kattalkingslow

[kattalkingslow]

Chapter 24

5 August 2018

I’m not sure why but it really feels like a new chapter of my life is starting. Like an era is over and a new one is about to begin and I’m embarking on this adventure.

I think it is in part because a lot of things that were in my life during college, all the noise and all the extra sounds that were essential in that season of my life but no longer necessary, are all gone and I am left with in a strange way the bare essentials. I need to work with the bare essentials.

Those things revealed themselves to me everything that I was but did not see or remember or know or understand, and I think it was a shaking of sorts. All the leaves fell of the shaken tree and what is left is shown, the things that matter and the things that remain and the priorities and things that (healthily or unhealthily) took root in my life without me even noticing.

Wow, I know so little. So, so little.

In a weird way, I wonder whether I should be starting something new, putting an end to this blog and seeing what is next to happen. I’m not sure why I feel this way, but I’m wondering whether I should do it. I don’t know if I want to let it go, and yet I feel like it is time.

(like a lot of the other things in my life)

Finite things are actually very beautiful in my opinion. Things need to have an end. Like series that keep making spin offs when they should have just stopped it at the first season because that was enough. Don’t overwork your art, I used to hear from my art teachers. 

In the same way eternal things are very beautiful. It is ironic because I feel like the finite things in this lifetime are so beautiful precisely because we want to preserve the permanence and infinite-ness of that moment and thing.

I had a wonderful week, and today was very touched to see so many of my friends whom I had not seen in a while, and even surprised by a friend whom I hadn’t seen in a very, very long while and is very near and dear to my heart. It makes me realize just how lucky I am, or maybe not lucky by definition, but very grateful that there is that kind of grace and love in my life. 

What are the things that matter in your life, Katherine? Think carefully.

Because a lot of the things in this life are going to be finite, something preserved in an infinite memory, but there is an eternity out there. 

[kattalkingslow]

Freelance Woes

15 July 2018

So frustrated with this current freelance project right now. Is it that I’m not competent as a designer? Is it the client’s demands? Is it communication? All of the above?

In part I really want to finish this project so I don’t have to think about it anymore, but in another part, its making me question my abilities as a designer. 

It’s definitely true I don’t have enough experience, but again, is it me, is it you? 

I don’t want to blame people because I feel like that’s a bad habit of mine when I am frustrated -- I become harsh and prone to blame the other person for my own frustrations. But I feel like I’m stabbing in the dark with this client -- a minute she is saying “design elements”, and then, after I design something, she’s saying what she means is “spot illustrations”. She’s telling me she doesn’t want to put the interior in until we have the “spot illustrations” done, but then we don’t get a sense of the book as a whole. I’m blindly designing for a client who isn’t sure what she wants and then tells me later on.

At the same time, I don’t have enough experience to know and feel as though I have the authority to say, “No, I need the interior right now; it will help me picture the whole”. This lack of confidence is really going against me. Similarly, I think the fact that I come from an arts background is strangely detrimental, because I realize that clients sometimes want something that is terribly designed and my whole body screams against it and tries to go the opposite direction, but at the end, it’s their project. 

Please, that’s an ugly picture. 

[kattalkingslow]

Wind

14 July 2018

The world’s a scary place out there. Thinking of all the little things I fear in my life and how they affect me, even if they don’t seem so big and you know it, it’s still there and it eats you up. Like the feeling of failure and rejection and inability and doubt.

Having a lot of doubts about my own design capabilities, and this is just something I have to come to terms with. No one can fix that mentality, and no matter what people say to me about my ability, if I don’t believe it then I won’t ever feel that it is enough. 

I am not defined by those things.

What am I defined by?

I’m realizing that maybe God is allowing me to be in a place of slowness, in a way where I am meant to focus on art right now instead of “ministry” or “faith” things. When doing ministry, it gets confusing on my part -- in many ways because I do it out of “duty”, out of doing the right things, out of controlling my outer circumstances and manipulating what is in front of me in order to get my inner needs met. And I think God wants to undo that, so that I may do it out of the grace God gives me, out of the pleasure of doing something because that is how He has designed me to be.

Art is one thing I do right now where when I do it, I don’t do it out of insecurity or out of duty, but because I love it -- out of pure pleasure and love for it. It’s a wonderful feeling, to do something that you love, and when I’m drawing (not designing, note the difference), I feel really free.

And I want to be in that place not only with my art but with being with God, that there’s a sense of freedom in his grace that I do it out of my desire to, out of my pleasure to, instead of striving.

