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Birds! with Karen

A Comfortable Peace

Recently, I’ve gotten in the habit of eating the same meal almost every day. Fish, rice, some vegetable, and a cup of tea. It’s been very relaxing for me to eat this way. I tend to have a bias to associate weight loss with health. Regardless of correlation, it isn’t always true. I’ve thought about how eating better would cause me to lose weight, and therefore I will be healthier and feel better. Also, not always true. It feels closer to the truth to re-frame it as health coming before the weight loss. I’m curious about how “medicalizing” some health issues tends to avoid the root cause of the issue. With medicine, I think changing the chemicals in your body does a good job at making you “feel” better, but it doesn’t always address the non-biological roots of some issues. To be clear, I’m not against the use of medicine wholesale, I just think that it alone isn’t always enough of a solution.

Being one who is always moving to an away from places, I always find myself in the most meaningful social relationships in the few weeks before I leave for my next destination. These times are the moments I cherish the most; relationships with other people are the most important thing to me. I’ve been hanging out with friends a lot recently, and I suppose that’s why I’m in such good health. I know very little about biology, but I feel sick less when I’m around the people I enjoy, especially in an asynchronous context. By my anecdotal experience, friendship is the best thing ever.

I still have yet to get a highway map of Illinois

I take friendship extremely seriously. Some people seem to find love a finite resource. I was one of those people, until a good friend from high school proved that wrong. It is possible for me to love everyone equally, and with the high level of passion I give out. I’ll concede that my material behaviors of friendship are indeed finite, I can only show up to so many ballet recitals and graduations. My conspiracy theory is that some people prioritize getting into a romantic relationship where their partner is given the task of filling all of their romantic and social needs at the expense of their communal relationships. From this, lackluster results come from asking your partner to be your “everything”. In conversation, I’ve called it those relationships where it’s “you and me against the world.” I think you and your partner should be in an exclusive relationship, you should have specific accountability and commitments for one another. Ideally, this relationship should be just one part of a greater community of friends and neighbors. It’s good to have friends and neighborly people around to help you move, or babysit your dog, etc. Cherish them.

A life in friendship can be comfortable and peaceful among a chaotic, unpredictable, and often unforgiving world.

The featured image at the top of this post was taken by me in Birmingham, Alabama in 2022.

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Birds! with Karen

First Person Finally

Do not put me in a situation. I have enough on my plate already.

It’s notable how I’ve lived my life outside of my own perspective. I’m either playing in some supporting role to some other protagonist in all of the stories I tell from this time or I am just some passive observer. A Watson to a Sherlock Holmes. I often place myself as the blank canvas strange events get stranded on. Maybe I was simply not self-aware at the time of the story. Maybe that’s wrong. I’m not sure. I know way too much about my function in social settings to consider myself anything but self-aware. I’ve been making a strong effort to disconnect myself from some of my leisure routines. Rather than listen to music infinitely through streaming, I’ve been consuming more of my audio media through my mp3 player. I regularly download my podcasts directly to my device, and this way of engaging with media might start some interesting consequences for me. I don’t know, I generally feel better doing it this way. I’m buying physical CDs of most of the albums I frequently listen to. Soon, I’ll make my return to reading books as the rate I do naturally too. Considering how much video streaming services have failed me (and society) recently, I have returned to watching most of my films and media through physical media rented from libraries and other places. This started after I re-watched a favorite film I have on DVD over streaming and made notice of the increase in picture quality. Over the years, I’ve gotten so accustomed to watching films with various types of video compression that I can barely recognize film grain when it appears.

My identity as seen by everyone else is going to change dramatically. This will be jarring for those people who have grasped to it, for me it’s just my typical 4-5 year change-up. As stated in my bio, most people assume I will always be the person I am at the current moment. Doing the same work tasks, and the same job forever. But I’m someone who loves the world and wants to experience as much of its beauty as I can. Safely, of course. What’s fun for me is experimenting and trying new uncomfortable things. I’m comfortable being uncomfortable. The way I’m seeing my life now, I’ve spent the majority of my life in service of someone else’s dream for me. I didn’t object to it, not having a dream for my life of my own. I still don’t, to some extent. Therefore, I just let other people decide what I’ll be doing in my life. This didn’t run me into any conflicts, one of my biggest talents in how fast I learn new skills. I took to chess very quickly. Then martial arts. Tennis. Soccer. Swimming. Shot put. Discus. High Jump. Trumpet. French horn. Mellophone. Cartography. Astronomy. Horticulture. Babysitting. Computer programming. Stop-motion animation. Computer animation. Latin. Portuguese. Mandarin. Electrical Engineering. Math. Audio Engineering. Cameras. Sound Editing. Video Editing. The list is too big now. Too big for a resume. Too big to joke about at dinner parties.

