Posted on

August 2017

This month has been one of the worst for my mental health in a while. I haven’t felt this bad since my second year at SVA when I wanted to fling myself from our 10th floor window. Things eventually..not turned around so much as just straight up changed for me, so here’s hoping that’ll be the case here again. Or maybe turn around. I’m open to any and all suggestions.

Books Read: 1 The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up is a cute addendum to Marie Konmari (yes, of KonMari fame)’s other books (The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and Spark Joy). Where Spark Joy plus’d Magic with new, specific info, techniques and illustrations, Manga throws you into a corny yet cute scenario via comic-book form. It too provided additional diagrams for clothing folding that I used with all of my graphic t-shirts. It’s a cute book to check from a library, and if you’ve read Magic but maybe need a little more push to actually properly use the KonMari method. I still haven’t done the full shebang that she advises, just little ones (which she specifically advises against but what can ya do). I’ve in the middle of a few books right now so hopefully I will actually finish at least one soon. : P

Blog Posts Written: 5, all on this website. To be fair, one of them was a quote I post every August 1st to celebrate Digimon’s anniversary, so that wasn’t much of a post. I have soooo many in my drafts though. I had one to post on eclipse day and totally botched it. I have far too many drafts that I think all slightly overlap each other in small ways so I’m worried I will accidentally post the same sentiments like 4 times in a row. But I already do that so why do I care?

Videos/Projects: Hahahahaha no

At the Movies: It’s been a pretty slow month for movies, actually. I can’t even remember if I did go to the theater at all. I missed out on a screening of Patty Cake$ at work which I am SO bummed about, so I may have to track that down. I still haven’t watched Okja, refuse to watch the US Death Note adaptation. I watched The Defenders despite not actually watching any of the previous shows (Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Luke Cage, or Iron Fist) and I enjoyed it despite some glaring flaws and frustrations (read: Iron Fist is a FUCKING BRATTY CHILD). Oh, I watched The Incredible Jessica James starring Jessica Williams. It was a cute little film. I also finally saw Colossal. It was NOT what I expected, but I definitely enjoyed it.

Oh, Dunkirk. That’s like, the one film I saw in theaters recently. It was aight. Oh wait! Valerian too! It was not aight. It was anti-aight. It had soooo much potential but was soooo painful. If you’re interested in hearing my actual thoughts about these two films and a couple more, you can listen to this 26th episode of my friend’s podcast, Action Film Autopsy.

I also saw a 35mm print screening of Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards, which is as big and beautiful a mess as I remember when I first watched a very terrible quality bootleg of it a few years back.

Lowlights: Work.

Highlights: The eclipse was a thing that happened I guess? My bf said something surprising to me the night before the eclipse. We were talking about how the next one that we’d be able to ‘easily’ see is in Montreal in 2024, and he was saying how he was looking forward to the one in 2024 more than the 2017 one. He said that the unknowns in between then and now exciting him, especially since right now neither of us are where we want to be. But that future one brings hope. Maybe, he said, we’ll be in two different places for work and we’d have to meet up in Montreal. Will we be married already? The eclipse itself was frankly interesting for about 2 minutes, and then everyone at the studio headed inside. It was a fun little break, and about what you’d expect if you weren’t in the path of totality.

This month there were a few fun fan-anniversaries to celebrate. As I mentioned, August 1st is Digimon’s big holiday, and this month also marked the 20th anniversary of the first Harry Potter book being published. Yesterday, September 1st also marked the date in the final Harry Potter book where the epilogue takes place–19 years later!

In general though it was a quiet month. You can tell when the only Instagrams I posted were a Digimon quote and this one from the farmer’s market I finally visited! Cross that one off of my previous post of a list of things I still want to do this summer.

Next Month: This September already looks and feels like a fly-over month. The bf is gone for the first chunk of it, on a trip to visit family that I elected to stay behind on. So I guess it will be nice to have a bit of quiet time? But even typing that feels stupid as I can and do get quiet or alone time whenever I want when he’s around? Like. I’d be doing the exact same thing I’m doing right now if he was here. If anything, I’d have more time since he washes the dishes!!

