I actually don’t like talking about myself much unless I can make a vague joke (preferably not at my expense) about my life or personhood. I’ve always been reserved and needlessly anxious since I was a child to some extent or another. I think I’ve developed such a strong fear of rejection to the point of seldomly giving anyone anything of myself to reject. Although sharing who I am as a person may not come naturally to me, talking about what I do is so much easier.
Like my love of creating art and being a vessel for creativity to pour through into the material world. I used to draw and write children’s stories in elementary school, produce music in highschool, and in college I drafted a poetry book. I recently wrote a piece of flash fiction for a national writing contest in the USA (fingers crossed that I win). I still need to work on getting the poetry book published but that takes time; thankfully time is the only thing I seem to really have in the age of rona. Nonetheless, I’m still writing and hopefully I’ll be able to work on the development of another major art project within the next year.
In highschool I studied film production and photo editing under the tutelage of my school’s librarian, who went to university for cinematography herself. I was a Teacher’s Assistant (TA) for her between my freshman year up until the end of my junior year. For those of you who did not grow up in the United States, our school system is broken up into school years (which are often called “grades”) and depending on which grade one is in they will be enrolled in Elementary School (ages 5-10: kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, 4th grade, 5th grade, and sometimes 6th grade), Middle School (ages 11-13: sometimes 6th grade, 7th grade, and 8th grade), and High School (ages 14-18: freshman/9th grade, sophomore/10th grade, junior/11th grade, and senior/12th grade). This year I used what I learned as a TA in highschool to produce a few videos on youtube and those had a modicum of popularity since I was deeply entrenched in the online Dark Academia subculture and was well respected amongst a niche part of that community. I have since left that subculture and video making endeavors to write and share my content on HIVE. Thus far I think HIVE presents a much better platform for my sociopolitical analysis and cultural critique than youtube.
Sadly, writing my pieces to add to HIVE also means letting go of the original video production ideas for that content and shifting it towards purely being text based. I’m considering starting a twitch account in the future and creating some sort of video game broadcasting entertainment that might still allow me to express myself through video. I’m not going to worry about it too much though, because I’m sure whatever I end up pursuing will make me feel engaged, challenged, and fulfilled in the end.
