2015 End

“May the soil be ever more gentle to those that came long after us."

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2015 is coming to an end.. truly this has been one of the most fruitful and magical year for me.

I am happy to say that I am starting to have a better understanding of how to apply the knowledge that I have learned from various mentor and friends into my art.

Despite whatever people say, I also found that art is something that the world cant do without as it made people smile or feel inspired in ways we cannot ever imagine.. its gives a touch of magic into people life that are mundane and hope to other that are despairing.

During this year's journey I start to understand about myself and what I enjoyed is truly storytelling and art is just a medium that I happen to choose.

But one of my the most precious realization is of how I had always overrated the result instead of the process.

I am a perfectionist and as my name stands I am very ana-l :x, I often beat myself over bad result be it in artwork or just life.

It made me a fearful person and it made me stop creating out of hesitation and self doubt.
It made me gave up whenever I start to visualize the end result and felt I could never reach the end goal I had in mind. I gave up whenever it got too hard.. and too painful.

Reading Constantine P. Cavafy's poem.. on journey to ithaca.. made me changed that thought process.

In the end life is a journey, we could never really truly predict whether we can label ourself as succesful or failure at the end of this path but all we could do is to enjoy the journey as we adventure towards the far end.

Coupled with last year reflection, it felt like its time that I try to overcome my weakness.

I knew it definitely wont be easy to kick the laziness in me which has been nurtured through out the years.

Procrastination and depression hits always on the most critical moments but this time around I tried experimenting with myself..I have to make myself sit and work.. somehow..
The idea of this experimentation came from my personal belief that we do have a choice on how to live our life just that we often forget how to make the decision or refuse to out of fear.

Half a year into 2015..I made a vow to myself to always overdeliver.. and that...... I think is one of the biggest thing that changed me this year as that made me push myself and earns me the practices that I had always ran away from.

There are many other small iteration that I continued to experiment on myself to try to streamline my process of hopefully on how to be a better person that I idealized.

So far it seems to be working well for me but I am hoping to be able to be more discipline and focused in the upcoming year.

And.. just a couple of weeks ago I lost someone precious to me, my grandmother. This was a huge blow to me as it was so sudden and I just thought of her..a day before her passing.
I had not lost someone close to me for years so it was a rather numbing experience.

I decided that losing someone is a lesson, a reminder for all the people to live our life to the fullest, to embrace life in a more positive note that is why there are death and parting in life.

With that in mind..if in 2015 my theme was "Embracing Fear" then in 2016 it would be "Chasing Dream"

I would like to start using what I have acquired this year to start pursuing more of storytelling..wish me luck and Happy new year everyone.. !!

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If you are interested to know more about some of the things that I have tried I have listed them below:

Firstly I tried to change the tone of voice in my head (as recommended in the book of motivation by carol dweck) I made it into a positive thing..Its a challenge! I will be better at it tomorrow!

I chanted it to myself everytime things gets hard. Of course as all human are there are days when it just didnt work I slipped into the bad habit of self hating but hey one step at a time.

Next, I start drinking 3liter or more of water everyday (I calculated how much I need using some online calculator)

I also cut on carbs and only drink milk if I exercised as those make me sleepy.

I tried to block out bad news or gossips as those tend to make me too depressed to work.

I start to trim out my social life.. Friends and families are awesome.. I love them all but life is a fair exchange, sometime you do have to choose your priorities and on 2015, mine was on pursuing my artistic goal.

And.. I start to find ways to remove distractions.. I am very easily distracted and it takes a long time for me to slip back into work mode.

So I block fb, turn off my phone, set work hour.. Gave up my hobbies...of gaming and reading books...

I failed many times in the beginning, too undiscipline to follow a strict schedule so the next thing I did was to add some breaktime in the middle, mostly in the late afternoon when I start to feel sleepy.

I also added some walk time and stretching. Those really helps alot.

Those are just some things that I listed off from my mind, if I remember more I will try to add on to the list.. I hope my personal experience,if any, could be of some help to spring board your own personal adventure. If you have any suggestions for me on what to improve on, please do feel free to share it with me. Both criticism and advise would always be appreciated.