I've been thinking about and reflecting on my various creative processes and pursuits lately, and I started to notice a bit of a pattern. I find my strengths to be in exploring sadness and pain (emotional). This doesn't necessarily extend to what I consume in creative fields and there are, of course, exceptions, but I find that I draw upon darker emotions most, in my lyrics, my dancing, etc.

I have never liked my "happy" songs. I have never felt particularly drawn or emotionally connected to happy or fun dances (perhaps why I'm so terrible at jazz and hip hop). I write characters struggling with "darkness." I prefer ballads, and I listen to what others consider to be "depressing" music, even--or perhaps especially--when I'm sad.

And only now am I really digging into why this may be. At first I thought it was because for a long time, I felt very withdrawn and inside of myself when I struggled socially in school before college. Also, writing was my form of therapy, of getting out my frustrations and sadness and anger. Then, I started realizing that perhaps for a long time, I saw the dark and heavy stuff as being more nuanced and/or complex. But now I see that happiness and joy are equally complex and varied emotions. Additionally, it's not just "happiness" that I struggle with in my art. I struggle with how to portray nostalgia or the way memory has a way of making hard times seem less terrible in retrospect, even as you know how hard it was. There are certain sadnesses I still struggle to write about, too.

I think there's more to it and that it goes deeper, both inside myself and also in regards to how we expect to consume things and how we view certain emotions. Part of my connection to pain and sadness in the arts comes from the ways in which I felt they portrayed so much of my experiences growing up, things I've spent very little time telling people about or sharing with others in my own art. It made me feel understood at times when I felt so very alone. I connected with those emotions in what I consumed creatively, so it shaped my own creative journey.

When I dance or choreograph, or when I listen to music, sadness and pain seem so much more tangible to feel and express--something grounded deep in my bones. When I reach as if something's pushing me or holding me back, it feels real. I can tap into deeply held sadness and pain that I felt growing up. The emotions written on my face are real, and I know how to make it nuanced, how to differentiate emotions and movements. On the other hand, all of my smiles feel exactly the same. I don't seem to connect to upbeat music the same way, and it makes me move and emote superficially. I struggle to differentiate dynamics in the movement or in the music, and it doesn't feel real to me or to the audience.

Real happiness, real laughs. I have the most amazing friends.

I don't want to glorify the dark emotions the way it can sometimes be romanticized in art. They are real and deeply felt, but I think my thoughts are symptomatic of something larger too. Of how we sometimes see happy, smiling people as superficial or fake. Of how we (and art) often portray happiness as a mask rather than something also deeply felt. Happiness is portrayed as being a certain thing, but we don't usually explore what that means or how that feels or how one experience of happiness and/or joy differs from another. We portray happiness as being carefree, as being free, as surpassing an obstacle or reaching a goal. But we rarely portray the small moments. We rarely look at how happiness can be mixed with other emotions. We don't tend to explore the nuance in happiness the way we do sadness. How does happiness and relief over a good test score differ from being with friends? And how does this differ from the larger, deeply felt happiness and contentment that is more encompassing? How does it differ from feeling proud and happy for a friend's success?  Your own success? Even more, we rarely look at how happiness and sadness can reside together and share space--how we can be both at once. We think of strength through the lens of adversity and perseverance, but what does it look like when we're happy? Sure, we have an understanding of feelings like nostalgia and bittersweet, but there's so much more. Feelings that perhaps we don't have words for.

We think of happiness as a cliche in our art. Sure, in things such as writing, you usually need some kind of struggle and conflict. But I've read amazing books exploring different facets of sadness and similar. Rarely do you ever have a fiction novel that explores different facets of happiness.

And all of the above discussion is solely around happiness and sadness as emotions and feelings. When we add other feelings, it becomes even more complex. There are so many to be explored and to express. Ones that I'm not sure how to express creatively or to even talk about. It's like I cannot find the right words or movements or sounds. Feelings are not dichotomous, but sometimes I worry that I make it seem like they are when I am creating. How do you express some of the complicated thoughts and threads in your mind? How do you ensure and build up nuance in your work?

Maybe this is what keeps me from moving forward in my craft. I feel like sometimes I'm running out of different ways to write about sadness in my lyrics. But I'll try to write something happy, and it just feels so fake, so cheesy, and I hate it. Maybe I just haven't found the right way yet. But why is it that I'm so drawn to this and not to something else? Why do I find happy things to be fake or cliche or stereotypical? Perhaps some of it is the romanticization of struggle and pain in art. I don't want to think I'm adding to that.

