HOW I MAKE TIME DOING WHAT I LOVE

For someone who works 8 hours a day and 6 days a week with a travel time of almost 3 hours back and forth everyday, how can one find the time to do hobbies and other creative outlets?

Slowly, in the past year, I was able to re-insert myself into the world of reading but wasn't able to fully immerse back into the writing and blogging (reviewing books) world. I was also able to take videos and compile them which, to my surprise, I enjoyed so much.

By the last half of 2019, I was able to turn myself around and do a lot of things that made me happy. Video editing (a little vlogging), reading, singing (doing covers), blogging, and kind'a journaling. Seems like a lot for a person who only have a day off per week, right? But looking back, it seems like I made a progress doing what I love in slow bits rather than doing everything at once, which is what I do since I am impatient, which I still am, but I'm slowly working on that one.

Here are the takes from my past and plans for my future and present little 'kinda' passion projects.

1.  READING AND REVIEWING

I love reading for a lot of reasons - past-time, learning cultures, looking back into past, love for words, etc. - and somehow, everytime I finish reading a good or even a not so good book, I have a lot of bottled up emotions that needs to get out  there. That was the reason why I write. I feel like writing things down and creating something and just seeing the outcome is my own form of happy pill.

I have a review blog that has been neglected for a year now but I still continued reviewing the books I read. Some of the reviews were on my phone and unfinished that was why I wasn't able to publish any last year, not even one.

My plan to resolve this, since I've always wanted to look back on what I felt when I read a certain book, is to have a collective review and/or make recommendation lists. I feel like I have to make it collective because sometimes I feel tired by venting out everything and I didn't know how to wrap everything up, that's why I wasn't able to finish any reviews for a while now. They were all bits and pieces of my emotions. Looooooong fragments.

This is what I'll do:

• Read whenever.

• Do collective review and fun lists.

• I'll post the single reviews on my old book blog and post the collectives on this blog, which I've decided to be about everything I love, including my life.

• Try making an outline of what should be included in the review if ever I decide to post a single review.

2. BLOGGING AND JOURNALING

This is separate and different from the book blogging because this would include life bits and mind pieces. I created a new blog late last year, which is this blog, where I can share my travels and decided that it would be my new creative outlet. I've decided to write down everything I love, just as I mentioned, and it involves everything from reading to writing to watching to traveling to eating to just about anything.

I remembered telling myself, "you somehow endure working for 6 days a week, barely having any time to rest and have a repose yet you will restrict yourself on the things that you wanted to experience?",  and that's the reason why every once in a while, I travel, meet up with friends, and eat out. This would be one of the motivation I could use to write on my blog and put something on my journal. Remind myself to never miss a memory!

This is what I'll do:

• Go out and explore. 

• Take out my camera more often and just snap good photos.

• Actually print out photos for the journal. hehe

• Take note of the when and  the where. Collect the tickets, save the stubs, get everything that can be stamped on a paper and just create!

• Follow aesthetic blogs with great contents for motivation and inspiration.

• Take it to pinterest to see beautiful journals.

3. KINDA VLOGGING & VIDEO EDITING

I love traveling, and for some reason, photographs are not enough for me to commemorate my experiences. I want to relive what I did through videos. Ever since I was in college, I've always wanted to capture special moments but I didn't compile them in a full video that's why a lot of those videos are nowhere to be found (I'm not good at organizing files). In the present time, I've devoted myself into compiling clips (some old, some new) into videos that I upload on youtube so I won't ever lose any moving memories ever again. To add into that, I've also made time to write some of those memories in this blog as well. Here's where some photos will go and where some of my experiences will be cemented and written for the interested people to read anytime.

Video editing is not easy and it takes up too much time but I realized that I was enjoying the creative process of video editing. Oh my, I don't have a good eye with creating aesthetic stuff but I am a creative spirit and I'm not giving up on that. 

Every Sunday (my rest day), if I wake up with motivation, I usually fire up the laptop along with my coffee and whatever food there may be, and try to edit some clips until I get tired of doing it. I only intend to finish a project when I'm excited to show my friends what I was up to. I don't ususally beat myself to a pulp just to finish a video because doing so would put me in a loooooong demotivated state. I have two separate mantra-like when I feel motivated and demotivated:

Motivated: "Even if no one watches your videos, one day you'll look back and laugh at all the shenanigans of your life episodes captured on 'tape'"

Demotivated: "No one is waiting for your vlog (except for friends), so you can upload anytime so just do it at your own pace. What you enjoy doing don't have to look like it's work."

This is what I'll do:

• Take more videos. Try to talk on videos. hehe.

• Don't push too hard on days when being a couch potato is a better idea.

• Travel more.

4. DOING COVERS & ACTUALLY LET PEOPLE HEAR IT.

I really love singing even when singing sometimes doesn't love me. Ever since I was in highschool, I would do covers using a computer's recorder then I moved on to using a phone recorder then recording inside the bathroom for that reverb effect.

I started posting my covers on soundcloud for a long time until I tried uploading clips on instagram then on youtube. By the time I was able to acquire a condenser microphone, I stopped posting on soundcloud and did not post anything anywhere at all, then started to post on IGTV and then on youtube. I wanted to have a video cover but for a long time, I can only ever have the courage to post audio only videos on youtube and IGTV. Maybe this year I'll get to try that and overcome my fear of judgement. I mean, everybody's gonna do it anyway, since youtube is a big thing now, right?

What I would do to create more covers is to list down songs I can actually sing well, try filming myself while singing, and have the guts to let people see and hear me sing. Don't judge me, don't judge me :(

For the last half of last year up to the past days, I was able to make these:

(｡◕‿◕｡)➜    4 BLOG POSTS!!!!

╰( ･ ᗜ ･ )➝ 11 YOUTUBE VIDEOS!!!

    (*❛‿❛)→     2 AUDIO COVERS ON YT & 3 ON IGTV

<(￣︶￣)↗   JOURNAL IS DECENT. HAHA

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Taking time to do what you love shouldn't be a matter of finding the right time. The right time can be found in between the crevices of a busy day. Read during breaks and before bed, watch movies/series before dinner and while on the way to work, edit videos or do covers during rest days and holidays or journal during mini breaks at work. That's how I usually do it. That's how I manage to do what I am passionate about even when my week is approximately composed of 72 hours at work and at most 56 hours asleep (I don't know where the other hours went, don't question my math!).

Overall, I think the only way to get through a year and look back with big progress is to be happy with slow steps. I didn't even kow that I can look back on so much because I didn't care about the quantity at that time, I just went and write and read and edit and all that stuff. I promised myself not to give myself deadlines as if it is a work that I would be submitting. It's for myself and not for others and when I thought about it that way, I felt no pressure, just contentment that I was able to create then I'm off to my next great venture.