Karl Lagerfeld defines Motivation
5 Aug 2010
xoxo,
Hilla Ohayon.
aspirations
who says work can’t be fun?
13 Aug 2009
These last couple of weeks have been intense. I’ve met so many new people and have been having so many new ideas! If there wasn’t for me and my Moleskine journal (which I love so much and will die without), I’d probably lose track of all the insights this week has given me.
For once, I’ve been brainstorming a lot with myself and with my friends. Brainstorming is the most efficient way for me to get creative – by talking about it with people who can enrich me and nurture my ideas. It’s actually very easy to do, much easier than I have thought. All you need to do it tell someone you love and trust about your general idea and start a conversation about it. It doesn’t have to be a firm idea, it can be at a very premature stage. While talking about it, the idea will grow by itself and its execution will become easier and easier.
So I’ve been brainstorming with my friend Orit, which is doing Vetrinas.com with me. We started thinking about iPhone applications. It’s endless, and we are having so much fun bringing up ideas, imagining what it’ll look like and who would use it. The ideas are running out of us together so it’s really exciting and we can’t wait to make it happen.
Secondly, I’m officially in love with my new friend Romi Mikulinsky, who stormed in to my life and heart in a second – it’s unbelievable how much we have in common and the similarity of our ambitions and dreams for the future. We decided that we should start working together very quickly, and we’re now doing exactly what we love doing with pleasure as work – writing and marketing by using social media, and we even got a job in fashion, which is lately my favorite madness, so I just couldn’t be happier about it. Working with a good friend on a fun job is the best I could dream of, really 
Thirdly, I’ve started to help my designer friend Aviva Zilberman brand herself on the web, where she had no presence up until now. All this might change one day, but for now combining fashion with web as a job is pure fun for me.
So today is the first day of my life (how dramatic, ha?) that I start working in doing things that I love. Isn’t it great?
turning point
5 Aug 2009
Almost 30. What a strange thing of me to say. Or write. Or even think of. Hey, but it’s true. I can’t help it and look back at the last 10 years of my life. If only I had known what a crucial part they have in shaping my identity, personality, health, education, love, and everything else actually, everything else that really matters, that is.
I spent 7 years at the university. That’s a long time. I know for sure that those years are not over. My time at the world of academy (yes, it’s a different and a separate world from the one we know, it’s on a different planet and even the air is kind of thicker there than here) is not done, and one day I will go straight back. In a lot of ways, it’s where I came from, and in many ways, it’s where I feel at home. I guess I will always feel like I’m growing up there.
The many years of studying gave me skills to stand where I am standing today – at a turning point, with no directions or signs. I am almost choosing, I almost know what I want. I know for sure that I have learned a lot. I have learned the study of people – I know what they’re like, I know how to be one of them all when I need to, and I also know how to learn from them. Therefore, I have learned to recognize a true intellectual and to admire wisdom, to look up to people who know more about me and to share the joy of knowledge at the right surrounding, and most importantly in my opinion is to research into the depths of my curiosity, and then to write about it.
I owe the academy many of my shapes and angles, of my opinions and thoughts, ideas and goals.
I do.
And I will forever be thankful for all that.
I hope that now, at the crossroad of Growing-Up street with Deciding What I Want To Do street, I will find my way easy, remembering all that I have learned, facing all that I can’t wait to learn, and step forward unhesitatingly towards that oh so scary place called ‘my future’.
Hilla.
My relationship with writing
12 Jun 2009
Oh, it’s a long one.
I started writing as I learned how to. I have always had a personal diary. Ever since I can remember myself. Always.
(The bad part is that I threw them all away)
That was me. The writing girl. When I didn’t have my diary with me, I wrote on everything I could: pieces of paper, school books, school notebooks, post-its, you name it. I used to save all the written pieces and save them till I get home, and then post them to my diary, so I won’t miss a single word.
