Valentine Bullets

I'm feeling a bit disoriented nowadays. Blame it on lover's season, I guess. Anyhoo, let me sum up all recent events concerning me these past few weeks: 

• Do not watch "Wolfman" starring Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins. It was like watching a 90's B-Movie with A-list actors who suddenly lost their integrity and did the film for the money and nothing else. Half the time, I was laughing to myself (hint: it's not a comedy), the remaining half was torture. Awful predictable story and really really awful production value.
• Been staying up too late for the past few weeks, which is very unusual for me. I do not like staying up late. I'm a girl who NEEDS her 8 hours of sleep.
• Got a giant pimple a few days before Valentine's. Nice. (I think I really need to stop staying up too late)
• Got to sing my videoke frustration song, "Alone" by Heart. Did that in front of our clients. 
• The things you have to do for work... singing a song with extremely high notes, definitely not one of them. Especially when you're known for singing male songs because of your low "husky" man-voice.
• Trying to plan a beach trip to Zambales for next weekend. I'm desperate for some quiet time away from the city. So desperate, in fact, that I'm willing to take a bus going there, and this will be my first long bus trip. Good luck with that.
• In the middle of an extremely busy February - March: 4 campaigns, plus an event, for 3 different accounts all targeting a mid-March launch.
• Since it is Valentine's and I don't want to seem bitter... then okay, I'll go with the flow. So let me leave you with this final thought:

          "Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without, and know we cannot live within."
         

The Thing About Spontaneity

"People respond to something that happened in the moment, much more than they will respond to the most brilliant thing that was thought of ahead of time and prepared. There's something in us, and they're going to find it someday. It's like a tiny piece of zinc in our cerebral cortex. They're going to find out what it is. But when we see something that unfolds naturally and is real, people love it... something going off the rail, something going wrong, something happening that wasn't supposed to happen. Do not fear those moments. That's where the gold is."

- Conan O'Brien (again)

When faced with a task, especially a writing task, I know I've had instances when I swear I've racked my brains, painfully over-thinking and trying to come up with good ideas, then ending up with garbage. Like every other normal human being, I do get some criticism with the work that I do; sometimes a lot of criticism. I also did realize that the ideas that seem to get criticized the most are those that I've agonized over, those I made sure had no loopholes. In other words, I get mediocre results when I analyze things way too much. 

Although I think I'm fairly open minded and can take criticisms constructively, I have to admit there are times I wish my skin was a lot thicker. See, I find sometimes that it's hard to psych yourself up to "try again" and not be discouraged when you get a "eureka!" moment that turns out to be a dud.

But there are also times that I do manage to get back up and spin the wheel again, this time a little more carefree. And after some lively, oftentimes off-track discussion with my colleagues or my brilliant (I'm not sucking up here, he really is something else) boss, we always come up with something goosebump-worthy and ingenious, something that is just simply and universally true. Surprisingly, these epiphanies always happen after that point when we've thrown in the towel and decide to take a break by goofing off for the rest of the conversation. The mood flow goes: serious, serious, serious, TIRED! break, break, break, laugh, laugh, laugh... DING! EUREKA! 

It's just magical, is what it is. I've heard/read somewhere that the best ideas are often accidental.

I think this is also the answer as to why planned gimmicks almost never push through and spur of the moment things always do.

Moral of the story - planning is overrated.