In Sickness and In Health

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Last week, I got sick with a common cold. Thankfully, I tested negative for COVID-19, but it did break my health streak of avoiding acute illness since before the pandemic. That’s almost 5 years! Can you believe it’s been that long?

As I laid around trying to recover during the worst of it, I had a lot of time to reflect on how much I had forgotten about what it’s like to have a virus. First of all, it sucks to have such a sore throat that every swallow of food or drink feels onerous. Secondly, the human body has the capacity to produce SO much mucous. I feel like I’m fully made of postnasal drip at this point. Most importantly, though, being sick allowed me to realize how much I have to be thankful for.

Early in my career, I worked full-time as an accompanist for a school district, while also working part-time in arts administration and running my small piano studio. As you might guess, in those days I burned the candle at both ends, often working up to 13-hour days with few breaks in-between. Predictably, I got sick all the time.

As an accompanist, every time I took a sick day it derailed all the choir classes at my schools, impacting the students’ quality of education. I simply did not have the luxury of recovery time, especially when performances were on the horizon. So, I showed up to work even when I was sick. I rarely took time away from my other roles, too; I figured if I could go to my full-time job, I’d better show up for my other work too.

And I would remain sick for weeks. I was sick so often and for so long that on my last day working at the high school, the students gave me a farewell gift of… a bag of cough drops.

Compare that to the past 5 years of my life: I’ve been wildly privileged to be able to continue working from home most of the time, and to be able to take as many sick days as I need. I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid all the viruses that have been floating around out there over the past five years.

Over the past week, it has been incredibly humbling to realize how much I take for granted, especially around my body and my health. At times over the years, I have despaired over having mental illness, agonizing over why my brain can’t work like other people’s. I have found myself nitpicking over my appearance, plagued by internalized anti-fatness when looking in the mirror. I have felt anger at the world for giving me a body so drastically different from my sisters’ naturally thin frames. I have raged at the universe for doling out the injustice of my mental illness while neurotypical people get to live their lives without having to fight their own brains all day, every day.

The simple truth is that I’m not magically going to stop having these complicated feelings about my body or my mental illness overnight. It’s going to take years to process all the terrible messages, personal and systemic, that have been instilled in me about neurodivergence or fatness. Life is, in fact, harder for people who aren’t neurotypical or thin. I don’t (yet) know how to love the disadvantageous genes I have been given.

But it helps to remember that this body continues to function, keeping me alive even when I don’t really want to be. This random assortment of bones and skin and fat and synapses allows me to experience small joys like the vibrations of my cats purring while I pet them, the sounds of vibrant music, or the taste of foods I love.

For now at least, I can be grateful for this body that takes care of me—in sickness and in health.

My Art and My Audience

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Last week, I was advised to develop a content strategy for this blog to help me reach more people and build an audience for my art in general. This seemed like reasonable advice, so I looked into how to do that with a quick internet search.

Every article that came up was advice for corporations and businesses starting blogs with the goal of pushing their main product. Even the advice for people just wanting to monetize their blogs included the same basic advice: focus on an incredibly specialized niche. Don’t just write about food, focus on vegan waffle recipes! Your content should all attract prospective customers and convince them to buy your egg-shaped label maker! All of it felt so soulless.

For the rest of the day, I sank into heavy despair. The writing I share is incredibly personal; it is the most vulnerable I ever am. I don’t want to feel like a product. I want to be able to write about the things that I feel are true and meaningful and beautiful, that would move and inspire others who might see themselves in my words. These articles made me feel like I would never be able to reach people with this approach; that I’m simply Doing It Wrong. Audiences will never want to read what I have to offer, or they’ll read a snippet and hate it, and this is all a waste of time.

Tonight I reopened my copy of Make Your Art No Matter What, by Beth Pickens. I had read it earlier this year because, well, I wanted to make my art no matter what, but when I flipped through the pages tonight, I wasn’t even thinking about how rereading it might help me through this artistic crisis. I was struck by this passage that I had heavily underlined (headline emphasis mine):

Sometimes artists can get hung up on how they imagine someone will respond to the art they’re still in the midst of creating; don’t give the power to your fear about audience response. That’s a bad relationship!

Your job is not to please your audience. Your job is to make your art and help it be in the world.

There is a lid for every pot, and there is a person who loves every work created.

-Beth Pickens, Make Your Art No Matter What

Although I want to eventually be able to support myself financially through my art, I also need to be true to myself and help bring my work into the world. Reading this passage, I feel a sense of peace with letting my work be what it will be, and hold faith that someone out there will love it. I will hold this nugget of wisdom close to my heart as I continue sharing my writing here. I hope it helps other artists in your journeys too.

