My sister is nuts.

From our second European morning, she had been bugging me to go jogging with her. She had coerced my dad to go jogging with her one morning in Paris, and another morning in Rome, where they did a Rocky in St. Peter’s Square, aka the Pope’s front yard. I, for one, value the little time I get to be sedentary.

Waking up at the crack of dawn to jog is absolutely nuts to me because a) we already spend the whole day walking around until our toes are numb from the tired and also, shoe friction, and well, b) that is the only reason.

Of course, when I had spent the previous day admiring the Florentine sunset, I figured I might as well see a Florentine sunrise for myself.

We crossed the Ponte Vecchio to the other side of the river. The sun was still low, by this point. We intended to follow the river, up to a certain bridge (I forget which one), but we had been jogging for quite a while before we decided to head back, since the bridge was farther than we anticipated.

Thank you to all my supporters and everyone who believed that I could rouse myself from sleep before seven in the morning, on a European vacation. Which is to say, nobody. Because nobody thought I would actually do this. So, thanks to no one for believing in me.

Just for the record, again, Florence is beautiful. I’m so glad I got to see it at all times of the day. It really stirs up something in you that inspires you to create something beautiful, just because you’re present in some place beautiful. While I was here, my hand rushed to finish scenes of a young adult novel I had been meaning to write for years. I think I actually have a plot line now.

I wish it weren’t such a tourist trap, because I honestly loved this city a lot.

All photographs were taken with a Lomography LC-A+ loaded with Kodak Ektar 100, aka my new love.

The post Waking Up to Florence appeared first on Nothing Spaces.

To shake off the feeling of displacement that I’ve illustrated here, here’s a post about where I ate yesterday. Which is: Ukokkei Ramen Ron, an almost cult-ish ramen haven for ramen nuts! It closed down for a while, but now it’s back in business, and would you believe it was both mine and Sarie‘s first time to eat there last night?

We got the Tantanmen ramen (Php 390), which is one of their more “special” items. I don’t really know what that means, but it’s not on the menu (it’s on the wall) and it sure tastes special. The broth is thick, flavorful and rich, and the noodles were superb. Sarie and I are doing splitsies now because of mutual weight gain, but the serving was more than enough. We had the gyoza as well, but it’s nothing worth noting.

The ramen, though. You must try it at some point in your life. Judging from the color of the broth, I’m thinking they used a lot of la-yu, the sesame chili concoction that I eat with everything. The waitress said it was a mix of miso and sesame, so you can imagine the potential party in your mouth.

On another note, I don’t know if it’s notable or anything, but I’m going to say it anyway. I’ve decided to try something different! No, it is not to dress in a manner that will make me more likely to be assaulted on public transport, but just to dress “better.” Of course, I don’t know if it is actually better in an objective way, but hey look—color!

My clothes are from Primark, which is a super cheap, kind of trendy apparel chain in London. I don’t normally like wearing rompers because it makes me feel like a giant baby, but I liked this one a lot, even though it takes quite a long process to um, pee. I also love this sweater, because duh, it is trés cool. My headscarf is from a super cute Etsy store, Chichi Dee, which is also based in London.

Meet my cute watch! I got it in Venice, and though I don’t normally wear watches with faces this big anymore, I am quite enamored with it. It’s by Fullspot and the idea is you can mix and match the straps and the faces to suit your personality and mood. Apparently, they’ve started selling these babies in RONAC last month, so I have to check out which colors I can get from here in Manila, because I only got one other watch strap (a grey-white). I checked the price point and it doesn’t seem to be that big of a difference. I’ve got my eye on some of the animal print faces.

For kicks, Sarie has captured how I apparently look like when we eat together:

And to end, please please please grab a copy of the October issue of both Rogue and Preview, on account of well, me!

Preview has included me in their Creative It List for 2012, which I think was awfully nice of them. :) The photo was taken by Everywhere We Shoot, and the words were written by the wonderful Karen Bolilia. Thanks to both of you, as well as the Preview editors and the rest of the Preview team.

