June's Book review: The Mind's Eye by Henri Cartier-Bresson

So you might have noticed things have been slow on the blog for the past 2 weeks, that's because I've been on holiday! Now that I'm back, there's so much to catch up on doing! I want to:

- blog about the ideas I've been having
- Finish the travel journal of my trip
- Think about some new goals for July
- Think about how to upgrade some of my hobbies

And lastly, I have to think about how to start on some of the above! So I will start with a book review of a book I was reading in June. 

The Mind's Eye by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a photographer and photojournalist. Born in France in 1908, he passed away in 2004. He took many iconic photos throughout his travels as a photojournalist and is most famous for coining the concept of the 'decisive moment'. (More on that later.) The book is a compilation of his writings from his photobooks and also includes essays on his travels.

I bought this book a long time back because I was intrigued by the idea of the decisive moment. I took it to mean a sudden instant in time where suddenly a great photographic shot would present itself. Before I left overseas, I thought it would be good to read the book on the way so that I might get some insight on how to find that 'decisive moment' on my trip. 

While I wasn't entirely wrong about the decisive moment, I wasn't entirely right either as I found out from reading the book. I was intrigued enough to pick up another biography on Cartier-Bresson at a flea market later on holiday to find out more and from that book I learnt more about his style of photography. (blog idea: An essay on Cartier-Bresson!)

I would recommend Part 1 for photography enthusiasts. Here, Cartier-Bresson speaks from his perspective about what photography means to him and draws comparisons between photography and drawing. Keep in mind though that he worked a lot during the era of film, so you may have to understand a bit of film processing to really understand his views on darkroom processing and colour film. 

Part 2 and 3 then moves on to essays on his travels and on the people he knows. Here are the chapters that some may skip but if you have to, read what he observes about travelling to Russia or China. After all, photography is not just the blind taking of photos, it is also about capturing life and how do you capture life if you are not a keen observer of it? 

Overall, I found the book an easy read and it also inspired me enough to learn more about Cartier-Bresson, which I would write about later. (future blog post!) To me, a book that does that, is a good book indeed. :) 

Just 20 hours to learn anything?

I just read this article on my Facebook feed: http://time.com/4255801/learn-anything-20-hours/?xid=time_socialflow_facebook

Incredibly, 20 hours seems like a very short time, but read carefully what he is saying and it starts to make more sense. 

One point I gathered: You don't have to aim for total mastery, just a high enough competence level to know when you are making mistakes and how to correct them. Neither do you have to go on a crash course. Even just 45 minutes a day is good enough. 

The key seems to be a form of deliberate practice in which you do not practice blindly but you actively think about your mistakes and how to correct them. Think quality of work done over quantity. 

This has been shown in research in many ways already, the power of incremental changes and deliberate practice. Do a quick google of these terms and you will see. 

Then if the changes are so small, how do we keep motivating ourselves to keep going? 

For this, I feel we should celebrate and appreciate small changes. For eg, I may not be able to speak French like a native by the end of this year, but I can already recognize more French words than I did before. And that's something more than what I had before I started. It's like saving money. 10 cents a day doesn't seem like very much, but keep at it and eventually you will save $100. 

I'm about to take a hiatus from all the learning and go overseas! Still, I'm bringing along a couple of photography books to read on the flight or at night. I figure since I'm going to be taking tons of photos, why not read up on it along the way? Bonne journée! 

FilmOut, out and about

So after my previous try with the FilmOut, (reviewed in a previous blog post here) I thought the pictures were nice enough to give it one more try but that I had to be careful of light leaks. I loaded the camera with Kodak Gold 400 (never forget what film you are using again!) and set out with noble intentions.

Here are the better shots, the rest are also uploaded on my Lomohome: 

(I'm amazed at how much natural light there is in the Ritz)

So since this is a review, what are my thoughts on the camera?

- It's very small and so easy to carry around
- You will always know what kind of film you are using
- It's a crappy point and shoot, so don't expect good lenses, focus or flash capabilities. In fact, I had problems with the positioning because I would think I was holding it straight but some of the pictures turned out slightly crooked. This is a problem I never had with my other (larger) point and shoots.