Because there's so much nuance in all feelings, and we should aim to explore those too, to capture the full range of human emotion and experiences. So I will strive to do better. To be more nuanced, to experience more nuance, to explore more nuance. To write the stuff I hate or struggle with so that I can improve. To analyze my joyous writing the way I do my other writing, trying to unpack my existing prejudices. To keep practicing and creating, whether through writing or dance or music. I will strive to be better, and I hope all artists will too.

Would you guess that this photo was taken after one of the hardest summers of my life? Or that I would fall into one of my worst periods of depression shortly afterwards?

I don't know where to start with this post. I keep putting off writing because I know it won't be perfect, and I always want to put my best foot forward. But I'm going to commit to writing this, making minimal edits, and publishing it in its imperfect glory. It's been a while to say the least. Or at least, it's been a while since I've blogged regularly. To be honest with you, it's been a while since I've written anything that wasn't for school, for a club, and/or for an internship. This is terrifying because I've wanted to revive parts of my online presence for so long. I think I've made some headway on my bookish Twitter, and I'd say I'm pretty active there now. I originally separated this from that by making separate accounts--also because I want this blog to eventually take a different direction--but my bookish Twitter still brings me comfort, some level of privacy (I've asked almost all people I know "in real life" to not follow me there), and some sense of community. But every time I've attempted to revive my blogging, I've failed. I mean, if you only look at this blog, I failed to ever blog consistently.

I've come so far since I started this blog, though. This was supposed to be a place for me to document my thoughts and my experiences. I do regret never being consistent with journaling exactly because I've grown so much and have experienced so much in the past four years. In many ways I'm glad that I did all of that away from a blogging community. It's hard to now try to return, but I spent time with my peers, going out and actually experiencing things and learning and failing and picking myself back up. I'm glad that I only put out small parts of myself during the toughest times because I controlled what I shared, and I also knew I had a real, strong support system. Not having such a system was originally why I became so involved on the internet, from middle school through the end of high school.

Every time I've tried to come back to blogging, to bookstagram, to my online presence, though, I've been flooded with fear. Fear that I didn't have when I first started talking to people on forums, when I first joined Tumblr, when I first started book blogging. But I'm scared now because I built a small presence. I never had a big blog or book Twitter by any means. Even now, people hardly know who I am. But I wasn't invisible either. I have my bookish and blogging community, and I love them so much and am so grateful to still know most of them, wherever we all are in life now. But I had gone through that organic trial-and-error. I had had the space to stumble around, to figure out my own style, to build an audience. And then I left and it almost all went away. And now the online community is so different. Between trends and influencers and algorithms and all that, it's harder than ever to break (back) in. And yet I'm not starting from scratch. The content I post are maybe not perfect and will still change, but they're somewhat polished and refined and thought out and planned. I didn't want to spend all the time and effort and not see any results.

But people have started to realize how contrived and convoluted it all is. What began as something organic has become anything but. And now authenticity is valued, but there's also so much fake authenticity. The kind that is still palatable. On top of that, sometimes we've been so sucked in, so ingrained with all these algorithms and trends that we genuinely think we are being authentic and only later realize we aren't. I think that's what's been hardest for me nowadays, on top of feeling discouraged when I put out content I am proud of, only for a tiny handful of people to see it (and I am SO grateful to those few--I hope I don't come off as ungrateful). Then again, what even is authentic? Can't we have different parts of ourselves for different people? How do we determine which is more or less "real" or "authentic"? Can we be authentic and play by the rules of the algorithm (or attempt to because does anyone really understand it)? And even more so, there are people who knew high school me, and while I'm still the same in many ways, I am also very different. How much of that change do I change? How much do I still conform to my "old" self?

Add to all of this that I haven't written for pleasure, for myself in 3.5 - 4 years. It makes the question of audience and authenticity even more complicated because I don't know, maybe I've lost my voice along the way. Or at least hidden it away. Of course, there are the ways that I speak and write to my friends and family, but even that is sometimes filtered. We all think about audience, even if subconsciously or in a context where "audience" isn't the right word. We inherently know that framing matters. And almost everything I've written has been for someone else's gaze. I think the last time I wrote lyrics was the February of my freshman year of college.

