just begin
As the title suggests, I just want to start before I get in my head further about this. Right now, I imagine each month will have a theme. Each theme will have an accompanying and ongoing digital journal/sketchbook/archive. I honestly just want to have fun in this space.
There are books I want to share! Over the holidays, I purchased Mahjong: House Rules from Across the Asian Diaspora by Nicole Wong. I’ve been playing with friends and just want to learn as much as I can! I also collect magazines and wanted to share one I found at a museum about photography in Accra, Ghana.
I want to share what makes me come alive and what makes my heart burst with joy and gratitude. At the same time, I would like this place to be messy like when I played in a sandbox.
Did you ever run around, trip and fall, chase your friend, and grab hands full of sand? Though I was extremely shy, and still am, I loved getting my hands dirty. There’d be grass stains on my pants, somehow there would be sand in my clothes, sand in my hair (yikes!), sand everywhere!
It was a very messy adventure. I would like to connect to that same kind of energy of being wild, silly, free, and alive again. Hence, I want to just begin and continue building this digital creative ecosystem online.
As you’ll see in the video, I share what I would like this space to be. Especially here in the PLAYLAB. It’s pretty much the opposite of certainty, the opposite of knowing anything. Instead it’s more of companionship with the unknown. This process is me wanting to play with ideas, dance with creativity and experimentation, literally and metaphorically.
P.S. I’ll share part two this upcoming week where I pick up where I paused! Stay Tuned!
An Amateur’s Love Letters
We’re all terrified of being revealed as amateurs, but in fact, today it is the amateur—the enthusiast who pursues her work in the spirit of love (in French, the word means “lover”), regardless of the potential for fame, money, or career—who often has the advantage over the professional. Because they have little to lose, amateurs are willing to try anything and share the results. They take chances, experiment, and follow their whims. Sometimes, in the process of doing things in an unprofessional way, they make new discoveries. “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities,” said Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki. “In the expert’s mind, there are few.”
Amateurs are not afraid to make mistakes or look ridiculous in public. They’re in love, so they don’t hesitate to do work that others think of as silly or just plain stupid.
—Austin Kleon, Show Your Work (2014), p.15
I have a shirt that says “The fear of looking stupid kills the soul.” I’m wearing it in the video as a reminder for myself. I’ve realized when I start to let fear get in the way of what I want to do and hold me back, a part of me does feel like it’s dying.
Today is my mother’s 70th birthday. I got to go hiking with my mom and our pup, Mama Lily. As I was waiting for my mom to have lunch with her, I sat down to reread Austin Kleon’s book Show Your Work. I really resonated with the amateur section.
As you’ll see in the following video, I was finally able to bring out more of my skin tone and play around again with Adobe Premiere Pro. I haven’t used this program in months. In my last video, things were blown out, flat, and desaturated. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I told myself next time I’ll try to be even 1% better.
So here is next time.
I went on Skillshare and searched for classes on color grading and color correction. While a part of me cringes and is embarrassed to show my mistakes and learning process in public, I also know that I said I wanted this to be messy. As folks tend to say, we’re used to seeing the highlight reel and polished outcomes of others and not usually the messy, liminal, awkward parts.
So, this second video is me talking about how I want to connect with community in more slow, intimate, and sustainable ways and the doubts that surface when I try to build this.
You might ask what’s my intention behind sharing this process? I remember telling myself I want to come from a place of generosity. I want to connect with you, the reader. I want someone who is in the middle of something hard to feel less alone in it. I want to show that growth is uncomfortable and nonlinear, not just that I guide people through this but as something I live and practice.
This Sanctuary, as I've shared before, doesn't just inform how I work, but also how I live. I want people to know that learning curves are real, and that even the person sitting across from you in session is inside it too. Welcome to me documenting my “suck less” phase and not so much my “polished” phase. Does this feel exposing? Yes. Have I been having a blast and having fun while doing this? Yes and yes!!
That’s all for now. I still need to finish an assignment for a photography course I signed up for in January. One of our assignments is to draft a project statement. I look forward to sharing the images one day. Off I go…and Happy Valentine’s Day!
One last quote for Valentine’s Day:
What am I in the eyes of most people—a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person—somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then—even if that were absolutely true, then I should like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.”
—Vincent van Gogh, quoted in Elle Luna’s The Crossroads of Should and Must