Big enough to scare them. Those who gets scared when I do math in public. They don’t like it when my list gets long. Yet the list gets longer and longer. I’m not aware of the list day by day. I’m mostly distracted by all the cool people I’m meeting along the way. Friends are great, highly recommended.

I’m okay, just got put in a situation while I was writing this.

The featured image at the top of this post was taken by me in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2022.

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Birds! with Karen

Being Frustrated: The Wisdom of Time

November 2023

Am I doing the best I can to be the best for other people? What unconscious behaviors do I exhibit that cause harm to others? How do I know I’m doing damage to people?

Should I adjust my language to ensure comfort in the listener, or should I prioritize effective communication? At what point in the balance am I not serving the other person’s needs? What do I do for people who don’t take other people into mind? I think it’s worth my effort to serve them, but at some point I’m only exhibiting outward with little input.

What things am I straining to do for other people? Things I actually hate doing but do so in the belief that the subject appreciates it. Why do I put myself in situations I don’t want to be in? I shouldn’t allow people to guilt me into doing “favors” for them, that aren’t actually favors, but means of control.

This sets the vibe for November 2023.

Why do people treat their environment like a machine? They assume its only function is to serve their needs. They push buttons and apply inputs and spend countless hours analyzing the outcome to see if they get the desired result. They blame every problem from the black box system of life on themselves. They make assumptions of the system that aren’t based on inductive proof. They don’t understand the stochastic situations they fall into, the random variables at play that cause unintended consequences. They view every negative output to be a matter of some misguided input to the system. They ask, “Maybe if I open this door with my opposite hand instead, good fortune will come my way today.”

All of this I’m beginning to deem foolish. I don’t think I have any real control over the machinations of the world and how it works. I can’t will the processes of biology to work in my favor. I am feeble and more insignificant than I think. We are always one bad day away from being thrust into fully trusting instead of knowing our needs. I hope to trust God for my needs now. I had a couple of bad days not long ago. I do not trust that things will get better, but that all things will continue. Even after my being chooses to stop.

February 2024

When I’m listening to someone in conversation, I have a tendency to respond with additional information about what they are talking about in attempt to establish a kinship with them. It’s to signal to them “Hey, I know what you’re talking about, I like that too.” However, I’m sure for a lot of people that can be annoying and make me a know-it-all who doesn’t feel any sense of wonder no matter what you bring to me. What I think can communicate my kinship idea better is a simple “Wow, that’s cool.” followed by an attentive listening posture. My listening skills could overall be a lot more active. That way I can do the labor not of receiving and delivering information, but instead receiving the emotion and subtext of what this person is delivering to me.

Communicating comfort can be difficult when set awash in a culture of anxiety and suspicion. People are more receptive when you use humor or self-awareness, and attacking someone’s character for the sake of effective communication isn’t a good approach. You should challenge preconceived notions with love in your heart. It does a friendship good.

I’ll try restructuring my eagerness to help people. I’ll help if you set some boundaries for me to work with. Otherwise, I get roped into an infinite cycle of undefinable work with no end in sight. Be specific about what my job is, please. When we have a focus, goals, and deadlines set it will be better for everyone. My utility as a helper is only limited by what you need from me and how well you can communicate that need to me. I won’t be doing your work on your behalf, I already have a short film on that theme still in the works…

This sets the vibe for February 2024.

The point in the balance where you aren’t serving your friend’s needs sits at two ends. You take their words at face value, you don’t try to offend, you keep them happy and satiated. Being idle towards what is clearly bad and troublesome creates an opportunity for it to fester and grow. However, good must be nurtured. If you don’t feed someone’s desire to do good, it can die.