[kattalkingslow]

A Quiet Place

11 July 2018

I’ve been having these little quiet times in the morning, 15 minutes before my carpool picks me up, and I feel like little by little I”m picking up the pieces to who I am and where I am right now.

Realizing that I have a wound of not being wanted, and in order to ameliorate that wound of abandonment/unwantedness, I try to be “needed” instead, or I “do” in order to feel significant enough and secure enough that I do have a place in that person’s life. That is why its so excuciating when someone doesn’t want me around, and I feel so helpless not being able to do anything about it.

Two friends of mine are in the area visiting right now, and I can’t help but feel these wounds re-open inside of me. It makes me feel needy and possessive, and I wonder whether I am those things honestly. They have played a part in it, but I think now it is just me owning up to it and trying to wiggle my way through. I’m sick and tired of myself being this way, when there are people out there who already love me. I am sick of constantly feeling this tinge of being not loved when I already am.

[kattalkingslow]

This song sounds like how I feel?

[kattalkingslow]

Thick skin

8 July 2018

I don’t think I can keep freelancing ahaha. I’m way too sensitive and attached to my work (like an artist) and it always makes me sad when someone doesn’t like something. That being said, I probably just need to develop some thicker skin and also calm the hell down. But I can’t help feeling sad about it :(

[kattalkingslow]

Soundtrack: The Walters

[kattalkingslow]

solanin

2 July 2018

Rhymes with melanin, which isn’t really applicable at all.

This is the kind of story I want to write and draw comics like -- simple, bittersweet, abstract and surreal, but authentic. The beginning was a slow start but man, the middle to end was beautiful. I’m glad the author didn’t censor anything too tough, but it felt raw and true to my age too. Gosh, he was 24 when he wrote it. Maybe 24 will be my year.

In the afterword Inio Asano writes “I drew solanin when I was about 24 years old. I had just graduated from college and was feeling a bit insecure about my ability to succeed as a manga artist and whether i would be able to continue to draw manga that were true to myself. In my anxiety and impatience, I felt that all I could do in my manga was try to get a true depiction of the times as experienced in my generation...There’s nothing cool about these characters. They’re just your average 20-somethings who blend into the backdrop of the city. But the most important messages in our lives don’t come from musicians on stage or stars on television. They come from the average people all around you, the ones who are just feet from where you stand. That’s what I believe.”

I resonate. With the story, with the characters, with this author’s statement. Everything.

Who knows if I’ll actually make it, and maybe these things are dreams far away that won’t ever be achieved, but I guess the question is whether I’ll be satisfied with what is present.

In a weird way, I feel like solanin is the anti-thesis to American Animals, which I saw recently too. Two particular takes on similar topics: the pursuit of a dream and an exciting life and what that actually means.

I think my best stories are the ones born out of my real life and the real things and the real people that exist there. I’ll draw more and more from that.

[kattalkingslow]

July

1 July 2018

I let myself sleep in this morning and successfully finished a first week at work. I haven’t slept in for ages; in a weird way I get this anxiety that I have things to do and people to take care of and sleeping in is a luxury and a strange self-indulgement that makes me lazy and disorganized and undisciplined! But that’s not true at all.

I’m figuring out myself a little more bit by bit, and one thing I’m realizing is just how much I care about how other people think of me, and just how insecure I really am, and how hard I am on myself.

I started work and it was stressful for the first bit in part because I had to figure out how I was going to get there (and I didn’t want to spend the extra money vs not spending the extra time commuting), in part observing and understanding the dynamics of the culture at my workplace, and in part because I cared so much about what other people thought about me. Rather self-centered really. Always feeling like someone is watching you and you have to make the right moves — what does my boss think of me? Did I embarrass myself? What if I said the wrong thing? I’m a people pleaser at heart.

In another hot sec, I’m finding out just how insecure I really am. My close friend mentioned to me that she was thinking to find another church, and if she stays, find a different Home group, and my heart just leapt with anxiety and anger and I wasn’t quite sure why. I think I didn’t want to be left behind. I didn’t want to be not good enough so that she wouldn’t stay, which is what I’ve felt for a lot of my friendships — that I wasn’t good enough for people to stay. I didn’t want to feel as if other people were moving on and I was stuck. I didn’t want to be left out.

Lastly, I’m in an odd rut in my spiritual life, where it feels so dry and stuck and I literally cannot for the life of me get myself out, and I’m hard on myself for that fact. It’s like what Pastor Albert preached on when he said we try to make our own way of restoration with God instead of letting him do the work. We think we have it all figured out on how to get God to restore us. It’s funny but wildly true for my own life. Not sure what to do.

