wat, u no likey? then changey!

I'm currently using Belle de Jour as my planner again this year. I actually have two copies, because someone gave one to my mom, then she gave it to me (she already had a Starbucks planner) before I could go to National Bookstore to get one, so I accepted. Then someone gave a copy to me, and my mom kept it to be even. But they were bound two different ways, and I kind of.. liked the second one better.

In the end, my mom didn't really manage to find a use for a second planner, and by the time I graduated I found an excuse to cross over from the spiral bound one to the smythe one. I told myself I'm doing it to signify leaving college, starting life with a clean slate, as my thesis planning and other things were documented in the spiral one. But honestly speaking, the smythe one simply just feels better in my hands and looks better to my eyes.

The cover, on the other hand, wasn't really my cup of tea:

I mean it's a good illustration. Objectively speaking, it's nice. But it just doesn't feel like it's mine when I look at the planner. So I felt an urge to change it to this:

I'll tell you about it, but first, a little bit of history between me and BDJ: 

I received my first BDJ Power Planner at sixteen (in 2007), from my mom's awesome + sweet boss/friend, (who's actually mentioned in the acknowledgments because her daughter was part of the group of ladies who created it hehe). Timing was perfect: it was so well-made and interactive that I got a hang of using a planner just in time for my first year at college. I never even properly used a planner beforehand (save for the really girly Avon free-date one I very sporadically used in gradeschool because it was cute and not because i needed it) and I can really say it was a lifesaver. I depended on it and it kept me sane throughout my really tough first year in college. (And I do mean tough. In fact, it was apparently much tougher than I remember. Apparently I called my mom crying during a panic attack after being left at my dorm. My mom mentioned it to me recently and I have no memory of it at all. Clearly was a weird + dark time, ew) ..UP was very different from everything I was used to. Apart from the culture shock, I was away from my closest friends and found it hard to make new ones. My planner felt like my best friend during these times.

So I hope I don't offend anyone by choosing to change the cover of the one I have now! I'm just way past my pink + black phase. It just doesn't feel like me when I look at the current cover design, and because of the roles my planners have had in my life since I started using them, that's a very important thing. If it is any consolation, I loved the pink + black on the 2007-08 ones to bits! 

I created a 4x4 cupcake tile image by googling "watercolour cupcake", choosing the prettiest ones, and tinkering a lot with MS Paint (i know, i know, i need to learn photoshop) which was the toughest part.. my background colour of choice doesn't simply fill in all of the spaces; not all whites are similar. so i had to manually brush around the cupcakes (leaving a very thin white outline) one by one, scale them to identical sizes, and arrange them in a grid.

I printed them onto sticker paper, doing a test print first:

and upon noticing that there's a fair amount of detail that has been compromised and that the background is a little too ridgy, i looked around for an option to print it in higher quality. i set it to "photo paper, best quality" and this is the result!:

infinitely better!!! i think it's noticeable even with these bad, partly blurry photos i took:

before

after....this photo is blurry, but if you look closely, the details of the watercolor still show better!

I was originally meaning to cover the whole thing with my awesome sticker print, but I really liked the texture of the cover underneath and the back was discrete enough, so I opted not to do the back. But I couldn't just leave it as is because it looked unfinished at the spine:

so i took a row of cupcakes and centered it along the spine, covering the spine completely:

et voila! my baby says it looks professional and i just about gushed and melted into the floor hihihi

i really shouldn't have written that thingy with my bad handwriting though.. then again that can be easily remedied.

I wish it was just as easy to just go change what I don't like with the rest of life, though. I'm finding it a bit hard lately. My sleep schedule is all messed up again and I haven't been exercising. But I have a couple of projects lined up which is nice, once I get myself to do them! And now that my planner is all pretty and cupcakey and feeling more like me, I'm going to find it easier to pick it up to plan my days and to generally enjoy my new-found freedom the best I can!

Chikun the hermit crab

To be honest I've been wanting to get a fish. But before I could even budget it, someone gave me this TIINY HERMIT CRAB. My 12 y/o cousin Covi kidnapped the poor thing from the beach we went to and just handed it to me after lunch.

I thought about it and decided to take him cos I have sand at home and it will probably die sooner if someone else took it and didn't want to. At least I wanted fish and can use that energy to care for it.

I named him Chikun which is just a weird way to spell "chicken" cos I just thought it would be funny to call a crab chicken idk.

At first I thought of looking for a big place to put it in and put it in this "transient crab condo":

But it was too small and he was able to reach the top:

Immediately the next day he got to escape. I prepared myself to lose him forever but looked anyway even though he was too tiny and could probably be too hard to find. But I found him under my bed! So I kept him for a while and cleaned the sand and the rocks and made a new mansion with a tiny toy dog house for shelter.

