Senior Thesis

For my thesis/senior creative project, I decided to write and illustrate a children's storybook. 

What I'm most happy about this whole thing is the fact that I was able to come up with something. When I started this, I wasn't at all sure if I could even start a project like this. I do not draw regularly, I did not know how to add color to sketches digitally, and I didn't even know if my plot for a story was even remotely acceptable. We were given a chance to choose whether to do a research project or a creative one. I just knew that I had to choose the creative project route, even though I didn't know if I could do it, simply  because I've always had artistic dreams. Now that it's all done, I'm just really happy I was able to finish a final product, regardless of its quality. Haha. 

When I was thinking about what I must do for my Senior Thesis, the first questions that I asked myself were questions like “What do I know how to do?” and “What do I like to do?” And I realized that it was difficult for me to answer the questions because what I only ever do on my free time is consume things created by others- fangirling or geeking out over them.

I decided to write and illustrate a children’s storybook basically because of three reasons:

(This is labeled Reason #2 because this is the slide I used for my thesis defense, but for this post, I'd like to talk about this first.) This reason somehow answers the question of what I like to do, but it’s definitely not what I think I am good at. It is more a question of what I would like to be good at than what I'm actually good at.  As I've said, I've just always had artistic dreams, so I just wanted to try it out.

For the third reason, I’m not saying that this is something that I think I’m the only one who feels. Everybody probably feels this way. I’m also not saying that I don’t want to be a grown-up, because I do. What I’m saying is you only really feel like a grown-up when you hear that child inside of you whisper to you that you feel like a grown-up. I think that is because everyone will always have a special friendship with the child that he or she used to be. I just feel like I want to tell stories to the child that I was. This project is actually very much for her.

Now, for the first reason. As I’ve said, all I ever do on my free time is consume other people’s work. I like reading books, watching movies, tv shows, listening to songs, learning about history. I like doing all of these things because I like stories, and I love the way that there are countless ways in which stories can be told and that there are countless things that can be revealed through the things we choose to tell.

And why wouldn’t I like stories?

It’s a part of the human being to like stories. Storytellers tell stories because they are humans who have needs and questions, and the stories that we let into our lives give insights that help widen our understanding of these needs and questions. 

The life itself that one leads is a story. It is the storyteller who appropriates and chooses how to tell the story by making choices in the elements he or she incorporates in the story, and by choosing to tell it through the medium that he or she thinks fit. All of these things that are done in the process of creating a story is like aligning a frame so that you give focus to a certain point of view that you want to give attention to. There are novelists, short story writers, playwrights, screenwriters, songwriters, painters, illustrators, children’s book author- all of these people are storytellers, but with different ways of communicating. In a children's storybook, the pictures and the words are incorporated in a way in which both are helping each other in telling the story. 

I'm really happy that I was able to incorporate a lot of my interests in making my senior thesis. It's also so fun knowing how certain things in my life have somehow influenced how this turned out. Pinterest, braiding tutorials, Daniel Padilla, my love for Tangled, and certain songs have, in one way or another, influenced this project. (Do not ask how Daniel Padilla even became a part of that list, it's complicated. Haha). I'm really happy that I went through the process of completely not having an idea what to do, but still coming up with something in the end. I was able to prove to myself that it's so much fun to learn and discover things just as you go along. 

Psychoanalyzing myself is my favorite thing to do

Most teenagers are inclined to find themselves drawn towards a figure they can look up to. Mostly it comes in the form of popstars. I was sixteen when I etched it upon the persona I was building for myself that Taylor Swift was my popstar of choice. Well, I suppose it was because it takes one girl suffering from the special snowflake syndrome to know another. Taylor established herself as an outsider with her guitar as a bestfriend. I was an outsider trying to befriend the pen.

I was drawn to her because of her lyrics. She has said that songwriting has become a way for her to understand her feelings, that there are certain feelings that she only begins to understand after finishing a song about it. I think I fully understood what she meant with this during this one time when I was writing a paper for my Philosophy class. I never really saw the bigger picture of the ideas taught in class until I was in the process of writing about them. (Ang pilosopiya ay ginagawa, you see!)

