[W27 -31] It’s not a bad day till you decide so

I hosted a freestyle dance lab with Ellie on storytelling at Stuytown Breakdown. Since I moved to New York, dancing’s been a bit intimidating - everyone’s world-class, so everyone (and me) got lil’ bit caught up in looking cool rather than enjoying it.

But dance is about fun, especially when it’s a portal to pour something out of you, where words would’ve failed.

We paired people up and threw prompts at them, such as “dance as if you’re in a wedding,” and let everyone burst into their own color of creativity. They paint an extra layer of scenarios - “a wedding of your ex,” “an Indian wedding,” or “a wedding with too many flowers.” I saw people, who were normally intimidated, trying out more different moves, and they smiled. I know! It sounds silly, but in the hip-hop choreography world, sometimes it shocks me that folks don’t smile when they dance. That night was full of laughter though.

I also got to dance my heart out that day. It was a heavy day - I got laid off, and lost all my short film footage, and was homesick af. I let it out of my chest. No, more like I let it out of my hips and arms and legs and torso. Then, I was surprised at moments when I completely forgot how heavy the day was. I was dancing to a love song to myself. Hah, turns out you can have joy even in the worst days too.

After losing the short film footage, I was devastated. The thought of restarting 3+ months project is heartbreaking. Luckily, on one sick afternoon, Allie, Mateus, and I filmed a stop motion, called “The hat that eats everything.” It’s silly and lightweight - the perfect recipe to rekindle the love for filmmaking. I took a while to learn how to do simple animation with DaVinci’s fusion tool. And here’s a free laugh for you:

I went to San Francisco, hoping for a chill sabbatical week. Instead, it was fun activities all week, such as this clown class at The Circus Center.

We had 45 minutes to come up with a script, grabbed some props, and performed for 2-3 minutes. Here comes the story of a pair of conjoined twins, from birth till a 🍌 do them part.

Being funny on stage is scary, but Toby the teacher made it safe. She’s the best hype woman I’ve ever met. Even for plays I didn’t find that funny, if you hear her comments, you’d think it’s the most hilarious, well-thought-out piece ever. It’s crucial to build up confidence in early-stage learning like this. Same thing for dance cyphers. This makes me question though, how can you be encouraging and building confidence while also giving actual, constructive, technical feedback? Especially to creative crafts/ arts, where everything is “subjective”?

P/s: we hope to not offend any conjoined twins with this, or hope that their population is small enough to never find this post 🙃.

I published the moment before memory, my personal favorite thus far. It was written in a very specific time frame, after a sobbing 1-hour meditation session. Acceptance washed over and I just went into deep focus flow to finish this piece in 2 hours. I don’t think other mental states would’ve been conducive to this level of writing.

I’m also drafting multiple blog posts around my lay-off. I find this time to be quite interesting. Of course, I’m a bit anxious about stability with visa and money. But overall, I’ve been much more energized, I’m more hardworking than when I was employed, I value my time much more (saying no to social media is easier now). I now have the freedom to structure my days however I want in the next 5 months, and oh boy did it make me see many ways big C Capitalism shaped my behaviors and thinking. I’m writing about all of them. I get to write each day, and I love it.

In week 6, I went and made this fish clay flower vase thing. I finally went to pick it up, and now testing different designs to put on it.

Here are the 5 prototypes of the design. My roommates vote for the Japanese wave pattern cuz it’s prettiest, but somehow I lean towards the “half salmon skin, half salmon skinned” more. We’ll put it in the living room, so it’s a heated debate. Please help us decide.

1. BACK UP YOUR GODDAMN FOOTAGE!

2. I predicted I’d be on the verge of burnout if layoff happened. I thought so because I envisioned it to be a me-against-the-world situation. But no, I’ve got friends checking in on me each day since, giving me hugs, ready to help me reshoot my films, offering to send out applications for me, and more. I felt my back got by a net of hands. So it’s not a me-vs-world situation at all, it’s me-and-7749-friends-vs-world situation. =) I’m grateful, that’s all.

3. It’s possible to still have genuine joy on a bad day. It’s not a bad day till you decide so.

4. Writing about meditation is tricky, especially writing about a “good” meditation experience. It implicitly sets expectations for other meditation sessions. Maybe I should write a “bad” meditation post to counteract the expectation.

• How to not be overflooded by the fear of uncertainty and financial insecurity while looking for a job that aligns?

• As I’m spending more time on creative crafts, I start to notice the pressure to grind/ make exponential growth/ progress with them. This is a classic behavior of the overachievers who succeeded in school. This pressure takes away lots of joy in the process. How do I de-program myself from the pressure to measure myself and my “progress”? How to enjoy learning things slowly?

This is the week #27-31 update of my daily creative challenge, as outlined in the Re-manifesto of this blog. I’m inspired by MỞ - Mơ và Hỏi’s course, Writing On The Net 2 (#wotn2), and all my friends who write and create consistently!