zikitti - Tumblr blog

[zikitti]

reflecting on 2020

I missed doing this closer to the start of the year and I’m currently going through the process of accepting that 2020 happened and making 2021 an amazing year. That being said, I’d also like to recognize that I previously ended at the end of the school year, which is really not the way to go moving forward post-grad. So here we go:

jun: it’s rather fitting that I previously ended in may, because that’s really when it felt like the year ended. i really want to wax poetic and go on how the year has stopped until march 2021, but you’ve heard enough of that from the news cycle. june was the month when i started working on my govtech startup, finishing work on a research project with my lab, preparing a fulbright application, and attending a ton of job fairs. i spent much of the month indoors, save for a couple runs around queens and occasionally a jaunt into manhattan. it wasn't the most exciting month and i spent it mostly coding.

jul: i forgot to mention, but i was working at microsoft this summer! they were very generous with organizing virtual events and i'll admit that by july, i hadn't tired of online cocktail classes. (you'd better believe that by march i was through). i swam in my parents' pool, spoke at a virtual conference, did a virtual startup incubator, and generally tried to drive away the helplessness i was feeling with copious hours of youtube/netflix.

aug: my brother and sister moved into college, so i drove upstate to help them out. also attended my first research conference—at this point i was still considering masters, though doing online school for any longer was starting to get unbearable. mentored a hackathon, got another return offer (!) and dreamt of moving to seattle (legit, i had an apartment planned out, clubs i would join, canyons and pole classes, everything), did a virtual painting and startup class, finished writing a second novel that in hindsight is still quite bad. but at least i was improving.

sep: september took me by surprise. attended two women in tech conferences, placed in a global ctf, was still convinced i wanted to do security, got three six figure job offers in a week (what a crazy time!), and decided i wanted to graduate early. i only needed one class at this point, but being the tryhard that i was, decided to undertake two additional writing classes. 

oct: i was starting to feel the burn at this point. did a virtual italian cooking class, went to my first lgbtq conference, and celebrated birthdays. did a bunch of soul searching (i'm convinced soul searching is useless and you just need to do things a la sartre but idk) and joined a religious studies group to figure my life out.

nov: pretty much finalized that i would be staying in nyc after deciding between there and sf/seattle. was it a good choice? we shall see. also started apartment hunting because i can't live with my parents forever. could i even stand living with my parents for the past year? all signs pointed to no, but it didn't make financial sense to move out then because i didn't have enough money saved up (sad). i did forget that i met up with a bunch of friends on socially distanced walks throughout the summer and we talked about our motivations. i'm almost singularly motivated by creating art but i also enjoy the intellectual challenge of coding and certainly get a lot of satisfaction from my software job. i would really miss it if i had to write full time like i was doing in december (though december was terrible for entirely different reasons as we all know.) but part of it was possibly that i was too caught up in my own head. i think having to balance makes you better at not wasting time. and i've also realized that i much prefer having money than having no money. 

dec: final month! i cringe very hard looking back, but december was the month when i had no job and nothing to do so i..........stayed at home with my parents. (what a loser!) i had a friend who was solo roadtripping the national parks and a couple more living in quarantine houses with buddies from college and i holed myself up in suburbia for what? to finish writing a book? what was the rush? it wasn't like i even had a book deal. that would've at least made a legitimate reason to rush myself. i genuinely have so many regrets about this month that i could've spent in frickin wyoming but it's passed and we have to live with it. at least i've learned the hard way that staying alone by myself is very bad for my mental health and productivity even if i was "freelancing".

---

this year’s reflection ended up a lot more negative than i was planning. will i take this down at some point? perhaps. this is also a midnight ramble from me looking back on 2020. at the start of our quarantine, it was fantastic fulfilling goals of mine (finishing a novel, starting a company, securing a six figure job, graduating early, taking classes with amazing writers, winning a ctf, etc) but i realized that too much time spent alone meant i wasn’t living my life. and i need memories even if not for capitalism then at least for living. even if i have $0, at least i can ride the subway or hitchhike or literally do anything to get out of staying in one spot day in day out. the sedentary lifestyle works for some but not me.

[zikitti]

watched some motivational videos on creativity and felt at once validated and reminded of my feelings of failure. i’m working on projects that i can only hope will catch wind. i’ve done things that i’m proud of that others aren’t catching onto and it’s so upsetting and demotivating. i can only hope that something will come of this all.