Writing used to predominantly be for me. It was an outlet, one that is different from dance but no less important to me. I needed it because I never spoke the things on my mind, but I needed it to get out of my body, out of my head, and I had nowhere else to turn to but dance and writing/music. Where words failed I had dance, but otherwise, I put it down on a page, predominantly through lyric writing. I think there is so much power in words and in writing. It can also be therapeutic. But for the past few years, I've put writing (for myself) on the back burner. I've put creative writing on the back burner. And now I feel out of practice, and the perfectionist in me fears the blank page. I even fear the therapeutic aspects because I think there's a lot I'm afraid I'll unveil, that I'll have to unpack and work through. I used to trust the words I could put on a page, that I could craft into a song. And now I've lost that connection. I fear not having the words. I fear being too vulnerable in my writing. I fear writing for no one but myself. I almost fear not having that outside gaze. And it terrifies me to try to get all of that back. Because I know it'll be messy. Because I know it won't fix everything but will certainly make me cry. Because I don't know if I trust myself to be real with myself on the page anymore. Because I don't know if it's still in me, even while I know that it is.

Writing, whether for oneself or for others, is like a muscle. And mine has been out of commission for so long. But I miss it too. I long for it. So I'm trying to write now despite my fear of the blank page. I hope I'll be able to start writing creatively again, whether for myself or for others. I hope I find my way back to the magic of writing and songwriting. I hope that it's authentic to me in whatever I may think it means in that moment. I hope I find that part of myself that's gone away for a bit. I hope that it inspires me again, that I find that spark that first brought me online, that first brought me to blogging, again (although I'll need to write for my eyes only as well). I hope that once I start writing for myself again, some of the fear will start to dissipate.

I hope that this next phase will allow me to re-introduce myself. I hope I'll inspire myself and others again. And I also hope you'll see that this has maybe been me all along.

Let's see where these words will take me next.

Morgan Harper Nichols posted the below photo while I was studying abroad in Salamanca, Spain, and something about it spoke to me. I spent much of my trip reflecting on what it means to truly live in the moment, and I also spent a lot of time thinking about the past half a year or so. I'm not going to lie. Spring semester of my junior year was rough. I wasn't in the best mental state. Actually, that's an understatement. And then I basically went right into an intensive, 7 week public policy program at UC Berkeley. Those 7 weeks were some of the most intense and taxing weeks of my life in every way--mentally, emotionally, physically. (Maybe I'll write more about that one day, but that's not the focus of this post.) From there, I had a brief semi-break before hitting the ground running this past fall semester. If I thought my spring semester was difficult, my fall semester was something else. I was overworked, lacked motivation, dealing with serious mental health issues, overextended, still trying to recover from the summer, and working on my capstone project.


So when I got to winter break, I was relieved. I was lucky enough to get a scholarship to study abroad for the winter and used a mix of my savings and my Christmas gift from my parents to afford a short trip to Paris and Luxembourg before heading over to Salamanca. And although there were things that weren't quite easy or totally relaxing about studying abroad or even traveling beforehand, for the most part, I felt as though I was happy, relaxed, recovering, rejuvenating. It truly felt like I was coming back into myself and coming alive again. My trip to Luxembourg to visit a close friend provided me such a sense of happiness and comfort, and it allowed me to slow down and enjoy the moment and being in someone's company. Traveling around Spain and Portugal on weekends during my time in Salamanca was at times stressful but also beautiful and fulfilling. Being surrounded by amazing people (which is not to say my friends at home or my friends from the Berkeley program aren't just as fabulous), I could feel myself loosening up again. I laughed in ways I haven't in a while.

Porto, Portugal

I thought things were getting better. I thought I was getting better, in a better mental state. And then I returned home, jumping right into this semester. During many of the long nights these past few weeks, I've returned back to the above image and quote from Morgan. During a coffee date with a good friend of mine, I realized that travel and these short trips are me putting temporary brakes on dealing with everything happening when I'm normally at home.

We're told that travel is life-changing, eye-opening. And I'll be the first one to attest to that. But it's often a step away from your "real" home life. Whether it's vacation or a study abroad/away, you put aside your usual stresses so that you can take advantage of the time you're spending away. You leave some of your worries behind, although replaced by others for sure. You may be living in the moment, taking it all in, but I think the reason we think of ourselves as coming alive when we travel is precisely because of this. You're in the moment, but if you're leaving behind your usual life, thoughts, stresses, worries, happinesses, what does that moment mean? I don't mean to place a negative or positive connotation on this.

Luxembourg, Luxembourg

One of the reasons I love to travel is precisely because I get to put aside my "regular" life, my usual habits and worries. That's a good thing. But I wonder how healthy it is to use travel to escape when you use it as a way to avoid dealing with problems. In the short run, it may feel great. It may even actually be good to get away, to get some space. However, what does it mean when you're running away from truly dealing with your mental health? What does it mean when you use it as a means to cover up your pain?

