Category: general life updates

man, today was awesome.

i totally shot a whole fashion thing today. thank you everyone who participated, came, and stuff, even if none of you read this. almost! hehe

MAN THAT WAS AWESOME. i officially love shooting portraits if (a) there’s a make up artist (b) outfits are planned out (c) the models listen to me.
turns out i can be a total control freak. but, i love it! and yeah.

here’s one from today:
sad queen

here’s one from fall:
dark alley and meto

here are two from last week (or week before that?)
accidentally overexposed
fierce

also; i got sick. for real. which makes no sense why i’m up now, except i love these photographs and need to burn the cd before tomorrow.

am i just crazy?

continuation from diny’s questions from the headache post.

why is it that i feel so overwhelmed? it is not like i am responsible for the world’s survival. well, i know what destresses me somewhat – writing down everything that’s on my mind. thankfully, i am not stressed now, but let me write down the list of responsibilities that i have. maybe, diny, its more than yours. it is probably (definitely) less than maha’s. but perhaps our individual tolerance levels are different for activities. i know, for example, tim doesn’t like to keep more than a few things on his to-do list at a time. neither do i, really, it is just i’ve seen him time and time again be “ruthless” with task creep, and just cut out things he doesn’t want to think about completely from the sphere of his concern. very smart. (reminiscent
of carnegie’s advice to “live in the sector of today“)

i suppose my activities list has several sections:

  • personal responsibilities:
    • close people who i’d like to keep in touch with on a daily/weekly basis, such as friends, parents, tim
    • people who i need to spend at least an hour/month writing, or 2 hours/month meeting (per person) acquaintances at school, ex coworkers, coworkers, photography acquaintances
  • schoolwork
    • since i attend all my classes, this is 11 hours a week for classes alone.
    • for school work, it is about 4 hours of reading a week, plus about 20 hours per assignment – with assignments usually being due every other week.
    • 2 hours a week at the computer science office, this is really friend-time though.
  • work
    • depends on the week; thankfully this is more of a mental pressure as my manager understands that i can’t be available 8-4.
    • on average about 5 hours a week.
  • chores
    • since i’ve moved out, this list has increased significantly. beyond daily cleaning that takes around an hour a day (dishes, bathroom, bedroom) there’s also..
    • weekly cleaning: laundry (~2.5hrs per load, mostly waiting), floor washing (30 mins), dusting (10 mins), cleaning up after the week’s activities (1hr) (if we didn’t have time to put things we use away)
    • about once every 2 weeks i dedicate myself into scrubbing down an area of the apartment. that takes around 3-4 hours per area
    • shopping – of course tim helps – but independently of what he ends buying, i usually need to spend about 2 hours each week on a shopping trip
    • cooking; the foresight to take things out to defrost them or to buy them. coming up with things to cook. the actual process of cooking. breakfast is easy, thankfully, but dinner is slightly more complex – at least in the amount of works it always feels like.
  • personal time
    • interior design: ~2 hours a week easily on just reading/planning
    • humor: ~2 hours a week reading random things
    • random things: ~3 hours a week
    • blogs: ~2 hours of reading, commenting, writing lists like this one
    • books: ~4 hours a week on leisure reading of some sort
    • tv: ~5 hours a week on watching the shows that we follow (ads aren’t part of the equation
    • transportation: ~30 mins a day biking, if i’m not leaving downtown. (or going too far, or making more than one shopping trip)
    • fashion and gossip reading: forced myself to go through these faster as i know its a total time waste. BUT FUN. ~2 hrs/week
    • my photography: yeah, that thing. anywhere from 0hrs to 6/week on shooting. on any average week about 2 hours editing old work.
    • random knowledge: ~4 hours a week on news, various tutorials/guides, just learning new things
    • showering, make up, choosing clothes: :) this is as much relaxation as it is a time “waste” of picking what to wear! (yesss warm weather)
    • shopping, not groceries: decoration stuff, clothes, stuff for home (like cleaning stuff), books/journals. ~5hrs/month
    • pure day dreaming, aka meditation: ~1 hr a week
    • sleep: whatever time is left

granted most of these are things that EVERYONE HAS. probably the entire freaking list is identical for most of us. i guess maybe its my conscious awareness of all that i have to do in the next few days that makes me so frazzeled – and consequently forget what i need to do now, in an hour, was going to do, will have to do in a week.
also note i love doing most of the things on this list! :)

i’m too lazy to make any calculations though.

headache headache why art though here

first headache in a while (excluding the whole being dropped on a piano fiasco). blargh.

goals: wouldnt your intermediate goals just be steps towards your long-term goals? i.e., in 5 years i wanna be working a decent computer-whatever-related job and have an established photography business. so in a few years, i should be progressing in some entry-level job and having a regular list of clients and/or a way of advertising and attracting people constantly. in a year, i should be working somewhere i want to be for a while, and be doing photography as much as possible to get my name out there. in 6 months, i want to get whatever non-work stuff out of the way (travel, slacking around) so that i can concentrate on being a grown-up (or trying to be), and having a clear idea of what kind of photography i want to do and how it will work. in 3 months, i want to finish school with good grades so that i can get a job and start building a portfolio that i can be happy with. in a week i need to finish this assignment and do this photoshoot. tomorrow, i need to red this article that i need for the assignment, and get a haircut cause nobody gives jobs to ugly people.

see people, now that’s genius. that’s pretty much exactly where i stumbled. i can say whats in 5 years but working backwards? never occurred to me.
i’m just going to use this as my list now!

its interesting how differently we perceive goals though. scarf has difficulties with long term view, and i have the problem with short term views (i.e. working backward).