I used to want to be a writer (whatever that means) until I didn’t anymore because I realized how much I was romanticizing. I still love the written word, though, because speaking out loud is something I never got right. There is probably some sort of memo out there that talks about some shared rules on speaking, but I never got it.

The problem lately is that I haven’t been getting in touch with my self. There are so many things that I can’t confront and can’t tell anybody, not even myself. I can’t bring myself to write because I can’t face all of those things. If I do, I know they’re going to tell me to grow up and I’m not sure I know how to do that.

I turned twenty April this year and I’m graduating from college March next year. Whatever the proper qualification is to be considered a proper adult, I’m more or less walking along the lines of that. Being in the position that I’m in, age-wise, I’ve realized that growing up is about learning to make your world less about you. It is coming to terms with the fact that it has never been about you. In the TV series Once Upon a Time, it was revealed that the Peter Pan character was an even bigger villain than both Rumpelstiltskin and the evil queen. I did not understand it at first. People always say that we should never lose the child in us. But as I continued to watch episodes after the other, it made a bit of sense to me that the one who refused to grow up would turn out to be responsible for a lot of bad. There’s only a certain quality of children that must never leave us, not all.  

I have a theory that I act all shy and quiet and passive because I’m protecting my ego from blowing up. I can’t allow myself to think that I’m any good because I’m afraid that I’ll put that to the extreme. You see, the reason why I dislike myself so much is because I like myself so much. The more you hate, the more you love.

I’m trying so hard to be balanced and stable and to stop being the weirdest person ever and to stop liking thinking of myself that way. I’m struggling so much with myself and I’ve been feeling restless. I honestly believe I know the cure to this kind of restlessness. I have to rest on God. I’m not writing this as a way of relying on figuring things out on my own. I’m only writing because I feel as though I have a responsibility to stop stacking unfathomable feelings up inside me and letting them rot and ruin me. I need to grow up. And because the manner in which I speak words out loud sometimes freaks people out, I think one way that I could stay sane is to go back to writing more. 

Current Favorite Fonts

pacifico  folks sofia amatic learning curve

 jenna sue a song for jennifer

janda stylish script janda elegant handwriting

I don't know anything about fonts, but that doesn't mean I can't express my love for my favorites! :)

I've been held back by something

To make a mountain of your life

Is just a choice

But I never learned enough

To listen to the voice that told me

Always love, hate will get you every time

Always love, hate will get you

I've been held back by something

Yeah, You said to me quietly on the stairs,

Always Love (Nada Surf)

I’ve been feeling like I’m floating on a sea of messiness and irresponsibility. I decided to write here in hope of finding land. (My metaphors are embarrassing, I know, but just let me be. hehe) It’s already the part of the semester when things have a huge potential of driving anyone to insanity. Therefore, it’s really necessary that I stop being such a slave to the lure of escaping. (because that just makes things worse, always remember!)

The reason I’ve been feeling so lost is because a certain gadget has taken over my life! Help! I bought my sister’s iPod Touch a few weeks ago. I know it’s been weeks now, but unfortunately, the allure of its novelty has not faded yet. (But those Line stickers are so adorable, you cannot blame me!)

On a more serious note…

I went on an immersion two weeks ago. I don't know what exactly to make of the experience, but one thing’s for sure: this experience has left me with so much to ponder on. I've realized that...

- There are few things in life that are better teachers than getting out of yourself and your comfort zone especially when you really do not know how exactly to do so. 

- In my life I have come to realize that i'm not much of a curious person. I don't often ask questions. I'm submissive to the way things are. I tell myself that there naturally are absurdities and mysteries in the world that no one will find answers to. But maybe not asking questions means unwillingness to fight.