I certainly don't have any answers, but as I'm grappling with being home in New York again, this has been on my brain a lot. I want to be able to enjoy travel but to not use it as a means to escape or hide from my problems. I want to travel in a way that actually helps to heal. I think that's when getting away is without question positive and helpful. I want to be able to travel in a way that's a little bit outside of my comfort zone but in a way that will help me to grow without creating new traumas. In the same way I'm working on healing and "coming alive" and being in the moment in my every day life, I owe it to myself to also do that when I'm not home. I want to be fully present, with all of my struggles and pain and problems and all, and I want to be able to find my way through it, with people who support me and help me find that way.

We all deserve this process, and we all deserve to give ourselves the room to figure out what this means and what this looks like for ourselves. There's no one way or one reason to travel. Sometimes we all need an escape, a step outside our reality, but I hope it's not too far away that it just puts off or compounds our problems. I hope that in escaping, in taking that step away, we instead find the room to heal. I hope that we instead find space we don't normally have in our daily life and routines to grow, to heal, to come alive.

Berkeley, California

In an interview for a fellowship this past semester, I was asked what leadership means to me. My answer was pretty terrible as far as interviews go (and I didn't get the fellowship), but I've been thinking about that question a lot lately.

This past school year, I founded my college's first book club. Let me tell you, it was hard as hell. There's so much admin stuff involved in just establishing a new club, let alone run it once it's approved. And I ended up doing a lot of tasks on my own, especially after our first event happened. My E-Board was comprised of amazing people but none of us took the initiative, and I don't think any of us were passionate or committed enough. It always came down to me to plan and organize and then to just delegate tasks. I had so much on my plate and wasn't really able to dedicate myself to ensuring the club's growth, so it wasn't any one person's fault. It was just a lot for us, and thus, the club floundered for most of the year.

At the end of the year, I was thinking about how to move forward. Honestly, I wanted to call it quits and just not reactivate/recharter the club for next year. But of course I brought this up to my E-Board, and they quickly disagreed. They saw the potential growth that was still there for the club and reminded me of it too. In my frustration, I had become blind to the potential. But then came the hard part...

Patrick Tomasso

For some E-Board members, stepping down was easy. Others were more than happy to stay on board. Some club members were willing and eager to take up club responsibilities. But I had to evaluate my own place and role. As the founder and first president of the club, of course I want to see the club flourish and succeed, and I knew that I would always have some form of ownership over the book club. At the same time, I knew that I wasn't committed enough to see the club through, although I didn't want to admit it. I had felt weighed down by the responsibility of running anything this past year, but I thought that perhaps with a better E-Board, all of it could be turned around. However, I also knew that my fall semester would be my hardest one yet and that I shouldn't keep this responsibility. Plus, as I mentioned in my sophomore year reflection post, I'll be choreographing for my dance team next year.

It was hard for me to let go and step down, but the book club deserves more than I can give it at the moment. I offered to take a lower position, but we just had a meeting recently, and I realized that all the positions were filled. I looked at next year's E-Board and only felt a huge sense of relief, though. The new E-Board is comprised of amazing, committed people. They are passionate and willing to put in the time and effort we didn't this year. Realizing there wasn't a spot for me felt like a punch to the gut initially, but I also realized that it was the best decision for the Book Club.

This club isn't just me. It hasn't been since after I chartered the club, got it approved, and got it running. Sometimes, being a good leader is about being able to see your own weaknesses. It means recognizing the talents and leadership of others. It means knowing when to step up and also when to step away. It's trusting others and leaving them with the tools they need to succeed and thrive. Being a good leader means trusting people to take your place and knowing when it's time to let that happen.

I will still have a place in the Book Club. I'm still the founder. I still want to see it grow. I know that it can't happen under my leadership, but I can still support it any way that I am able. And letting that be my role now is both right for the club and for me. I've let go, and I hope that means that I've been a decent leader. I can't wait to see what the club that I started becomes.

What does leadership mean to you?

Please share, comment, follow me on social media, etc! <3

Sunrise on HeHuan Shan, Taiwan.

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Me, contemplating the meaning of life and the fragility of our dependence on the planet, on HeHuan Shan in Taiwan.

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Follow my blog with Bloglovin I've always had reason to look back on memories and think about how we lose pieces of memories as we move further away from the moment. This lack of permanence, this transient nature of memories, is the reason I wanted to journal when I traveled overseas by myself for the first time, and it's the reason why I want to continue to document my travels. These thoughts have particularly come back into my mind as I near my next trip and as some of my friends from Barcelona head back there, causing memories to resurface with a force.

Mis amigos de Barcelona y yo cuando nosotros jugamos futbol (My Barcelona friends and I when we played football)