My Journalism Portfolio

Behind the Scenes of Lao Project

It can be so easy to throw all the materials I’ve collected onto one page for the audience to simply scroll through, but I couldn’t do that. There are so many moments where I’ve felt frozen with pressure and responsibility to manage their narrative with care and respect.

However, I knew that this was the pressure I was ready to take on, but first I must mentally accept with no shame the process of important distractions.



To release the frozen blockages, I went walking everyday, 45 minutes each day. Lots of Yoga and stretching, and lots of naps. Also, allowing myself to divert my full presence in other things that feeds my soul, like reading a good book, napping, cooking, learning a new dance routine but one of my all-time fave choreographers Paris Goebel, and watching a good movie (realized again why I enjoy Salt and the Underworld series so much).

These activities distracted me from feeling the overwhelming pressure, but it was never intended to distract me from the entire project itself. After walks, I felt calmer, motivated, and mind racing with ideas to spruce up the project. I’d go straight to my laptop to jot down strategies to bring my ideas alive.

I found inspiration in movies, came up with great food portrait photography ideas as I was cooking, imagined color schemes for logos while I was painting flowers and trees, and thought of Lao tutorials I’d want to see out there as I was learning a new hop hop dance.

I always had my lap top and phone on hand to note ideas and to-dos at the spur of the moment. Nothing went lost, and time never wasted.

It was important to clear out the overwhelming stress, so my thoughts can flow in the way that I need to for this project to succeed into how I imagined.