[zikitti]

how goes it my zikitties? i came up with the name of the blog because i was learning about zero knowledge proofs and script kiddies and i thought hey, i love cats, why not combine the two? i’m still thinking about producing a web series that talks about security and hacker tools and mentioning the pun at some point, but that’s for the future.

one of the students in a class i’m taking on british literature has been posting about her life and it makes me so happy. here in nyc, the sun’s also been shining a lot more and i love seeing the colors pop. i do have sympathies for pluviophiles, but i think i love the sun the best - mild weather and breezy days when the colors pop and the world feels like it’s tilting just right.

i spent the first few days of the week back home in nj. my parents have been traveling back and forth to take care of our house and i finally finished my last final for school just in time to follow them back. i didn’t venture out much apart from going to the grocery store and it’s still awkward to talk to my mom, but it was nice connecting to my younger self. i read a quote somewhere that as long as you’re someone your younger self would’ve been proud of, you’re succeeding. i think i’m getting there.

 ever since taking the yale course on happiness, i’ve been tracking my happiness index and signature strengths. the idea is that if you focus on improving what you’re good at, you’ll be more successful and happier. my score has increased a full point since i started at the beginning of the semester and i’ve really been honing in on my strengths - love of learning, appreciation of beauty, curiosity, creativity, and gratitude. saying thank you, writing poems and short stories (even working on a novel!), learning from masterclass and skillshare, i feel like i’m living my best life.

today i made honey banana bread and read a code called verity. i learned about non-eurocentric poetic forms from franny choi and revisited sarah kay’s button poetry readings. i’ve been thinking a lot about what i want to do after graduation, and i think combining my love of writing and code will be necessary. i love building new things, and i think working on product dev (possibly as a pm, since i have experience leading teams) might be fun. it would give me time to work on my artwork and writing in the evenings, maybe improve my drawing skills so i can make cool animations (i’m really looking at coleen baik and laura gao for inspiration here, but boy are they inspirational.)

sort of as a joke, but also half serious, i’m imagining myself living in a wonderful permaculture co-op somewhere in berkeley or oakland, taking trips up to the pacific northwest for the rainy foodtrucks and mountain views, down to south bay to learn to surf and to hike in the desert, across to japan and taiwan for delicious night markets, over to new zealand and australia for the gorgeous green valleys. road trips to santa fe to experience the cacti and native embroidery, visit friends in canada. keeping a goat, some quails, and a garden out back so we can have fresh cheese and eggs and herbs for our morning omelets. working on climate change and social justice, attending movie screenings, working on short films that we submit to film festivals, writing novels, giving lectures at the local universities. mentoring students, keeping a cat around in my study to keep me company, sipping green tea. i feels like a perfect life and i know i don’t need the extra stress of trying so hard to attain little marks of approval from big institutions to get there.

my favorite writers usually live in nyc, but i suspect that’s due to my bias of mostly reading the new yorker and related journals. after all, the midwest is so much more affordable for a writer who makes less than 50k a year and i really don’t need too much to live a gorgeously happy life. my parents even related to my wishes - that it’s enough to live a fulfilling and happy life and that it’s totally not at all necessary to stress yourself into oblivion over the pursuit of someone else’s dreams.

goal setting is important, though, and i do like working towards big goals, but i think pursuing excellence in what aligns with my vision is the best way to get there. things like working with amazing people on amazing projects more than trying for arbitrary awards require slanting your projects to fit into neat boxes. i think to some degree you do need to promote yourself, but there’s also the matter of networks and not throwing out half of your facebook friends due to some personal crisis you’ve had (i’m guilty).

but i’m in a better place now. it might sound unachievable, but i’d love to align my goals with my writing and activism - giving more talks, starting initiatives that take off, writing things that so many people relate to and love and are moved by after reading. i want to be a great mentor and to tell stories really effectively and to collaborate on cool film and animation projects. i think so long as i’m able to this all well, my private life and public life can remain in harmony and i can keep floating on this beautiful cloud i’ve been lucky to construct.

[zikitti]

talked to an alum today about my screenwriting aspirations - he said he was glad to meet someone crazy enough to throw their degree away

i went to a tv writers talk yesterday and they said that the ivy league credential actually hindered their opportunities in some ways. everyone thought they were too intellectual to be in the writer’s room

thought about the interviews with professors that tea with teachers did, how the professors all said they want people to pursue their passions

thought about how i always try to leave when i feel like ive mostly figured something out (something dunning-kruger)

thought about how i want desperately to be able to embrace my technical and artistic interests, but how im still no good at telling stories

thought about how sad freelance writers are, how meaningless life feels for software engineers, about how success is the ability to fulfill any idea that you have - it’s quite simply power, whether that’s reach or money

wondering if i should throw my prudence away and embrace risks. if ill regret not taking enough chances when i still could

i have no spouse, no assets, nothing to tie me down

if i wanted, i could travel the world - visit santa fe, taiwan, istanbul, auckland

i could start a blog, make passive income while thru hiking across europe

i could spend half a year finishing my novel

but what i cant do is make a movie. i cant even imagine where i would start

embracing challenge is all ive been doing. when i have the opportunity, im afraid ill squander what i have already built. but sometime you need to let the tower fall to start the world anew. sometimes the tower was just a lesson.