And! My first contribution to Rogue’s Columns section, which is on the Golden Age of Television and why we (the Philippines) are not a part of it. Thank you to Clinton Palanca for helping me out on this one. Snaps for Paulina Ortega, my seatmate for all of (college) eternity, for putting my words into pictures.

I would appreciate it if you guys grabbed a copy of these issues because they are both quite special things to me. That said, Arrivederci! I shall see you all in my next installment of The Great European Backlog of 2012.

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I have a ton to say about HBO series, Girls, the seeming T.V. underdog turned sensation. What is it about this show that has drawn the attention of so many people, even those that are outside of its apparent demographic. I’ve seen a lot of people talk about Girls, heard them talk about it, and I have always wanted to talk about it myself.

The first thing people ask you about Girls is if you like it. There is an extreme polarizing reaction to the show—dividing camps between people who love it and people who absolutely despise it. Rarely have people fallen on the exact, thin divisive line of “it’s okay,” and people who do say this often lean towards one reaction.

The second thing people ask other people about Girls is, “So which one are you?” That’s probably the hardest thing to answer accurately, because they are all awful and freely picking one to embody yourself is a hard and unattractive decision. They are awful, though, in the way that you get, in the way that you can maybe sympathize with. What I see when I see the Girls girls are the worst versions of ourselves, the parts that we try to hide or deny, amplifed and glaring on your T.V. screen for half an hour each week.

We get to know the self-absorbed best friends and roommates: shrill, uptight Marnie and perennially unemployed Hannah (played by Lena Dunham, the twenty-six-year-old female creator of the show—but that’s another story) who recurring character, Elijah, said that were cut from the same selfish cloth. Marnie is fickle and juvenile, though she likes to think of herself as grown up. Hannah seems to have very little self-worth, and likes to pretend she knows what she’s doing when what she really is is lost.

There’s well-traveled, liberated, reformed wild child Jessa who gets by as a good looking nanny with very little to lose. Then, there’s Jessa’s cousin: sheltered, inexperienced Shoshanna, who dubbed her virgin self a Samantha Jones. (Shoshanna is actually not that mean. She is very, very endearing, and I think I would want to be her the most.) These people seem to be oblivious to their own flaws, which is what I find a little hard to believe. But, people do have their own blind spots; it’s just so hard for me to believe that theirs can be as glaring and obvious as they are.

There’s very little that’s aspirational about the Girls characters, but I think that’s why I like them so much. A lot of people have been put off by this plain Jane, awkward version of the New Yorkian stories that HBO seems to make every once in a while, but I like it because it makes you uncomfortable in a way that’s not horrific, but just earnest and real—shame and secrets shoved right up there in your face.

I love it because it gets to the meat of things, even though the truth is often awkward and strange and horrible, instead of beating around the bush for oh, I don’t know, seven seasons. Do I like the “ugly people sex”? Of course not, but it’s a part of the show and it works because it exposes everything, much like how every ugly thing about these people are exposed, too.

Another thing that I really like about Girls, as a show, is that they make no excuses for the awfulness of their characters. It really doesn’t care if you end up liking them or hating them for what they do. What happens is that you develop some empathy or compassion for some of them, because you’ve been there, too. Maybe not in exactly the same situations, but maybe steeped in the same feelings. I find that, as we see more episodes of Girls, their characters enough space and enough layers to be believable as people.

I saw episode 7, “Welcome to Bushwick a.ka. The Crackcident,” last night. I have never been to a warehouse party in Bushwick, but I roared with laughter and I felt for them. Maybe because I’ve done things that I’m not proud of. Maybe also because I have felt as betrayed, as wounded, as discarded, and as embarrassed as they have. Not in the same exact way—I have never faceplanted the pavement falling off the front wheel of a bicycle—but in a way that’s enough.

Plus, it was way funny.

Girls is more than just “Sex and the City for ugly people,” and it’s hardly the voice of our generation. What it is is a damn good show where we see lost twenty-somethings, in their complexity and depth, unafraid to show the ugly, broken bits that a lot of us would love to hide instead. It’s too early to tell what kind of people they are, but each week, another layer is uncovered. Right now, it’s about horrible people-in a real sense, not in a Joffrey Baratheon sense–that you end up rooting for because, sometimes, you can actually see them (secretly) as you.