- I've also had a renewed awareness of my difficulties to trust that people are good, or that people would want to be good to me. I am amazed at how my foster family opened up their home for a stranger. I cannot grasp the idea because if I were in their position, it is certainly not something I'd be ready to do every day. 

I wish i could write a blog post that is less about my little issues in life. Attempting to do so would have to wait, though, because I have responsibilities I've been neglecting. Right now, I have some academic stuff to attend to. My thesis is still lost in a wilderness and can't find a way of getting itself done. I still don't have a clue on how I’ll be able to do what I want to do with it. I also have a paper that I’m hoping I could write really well so that I could somehow make up for not being a very good student over the past weeks. 

-V-

Because everyone is trying to survive the labyrinth of suffering

I know that I’m venturing into John Green's body of work a little late. I’ve only read Then Fault in our Stars a few months ago, and Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns just two weeks ago. I haven’t read An Abundance of Katherines, but it’s on my reading list- a reading list that I’ve somehow been disregarding because the internet can’t stop luring me. Sigh.

In all of the three times that I started a John Green novel, I greeted each with an “i-want-to-know-what-the-fuss-is-all-about” mentality. I have that thought at the back of my mind while reading, so it was like I was on the lookout for something and was very eager to give a judgment. And so, I have these things to say:

1.  Whenever I read a John Green novel, at first, I find myself rolling my eyes at the angst-filled teenage voice of the novels and at all the cheesiness of the manic pixie dream boy/girl stuff that’s going on with them.
2. John Green’s novels have a way of making you feel like they hold the answers to life’s biggest questions.

I admit, although I claim to be a booklover, I don’t usually have a lot of things to say about the books that I read after I put them down. (I’m clearly trying to change this, as shown by the fact that I’m attempting to write this review. Haha) The problem is that I just don't know what kind of criteria to use in making my judgment of what makes a book “good”. I’ve realized recently, though, that a lot of what makes a book “good” in one’s opinion has to do with whether the reader is reading it at the right time for him or her.

With Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns, I feel like I have read them at exactly the right time for me. When I say that the novels have a way of making you feel like they hold the biggest answers in life, what I mean is that they are full of the kind of profound yet somehow cheesy quotes that Tumblr users abuse. They’re cheesy, but they help you keep on hoping. When I read the books, I was in a place in my life where I was in need of a little extra push. I was in a place where I needed to know that “the only way to out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive”. It was a time when I needed to be reminded that “everything, except the last thing, is survivable,” and that we are not "irreparably broken."

I’m aware that I’m not the only one who is in need of those insights. Everyone’s trying to find a way to survive the labyrinth amidst the realities of death and loneliness, the loss of ideals and innocence, and of the craziness and darkness of angst-filled teenage thoughts that are too hard to escape.

The insights of the teenage psyche- the self-centeredness, the angst, egoism, etc. - make me cringe. (I’m not sure yet why, but I think it has something to do with the fact that I’m self-centered, angst-filled, and egoistic in reality, but I’m hoping that I’m not. In short, I’m self-loathing. :p) But even though certain elements of the novels are personally annoying to me, at least they do not fill me in with romanticized, false, and misogynistic ideas about love unlike most young adults novels do these days. 

So, are John Green’s novels and I, in terms of a reader and book relationship, a good match? I may deny this when I’m feeling extra pretentious, but, IN SOME WAYS, we are. The books are a good match with anyone who’s trying to survive. And most people are.

Finally, finally, finally, I tried baking!

We didn't know what else to bake and I was scared that we would just mess it up, so we decided to try a simple Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe from Martha Stewart's website. :)

I break everything I touch. lol

Because she just felt like wearing a hairnet.

Royce!!

the things that i do on a boring summer afternoon

So... what did I do today?

1.) Designed a notebook cover.

2.) Learned how to make GIFs.

and...

3.) Turned pictures that shouldn't be turned into gif into a gif. 

(I thought it was a good idea, but now I'm beginning to think that it only highlights that the design looks better with lesser wiggly lines! Haha. Oh well.)