[zikitti]

how to get into animation (as a hobby)!

for some context, i answered a forum post about how to get into animation and was lowkey obsessed with the response, so here it is:

i love animations! there's different contexts for when you might be making animations - there's flow for motion graphics (like stuff you'd see on a website), piskel for 8-bit gifs (like sprites for games), 3d animations, 2d animations, etc.

i recommend watching mewtripled on youtube if you want to learn about traditional animation (and checking out calarts, sheridan, gobelins videos for really fantastic student work!) you'll want to get better at drawing bodies in motion if you want to go down this route, though getting the very basics of animation isn't hard!

colleen baik also has a great series on medium about how she got into basic animation as a techie (https://uxdesign.cc/a-day-in-the-animated-life-part-ii-9730fb199517).

you can start off with stop motion or flip books (basically hand-drawing and flipping back and forth to make sure you get the motions correct). if you have access to an ipad, autodesk sketchbook and flip a clip (basic onion skins) are great for small animations. if you want to get more serious, rough animator has more functionality and is 4.99.

there's some more apps that are more advanced (procreate, nima, synfig) that you can check out if you end up wanting to do more advanced things with rigs i'm not super familiar with 3d animation, but blender, maya, and unity are all free and great tools.

[zikitti]

hot take but how is a globe trotter supposed to date :/

[zikitti]

my favorite

[zikitti]

motivational accountability frog for u all

[zikitti]

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

— Maya Angelou

[zikitti]

Huangshan Scenic Area, Anhui Province, China

(by 喆 陈)

[zikitti]

I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it — to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once.

— Haruki Murakami

[zikitti]

does anyone remember the scholastic teen forums back in the day where people would post harry potter fanfic and give critiques? man, that was my childhood.

also the sparknotes blogs that made me so excited for high school (spoiler: it was not what i expected). turns out elodie’s still writing and her english lit memes are so funny. check them out here.

[zikitti]

mandarin nighttime vocab💤

 inspiration from this post (x)

🌙 night vocab

夜晚  (yèwǎn) - the night

月亮  (yuèliàng) - the moon

星星  (xīngxīng) - the stars 

夜的   (yè de) - “of night”; nocturnal

🛏️ bedroom vocab

卧室 (wòshì) - bedroom

主卧室  (zhǔ wòshì) - the master bedroom

床 (chuáng)  - a bed

枕头 (zhěntou) - a pillow

填充玩具动物 (tiánchōng wánjù dòngwù) - a stuffed animal

毯 (tǎn) - a blanket

寝具 (qǐnjù) - bedding

床头柜 (chuángtóuguì) - bedside table

枕套  (zhěntào)  - pillow case

舒适  (shūshì) - cozy

棉被  (mián bèi) - comforter

整理床铺  (zhěnglǐ chuángpù) - make the bed

双人床  (shuāngrén chuáng) - a bed for two people

单人床  (dān rén chuáng) - a bed for one person

床架 (chuáng jià) - bed frame

床单 (chuángdān) - bed sheets 

双层床  (shuāng céng chuáng) - bunk bed

 😴 sleep vocab

小睡  (xiǎoshuì) - a nap

睡觉 (shuìjiào) - sleep

睡意 (shuìyì) - sleepiness

���想 (mèngxiǎng) - a dream

噩梦 (èmèng) - a nightmare

白日梦 (bái rì mèng) - a daydream

失眠  (shīmián) - insomnia

梦游 (mèngyóu) - sleepwalker

夜猫子 (yèmāozi) - person that likes to wander at night; a night owl

早起的人 (zǎoqǐ de rén) - early riser

闹钟 (nàozhōng) - an alarm clock

🌌 verbs

起床 (qǐchuáng) - to wake up (literally to rise from the bed)

安歇 (ānxiē) - to go to bed (literally to retire for the night)

困了 (kùnle) - to be sleepy

睡觉 (shuìjiào) - to sleep

做梦 (zuòmèng) - to dream

做白日梦 (zuò bái rì mèng) - to daydream 

🌃 phrases

晚安 (wǎn'ān) - good night

开夜车 (kāiyèchē) - to work/study until late (literally drive the night train)

早起的鸟儿 (zǎoqǐ de niǎo er) - an early bird

晚起的人 (wǎn qǐ de rén) - a late riser

难以入睡 (nányǐ rùshuì) - having troubles falling asleep

熬夜 (áoyè) - to stay up all night

[zikitti]

Lawful Disaster...

