BONUS: the small moments

ones i want to remember

(meant to be read alongside weekly reflections)

9.4.23

9.3.23

• I ate dinner with my roommates today. One of them brought up a question I had asked them a year ago — “What is a compliment you’d like to hear, that you’ve never been given before?” I snuck out of answering the question just as I did last year, but I thought about it for a long time. The issue is that though compliments are lovely, they don’t always penetrate the fog of thoughts in my brain. On a good day, they’ll make my day. On a bad day, they’re ignored, or worse, twisted in a self-deprecating manner.

• But I’m still thinking. My roommates described compliments that only they can give to themselves. That makes sense but…

• I live only to impress myself; They were the only person who was capable of pulling me from death’s door to the gates of one of the most prestigious schools in the country. They were the person to convince me that life was a story worth telling, and thus worth living. They were the one to talk me down when nobody knew how high up I was in the first place. I owe them everything, and I want to make nobody proud like I want to make Them proud.

• I live to impress myself. Maybe that’s why it’s so devastating when I fall short of my expectations.

8.17.23

• This is less of reflection and more of me using this space as a scratch sheet to solve my own word problem (see Week 7).

  • Question: what is the connection b/w art, community, and hope? Why do these virtues uplift each other / work so well together?

• Art + Community → appeal to one’s humanity, human nature

  • Art → sense of connection between the individual and the creator → acknowledgement, validation, comfort

  • Community → sense of connection between the individual and the group → acknowledgement, validation, comfort

  • Both appeal to one’s intrinsic desire to be seen, and for what is seen to be called good

• A person is made up of billions of experiences, and art is the manifestation of those experiences, and the related thoughts, beliefs, and messages attached, on paper.

  • Art → the manifestation of not only the creator, but the creator’s communities, which house these experiences

    • i.e Black community is made up of people with a common experience of living the life as a Black person (as is defined/perceived by society, because Black is a social construct)

  • Community → a category of people who share some common experience, can relate to each other.

  • Community uplifts experience, by giving it a platform to be related to. Art uplifts experience, by manifesting it in a manner that can be seen and acknowledged. People uplift experience, because people are experience.

• Art and Community work in tandem — they both affect Experience, which is what people intimately define themselves as.

• So the last question is… what’s the connection between art, community, and hope?

• I could probably brute-force the answer now, but it’d be more poetic for me to save the juicy part for my next reflection. And if I experience something in the next few days that particularly adds to this discussion, that’d be perfect! (Looking at you, Universe. Help me out here)

8.8.23

• I already talk about it enough in my reflection, but I’m genuinely proud of how my interview went. I’m clearly improving when it comes to communicating my thoughts and ideas, which is in part because of this project. It’ll also help when it comes to writing the script for the augmented reality component; I want to be able to communicate why the movement matters and why you should care about it too.

• And though it won’t (shouldn’t) be the primary focus, if I could use this project to pull my mom out of the propaganda pipeline she’s fallen into, that’d be pretty amazing too. If anything can distill ignorance, I wholeheartedly believe its art, and communication.

7.22.23

• I am once again reminding myself how valuable breaks are. There’s no point in me trying to be excessively efficient with them either — good things happen when I let myself take as many breaks as I need, until I can step back into the work with a clear head.

7.10.23

• Having a detailed timeline AND a consistent daily routine (that includes me leaving the house and working anywhere other than my bedroom) is critical to the success of this project.

• It’s also deeply helpful to be working on multiple other projects alongside this one. I am a very passionate person, which is a real double-edged sword; I will fall knee deep into pursuing my passions, but when those passions flip at the drop of a hat my focus follows in a similarly erratic fashion. Instead of resisting that switch of interests and forcing myself to focus on one thing all the time, I’ve given myself space to work on whatever my heart desires as long as certain goals are met eventually. Having a daily timeline would suck, but a weekly timeline is perfect.

• Environment plays a large role in how productive I am, too. If I’ve been in the same environment too long, too often (i.e., my bedroom), it’s really hard to stay motivated. If the environment is too cold, or dark, or busy or still, that also affects my motivation. With so many factors affecting me, it’s crucial that I am constantly reflective and flexible. That’s another point towards not having strict schedules, but still having some structure to keep me from rotting away in my room.

• That said, I have a bad habit of leaning on the reward-punishment systems the American education system raised me on. Just now, I was forcing myself to sit in a ice cold cafe, telling myself I’d leave once these reflections were written. I recognized my own advice as I was writing it, and left the space early. I’m now warm and happy outside, and even though I still have to finish this reflection, I already feel much more focused. Who would’ve thought — if I’m kind to my body, my body will be kind to me.

  • Side note: It’s going to be sunny and at least 80 degrees every day this week! I love midwest summers.

7.7.23

• I am re-realizing the power of art — how it collects and holds hope. After feeling triggered and depressed all day, I couldn’t bring myself to return to research. But watching My Hero Academia was absolutely what I needed to ground myself in hope once again, and move forward with renewed purpose.

• Everything I learned/remembered/realized while watching My Hero Academia, that relates to this project:

  • If fighting to save the world is too big to handle, instead, fight to protect something specific that you care about.

    • For me: I am fighting to create a world for my younger self, Hope. She deserved so much more than she got. I want to give it to her.

• Loyalty and community may be the most resilient, universally powerful thing. It is dangerous when wielded skillfully, and incredibly threatening.

  • Me fighting for my community

  • Reminds me of common rhetoric used to stir up homophobia in Uganda — threatening the children. The idea that queer people are “recruiting” and hurting the community’s children may be what ultimately tipped the axel for the death penalty bill to be instated.

    • Manufactured threats towards the community → as my mom said, “They crossed a line”.

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SM