Lucky Stars

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

As a teen, I went through a phase where I folded hundreds of lucky stars. Like many other Asian American teens of the era, I was drawn to the translucent pink cylinder that housed the paper strips, lured by its promise of being filled in the not-so-distant future with a rainbow of beautiful stars, each lovingly made by my own hand. I could be a creator of art almost instantly—no long hours of piano practice, no suffering through drawings that never matched up to my imagination, no struggles with articulating my thoughts and feelings in writing.

After stumbling through the steps to make my first few lucky stars, I got into a rhythm of tearing off each strip of paper, folding it onto itself over and over until its end, tucking in the tail, and pinching the sides to puff it out into a tiny work of art. Tear, fold, tuck, pinch—over and over again, in the small pockets of free time I could claim for my obsession. I didn’t need each star to be perfect. I didn’t even need each star to look good. I just had to stay in my soothing rhythm, for however long it took to fill that pink container. After however many hours cobbled together from those scraps of free time, I got to the top of the cylinder, proud to see the countless tiny fruits of my labor.

Then I bought another cylinder. And I did it all over again. Tear, fold, tuck, pinch—easy little mindless tasks for my restless fingers. Soothing, repetitive motions that calmed my racing brain, until I ran out of room for any more functionless pink cylinders and eventually left the childhood home that housed them.

Years later, during the pandemic lockdown, I felt a strong urge to fold those lucky stars again. Several Etsy deliveries later, I was well on my way to exceeding however many lucky stars I’d created in adolescence. I made over a thousand lucky stars, this time purchasing fish-shaped bottles and hexagonal terrariums to house my little paper marvels. Each time I filled a bottle or terrarium, I was able to step back and admire my handiwork, satisfied that I had created something beautiful.

Dozens of small origami stars of different colors and patterns that I folded during pandemic lockdown, spread out over my desk.

I have never once been able to admire my own artwork the way that I see my lucky stars. I cringe when reading the words I have written, recoil from recordings of my music performances, and shrink away from my attempts at visual art. Every time I step back and look at my creations, all I see are the imperfections. I nitpick every detail even as I work, focusing only on the flaws and hating the final product.

My lucky stars never received the same scrutiny. I took pride in the fact that I made them, that I persisted in their creation, and what’s more, that I enjoyed the process along the way. I settled into the rhythm of the origami—tear, fold, tuck, pinch—allowing my anxious mind to rest while my fingers worked. Star by soothing star, I simply accepted each one as it formed, imperfect and uneven though it may have been. I gathered them all together, these tiny manifestations of my worries, fears, and insecurities, and saw the beauty in their wholeness.

I would like to see my other artwork with the same eyes that view my lucky stars. I would like to slow down and enjoy the process of creation, getting into the rhythm and ease that settled over my star-making. I would like to see the beauty of their wholeness. I want to love each piece for what it becomes, flaws and all.

And if I can see my artwork with those eyes, maybe one day I’ll be able to see myself with them too.

Perfectionism

I’d like to improve my writing skills, so I recently borrowed a book digitally from my local library (support your local library!!!) called Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott. Some of it is … problematic, but overall, I have found it to be helpful (so far).

One chapter of this book is called “Perfectionism,” and its opening was so direct and impactful that I actually made the effort to digitally highlight it. Here’s some food for thought for another Friday:

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people.

[…] Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.

-Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Heading off to live this weekend with a little clutter and mess.

A Midweek Affirmation

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

This weekend, I went back through all the journals I’ve had since I began bullet journaling (all the way back in 2017!) looking for any other quotes I’d used for hand lettering practice. It was a fascinating—and somewhat startling—trip down memory lane, showing how much my journaling practice has changed over time.

In my first bullet journal, spanning 2017-2021, the early pages feature rushed handwriting and ink from a crappy pen I got for free from some school or work event; later pages suddenly burst into color with a flurry of brush pens, markers, and gel pens used for multiple layout styles and even mini comics drawn just for myself. Other journals introduced washi tape, whimsical stickers, and still more layout experimentation; pages were filled with silly doodles, daily gratitude check-ins, and reminders to care for myself in carefully penned hand lettering.

My journals are stored rather haphazardly, and so my review of past selves did not proceed chronologically. It wasn’t until I had gone through four or five previous notebooks that I realized how much more subdued my bullet journal has become over time. Handwriting so shoddy even I struggle to read it seeped in. Stickers and washi tape appearances dwindled until they disappeared. Page layouts lost their experimental edge, joyless in their focus on to-do lists and blank spaces where I meant to doodle and reflect daily but never did.