[zikitti]

[zikitti]

i should really start doing skincare. i’ve tried on and off, but so far it’s mostly been using benzoyl peroxide for acne treatment + toner face masks and korean face masks for destressing. also using face scrubs and cleansers occasionally. i definitely don’t use enough sunscreen and lotion and my makeup is literally just foundation + blush + powder + mascara + eyeliner.

[zikitti]

[late] reflections from 2017

as i’m contemplating the lessons i’ve learned from the past two years, i thought i would do one more - a reflection of freshman year. i haven’t thought of this year too closely, since it seemed like a fever dream in some ways. 

i was thrilled to move out. living with my grandparents was stifling - a house full of mental illnesses and no room to breathe. i just wanted space to be more healthy and to work on what i cared about, not what i was supposed to do in order to be a good student. senior year was a gap year of sorts for me - lots of chilling around with friends - and pnr was in a way an extension of that gap year.

#

jun: northside festival! i love flea markets and indie publishers and plants. also graduated from high school.

jul: went to dc for a scholarship! it’s always awkward for me traveling with my parents, but considering how many republican lobbyists we met, this was pretty awkward for all three of us (cue the obama/trump skit yikes)

aug: saw the eclipse in yellowstone! our freshman orientation program was lifechanging and i took it as a sign that i belonged near the mountains and the sea. met some really cool pre-frosh and learned a ton about geysers.

sep: won a pitch competition and went to techcrunch! such a fun week, and though my startup didn’t end up working out, it was such a meaningful experience and i do hope to come back with more perspective working on ngo development projects.

oct: went to forbes under 30 and grace hopper! such a fun time, met some of my idols working at facebook and teen founders in the bay area. spoke on a panel with a bunch of women in tech.

nov: junction in helsinki! another amazing trip, made friends with hackathon organizers and explored scandinavia. loved the saunas, the ice pools, the mushroom salad, the night clubs, the music.

dec: performed with my a capella group, worked on animated shorts. i don’t remember much happening, but i did get into a nonprofit fellowship and some speaking gigs.

jan: coached at shehacks, worked on ctfs with the security club. was originally going to go to grenoble, but had a conflict. i mostly recall chilling, going to parties, hanging out with friends (it’s iap, chill).

feb: started a vr class! i loved my team and learned so much about media production. started an acting class, which meant watching shakespeare and theater a bunch.

mar: sxsw! got into a hackathon at the vatican, but had a conflict. ran a hackathon and co-ran a conference at my school. pretty busy and fulfilling month, though i could’ve made due without so many of my friend circles colliding all at once.

apr: i was planning on moving out of ec and into wilg, but peer pressure, ugh. in hindsight i wish i knew i was getting gaslit.

may: steer roast, beach trip, and final projects. i had wanted to attend the festival since hearing about it, but the experience wasn’t what i had expected - less mood-lit music and art vibes, more alumni gathering.

#

the thing that stood out the most to me was my inability to juggle school and my outside commitments. i was still holding roles from high school an i found that i had to drop quite a few of them - some of them were good choices, others sacrifices i wish i hadn’t made. at the time, it was just overwhelmed, but in hindsight i was still in the mentality that i need a hand in every pot to get somewhere.

i still wasn’t confident in any of my skills, and i thought i needed things like accolades or “networks” to get me through in life. the tower was always threatening to collapse, and i think sophomore year was when that happened. but i did manage to salvage some pieces that stayed intact, building a far more stable and longer-lasting tower from the debris.

as far as freshman years go, this was a pretty fantastic one. though i’ve lost touch with a lot of friends i made then, i still have the memories and the knowledge that i was able to feel that way once. something alice wu said in an interview was that in high school, you’re feeling emotions for the first time and you think you’ll never feel that way again. or in her when joaquin phoenix's character says that sometimes you fear that you’ve already experienced every emotion you’ll ever feel, and that anything you feel will just be a weaker version of the one in your memory.

this pretty well encapsulates the way i felt going out of freshman year. i was certain i’d peaked - i wouldn’t ever again work on a project that made an impact, have close friends who would fly out to see me, perform in front of thousands of people, write something that touches people from halfway around the world. some days, i still feel that way, but i remind myself that i’m still young and that there’s still and that life is lived in chapters not a hero’s journey.