But the main lesson that was reinforced with this camera is a simple one that anyone following photography should remember:

Always follow the light

I'm not sure where I read this or which photographer said this, but always in basic photography, if you are mindful of where the light is, you cannot go wrong. 

I applied this a lot when I was using the FilmOut and always made sure there was natural light coming from somewhere. (Indoor lighting does not work as well, the pictures will still turn out dark on film) Even in the indoor shots, as long as there was a natural light source somewhere, the picture still developed nicely. (although I'm still surprised at the amount of natural light that shone into the Ritz-Carlton) 

It doesn't mean that anyone with a DSLR and a couple of huge-ass lenses can become a great photographer. Much still depends on the skill and eye of the person behind the camera. Learn some of the basic concepts of photography, like the rule-of-thirds and composition, experiment a lot, learn from your mistakes and even with a $10 crappy camera, you can still take good pictures. :) 

Other stuff:
I found another blogger online who bought the same camera! You can see his photos here.
This is a good page on taking photos with digital point and shoots at Petapixel.
Another photographer who shoots from the hip is Daido Moriyama. Here is a video showing how he works.

Inspired to try one? The Lomography website has tons of photos taken by film point-and-shoot cameras. This is what I got from one search.

Craft: Notepad holder

I have a secret guilty pleasure: I like notebooks. I especially love those with blank empty pages because they feel full of potential to become full of well-drawn sketches and interesting ideas, whether or not I actually manage to fill them up!

From a love of notebooks, one day, I discovered the art of bookbinding and realized another thing: Instead of buying notebooks and collecting them, I could make them for myself! What a brilliant thing! 

So every now and then, I experiment and try my luck with scrap paper and cheap notepads. Sometimes I have total disasters that I have to throw, sometimes I land up with something that just maybe is usable and sometimes, I have a success!

This one I made is closer to a success. I thought of doing a notepad holder because I have a bunch of A6 notepads which are easier to carry around than my larger journal, and I also thought they would look nicer in a holder that I could re-use every time the paper ran out. I have a bunch of paper and thin card and I had a Typo envelope that I liked the look of, so why not? 

I finished this in one afternoon (with one loooong break in between for lunch and shopping) and I'm quite happy with the result. It looks nice and because I used more cardboard, it's stiff enough to hold the notepad without bending. Also with the elastic band, I can take out the notepad and change it with a new one when the paper runs out.

And so, the instructions!

Crafting a Notepad Holder

You will need: 
Paper for the cover (I used a Typo envelope)
Paper for the inside cover (mine is a striped pattern, from a book I got from Daiso)
Thin cardboard (I used free flyers)
An elastic band (you can buy a packet from Daiso)
Scissors
Glue
Stapler or needle and thread

Instructions:

 

1. Measure the flyers and cut them to fit your notepad. ( I was lucky because the flyers I chose were just half a inch larger than my notepad, so no cutting here for me ) Then stick them together so that they are as hard as a paperback's cover. ( I used two, but if you have good quality cardboard, you could probably just use one.) Since I used two pieces of different sizes, I also cut the four corners off so I could fold the edges down. I felt this would give the edges extra strength.

2. Cut the envelope and choose one side to be the front cover. Then put it down facing downwards and lay the cardboard on top. Fold down the edges and glue them down. The cardboard will add strength to the holder.

3. Take the coloured paper for your inside cover. Measure it so that it fits and paste it down. If the front cover is longer like mine is, fold the edges inward like in the 2nd picture.

4. To attach the notepad, I stretched a piece of elastic across the notepad so that I knew how long a piece I needed. I then cut it off and because I'm a lazy boredslacker, I stapled the elastic to the cover. More hardworking types can use needle and thread to sew it on. 

The finished notepad holder, from the outside and the inside with the notepad inside. For a personal touch, I took some excess paper that I had cut off for the inside cover and pasted it on the outside. 

Looks great in pictures, but mind you, I did not show you:
- The mess of paper and stationery strewn around me on the floor
- My intense concentration when cutting and measuring and praying that I didn't do something wrongly
- Me having to stop every 10 minutes to position the materials nicely so that I could take a shot for the blog
- My irritated grunts when I found out I had stapled the elastic band wrongly and had to take out the staples
- More grunting when I was done and had to clean up the mess
- The holder doesn't close snugly so to close it, I had to loop an elastic band around it

Still, I do think it looks good. Can't wait to fill this with well-drawn pictures and interesting ideas. ( fingers crossed ) 

Art Day Out at Gillman Barracks, 14 May 2016

Every so often, I feeling like expanding the hub's artistic horizons, so I will pull him off to some art exhibition or other where he will see things that leave him in total incomprehension.

