The Friday Song: Fragance

A few years ago, my best friend and I had this website The Friday Song, in which we asked music related questions every friday. This is the evolution.

I’m truly sorry for posting this so late, but I’ve been pretty busy. I’ll go back to school next monday and I am already losing my mind. I’ll update you on this during the weekend, right now, let’s talk about TFS.

A few days ago, I was working on a video project and Gackt’s music popped up to my ears. It’d been years since the last time I heard anything by Gackt, even though a friend of mine is really into him. This is one of my favorite songs by him, and I’ve been listening to it nonstop ever since. I hope you like it. *hurry*

yukisaki sae mo mitsukerarenakute
kaze ni kiesouna kioku o
hosoi ito de yukkuri to hikiyoseru
zawameku kokoro no koe ni mimi o sumashi
“ittai nan no tame ni
umarete kita no ka…”
sou, toi kaketa

tsuki wa kawarazu boku o mitsume
ima wa mada kotaete wa kurenai

kikasete okure yo
sono koe o…
misete okure yo
sono yume o…
samenu nemuri ni ochite mo
obieru koto wa nai kara

oshiete okure yo
shinjitsu o…
tsugete okure yo
sono tsumi o…
akai namida ni nurete iru
kakusareta kono sugata o…

tada itoshisa dake ga ookikunaru
kako no namae sae
omoidasenai mama na no ni
mou dou ni mo dekinakute

tsuki wa kawarazu shizukana mama de
ame o furase tsudzuketa

I hope you enjoyed it, I may come and talk about it later, but for now, just bye!

My Daily Moleskine

Please,ignore my spanish

As you may have read, I bought a bunch of Moleskine notebooks a few weeks ago. Among them I bought a pocket-size ruled notebook, I planned on using it to keep myself organized. I’m the kind of person who needs to have everything on paper, but (I have to admit it) I suck at keeping up with printed organizers and even PDA’s, I even have two Moleskine daily planners (I bought them for two different purposes, don’t give me that look!).

I’m just more of a free writer; some days, I barely have anything to do, some others, I need to write very long lists of pending tasks, for this, I need something I can use my own way, something I can personalize in case I need it.

I started checking various GTD systems, but I find them so rigid, I know I won’t keep up with them. And It wasn’t until I read Gala Darling’s guide to her very own Filofax, I came up with a different idea, that I KNEW would help me organize myself. This is how i did it:

When you open my Moleskine, the first thing you encounter is a manifesto, I wrote to remind myself to stay positive. of course, ‘Letting sequins into my life’ it’s there. On the first two pages, you can see a calendar I printed including just the months from July – December, remember, my planner covers only these months. From the next pages on, I separated my Moleskine into twelve sections (yes, twelve!):

1. Daily – A week in two pages.
2. 2011 – For any upcoming event or information that does not fit in my 2010 planner.
3. Projects – A few pages for project ideas, notes or lists.
4. Manifesting – I also believe in manifesting to make happen.
5. I love – Making ‘I love’ lists or statements has saved me from madness a lot of times.
6. Music – I constantly need places to write songs/bands I discover and I want to download or learn more about.
7. Movies – Also, movies I want to learn more about, watch, or just check facts on.
8. Ideas for articles – Here I write Ideas for new blog posts, or articles on El Espejismo.
9. Lists – I am a list-maker. I need lists all the time.
10. 88 days – Here i keep a list of my goals for the 88 days project.
11. Spending – A detailed section where I revise how much I spend every week and what on.
12. Extra – Notes, songs, scribbles, love letters, etc. Anything goes.

Most of the sections are pretty much self-explanatory, but also, some of them are a little more personal and I designed them to cover a specific need of mine.

• Projects – I don’t know if I’ve ever said this here before, but I tend to get ultra creative at night, when I feel super tired and desperate to go to bed, this is when I think ‘I should paint this, I should do that’ sometimes I do it (like right now, I decided to write this and here you have me), sometimes I feel too tired to start some real action. But when I decide to get my hands on it, it’s normally when my whole week gets messed up as I tend to stay up until I finish what I start (then again, like right now) leaving me too tired to be productive on the next day. Having a place to write all these ideas help me go to bed knowing I can get my hands on it on the next day without the risk of forgetting the super fantastic idea I just had.
• I love – It’s not the first time I write here about how focusing in what I love about my life has saved me from depression, madness and angst. I just write short sentences of love and gratitude, and then I write the date. Even going back to read them makes me feel positive.
• Ideas for articles – If you click on ‘Future posts’ on the column of the right, it will take you to a password protected page, here I keep a list of ideas for future articles and posts, but when I am not in my computer and I have a brilliant idea for an article, I normally have to write it on my cellphone as a reminder. Sometimes I get them and end up forgetting about them. Well, not anymore. Here I can collect all of those without having to run to my laptop in the risk of forgetting.
• Lists – One of my best friends once told me that writing a to-do list gave her an accomplishment feeling; I’ve been there, but in my case, things are a bit different. I am one of those unlucky beings that need to write everything in a sort of step-by-step list that helps me remember what needs to come next. As I’ve said  hundreds of times before ‘Asperger is to blame’. You can imagine my listing section takes over almost as many pages as my ‘Daily planner’ does.
• Extra – This little extra  is one of my favorite sections. I love to write, scribble and sketch, and normally on regular planners I don’t have as much space as I would like for this. This section, being one of the ones I use the most, starts from the last page on, going backwards, which combines it with my 88 days section, this way, I am not limited by the number of lists I can make, and my doodling creativity has no limits as well.

