Why "doing what you love" isn't just self-indulgence

There recently had been backlash towards the "Do What You Love" philosophy, the way of thinking that promotes pursuing your passion instead of financial pursuits or prestige. This way of thinking had been deemed classist and inconsiderate of people who simply cannot live day to day without juggling three jobs to make ends meet, or people who are locked down in their jobs because of loan debt or other crises, among others.

For the most part, I agree. The backlash, as I understand it, targets people who offhandedly attempt to suggest that doing what you love is possible for anyone, and people who don't do what they love are somehow wrong or at fault for having the lives that they do. This is not true at all - it is short-sighted and simply obnoxious to try and prescribe this to everyone and anyone who is unhappy without looking at their particular situation. 

However, for people who do have the ability to choose, I do think that there are colossal merits to trying to pursue this ideal. I feel that too many people feel as if pursuing their passions is somehow self-indulgent, just because not everyone else is given the same opportunity as they are.

I think this way of thinking helps those people just as much as eating all of the food on your plate when you were a child helps all the starving children in the world...

Hint: it does not...

It just makes you guilty, and possibly nauseous.

“I really believe that the world needs more people working on things they love.” 

-Arriane Serafico

When we do something that we love, we simply have more spirit fuel to try and do this thing in the best way we can, and for longer. And we are more likely to be spiritually awake when we do things we love rather than when we do things we feel obliged to do that we dislike. When I say spiritually awake, I mean that state of genuine engagement with your work where you are more likely to think creatively, to think of the moral implications of the work you put out, to feel involved in this work, and to feel like it is something you will be proud of putting forth into the world, when you're at the end of your life. Instead of feeling like a passive cog or gear in a machine that you have no real control over.

Disclaimer: When I say love, I don't mean simple enjoyment, which can fade after your calling becomes your job or when the going gets tough. I mean love as in fierce love - when you believe in your heart of hearts in the value of something, and you treasure it no matter what; much like the love we have for people in our lives.

Of course, it is possible as the intelligent and dynamic beings that we are, to simply choose to have this mindset, to be spiritually awake, in whatever it is that we are already doing. So if you're in a particular occupation or field right now that you don't really particularly despise, but you wouldn't say that it has really been "what you always wanted to do" either, if you're somewhere in between, then give passion a real shot in whatever it is! Get obsessed with it. Learn more about it. Try to see if you can be more passionate in whatever it is that you do everyday, and heighten the experience! And if you are already in there but have lost your passion, try to get it back. Remember, it goes both ways: Do what you love, love what you do.

But if you are, like me, at a place in your life where you're just about to choose what it is that you'll be doing, give yourself a favor and truly consider work that will make this passion occur spontaneously. Skip a step. Get to that place where you can be passionate and therefore make better work that much quicker. It will not only be a favor to you in this way, but clearly, through playing to your passions, (which would then through sheer force of love and will, be your strengths) a favor to whoever it is you would be serving through your work. 

Here is a video from The School of Life (a recent gem I discovered!) that attempts to guide one in one's pursuit of finding fulfilling work. I'm in the process of applying this advice myself, and found it very refreshing and comforting, so I want to share it with you, because I'm grateful that you're here reading my blog, which is currently where my passion is. Haha!

Hope to see you again here soon.

Inside Out and how Empathy lets Joy "Grow Up" (and its parallelisms with Hector and the Search for Happiness)

*slight spoiler warning*

Inside Out reminds me of Hector and the Search for Happiness.

In this film, Simon Pegg's character Hector starts out pretty unhappy even though he is quite well off. He feels very meh about his very comfortable, "tidy" life. He is a psychiatrist and he listens to his clients' stories with emotional detachment. He tries to find meaning in his life and goes traveling, being the privileged individual who can afford it that he is.

I highly recommend this film for good vibes, by the way.

There is a moment in this film that keeps coming back to Hector, when he finds himself under Tibetan prayer flags, and he hears a voice saying that it takes all of the different colors. It takes all colors.

In Inside Out, this concept is illustrated through the five emotions in Riley's head. At first, it seems as though Joy is the only positive, functional emotion. I'll try not to spoil Hector, but at the end of both movies, the lesson is clear: processing, or working with the other seemingly negative emotions is the way to sustain Joy's functionality. We should not suppress "negative" things, but deal with them and let them allow us to empathise with each other, so that happiness can have meaning. 

