It was ending 2019. We had just come back from the UK, with a degree in our hands but no jobs to back it up. We dived into the unknown, stuck with our dream of doing this business & designed the 2020 calendars - our first ever product as PAPERBAAG! We had launched in 2020, but soon the world shut. Little did we know, that we would become a Pandemic Business, a term that sounds low on hopes & dreams; or maybe not?!
When nothing went as planned, we lived one day at a time, scribbled one milestone at a time, marked & completed one deadline at a time. Our calendar had become a reflection of our story, in the making :)
When we decided to curate our 2022 Calendars, we knew it should be something that let's you breathe through the chaos; something that doesn't confine you within the dates and schedules, but that reminds you every month, to be YOU.
They changed the way we live, we function. We want them to transform your lives too.
#1: Staring into the unknown, with Hope
We had given a job interview and were almost ready for a work life, that the pandemic hit. Everything changed for everyone, but what stayed was the 'unknown'.
'Should we beg for a job?', because sitting idle with a degree from abroad felt heavier than the weight of an aircraft. We stared at fear for hours together, with no hope for what is to come when something stared back at us - it was a date circled on our calendar, 8th January 2020, the day PAPERBAAG was officially registered; the day we birthed our dream.
In that moment, we picked up a pen and marked another day in March, and scribbled "start learning portraits."
"Setup the store as office", "Launch the spring collection", "Ship the orders", we kept marking the dates; when one fine day, our hands shivered as we circled in November 2020, "Meeting with FabIndia."
We were just filling a simple calendar, but it had become a testimony to our journey, a guide we never knew we wanted so bad.
Ever since, our calendars carry only one mission: to force you to give every day, a chance; to circle that date and give it a task even if it means 'making tea', and see how life celebrates the unstoppable.
#2: Your surroundings reflect you
Working everyday can get so monotonous, because you are around the exact same spot, doing the same things, almost like clock-work. Especially if you're working from home, your moivation needs to be recharged time & again. What you surround yourself with, will define your energy, your mood, your mental state of being.
Therefore, it has been a delibrate attempt this year, to fill our 2022 desk and wall calendars with a gush of colours and intricate elements of nature; to help you find joy in the tiniest of things. Every illustration will speak to you, in a language you may have never known before, but it's a promise - You will be proud of doing more of you, every passing day :)
"Sometimes going back to that table where we worked from, felt like the longest walk. We started finding ways to ditch it and work from our beds instead, which decreased our productivity even further. Sometimes paint spilled, and sometimes the whole idea. We couldn't just keep that dull feeling going. So we decided to give our workspace a makeover. A vase with fresh flowers, our favourite books brought together & our calendar on the side. With no where else to go, it became our favourite place in the world."
We don't know what an ideal life looks like, so we made space for some ideal desk situation instead :)Heading #3: Celebrating unmet deadlines
You cannot always meet your entire to-do list. Sometimes you try really really hard, but the inability to tick off the entire list stops you from being happy for all the things you managed to complete. We ended up being too harsh on ourselves for reading a book or watching some netflix because it meant not completing everything planned for the day.
"So we adopted a habit: we made sure to mark all our happy moments (like bake a cake today or take time to unwind), and make a list of non-work related things, on the note section in our calendars. A small change made such a big difference to our happiness index. We started looking forward to the day ahead."
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