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:

If it isn’t already obvious, I’d just like to point out how my life has been (sort of) resembling shambles lately. I’m not going to go into the details—that’s what LiveJournal is for—but I will say this: making things has been a pretty good remedy for quarter-life panic. There’s something about it that really calms me down. I’m working on the painting (it’s going well, but I can’t find the time to really get into it) and a bit of other things, but for an upcoming group exhibit, this is what I am working on:

I’m pretty excited about how it’s going to turn out.

Another thing I have always thought of making, I finally got around to actually putting together tonight. I was going to go with a few friends to Rockeoke, but felt guilty about ditching work. So, I did the responsible thing and stayed behind to do some work. The Internet started acting up by around 6PM, though, and finally died by half past eight. I really, really got upset, but I didn’t have a social network to whine to, given the death of my internet connetcion, so I decided to try and actually start on my chapbook.

LOL. I bet you’re sick of seeing that darned deer.

It doesn’t have all of the stories I want to put in it, not even all of the ones in the fake table of contents, but I just wanted to try out the technique and see if producing a small print run was feasible. I think the size (4.25″ x 5.5″) might be a little small, but it’s a nice fun size, so we’ll see. Maybe if I have enough material for one that can handle the perfect bind.

Cutting. This is just a working title/placeholder. Also, it is a brilliantly sad song.

This story needs editing, but it’s got some of my favorite sentences.

Teaching myself how to use Masters, etc. This is a fake table of contents. Obviously.

Trimming the edges.

A few things that I’ve realized:

• I need a pen tablet. The fact that mine died a few months ago is upsetting to me. I never realized how crippling it was to live without one, once it’s become such an integral part of one’s process. But I digress.
• I need a heavy-duty paper cutter.
• I need an awl.
• I need good paper, waxed string, etc.
• I really, really like making books. This is actually more of a reinforced idea than a realization, but whatever.

And, you know, it sounds like so much work, trying to figure out Masters for InDesign pages, and printer settings, and margins and packaging contents, et cetera, et cetera, but it has, so far, worked best at calming me down.

October has been the most confusing, frustrating, exciting, fantastic, boring month, so far, this year. I have resisted the urge to punch people in the face, and sob uncontrollably (which is to say, I guess I controlled that urge pretty well), and kick and scream at nothing, sometimes about nothing at all. But it has also been one of the best months, if we are going to talk about blessings alone.

When I try to think about what has been happening in October, they all congeal into this indeterminate blob of either ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ depending on what kind of day I am having. On paper, it really seems like a stellar month.

• A piece I had written a few months ago got published in a magazine that I honestly don’t regularly read (on account of I am usually poor LOL) but I deeply respect. It’s also about something that I’m really attached to and interested in, so, way to go, right?
• I mounted a show with only my favorite artists ever. (No kidding, here is a list: Juan Alcazaren, Roberto Chabet, Nilo Ilarde, Bernardo Pacquing, Soler Santos (lol my dad) and Gerardo Tan. “What even!” is all I can say. Also, that yes, I have died. already, thanks.)
• I got offered a pretty sweet position at a new company with a pretty sweet idea and mission that I really feel personally close to.

(Yeah, I mostly put all of that there to brag and plug, but still, pretty good month, considering, yes? Please get the October 2010 Issue of UNO magazine! And drop by the exhibit; it’s up until November 6.)

And yet.

October 2010 remains one of the most harrowing months I have ever had to live through. I was sad for no specific reason, and whenever I tried to talk to other people about it, I couldn’t really give definitive answers, because, to be honest, I couldn’t think of any. Whenever I tried to put words into what I felt, they sounded wrong, and pathetic, and came across as measly, little problems that people whined about when they ran out of things to be sad about. But the feelings were real, and they were eating me up, and I didn’t know what to do about them.

One of the things I was upset about was my general listlessness when it came to “achieving” and “productivity.” It’s no secret to most of my closest friends that what I want for myself in life is to matter. That’s why I write, and that’s why I’m always so focused on making things. I used to think that maybe this fixation on ‘getting my name out there’ pointed to me wanting be popular and famous, and that thought really upset me because I didn’t want that to be my ultimate dream. How selfish and self-absorbed, I thought.

I think that the “not getting very far with what I had been doing” is what made me panic. And this panic bubbled into something I can’t even try to name. Sitting here, thinking about the month that still is, I have arrived at the realization that, perhaps, I’m not working hard enough, and I’m not spending my time as I should be, if I wanted to really make things that will mean something to people. If I really wanted my life to matter in the way that I wanted it to.

I’m sitting on an article due tomorrow morning, that I haven’t written, and I’m going to steal one of the quotes from my friend, Nash: ” i think [certain things] after college really taught me to stay away from the sad things for awhile.” I have a feeling that October is the month where I will try and teach myself to stay away from sad things. It’s been opening my eyes, slowly, to seeing that I needed to spend time on other things that I loved, and steer myself away from the little failures and disappointments that have been so liberally scattered recently.