That’s all from me right now.

[kattalkingslow]

This sound

[kattalkingslow]

Intertextuality

14 June 2018

Wondering is there is a trend with nostalgia and referential subject matter with shows that are a hit these days over a number and across different people.

Too bad I’m not in school anymore (or I guess I could still), but I think I’d love to write an essay on nostalgia and intertextuality with Stranger Things and My Hero Academia. They’re really different but strangely enough, similar on those two points, and similar on the fact that they’re successful for their genre even with people who don’t technically usually watch those genres.

Stranger Things harking back to monster movies, ET-vibes, 80s themes, Twilight Zone. My Hero Academia taking the best of the last decade of anime arcs and putting it all into one, X-men/superhero multiplicity vibes (even like Heroes’ main villain), high school angst and idealism nostalgia.

I’ll think about it a little more. 

[kattalkingslow]

A great redemption

11 June 2018

Listened to a sermon about pruning today that really uplifted me, talking about how seasons of suffering and hardship may very be the painful pruning God is doing to result in abundance and fruitfulness. 

But I do think about it and wonder whether there is suffering without purpose, suffering without meaning. And I think there is suffering without purpose. Or at least suffering that we cannot comprehend but only God can. Suffering where it happens only because of sin.

I need prayer for my brother. Whenever he talks to me, he talks to me about where he is at and it’s oftentimes very discouraging and rather depressing and I’m not sure how to respond to his words. I am not good with words; I’m really not great at responding to things on the spot, especially philosophical and theological things. It all makes sense in my mind but it doesn’t make sense when it comes out of my mouth. And I feel really burdened for him to know Jesus, but he says things about God in his anger that make me very frustrated and angry because its opposite to the character of God! He believes all these lies and tells me cynically, expecting me to relate? I am unsure. I cannot relate, and I cannot fully understand him or any other human being for that fact.

He asked me: how do you know God loves you?

I said, in part from my experience and in part from the Bible, which I believe is true. 

He said to me: why did I even bother to ask you?

In my head, I am saddened and frustrated and a little angry. What did you want me to say? Are these not legitimate answers? It frustrates me that he believes the lie over the truth. He has good claims of course, but how do you know those claims are true?

From your experience and from the world and from your feelings. 

Is that not similar to what I said? And we both know the world and feelings are subjective to an extent. 

I’m frustrated that he only sees the suffering in the world but cannot see God, cannot see the fact that man is fallen but there is great redemption.

I’m hoping that there is a great redemption in my brother’s story to come. It’s very painful to watch the process.

[kattalkingslow]

Burdens

11 June 2018

During church yesterday, God gave me this image, when I asked him what heart posture I had in response to who I knew him to be, and it was this:

I was in a posture of “supposed” surrender, kneeling before God’s presence in a very white room with just me and Him. But my posture was strained. I had my arms crossed over my chest, fists clenched tightly, and with an expression of pain on my face. And it felt as though there were forces against me, typing me up and pressing my own arms to my chest, and whenever I tried pulling them down, it would be pushed back by a great force. It was like a spring, where you tried pulling it apart, but it springs back to its original position. My arms were springs and there was pressure all around pressing against me, and my joints felt sore and achy as though I hadn’t moved them in a very long time. And as I pushed my arms down, in paint and in difficulty, I would find my arms in a position of surrender, opening my hands, palms up. And in my hands there were broken shards of porcelain or glass (not clear, but more like pottery). I had held them so tightly that they had cut into my skin, making cuts, deep cuts, all over. And as I presented them before the presence of God, he swept his hand over mine and the shards were wiped away (first), and then the cuts gradually healed. 

I felt the Lord nudge me this morning, in the midst of my waking and feeling incredibly unhappy and anxious, on the verge of mental breakdown and burnout, saying: “Let me heal the wounds you cannot heal.” And it was a tender voice. Asking me to give it all up, things that, in a way, I knew I had been holding tightly to. My personal wounds of hurt and bitterness, cuts and remnants of porcelain I held onto tightly. But also the wounds of others that I have heard and carried a burden for. My mother, father, brother, two of my closest friends, my grandma, the poor and homeless, the injustice of our world, my own weakness. In a way, I think I blamed myself -- for not being able to do more for anyone. Feeling helpless is a discouraging, hopeless feeling. And at the same time, I knew God had been revealing this heart so that I may be stirred to pray. But I couldn’t even pray and that was disappointing. It was too hard, too much. God, I would say, how long till I see the restoration you promise? And then my mind spirals. And what if God doesn’t save my dad, my grandma? What if she dies before I get to say anything to her about Jesus? I can’t speak Taiwanese, how will I share? God sustain her health until I can go back again, but am I brave enough to say it? What if I can’t say it? To her? To my uncle? To my cousins? And what about Calvin, what is going to happen there? What if he is thinking about suicide? My mom too? My dad? God, how long?

