š What I worked on
šĀ I finished my portfolio website!!!!!
Finally. You can check it out at https://trangdoan.vercel.app/.
If thereās a sugar parent willing to buy me a domain Iāll take it š°.
I did a crazy thing - I turned down an interview offer. Itās because I know I wouldnāt want to work for the company even if I got an offer, despite it being well-paid and flexible and good colleague yada yada.
I was so scared to send that email. Who am I to be choosy right now? Isnāt the job market super harsh? Donāt I want to stay in the US? But it doesnāt feel right to find a whatever full-time job. It doesnāt feel right to invest my most brain-active hours on something I donāt care about when I already have things that make my heart sings. I realized that for me coding isnāt a fulfilling craft in itself towards the end of developing this website. Itās only fun when Iām developing something I badly want to exist in the world. Then I wonāt care about feeling stupid for not figuring out a bug, then Iāll have a good time.
š„ Short-film
My family is going through a mutual grief. Must be a strange year for us because each also carries their own problem on top of this - I got laid off, grandpa is sick, x y and z. Being Asian as we are, none of us knows how to talk with each other. So the calls just end in 5 minutes of āhave you eat?,ā or erupt in an ugly fight if we dared to pry any further. But even without the elaborate emotionally mature conversations, I still know that they care.
I wanted to make some art out of this, but Iām scared. Not only does genZ overshare cringe me, but I also wonder if my brain will go bonkers if I think too much about this stuff šµāš«. But I need something cathartic. I need a way to tell my parents I care even though I canāt put them into words, at least not in a language they can understand. So maybe a short film. Maybe a dance short film where I can get vague enough about what happened but still get to the emotional truth.
I brought this idea to a creative circle in NY. Here are insanely accomplished videographers (theyāve won Emmys!). Itās still unreal that I get to hang out and share creative ideas with them. My ears were burning red as I went through the filmās synopsis - a group of intimidatingly talented people were staring at my most vulnerable emotions. But they held my ideas so lovingly and creatively. Maybe because we abstracted that grief as an āart project,ā we just focused on whatās another way to express this grief. There was no pity, no sense that I was burdening them with my ā¦bad news.
In Forgiving Self, Robert Karen described the biggest challenge of moving on was the ability to mourn fully. "Successful mourning confers emotional resilience upon the child. Future losses can thus be dealt with creatively." Is this why I had the urge to venture into this project? Is this the role of art, to channel the trauma from the medium of interpersonal relationships into a āsaferā medium of fiction? Or so my therapist says š¤·āāļø, I just wanted to sound deep hohoho.
As I got started on it, my friendās bf, whoās a nerdy cinematographer, happened to be in town. I bothered him for an in-depth camera workshop. In a non-condescending manner, he explained all the camera specs that had confused me for months till midnight. My brain was so happy that I remembered giggling in my dream that night teehee. Again, itās so good to learn from masters. And itās so good to ask for help! I can just reach out to experts and ask them how they do it. How nice!
Just brainstorming and inspo gathering for it right now. Send me any of your good recs on the topic.
š„” Takeaways
1. My delulu plan
I only have 2 months left in New York if my job search + visa donāt pan out well. So I decided to be even crazier and go all in. In the next 2 months, I want to try out this experiment of just learning and doing lots of creative crafts, do bare minimum on job search, and see where the universe will take me. Iām going full delulu. Perhaps because so many batshit crazy stuff has happened to me in 2024, Iām wholly embracing āno one knows what tomorrow holdsā, so Imma YOLO and just do whatever I want.
I developed myself a 2-month curriculum based on martial arts training.
Part 1. Drilling
Drilling is a set of small movement combos, do repeatedly, ideally with feedback from a coach, until the movements become muscle memory.
I listed all the crafts I want to learn, break down the smaller, drillable skills from each of them, find overlaps, and assign 1 skill for each week.
Each week, I would pick out some unit from the topic and practice 1 exercise. Iāll get at least one person to give me feedback on the exercise (ideally an expert but peers also help). Then iterate based on the feedback.
The key of this drilling part is (1) Practice, and (2) Feedback. I hoarded lots of typography and design knowledge from books but my designs look š©Ā because I donāt practice. Iām afraid of my designs looking ugly. But for every creative project, the magic lies in iterations. Iterations get better not out of sheer number but because of insights from feedback. When I self-studied for National Chemistry Olympiad or dancing, this was the key inflection point in my skill development - when I slowed down and identified where I got things wrong. So Iāll get someone each week to help me identify even just one small weakness and improve upon them.
Shoutout to Shenghan for giving me many insights on the curriculum.
Part 2. Sparring
This is where stuff gets nasty. Youāre thrown into an unknown opponent where you need to apply the drills dynamically.
The Sparring project will be of bigger scale, less defined, combining different skills. I aim to make 2 sparring projects happen in 2 months. But honestly would be happy if only 1 is realized. The short film above is one such sparring project.
Friendos, you can expect some sprint-like report from this newsletter. Each week, Iāll outline an exercise I want to learn and report on last week exercise + feedback + iteration.
This is week 1, which means Typography. I finished reading A Type Primer by John Kane. Iāll do a layout exercise for a tabular information from the book.
2. Thoughts on unemployment
Itās both scary and thrilling to fully direct myself these days. Thrilling to get to know myself at an exponential rate ā Iāve felt more grounded, alive and energized than Iāve ever been (discount childhood i guess). Iāve also gotten so much more action-oriented. If I have an idea, itās getting much easier to reach out to people, validate my hypothesis on whether itās possible to do what I want to do, and move on.
But itās still scary. Iām still a kid who wants some parental authoritative figure to tell me Iām choosing the right path. Some reassurance, you know. But I had this conversation with Sasha Chapin, my favorite internet writer, where he told me the desire to āpick the right pathā is ultimately the fear to look stupid. Itās true, in the āworst case scenarioā where my current venture fails, Iām still not homeless or lack food security. Itāll just be embarrassing. My parents, as annoying as they are, will house and feed me. Then I can still teach some English, flare my āAmerican educationā in some Asian countries and get an easy pass for a while. My worst case scenario is many peopleās dream lives. Itās quite liberating to try things and fail when I think this way.
š§ Question of the week
How to know when to rest cuz you really need rest vs just your brain making excuse to not do the hard thing?
How to find people to give feedback to you each week?
This is the week #40-43 update of my daily creative challenge, as outlined in theĀ Re-manifesto of this blog. Iām inspired byĀ Mį» - MĘ” vĆ Hį»iās course, Writing On The Net 2 (#wotn2), and all my friends who write and create consistently!
v fun read, great to see how youāre exploring life!
just realize I scored you website in the wrong direction all the time!