Shoot Promos on Race, Class, Gender, Etc

"Despite everything, no one can dictate who you are to other people." - Prince Wait, I thought you concluded your blog last week . I did. But I did have one portrait left from my photoshoot with Zachary, so I decided to tack on this "stinger", a post-credit scene, you see with most Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. Okay, what's up. Am I going to share any insights or lessons I gained from going through this journey? Am I going to announce my plans for another blog series or some other creative endeavor? Do I have some joke I wanted to get off my chest? Am I going to attach a scene of enjoying shawarma with my best friends like the stinger in The Avengers ?  As far as writing goes, I'm going to take a much needed break. The self-imposed commitment to write every week was very cathartic but I poured everything I had into this project. I'm spent and need to take some time to recharge and feel inspired again. I need to find my creative source now that I...

"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well." - Ralph Waldo Emerson Warning: the following blog deals with areas of mental health and suicide ideations that may be triggering. I won't take it personally if you skip this one. Based on the viewership the last few weeks, y'all skipping anyways. So f*ck it. LOL "What is going well in your life?" My therapist RB asks me through the zoom screen. During our last session two weeks ago I shared that my mental health had declined and it felt like I was back at square one. The throbbing headaches returned. And the quality of my sleep had been inconsistent. The suicide ideations returned and whatever progress I had made over the previous six months felt like it was all for naught. And what actual progress had I made? I was still heartbroken. Though I tried to cautiously date since then, every "I...

"The leaves have refused to change. They say that they are tired of things never remaining the same, of dying to be reborn, of winter's dry withered hand. They are praying for an eternal spring. Even I expected that the beautiful autumn must have been ecstasy for the leaves. But they admit that there is nothing more painful than changing from green to yellow to red to brown. They insist that their beauty is a prolonged suffering. They say they will never change again... I have told them that everything has its season." - Saul Williams, S/he SPRING It was August of 2003 (yes I'm telling a story that happened in the summer but just follow along this strained analogy). Nearly 6 weeks after surgery on both knees for patellar mal-tracking and tendonitis. By now I no longer needed to use crutches but I still required the use of a cane because any prolonged standing caused immediate swelling and inflammation in my knees. I wouldn't be able to resume physical therapy unti...

  "Having grown up so familiar with creating a pleasing facade, I now end up compelled to reveal things inside and say, 'Okay, now you really see me. Do you still love me?' And then it's never enough; it always has to be total self-revelation." - Kathryn Harrison One of my earliest coping mechanisms were to create facades, not because I'm a sociopath who lacks empathy. Quite the opposite; I created facades because I have empathy and inherited the people pleasing trait from my parents. I became whatever version of myself that I felt people wanted, in order for them to feel safe and valued. While I may have used a different toolbox than a sociopath, my facades were still a form of manipulation to get people to like me more.  Why do we create facades? If you're a person of color, woman, LGBTQ+, or non-Protestant, something we're all familiar with is  code switching,  a survival tool we adopt to assimilate in predominantly WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon, Prote...

Kumon math. Taekwondo. Piano Lessons. Cello Lessons. Flute Lessons. Noonnoopi. SAT Prep. I was one of many second generation AAPI who's parents insisted take up an extracurricular activity. Not only would it help it in the college application process (yes my tiger parents thought of this while I was still in elementary school) but it was a necessary diversion from me spending every afternoon watching television and playing video games.  None of those hobbies stuck for long. The one day I forgot to wear a cup to Taekwondo, I participated in a sparring activity and was promptly kicked in the groin. Seeing as that I was never going to become the next Bruce Lee, I quit shortly with a brown belt and ZERO ability to defend myself in a fight. As much as I loved music, I didn't have any talent to play it. I never learned how to read sheet music fluently so in between piano lessons, I wrote the letters of keys in my music book so I knew which keys to play. My parents invested in a small...

On March 16, 2021 a domestic terrorist killed 8 people, 6 of whom were Asian women, in Atlanta. Let's not mince words here, this was not a "sexual addiction" or the result of a "bad day". This was a targeted attack on Asian women. But this isn't an isolated incident. Hate crimes against all AAPI people have risen, especially after former President Trump referred COVID-19 as the "China Virus" and "Kung Flu" with many pundits, politicians, and people co-opting those derogatory terms.  From the onset of COVID-19 and we were ordered to wear masks and quarantine, I have seen the micro-aggressions directed toward Asian Americans. The glares from people at AAPI, communicating "this is your fault", "you brought this on us" . The way that people would walk on the other side of the street, profiling AAPI as automatic careers of the disease, the same way Black folk are profiled "walking while Black". Some may not be fam...