The post Answering the question “Which ‘Girls’ Girl are you?” appeared first on Nothing Spaces.

I’ve been thinking a lot about sadness lately, but only because it seems to have elected itself as a permanent sheen on my otherwise pretty good life. I have found myself getting sad over the littlest things like having to explain things to people twice, social exclusion, accidentally exposed rolls of film and, most recently, withholding tax.

Once, Reggie wrote that she doesn’t even remember what kind of things she used to be so sad about in high school. I know what that feels like, when it comes to my life, too. Because, I don’t think my life was ever severely lacking, at least in the ways that mattered. It’s just like that Smashing Pumpkins song, I’m in love with my sadness, but believe me when I say that I never truly mean to be.

At some point in my life, I agreed with a lot of things that John Green’s female protagonist in Looking for Alaska thought. Alaska said, “Pudge, what you must understand about me is that I’m a deeply unhappy person” and briefly, I believed with all my heart that that was just the kind of person I was. Lately, I’ve been giving in to sadness and negativity, and the truth is, I haven’t felt as disconnected from myself as I do now.

It’s not like “I don’t know myself anymore,” but it’s more like “I don’t feel good when I respond or think this way.” I don’t think I’m alone when I say that sadness is beautiful. It’s beautiful in a way that honesty and vulnerability are beautiful, especially in the face of ugly, painful things. I’m drawn to it, because it opens up a more interesting complexity in humanity, reveals a side that a lot of people would just rather ignore.

“Brod discovered 613 sadnesses, each unique, each a singular emotion, no more similar to any other sadness than to anger, ecstacy, guilt, or frustration. Mirror sadness. Sadness of domesticated birds. Sadness of being sad in front of one’s parent. Humor sadness. Sadness of Love Without Release.” — Everything is Illuminated; Jonathan Safran Foer.

But, just because it sometimes can be beautiful, it doesn’t mean that I should constantly seek it out and put myself in situations where sadness will prevail over everything else.

It’s no secret that I relate to a lot of coming-of-age stories. These stories reflect basic human pains, stings of which are often felt for the first time, and then they tell of how young people overcome them. The first pangs of betrayal or rejection might just be some of the worst feelings in the world. Sometimes, it gets worse, but we learn, we grow, and we cope. That’s how the world works. I think sad situations are inevitable, but ultimately, you get to choose how you respond and how much of yourself you allow to be affected.

I don’t mean to say that it’s better to be a happy person than to be a sad person, but I think that I personally should know by now how to better deal with these bouts of sadness and these tiny tragedies, without having to feel like the whole world is ending or that my heart is imploding on itself. My So-Called Life‘s Angela Chase is an early adopter in Wallowing, but I imagine that even she eventually had to suck it up and deal with her feelings, too. I’m thinking, maybe, so should I.

“Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is really worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It’s okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.” — The Shared Patio; Miranda July.

The post Zero appeared first on Nothing Spaces.

March closed with a screenwriting workshop, led by Aaron Rahsaan Thomas, who’s now a supervising producer for CSI:NY. I’ve never watched an episode of CSI:NY and I tend to shy away from programs like that (which are called procedurals) because I tend to favor character-driven shows. The real reason why we even went to that two-day workshop was because Aaron Thomas was a staff writer for Friday Night Lights, even writing two episodes during his stint.

It’s been almost a week since we left that workshop and I don’t even have notes or a vague idea for a story. It’s kind of depressing. Watching behind-the-scenes footage and extras on DVDs made me really want to be a part of something so completely collaborative, like television. In particular, the footage from the LOST DVDs that featured the writer’s room and a big binder of notes they kept for six season’s worth of continuity. It seemed like such a great thing to be a part of, especially someone like me, a big fan of television.

Aaron talked about the structure of a procedural—an episodic series divided into twenty-two or so 40-minute, goal-oriented episodes—and we sort of got to write the teaser (the segment at the beginning, before the credits, where the main premise of the episode is revealed) and Act One (the first seven-or-so-minute chunk before a commercial break) collectively.