I don’t know what to do yet for those who act selfishly despite all the help you try to give them. Pray about it, I guess. It’s being worked out somewhere. I would summarize 2023 as a year of great output for me, but with little input given back in reciprocation. It’s a fast track to leaving one empty, I wouldn’t recommend it.

I live every day trusting that things will get better, even if after my lifetime. It’s some I don’t know, and in fact I prefer to limit what I know. So much info is out there, more effort is required to parse it than find it. It takes the stress off if I just sit peacefully, listen carefully, and get a little bored. That’s where my peace is, and I’ll fight to keep it for as long as I can.

The featured image at the top of this post was taken by me in Birmingham, Alabama in 2022.

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Birds! with Karen

Imaginary Problems and Real Solutions

Everything and everyone is an advertisement, it seems. I’m starting to get tired of influencer marketing and seeing economics everywhere I look now. I’m annoyed by it. With the methods getting increasingly subtler, I see what’s going on here.

I’m starting to see through how entirely new imaginary problems are created just so they can sell me the solution. It’s so pervasive and unassuming. A lot of labels people use to (often incorrectly) define me are usually framed as if something is wrong with me. But I don’t always catch on. I internalize it without much thinking. I’d hope if something about me is enough of a problem, I would know it’s a problem. And if it’s a problem about me I don’t know, please tell me. Don’t dance around it and hope I catch on. You aren’t a jerk for calling me out, if anything the jerk behavior is letting me continue being foolish. I feel I might be overthinking it, but the labels sometimes feel like a weird kind of “implied bullying” where I end up doing all the work. They also tend to focus on aspects of who I am that I am proud of, and reframe it as some strange anomaly. I’d have to go on a hero’s journey of identity to remove a “rare” characteristic from my canon like “being curious.” I don’t think “fixing” stuff like that about me is a real solution to this “problem.”

When someone tries to convince me that I have some problem and the best way to fix it requires buying a product, even if they aren’t selling it themselves I am immediately suspicious. In my short two-and-a-half decades of life, most of the objects that have been most useful and lasted aren’t things I bought, but the objects I inherited. The winter coats I wear each season were passed to me from my grandfather. Some of the hats I wear were originally worn by my grandmother. A lot of the cameras I take pictures and videos with are the ones that otherwise sit in boxes all day. My acoustic guitar (as used in the score of Job Tips With Cardboard) once belonged to my uncle and was gifted to me by my aunt long after he passed away. My enjoyment of calligraphy, fonts, and jazz was given to me by another grandfather.

Despite all of the negative things my ancestors have given me, they also seem to have provided me with some valuable tools for me to use now. What if instead of thinking about what I will buy next, what if I focused on what things I have now? The things I take for granted around me are already a grand museum of items that have stories that date back centuries.

I’m going to be spending less time aspiring to buy new things so I can make better art, and instead tell the stories with what I have. I think you should too.

The featured image for this post was taken by me on a trip to Macon, Georgia in 2023.

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Birds! with Karen

Please Think Responsibly

I thought too hard recently
It made me sickly
Always think responsibly
Ukiah
I discovered this by accident, I just didn’t know how to write a proper haiku…
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Birds! with Karen

Self-Conscious or (Self-Centered?) Speculation

It’s early October as I write this, and I’m going to pose a cheeky question. Is it a bad thing that for the entirety of my life, my friendships and relationships have almost all been determined by work?

I’m not the type of person to call a friend up to hang out often. I don’t have a lot of social energy to have a best friend I see every single day. Most of my friends I only see in person or hang with once or twice a year. Some I only see every few years. I assumed that was normal. In fact, I’m certain it has to be normal. I’m puzzled knowing that there are people who exist who have brunch with the same group of people every Sunday morning at the same time. The concept of that kind of community synergy is unreal to me. Is that something I can tolerate? There’s a chance that I might end up with a brunch group like that of my own. I’m worried about how I’d adjust to living that way. I’m comfortable spending so much of my time alone, but I think having a “me against the world” attitude is not helpful to anyone.