A conversation with Abi made me realize how dumb it is to fixate on one aspect of my life that was going wrong at the time. When I saw her for the first time in months, I was visibly sad and upset. “How’s work?,” she asked. “Pretty good,” I said.

“Your family?”

“Also good.”

“Friends?”

“Quite well, actually.”

She didn’t say anything, because she’s such a good friend, but I could see her thought process, and it became clear to me how stupid it was to devote so many hours of my day to being upset over something I couldn’t control. It weighted so heavily on me, and I couldn’t shake these bad thoughts and bad feelings away. But I think it might have been because, up until that point, I didn’t really try very hard. And then, quite suddenly, the clouds seemed to part, and then it became easier for me to look at the other parts of myself that were working out well (and celebrate them!) and work on the things that I could.

Nick Hornby wrote, in 31 Songs (a book I have been in the middle of reading for the last eight years), “One has so many more opinions about what has gone wrong than about what is perfect.” And it’s true. From another high school staple, Megan McCafferty’s Second Helpings goes, “Tragedy was part of our daily routine. But through it all, I never understood the point of being sad when I could choose to be happy.” It’s been all around me all this time, and it took me a pretty frakking long time to get it.

What you choose to spend your time on is what’s going to matter in the future. That’s what’s I’m slowly learning. That it’s not good for certain things, especially those that are surrounded by negativity, to take up too much time and space in your life. That by giving these things an entire continuum, you ignore the other parts of your life that you could be happy, proud, excited about.

I’ve always been the kind of person who is propelled into action by the overwhelming sense of pressure. School taught me how to speed-write a paper an hour before it is due, and still get passing, if not excellent marks on it. I know how to cram a paper, edit a report, make a presentation in record frakking time, but what I’m learning right now is to be patient and to really spend time on the things that matter to you. Your relationships, your work, your craft—even reading books (as Atwood’s “The Blind Assassin” is kicking my ass so hard right now).

Some things can’t be rushed and need to be coaxed to grow and bloom and what-have-you. Sometimes, you really need to make time for them. Other things need to be left alone for a little while and be given some space to breathe. The trick that I’m trying to master, I guess, is which parts need to be looked after and which ones need to be aired out.

In the introduction to his novel, “Mother Night,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. I was first introduced to this by Megan McCafferty’s “Second Helpings,” and while I always thought of this as a cautionary tale, a call for us to take care to ‘pretend better,’ I realize now that I may have missed Vonnegut’s point entirely.

I went through a number of phases growing up, all of them different versions of ‘fitting in.’ When I was a freshman in high school, I assumed a completely different personality, one that immediately calls attention to myself as someone who was “different.”

I wasn’t like many of my schoolmates who cared too much about looks, and too little about learning. I didn’t mind lying on the grass, or looking silly, or being alone in public. I was different, sure, but I still wasn’t me. I was caught under the illusion that I was being who I was, not caring about what others thought of me, but the truth was that I did care. In fact, I cared so much, I created this whole other person—a supposedly better version of myself—that I could be.

That was a completely stupid way to live. Always considering the opinions of other people, not to mention failing, is taxing. Of course, I still do it all the time. Will this person like me better if I do this, if I say this, if I act in this way, if I say yes? So many unnecessary questions that coalesce in my brain, coming together to form something that, ultimately, matters very little.

Kurt Cobain said, “Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.” I think he was onto something. Embrace who you are, because you’re going to be stuck with that person until the day that you die. Don’t make yourself into somebody you will hate, because at the end of everything, the person who will care the most about how you lived and what kind of person you turned out to be is yourself.

These days, it seems like the only way to judge a person anymore is by looking at what they listen to, and the books that they like. It’s so easy to construct a ‘personality’ when you choose all the right books and all the right films and all the right artists, but these things tell you nothing about a person, at their core. The things people consume tell you the level of their comprehension, the kind of things they like to hear, what kind of stories they like knowing about. They don’t really say anything about a person’s character: how they will act in the face of danger, how selfless they are, what kind of people they have grown up to be.

“At three, I wanted to be a cook. At five, I wanted to be Napoleon. My ambition has been growing ever since, and now my ambition is to become Salvador Dali, nothing else. It is, nevertheless, very difficult, because the closer I come to Salvador Dali, the farther away from me he goes.” — Salvador Dali

Why are we so apologetic about who we are? Why are we so scared of being judged? Yes, criticism is painful sometimes, especially if it hits us in places that we are most sensitive about, especially if it’s being said by someone who means the world to us. But why hide who you are? I don’t think altering our character just to avoid hurtful words from other people is worth wearing all these masks.

I think that that’s why people never really say what they mean anymore. There’s a certain degree of paranoia that has whitewashed over everything, because we are suspicious of ulterior motives, and we are always on the look-out for insincerity. The only people who aren’t afraid of other people’s cruel intentions are people who are still sincere, and I think that those people are very hard to come by these days.