SO WE ALL SHOULD BUY MY SUPER DUPER ORGANIZER SYSTEM!
(ha, fooled ya! thanks, superkev ;) )

week has finished and i’ve been slacking off way too much. at least i got a break – next 3 weeks? something enormous due each week. like, end-of-year projects. and then exams. oy oy oy!

our cat started shedding. wtf? so far no hair and BAM spring comes around and freaking fur all over the place. i didn’t sign up for this!

headache headache go away please come back another day.
its cssu pub night tonight. last one of the year. man, i can’t believe graduation is so soon…

oh, and,
my haircut is short and delicious!

must we have personality?

comment feed is here

schedule keeping and goals

so, to sum up about a week of schedule keepin.
writing things down helps an enormous amount; i’m considering getting a smal moleskin just for that purpose. (maha gifted me with a notebook sized one which is fantabulous for everything). writing them down online? not much; actually. while i’d like to think you all care and eagerly check my blog wanting to see what i am doing, in reality i know its a really boring list of what am i doing. i can be funny! or try to, anyway.

what i am having difficulty with is how to determine what are my medium-long term goals. i.e. in between 3 months from now to 3 weeks from now
i can see my goals for the next 1-2 weeks, and for next 1/2 year to a year. i find goals to be motivating, and incredibly, err, helpful, in achieving things.

i guess that’s pretty intuitive, but, still, how to figure out whats my goal for 3 weeks from now?

writing down a list of what to do weekly is nice; although i still have a mental and partially physical “general” to do list that i gotta implement. i’ve been considering trying to fully swtich to the GTD method.

GTD is Get Things Done, written (I believe) by David Allen. it seems to be a highly popular way to create structure and organize your life. the only thing i am lacking though is a 13 folder file. i don’t want to make it a physical one, as visceral feedback is far better for me… i think. anyone heard of this before? tried it?

must we have personality?

must we have personality

i can’t remember where i found this, but its tempting to print and hang this in our bathroom. hilarious!

apartment design

i buzzed everyone ears off i think, but i just needneedneed to talk more about this. its like travel. i return thinking “i’ve had enough” and 3 months later i’m itching to go somewhere else!

SO in the 6 months or so that i’ve started living with tim i’ve (first) bugged him enormously about redecorating, improving, renovating, designing, purchasing, arranging, cleaning, until one fateful day he left to california and i renovated a bunch of things without really … telling him. so, now tim has agreed that not only the apartment has potential, that it is this potential that is possible to show and is WORTH showing as we’ll be living there for a while.

so, now my daydreams are mostly about wall colors, lamps and couches. among numerous other things.

the big reno happened end of february. it is not even a month, and we alredy rearranged the living room (there is an actual LIVING ROOM now). and now i itch to paint the living room, office areas, bathroom, kitchen. i itch to find lights for all the nooks that they will be so perfect in. i itch to organize the large closet so that when you walk into it, it feels like a neat space. i itch to get rid of my plastic drawers, and figure out how consolidate all the things that i have in them now into neater, prettier, smaller, invisible containers/shelves/whatever solutions. i can’t wait to get to chinatown and find the baskets for the bathroom shelves, and hang art in it. i can’t wait to find the perfectest shower curtain, and bath mat(s), and finally put the mop into the aforementioned tobe organized closet so that bathroom is just NEAT. i can’t wait for tim to have his own light at the desk, and for reading lights in living room to be convinient for all. i daydream of carpets and pillows and blankets and warmth and fuzzy that it will be SO VERY SOON.

i KNOW how great this feels. after painting the bedroom with maha’s and alina’s help, and organizing all the closets there (which are STILL ORGANIZED, w00t w00t), walking into that room became a 1000 times better experience – even when it is messy!

i want bold color! and light! and a pretty bathroom. and i think those are the things i want first.

so now that i’ve bored everyone away…

i’m getting a haircut tomorrow WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

monday schedule pre/in

11:10am: woke up thanks to maha’s wonderful efforts!
12pm: send stuff to to work
1pm: start working on reading, have lunch and head to class
5pm: class
8pm: come back, start cooking
9pm: eat
10pm: read things for tomorrow’s quiz
12am: head to sleep

week schedule – pre

monday: finish fashion photographs (2 hours), read prior to psych class (1 hour), work (2 hours), work on movie assignment (2 hours)
tuesday: assignment, classes, quiz
wed: meet scarf prior to class, have movie class, then karmun is d/t to visit tim and me
thursday: showing off our moved around again apartment to maha! (the place feels more and more great)
friday: CSSU PUB NIGHT YEAH
saturday: seeing parents!
sunday: seeing parents! (finally, its been months)

that’s a great week! woohoo! i hope i didn’t forget anything :S