Happy New Year, and Other Cliches

I know I've taken something of a break from posting recently, but worry you not, I have taken video which I'm editing and will resume posting more normally between now and when I get back to Lisbon and am overwhelmed by obligations again. However, it is New Year's Eve, so I thought it would be fitting in the general theme of reflections on this blog to post some of mine.

I started 2013 accompanying my then-partner to an Alcoholics Anonymous drag show in Dallas and find myself closing the year in Barcelona in less forcedly sober company. The passing of another year feels to me much like birthdays do, an underwhelming turning point that exists mostly to pause and reflect on what has happened until now, a reason to celebrate something and, preferably, enjoy the company of others for a day or two. Yet for all of the differences that the year has brought, all of the changes and lessons learned, I only find myself continuing along a path that started long ago, moving from step to step in a systematic manner that only roughly corresponds to the months on the calendar, finding occupation and purpose in my pursuit at a rhythm that only the adventure itself seems to determine.

So on the surface of things, much is quite different indeed. One look around this site reveals, in metaphorical and superficial terms, the extent to which that is true; I registered the domain and took care to redesign the site to the extent to which I am capable of being satisfied short of recoding the entire layout, and so on. I moved to a different country and learned how to worry about money in a more productive manner. I learned more about what it means to live for yourself as your own person and ended up with tattoos that, in their own little way, represent that. I learned how to get over my inhibitions for speaking a second language and found myself conversing more naturally and fluidly in both French and, in particular, Portuguese than I ever could have imagined. Fluency is something I take seriously, if at the same time discredit to an informed extent now. I visited new countries and new places which gave me a reality check on just how spectacular and fortunate my circumstances are that I am able to do so. I started to express myself more creatively, letting my writing develop and making videos, among other things. I figured out how to eat better on the same amount of money spent each week at the grocery store with just a little bit more effort in the kitchen on my part, and in turn my satisfaction with the way life is going is much higher than it was at the same point of the turning of the calendar a dozen months ago.

A dozen months of phrasing makes all of this seem like a lot, like a marathon of time has occurred, but the reality of aging and preoccupation with the so-called real world have informed me decisively that it is not and never will be. On the contrary, each moment, good and bad, seems more and more fleeting, and the importance of not getting too far ahead of myself seems all the more potent. I look back on the year that was primarily because it is a habit of mine to look back on times past, short and long, and draw something out of them that I can use in my creative energies. Yet I also have taken in part of the lesson in my daily life that the cliche of new year's resolutions tries to grasp at, which is that looking toward the future with purpose and clarity 

On Not Being Full of Yourself

"We were talking the other day and it was noted that it always seems like you know exactly where you're going by the way you walk." I was told the other day that I walk in a very particular manner, and the irony of appearing to know exactly where I'm going as a result is not lost on me. I walk with purpose though, to be sure. And today is all about that.

Since the corner of life and the productive world I have come to find myself in happens to be an area where finding the most diplomatic way to convince others of your value is of top priority, I have reflected long and hard on the place of my creative output in the grand scheme of things and whether it is in vain or to some means. The conclusions I come to bounce around primarily between the idea that although I enjoy my writing and my visual creativity, it amounts to very little and that energy and time would be better off spent learning code or doing something else, and that to some end, it has become clear that little by little, month by month, post, image, video by piece of content produced, my writing (in particular) and my other projects are the things I enjoy most doing and that following in the pursuit of that ideal can take me in directions that may bear other fruit. In other words, I have no certainty of where I'm walking, but by continuing to just do so and do so with purpose, I look like I have all the certainty in the world.

Yes, but what's the point? Let's not pat ourselves on the back or navel-gaze too much.

The idea is simple: it is easy to over-acknowledge the real-world value of the things you do or the skills you have and to put yourself, unwittingly, in that dreaded category of "special snowflakes" or "lazy millenials", the concept of which I spend so much energy expressing myself against. In other words, it is easy to think too highly of yourself and expect greater returns on your efforts than are warranted. That does not have to mean not to do anything, however, and having a certain aptitude for something can be recognized with humility and the knowledge that you can always do better, regardless of what you've already accomplished. In my case, this applies to any number of things, be them my studies, my language learning, my writing, or my photos, all of which I receive comments about, to all of which I deflect by insisting that none of it is nearly so worthy of flattery. I have never been one to take a compliment well anyway, but part of that is because I'm always conscious of the role of you can do better in motivating myself to do anything.