The next month as well as October look like they’ll have a few days each where I go into NYC, which isn’t my favorite thing in the world. But cool stuff and people are there so I have to suck it up and be a human. Bummer. It’ll probably be good for me though. I hope September is good for me.

Posted on

July 2017

While many American’s July’s usually begin with celebrating Independence Day, mine began with Canada Day, and more specifically, Montreal. This year marks Canada’s 150th anniversary, and Montreal’s 375th, and I happened to be there right in the middle of it all.

Because it was my first time there, the bf and I did all the touristy things, like visit the cathedral (photo above), the biodome, Mount Royal, Montreal’s old town (the historic district), and in  general walked around and enjoyed the city. We didn’t have a bad meal while we were there, and I finally tried some amazing pulled-pork poutine–something I somehow missed when I was in Vancouver a few years back–while briefly at the Jazz fest. The airBnB we stayed at was in a nice little suburb, a few blocks away from the metro, which we utilized to the max. The only big issues we had was crossing the border (both ways–line cutters from both sides!), and the first two days I was a bit under the weather.

Continue reading “July 2017”

Posted on

June 2017

If the lateness of this post is any indication, my blogging has been way, way off. The fact that my archives now skip an entire month is really disappointing. The fact that this year I managed to have multiple posts per month and I couldn’t even get a basic recap post out in time is really disappointing. My lack of inconsistency is frustrating to me–I know that I’m doing this for myself, and that this is something I’m doing because I want to, but I do think some more pressure would be good for me. I really need to set up self-imposed deadlines.

Books Read: 1 Ghachar Ghochar was a confusing and short read. Not really sure how I felt about it–it’s definitely a book I’d want to discuss with others who’ve read it.

Blog Posts Written: 0

Videos/Projects: 0

At the Movies: The highlight of my movie-going was seeing Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver, which is a wonderful reminder of why both mid-budget movies  and directors actually having control of their films (as opposed to the studios) are dying breeds that need saving. I also saw Cars 3, which was less than stellar.

Lowlights: Between OT at work (which, isn’t in itself a bad thing), moving house, and general obligations, I just didn’t have time. And that sucks. And that’s still my fault. That means I’m not utilizing the pockets of time I do have.

Highlights: Seeing Kingdom Hearts in concert. Without a doubt, that was an absolutely magical evening, and an experience that I enjoyed even more than I did seeing Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings in concert. The format of this concert was select songs played over gorgeous cinematic footage from ALL of the games–even the more obscure mobile ones. Since many of the songs are meant to play on loop as you travel around, I really appreciated how they created segments based on character themes or final boss battles and beautifully went from one piece to the next. They also played the trailer for Kingdom Hearts 3, which had only just been played at E3.

A major part of this that I haven’t mentioned yet was that the composer of Kingdom Hearts (as well as many Final Fantasy’s) was there. She came out at the beginning to introduce the show, and came out towards the end and actually played the piano for the encore song, which was the credit song for the first game. It was absolutely magical, and I cried when I heard Dearly Beloved, among everything others.

Another small highlight was seeing the Ferdinand trailer in theaters (before Cars 3)!

On that note, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I loved the first trailer for Ninjago, which is from Warner Bros. and very much in the same vein as The Lego Movie and The Lego Batman Movie.

Posted on

May 2017

Another month that quickly went down the pipe. Too fast, 2017, too fast. I don’t even have much to say about this month…I sort of blinked and it was over. That being said, let’s get right into things:

Books Read: 3 Finally wrapped up a couple of books I started last month–one about writing and two others I’d like to mention: Superfandom is a book about fandom culture and the psychology behind it. Great, fun read. The third book I read was Designing Your Life, which was written by two Stanford professors after their class of the same name proved to be so successful. I’m still a book behind according to my GoodReads, but that’s ok.