I spent the weekend processing the profound sorrow that hit me after this observation, and ultimately realized that what I felt was grief. I had halted exploration of artistic impulses in favor of maximizing productivity, spurred by the false sense of urgency ubiquitous in a capitalist society. I had stopped letting myself play in my journal, expending energy not on creating my own joy, but on the drudgery of work and the daily grind.

After thumbing through the pages of these tomes, several entries stuck out in my mind. In one of my journals, I had gotten into the habit each day of opening the book Morning Affirmations by Jennifer Williamson to a random page, and carefully hand lettered whichever affirmation the universe sent my way. I had forgotten that among these affirmations, I had written a few of my own when I needed them most.

One lesson I have learned from my career coaching program is that setting aside daily time to challenge limiting beliefs and appreciate small moments is an essential practice to keep me rooted in strength. While the resilience practices shared in that program were extremely helpful in getting me to a better place with my mental health, I realized in reading my affirmations that those two practices are not enough. I need to remind myself to use my power to resist the systems of oppression that prevent me from living a fulfilling life, and explicitly affirm myself each day.

Past Me wrote a particularly poignant affirmation that Present Me absolutely needed to read again. In the middle of this work week, I share this affirmation from my past self as an offering to you, and as a reminder to myself.

I reserve my energy for me.

I do not owe work my life energy and life force beyond what I feel able to give. I am allowed to save energy for the things that are important to me and keep me going, even if that means I use work time to recharge. I am allowed to give less than 100% at work when I don’t have 100% to give, and I need to keep some for me. It is my job to take care of me, and that job is more important than any job for anyone or anything else. Capitalism does not get to steal my life away from me.

Music Monday: September 9, 2024

Estimated reading time: 4-5 minutes

Remember when I used to do Music Mondays? As I’m easing back in to writing regularly, I don’t know if I can commit to doing them every single Monday, but I’m going to experiment with what intervals of posting these are sustainable for me. You’ll see why as you read on: strap in and prepare yourself for a mini manifesto! (Click here for the TL;DR if you don’t wanna read all that!)

Today’s Music Monday features music from the video game known in the U.S. as Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. For those unfamiliar with the game, the player/protagonist is a defense attorney named Phoenix Wright, tasked with clearing his clients’ good names through crime scene investigation, witness interviews, and courtroom antics. It’s a romp of a time, especially if you (like me) enjoy truly terrible puns.

An image from the video game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Protagonist Phoenix Wright is in the foreground, wearing a blue suit with a red tie and pointing his index finger in his classic "OBJECTION!" stance. Behind Phoenix is Maya Fey, a young woman with black hair making a determined pouting face. Behind her is Mia Fey, Phoenix's former boss and mentor. Above all three sits an elderly judge on his courtroom chair, while a giant face of rival prosecutor, Miles Edgeworth, looms in the top right. Finally, spotlit in red on the bottom right, is a faceless figure, forlorn and on all fours behind bars.
An image from the video game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Protagonist Phoenix Wright is in the foreground, wearing a blue suit with a red tie and pointing his index finger in his classic “OBJECTION!” stance. Behind Phoenix is Maya Fey, a young woman with black hair making a determined pouting face. Behind her is Mia Fey, Phoenix’s former boss and mentor. Above all three sits an elderly judge on his courtroom chair, while a giant face of rival prosecutor, Miles Edgeworth, looms in the top right. Finally, spotlit in red on the bottom right, is a faceless figure, forlorn and on all fours behind bars.

This game was first released in Japan on Gameboy Advance in October 2001 and made its English-language debut in 2005 on Nintendo DS. I did own both systems, but somehow I had never heard of this original game and subsequent franchise releases until 2020, when my partner and I played the initial game trilogy together during the pandemic lockdown. Recently, we spent an evening re-listening to the entire original soundtrack for the game trilogy, and I was blown away by how many layers and details there are in this soundtrack that I had never fully noticed during gameplay.

In general, I feel that video game music is not given as much respect as film music has grown to receive, even though both serve similar purposes as just one component of a larger work of art. Much is made among professional musicians about the brilliance of John Williams’ music in many popular films (including Star Wars, Superman, E.T. the Extraterrestrial, Jurassic Park, the first three Harry Potter films, and countless others), and there are even radio stations that regularly dedicate chunks of time to playing film music exclusively as part of their weekly programming. The same cannot be said of video game music (yet).

In a lot of ways, I believe video game composers actually have a much more difficult task than film composers. Ever since the early days of “talkies”, film composers have had the advantage of using live instruments and even entire orchestras to produce their sound; they have always been able to write fairly straightforward orchestral works to accompany the larger work of art. In contrast, video game composers have always had to contend with the limitations of the technology that brings their artistry to the masses.