Editing this post, I chose the phrase not helpful rather than simply saying the “me against the world” attitude is unhealthy. Both are technically true. However, I feel it’s important to interject that I’m currently resistant to the “Do Whatever Makes You Happy” philosophy. In fact, I’m gathering evidence of how individualistic and consumerist interpretations of that lifestyle are actually driving a lot of social harm, and in the best cases lead to a socially acceptable hedonism. I’ve certainly dropped enough triggering buzzwords for this to be its own topic for a documentary, book, or blog post.

Future Me, as an Editor’s Note

Around the end of 2022 and early 2023 I read Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam and The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community by Ray Oldenburg. Those books focused pretty heavily on the urban planning and sociology of hangout places, and I’ve been thinking about them a lot in the past year. Finding my own Great Good Places in the suburbs of Chicago hasn’t been all that easy for me, especially as a non-native native citizen of the area. I can’t relate to the Cheers theme song. I have yet to find a place here I can go with no monetary or social obligations and know what to expect from the place. It was something I really focused on last year. This year, I’ve been too engulfed in work and school to find a Great Good Place. It’s taking a toll on my social health, and I’ve noticed it’s creating problems for people around me. In a sentence, I miss being able to hang out spontaneously with friends without having to constantly check my budget or make reservations and complicated plans and spreadsheets.

Basically, I’m just looking for somewhere to loiter that isn’t:

  • Someone’s home, where they have to play host
  • My home, where I have to play host
  • A mall, where everybody wants to sell me goods, services, and religions
  • A park, which isn’t effective on poor weather days
  • A restaurant, where you gotta pay for food
  • A bar, specifically ones with live music or loud piped-in music
  • While I’m on the topic, bars with loud music are essentially the same as nightclubs which I have to pay to get in even I did like that kind of thing
  • McDonald’s
  • Certain places of worship (you know the ones)
Editor Me, reviewing the last paragraph

A major success for me socially is that I have successfully separated the physical spaces where I work and the places I sleep and relax. This topic was very relevant when I made this choice during quarantine. Though I don’t sleep well generally, this lowers my stress levels tremendously. I have a consistent space where I go to work, and as advised in Plurality, Infinite Space my bed is only for sleeping. I don’t put a high value in increasing productivity. But because promises about it gets your book on the shelves in Barnes & Noble, I’ll also add that I’m more productive. By routine when I enter the space where I work my body subconsciously gets ready to work. When I get in my bed, my body naturally falls asleep. I wake up before my alarm clock constantly. Even on days when I need to wake earlier.

Home

What does home feel like? To me, it feels like unconditional love. It’s where people let me be myself without judgement, maybe. I’m in a different frustrating situation than when I wrote Plurality, Infinite Space. I foolishly assumed that this is an environment where people were more likely to accept me as I am. This new “home” seems a bit more insidious. I have friends across the political spectrum, and I would like to keep it that way. I often attract people who assume I share their views on a topic, or more commonly, that I have the exact same traits as them. This goes as far as to say most people assume I have the sexual orientation they do. Makes me feel like some sort of mirror. I know exactly who I am, and it’s really difficult to break people’s prejudices, so I just allow them to label me with whatever terms they feel comfortable with. However, in terms of my push towards responsible storytelling, this is a hypocritical sin on my part.

I’m starting to discover that I have given in to an underhanded method to make me more palatable to others. They use what manifests as jokes and tongue-in-cheek comments to mold me into some person they want me to be, rather than accept me for who I am. It’s really interesting how it plays out. When I tease the boundaries of their assigned definitions of my identity, the harvest of these actions is similar in quality to abusive relationships I’ve experienced.

Let’s imagine. I would be talking to a new person, and pretty quickly they apply some diagnosis of who I am. Sometimes this diagnosis plays out as medical, metaphysical, psychological, racial, even sexual. It has good intentions, but often it feels like I’m witnessing myself be sorted into this individual’s caste hierarchy and social stratification systems. In the best situations, I’m told explicitly what this is for that person. For some people, this is made at the first glance of seeing me. They think that giving their description of what energy I’m giving off is helping me, but I know who I am, so this confused me at first. Why are you telling me who I am, when I already know that and show you time after time? I assumed that this was their way trying to understand me, so I let it slide. I don’t like to put barriers in the way of getting to know me, even if I don’t see myself that way. Some time later, I begin to grow and develop and change like any other human. This causes a conflict in their labeling system, as in my perspective I should remain the same person. However, I no longer fit the diagnosis they give me. It feels like the farther I stray from their defined box, the more I start to reveal symptoms that remind me of Isabel Wilkerson’s eight pillars of caste. It’s a weird non-argument situation where I get in awkward situations where I test this person’s interpretations of what they perceive to be some immutable reality with all these strict rules they make up in their heads that aren’t actually there.