As I got older, I started writing only when I was sad or having a bad time. Those were the times I wrote most. I sometimes couldn’t stop writing and did it for hours. I used to wake up at nights and hurry to get a piece of paper because some random thought or a sentence crossed my mind while I was asleep and woke me up.
Some people say I don’t talk enough. That I might be too quiet. I guess it’s true. If only they could hear how loud and clear the words are inside my mind, they would probably think differently. I talk to them all, all the time, inside my head. As far as I’m concerned, I’d write them all emails, letters, messages or whatever they’d like as a conversation tool, as long as I don’t have to actually use my voice. I’d much rather write instead.
And then came my thesis, which I made the main theme for it up myself, and it’s mine, and I’m creating it from scratch, and I love it. At the beginning it was surprising and so different. I wasn’t used to write despite my emotions. It’s research, it’s based on facts, it’s a big pile of notes, documents, tables, pictures, memoirs, and more that I have been collecting for two years now. I love writing it, yet it has nothing to do with my writing-out-of-emotions kind of writing.
Writing is endless. It’s another world, parallel to this one, and only those who write can grasp its wonder. I’m so happy I can understand the value of writing. I do feel privileged.
After all this came this brand new year with its world shaking changes. One of them was trying to write about favorite topics. As a career. So this is basically what I do here – I write here about anything I want.
So now I basically write in four different favorite places:
1. My thesis;
2. http://blog.vetrinas.com/ – My blog about http://www.vetrinas.com, which is such a lovely website that I love (oh, and work for );
3. http://www.bamoda.co.il/ – A fashion designers index in Hebrew I also just started writing for (in Hebrew);
4. And here. My home. Where I can lay my hat on
It took me a little more than 20 years to finally write freely without locking my diary and placing the key back in my key chain. Growing up can be sometimes nice. Writing about it is another topic I try to handle by writing about with
The doors cliche
3 Apr 2009
I wrote someone last night, that yesterday was all about the doors and the windows cliche. Well, yesterday was an important day, even if I was trying to underestimate it.
It started when I woke up into my favorite hug. That’s always a good sign, right? It went on to a very nice meeting with someone (same someone from the first paragraph) whom I liked from the first minute I saw her.
Now, that was a door being opened widely towards me. I wasn’t ready for the lovely breeze, but I let myself lay back and enjoy the feeling. As I left and went down the escalators, the vicious reminder of cynicism crossed my mind saying, that if one extra door opens to your face when you didn’t bother closing another, then it must be wrong. I also remember thinking about the motive of timing, because when it comes down to the basics, then that’s what it’s all about. I figured it won’t be too long before I get the news from the university in New York, which will probably shake my world once again in for the last couple of months.
I was ready to get confused, relieved, sad, disappointed, happy and crushed all together. And then came the sick sense of humor of this life and decided to just make it easy for me.
I don’t do easy. Never. I’m all Miss-I-work-hard-to-get-what-I-want. It can’t be easy. Not that easy anyways. Or can it?
They turned me down. As in N-O. No New York.
I was supposed to be devastated. Crushed. Crawling on the floor crying. But I wasn’t. Sure, I was sad and disapointed and sorry and all that. I knew all along that it’s going to be damn hard to get in to that special program that costs United States of America tons of money. Sure, I was taking a No option under consideration when I was working on my application. Dammit, I just worked so hard on it.
And then it happened. After Mr. Ego has left the building, I was relieved. I don’t have to leave my country anymore, I don’t have to work something out with my man, I don’t have to go through any of the drags of moving. Been there, done that, and apparently it’s not going to happen again.
Is it really that easy? Can one really have it all? Do I really get to keep it all? The love, the life, this city, my friends, my family, and my job – all wrapped in a gift wrap with a smiling future included?
Summing up:
1. No NYU, but:
2. Love
3. Tel-Aviv
4. A nice and full of fun job
5. New and old friends
6. Home
Therefore: 7. I’m happy.
(reminder: copy-paste to fridge door)
