process

26 April 2025 by @hootappi 0

Papi Bagheera – The character that found me

Some things you create on purpose. Others sneak up on you slowly – through laughter, through accidents, through life happening when you weren’t paying too much attention. That’s how Bagi came to be. If you had asked me back then, in 2009, when my first child was born, I wouldn’t have said, “Oh yeah, I’m about to invent a character.” It wasn’t like that. Life was just moving, changing, and in the middle of it, friends – those kinds of friends who know you a little too well – started calling me Papi. It was half a joke, half a nudge. I was the first in our group to cross into parenthood. They treated it with humor, the way good friends do. It wasn’t serious. But somehow, it stuck. Papi. And by the way, my kids still call me Papi. Not long after that, life handed me another piece of…

Curiosity leads the way

It all started on April Fools’ Day, which in hindsight feels oddly appropriate. I had no plan, no name, no niche, and definitely no long-term strategy. I wasn’t launching a brand or building an audience. I was just curious. I opened up a blank page and began writing, without knowing what would come out of it. The first post felt like tossing a paper plane into the wind just to see where it might land. That was the challenge: write something without needing to know where it was going. I set a small goal—ten posts in one month. Just to see if I could. And now here we are. Ten posts in. The original goal is complete. And while this blog might still not have a clear direction, I now have something I didn’t have before: a trail. A visible, tangible thread of thoughts that connects the last month in…

Feelings, Failure, and the Flood of Ideas

Sometimes I really love how my brain works. Other times, I wish it came with an off switch. There are moments when I feel like my mind is a whiteboard in a storm—ideas flying onto it from every direction, half-formed, overlapping, impossible to erase. It’s exciting. It’s energizing. It’s also… a bit overwhelming. I get inspired easily. Then I start shaping the inspiration into something more tangible. Then I start thinking how to actually make it real. And before I know it, I’m halfway through concepting a physical prototype in my head—when all I really did was take a walk, or have a conversation, or leave my computer at work to “take a break.” Spoiler: I didn’t take a break. Not in my head. A Thought That Didn’t Leave Me Alone Lately, I’ve been reflecting more—not just on ideas, but on feelings. I had a moment this week where I…