As children, for us who are privileged enough in terms of where we live, our world is kept small and simple. At this stage, it is easy and natural for Joy to be the only emotion we come across often. But as we grow up, our world becomes bigger. We are made to deal with a lot of uncomfortable changes in our own lives, and we see the state of the rest of humanity. We also hopefully start to understand other people better, and we are pressured more to take other peoples' feelings into account. A lot of people cannot choose to live without these negative feelings as a result of their life's circumstances, or mental/psychological capabilities, or the experiences they've had.

Even though Inside Out and Hector demonstrate the same concept in very different life stages, both stories put Joy in charge, and allow her to work with the others. Joy is in charge, because it motivates us to keep going on so that we can make things better.

 Both stories attempt to teach the lesson that a meaningful life, one we can be happy to look back on, requires us to be open to all emotions and not suppress pain and discomfort when they come. Processing and going through all of them together, "all the colors", and not clinging too much to joy and comfort so much that it loses all meaning. 

Joy in itself is a dead end, if we don't put it in context with the other emotions. We need to use joy to propel us to ease each others' pain, and our own.. But only after we open our eyes and hearts to find out where that pain is.

Movie Rating: 4 STARS. Really cool, but makes me really want a sequel to feel like it's enough.

Post-LDR CaNoodling

Hello blog I've missed you!!! Just passing by to show you this vlog Beardy and I made together. Foodventure Time: Buldak Bokkeum Myeon. It might turn into a series, we'll see. But I do want to start making Youtube videos. Both conceptual stuff and more vlogs like this about our life post-LDR. You know, our life together after being a long-distance couple? Cos yep! We aren't long distance anymore! Beardy has finally arrived (In July) to stay. We're just a regular couple now, making it work.

Today we went to the Immigration Office to extend his Visa and may I just say, what a relief to be done with it! I was so stressed before going, but it all went super smoothly. Our local office was transferred to our huge City Hall and it was really good, fast, friendly service. I feel happy about my city.

We might be leaving it soon, though. It's more than likely that we will move out of the city when we find a place. But Santa Rosa will always be home :) There will just be new adventures to make, new places to discover! And I'll make sure to update you! For 90 days (since the 15th, but I'm only starting the real work today), I'm setting my mind to posting regularly on here and on Youtube. To give it a real shot! I just gave myself a couple of weeks to think about what to do. I haven't figured it out completely, but I set myself to start no matter what when September comes, so here we are!

It's good to be back!

impulsive "honest-to-blog*" life update for other night owls

isn't it funny how much we change as people throughout our lives? how much of the stuff we thought were the shit just kinda make us cringe and toss around at night? in my case it was how much of what i wrote i derived from the movies i watched, which had very particular language that i couldn't really possibly do that without sounding obvious (*Juno, 2007). luckily i didn't try to get away with that or anything, i pointed to them as much as i could. heck, in my previous about page, i took a .gif from Scott Pilgrim, which was where i got the previous blog title from, "Getting A Life."

i recently had a branding overhaul though - okay, maybe tweak is more proportionate to the intensity - over here and that's gone now. what's left is what i hope would be something more central to just me as a person and the messages i want to send out rather than some big event where i get a life; because how daunting is that?! does that mean i don't have one? maybe i'm fine just sitting here and slowly becoming okay with who i am, you know? so yeah now this blog, like my other social media, will simply be called beawilderment.

now, on to other life things...

recently i started shooting a collaborative video project with friends and it felt really good and natural to be tinkering around with video editors. it felt good immersing myself in something i enjoy, even if it's just for fun. or maybe, because it's just for fun. and it sure doesn't hurt that i get to do it with friends.

quote based on a facebook post by Tara Stiles

other than that, on days where i feel like it, i paint and draw, usually words. i'm still not immersed in it as much as i want to be because i usually don't feel like i'm in the right shape for it somehow, or it's too hot in my room, or my back hurts, or it's too hot in my room.. 

it's usually because it's too hot in my room.

but it's been easier to be fully immersed in the little things that make life good. noticing little things when i'm outside that look beautiful. the way people dress, plants, animals, food, architecture... and interactions with people i love. and finding little cheap stuff i want or need like shampoo, cleaning fluids, or pencil cushions, pictured above.

anyway, i just felt chatty and like maybe i want to just take time to share a tiny bit of life on here off-script. since i've decided to really give this a shot i've been feeling somewhat stiff and formulaic and therefore don't really get to do much posting because i have stuff lined up that stress me out. hahaha. too much pressure. so silly. anyway, i'll try to do "organic" things like this apart from conceptual stuff just so i keep myself in the mood for it.

anyway, if you happen to have clicked on this and read through everything, thanks! hope to see you here more often.

