Tenji’s Midnight Lifestyle Moodboard

It is 1145pm on Saturday 25 May 2013. I am awake – and not in a dimly lit exciting place holding something cool and tall in my perfectly manicured hand. Oh no. I am on Via Pietro Calvi, 3 floors up from the Saturday Night Fun Times Crew who are having a time of it at the tops of their voices outside my window. What am I doing? Compressing and compressing and compressing again a portfolio for Zuva Interiors that I put together in 13 hours today. (In Adobe Illustrator which I first learned how to use 1 month ago!! The Drama.)

What made it better?

• An amazing playlist courtesy of Steve Jobs and Spotify (think Sia – Colour the Small One, Justin Timberlake – The 20/20 Experience (bloody amaze, btw!), and Halou – Wholeness and Separation).
• A pretty life-changing bottle of Araia white wine, and
• An impromptu work-date with a great guy in a rugby jersey.

ARAIA = THE GOOD STUFF

Besides these silver linings, I died. For my future, for the chance at being a Rockstar Interior Designer, for my amazing Milanese summer simulating the life of a 20-something 9-5er, for the prospect of being able to afford a bottle of wine that costs more than €5. See, chasing dreams really does take all of you – all of your passion, your insecurities, your networks, your fly hair days, your Saturdays… I must thank my mother for helping me to understand that lucky people are really just hard workers in disguise.

But wait; before the title to this post becomes misleading, what was the point of this post? To share with you my Midnight Lifestyle Moodboard. See my teachers at IED have me making all types of moodboards at least once a month to communicate creative concepts and evocative statements to hypothetical corporate clients. Moodboards are a brilliant way to quickly and immediately tell a coherent story using only images (and sometimes keywords); they are an incredibly powerful sales pitch tool.

So, the other day, I was dying in a similar fashion to the way I have died today – basically hour upon hour of computer-based graphic design work had me feeling like a work robot. So I decided to end my night (at 1am!!) with a quick “Despite How We Feel, Tenji’s Life Is Amazing and Full of Promise” Moodboard.

Here it is:

TENJI'S MIDNIGHT MOODBOARD

It should tell you that I love fashion, loved Rihanna’s feminine mohawk, wish I had shares at Tasha’s (my official favourite restaurant in South Africa), live for cosmos/champagne/prosecco, value intellectual pursuits, enjoy music and exercising, am a bit of a romantic and a lot of a fashionista and really miss Zimbabwe’s Jacaranda trees. Phew! All in one breath! Thanks to Pinterest and the myriad of random images I harvest on my computer, this took minutes to put together. Maybe you can do one too.

The result of this 30 minute exercise was that I felt more centred and connected with who I am, what I value, and what I am doing all this hard work for. I also had a great visual framework through which to navigate this stage of my life where I am launching a new career that I hope will be more accurately molded to who I am and what I enjoy doing. When you have extended periods of mind-numbing work (the work that is actually setting you up with skills and knowledge foundation in order to excel at your passion) you can begin to feel disconnected from the love you have for the work you are pursuing. So something like this moodboard can help you to step back from the dull grind and plug back into your motivating values.

Oops, this 2-min quickie of a post turned into a bit of a ramble but my thoughts often pour out that way.

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