Design: More Than Meets the Eye

I’ve been intrigued by the concept of having great design. The thing about design is that there is more to it than meets the eye. It requires a deeper understanding of what individuals need and like. For example, for interior designers to create a lovely home for a family, they need to check on the personality of each one and really get to know them. They will need to find that perfect rendition and combination of the style and design that each family member wants and possibly needs.

Nowadays, how a person designs their site and social media accounts also speaks a lot about their personality. You’ll notice that a lot of writers, bloggers, graphic designers, photographers give people an idea about who they are as a person through the work that they create.

I love how we can get to know people by just looking at their blogs or Instagram accounts (not through stalking), but through analyzing how they express themselves through design and images.

For those who are intrigued by design, beautiful things and the story behind it, you might want to attend the following workshops on February 27, 2016.

MOBILE PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP

Workshop-Mobile-Photography-Poster-2016-02-25-Rev2

You can sign up here: http://manilaworkshops.com/events/4-corner-story-a-mobile-photography-workshop-with-shiela-catilo

BASIC INTERIOR STYLING

BASIC INTERIOR STYLING

You can sign up here: http://manilaworkshops.com/events/basic-interior-styling-2

See you! 🙂

 

When the Hum Stops

It’s funny that someway, somehow, life gives you something right at the perfect moment. It is as if for some reason, when you’re about to give up and every thing seems to be hopeless and meaningless, the world gives you something — something that inspires you and nudges and pushes you back right on track. That something may be a call from a friend, a kiss from a loved one, a passage from the Bible, a story form a stranger that you just met, a hug, and that something ultimately makes you feel alive and whole again.

That something for me was this Ted Talks video from my idol Shonda Rhimes. For those who don’t know her, Shonda Rhimes is the “titan” behind all of my favorite shows like Grey’s Anatomy, How to Get Away with Murder and Scandal. I suggest that you watch her in this talk from TED.

I woke up, feeling better than I did last night. Last night, I had tummy cramps every so often and each cramp left a trace of pain that would build up and build up and build up. I found out I had GERD (Gastroesophageal reflux disease). And the funny thing about having it is that I was not surprised it happened. When I work, I lose track of time. I forget to eat, but surprisingly, I don’t forget to to drink coffee. I think of coffee as food and as something that keeps me going and it keeps me sharp. This is actually how I live and I’m not proud of it. I know that this kind of lifestyle isn’t healthy and I know i’m just waiting for attacks of pain, just like this one.

“When I’m hard at work, when I’m deep in it, there is no other feeling. For me, my work is at all times building a nation out of thin air. It is manning the troops. It is painting a canvas. It is hitting every high note. It is running a marathon. It is being Beyoncé. And it is all of those things at the same time. I love working. It is creative and mechanical and exhausting and exhilarating and hilarious and disturbing and clinical and maternal and cruel and judicious, and what makes it all so good is the hum. There is some kind of shift inside me when the work gets good. A hum begins in my brain, and it grows and it grows and that hum sounds like the open road, and I could drive it forever. And a lot of people, when I try to explain the hum, they assume that I’m talking about the writing, that my writing brings me joy. And don’t get me wrong, it does. But the hum — it wasn’t until I started making television that I started working, working and making and building and creating and collaborating, that I discovered this thing, this buzz, this rush, this hum. The hum is more than writing. The hum is action and activity. The hum is a drug. The hum is music. The hum is light and air. The hum is God’s whisper right in my ear. And when you have a hum like that, you can’t help but strive for greatness. That feeling, you can’t help but strive for greatness at any cost. That’s called the hum. Or, maybe it’s called being a workaholic.” – Shonda Rhimes

Going back to that something that comes at the perfect moment, when you least expect it, it happened just about 30 minutes ago. I’m here lying on my bed, because this stupid pain on my tummy keeps bothering me. I know i’m sleepy so I try to watch a a few movies on Netflix, but nothing catches my attention. I decide to open TED instead to watch videos (wooohoo! This is my idea of fun!) and the one that catches my attention is obviously this video of Shonda Rhimes, my ultimate idol (yes, I know, I’ve said that). I have admired her for the longest time and when I saw the title of her talk, “My year of saying yes to everything”, I wanted to watch it immediately. I thought she was going to talk about how saying yes to everything gave her this successful career and status that she has, but it was about saying “yes” to playing with her child for 15 minutes.