I saw another image, where I saw myself pushing against a giant wave or ball of black -- a great force against me. And I was the only one pushing against it, and I look back and I see people I love, unable to help, and it felt like too much. I couldn’t hold it; it is too much pressure. I am weak. And this is when I wonder whether I have forgotten who my God is. Whether I truly believe him to be who he says he is. That he is MY savior but also the savior of all these other people I see hurting. I am a vessel, filled up by Him, of His salvation, but I am not the savior. The broken shards of porcelain on my hands, perhaps are the burdens I’ve held too tightly to, thinking that I could bear them all until they disappeared, had to bear them all. And to bear it alone. But if I do not hand it to God, these burdens, held too tightly, would make cuts in my own skin, my own body and cause the pain, because I am weak. I am not a savior. It is God who heals, and I wonder whether these burdens from others has begun to cause welts of bitterness in me that I’ve also held tightly to, unwilling to allow God in to take care of it all. Bitterness and frustration with the fact that I feel so alone in it all, that I feel as if I am drowning in pressure and no one is noticing. 

I am weak, so weak. It is the mood I’ve been feeling over and over again, but I think it reminds me of how little i can do and how much more my God can. I am in the process of lowering those stiff arms and letting God take what I cannot do, and to allow him to do what he is most able to. 

[kattalkingslow]

Something I’ve been thinking about

[kattalkingslow]

hold space for me

4 June 2018

You know, sometimes I wonder how much I can be stretched until I break and snap like a rubberband. 

Sometimes I feel like people are very insensitive or inconsiderate towards me, not because they want to hurt me but because they’re personally going through things and it affects how they are in my relationship with them. I understand those things, and I try to see into the fact that you’re going through what you’re going through, and I’m trying to step into your shoes. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t mean I’m not affected. I’m not immune to everything that you say, and I wish people would pay a little more attention to that fact. I’m not saying something to be inauthentic or just to please you, but I’m being genuine, so please don’t take out your emotions onto me. 

I know I can take it, but it doesn’t mean it’s right. 

[kattalkingslow]

Just posted something to Instagram

1 June 2018

And now I’m getting second thoughts because I literally never post stuff like that on social media:m. Here it is:

I’ve been reflecting how things feel like they’re restarting, like it’s the end of a small era and moving onto the next overarching season. And perhaps it’s because I’ve moved to a new place in Oakland, ended my internship and am starting a new full-time soon, and moving into new ministry responsibilities, and because so many things are changing in such a small amount of time. I’ve had many moments where I kind of can’t believe I am where I am, like when I was in high school, the idea of being a “college student” was so foreign and then you’re standing in front of your dorm waving goodbye to your parents and you’re like wth, it actually happened. And now I have a creative job? Weird.

I’m a designer but I think at heart I’m an illustrator and fine artist (because stories and concepts are way more fun to me and I am a strong N), and at the end of the day I think I just want to draw comics and do random art projects that don’t necessarily contribute to society in a utility kind of way but speak to the mind and the heart.

And it’s crazy because I am somewhat there and able to pursue those things and am learning to be content in every circumstance. God is faithful and good, and not in the way that God has given me this and therefore he is good and faithful, but God just is, and if I don’t have anything, he is still who he is, in the fullness of his character.

I guess one last thing, if you’ve made it this far, but to my brothers and sisters in Christ (and to me): please wake up and live out of the overflow of the Gospel’s transforming power. working in Tenderloin, I’ve been seeing so much suffering, hardship, and just how our system plays against the poor and weary; these are talented kids and able adults who just don’t have the opportunity because the system shuts them out. Jesus’s ministry was a ministry of healing and reconciliation, and my hope is that we can live like that. Not of selfishness. When is it about me and when is it about God and about others? Let’s wake up and step outside of ourselves to see what God’s heart breaks for.

Very long, my apologies. I just liked this picture @josephine.wu took and wanted to put a face to things.

Oh gosh, it’ll pass.