Blog Posts Written: 4 including this one. None on AniCom again. It’s so hard for me to figure out how I want to split up material for that site–what should be a blog post/article, what should be a video, or podcast, or some combination. I also definitely am over-thinking this too. I managed to squeeze two out today, one being this end-of-month recap (which makes sense), but the other was a response to a Facebook thread I decided to opt out of, about privilege.

Videos/Projects: 0/5 No new videos this month, but I either got started on or made significant progress on a number of different projects. I spent around 10 hours this past weekend at the library with the wifi down, sooooo I got a lot done. ; )

Continue reading “May 2017”

Posted on

When You Know Your Writing But People Don’t Believe You

A few weeks ago, I was very proud of myself for a very simple thing. I showed somebody some in-progress writing that I was working on–a script, more specifically–that I was planning on shooting soon. I’m the type of person who managed to go six years in art classes and rarely show any of my work. I’d go out of my way to game the system, to wait until the end of class or show something else or show something intentionally bad, like stick-figure thumbnails of what the final product would look like in order to avoid it. It was, is, and, fucking hell help me, the biggest issue that I deal with as a creator. There’s a whole memoir in me about my art anxiety, imposter syndrome, mental handicaps, simple fear, and just oddly and inexplicably low self-esteem I have about the creative side of myself, to the point that I still can’t even call myself an “artist” or “writer” or “creator” without feeling like an asshole. For fuck’s sake, my very first post on this site in 2014 directly addresses this issue: this blog is meant to be a direct, opposing force to said feelings.

This person didn’t know this about me, but did know that I don’t show things often, I don’t talk about things often. If I’ve done so with you, congrats! I love you and we can unceremoniously boil you down to being a safe space for me in trying to find my own self-love. The friend I was with is the type who likes to link everything back to parental issues; things like how you dress or eat, whether you wear makeup, things that seem asinine at times. But I know there is truth to some of this. I’ve read enough Malcolm Gladwell books to not ignore the nature/nurture argument just because it presents things I don’t like. I do think that this particular friend places too much emphasis on it though. It’s sort of like that scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Meryl Streep’s character schools Anne Hathaway’s over a blue sweater and the illusion of choice.1 While not a perfect or full picture, the scene serves as a reminder that many of the things we do, the ‘choices’ we make in our daily lives are not necessarily our own, or we aren’t fully conscious of them or their origins. But at the same time, Anne Hathaway’s character, for whatever reasons, did make the choice to buy that sweater, not knowing the context that Streep’s later presented. But I understand that this was more about the options available to a person.

When I showed my friend the script, I was proud of myself, and my work. But my friend immediately picked it apart, which in and of itself is not the problem. Despite aforementioned issues, I am not immune to criticism and it’s benefits, as well as the divorcing of the actual criticism from the person who is delivering it (in terms of your personal relationship with them vs. their input as a critic). My friends biggest issue wasn’t so much the content itself so much as the fact that I was even showing it to them. To them, this proved that it was not ready–that I was not ready–if I needed reassurance from someone else. That if I needed a second opinion, it invalidated my confidence in the piece. They then went on to argue that the writing was trying to be something it was not, completely neglecting any potential context or reason why I would write something in a different–in this case, more formal and academic voice–than my usual casual blog post or my usual way of speaking.

So I defended myself. I took his criticisms about the tone and voice of the piece to heart and did make some changes that bettered it. But I also explained that I was happy with it, and just happy that I was finally making again and wanted to share with someone I thought would be happy and supportive. I thought they specifically would appreciate the piece as it was about a topic they enjoy. I explained that the educational nature of the piece prompted me to avoid my usual f-bombs, anecdotes, and brazen casualness.

To them, I got defensive. That this reaction was a reflection of how I feel about myself. Which it totally was. But not in the way that they were assuming.

Continue reading “When You Know Your Writing But People Don’t Believe You”