I wish I knew exactly why I stopped my intense writings and spoken words. It was the most relieving form of expression for a period of time. I was searching for something with so much passion. Trying to discover who I was and spoke my individuality, my creative mind, my love for ambition and inspiration.

I hate to write this and admit to it but I think I stopped because I fell in love. I couldn’t write about it because I found it so difficult to express. My desire to express my feelings drifted away and my passion to speak found its way in my partner. I slowly realized that writing things that were important to me weren’t important to write about. It sounds terrible, but maybe I don’t want to show off the intensity of my love anymore. Maybe I still haven’t taken it all in and reached the point to reflect on my experience with being in love with someone else and having it in return. Maybe I’m not ready to be open about the ups and downs, simple beauties, companionship, brutalities, childish gestures and mind-readings. There are too many magical subjects to write about that I don’t feel any of it necessary to share. Maybe not yet. Maybe another time.

Until that day, i shall practice things i like doing.

A friend of mine whom I hadn’t met up with for a year said to me, “member when you were ambitious?”
I paused for a moment, not knowing if I should respond with offense or agreement. I said, “I’m always ambitious. I’m coming up with ideas at work (contracting at RIM currently). I’m trying new things, presenting new ideas.” I think that response wasn’t with offense nor agreement, it was with comfort.

I feel like I’m in a comfort zone right now. I’m going to work for 8 hours, to a renowned telecom company, working on ideas that can make me stand out as a designer. I live with my boyfriend who I fell in love with in the first week we met and I feel like my life has settled down. I had no idea when you find love, a whole lot of things change. Your core becomes shared with one other person who becomes part of you. I had never had that but always longed for it. I was in the search for that one interesting worthwhile person. So I have it now – now what?

I doodle. I started doodling since last December and it seems to be my first hobby, because I don’t do it for a reason. My boyfriend was the main reason I started doing it. His encouragement kept me going.

Who am I now? Where is my ambitious self? That daredevil who was after something big. My gut answer is, “I’m always ambitious”. Because I know I’m driven. Time will tell where I belong in this world of innovation, cusp, peek, breakthrough, disaster, instability, confusion, chaos, leadership, youth, technology, internet, mobile and CHANGE. I’m comfortable right now with the new relaxed me that doesn’t feel responsible to be a social leader, change-maker, agitator, mover, shaker, button pusher. I feel happy to snuggle and eat dinner with a smile every night. I’ve found peace in the other, even though it’s scary sometimes. And by that I mean the feeling of being strapped to comfort.

Is that the new me? Well it’s updated enough for now!

It’s good. It’s in our nature to be this way. Afterall, we were given a brain for a reason – to define our own reality, to adhere to safety.

Seek beauty in people and places that don’t advertise their perfection. Try looking for imperfection – you’ll find reality there. Remember me when you find it and smile. =)

My first failure in my mind was when I stopped pursuing becoming a professional basketball player. It was a very rough transition from highschool into design school and re-motivating myself to pursue a love in a future of graphic design.

My second failure was reaching the level of graphic design I wanted, which was probably when I didn’t get a response from Bruce Mau when I applied to the studio with my heart and soul on the line.

My third failure was when I branched off from the industry of graphic design and desire to be a top-notch graphic designer to establishing some kind of an enterprise with an empty storefront in a neighbourhood and then failing to build a website that it evolved to.

All three of those failures took so much out of me. Like I had to re-motivate myself to believe I am capable of something else. Something that all my previous failures taught me: pick it up where you left off.

Motivate to evolve. Evolve to be at full potential.

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“Never be a nut without a kernel. Empty form will not conceal the ugliness of vanity. Never wait for chance to come to you. Wait for it to come to someone near you, and take that one.

Never design if you wold rather move mountains.

Never accept help when you can get paid for doing it yourself.

Never compete against a superior designer’s manifest skill. Hire her for it.

Do not be distracted by the look and feel of money, else you leave yourself without the means to make it. Focus, rather, on the designs at hand, and trust no one.

Never eat cake while you still earn rice.

Never lose an opportunity to state your name, describe your business, and explain why you are the right designer for any job anyone can think of at that moment.

Never shovel coal into a steam engine when you can feed hay to horses.

Never be civil to those who don’t deserve it, especially when witnesses are liable to record insincerity.

Never promise to complete work at a certain time without being sure the client will believe your future excuses.

Never trust a vendor claiming to sell at cost.

Do not accept advice as a map behind your eyes. Do not let others drive your thoughts. Rather, spread their advice on table, in quietude, and study its wrinkles, contours, and latitudes. The map of their advice has borders. The table has an edge. Stand above these representations of the bordered world and awaken to your own masterful perspective. Most people don’t know what they’re talking about.

Avoid speculation for worry’s sake. Invest in the strategy of your own gain. Save for the inevitable betrayal by close allies and banks.

Never forget that if you appear faithful to your friends and family, you will have forgiveness forever.

Never give a client your home address.”

I put aside my “making a point” mentality to pursue the daily grind, fitting the standard and establishing myself as a graphic designer. You know, the one that goes to school for it and works in the field after. My point is, it’s just like any other field of education. I didn’t go to school to be an artist – I went to school to give people exactly what they want, to work for people who make decisions and tell you what to do. I’m not complaining here. I make a living off of type, colour and image and I have no problem doing it. I just feel so empty when I do it. Like a sell-out to my creative potential by working as a graphic designer (it sounds lame, but it really is how I feel). Maybe if I worked another job for the daily grind and applied my creativity to a hobby or my own creations, I wouldn’t feel as empty – who knows. I can’t go backwards. I have to see how long in this industry I can last and discover who I become on the way. I need to tell myself that I will evolve and continue to have a spirit for making things that matter to me.