A World Where Girls Love Girls

I saw two very young girls at the pool one afternoon, holding each other, looking nervous. The water seemed like something new to them. Like they are to the world. They were new and young and adorable. They looked very different from each other. One was slightly taller and thin, and the other was chubby with a really cute face that reminded me of Rae Earl from MMFD. They looked very different, and yet they held on tight, both needing each other. Both wanting to be there for each other.

It was really cute and a bit surprising to me, for reasons I felt I had to process. I eventually figured that it was seeing an endearing form of sisterhood, seeing them hold on to each other at that age. When I was that age, all I depended on were adults or much older children. And it took me a long while to feel that sort of sisterhood that I read from their gesture. Growing up, whenever I was beside a thinner girl, or a prettier girl, or even a shorter one, which was silly, I eventually somehow learned to want to change or shrink myself. Or otherwise, to feel like I'm the better one. Even if I needed them around me. Even if they needed me around them. I didn't want to be compared. But I ended up doing most of the comparing.

Even though I might never know what made me feel that way, I always felt like I was being compared, it felt like I was being put in a competition I didn't sign up for. But I learned to play it anyway, because it seemed like the only way to go about things. 

This girl is prettier and thinner, but I'm smarter and do this and that better. Oh, but people still like her more... Um, that's okay, that probably means I'm just better than any of them. Somehow.

Didn't mean anything if I was winning or losing whatever competition it was, it felt a bit uncomfortable to be around other girls, it felt bad overall. It felt corrupt. It didn't feel like how a child is supposed to feel. But I felt many things that didn't feel like things I was supposed to feel, so I never got to process this particular one.

Now that I'm older though, I'm more sensitive to clues that point to where my insecurity might have come from. I can see clues when watching women interact with each other, watching men interact with (or objectify) women, even just watching the news, or reading a magazine. (I'm specifying the experience of women here because it's my experience, and there's a different level of pressure given to women by default when it comes to appearances and social roles.)

Everywhere are signals for women to either prove themselves, or to compete with the next woman.. And a lot of signals about a woman's appearance determining her worth.

And a lot of women internalized this. Including me. 

Luckily though, most of this went down before I even considered myself a woman. Now that I'm older, I've learned to celebrate other women's triumphs and encourage their happiness, and genuinely care about them and love them and come from a place of support. And if I do feel jealous at times, I always try to pull myself back, take a breath, and let things that inspire me in, while letting the rest just fall away. I'm still able to be critical of things that need to be critiqued, but I try my best to check if it's coming from a place of jealousy or sexism now. (some people still interpret my criticism of things as me being jealous of course, but that's from their own internalization of this competitive culture among women.)

But being a young girl in a world like this can be really tough. I always feel a tinge of hurt when I see chubby girls get teased, when they grow to be bitter or sassy as a result, and receive more ire and criticism for dealing with it that way when they probably can't help it. (They're kids! I mean really..)

But now that I'm grown up, I can sense a huge wave of change taking over. The good thing about the internet age is that you can surround yourself with information you want to be surrounded by. I surround myself with positive messengers of love, people who see through the double standards the world puts on certain people, and try to be equal and inclusive about language and representation. It feels encouraging, inspiring, and I aspire to be this kind of voice in the world. And it's reassuring to see the next generation of parents be this way. Most of them anyway.

But after logging off, it's of course, a different story. In my day-to-day life, and media that I don't get to pick and choose (and what most people are exposed to by default) the inequalities I faced as a kid are still rampant, widespread, and most of all, unrecognized and unchecked. To me, that is the worst part. When a horrible thing is normalized, it makes otherwise well-meaning but not very critical people vulnerable to its influence. I see many people I know doing things and saying things that I now see are symptoms of a society that lets oppression run free, so long as you have a certain kind of conviction or you pay the right price.

And this isn't me putting groups against each other, because I often see, for example, women policing other women's clothes, life choices, appearances, and therefore being complicit and even contributing to their own oppression. Or in non-gender-specific sense, people selling their votes to people who will just perpetuate the kind of dysfunction that puts them in that place where they need to sell it anyway. 

In the end, it's not any single person's ideas about the world, but a general culture where any person's bad ideas about the world are left unchecked, uncorrected, and even promoted, perpetuated, even institutionalized. Because the human species is a social one. We need each other to learn. We need each other to help more people. We work in groups, we have an innate need to touch each other's lives. And we will save SO MUCH MORE TIME in cooperating if we stop trying to control each other, boxing people up in clear-cut groups, or ostracizing those who are different (and, ehem, policing and obsessing over other people's sexual lives and bodies hellloooo?!), and start taking advantage of our differences and nuances to see how they positively contribute to the whole group. Because this is how we can stop children thinking something's wrong with them and growing up to be people focused on doing things and getting out there into the world, rather than trying to change themselves. I sure could have used that growing up.