It was hard to get a general concensus, because everyone had their own ideas that they seemed to fixate on. I kind of just quietly sniggered and sighed, being in the midst of a lot of professional writers and such who already worked for local networks. It seemed unnecessary to speak just so I could complain about ideas instead of being constructive. Anyway, most of what they threw around and played with were not my cup of tea. I already saw the disparity between the shows that are locally produced (telenovelas, the kind of humor they liked, etc.) and the shows that I enjoyed, and it made me sad that it didn’t seem like they intersected at all.

Because a really big part of me wants to work in television, but it doesn’t seem like local television has room for the shows that I want to make.

I am moved by series that center on coming-of-age, especially those that confront issues in a raw and honest way. I love it when shows speak to me through the characters, genuinely and believably. I love the brutality of feelings, the tragicomedy of high school, the overwhelming weight of things that matter now.

To tell you the truth, I have no idea what I used to be really sad about when I had been growing up. But we get hurt as we grow older, and we heal. We forget, or we think we forget.

These shows that I love so much, they’re reminders of the things that had mattered in the moment, and how intensely they felt to us at the time. I think I want to create stories that allows people to look back on—or experience at once!—these growing pains. To take those hurts and feelings of weightlessness, and preserve them in stories people can look back on, alone, together or apart. To remember, and maybe to forget. To detach or reacquaint ourselves with the very things that first taught us how to feel.

I digress, because I sought out to write about the workshop and how different it is where he is from (Los Angeles) and how it works here in Manila. But, I ended up talking about feelings and growing up, and that’s what I would love to write about. That, or something else wholly consuming, a web of stories, characters, and relationships that you grow and fall in love with.

I’m not interested in pushing the drama to ridiculous points to rake in ratings, and maybe that’s where I would falter if I worked here. I’m interested in making stories and using television as a way to share them with people. Sadly, it feels as though there is little room in the Philippines—maybe the world—for this kind of creating and collaboration.

I want to have a voice, but I’m not exactly sure where to start.

The post Screenwriting for Dabblers Like Me appeared first on Nothing Spaces.

For the April 2012 issue of Rogue magazine, I wrote about artist, Arturo Sanchez. On a drizzly day last February, Joseph and I went to Art’s studio in Angono for the interview. When it was time for Joseph to take his pictures, I took a few behind-the-scenes ones, too.

In other news, make sure you grab a copy of that issue! Aside from writing this, Sarie wrote a feature on Vincent Moon (photos of which my brother took), plus there’s a really good visual contribution from Kris. The rest of the content—I’ve only skimmed through it thus far—seems excellent, too.

Also, just so you know, the cover is an AR incarnation of Solenn Heussaff.

The post BEHIND THE SCENES WITH ART SANCHEZ appeared first on Nothing Spaces.

Nikon FE, Fuji Provia 100

Sometimes I think I forget about why I do things.

I think I forgot about why I liked to blog in the first place. My first blog was born because my best friend gave me the link to her secret one, and although she was a much better writer than me, I wanted to tell stories, too. I got my LiveJournal because someone I liked had one, too. It resulted in Nothing Special, but I moved on to making bonds with people over the Internet, which was, at the time, kind of a creepy, shady thing to do. We talked about obsessions, and real life, and asked no one in particular why the world was so unfair. We grew up and moved on, but LiveJournal has always been a safe place for me.

I got Nothing Spaces because of envy, mostly. I read a lot of personal blogs that were “.coms” and I admired the honesty and candidness of those journals and diaries. Back then, people didn’t really Google people, and no one really plugged their blogs. They just poured their hearts and souls and pictures in these repositories, and people from all over the world somehow connected with them.

Mary Oliver wrote the “instructions for living a life:” Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

Sometimes, I’d like to think that that is why I do what I do. It’s not something I earn from (although a lot of people who get in touch with me for work find me through here), and it’s not something I use to share what I do (although I have been wanting to do so for a while). It’s just here, because I am “living a life.”

I like taking photos, I like writing, and I like telling people about things that I find. I like telling stories on blogs, because truthfully, it’s the best way I know how to. I’m not very articulate, nor am I particularly good at adding flourish to my story-telling. A lot of people kind of hate on blogs, and I understand why. It doesn’t mean I agree, but I get it.