A “non-argument” situation is what I call that passive-aggressive mode of communication where people are arguing, but nobody is engaging each other claims with direct language to avoid conflict. In this case, I’m suggesting that the person is using their “diagnosis” as a proxy to cover up what is actually a prejudice.

Editor Me, with a sense of self-righteous snootiness

Before I know it, I’m the one confused because this person is now telling me I’m wrong about basic facts about myself. Isn’t that just bananas?

Hold on, I’m supposed to be talking about what home is supposed to be. It appears I ended up talking about what home actually is for me in the current moment. Yikes…

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Birds! with Karen

Trusting the Process!

I have a lot of issues, but a big one is that I have difficulty trusting other people. I’m often found swimming in a sea of mistruths, and false stories. The peculiar part is that stories all hold partial truths in them. However, a partial truth and truth are not the same. In fact, a partial truth is often a palatable bridge to falsehoods.

I spent much of 2022 thinking about responsible storytelling, and in 2023 I have taken those thoughts further. What I gathered from my journey in responsible storytelling is that it does a disservice to those around me to present my life in a way that is only partially true. Everything I present about myself to others must be authentic, but I must consider what I don’t present to people. Why do we choose for certain aspects of our lives to be kept hidden? Should we choose those things? If I don’t show the moments where I struggle, people will assume things come easy to me. They don’t. I fight an ongoing battle inside my head telling me to quit stuff because I’m not any good at it. Most of the time these are all lies. What’s worse, is that by staying quiet about my insecurities and criticisms of myself, people will make up their own stories about who I am and go as far to try to convince me that they are true.

The Internet isn’t forgiving to human growth and failure. Everything posted online is mostly unchanging and inorganic, not subject to the decay of other forms of media. There is little I can do to affect changes of perspective that come with time, but knowing these words will remain for a long time feels like an infinite amount of responsibility. Bundled with an equally sized infinity of opportunity.

2023 so far is giving me a glimpse at the reckoning of irresponsible storytelling, at least in someone else’s life I know. Imagine living a lie mostly through omission for decades and causing damage to scores of people. And worse, not exhibiting any remorse for that. It’s things like that which keep me up most nights. I don’t sleep very well in general. Nightmares are typical for me. What I wish to investigate in the future is how the source of my nightmares are based from the seeds of past memories of me and my ancestors. In my discussions with friends and family, I’m looking to find the link between these memories to unlock new ones to bridge the holes in my past. I should be more careful with this tactic, I don’t wish to place any responsibility on them for things I alone have to deal with. But I shouldn’t have to go through it alone.

If 2022 was the year of responsible storytelling, 2023 is the year of taking responsibility for irresponsible storytelling. Or maybe the beginnings of doing that. Before the online blog version of the posts, I told a much different story of my past. Bubbly and optimistic. To some extent, it almost followed a typical rags to riches underdog type story, something heartwarming for the whole family. The darker parts I wanted to reveal were censored heavily by my editor at the time, all for good reasons that preserved my mental health. However, I don’t think this edited version is my story at all, though that version is a bit more palatable and easier to receive.

I remember one of the first instances I told my story about who I was. I was in middle school at lunch with a group of folks I had just met. Some nights before, I experienced a crisis of identity which woke me up in the middle of the night. I laid awake in bed for several hours, my mind spinning and grasping for identity. I didn’t know what my favorite color, food, movie, and music was. I resolved to answer these questions, and do it quickly before anyone else answered them for me. I changed up my mode of operation of eating lunch at the edge of the table by myself and popped into random social groups that seemed far away in style from my usual peers.