So this is where he lives now:

He's that tiny seashell under the bottom bottlecap. so yeah. Pretty big house.

I don't know how long I'll able to keep him alive because I'm no expert in these things, but I'm hoping he's comfortable. I wonder if he's even alive up there in my bathroom. (I keep him there cos they need the air to be humid apparently)

So yeah dat's Chikun the hermit crab now you've met, bye

We're almost halfway through 2013? Huh.

I feel that I sit here waiting for something to happen and yet when things are happening it still feels like nothing is happening. I have two hypotheses regarding why this is:

• We don't recognize when things happen because our perspective of happenstance as we imagine it is a voyeuristic one and we just need to change our way of looking at the present moment into a more positive one/ first-person perspective
• There is a certain kind of happening that I am inwardly craving for that hasn't happened yet

Maybe the act of mentally tilting forward a bit is needed to keep moving forward? Like a Segway.

But in retrospect, a lot happened in April and these first few days of May. At least a lot compared to the time before that. I finished my thesis and graduated, turned 23, started making stuff again, and we went out a lot more than usual:

graduation dinner @Comida China de Manila. Sansa got to run around off-leash becoz private room

we have the cutest parents

beech day (and night) #1

me this mornin: ready n armed for some mornin beechin

sum byutiful ledies. with my explosion of a face

afterwerds we went to Bag of Beans for nommage

before and during nommage. a wild nica appears ~~

after lunch today

(btw thanks to my tito leo and ate ling ling for the pictures!)

But maybe that's the thing. To be able to feel like much happened, I always have to mentally consider how much less happened before. On its own, my year hasn't really been very eventful. But dissecting that thought process even further, I feel the need to explore what my definition of eventful is. I feel that I measure my life a lot in comparison to other people lately. I've been feeling very insecure. I should probably calm down and accept that there's just a lot of talented people that I know and that nobody's laughing at me for not being able to be as good as them. Just me. Which has to stop, too.

I feel that a bit part of growing up in my case has been learning to know that people don't pay as much attention to me as I fear. If I laugh at embarrassing things I do, they will laugh with me. They don't care about me enough to focus on criticizing me. Deep inside, everyone just wants to get along.

Anyway, this month I have tasks to tick off my to-do list. And I'm sure that even when I finish them, I will not particularly feel like I did SO MUCH and that I FINISHED something. It will just feel like there's nothing overdue. At least that's how graduating felt.

My To-Do List for May:

• medical check-ups
• some girly maintenance tasks
• learn to drive
• get serious with yoga again
• start either losing fat or gaining muscle or both
• learn tarot
• finish two books

But maybe that was because graduating was like paying off a debt, and these next steps I take are more like creating some savings. It's adding something to my life instead of just leveling a negative feeling. 

I have hope.

a real new beginning

i figuratively did a lot of pacing back and forth in writing this one, i just couldn't feel as if i was in the right place to write about it. it seemed like it's supposed to be a huge deal but there's nothing out of the ordinary i could really write. so i guess i could just approach this by going straight to the point:

i've finally graduated.

the cross i've been carrying for 1/4 of my life has been dropped. i have an empty slate.

but somehow it doesn't feel so grand, and i don't feel completely light. i feel the pressures of having to make something of myself as soon as possible. but i'm trying to be wise about things. i will take time soon to really think of what the next step should be.

i'll post photos soon probably.

today we're going to the beach with family and i'm really excited. it's been a while.

merriment

this month has been good to me

(you know, if you ignore how ball-sticky hot it is every day)

i was so happy about getting my final grade that i didn't feel the need to have a birthday party.

DVD stickers and covers i made for the copies i gave for the library etc :3 i scanned the watercolor images i painted when i conceptualised the sets :3

this was how i celebrated my birthday-eve :) with a boy drink and a girl drink (i guess you could say it symbolizes my wholeness as a person or whatnot but really i just wanted to try these new tanduay ice's) and the cutest christmas tree bottle opener! i love how it goes with my thesis theme haha

i did a lot of catching up with my favorite shows after finishing my requirements. it's been good :) insanely hot, but good.

my "problems" arent over, i still need to know what to do with my life, but at least i'm more in the same stage as most of my friends.. it's one thing to feel lost, it's another to feel deliberately LATE.. if you see what i mean.

i feel like this year will be a great one for me. even though the rest of the world seems to be going crazy (really sad stuff in the USA and Iran and NoKor craziness)... I'm really looking forward to finding out what I'll be doing next.. Even though I'm really anxious too! SOMEONE HIRE ME haha

anyway yeah :) tomorrow i think i'm going somewhere with a nice water thingy (is it a pond?) to celebrate both my birthday and my cousin's move to Saudi. so yeah. the fun continues.