When I see blogs today, I realize it’s very different from what I grew up with. It feels kind of like how old people don’t really “get” the learning curve of computers. All of a sudden, there is an influx of blogs that were monetized and sponsored, and I couldn’t wrap my head around how it all worked.

I was obsessed with figuring it out for a little while, and it was a huge blow to the ego when my stats began to dwindle. And it got sad when I realized that what began to motivate me to post were my stats. So I stopped caring.

And now we are here.

I don’t think I can recreate the earnestness and honesty that gave birth to so many funny, endearing blogs that I used to spend hours reading in high school. I don’t think that writing here even improves the quality of my writing.

But I’m paying attention, and I’m being astonished, and I’m here to tell about it.

The post INSTRUCTIONS FOR LIVING A LIFE. appeared first on Nothing Spaces.

I started writing this on February 3, and I feel like it might be time to continue this train of thought, and get on with it. Ahem:

This marks the beginning series of posts has been stewing in my head for the past couple of months, and because I’d been putting it off for so long, I was afraid I’d never get to post it—here I am, at 4:25 AM, writing a crapshot introduction for it. In case it’s not common knowledge, I have currently been enamored by a certain film called The Social Network. To be honest, I expected very little from it, and only really wanted to see it a little bit. How the frak was I supposed to know that it was going to turn me into a crazy lady?

But I digress.

The Social Network is a semi-fictitious account that follows the dissolution of the friendship that founded Facebook, not-so-arguably the biggest social networking site to date. (It’s based on Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Billionaires,” which was based on the story of Eduardo Saverin, Mark Zuckerberg and the website that came between them.) On paper, it sounds like a horribly drab film—I can see you now, shaking your head and asking: “You want me to waste the hours I haven’t already wasted on Facebook, watching the story about the dorks that came up with it?”—but I maintain that it’s pretty much a stroke of genius.

It’s curious to see how a movie about something as cold and (strangely) impersonal as a website can cause this much noise. It’s gotten a lot of awards show buzz and recognition, aside from all the crazy stanning from the Tumblr community—me, included. Zadie Smith wrote a pretty telling review on it for The New York Review of Books, which caused me to think about my relationship with Facebook, with the people I am friends with on Facebook, and ultimately, the Internet.

“That other movie about Facebook” is called Catfish. Set up as a documentary, it follows the unlikely friendship of photographer Nev Schulman with an eight-year-old girl, Abby, over the Internet—a relationship which might be the least creepy situation that we encounter for the rest of the film. He eventually forms bonds with the rest of Abby’s family, with much of the attention shifting to her gorgeous half-sister, Megan. I watched it a couple of days after I saw The Social Network, and I’ve written a review about it for Pelikula, but I feel like it’s worth revisiting, for the sake of argument.

One of the biggest points that Catfish is trying to assert is pretty obvious: don’t believe everything you see read on the Internet. What people seem to take away from The Social Network is that Mark Zuckerberg is something of a douchebag, but I suppose it’s just because it is less upfront about Facebook’s social implications. Helpfully, Smith’s review touches on a lot of things that many might have missed or overlooked.

I am thinking about the projected length of this discussion, and I feel like it’s going to take me a while to sort out my thoughts, so this will come in parts. Also, I’ve bought and read most of Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not a Gadget,” which Smith reviews along with The Social Network. She makes up and uses a term that I have since adopted as my personal goal; I’ve been re-learning how to be a Person 1.0.

What exactly is a Person 1.0? I couldn’t really tell you right now, but I’m looking into that. All I know is that technology has rapidly been shaping the way we interact with people, as well as how we function as human beings. I don’t know about you, but often I’ve let slip computer jargon in “RL” conversations. I’ve asked people to delete what I just said, or to please compress their story into a .zip file because I have no time for it right now. (Just kidding about the .zip part, but wouldn’t that be amazing?) Sometimes, I wish I could just CTRL+F a Philosophy text to get to a term which has a definition escapes me. Do you not groan at the injustice of it all?