After watching the video, I cried. I kept on saying “Damn, you Shonda! You’re just amazing! I hate you” over and over again. I hated her because she hit me right on the mark. I hated her because she made me feel better; I felt like someone understood how I was feeling.

The honest truth is that I love working. I love working, and at times I think I’m wonderful, noble, admirable, impressive, but sometimes, I think i’m irresponsible, unreasonable, pathetic and pitiful. My life has become unbalanced. This annoying pain in my tummy makes that evident. I don’t know how to go out on dates anymore with my husband, as I constantly need to check my phone. I don’t know how to play with my daughter, as I constantly think of the next business strategy that I need to map out while building lego blocks. Planning my daughter’s birthday party has become an event with a matching keynote presentation that I planned to present to her teachers. Things that can be turned into a business excite me now over things that I used to love, like new restaurant finds, new flavors of ice cream, a new dress, etc.

Then there came a time during the past few months when the hum stopped for me. I was overworked, depressed all of the time, tired, frustrated, angry a lot of times. And now I know that it was because, I lost that inspiration — I couldn’t hear that “hum”.  I was so focused in working my ass off that I forgot to “play”.

I have forgotten how it is to live and appreciate the seemingly mundane things in life. I have set aside going out on dates with the husband, playing with my daughter, going out on night outs with my friends, watching movies, going on ME-time shopping sprees, etc. I have forgotten that these simple things but are really important and it’s what makes living fun and life worth living.

So, thank you, Shonda Rhimes, for showing me that working is okay, for as long as I inject “play” time. Thank you for reminding me that work hum becomes more meaningful if mixed with play hum and love hum.  Thank you for singing out load to make me hear that hum again.

All about Coding and What Stops us from Learning New Things

As you may have heard, I am part of three teams / companies that are creating mobile applications. Oh, I am not a techie person, and my I don’t have any IT experience, except blogging (if you even consider basic HTML commands as valid IT experience). What I know though is that technology is and will continue to change industries and lives of people. I believe in that and that is the reason why I want to be part of this industry — to make disruptive changes.

For one of the tech companies that I am involved in, from the time we started, we didn’t have any tech partner. It has been a source of lots of problems. The major concern is that we have been delayed with our launch because of this, but fortunately, we found a new partner / provider that can help us develop an upgraded version of the app.

Having this problem has made me and my friend (also with a marketing background) think about learning programming and coding. We are both ladies, who have no experience in programming (oh except the time in HS where we had basic programming and we would copy our classmate’s work), and the only reason why we want to learn how to code is to know more about it. We know that we can’t be experts and it may even take time before we can develop our own application, but having the knowledge of how it’s done can help us explain better what we want to our partners and providers.

Right now, I’m learning Python, since this is what my husband (who by the way is an excellent programmer) said I should start with.

Python.001

I’m 39% done, but I must say that this has made me realize a lot of things. It made me think of what stops us from learning new things. One of the things that I realized is that it takes a certain passion and patience to continue on and to learn. There are so many distractions and it takes someone with a certain level of persistence to finish courses and even to finish a chosen book.

A tip that I have gotten from this experience is find that single reason why you want to learn. It may be to improve your business, to improve your career, to impress others, to impress a loved one — any thing. This will be enough motivation for you to keep on learning. My personal motivation is because a lot of the things that I am doing now requires at least a basic understanding of coding or programming. This is why I am being a patient student and I’m trying to learn everything I can.

What will motivate you to learn? Find that motivation and embrace learning!

Search for that thing that you Love Doing

When I was young, not to brag, I never had a hard time looking for love. My family and friends would say that I was the “ligawin” type. Although, I am a bit naive and dense when it comes to knowing though if a person likes me. It may be that or probably the fact that when I set my eyes on someone, he becomes my whole world. Anyway, this isn’t about my love story with EJ, but it’s a story about searching — searching though for the thing that you love doing.

I wasn’t that lucky though in searching for that one thing that I wanted to do for the rest of my life. When I was younger, I used to admire my friends who landed their first job / business and loved immediately and wholeheartedly. Until now, most of them are still in that same company, doing the same profession, and still managing their businesses. During those years, I was pretty envious. They were so successful already, earning probably millions of pesos and I was stuck with the feeling that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

I kept on searching and kept having an open mind. I have gone through a lot of businesses and side jobs, and believe me, when I say a lot — I mean A LOT!

