paying ad agency job and was a walk away from all the glamorous high-end malls. I took a tour of our neighborhood and discovered spas, coffee shops, restaurants, supply shops, surplus shops. Everything was at least half or a third of the prices in the high-end malls but delivering good quality. It's not about giving up. It's about finding better and wiser options.

5
Dress up. Even when you will spend the day at home. 

I know that it is a common image that people who work from home enjoy the comfort of working in their pajamas in front of the computer. I learned early on that this is one factor that could lead to a slow progress or procrastination. You have to signal to yourself that it's time for serious stuff. It also affects mood and confidence when working on a challenging project.

It's also easier to follow up on errands and any emergency task that will require you to step out of the house. Sometimes getting yourself fixed up to be fit to be seen in public can be such a chore. Don't let it.

It doesn't have to be full outfit. For myself I put on a nice comfortable skirt or pants, a plain clean t-shirt in a matching color and I fix my hair (a headband or a clip that complements the clothes) and I put on some light powder and lip gloss. Believe me, the act of preparing yourself and the feeling that you look good and presentable can do wonders in energizing you for the day.

But do feel free to have non-dress-up days once or twice a week. I have them too. :)

6

Keep your social skills sharp.  The trap when working from home is getting used to the comfort of it. The change and the fresh air will do you lots of good. One thing that can undermine your confidence when working by yourself at home is the realization of being left out of the loop or out of touch. Your social skills also tend to get a bit rusty after a while and sometimes you can become more sensitive or reactive to other people. Worse, you become defensive of what you have done with your life.

Catch up and also share what's been happening with you. Always remember to present yourself and your current life as equally worthy as anyone else's who are employed (and believe it!). Some people will tend to assume that you don't work as hard as they do, or that you are not as serious about a "career". Don't be shy to assert and to show that more than a career, you are pursuing a passion.

On the other hand, there will be people who will wish they had your courage and will ask you for advice on how you do it. Give them realistic advice and don't give in to the temptation to feed that illusion of freelancers or solo business owners getting to do what they want all the time. Don't make it all about the hardships either. Give a good balance of the good and the challenging.


7
Learn a lot. Study more. You train yourself. You teach yourself. In my case I even gave myself a workshop and bought myself books. I also signed up for free online classes, as well as affordable e-courses that could help me evolve and grow continuously. I cannot afford to go back to school so I make do and make my own curriculum. I also learn by advice and example from people I admire.

You cannot get by forever with the stock knowledge and skills you gained from your previous job. Especially if what you wish to pursue now is different, you will need to work a bit harder because there is no one else backing you up. Your credentials will start looking a lot different.


Make sure you take time to understand things. You will save more time and effort later on. True, experience is the best teacher but it does not mean that you should plunge in blindly. There are enough lessons left behind by those who have gone before you.

Oh, and read a lot. I read books, magazines, websites, blogs, articles --- anything that could lead me somewhere new. I even read my old journals and notebooks for ideas that were shelved for lack of time -- I have time now.

8
Spend more time with people you really care about, like your family and very close friends. These are the people you don't have to justify yourself to. These are the people who help you regain your balance when everything seems to be lopsided.

One of the things I appreciated when I stopped going to an office is the time I get to spend with my parents. They are now in their sixties and I would like to be with them more than just buy things for them with a big paycheck. My grandmother, who is now 90 years old, is the last of my grandparents still alive and I now visit her regularly. She has been delighted when I asked her if she could teach me and my sister  her knowledge about craft-making.  Cherish those moments. Collect all those happy memories. They will boost you up for the rest of your life and through every difficult time.

9
Travel. From a simple walk in the neighborhood, to actual trips taken on a well-planned budget. Traveling takes care of a whole chunk of stuff in this list : catching up with events and people, learning, discovering, relaxing, taking time for yourself, meeting new people, dressing up, etc.

At the start of the year I plan trips with my sister and look for special promos, especially in airfares. My trips this year only cost me half or a third of the amount in plane tickets.

Local trips also include visiting stores I've always wanted to visit, especially those discovered online. I have a fondness for dessert cafes and vintage shops as destinations.

10
Know what you want and where you are heading. At some point all that supposed freedom and control will actually weigh on you. When the initial euphoria of making it on your own settles down, you are again faced with that vast expanse of possibilities.

Take time to pause and take stock of things. Ask yourself the important questions: Are you happy? Are you satisfied? Can you see yourself along this path in five to ten years? Or are you thinking of something else? Be honest.

The whole point of leaving my job was to find myself a happier and more satisfying way of living. So if I am not getting that then what was the point of leaving in the first place? Sometimes it will need a whole re-evaluation of your priorities. That's okay. Better be sure now than sorry later.

11
If necessary, don't be afraid to change your mind and the course of your life. Don't settle just because you are worried about what other people will say. Or maybe you are losing confidence that you can pull it off at this stage. Or maybe you feel that you will have wasted all your previous effort.

If you are truly certain, and if you truly know yourself by this time, then you do what needs to be done. Your previous efforts will not be wasted because you will have learned from them and most probably it is through them that you are having these realizations now. Everything happens for a reason, my sister always says. Nothing is ever really wasted if we pay attention to the lessons that every experience brings us.

I thought my original business plan is it. I had grand plans and they consumed me at the beginning of my journey. But along the way I discovered that there are other things that I am passionate about. I had to take a full review of everything, my old plans, my financial goals, my skills. I can see a very tough path ahead but I also know that I will sleep better at night even just admitting to myself what I truly love and want to do.

12
Have a plan (or plans). Map out the options you have, but most especially the options you are willing to undertake. Always have a plan B, or even a plan C stashed somewhere. Not that you lack confidence in plan A happening, but it is like a psychological buffer in your head that can actually help you push forward because you've got everything covered. It works for me anyway. :)

Have a plan but also be flexible. Allow for synchronicity and serendipities to weave their own magic. While you acknowledge your own strength and power, you also have to give the powers-that-be their due, depending on your faith and beliefs. Do not fully rely on yourself. Plan for those times when you will need help. Ask for help.

Always be open to the many ways that your plan can happen. Don't think it can only happen this way or that way. Do not lock yourself in certain ways of thinking that could only lead to disappointment. Don't be impatient. Things unfold accordingly in their right time. Be calm. You have done your part (the plan), now let it happen.

13
Never regret the decisions you have made, most especially the one that made you lose that paycheck in the first place. It is not a healthy and productive exercise. I came close to regret at one point but I pulled myself back in time. When I did, I found out that an opportunity was already around the corner and I would have missed it if I had wallowed in regret.

Regret is what will waste all the lessons you have learned in every step you took, and will invalidate all the joys you have experienced, and all the good you have gained. Believe that those decisions were timely and were needed for you to grow and move forward even if the way had been difficult, or even painful, in some cases.

Re-align yourself with what is important to you. Point your inner compass to your true North and move forward. :)

~*~

Yes, this is quite a long baker's dozen for a start! But I hope you were able to learn something, or maybe even comforted by the knowledge that you are not alone in certain situations. A new baker's dozen comes out next week!