The leader of this group of folks sarcastically asked, “Who are you? Are you lost?” and without blinking I rattled off a pretty long, but honest story. It was a joke-filled summary of my life that pretty soon had much of the table laughing to the point of tears. What surprised me was their response to the story. “Your life so far is been nothing but terrible events, it seems. How are you joking about all that?”

Up until that point, I never perceived the events of my life as anything negative or terrible. Sure, I saw bad things happening around me, but I didn’t think any of that affected me as an observer. What keeps me going is my insistence that my future would only get better. That was my answer to the question. “I’m on a journey to fix everything that went wrong, or at least start the ball rolling for the rest of us.”

I think in that moment, I took responsibility for the terrible story of my past.

Moving to Illinois after living here 20 years ago has had me come face-to-face with parts of my life that aren’t great, but I had somehow censored into something happier but untrue. I used to foolishly think all was well before my family moved to China, but I buried the parts that grew into the more obvious issues that developed in Atlanta and across the US.

Trusting the Process

Oh, and I’m working on a live-action short film for a class. I’m the writer-producer, and this is my first narrative live-action venture. Generally, I’ve worked in animation since I didn’t think I had the social capacity and energy to gather a crew of people to work on a project I conceived, but here we are.

I’m plan to start cranking out sound design and musical inspiration for the film and my other projects. I released an album recently compiling all of the “corporate” music I wrote for a local library advertisement, and there is more sound stuff to come in the near future, I bet. The craziest part of this film-making experience is how I came up with an idea and I’m giving it away for other talented artists to interpret, expand, and explore. I think that once you tell a story, it is no longer yours. It’s one the points behind my responsible storytelling philosophy, and also the reason why I should be able to share my story with other artists. The stories other people tell about you or with you are just as valid as the ones told alone.

The project is still ongoing as I type this, so I look forward to reflecting on it in the future. Thanks to the dozens of crew members, cast, friends and more for making this happen. Just you dedicating your time for this project is enough for me to be proud.

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Birds! with Karen

Inheriting Problems from your Ancestors

Following the passing away of multiple family members last month, I took the month of August off. It was already a difficult month in spite of that.

How do you deal when you’ve inherited the problems of those that came before you? How do you grow up knowing you’ve been permanently connected to someone that’s hurt so many people, and continues to hurt more people? I haven’t yet had the free energy yet to professionally deal with the issues I’ve developed over the years. That’s something I’ll be doing hopefully soon. My goal for a good few years is to gain some independence so I can work through some stuff I’m sure I’ve stuffed down into my subconscious.

Socializing with Friends

I think my main issue with inviting friends places is that I always teeter between wanting to hang out with other people and wanting to be alone. I’m always finding myself balancing my social battery and my desire for social interaction. It’s like social interaction is candy that hurts my teeth after too much. I go through a cycle of friendship cravings until I get too much and I start to feel sick, so I take some time off to heal myself. Not literally sick, but tired and socially drained.

Lying in Bed Awake, Thinking

I need to change some things about myself. First, I should be talking less, and listening more. Both digitally and physically. Here’s something I’ll try. When I’m writing stories, instead of writing stories starting at the theme with characters, environment and plot serving it, I’ll try working the other way around. Makes more sense when you think about it. I will be more solitary, but sincere. I’m going to rearrange the order of my weekly and monthly tasks and see where that takes me.

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Animation Art Birds! with Karen

In-Groups, Out-Groups, and such

I started writing this as way for me to jumpstart writing a screenplay for a class. I hope I type enough information out of my head and more that I can pull from later.

Since around middle school, I’ve been a bit averse to participating in cliques and identifying myself with social groups. I didn’t like phrases like “band kid”, “popular kid” or whatever. During the time I was in middle school/high school in the 2010s, there was some understanding of cliques. one could consider metamodern. On one end, my peers liked playing with subversions of the popular clique tropes on TV while at the same time sincerely and strictly following the tropes. It’s a murky balance.

I’m sure it may have existed, but I don’t remember there being much conflict between all of these cliques. There was definitely conflict, I’m sure, I just didn’t learn of the details until much later. It wasn’t petty stuff. These conflicts shaped a lot of people emotionally probably for many years after.

