Blessings: 17 Oct - 23 Oct

If I can't keep it up daily anymore, let me see if I can at least recap weekly a few of many instances to be grateful for.

(1) First time for family to sit down COMPLETE for a meal, with homemade Hainanese Chicken Rice no less

(2) Potential shoot problems working their way out such as knowing organizer of one location & wonderful weather

(3) Surviving & celebrating the craziness of this week

(4) New places: Legaspi Market, Filipinas Heritage Library, top of Makati Stock Exchange & empty Tower One

(5) Learning to put my foot down & picking up lessons for future like-experiences

(6) Kiddie games + adult vices = a good time

(7) Jogging.. even if only for 2 nights this week

(8) Seeing the magic of production crew at work & appreciating genius behind capturing a moving picture

(9) Holiday = sleeping in + finishing a book

(10) Acknowledgment for work accomplished this week

Emails Galore!

I got up at 8 am this morning to dove into my work hoping to clean THIS up:

But 12 hours later, thanks to a rush shoot we are preparing for tomorrow, I have not only NOT started going through my mail, but the number of messages in my inbox has grown!

I like starting the day out with a clean inbox so before the day ends, I like to have gone through, responded to and filed away all of my email. You can imagine how much it bugs me to have that many messages sitting idly in my inbox - both unread and unsorted. 

Because I did get to relax a bit today, I'm in the right frame of mind to say that despite the nutty week, it was a lot of fun and can definitely say I picked up on a lot of new things. I think if you had asked me earlier this week,  I would have just responded by bursting into tears. Hehe. Thankfully, I haven't smashed and obliterated any of the balls I'm juggling for work, though I don't think I can say much about the balls outside of work. But that's a different story.

Anyone have tips to help my work move faster and STILL afford me some sleep in the evening and  balance in my life? 

On Friends & Nothingness

Saw a good friend recently. Over lunch I began fielding calls from work and then over dessert, she took out some papers to do some number crunching for work while I flipped through a magazine. 

It was an afternoon of catch-up, the deepest-of-the-deep kind of conversation, insubstantial chatter and many moments of nothingness.  

When you aren't compelled to put on a song a dance because each other's company is entertainment enough, when you can truly be comfortable doing nothing and still feel like you had the best time in the world.. then you know you are in the company of a true friend. And I am reminded, time and again, of how lucky I am to be blessed with people like this in my life. 

Work Load II

Ok - so deep down, I'm freaking out about my workload.

(1) Three of my current accounts are rush projects, while I also have a few other projects that are drawing near completion these next few weeks. As much as we'd all like work to be evenly paced and well planned out, some thing about finally seeing that deadline at the horizon brings about all these strangely unforeseeable things that all of a sudden, need to get done in order for the project to finish. So..

Near completion = heightened stress.

(2) My co design manager went on maternity leave last Friday and the person that we were supposed to hire as a reliver.. backed out last Thursday. So guess who's taking over her accounts in the meantime?

(3) Must.keep.life.balanced!!!

On the flipside, I'm kinda excited about taking on more work. More work means more experience under my belt, and also means more opportunities to learn - and as I'm trying to focus and fast track all these learnings for the near future I'm preparing for, this opportunity is as good as any. On the flipside, I shouldn't be too worried because I'm working with a great team, so the projects WILL move along and the support will be there.

6th month in and I did say I wanted to dive in 200% right?!

But ya.. i'd be lying if I didn't admit that I'm freaking out.

Neat Freak

I love things that are uniform and organized. Nothing thrills me more than seeing books neatly stacked and arranged by height and color. Or spools of ribbon organized from darkest to lightest. Or pails over-flowing with taffy, split up by color. Or clear boxes each full of one particular button shape. Groupings of similar items or.. things organized in rows.. or.. or.. or... ya.. shut me up before I froth at the mouth.

I have absolutely no idea why I am so amused and delighted and absolutely tickled by this. Thought it was a strange fixation. Turns out, I'm not alone.

A friend reblogged a photo from a a tumblr site called: thingsneatlyorganized.tumblr.com.

As a friend said when she saw it, porn for the obsessive compulsive... orgasmic organization. Check it out and tell me.. are you not writhing with so much giddiness that you don't know what to do with yourself?!?!

Email Etiquette

One big part of being a design manager is liaising with clients - so I spend a lot of time fielding calls and emails. Sometimes I find myself staring at my screen for hours (ok.. exag.. maybe an hour at most) writing emails.

The most challenging ones are those where you have to relay a negative message, but still packaged professionally, and in a way that doesn't piss off your client (too much). It's not just about stringing words together, or punching out a email - its about crafting messages targeted at certain personalities that effectively communicate your objectives.

My boss is EXCELLENT at composing these types of emails. In fact, she's so good at it, that her emails sound like the clients are hearing what they think they want to be hearing - even though in reality, it's what my boss wants them to hear. Lol. Then again, I do work in an industry where communications is supposed to be our expertise, so I guess I shouldn't expect anything less from my boss.

Point of my post? I guess to share my amazement (amusement?) that something as seemingly simple as email writing is actually a potent communication tool.