Week 6: I Think I’m a Fair* Person.

I wasn’t before.

*I mean the carnival.

This week wasn’t what I thought it would.

For Et al Orbit I wasn’t able to get much done as my school had some events that took up class time and preparation for the break (I had to turn in my camera 😥).

School

We’ve started after-school theater rehearsals which are, honestly, quite delightful. I don’t want to say it’s a lot of play, but it’s something that I looked forward to every day. Whether it was people not knowing choreography, creating little dances and inside jokes, taking photos, and singing and acting, everything was great.

Schoolwork was a lot though. I don’t want to drain on, so I won’t talk about it here. One thing that I will get to is my focus this week.

Relationships

I think I got better with relationship-building from my last blog post. I think I was much happier as well. I allowed myself to laugh more.

Sometimes I get quiet though. I would be in a large crowd, or with friends and family, and all of a sudden I would get quiet and stare off into a serene space. I felt like I had lost energy, but not just that, I feel like I had just needed a short break. Does anyone get like that?

There are some moments, small and minute, where you just don’t feel like talking and embrace what’s all around you; moments where you need a break. And if I look at myself a month ago, I would have condemned it, almost saying that it’s a problem. Maybe I’m beginning to embrace the minute moments where it’s me and the world separate from each other and somehow analyzing one another.

I used my iPhone camera for this shot.

The Fair

Weeks ago, when my school would have trips to the fair, I would tell people I wasn’t a fair person. The rides weren’t for me. The food. The atmosphere. It just wasn’t an experience that I would enjoy as much. Nope. I was wrong.

I loved the fair.

My Cousins.

Now, I’m not saying I would go all the time, but the rides, the food, the atmosphere, and the people I was with (and the ones I met along the way) made it all so enjoyable. It was an experience that I would have never really thought of doing.

I highlight my evening at the fair because I believe I’m an open-minded person. I think that I’m up for any adventure. Why would I say I would never go to the fair a couple of months ago? My time at the fair revealed a blind spot that confronted my idea of who I was. Maybe I’m not as open as I thought I was, but this was a start.

Meadow

I worked on it some. I have storyboarded an animated sequence in the film and designed how the characters would look in this animated realm. This coming week I will animate the whole sequence and I will, in fact, I MUST put it on YouTube to show the world my progress (thank you Austin Kleon).

Entertainment

Oh, my word!

People and their creations are spectacular. On the plane, I watched Everything Everywhere All At Once and it was beautiful (I never got to finish it). There were some portions when I thought it was too much stuff to keep up with and a bit messy, but others where I found myself invested and screaming on the plane. It was funny, dramatic, and heart-wrenching. I don’t have a final verdict because I’m yet to finish it, but while tearing up at the rock scene and others, I took this down in my commonplace book:

I know you see yourself as a fighter. Well, I see myself as one too. This is how I fight.

Everyone needs Waymond. I was screaming on the plane.

I also watched part of this series on YouTube called HACKING GOOGLE. Brilliant animation and sound. Brilliant story. The people at Google, specifically the TAG team, are intelligent, not because they’re able to get rid of international hackers, but because they learn and rebuild their system’s architecture after a situation. These people are brilliant learners and if there’s anything to take away from the episodes I’ve watched so far, is that I should learn after every failure and every triumph, but not just learn, redesign my mental structure to account for similar threats in the future.

Reflection

This week was a rollercoaster, but more specifically, I week of learning. Not just from the pieces of art that I take in, but also from being more self-aware about blindspots that I may have. I feel like I’m starting to lose focus on some things. I used to think I did well blocking out distractions that keep me off my path, but now, it feels like those distractions are almost intensifying. Maybe it’s time to rebuild. I’ll tell you how it goes.

Thank You. Have a nice day.

A view from the top (of the fair).