Lately, I’ve been weaning myself off of the Internet—or so it seems. I have been online, sure, but my “presence” hasn’t really been active. Is this progress? I doubt it. I think I just found other useless things to do. Or, I just got too lazy, or it finally dawned on me that, No, Carina, the Internet doesn’t need another GPOY. However, I’d like to think that I’d been spending my time on fairly productive things. I mean, I do feel a little bit more self-fulfilled, occasionally. I don’t know if that means anything.

In any case: there it is, really. I’m re-learning how to be a Person 1.0, and thinking about what that means. At some point in my life, I’m sure I was a Person 1.0. It’s just really fascinating to step back and think about just how much technology has shaped and changed the way we view the world, and how we think. It’s astonishing, and it’s mind-blowing, and that is probably why people don’t really think about it all too much. This is so ingrained in our culture and our habits.

It’s scary because it suggests some kind of major alterations in the world. I mean, at the rate that technology is already shaping the present (and in turn, the future), I think it’s safe to assume that big things are going to happen. And it’s scary that we don’t know just what these changes are going to bring about. Like I said, social implications are inevitable, but think about other possible revisions to life as we now know it. I think it is potentially terrifying, and it doesn’t help that everything is very, very possible.

This is just the beginning of what I hope to be a string of fairly coherent thoughts about the future. At the very least, I hope I make sense. I’m not exactly sure what the purpose of all of this is, at this point, but I’m fairly sure that, given the scope and the subject matter, it may very well concern you, Person 2.0. Don’t try to deny it! The fact that you are on a computer, reading this obscure blog by some nobody from the Philippines, means that you kind of know your way around what a Person 1.0 would call “The Information Super Highway.”

Don’t worry, fellow Person 2.0. We can find a way to make it better.

The post The Anti-Social Network: Part I. appeared first on Nothing Spaces.

There are people who can get by life coasting on their looks, their wealth, their natural intelligence or talent. I am not any of those people, so at a young age, I resolved to be remarkable. While my ambitions shifted around a lot, I just always wanted to be someone who mattered, people took notice of, and was good at what she did.

Aside from a strong sense of entitlement, what plagues this generation is discontent so potent, it’s hard to find people my age who are genuinely happy. I’m not going to write myself off this list, because a lot of the time, when I “feel weird,” it’s because I am drowning in this sort of restlessness that I can only assume comes from discontentment.

People talk about the feared yet inescapable quarterlife crisis, and have spoken great lengths about how awful it is to be victimized by it. I’ve done this quite a few times myself, and I think that, after acknowledging this crisis, this loss, and confusion, maybe it’s time to just let it go, and figure out how to get past it.

Maybe what the problem is what my perception of “remarkable” is. Think about the fact that everyday, millions of connections inside your body function together so we can exist. Think about everything that interacts and coexists, all the random little things your body does, everything that happens on this planet, and tell me that that isn’t magnificent.

I know it sounds like I’m making excuses for my lack of accomplishments. It sounds like I am justifying this growing cloud of laziness that is slowly becoming a permanent fixture in my life. Does getting rid of this listlessness give way to me being remarkable? Maybe. But maybe it shouldn’t be the reason for me to stop being lazy anyway.

I think a lot of people give up in the middle of doing something when they see that it’s not putting them on the road to remarkableness. Maybe they stop doing what they do because it’s not giving them the attention or the praise or the reactions that they were hoping for. Maybe that’s what’s been happening to me.

I’m not sure why I’m writing this entry, to be honest. Did I want to draw attention to the fact that I am nearly twenty-three and I’m nowhere close to where I wanted, where I want to be? Am I quitting on the dreams that I have held onto for so long because they feel a little bit harder to reach everyday?

The pressure to be remarkable—to stand out enough for people to notice—is, at times, motivating, but much more often, I find that this compounding pressure leaves me paralyzed. Instead of making me want to prove people wrong, it just makes me want to give in to being someone whose dreams aren’t and won’t ever be realized.

Holocene, Bon Iver

On Bon Iver’s latest record, Bon Iver Bon Iver, Justin Vernon sings: “… and at once I knew, I was not magnificent.” And I think maybe I just need to come to terms that I am not magnificent or remarkable, in the way that I want to be. At least, not yet.