Then the time came when I was creating events for Manila Workshops as a side business. I wanted to set up events so that I could use it as a tool to look for the business that I would eventually start. After a few runs, I realized that this (creating events) was the thing that I loved doing and it was there all along. It was right under my nose and I failed to notice it!

Fast forward to today, 3 years after, we are incorporating the business (from being a sole proprietorship). Also, I just came from Davao to conduct an onboarding session for my team there. I still couldn’t believe that I expanded the company from just me and my husband doing all the legwork for Manila Workshops to a team of 30 people now, helping out cascade the vision of Manila Workshops to our countrymen here in the Philippines.

Keep on searching

Looking back, there are so many things that I have learned and that I am grateful for, which I hope will help you also.

1) Never just settle. Settling is having that feeling that you know that one thing isn’t right for you, but you just “go with the flow” since it’s comfortable. It has to be something that makes you incessantly and ridiculously happy.

2) Love and believe in yourself. You deserve more than this comme ci-comme ca life. Believe that you got what it takes. All you need is to love yourself enough!

3) In searching, listen to the voice within. Listen to what other people say, consider what they say, but follow your heart. You know what’s best for you. You know what will make you happy. You know what will make you sleep well at night.

And the last thing that I learned is that the search for that thing that you love doing may seem like forever, but be patient. Be positive that you will find it. It may come early or late in life, but at least you get or will get to experience doing that thing that will make your heart leap every single day!

Loving and caring for you,

Mommy Ginger

Mommy Ginger

 

 

 

 

PS. Happy Valentines Day! 🙂

PPS. Please support the EUREKA Collection of @flufflypwets FPx Ginger which inspires children to go for what they want to be! Click on the image below to purchase this diaper or shirt!

Fluffypwets

 

 

Creating Beautiful Pictures on Instagram

One of the effective ways to get advertisers for your blog is to show them how high the engagement is for your posts in social media are. My engagement in Facebook is high, but I still need to work on Instagram. Increasing followers on Instagram is so hard since you need to have amazing photos. Especially  for entrepreneurs with products that are highly visual (like food, crafts, and other pretty stuff), you need to take amazing photos.

Admittedly, I need help with mobile photography and I know a lot of bloggers, entrepreneurs, freelancers, etc. need help with this also. It was just recently, from my team Memory Crafters, that I got to learn the term “flat lays”. Haha! I didn’t even know what it was for the longest time and I never bothered to ask.

There are a lot of things that we need to learn about Mobile Photography, particularly taking photos for Instagram, and a learning about it will make branding and business sense.

A-4-CORNER-STORY-1-724x1024

Join us this coming Saturday and do bring your loved one as we learn about this amazing world of Mobile Photography! We will learn it from none other than my friend and very talented photographer, Sheila Catilo. In this event, Sheila will teach the basics of Mobile photography and her unique ways on how you can express and tell your story through your photos. Get to know her exceptional styles, tips and tricks and experiences in the industry.

WORKSHOP OUTLINE
I. Introduction

II. Mobile phone basics
A. Exposure
B. Focus
C. Functions
D. Strengths and weaknesses

III. More than just a picture
A. Defining your objective
B. Identifying your subject
C. Finding your style
D. Knowing your audience

IV. Telling your story
A. Finding your light
B. Rules of composition that work
C. The importance of timing
D. A sense of context
E. Captioning

V. Editing before you click
A. Cleaning up the frame
B. Styling your shot

VI. Choosing photography apps and accessories
VII. Editing and sharing your photos
VIII. Loading up on inspiration
IX. Practice makes perfect (SHOOT PROPER)
X. Constructive critique session

About Sheila 🙂

1653399_10152009709701406_1875042325_nSheila first fell in love with photography when she got a Canon Pixma for her 9th birthday. Back then, they were inseparable. By the time she was in high school, she volunteered to be their school paper’s photojournalist using her uncle’s old SLR to take pictures and join contests, saving her allowance to buy film, develop the photos she took and share them with her family and friends. It didn’t really occur to her that she would eventually do it for a living, but to her, being a photographer now is like ending up with her childhood sweetheart.

She is happily married to her best friend and co-photographer, Jorem Catilo and full-time mom to 3 little girls who she cannot stop shooting. Her Instagram account is evidence to this fact. Check it out through www.instagram.com/sheilacatilo/.

Please do join us on February 27 (It was moved from Feb. 13). Sign up here: http://manilaworkshops.com/events/4-corner-story-a-mobile-photography-workshop-with-shiela-catilo