I found myself having to fight against these categorizations of teens. I fought to take on whatever character traits I wanted, without following the framework given to me by pop culture and media. My determination to do this was quite isolating, especially since it fell at the same time as the introduction of social media and smartphones.

I remember before participation in competitive school sports, math and science clubs there was a time where my peers were much of the same. We had a lot in common, and it wasn’t hard for people to communicate. People had talents and specialized skills, but it wasn’t controversial for people of diverse interests to explore new territory. The freedom to this was threatened more and more as I approached my teen years. In my high school, it was difficult for someone in theater to also participate in welding or carpentry. In college, I had to fill out paperwork and work my way through levels of bureaucracy to take classes beyond a pre-packaged diploma package. My peers became caricatures of their majors and fields of study at times.

With the increase of political polarization also occurring in the mid-2010s, I sense now more than ever people starting to communicate and associate through in-groups and out-groups. I sense an anxiety in people’s faces when I break the social norms of the in-group.

I feel like when I talk to people, they interpret me not by my behavior or by the content of my character. Rather, they seem to pay strong attention to what I say. Even if it is inconsistent with my actions. This is interesting to me, I try to read intention through behavior instead of language; I’m in an environment where people lie to others and themselves pretty often.

As this point in writing this, I’ve read “Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination” by Henri Tajfel. I’m not the best at understanding what is written, but it seems that in-groups and out-groups can form without the need of a prior history or conflict. The conflict is manifested just by the act of categorizing.

To paraphrase a statement I read, simply by using language like “us” and “them” is enough to create some implied competition between two subjects. Even if the corresponding words aren’t disparaging. Just something I’ll think about for a bit.

This is the first creation I screened showing my use of Adobe After Effects. I’m proud of it.
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Animation Art Birds! with Karen

The Feel of Summer

I feel great. I’m also doing a lot of tasks very quickly and efficiently. I’m able to travel around and feel proud when I tell people what I’m doing. Not that what I was doing before was terrible, it was just that when I told people what my field of study was, I felt the need to give a long story showing my true intentions and needing to break preconceived notions. As I write these words, I just finished multiple road trips to friend’s weddings. I feel like they really recharged me.

I took a walk around Chicago, and took a few photos with my phone. I forget that’s something I can do anytime I want.

As a freelancer and a part-timer, I don’t get much opportunity to make friends at work or school. I am constantly meeting new people and the flow of people entering and exiting my life is a revolving door. This is great, but it’s nice to be around close friends who truly understand my character. We have inside jokes and language that we’ve built over years of relationship and experience. I’ve tired myself out a bit from all the time I spend having to explain who I am to people. And the everyday small talk is so draining for me.

I like finding ominous holes in the ground. It’s refreshing.

Explaining myself is almost always an uphill battle. Being who I am I find myself having to constantly guide people through the process of unlearning the false assumptions they make about me. It can be such a burden. I try to relieve the stress by simply showing my character through my actions, but few people pay attention to those details. I wish they did.

These Canada gooses are larger than the ones in the suburbs. I wonder why.

Here’s another thought. While digging through old items from my past, I found some artifacts where I detail my future plans while I was in high school and earlier. In all of them I list my future career goals as the very things I am doing now. Animation, sound, and more. I am every day accomplishing my childhood dreams. I wondered, why did I delay pursuing these dreams directly for so long?

Putting the brakes on pursuing my goals was really helpful. Working in a creative field is very difficult, and I think jumping right into it straight away isn’t for me. By taking my learning so slowly and gradually entering the field, I am able to grow in my craft without losing my strong character and my identity that I’ve built before entering.

I’ll tell myself that this photo would look better had I taken it on film instead of digital.

I’m currently in a mode where for a class I am creating a new animated work each week, so I’m curious about whether that will affect my progress on completing the Easy Card Tutorial series. I guess we’ll have to see.

These episodes are based on live-action reference footage.

Wait A Minute

Saw this video, and wonder what stuff I got right or wrong back in April 2022. Or to see if I can be smug and say I’m ahead of the game or something.

Plurality; Infinite Space: Postmodern Title Format
It’s in an absurd style, but a lot of the same points are there, I think.