Hi everyone! Happy New Year!
It’s been a while since my last post. I have to admit, the holiday season has gotten into me and I guess I just didn’t want it to be over so soon that’s why I slacked on posting here. No? Alright! Yeah, I just got lazy as usual. But hey! Don’t tell me I’m the only one who got lazy after the holiday season. C’mon! I’m sure some of you also went through this same phase, but enough of this. It’s Sunday today and I want to share with you what’s running on my head…
** WARNING: THIS IS GOING TO BE A LONG POST. **
New Year, new beginning! So what does that mean to me? Well, I probably haven’t told you this yet, but for the longest time, I’ve been struggling with this what-do-i-really-want-to-do-in-my-life dilemma. And it’s tough! Here’s the problem: there are a lot of things that I want to do and accomplish but I don’t know how I’d be able to do “all of it” with the time I have. Good thing, I learned a very important lesson last year which I would like to hopefully apply this year. I know this is a popular saying but it’s only when I heard it on TV that it stroke me: “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”
My biggest weaknesses are setting of priorities and time management. There are a lot of things that I thought I love equally and my mind is just always racing with ideas for each of these “things” that I love to do. However, I find it difficult to put all these ideas into action with the time I have and with my current level of skills. To give you a more vivid picture of what I’m going through, let me take you back to my childhood days.
Ever since I was a kid, I love drawing. I drew and drew endlessly when I was young. Whenever I drew something, I always had a story for it in my mind. It’s like I was creating a comic book with no texts because the story was just running in my head and I was too lazy to write the dialogues down as I drew the characters. I also thought, “What’s the point? Nobody’s gonna see and read it anyway?”
When I was 12, that’s the first time I started literally writing down my stories. I wrote them on an old notebook and passed it to my classmates for them to read – for free of course! That was fun and I thought that's what I could be when I grow up: either a writer or a comic book illustrator. I didn’t stop with that cool hobby of mine until I graduated high school.
Yeah, I took up BS Architecture in college but that's different. I never liked to draw houses and buildings when I was young, and you know what? Those are exactly what drawings are like in the archi-world. If not for God's grace, I wouldn't know how I'd be able to finish college, haha. Whew! It's probably why I decided to change path after graduation - another long story which I'm not gonna bore you with today.
So! A decade and two years later, I decided to pick up a pen and paper and started drawing again. That’s when I realized how much I’ve missed it and that my skills didn’t change. A good thing? Nope! Yeah, my skills didn’t change which also means they didn’t improve either. And before I stopped sketching/drawing years ago, I already knew that I still have a lot to learn and improve. And now that I’m back, it seems like I’m starting all over again.
The good news is: I found a platform where I can share my drawings and stories to the world. And that platform is no other than YouTube. I have created a channel last year for this hobby and it’s called “BeckarooPresents”. Beckaroo by the way is one of my nicknames. I actually have an ongoing story there right now, but just a heads-up, it’s in my native language: Filipino/Tagalog.
The thing is I have so many great plans for that channel and I know it will take so much of my time. Why? Well, I need to improve on my drawings and I also intend to do animations very soon. In order for me to do all of that, I need to practice more each day which means I might need to sacrifice other things that I love. And what are those other things? One of them is blogging. Oopps! RELAX. I’m not gonna leave this site and give up blogging completely but I’m thinking that I might lay low a little bit, because blogging is not just about writing. It requires a lot of work too. You know – taking photos of products, observing how a product works, jotting down your observations, writing your conclusions, post-processing photos, etc-etc. And while blogging is really fun, I realized just very recently that I love drawing and writing stories more than I love blogging.
Is that it? No. Aside from drawing and writing stories, I also love music. I started composing my own songs when I was in college (2nd year). Since then, I fell in love with the idea of creating my own songs. The problem is, I was never confident with my voice and my songs that I kept all my compositions buried somewhere in my treasure room. After I graduated college, just like what I did with drawing/writing comic books, I also shelved my passion in writing songs. It’s only when I started being active on YouTube that I decided to give it a try again. And because my husband is a really good writer, we decided that he’d be the one in-charge of the lyrics while I’m the one responsible for the tune. Our first song is called “There’s Never You And Me” and I used it as the closing song for each of the episodes of my first Love Story on YouTube. Here’s the complete song, by the way.
Unlike with drawing/writing stories, I have given up on the thought that I’d go far with song-writing, so I’d probably just do it whenever I have a spare time and whenever I need a specific song for my stories. But you know what, last year I thought differently. I was struggling so bad about setting my priorities, because I couldn’t decide which among the things I can do (and love to do) would be okay for me to either give up or lay low on. And that’s when the saying, “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” really had a big impact in my life.
It made me realize that being able to do all those stuffs doesn’t always mean I have to do all of them. I need to decide which one I should focus on. Even though it doesn’t necessarily mean I have to give up the other things I like, it also doesn’t mean that I should give each of them equal time and attention. Yeah, maybe others can do it smoothly, but I have to accept that I obviously can't. It is only in choosing what I really want to do in life that I could give my 100% time and effort to it and could actually get better in it.
So, for this year, I am looking forward to leveling up my drawing skills and writing more stories. It may sound easy but I'm telling you, it's really not, haha. By the way, I’m sorry for the long post. *shy grin*
How about you? What are you looking forward to this year? Happy New Year again and may we all have a blessed Sunday ahead!
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Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV)
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight."