Art Day Out at Gillman was no exception. This is a day where the galleries at Gillman open their doors and all are free to come. Other than the galleries, there were also artists in residence from NTU and an area for children to play with art materials. To top off the Day, when you reached the last of the galleries, there was also a vintage flea mart and eating places as well. 

I don't know if the hub's artistic horizons were expanded, but I can be sure on the total incomprehension, from the look of confused bewilderment on his face from gallery to gallery. Would you 'get' the following artwork?

1. All that glitters is not gold, it's guns too. 

2. The art is in the hidden message. See if you can spot it.

3. I wish I had such art assignments when I was in school. This is Art Outreach, they are an educational non-profit that promotes art through programmes such as art and cultural heritage tours, school programmes and they have a visual thinking lab at Gillman. Check them out on Facebook because they have programmes for adults and children alike.

I do want to spend a bit more time writing on the following exhibition because it turned out to be my favourite out of the Day and they are from the exhibition Reflections on Still Water by Zheng Lu. Zheng Lu is a Beijing-based artist and he created works out of stainless steel to look like splashes of moving water. Most remarkably, when you look up close, the sculptures are made out of thousands of Chinese characters. 

The ones I've captured here are only the small ones. There was also a large splash inside which went over the room! They really caught my attention because although they were made from hard steel, the sculptures still looked very fluid and it felt like they were in motion even though they were steel.

Or they looked like a Harry Potter spell frozen in mid-air.

Reflections on Still Water is held at the Sundaram Tagore gallery from now till May 19. This will bring you to their website.

The other I found interesting was one held at the Pearl Lam Gallery entitled The Third Script, a two-person exhibition by Boo Junfeng and Linda CH Lai. Their exhibition was a reflection on how our identity and recollection of the past are formed and how incomplete and non-linear perspectives can skew our memories.

The most touching part of this, (other than the incomprehensible parts) was a short film by Boo called Parting. The film is about a Malaysian man suffering from dementia who comes to Singapore to look for his long-lost lover whom he left behind....... in the 1960s. I found the scenes with the man very touching as he went through Woodlands and plodded his way through Singapore. He walked around with a bewildered expression through most of the film (kinda like the hub that day) and his tenacity finally led him to the school where she worked. Did he find her? I'll let you go to the gallery to discover for yourself. :p 

The Third Script is held at Pearl Lam Gallery till 19 June. This is their website.

So in the end, after seeing all these, are these Art?

Well, maybe it really depends on the beholder. 

I did wish more of the galleries would make an effort to promote their art. Most of the information I wrote above came from media release notes and curatorial notes that the galleries were giving out that day. The reason why some are better written than others is that these galleries actually had the notes to give out. Also, the staff in the galleries mostly left us to wander around and there weren't much information put up. Um, if you do hold a public event inviting the public to come, you could be a bit more inviting.......? Guess they weren't impressed by my Pusheen keychain.

Well, you do have to consider they are a gallery, not a museum, which means they are also interested in selling the artworks to worthy buyers and unfortunately the only way I could bring home any of their art was to pilfer the free postcards. 

Maybe one day, who knows? Meanwhile, for more free art, I offer you the following photographic artwork. 

I think I'll call it: "Total Artistic Incomprehension". 

The FilmOut Camera

This, my dear readers, is a FilmOut Camera:

Ok, to clarify, I gave it that name because I didn't know what it was called. I went to my usual photolab to develop some shots as usual and I noticed a new toy camera they had.

Not only that, but the box showed that the roll of film was exposed?? 

(Note: Usually when a film negative is exposed to light, it becomes overexposed and everything on the negative turns white. So when doing film photography, exposing the film negative entirely is a strict no-no.)

I asked to take a look and when they took it out of the box, the film roll was indeed exposed! The key design feature that made this possible was the closeness of the camera to the slit in the roll where the film would exit. The design made it such that the film roll would sit right next to the camera so that the film would be wound from the roll to the other side of the camera (the side of the astronaut in my picture) 

I couldn't help it, I just had to give it a try for $20. 