So I guess, if you're new to this whole feminism thing, the takeaway is to check yourself. Before saying anything bad about a female celebrity, or your daughter's friend, or your cousin's new girlfriend, think about three things:

1. Would I be spewing this garbage if it was a man?
2. Is it my business or responsibility to say this piece of ~information~*
3. Did I take the time to get to know her as a person and not just how she appears (or is marketed/covered by the media) before making conclusions?

*term used loosely

And as a bonus, some proof that we are meant to cooperate as a species!:

I want to wake up someday in a world where the people I care about no longer project their insecurities on each other by bringing them down, and therefore encouraging more insecurity. I want to put the sense of mutual support and love I saw that afternoon from those two girls in a jar, to save it, to remember it, so I will always remember what to aim for. 

Two-faced Hope

Each day is like a bite-sized summary of how my life has been as a whole (at least, so far). I entered this world with my eyes full of stars, with my head held high. My conviction and confidence clear and solid and easy to see. But that was back when the world around it was still hazy, and I understood little. A hazy, misty, blissful, blue dawn. I was a streak of black ink; brazen, bold, standing out. But the background doesn't stay hazy for very long in anyone's life.

We start learning things; seeing the world around us. How big it is, how small we are.. How little we can change. What's worse, it becomes clear how hard it is to stay in control as we grow up and build habits, good and bad. And how much of living can become automatic and prescribed and inauthentic.

 The world is coming clearer to me in streaks. A sunset so full of color and vibrancy. My voice, once so strong, turns into an uneasy whisper. My hopes become like smoke, dull among the brightness of all life. 

They say happiness is all about managed expectations. And my hopes were too high yet empty. I dreamt of ziplines so high that where I am now, starting from the ground to make mounds from the ground to step on instead, seems so unexciting. But mounds of dirt can make hills, and maybe even mountains someday. Mounds of dirt are what makes ziplines even possible.

I was too sure in my blindness, too complacent in that hazy view, that now that things are clearer, the vibrancy of the vast sky brings me fear. I don't want to be afraid. Instead of being weak and quiet smoke, I want to become a cloud. To ride the sunset and to be a part of the vibrancy itself.

A homebody's home-buddies. (Cute .gifs ahead!)

I discovered that my s4 (mom's hand-me-down, thank you so much Mama, changed my life) has this really cool camera mode called "Animated Photo" which essentially, makes gifs by picking areas in the picture you want to move while leaving the rest stationary. Only catch is, The output files are freakin' huge! So you might have to wait a bit for these to load. Leave them in the background or something!

This was the very first one I made with it and it's made me want to go to the beach or some other body of water so I can make more water .gifs! They are so relaxing. Although maybe not like this, from a tap. Makes me feel a bit anxious actually, especially with the recent water shortages. SOMEONE TURN IT OFF OH MY GOD.

This one I find to be super cute. It captures my little cousin Fheebo in his element. Bubbles make him scream and squeal. He's too excited about them! I love the way he pokes them mid air. bluplupblubup. blup blup.. blup blup!

Shortly after Fheebo's bubbles ran out, my brother Jaro comes home and Sansa excitedly welcomes him. Jaro, being the smart psychologist that he is, decides to wait until she calms down before acknowledging her. Luckily it happens within the 5-second window that the cam mode allows and I get to capture it! I love that she just plops down in front of him even though she's still really excited. 

"OKAY OKAY I'M CALM I'M CALM!!! PET ME NOW PLEEEASE ASDKJASFKAJL"

Anyway I'm officially a homebody now that I've quit my tutoring job, but weirdly enough, I've been going out a lot more ever since! I've been trying to be more outgoing and less... afraid of everything. I'm going to just immerse myself into music, art and introspective writing (and other things those things inspire) during this time while waiting for ~the big move~ which I might talk about later. I might need some spending money though, so I still have motivation to create stuff! Anyone of you who like my stuff at this beginner stage of style-discovery (haha it seriously surprises me that people like them at times, but in a really good way!), you can send me a message or email if you want a handwritten quote, an artwork or anything like that! I'm going to pour myself into just this. Just being this, just doing what I love doing. See where it goes from there. Start where I already am.

I'll try to be here a lot more too, this is where I want everything compiled after all! Because where else would they be if not here? (Tumblr, probably if I'm being honest.)