 |
| Unrelated Alfie pic and a friend |
 |
| Proof |
I feel that it’s been nice and sometimes difficult to stop the habit of going to my phone when I'm bored, but overall I feel much more accomplished and relaxed since I decided to go on this trip towards a little bit of a more analog life.
On this entry, I would like to give you an update on things I’ve been enjoying, spontaneous outings, and some other things I would like to explore more in the future.
1. Post-grad studies
I’m entering the final steps in my strategic communications course. I feel like I have learned quite a lot, especially because I’m a designer and, by some weird chance, I ended up becoming a project manager in strategic consulting, so I see a lot of the communications and design in our projects. I started this last year, around the end of May, and I can’t believe how fast time has flown. It’s a demanding institution, but I feel very grateful to have this opportunity to deepen my knowledge and get to learn more about this side of things.
Besides that, I have made a couple of friends who are super cool and interesting. Most of them are journalists, so it’s always nice to work in interdisciplinary teams with them because we all learn about each other’s points of view and ways of approaching a problem.
2. Alone time: going to cute places and the theater
Something I always try to do is spend time with myself, alone. I’m going to be honest: I know a lot of people struggle with this, but for me it’s always been such a joy to be able to be on my own, observing the world go around me and doing things I like.
I remember the first couple of times I started going out on my own, I was 14 and I would go to the record store (RIP) in the centre of the city, look around, and go have lunch by myself at a café (a sandwich, because I was still in high school). That then transformed into me realizing that it didn’t matter that my peers didn’t like the same things I did, so I would go on my own to watch documentaries on David Bowie, The Velvet Underground, and new movies that they would show at cool cinemas. It felt freeing being by myself and immersing my senses in the art I was seeing. Later on that meant I started going to live shows alone and meeting new people (even then, when I was very shy).
Now, at the age of 30, spending time alone is something I try to reserve space for. With many wonderful friends, going out with my mom (who is also my friend), studies, hobbies, outings with coworkers, freelance stuff, and always having things to do, I feel like carving some time to myself has been soooooo good for my mental health. Giving myself space to think and enjoy.
These past few weeks I have been going on long walks (as much as 32–36°C weather will allow me), enjoyed very aesthetically pleasing coffee shops, and I even went to the theater on a whim.
My coworker, C, told the team that if someone wanted this ticket for the play, it was for the next day. I was taking a test close by, and since I don’t mind going on my own to things, I asked for the ticket. It was AMAZING, and I don’t say that just to make a more enthusiastic blog post. I was happy to just go. Free tickets and an evening for myself after my classes and test sounded great.
I don’t know if it’s weird, but most of the time when I go to see a play or movie, I don’t look at previews, trailers, or summaries… what can I say, I love a good surprise. So that was me, on a Friday evening, sitting in the middle of a packed theater by myself, open to enjoying whatever.
The name of the play is MÁM, an Irish dance and theater production. Lucky for me, it made me go through all possible emotions, from fear to sadness, anger, laughing out loud, tenderness, and more. I was absolutely filled with joy and amazement by the end of the show and thankful for experiencing such a thing. I feel like I fell in love with all the dancers/actors.
If you want to know more about what I saw, they can explain it better than me, and if it’s ever in your city, please go. I couldn’t blink during the 90 minutes it went on, and I couldn’t get enough—I would watch it many more times!
3. Illustrator influencer era? & thinking about my future with art
I wanted to share with you how I’ve been feeling very inspired lately. I don’t know if it’s because I feel more confident in my own skin, about the things I want, and my conscious effort to vocalize what I’m good at and not only my flaws or shortcomings, but I have been offered a couple of really nice opportunities around illustration these past few months.
More recently, I got a gift from an editorial (Contrapunto), and they told me to pick a book from their collection for free. I uploaded it as an Instagram story a couple of days ago, so maybe some of you saw it. The book I chose was The Gruffalo, a story by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler. Probably a lot of you are familiar with it, since it’s kind of a classic.
In any case, it was a very nice opportunity for me for many reasons: one, because the idea came from an ex-colleague of mine (my office bestie at that time) to offer me the gift from the editorial, since I have a lot of followers online. Soon we will go for coffee too, and I’m excited about it :-)
And second, because every time I’m faced with children’s illustrations, I get overwhelmed by these feelings of joy and nostalgia, and I want to take my pencils and draw!!! A couple of months ago, I was watching the Tigger movie with my mom and cried because of how beautiful the art is.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t stop staring at the art in movies, and in this case, at every page of the book, and be in awe of its beauty. Of course, that reignited my never-ending desire to illustrate books!! (Hopefully in the not sooo distant future!!!)
 |
| One of my recent illustrations |
 |
| The Gruffalo - It's an special 25th anniversary golden edition! |
4. Three other things I'm thinking about and enjoying
 |
| A little grumpy. |
 |
| Just some ideas of nice layering and textures. |
 |
| My cool outfit. |
No comments:
Post a Comment