As I was looking at the mirror, changing the angle of my head to assess how bad the bruise in my eye was, I was thinking, “I can’t show up to work like this?!”

I had a black eye in my left eye. No, I wasn’t sucker punched. It was a result of my son’s miscalculation and lack of attention. You see, he likes to slam the back of his head on the pillow. To him, that was fun, until he accidentally landed on my left eye instead. He and I both cried…and I wanted to cry longer. He is a heavy boy. But as a parent, you don’t have time to cry lol.

Your baby’s cry is probably the most unbearable type of noise you can hear—you do anything and everything to stop it.

***

We watched Suzume over the weekend.

I liked it simply because the story is nothing like Disney or the typical “hero journey arc” you see in movies. It’s difficult to put it in a typical category: is it romance? scif-fi? time-travel? drama? Or a combination of all?

I had the same experience when I saw “Your Name”.

It felt like a love story but it’s not the cheesy kind of love story. There were twists and turns and elements that leaves you wondering: Whoa, what in the world was that? I can’t help but wonder and reflect more about it.

Whenever I get that feeling, I know I watched a good movie.

***

After spending an hour creating my 1st carousel from my long-form content, I realized how my current approach was inefficient.

The initial idea was to create a long-form content, formatted in a way that would allow me to copy+paste its contents to a carousel. I already have the sub-topics and summaries in place so why can’t I just go with that?

Here’s why:
– Short-form content is not the best vehicle to share a complex idea.
– The sub-headlines of my long form (if used as a hook) do not entice the reader to more. Why? It feels complex and incomplete.
– I don’t wanna overwhelm the viewer of the carousel. I can’t expect them to read a mini-article in carousel format. While it’s convenient to copy+paste—it’s also lazy.

However, laziness does not help me improve my creativity.

Now here’s how I decided to fix that:
Use the long-form content as a reference.
Start with creating good hooks and then figure out the ideas that go with it.

This approach helps me practice how to write better hooks and repurposing my ideas.