Ahh.. it’s been a while since I’ve written a blog post. I’m not much of a writer myself– that is, I don’t get the same amount of enjoyment as I do through drawing or playing games– so I struggle with sitting down and writing my thoughts out. You’d think I’d learn by now that I can’t memorize all my thoughts and to write them down somewhere… hahaha.

Note: This blog post should’ve been written in February. The following thoughts were written three months after the event in question.

I am a shy person…

and don’t like putting myself out there. I hate networking. I’m very bad at talking to people for the first time. Although, I’ve gotten better since working at the front desk of my university library in a customer-facing position, so I am grateful for that experience.

Therein lies the problem: I wasn’t raised to boast about my skills or to be confident of my capabilities; I was raised to be “humble.” In other words, I’m-not-great-at-all-because-I’m-expected-to-excel-so-there’s-nothing-really-special-about-me. I’ve been trying to unlearn this mentality and grow confidence in my abilities and skilllset.

Unlearning self-ridicule

I’m eternally grateful to have been surrounded by a wonderful group of confident and uplifting women during my college career, both of which I’ve found in mentors and in friends; every one of them has a quality that I find inspiring. Their constant words of praise, reassurance, and advice has helped me develop into the kind, empathetic, and optimistic person I’ve wanted to become.

As an artist, critiques play an important role in discussing my work, my reasoning, my technique, and what I hope the viewer experiences; confidence in my purpose for creating the piece has to exude from my words and demeanor, all the while being receptive to criticism and accept any shortcomings. Instead of being unsure of my work and why I create what I do, I became determined to pursue topics important to me, not what I think someone else would want of me.

In tandem with all the other events I’ve emceed during undergrad, I’ve grown to enjoy public speaking and hosting events, something I never thought would happen. Honestly, I get terrible stomach aches, anxiety, and stress when it comes to speaking in front of crowds. The constant bombardment (hahaha, not really, but it sure felt like it!) of speaking opportunities has helped me somewhat get over the anxiety. I just have to remember: no one is harder on my mistakes than myself.

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Anyway, to the main event

In my… Excitement? Stress? I got ready on the wrong day, hahahahaha. I spent the whole day preparing myself for the discussion: prepped possible talking points in my head, thought about what topics I wanted to highlight, went over the questions Lendl sent me, etc. The anxiety and fear was slowly building up inside my stomach as our call time drew nearer…

A few minutes passed after our call time… I thought, “Maybe it’s Filipino time*, so I’ll wait a bit more.” Then 15 minutes passed… I went back through our messages only to realize that we weren’t scheduled until the next day. (ू˃̣̣̣̣̣̣︿˂̣̣̣̣̣̣ ू)

* Note: Filipinos are notorious for arriving to events later than the specified time, hence, “Filipino time.”

The next day’s anxiety wasn’t so bad after that embarrassment. As soon as we started talking, all the stress I felt faded away. Lendl was a great host and very easy to talk to!

The topics we discussed aligned a lot with my art practice and the things I would like to explore more, or at least did want to explore more. I’ve been reevaluating my themes because it started to feel disingenuous for me to create “Filipino” works by pulling from random objects, foods, fabrics, etc. from Filipino culture (a realization I had during our discussion). I’ll dig into this more on a separate blog post. I’ve elected to only focus on culture and content as it relates to me personally– even better if I’ve experienced it firsthand.

Here’re the list of questions we tried to discuss:

• What was your upbringing like?
• When did you come to the U.S.?
• What made you go into visual arts?
• Does Filipino culture influence your art?
• How do feel when you hear about Filipinos that work on big projects? Filipinos like Gini Cruz Santos, supervisor animator for Pixar, Leinel Yu, comic book artist for marvel and creator of “Wave,” the first Filipino in Marvel, and many more.
• Do you think we are more than capable as Filipinos to carry big franchise work rather than smaller jobs?
• Being a creative in any capacity is not something parents really would like for their kids. Do your parents encourage your endeavors?

Although Lendl and I have very different upbringings, one thing remained: both of our parents were unsupportive of our artistic paths (him as a film maker/podcaster and me as a visual artist). Admittedly, we both agreed that the arts are, while fulfilling, an unsustainable way to support ourselves. Like many other Filipinos I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, financially stable careers are the priority, not only for ourselves, but so that we may provide for our families.

I’ve been fortunate to have been brought up in communities (Fallon and VB) with predominant Filipino populations and to feel accepted rather than othered. I’ve also been fortunate that my parents did not choose for us to stray away from our culture. Many families force their children to assimilate into American culture to avoid being bullied.

Anyway, from this experience, I feel better about putting myself out there and talking about more personal, non-superficial experiences. I still get a twinge of fear whenever I comment on a post saying that I’m open to speaking about a certain topic. I think it would be beneficial for me to have dedicated self-talk sessions as well because I learned a lot about myself just from that one hour.

There’s so much talent hidden within the Filipino art community, and I hope there comes a time when it can truly shine.

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Until next time,

AVDLR