Lo and Behold, it works!

There were caveats, of course:

The camera should be used where there is strong light, or a source of strong light. Such cameras are typical point-and-shoots and they don't have additional features like flashes or light meters to allow you to take nice pictures in dark rooms or at night. 

The pictures appear in a continuous panorama. Perhaps because the film wasn't wound enough into the camera, the lab couldn't figure out where to cut the negatives. So you might notice parts of an earlier shot spilling into the next shot, like the 6th shot of the woman at Starbucks.

There are light leaks in each one because I didn't set the film firmly against the camera. That's why you see little stalagmites of light in each shot.

Still it is a unique collector's piece! I still want to bring it out to try again! Bonne chance!

Women: New Portraits by Annie Leibovitz

Today (Sunday, May 8) I went to the Annie Leibovitz photo exhibition at the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station. Since one of my personal goals is to improve my photography, I thought it would be worthwhile to learn from a master, oops, mistress of the craft.

I was only armed with a humble iPhone and my lacklustre skill, so no comparisons hor...

 The exhibition was sponsored by UBS and it's a world tour which began in London in January. Other countries on the world tour include New York, Zurich, Tokyo and Hongkong.

The Exhibition Hall

While walking, I notice some light and movement inside the old ticket counter. What the...?

When I walked in, I realized they had created a reading nook inside. There were chairs and sofas and photography books from a wide variety of photographers for you to browse through.

While the area looked tempting, I couldn't stay for more than 5 minutes because it was just too hot! There were 2 reading nooks and both only had the standing air con unit for ventilation so the room became very stuffy and humid very quickly. 

This is the book which you can find her works from the exhibition as well as many more. I think I would rather browse it at Kino......

The print photographs displayed were of various well-known female figures from politics and the arts and others. I don't know if I can accurate pinpoint or describe the Leibovitz style but there were 2 points that struck me in the photos I saw:

She took photos of her subjects in their own comfort zones.
Adele was taken while seated at a piano, a prominent historian was taken while in her study, and a US ambassador in her office. The subjects weren't always the major focus of the photo and they were placed in a setting that expanded our understanding of them. So for example, in the photo of Adele, we do not see her just as Adele, we would see her as Adele, the Musician.

This is interesting because when we think of portrait photography, we always think that we should focus on the person and the face. Most commonly, we think of the studio shot, shot against a plain background. Leibovitz shows that a portrait can be taken out of the studio in order to show more of the character behind the face.

Her subjects show strength and vulnerability at the same time
I'm not sure if this was because of the rapport between the photographer and the subject or because of the subject chosen. Most of the women in the photos seem to show this contrasting dichotomy. Could it be because as working women, we are expected to be strong but yet we still have an inherent softness? Ah, I'll let my feminist friends argue that point out... 

Most striking were the 2 photos of Yoko Ono. One was a Rolling Stones cover which showed her and John Lennon in the same bed. The other was a close up of Yoko Ono's face. There seemed to be years of difference between the two but the captions will tell you that the photos were taken only 1 year apart. A few hours after the Rolling Stones cover photo was taken, Lennon was shot. And the grief and misery was clearly apparent on Yoko's 2nd photo.

All in all, I liked the exhibition though I wish that more photos were displayed and that they had better ventilation! If you want to visit, the exhibition is on till 22 May. Read more about the exhibition by clicking on these little highlighted words.

It's May!

Time definitely flies faster when I'm back at work! Suddenly it's almost time for the holidays and there are still a million and one things that I have yet to do! So how is my progress so far on my personal goals? Time for a reflection......

1. Read the book each day
Sidetracked! I read everything except my writing book! After one trip to the library and a couple more to Kino, suddenly I have more books and magazines I need to finish! Argh!

On another note, the book I am currently reading is very interesting because it's something I can relate to:

The Late Starters Orchestra is written by Ari Goldman. At the age of 60, he decided to finally pursue his longtime dream of playing the cello. In his book, he writes about the words of his long-deceased cello teacher, Mr J, and about the openness and friendliness he encountered while joining the Late Starters Orchestra. 