I have always attached the idea of remarkableness to accomplishing things at a young age. Perhaps this is the cause of all the panic that surges through me each time I see a younger friend or a younger famous person do the brilliant things that they do. Maybe it’s a tiny bit of jealousy, a constant reminder and signifier of my severe lack of having done anything important. It makes me feel like I’ve let down my younger self when I look at myself and see how little I’ve done with what I’ve been given.

I’ve read through Frankie‘s latest issue (JUL/AUG 2011) and Benjamin Law writes about the woes of being 30, but with a slight upward resolution:

“Things didn’t turn out to plan… Really, who cares what the 12-year-old version of myself would think of me? Because, to be frank, the current version of me thinks the 12-year-old version of me was an annoying little f*ckwit.”

He laments the things that turning older means: saying goodbye to the things you wanted to be—a systems analyst instead of an athlete, a deputy sales coordinator instead of an astronaut—but he also says that you get to say hello to a lot of new things. Let go of dreams that are really far gone and dream up new ones. Find new goals to pursue, new ways to be remarkable. Look for new parts of yourself that you want to grow and can cultivate.

I’ve said a lot of things in this post, and really, everything’s still a muddle in my brain. Do I resign myself to the fact that—no matter what I do—I might not reach that point where I see myself as remarkable, and so stop trying to be? Or: do I try anyway and see where it takes me?

The trick, I think, is to look past what you could have done, and to look towards what other things you could still do. The human spirit is extremely resilient. Maybe, that in itself is what’s remarkable.

(Although, maybe I should actually do things that mean something, and things I could be proud of. What I mean to say, Carina, is: don’t sweat it. You’ll get there. It might take you a damn long time, but you will.)

The post I WANTED TO BE REMARKABLE. appeared first on Nothing Spaces.

I just finished reading Jennifer Egan’s “A Visit From the Goon Squad” and you should know that this is not a review so much as a congregation of Things This Book Made Me Feel. I think, before I will be able to write a proper review, I would have to revisit the novel again (which I don’t mind, because I thought it was beautiful) or talk to other people who’ve read it. I thought it was brilliant, because aside from making me care about what—and oftentimes, who—she was writing about, Egan also utilized so many different ways of telling a story, fitting of the characters, the stories, and the circumstances.

Most of all, this novel moved me to want to start writing again.

Currently, my writing has been limited to tiny snippets of semi-fiction and to-do lists, some scenes that would play out in words and paragraphs, but would stay in my head, eventually disappearing forever. Example: a smattering of notes for a YA novel I have had in my head for a while. Another example: a collection of short fiction that I never quite managed to complete.

I used to dream about having my fiction published, and writing a column for some magazine or broadsheet or online tendency catalog group. That was what I always wanted to be, but I think I really just am more sensitive about my writing than my design work. I never really published a lot of my stories, but I wrote all the time. This was the journal I used to bring around with me from when I started college until the end of sophomore year:

Right now, I’ve still been writing, but the level of documentation from then is so much different. It was very entertaining to read through: often funny, sometimes sad and painful. But I loved it because it reminded me of how real those feelings felt at the time, and it showed me a) that it really does get better, and b) how much I’ve grown up, even if sometimes, it doesn’t quite feel like it.

I’ve been writing in tiny notebooks (Field Notes is obviously the brand of choice, LOL), and while it is awesome for to-do lists and keeping me in line when it comes to productivity, it’s not particularly helpful for me when I want to write. Maybe that’s just an excuse I’d been formulating. Maybe it’s not in the tools, but in the want to write, in the desire to keep track of everything, in the love of telling stories.

Sometimes I think that maybe I was never meant to be a writer. This years-long dry spell is a little bit ridiculous. But, Egan’s writing jolted a desire I’d been nursing from before I could even remember: to put thoughts and ideas and lives into words. It moved me to want to start turning possibilities into actual, tangible writing. Maybe I’ll come up with something crappy, but that’s O.K. The important thing is that I always just try to be better. It’s better to come up with creating something that could possibly be good, than giving up before even getting started.

Something from a person whose work (and opinions!) I admire, Ira Glass:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this.

And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met.

It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.“

And so, my personal mantra, until I die:

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