I colour coded all my events, that ways I can tell from the outside what’s coming. At the very end I keep some post-its and colour flags just in case I need them. Also, in the pocket, I have a small address book (Which I am still thinking about, since I rarely use address books), a couple of business cards just so I don’t have to dig through my purse looking for them, and the receipts I have to take care of.

So, how do you organize yourselves?

5 Online Personalities I Admire.

My creative drive is out of control! I am right now working on a video based on a personal experience. I may show it to you later on if I get the chance.

Ever since I started with this blog, I’ve been wanting to write about the online personalities I’m head over heels for. Finally it’s here, a short compilation of incredibly awesome links to equally awesome people I’d never met, but simply fascinate me either on artistically,or simply indulging my voyeuristic vein.

All the pics on this post belong to the person I am talking about.

1. Baby Panda
   I first found her on DeviantART back in the days I was really into it (Right now, as you can see from the lack of a proper link, I decided to stop using it). I immediately fell in love with her artwork. I find it so unusual, yet so aesthetic.  Years after I discovered her, I started following her on Tumblr, She’s completely NSFW and even a bit ‘ultraviolent’ (as her blog used to be named) but somehow I find her incredibly inspiring
   
2. Malloreigh
   Malloreigh is a SuicideGirl, one of the first ones I learned about. I think that in 2006 when I joined the site for the second time, she just had one of the best sets I’ve seen gone live and that defined my fascination over her. She’s vegan and openly queer, she also has some very strong political opinions. In the recent years I started following her blog and tumblr, but for some reason, she stopped writing on her blog. So sad. Now I just have her tumblr and twitter to lurk on.
   
3. Shiricki
   I first found Shiricki about 7 years ago, back then, her blog Angelic-trust was one of the most interesting things to read online, and a huge inspiration on those days I was just starting to learn how to build websites and stuff. Nowadays, she closed her blog, and is mainly focused into handling her online store. I still talk to her from time to time through Twitter and Facebook. I even got the chance to interview her once regarding Kyaaa. One of the things I always loved about her while she was blogging, is that she always focused on the positive side of her life. I don’t remember ever reading her blog about something negative.
   
4. Gala Darling
   How do I begin describing Gala Darling? Noting how most of the people who come here find me while looking for her, you must already know about her. I found this lovely lady online during one of the toughest moments in my life. I had just recently lost a relative I was too attached to, and her positive take on life helped me see the light in my life again. I am yet to write her a thank you e-mail. If you google around you will find there’s a lot of controversy surrounding her, but I don’t really care about it. She’s an amazingly positive person, and that’s what has had an influence on me.
   
5. Chloe St. Reagan
   THIS WOMAN. Gosh, I’ve had the biggest girl crush on her for about 6 years! She’s also on Suicidegirls, and I would even dare to say she’s one of the most popular girls there. I first started reading her blog there. I love the way she expresses herself. Eventually she decided t become inactive on the site, and I spent a couple of years without reading anything about her. One day, about a year ago, I accidentally found her photographer portfolio, and from there I found her blog, and I started reading her again, I was even happily surprised to see how Gala Darling and her were friends. Nowadays she’s back on SG as part of the staff, i have no clue what she’s doing there, but I’m just happy to see her blog there again. Now, you must be wondering what is it about this woman hat I find so appealing? Well, she’s smart, and she seems fun, she sounds very laid back, and I love her witty attitude; visually, she’s super expressive, ultra gorgeous. She looks so free. I would love to meet her one day.

That’s it my darlings, now tell me, who are your internet crushes?

The Friday Song: Deep Orbit

A few years ago, my best friend and I had this website The Friday Song, in which we asked music related questions every friday. This is the evolution.

