New Season, New Goals

The last post I mentioned making only 3 out of my 5 goals for the summer. Here's my post on my next few goals for the coming months:

- Save enough money to travel

- Apply to schools/other jobs

- Get fit

I actually had these goals in mind since the end of August when I decided to not go back to school and work instead. My goal for next year is simple: Get out and live life. 

With that goal in mind I can share with you my general plan of how the next year is going to go: work for a few months, save up to fly to New Zealand and stay there for at least 3 months. Then hopefully by September I can go back to school or start work.

Does this plan sound too crazy?

Summer-y

A lot has happened since I last posted on the blog. This will be a little reflection of what I accomplished or failed to accomplish this summer.

The goals I set out for myself were to GET FIT, DANCE, ANIMATE, FIND A JOB, and to BLOG.

Out of all the goals I can say I accomplished at least three of them: GET FIT, DANCE, FIND A JOB.

Getting fit was something that I really wanted for myself. Before summer started I was in school with very little direction and no idea where I would be or what I would be doing in the next few years. Becoming more focused on trying to eat healthy and working out was a way for me to relearn how to set a goal, plan out steps to reach it, and take action. For me reaching this goal was very important because In the past year I've had a lot of trouble with being motivated in school and finding out what I really want to do in life.
I've accomplished running fairly often (at least 2 times a week), strength training in the basement, rockclimbing for 2 months (at least once or twice a week), yoga and biking (I built a bike for around 100 and finished 100km with a flat tire in the last 4 or 5!)

I also accomplished taking one class a week for dance! I've always wanted to learn the east coast style of hip hop so I took advantage of living at home and took class whenever possible. I've taken classes from Leon and Shavar in the early summer and the last half was mostly Vanessa Li in rightfoot. I definitely learned a lot from all the classes I've taken. Sure I forgot all the choreo I learned but watching the select groups and learning the toronto style really inspires me to keep my passion of dancing alive.

In regards to finding a job and figuring out what I want to do in life, I feel like I have accomplished that. Sure I still have no idea where I am going to be in the next 5 years but the path I'm taking is one that I would regret if I never pushed for it. The details will be explained in another post when I have time. here's a picture of the indoor waterpark in the largest mall in North America, West Edmonton Mall.

out of the 5 summer goals I set for myself I have FAILED 2 of them. The animation project was almost completely dropped. It became really tedious and I lost motivation to keep going. I still want to finish the animation, so hopefully I'll find time to put in work. For now though it'll be sitting there waiting to be worked on. The second failure was blogging. I was doing really well until the end of july, beginning of august hit. I missed a whole month of blogging! Trying to organize my thoughts onto a post is really difficult. I have to think about what I want to say and how I want to deliver my message. The reason why I wanted to blog so often is to get better at writing and to keep a record of basically whats going on in my life and what I feel at the time. Hopefully I'll be able to find time to blog more often with less things to worry about right now.

Sure 3/5 is pretty bad. I have failed a couple of the goals that I set out for myself but it doesn't mean I'll never accomplish them in the near future.

Big decisions and summer slacking (written in august)

Recently I've made a big decision to work for a few months to save up money to travel instead of going to start nursing school. It's going to be hard work, but if I can pull it off then it would be an experience that I will never forget. 

There are a lot of things I actually had to think about before making the final decision. Going back to school would have been the safer choice. I could go through school, maybe meet a girl, graduate and work my debt off. I could work as a nurse, take vacations every now and then for 3 weeks and focus on a great career. 

Out of the 5 main summer goals the only ones I've actually been keeping up with are getting fit, dancing, and finding a job.

I've been running fairly often, strength training at least twice or three times a week and I've been rockclimbing at least twice a week. Even though I've been keeping this up, I don't have the kind of body I want yet... getting the last bit of fat is the hardest.

Since the beginning of the summer I've been taking a dance class a week and still keeping up! I haven't been able to film any of the sets I've choreographed yet though.

I have completely stopped working on the animation project a few weeks ago because of how tedious animation is. I don't want to leave it unfinished though so I will aim to finish my project eventually.

***this was a post meant for the end of august but I didnt post it till now because I didnt have a picture to go along with it. I'm just gonna stick the munnies that I finished before on here***

Yoga

This Friday I tried yoga for the first time. Since it was part of what I have access to in the rock climbing gym I thought "why not?" 

I also tried Hot yoga today. I sweat. a lot. 

In my opinion it works as a great complement to rock climbing, especially after. I was expecting it to be fairly easy since I thought yoga was just an hour of stretching. I was wrong... Holding the poses and reaching for the positions were difficult, and balance was an issue for me (I started sweating when doing the downward dog). One thing I really like about yoga is how important breathing is for each movement. 

Poetry Slam

Last night was the first time I've been to a spoken word event at the Drake Hotel in Toronto. They had an open mic session and a poetry slam.

After coming in to the event with a few friends a little early, we were actually asked to help judge the poetry slam! The first time being in a spoken word event and I'm already judging! The most exposure I've had to poetry was spoken word portrayed in movies and Raphael De La Ghetto in Fresh Prince. I was sort of expecting the poems to be too abstract for me but most of the poems were delivered with great imagery and descriptions. There were a few poems that I either didn't get at all or just didn't care about (one dude's poem was about hating pandas and penguins) but overall the poems were great and I didn't realize how much local talent there is in Toronto.

For me the best poems of the night were the ones that really delivered their message. Some of the poems had subject matter that I could relate to and had imagery that really brought out real emotion through the words. Some of the poems had subject matter that I have never or would never experience but through the poems I would be able to understand and feel how the poet feels. Going to the Toronto Poetry Slam was definitely a great and unique experience and I would go again if another opportunity comes up.