The LSO is a real group of people and they believe that anyone should be allowed to play an instrument in an orchestra, regardless of skill and ability. They are a real group and you can read more about them by clicking this here link.

A very familiar scenario for me as my violin rests on the wall to my right! The book is worth a read as Goldman writes in a very easy-to-read style and I think anyone who is in the process of learning something as an adult will identify with the struggles and difficulties he faced.

(Ah ha, I think I just wrote a book review for April!)

2. Write a story from Pocket Muse every week.

I managed to write only 1 short story, which is The Loudest Person. Why did I fail so badly on this one?

I attribute it to lack of proper planning. I've been planning my personal goals by writing them on a desk calendar. However, I failed to realize just how tired I would be after school and how that would affect my creativity. On some days, even when I tried, I could only sit and stare at the book because nothing would come to mind.

This is important because if I'm that tired, it would not just affect my writing but also all those other areas I want to work on, like my art. It would also affect my violin and piano playing. (I would probably end up using the massage chair at the 'piano studio' more) So what does this tell me?

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF FIRST.

Don't get so caught up with trying to finish all the work in school. Plan lessons and keep in mind what work I would expect to mark after lessons. Plan which I should mark on that day and which I can leave for another day. Finish all planned marking in school so that I feel fresher after school. Don't plan for too many mentally intensive activities on the same night.

That being said, I also realized that the time after dinner at home is a great time to flex creative muscle. It's peaceful and cooler and it becomes easier to relax and think. All I have to do is close myself in the study and leave the man to the TV.

3. Start Writing Project

Argh, this one also took a hit. I have to start again on this one. 

So What Now?

So there are some hits and some misses. I do realize now that if I want to focus on something for the month, I have to plan for it to actually happen. Writing in my desk calendar helps so I will continue to do so. 

Even then, there are times I will also miss out. That means that when I plan for something, I have to step into the study and start, anyway and any old how. As long as I start something or step into somewhere, I can start. 

Although, at least I have some slight achievement. I have one story, which is one more than I did before -_-!!! But I still have to continue progressing, so what am I aiming for in May?

Photography
To complete at least 2 photography ideas, whether it be doubles or other Lomographic weirdness.
Music
To practise my violin and piano at least twice a week
French
To do one section of French a day, excepting weekends. For this, I started a diary page in my journal where I will write one sentence in (badly written) French each day. 

Wish me luck! Bonne chance!

My Blog is a Tween! + Was I ever that young?

I recently wrote a small piece on my other blog comparing how I was as a fresh grad and the changes I had observed after 10 years in the industry. After writing that, I became curious about this blog and searched through the dusty blog archives for the very first entry I did.

Lo, I realized that this blog was born on 16th October, 2003. It turns 13 this year! It's a tweenager! 

Even when I read the words from that first entry, I felt old! The style of writing seemed so immature and full of teenage spunk. [I don't want to elaborate on what that shows of me from my writing now...] They seemed to come from someone else entirely and if it wasn't for the fact that I remember typing them down in the university computer lab, I might have never recognized them as my own.

Anyway, here they are, with my older, wiser *ahem* thoughts in between:

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Out of curiosity, and the plain fact that I do not want to start working on any of my schoolwork anytime soon, I've decided to start this blog. If nothing, it'll save me from writing all those lengthy emails to pple ( when I actually do it, that is ) and give my friends the option of choosing to read my crap or not. What a nice person I am. :p

Nowadays, with FB, my friends have no option but to read the crap I post. Sorry, guys.


Anyway, quick intro: 22 year old *still* student at NUS, fac of bizad, school of management, 

Damn! Was I ever 22??? I can hardly remember what that feels like!]


or [my favourite] School of Biz [SOB. who the heck was the one who thought that up??] 

And now my employer shares the same acronym as the bartender from the Simpsons. Who was the one who thought that one up?


I'm graduating in Dec, so will officially join the ranks of the unemployed on Jan 2004, wondering exactly what it is I paid NUS so much for. Will become wandering spirit by that time, the Fool of the Tarot, going where the wind blows me to and hopin' I don end up in some rubbish heap.

Thankfully, not still unemployed. Honestly, in retrospect, that was a pretty uncertain time, living literally paycheck to paycheck teaching tuition. I wouldn't have done [or bought] most of the things I have now with that lifestyle and I do have some gratitude for the paycheck I earn now. Yet, I can't deny there are aspects about it that still appeal to me and I do still have a longing to become that Fool of the Tarot.


My big dream is to strike 1st prize in 4D one day, become disgustingly, filthily, rich and live off the proceeds for the rest of my life without having to work.

Obviously, this still has not happened.


Since the chances of that happening is [nil], I would also like to work in the creative arts industry in some way. If I ever get my Illustrator down, I'd like to become a freelance graphic designer. Until then, I'd be teaching tuition for a living, until the day I die of a heart attack in a pool of my own blood in some kid's house.

Oh, this is one of the parts I miss so much about being in university. The thought that the world was still open to you and your dreams and you could still be anything you wanted to be. Instead, I'm still in danger of dying of a heart attack in a pool of my own blood in school. 

How does this happen to us? How do we lose our dreams and the capacity to dream somewhere in those 10 years?


Ok, too much info for now. Me gotta go do some actual work, you know, the kind that justifies your place in society and that most parental and educational units look favourable upon. See ya.

Yes, I did manage to find some actual work to justify my place in society and be looked favourably upon by parental and educational units. I'm still deciding whether that's a good thing or not.

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Seeing my 22-year old thoughts and my 36-year-old ones together brought home the idea of aging far more vividly than I thought. My 22-year-old self sounded a lot spunkier than I remember at the time and more sarcastic as well. Yet, I can't deny that my older self has some wisdom *ahem* that my 22-year-old one did not have and that certainly, I wouldn't have wanted to live with the salary that I was earning as a tuition teacher for the rest of my life. 

Maybe the key here is to be aware of and grateful for what age can bring you. My 22-year-old self would not have been able to travel to the number of countries that I did in my 30s. My 22-year-old self would have still been sharing the family computer and living with her parents, instead of typing these words in her own study in her own house. My 22-year-old self was very much single with no hope of getting attached. So indeed my older self has a lot more that my 22-year-old self would have looked enviously at.

Still, you do have to raise a toast to younger days. To dreams unfulfilled and dreams yet to be.

Do a Little Every Day To Inch Towards a Better Tomorrow

Here is me, trying to inch my way towards meeting my writing goal this month! Whee...

Since the start of this year, I've been trying to achieve various personal creative goals. I've had varying amounts of success with them. There are some days I don't feel like doing anything productive at all, and there are some days I wonder how I managed to get so much done.

Take today, for instance. There were 3 tasks from work I had to do, 2 of them involving marking. Somehow, between the lessons and the various meetings, I managed to finish all 3 at the end of the day. After that, I practised an hour of piano before going for dinner and then went for an hour-long walk around my estate as an excuse for exercise. I'm back home, having bathed (yet still feeling hot, why???) and I'm typing a new blog entry.

This is not the first. I've had other days too when I look back and I wonder how did I do all that, when I initially thought I'd fail or end up pushing it to the next day. But actually, on reflection, I realised there were 3 principles I'd been following, that I had read from various books and FB sources.

1. Multitasking really does not work.
The research has proven it over and over again and I've discovered it for myself through real-life experience. It does not work and in fact you can be more productive if you concentrated on just one task at a time. 
Take a typical day at work. Once I start marking some worksheets, I get into a kind of groove. I can spot the mistakes and take note of common errors more easily. Then someone comes around and asks to discuss about something. My attention turns to that person and even if it is just for 5 minutes, I find my groove totally lost when I turn back to the worksheets.
It's not that I'm easily distracted (well, maybe that too) but there's tons of research done to show that what happened to me is more common than you think. Yet there are still tons of workers who think they are being productive by being able to handle all those distractors at the same time. Well, you might be one of the lucky few, but I will gratefully concede that I am not and in fact, I really did accomplish more work and marking when I just ignored the people around.

2. Even a Little Bit Helps
Remember that proverb about moving a mountain rock by rock? It turns out there's more than a pebble of truth in that after all. A more consistent practice bit by bit helps to build up huge results. $2 saved a day will earn you $60 richer in a month, and $720 richer in a year. If you think that's not much, maybe you are one of the top 1%. This does not apply just to money, but to other things as well. 10 minutes of instrument practice builds up skill. 20 minutes of brisk walking burns more calories than sitting in front of the TV. 10 minutes of blogging builds up too. I just counted the number of blog entries for April and I did 18 entries. That's an average of a post every 2 days!
So that small bit of effort doesn't seem like much to show at first, but keep it consistent and eventually it all builds up.

However, building it up leads us to the last point, which is....

3. Remember the End Goal
I learnt this from 7 Habits and it has stayed with me. Whatever you are trying to achieve, you have to keep in mind what end result you want for yourself. Then with the time remaining to yourself, you decide whether what you do leads you to that end goal.
In my case, that meant I gave up a lot of TV. I'm a total idiot when it comes to TV dramas of any kind and I only know of some vaguely because of my 8 Days habit. When I wrote down all the things I wanted to achieve, I became a bit guilty every time I sat in front of the TV. I could have been writing, I could have been reading or doing some art instead. Since TV did not feature in any of my end goals, I gave it up with no regrets. I do forget and binge watch at times and I still like to watch my crime dramas while eating but other than that, most of the time I rather do something else. 

Why do I put all this down on my blog? First, to fulfil my writing goal of course, and secondly, because actually writing down (or typing) them does help to etch them in my mind. These are principles I feel are easy enough for me to follow and can reap big rewards later on in life. I'm not sure if one day I will be a world-famous artist or a millionaire blogger by doing so but I do know that for me, it beats TV and FB and that it's good to see some of the results, no matter how small.

Planner Art

From this blog, you can see that I'm interested in a lot of things. (Curiosity could kill the cat indeed) I get interested in a lot but I don't always have the commitment to brush my knowledge up to a level that I want. For eg, the violin. I like the challenge of playing it, despite how bad I am, but I don't feel I practise enough to reach a level that I am satisfied with. Why don't I do so? Numerous distractions abound, but Facebook and TV spring to mind first... 

This year, I pledged to achieve more of my personal goals instead of just letting them languish holiday after holiday. I've used this blog as a way to keep myself accountable to me and to my friends, but I cannot use it on a daily basis. I don't like looking at screens all the time, my battery will run flat several times a day and more importantly, I can do more pretty things on paper than on the phone, heh. 

So I've been keeping an informal planner to help me keep track of my personal goals and to help me plan my week and this is the planner page I've done for the week 18-24 April:

There's very little content because I never meant it to be a daily diary, just a simple one to note when I did something relating to my personal goals. I do keep one thing constant though, which is to note Gratitude, Focus and Goals.

For Gratitude, I note one thing in the day I'm grateful for. This reminds me that life is not all bad, even on its worst days and reminds me to see the good as well. Sometimes there's one big thing I'm grateful for, sometimes it's small, like a quiet cup of tea. It all works to the same effect.

For Focus, I note what I did to achieve my Focus for the month. This month, my focus is on Writing, so I might note whether I blogged in this blog, or others. 

For Goals, I note which of my other goals I managed to achieved, like practising the piano or exercising. Again, the success of this varies. Some days I did it, some days, I rediscover the joys of TV...... 

Why do I have two separate yet alike sounding themes like Focus and Goals? There is a slight difference for me. Because there's so much stuff that catches my attention, I want to focus on one a month and take that month to go more indepth into the subject. So for my Focus on writing, I might read up more on writing skills and techniques and (try to) blog more frequently. Hopefully, after the month of focus is up, some habits and knowledge become more ingrained.

However, other than writing, there are other stuff I like to do and I feel are important enough to continue doing. Exercise is one, so it becomes a goal. I continue doing it but I don't bring all my focus onto it and exercise 5 days a week at the gym. That for me is the difference.

It's not a perfect system of course, and I'm not all that disciplined in carrying out all my goals, but I do feel that there's a difference when things are jotted down on paper. You feel that much accountable to yourself and I also make more of an effort to reach them. Even if I don't reach all my goals, it feels good to know there is some progress still, better than nothing. 

And of course it always feels good as well to look at a pretty planner page, haha...

So I'm going to continue with this habit for a while. It's a simple way to exercise creativity in both art and writing and also to keep track of my goals. At the same time, I can also exercise mindfulness and gratitude for the little blessings that make my life a bit easier. It requires little effort, does no harm and I end up with a pretty little page at the end. Why not?