I’m writing this post to remember that I’m not EMPTY. I care about making a point. I care about my own view of the world and expressing my thoughts just to feel alive. To matter. To practice. To grow. To make stuff I can later reflect on.

Sure, making money from what you go to school is important but what’s more important is applying yourself to society, taking risks and not being afraid of sharing it with everybody.

I don’t know who I want to be, where I want to go or what I want to practice, but the passion and the thrill to rebellious fame that I feel from observing graffiti writers and so called street artists has some kind of rawness that connects to me. I don’t intend on becoming a writer or a street artist but a communicator that gets people’s attention, which in itself makes a community of like-minded people that can together create a movement, like Banksy and his peers that came together and made a point with their film.

I don’t even know what exactly I’m inspired to do but I’m proud of myself to be inspired. It’s hard to be inspired when you’re doing the daily grind.

It’s like putting your life’s tune on loop until your battery dies.

Art is what you make it. Fame is how far you push it.

I’ve spent almost 24 years being inside a female body, not that I would trade it for a man’s, but I feel that by just being in this body, I have some sort of power over the man if I speak his language. Men have their own vocabulary for relating to one another. I’ve been in male circles where I’m the only female and I feel like being somewhere inbetween a male and a female in terms of presentation is what forms a subtle form of respect – a brotherhood welcome to the family of men. I’m not saying that men generally disrespect women, but a male to male bond is in my opinion, definitely stronger than a female to female bond or a male to female bond, in terms of being comfortable and not judged all the time. The key to being a respected woman as a woman is, well, spending their life not trying to look the image of a woman. I get it, it’s harder when you’re considered physically unattractive, having features that don’t fit into the whole “beauty” category. I understand how that feels because I’ve made a few changes to feel better about myself. It’s not completely bullshit trying to look beautiful, but pushing it further with makeup, clothes, hairstyles, is pretty exhausting and can actually diminish you as a human being. Why consume so much and fear judgment by the world of beauty? I don’t even think beautiful people think they are beautiful, because they’re constantly changing their look to feel more beautiful. I think it’s worse than a drug.

Anyway, my point is…I’ve always hated the woman cliche, even the most feminist, woman power, dog-eater kind. I don’t think I’ve ever had a woman completely understand me because as young girls growing up to be adults, their entire life is either surrounded around pleasing the man or getting the man or talking about the man, or it’s about being beautiful and powerful and how as women they have less rights. I can talk, relate and express myself in that language but I’ve always felt more comfortable talking to males because men are the ones that need to be understood, not women. We know enough about the female beauty and their strive to be powerful and successful, but still, women need to really be able to bond with men beyond the lust level.

Some examples of this are gangster female rappers, the really good ones that are very few of. Or even a female graffiti writer, dj, b-boy, comedian, film director, athlete (well, i don’t think any men will ever look at a woman athlete the same way they do a man) – you know the fields that create adrenaline, that really require guts and a liberated, powerful, open-minded level of connecting to male audiences. Men will not respect women trying to step into the game unless they are down with the game. Some of it may require some physical abilities, some visceral, some sexual, some breaking the taboo, breaking the stereotype, learning from the best. I don’t even know if any of this means anything, but I’ve been observing it and experiencing it since I could make sense of the world.

I never wanted to be a beautiful woman. Never aspired to celebrities. Never wanted to look a certain way. I just always did what I wanted to do for myself, not for anyone else. Sure, I respected people’s feelings and wanted to help people (I still do), but I never wanted to be someone else. Any woman I looked up to disappoints me because I don’t think they’re cool enough. Does that sound lame?

Men are just cooler. Women are looked as objects. That’s just the norm. So what I think women should do, or what mothers should do to their daughters, is push them to be cool, not beautiful or sexy, just pretty fucking cool, so the men respect them. So they bond with boys, so the taboos disappear, so they have potential, so they can grow to a matriarchy and be as cool as men.

I think that’s what men want too, maybe intuitively, because they love the ladies being lady-like.

I don’t think being a lesbian is the solution either. Homosexuality isn’t about the sex, it’s just about connection. So if you do want to connect with the opposite sex, you must get as close to it as you can to really understand it. I’m all for having a family, raising kids etc, because the biological need to reproduce will hit you at some point. I don’t think however aiming to have a family, finding the right mate, aiming for the income, is how you should design your life. If you just do things you do because you are open and free and thirsty for personal growth, along the way you will meet that person that you won’t want to let go of because they will make your grow even more. And that’s when you even start thinking towards a future of reproduction because two will become stronger than one, and together you are a new beginning.

I was caught up for a few years, trying to prove to others that I’m capable of doing something big. And with that mentality, I went forward pretty fast. I’m silly. I look at my life the last few years and I see the energy I had bursting from my brain, so lost and insecure, so focused and ambitious. I was willing to take the leap of faith for emergence. That’s what school did to me. Now that I have the tools, the skills and the time, I can grow as a professional “whatever”. I’ll design for a living but I’ll aim for being an artist for myself.

New place, new life, new age – my new thoughts are taking time to soak before they take form drastically again. I’m a woman with more energy for living a happy, (up and down) balanced, fun and compromising love life, than I’ve had for anything else. It’s like a new side of me that needed to be explored – part of growing up I guess. It’s like the intensity of how I feel makes me more real. And because I like the realness of how I feel, I go along with it to learn and grow.

The artist in me that he has brought out in a new form: GAZOODLES