With only a few channels available to them for sound—and with at least one always taken by the sound effects of the game itself—early video game composers were challenged to create music worlds with limited instrumentation possibilities. Imagine having to write a novel using only 10 different words throughout the entire work; that’s analogous to the Sisyphean task laid out before these intrepid musicians.

I do not mean to suggest that film composers don’t have their own challenges. However, I would say they are the Fred Astaire to video game composers’ Ginger Rogers. Backward and in heels, video game composers have wrestled with numerous other demands on their art form. They have not only had to contend with the limitations of the available sound channels on a given gaming system, but have also been hampered by the tinny, compressed sounds of whatever sound file is imitating the musical instruments whose true timbre can only be heard when a human plays it.

Not only that, but the nature of most video games demands background music that loops indefinitely for the majority of the gameplay, where one user might spend 20 minutes or 20 hours in the same stage of the game. Given the long hours a player might spend listening to the same music, it must also be interesting enough to keep their attention, but not so active as to be obtrusive to the gameplay.

On top of all that, video game composers follow the same conventions as film composers, creating leitmotifs representing the characters, locations, feelings, and narrative themes of the game. Like film composers, they also create music that changes in time with what is happening in the larger art form. And finally, they write on deadline—some franchises notoriously churn out games in rapid succession, and video game release dates are rarely pushed back. In short, video game composers fulfill a million demands on their work to create a product unified with all the other elements of the game!

I could go on about the complexities of video game composition, but I have digressed quite enough for today. Rather than continue blathering on, I’ll illustrate the point with this track from Phoenix Wright, composed by Masakazu Sugimori. Translated as “Pursuit – Corner the Culprit (Variation)”, this particular music plays in the final part of the trial, when Phoenix successfully reveals a witness as the true culprit beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Listen to all the layers in this one track: you have the main melody on the top, the drum beat underneath, a persistent rhythm providing the forward driving motion, a countermelody in the middle voice, a bass holding down the harmonic foundation, and the orch hits punctuating everything over the top. It is an absolute marvel that such a thrilling and supremely satisfying track resulted from the use of only 6 channels.

The whole trilogy’s soundtrack is fascinating to listen to in its entirety, especially if you have played through the games. Various musical themes are brought over as elements of multiple tracks, connecting people and places to each other and yet differentiating them through different articulations and rhythms. Character development is foreshadowed through subtle appearances of musical ideas heard for protagonists or antagonists. The music from the two later games even includes various elements referencing what was written for the earlier game(s), despite having completely different arrangements, melodies, chord progressions, and even composers.

TL;DR: video game music and composers are underappreciated, and the Phoenix Wright soundtrack is an example of why.

Now enjoy it, and try to appreciate all the thought and care lovingly bestowed upon every note!

An embedded link to “Pursuit – Corner the Culprit (Variation)” from the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney soundtrack on Spotify
An embedded YouTube link to “Pursuit – Corner the Culprit (Variation)”

Friday Food for Thought

My phone keeps refusing to run the app my family uses for our group chat due to lack of space, so recently I’ve been deleting old photos (some dating all the way back to 2016!). As I was going through them, I found some old pictures of bullet journal pages where I had been practicing hand lettering using inspiring quotes from books I was reading. It was incredible to reread them, and no less healing several years later. So, I thought I’d share one of those quotes here as food for thought over the weekend.

Imagine that the most effective armor of all is the unwavering belief that you will be okay.

– Pixie Lighthorse, Boundaries & Protection

Hope you all find at least one little bit of this armor that you can try putting on this weekend.

The Comeback

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

I have not posted on this blog in 18 months. That’s a year and a half that I have spent unable, and sometimes unwilling, to share my writing online. A thousand times I have thought about returning to this blog, only to feel overwhelmed by the minutiae of life with no energy left to write. The few occasions I did attempt a return, only trite nonsense and subpar ramblings flowed from my pen.

A few months ago, desperate to find a way out of my current job but not knowing what I wanted to do, I invested in a career coaching program to help me figure out my next steps. At first, I doubted myself—shouldn’t I be able to figure this out on my own? What if I’ve just wasted all this money on a program that won’t actually help me find a path forward? But the process worked as intended: I finally admitted to myself that my calling is to be a writer and creator.

I have no evidence to indicate I can truly make a living from my creative pursuits. I have no reason to believe that I am any more special than the thousands of other people who pursue writing in vain. But I recently realized that when I decided to pursue music for college, I had no evidence then that I’d be able to make money from that, either. The main difference was that, in my stubborn and arrogant youth, I was willing to take the leap of faith and work at my craft until I found financial success.