I'm going to end this post with 2 haikus by the featured poet at the event, Andre Prefontaine:

Somewhat gay monkeys/
Eating phallic bananas/
Bicurious George/

Zen master jerkoff/
He didn't see it coming/
Jizz in his third eye/

  (oh btw, people do snap to applaud the poets)

Get it over with

Last night I taught at UWaterloo.

I really liked the original song, but it didn't have any beats to it so I looked up some remixes. Luckily I found one which a beat that fit it perfectly and kept the mood of the song.This song has been on repeat the last week, and I made this choreo in two days. I wish I had more of it to teach.

I'm hoping to add more to it this summer and film it. I'm glad I got the opportunity to teach at Waterloo again. It was a great experience.

Summer goals

I've already started working on a few of my goals for the summer but I just felt like I should list them down for myself as reference:

• GET FIT
• run every other day
• strength training every other day
• rockclimbing
• yoga
• biking
• DANCE
• drop in classes once a week
• film choreography
• ANIMATION PROJECT
• work on it at least 1 hour a day
• FIND A JOB
• network
• figure out what you really want to do
• BLOG
• post at least once a week

So far I have been working on these goals, but not as much as I should. My problem is procrastination, but it could also be because I have very little drive to just do it. I know through running and working out this summer I'm slowly learning to push myself to reach each checkpoint and keep focused (which hopefully can be applied to how I live my life). 

The last goal will probably be the hardest because I've had no luck recently getting interviews. I think I'm doing a lot of things wrong so I have to take a step back and reevaluate my strategy. 

Also I'm not sure if you noticed but I've been trying to add a picture or a gif to every post of the blog. Here's another little something from the animation project:

Rockclimbing (and being broke)

I signed up for a membership with an indoor rock climbing gym for the next two months, another activity to add for this summer (membership includes yoga and pilates classes woo!). I've pretty much set my summer up for some personal growth. 

It's been two months since I've been out of school and I still have no job and haven't been as productive as I expected I would be. At this point I think I have to look at what I've been doing wrong. Here are some of the tips I've read (courtesy of an email from a buddy of mine) to overcome failure:

"

I take a breath. It’s not the end of the world to fail. I just need some space, some distance. I need to see the problem in perspective. When I do, I realize that the failure is pretty minor in the grand scheme of my life, in the grand scheme of the world of lives around me.

I reframe the failure. Someone once said there isn’t failure, only feedback. That means the failure is just a point of information, a part of the learning process. I like to say, it’s not a failure of me as a person, just a failure of my method. Which means I need to change my method.

I change the method. If the way I was doing it didn’t work, I need to find a new way. What can I do differently? In some of the cases above, I added some accountability, asked people for help, or looked for inspiration. In some of the other cases, I haven’t changed the method yet, to be honest.

I take the first step. The problem can be overwhelming, because quite frankly we can’t solve any of this stuff overnight, or even in a few days. We can, however, take one step, right now. One tiny step. And that’s all that matters.

"

Hopefully this membership will push me a little bit more to get in better shape.

So far to keep myself active I've been:

- taking drop in hip hop classes at least once a week

- running every other day (or running after 2 days)

- strength training every other day 

I haven't seen results yet. It's probably because I don't think I am pushing myself to sweat enough so hopefully that changes soon. 

Learning Photography

I was over at a friends place learning some basic photography. I learned about Aperture, Iso and Shutter speed. I'm excited to experiment more with what I've learned.

My first photo with a DSLR:

My first photo experimenting with Aperture and Iso:

 Practice with Aperture and Iso

Project Progress

Here's a few rough animations. I'm still learning how to animate as I go through with this project.

These are revolving doors. I created a sequence with the middle doors and learned how to duplicate and resize the same animation.

here's the rough animation with stick figures. after cleaning up the movement of the stick figures I plan to create another layer and draw the animation of the more detailed characters.

This animation project is going by really really slowly... hopefully I eventually get to a point where I'm getting through the drawings faster.

Webcam munny

Hey! a little project that is mostly finished. I just need to fix up some of the paint and lines and get better pictures.

Here's some of the progress, and where it is now:

The image above was the original ideas for the body and heads. I decided to go with the head on the left and decided to change a few of the lines for the actual munny.

 
 

Getting Fit

I've missed a week in blogging! So I'm going to make up for it with a series of mini blogs of what I've been up to in the past week.

Aside from trying to find a job, I've been trying to be a little healthier and start getting fit.

Three days out of the week I've gotten myself enough courage to put on running shoes to run around 6.5 km.  I used to think running was boring and thought bboying would be good enough for cardio, but I've found running 6.5 km forces me to use more energy in the least amount of time.

I have also forced myself to start working out. I dont think I have figured out exactly what workouts to do yet, but I've been doing pushups, chin ups (with the help of a chair because I am too heavy to carry myself), shoulder presses and inclined situps with added weight.

I've also been taking dance classes more often. learning from OIP definitely pushes me to learn a lot faster than I am used to, and the little kids that pwn the choreo also motivate me to work harder. I'm not sure if this is a phase, but I'm definitely going to make it a point to try and keep dance in my life whether it's through learning choreography or freestyle.

me by the end of summer:

Learning basic animation!

here's a walking sequence for a project I started working on:

not sure if I'll actually go through and finish it, but the plan is to finish a 3-4 minute short by the end of the summer.

here are some other test animations I've worked on so far:
- lip sync test
- really crappy first animation

Biking

Earlier this week I went biking with a friend for 76 km. I definitely slowed him down, but I'm glad that I was consistent with my pedaling and we took very few breaks.  I still can't believe he used to do this once a week last year.

I would definitely do it again.

Starting fresh

Finally after a few years I sort of feel like I'm at a point where things can only get better. I feel like I have the freedom and time to find out what I really want to do.