☼☽ things to be excited about ☽☼

ignore sad things! think of good stuff! make a list of exciting things!

stuff to be excited about:

• Graduating - This is a huge one. It's been a while since I last felt that I can accomplish anything big.. Especially because of the fact that there's loads of brilliant people in my university. I try my hardest not to compare myself to anyone, in fact I'm much better at it than I've ever been, but this one has been weighing on me for years now, and I feel like I just want to formally end this chapter and say that I did it, so I can start anew on other things, and be better at those than I was with college. Graduating would just take such a huge load off my shoulders. It hasn't happened yet and I already feel lighter just because I know it's happening. I feel freer to do things, to speak to people, to make things. It's really odd but it weighed on me like a ball and chain, constricting my very being. So yeah sorry bout the gloomy description, but it's the only way I could express how great this is for me! 
• Yoga - I went to yoga again this morning! after more than a month! It was great. I'll have a nice sleep tonight. I'll keep going and it will be awesome.
• Nero - I can edit videos now! hehe. So I might be able to post videos of Sansa soon.
• Disc covers - The fact that mama's extra laptop has a burner has somehow never occurred to me until I had to use it to burn my school film DVDs... i have sticker paper and a working printer! just imagine aaall the playlists!
• My Bday week - coincidentally my first week of freedom from school work! ( there will still be administrative stuff to work on for graduation, but there's no more papers to pass or whatever ) I shall try not to drink or eat much. maybe just one night. hehe. (of drinking)
•  Time for creating freely! - Since i won't be so bogged down by guilt of not being done with school
• My newly improved sleep schedule! - I am pleased to announce that I have been sleeping properly for more than a week now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOORAY
• JUST ALL THE THINGS! THE GREAT UNKNOWN! I DONO WHATS GNA HAPPEN BUT I CAN MAKE IT GOOD AND I'LL MAKE IT MINE

a victorious day

guess what happened!!

clue:

don't say anything about the discarded dress ITS REALLY HOT OKAY

and then i

\

!!!

What, I stayed up all night on FACEBOOK and then printed some random stuff the next day? nonononono i finished my THESIS and printed it this morning!

and then i went to school to submit it for binding!

they planted a bunch of sunflowers at the main road in uni.. i've only been hearing about it on facebook, never really noticed them when i went there.. they said it's for the april graduation ceremonies.. so sunflowers had been a graduation-related meme online. there was an image that went around, a background of just sunflowerheads and in the middle was written:

 tapusin mo na ang thesis mo.

("finish your thesis already.")

at the time i was trying my best to push myself to do just that, so I actually downloaded that image on my phone and used it as a wallpaper. it did help remind me everyday.

and now fast forward to this afternoon.. i was in the jeep entering the uni grounds, and for the first time i made it a point to look for the flowers.. i noticed the hedges.. and sure enough, i saw a first couple of little sunflower heads. greeting me, like hi i know you finished your thesis, good job we'll all see you soon.

it was a feeling that was really thrilling and i felt so excited and i felt feelings i didn't think i could feel anymore.

i remember feeling thankful about my thesis being about children. thinking about the things that make children different from adults really put things into perspective. i find it easier to be happy/pleased when i tap into my child self. i don't call it inner child anymore. i just realised it's still who i am. 

i passed my copies, returned my adviser's book, and i passed by a little sunflowerhead on the way out of my college. i snapped a picture of it with my phone, and replaced the one with the thesis reminder. now it's time to remind myself that the hardest part is over, and that the sunflowers are waiting :)

in other news, i made earrings today!

I've always wanted these and now I have them and it's a lot cooler cos I MAAADE THEM OKAY! there were four pendants in the little baggie so i made two pairs. one for me, one for mama!

also i bought some blue feather earrings that i altered (i used the same chain):

ta-daaaaa, muuch bettor.

all i used was this thingy which i think is used for surgery or whatever who cares it's cool

I almost gave up on finding the perfect chain, because i had something specific in mind.. luckily this really long one came close enough, and still looked cool:

 and i'm going to make other funky pendants for that blue chain i found. it's so cool-looking. i'm thinking i'll screw some loops on some tiny plastic animal/insect/dinosaur toys...

i bought lotsa nice cheap stuff today.. take a look at these AA batteries:

all of those for only 88 PESOSWHAAAT

also, i found this in mama's room and she's reading something else so she's letton me barrow it:

yey to fey

SO YEAH i'm excited and i'm drinking a beer. it's super exciting cos now that it's over i can just look forward to the summer. what's happening in the summer? guess.

clue: