Intensity.

DRESS: INDIE-GO HAT: H&M BAG: Bench (China) Shoes: from Singapore

Photography by Monica Villarica

I realize it's been almost a week since my last post and I hate that I've been away from this haven for quite awhile. I've been racking myself over designing and redesigning the INDIE-GO website this past week (thanks to the latest Multiply changes-slash-hassles, we've decided to take the harder road regarding this endeavor) and that's why I haven't found the time nor strength to post as much. Well, here's to the little breather I get to have from designing.

This week, I have also realized that I unexpectedly have some lamentations when it comes to being a supposed "creative" person who offers creative services. Don't get me wrong, I love designing and I desire to do nothing but improve in the craft whilst helping small-time brands advocate high-quality packaging, advertising and overall branding. However, because people have already seen high-quality work, they expect nothing less and done always at the speediest rate. And sometimes, while I super love what I do, I can't help but also be human and run out of creative juices or how I term it, "design-spiration fuel". It's so frustrating when I sit all day in my lovely workspace, completely drained and still staring at blank canvases with the clock ticking, hands shaking and no idea running. Its draining and beyond annoying, to say the least. So that's been me for the past 4 days. I do not know how I manage to pull through. It just happens. 

I wish I could engage in conversations with excellent and well-acclaimed graphic designers around the worldwide and attend design conventions just to satisfy the question running in my head - how do you do it? And what do you do when you run out of the design-spiration fuel? Things like that. 

Anyway, I do hope to become like one of those amazing artists I see in my art and design books. Hopefully, with more practice, more brands to experiment and play on, more perseverance, I'll get there.   

This week has also been an onslaught of troubling news around the world. Bombings, earthquakes, threats of war. Honestly, its crazy and extremely alarming. So now, I would like to take a little time now to just simply extend my lamentations and concerns to Afghanistan because I believe that was a news that didn't seem to get around as much as it should have (what with the whole world talking about and praying for Boston). It's quite alarming to realize just how one incident outweighs the other and only because media - old and new - made it to be so. I'm not sure why this isn't as trending a topic as it should it be, but I just think both traumatic incidents should be given of equal importance and conversation worldwide. Still, my heart aches for everyone to have been involved in such incidents. It makes me feel blessed still, that no matter how seemingly "scary" this country might be or how many things this country still lacks in or how this country just honestly reeks of overwhelming social sicknesses, we're still the lucky ones compared to our neighbors and allies on the other side of the world. It's ironic how it has always been a common thing for schools and malls to have shootouts and for cities to have bombings on a random basis in a country that is supposedly the most prosperous among us all. The world never runs out of flaws and scary things. 

And meanwhile, amidst all this, things heat up in Korea with the strained North-South relations. Honestly, this issue has been irritating me for the past month. I really don't understand North Korea's deal and why they just have to find this incessant need to show off what power they have by threatening to kill and bomb half the world off. I'm annoyed and scared - but most rightly, just annoyed. How do you make them stop? No one knows. It's like me racking my brains over for a design idea... everyone's stressed and.. no one knows. Annoying.  

So.. that's me this week. I must seem to pass as such an intense and serious person talking about these things. Hence, the running around photos. I decided to revisit my special park and just run around like an idiot as a destressor. The summer heat is not such a welcome anymore and is becoming more of an infuriating pain in the head and on the skin. 

Take care everyone and don't fall into a heat spell! Pack up with cold liquids and stacks of vitamins to fight of the dangerous and powerful rays of the sun!

Till my next post.

Enjoy the rest of the photos! 

yours truly,