so when do you graduate?

09.08.2020 | I’ve been waiting to post this for a while. A lot of you guys may have been wondering why I took a mini-haitus until today and that’s because I had a really really big exam (aka my PhD candidacy exam) I was prepping for >5 months and I wanted spend my time focusing on that, especially in the last two weeks before my exam. And yesterday, I took my exam and I PASSED! All those months of stressing, feeling anxious, overwhelmed, and doubts pilling up on whether I could actually do it disappeared in an instant after hearing that I passed. It was the best feeling I’ve had in a long time since starting grad school! 

Anyways, back to the actual picture: some of you may know that I like to write about my goals and intentions at the start of every month and reflect on how I did the previous month. This month (for me) is all about recharging, refreshing and rebooting. I thought it would be nice to do an old-school classic WindowsXP theme. This desktop setup (especially the files) kinda sums up how my mindscape is right now. This theme was really inspired by AmandaRachLee’s recent youtube video so I don’t want to take credit for coming up with this myself. 

I hope you guys are doing well, and also get a chance to recharge a bit too this month! 

07.23.2020 // I dabble in a lot of things when I’m procrastinating on my grant writing. (apparently a common trait in procrastination that I got from my old research mentor Dr. E who would build things in the lab instead of writing his grants) 

Lately I’ve been cleaning out my apartment, and I’ve been holding onto this wine bottle from Prophecy because of the beautiful label done by Victo Ngai (she’s my favorite artist - I even wrote a whole essay on her work when I took Art Appreciation in undergrad). Part of me wants to buy all of the Prophecy wines so I have all her artwork. Anyways, I figured I could just take the label off and recycle the bottle (why I had not thought of that earlier I have no idea). Unlike my dad who does like to collect the bottles, I like to collect beautiful graphic illustrations on said bottles. 

And yes, I know the quote by J.R.R Tolkein is slightly wrong; I actually chose to write sell instead of see because of the spread revolving around the “goddess of fortune”. it was totally intentional...

07.07.2020 // A coffee-inspired spread of me reminiscing about how much I miss coffee-shops right now, and an old picture of coffee from my favorite local coffee shop. ♫Get What I Came For - The Phantoms

[ig: guavadays]

07.07.2020 // This week been looking really bright. I finished my first draft of my proposal that I had been procrastinating for a month; I got good results from my experiments!!!; and my mini-stationery haul from last month finally came in the mail today. I’m in love with that gold foiling~ When I’m really happy (like today), I like to go out to get coffee. Since that’s not possible right now, I’ll have to settle for making my own I guess. [♫ Walking on A Dream - Empire of the Sun]

[ig: guavadays]

05/07/2020 | Today, I didn't want to leave my bed.

Four years ago, I got into ringed planners and invested in a personal planner binder. Over the years, my planners evolved from just a collection of to-dos to a semi-journal. I started to collect things (mostly post cards, handwritten letters, birthday cards, cute stationery papers) that made me happy or had a happy memory associated with it. I’m not very artistically inclined so I’m trying my best to make my “planner” (seriously what is this now?) look cute.

This is the current week spread but I’m going to be trying something new next week onwards. I don’t have much to do during the pandemic aside from writing and reading, so my planner is starting to evolve into a more collection of reflections. Over the last few weeks, my mental health hasn’t been doing great so I wanted to sit down and journal a bit, maybe doodle here and there, write to my multiverse alternative (hi Tulip from multiverse 2084!).

Does anyone else use ringed planners like this?