The last few days have been pretty exciting so far. If things go as expected today I will finally have a Photography class I’ve been expecting for the last month. Also The 88 days project has got me thinking so much. Since it’s an ongoing process, I am already paying attention to my health, I am exercising more and becoming more conscious about what I eat. The next step in my list is improving my already awesome relationship, and since I had not seen my boyfriend in a couple of weeks (vacation) I’ll be meeting him again next week. I’m excited.

So, this week’s song is Deep Orbit by the mexican band Monoplug, The picture has literally nothing to do with this week’s song, but I liked it just to illustrate the concept, Also, I happen to find it very aesthetically pleasing. Not much to say this week ‘cept for the fact that I love this song, even if it’s not really new (it came out in 2006) and had not been able to kick it off my head for the last week.

Sadly, this week I don’t have any lyrics for you. The song it’s amazing, but not very mainstream. Sorry ponies, you’re just gonna have to listen to it and enjoy it “as is”.

The 88 days project

Your power lies in knowing that you are always changing and being responsible for the quality of that change. If every 88 days or so your body completely regenerates then in 3 months time you can be a whole new you! Now that’s real power. So what are you going to do with all that power?

Pretend it doesn’t exist and keep behaving like a victim in all your old habits? Or take charge of the situation and Re-invent yourself?
Go on I dare you!

The body coach reinvented

A few days ago, my friend Dafne showed me the quote above and it got me thinking about how hard would it really be to change my life, to transform myself into someone different, someone who made me happier than I am right now.

I made a short list about the things I would like to improve or even completely change about my life, things from fears, insecurities, etc. And after revising it a bit, I thought ‘Why not changing them in 88 days?’ That’s how I’ve come with the idea of The 88 days project.

I decided I would work on it for each and every single day on the following 88 starting last monday, which means that by  Oct 14 I will have accomplished all my goals, So to make it even more official (Cause I know that if I keep it to myself I will probably end up procrastinating and eventually forgetting about it) I am keeping a registry of this on my daily planner,and I’m also writing a part of the ever-expanding list of…

Things to work on the next 88 days

1. Conquering my fear of the dark
2. Cutting the negative people out of my life
3. Improving my already awesome relationship
4. Setting AminoKou as a formal business
5. Writing more articles for El Espejismo
6. Paying more attention to my health
7. Working on my relationship with my mom
8. Saving!!!
9. Stopping my media dependance
10. Reclaiming my identity
11. Cutting my candy addiction from the root.

There’s more of course, some of the things I decided to work on are a bit more personal, but after all this whole process is just about redirecting your focus and re-entering your life with a new more positive attitude. It’s all about creating a new you.

How to do it?

As of Monday I started working on my intense fear of darkness. It may sound silly or childish to say so, or it may even remind you of that 90’s canadian-american TV show, but I’ve been terribly afraid of the dark for about 5 years. Yes,pretty irrational,but that’s precisely how phobias act: irrationally, messing with a part of your brain you don’t really get. I don’t really know how it started, cause I remember not being like this until recently. So I began exposing myself  to the thing I was most afraid of: Sleeping in the dark.

I normally sleep with my TV on, which I am aware is not the healthiest thing to do; not only you’re exposed to the radiation emitted by the TV during your sleep hours, but also, all this noise does not really allow you to rest properly, So, on monday night I decided I would turn my tv off, and instead of sleeping with my regular cartoon channel on, I left my laptop on playing When Harry met Sally until I fell asleep. Last night, instead of a movie I read a bit until I decided I was sleepy enough to go to bed without spending the well-known minutes worrying about the dark. It worked. I woke up at 3 am once and then again at 5 30 cause I was having a nightmare, but I consider this to be a huge success.

Even though waking up after my nightmare was terrifying and I even thought of slowing my pace. I did not turn the TV on, and I won’t do it tonight, instead, I am trying it again.

That’s what it’s all about, doing what it takes to help you reach your goal. For example, I want to cut my media dependance. How can I do this? Identifying where is my dependance coming from, and slowly walking away from it. In my case it’s all from TV and Internet,So I’m going to start slowly getting away from these two. I’m not cutting it completely, I’m just going to use them less and fill the extra time with healthier activities.

That’s All, just list what you want to change, identify how each point behaves and break it! You can even indulge yourself after you have accomplished one of your goals, I know that after I get to sleep quietly in full dark I will buy something to cheer me up! It doesn’t even have to be something expensive, even a cheap set of bangles will do.

I am aware that the most difficult part for me will be cutting off the negative people, but I have to try it, and I’ll set my most decadent prize for this one.

Are you joining me on this? If so, what are your plans for the next 88 days? I am so excited. I’ll keep you posted on my 88 days journey.