This isn’t to say that we should stop trying to be better people. My point is that living our lives, for other people, for the sake of being “different,” for some sort of acceptance, at the expense of our happiness, is stupid. What I’m saying is that it’s OK to be who we really are. It’s inevitable to run into people who will heckle and judge and talk behind our backs, but who cares?

I was bullied in the fifth grade, trying to please people who made me miserable everyday, and while I thought about what they must have thought of me at the time, I couldn’t really care less right now. I don’t even speak to those people anymore, and I think about the time I have wasted, being pushed into doing things I didn’t want to, and having so much unnecessary drama that I frankly could have lived without. Dr. Seuss wrote, “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind,” and I’m taking his word for it.

J.K. Rowling’s Harvard Commencement is called “The Fringe Benefits of Failure” and she talks about stripping away of the inessential, of doing away with things that don’t matter to make space for the things that do. I hold on to a lot of things, and I still cultivate ideas that people have of me that aren’t true anymore, but I still try to live up to. And I realized that to move forward, I had to get rid of a lot of things.

“I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity.” — J.K. Rowling

I had to strip away the inessential and stop pretending to be someone I was not. I think that that is what Kurt Vonnegut was ultimately trying to warn us about. We are, to other people, whatever we pretend to be. But what I’m hoping is that, little by little, I learn how to stop pretending and start actually being who I am.

excerpt from Mikael Co’s “As Courage, To Camus.” Click the photo to get to the entire poem.

It doesn’t take much to make me happy. I think the past entries have been proof of that. My idea of a picker-upper is a Harry Potter marathon and flavor-blasted Goldfish crackers. I mean, the problems obviously don’t go away, but at least these simple things make me feel a little bit better about my misfortunes.

I don’t have a lot of unfortunate events happen to me recently (thank you, Lord), but still, little things have wormed their way into my heart and cheered me up! One of my favorite things in life is getting packages in the mail. Doesn’t really matter much what they are, I just like getting them. In this case, though, I had been waiting for this package for eons, and my heart nearly jumped out of my chest when I saw the notice for two parcels stuck at the post office.

Definitely was what I thought it would be.

I finally got the first two installments of my Field Notes Subscription! <3 Armando first introduced me to Field Notes by sending me a 3-pack and I fell in instant love. Because I’m a sucker for stuff like this. And, well, I do go through notebooks fairly quickly, so even though the price is probably a little steep for other people, I knew I would be putting these babies to good use.

My loot! Opening the package honestly felt a lot like Christmas.
They added a lot of awesome things like pens, a sticker, and rubber bands.
Yes, only a dork like me would be excited by rubber bands, but. Well, leave me alone, they were pretty!

County Fair Editions! I got New York (because it’s my favorite state)
and Alaska, because of “Looking for Alaska” because I am a dork.

Square pinback button!

Pinback button!

Packet of Sunshine! It came with Marigold seeds. :)

And the grid inside was yellow. So pretty!

No, Field Notes, thank you for making quality paper products
that are both functional and aesthetically pleasing! I’m definitely a happy customer.

I can’t wait to use them!

This blog is Looking For Alaska’d Out, I know, but its author, John Green, is brilliant in so many other different ways. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the importance of cohesion and unity and meaning in created works, and how a lot of my writing has been thoroughly insubstantial. I say this with an earnestness and a modesty that I hope will not be taken as me fishing for compliments.

The truth is that, when I began really thinking about being a writer, it was because of fiction. And now, after being a fellow for a Heights workshop two (three?) years ago, I have turned up with nothing to show for it. When people assume that my Biggest Life Dream is to be a designer, I politely correct them and say that what I really want to be is a novelist. I still want that, and I’m more than a little bit ashamed that I haven’t been doing anything about it.

I think I might have frozen up a little bit, and maybe I’d become a little paralyzed by the thought of potentially writing something awful or shallow or empty. And then, through the course of this stagnation, I’ve forgotten how to try.

The point of this entry is that, while randomly watching John Green’s latest update on the vlog channel he shares with his brother, Hank, this wonderful man gave me the jolt that I needed, I think. And with his parting words, the pressure has been lifted off of me, to come up with something beautiful or harrowing or life-changing, replacing it with the desire to create something true.

And then, I’m left beginning to think that, maybe, I’m ready to write stories again.

“There used to be a barn in this field, a barn where I first told a girl I loved her, and where I spent my first all-nighter studying world history by flashlight while drinking astonishingly bad wine. Emily Dickinson wrote that success is counted sweetest by those who ne’er succeed, and so, too, youth is counted sweetest by those who are no longer young.

Nostalgia is inevitably a yearning for a past that never existed, and when I’m writing, there are no bees to sting me out of my sentimentality.

For me, at least, fiction is the only way I can even begin to twist my lying memories into something true.” — John Green