I am going to take a chance on myself the way I did at age 17. I’m going to trust that I can and will make a sustainable life, as a creator, that I can be proud of. I’m going to love myself enough to listen to what my soul needs and pursue what I want instead of giving up before I even try. I‘m going to start living the life that I have denied myself because I feared that I wouldn’t be talented enough, or make enough, or simply BE enough.

I’m giving myself permission to stop holding myself back. I am summoning the part of me that threw caution to the wind half my lifetime ago, determined to follow my ambition to the end of the line. I owe it to myself to wholeheartedly forge the path I am called to make.

 I’m making a comeback—and this time, I won’t stop until I find my success.

Ocean of Emotion

I was a child with Big Feelings. In a home where expressed emotions were dismissed or denied, I found socially acceptable solace in literature. I could dive head-first into the deepest depression or soar in the heights of happiness alongside each protagonist. Each page of prose transported me to worlds where I could imagine expressing each emotion without shame.

It should come as no surprise then that as soon as I could write full sentences, I started processing my feelings through the written word. There was nowhere else I felt more alive than in my private writings. In my diary, I didn’t have to imagine myself alongside a main character; I could take center stage and be my truest self as much as I pleased. I wrote and wrote and wrote, filling up journals and endless leaves of paper with the me I couldn’t be in real life.

As the years wore on, I had less and less time to spare for frivolous pursuits. Still, I made time in my darkest hours to let the feelings flow from pen to paper through high school and college, even getting published in an online literary journal at age 19.

Somewhere between then and now, the reality of survival in adult life sank in. The self I knew and expressed in writing was no longer welcome as I buried the Big Feelings deep down to get through each day. Day by depressing day, I stumbled through the fog of malaise deliberately avoiding my art in hopes that I could escape the tsunami of feelings trailing behind.

The problem with this is that tsunamis get taller the closer they come. What started as one or two small ripples of feelings turned into an unstoppable wall of emotions I can no longer suppress.

As I struggle to swim my way out of this ocean of emotion, I remember the child who wrote with reckless abandon, throwing caution to the wind. I remember the life in every word and the vibrancy of each pen stroke. I remember coming alive with every emotion that flowed out onto the page.

And I pick up a pen and begin to write.

And little by little, I drag that pen across the paper like an oar across the ocean, rowing through the waves until I find myself again.

The Specter of Despair

[CW: depression]

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Today is one of those days where I exist on the border between numbness and deep emotional turmoil. It’s somewhat counterintuitive that those things would be so closely related; but for me, it’s second nature.

At age 19, a particularly difficult depressive episode of my life caught me off-guard. For the first time, I was completely numb—all day, every day. I felt as though I should have been crying, except that I physically could not. I would blast drum and bass music in my car just to feel something in the ear-shattering vibrations. I navigated each day with an inner blankness, a ship lost without a compass or stars to guide me through the endless night.

Underneath this numbness, I knew, lay an unbearable sorrow. It was so unbearable, in fact, that my brain and my body refused to let me experience it at all. This feeling was so intense as to be incomprehensible, and the result was profound self-detachment.

Despite the seeming contradiction between numbness and emotional distress, I think this is a common human experience. When we have particularly intense emotions, it can be overwhelming to process them. Many of us turn to distractions as a coping mechanism, turning away from the Big Feelings and moving on with our days as best we can. Sometimes this helps, and we’re better able to process our emotions in small spurts. Other times, all this does is delay our inevitable collision with the cascade of feelings waiting for us on the other side. Still other times, we are so desperate to escape from our intense feelings that we simply don’t recognize we’re having them—or, at least, our brains protect us from them by making the emotions unrecognizable. In my case, my brain took this to the extreme.

These days, I’m in much better mental health than at 19. But there are still days like today, where I know I’m depressed, but I can’t feel exactly feel it. I know I’m emotionally distressed, but I can’t articulate why. I live in a state of liminality* where I’m somehow completely hollow while simultaneously on the edge of breakdown.

This is only one of the ways I experience mental illness. It is a constant struggle that never completely goes away, no matter how well my life is going. There is always the specter of despair, just outside my field of vision, that either pulls me into blank oblivion or pushes me into utter devastation.

There’s something incredibly lonely about existing in this borderland. And while the intense emotions and numbness eventually pass, the time in-between stretches farther than the eye can see. Emotions may be temporary, but the struggle is still real.

*ugh, this is such an academic word but it’s the best word to describe it