Instead, I try to focus on the technical side of things, talking about what I enjoy and what I'm relatively good at, and work on strengthening things that are weaker. When I have the opportunity to talk to people with more relative success than I do on similar endeavors, I try to have constructive conversations about what they're doing and how they go about it instead of just complimenting them, and when others come to me in a similar manner, I try to do the same. My Portuguese might be legitimately good, but I could be better with idiomatic expressions and prepositions. My photos might have nice color and/or composition, but perhaps I could work on focus and scaling. And so on. Amid the energy you put into something you enjoy, recognition is natural and does come eventually, in my case trickling in slowly but surely from my photos and my writing. It's all in the name of recognizing the merit of the praise of others while humbly suggesting that you could always be a better version of yourself. Any good project should always seem to some extent incomplete by its creator, especially in creative mediums, with some detail or other that could be improved or expanded upon. Mine is no different, and perhaps you, while reading this, feel similarly.

Hitting the Road Again

I apologize for the lack of a post, video, or anything else either Tuesday or Saturday (my tentative new schedule for content), so no excuses about it, and here we go.

Many people travel for some, if not all, holidays. My family and I never really did that when I was growing up, except for the Disney World trip on one of my first spring breaks that instead turned into us going yearly to visit relatives in an altogether different state. This year, however, being my first entirely on my own and coming from a different place in the world as well, I examined my options and thought about where I would want to and could go. I decided on Barcelona because I wanted to visit somewhere I hadn't previously, somewhere I had enough friends that I could stay with them and see the city from a more personalized perspective, it's one of the lowest-cost flight destinations from Lisbon, and because it's not nearly so cold during the winter as other destinations. Sorry, Paris, but I hate snow and temperatures that are in the single digits Celsius. So I'll be going for not quite three weeks, including spending New Year's Eve in the Catalan capital.

The idea that has popped up with one of my friends is to rent a car—it's apparently a cheap endeavor in Spain, so long as you return the car still in Spain—and get to know all of the environs of Catalonia, the region being sufficiently compact in size to take the time to drive around without spending a fortune or necessarily needing to spend the night away from home. If this happens, I'm hoping to also be able to see Valencia, since I'm unsure of whether I'll have the interest or equivalent amount of time to spend in Spain again, let alone appreciate it. I'm just not that roused by Spanish culture, the language, or the collective history, to be frank. I wasn't particularly moved by Madrid when I went to it, although it's a fine place, and that's a good summation of my feelings toward the country. My interest is primarily in regions that have stronger conceptions of independent identities, like Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia. But then we would be getting into the social politics of what Spain is as a unified country and other things I'd rather not discuss on this blog, at least at the moment. Suffice it to say, I have tended to have more interest in other places. So that being said, the opportunity to take some time and really get to know a region of the country is a welcome adventure, because it is out of the ordinary for me and will be something I am entirely unfamiliar with; I speak no Catalan and have difficulties understanding it in writing, I understand Spanish just fine when spoken or written but do not speak it, and we have the aforementioned cultural reference regarding the country itself.

That idea is similar, coincidentally, to an idea that I've had in mind for a long time but for some very obvious reasons have never had the opportunity to do: renting a car and doing a road trip, Iberian-style. I would love to be able to get in a car and get to know much more of Portugal, go through Galicia, see the Basque Country, and beyond. Portugal is somewhat surprising in being a place that really requires a vehicle to see and do everything on offer, alas. That trip will be quite some time in the making, until then, Catalonia will be a sort of test run.

So in the spirit of moving around and seeing and doing new things, of course I've taken my blogging and videos into account. For you, the half-dozen or so readers I get consistently, I have a couple of questions: do you prefer reading posts or watching videos? If you prefer writing, how would you like to see Barcelona incorporated on the site? If you prefer videos, would you be interested in watching vlogs from Barcelona? Let me know in a comment, a personal message, an email, a tweet, whatever way you feel like contacting me.