Photo taken by Jorge Halili @jayaarah with film on a Mamiya RZ67 #120mm
// Here we go again with another New Years journal.
What can I say about my 2018?….. It was like a big roller coaster that made me experience everything my life could possibly handle so much of. I’d say it has been the most emotional year of my life and it's finally over… This year felt so long. To start this off this journal, I’ll probably start by stating all of my accomplishments and failures of this year.
I’d say my first biggest accomplishment of 2018 was getting accepted to Rutgers Camden University. After commuting at a community college I felt such a big relief that I finally did something good for myself and moving forward with my life as an individual. Being a Graphic Design major, it’s so great to finally take the courses for it. Everything that I learned so far in them has helped me exponentially with my creative work outside of school. Of course school be stressful with work but we’ll get into more details later.
Photography wise, I felt like I have done a lot. I’ve collaborated with many individuals and that happening makes me feel like my communication skills went up. I grew up being very introverted and felt I lacked so much social interaction. My first semester of college at Rutgers, I had not talked or hung out with many people there, I would just go home after my classes. But outside of school that semester, I tried to be the one to approach people and start conversation, and since then it’s helped me have so many connections in life for potential work and of course, friends.
This year was also my first time traveling to Los Angeles California (ever) as a paid job to make a music video. Of course I couldn’t deny the offer so I took it. It was a very impacting experience because I had never went to a different state outside the tri-state alone before. But this gave me the signal that I needed to learn to be able to take care of myself without an older family member. Luckily my client was a close friend and it made the whole experience very comfortable for the both of us, in making some good content for each other. Also lucky to have a good friend who goes to school in California host us around the area of Los Angeles. It was such a great experience, even though we couldn’t check out a majority of places to do touristy things due to trying to get content for the video, it was all still cherish-able.
Towards finals month of my first semester at Rutgers, I took a filming class and we were able to create any type of video that we wanted, so I wanted to make a story music video. I felt that music videos were my specialty at that point because I just felt comfortable with it. Also considering that I feel like I’m good with syncing the music well with the flicks. I used one of my friend’s songs who I went to California with called ‘In the Lead’. This was my first mass production I had ever done, alone. I did a whole track concept, drew story boards, and had a lot of castings for the film, I was even able to use a school class room. Of course with the help of my friends it wouldn’t have been possible. But the biggest problem during the production was getting everyone’s schedule to be synced. It was the most challenging thing for me to do, and having to improvise when a person wasn’t able to attend for a scene. After finishing the video (during final video presentations), I was not satisfied with the results and felt like I wasted everyone that was a part of the production’s time. But of course I still got a good grade, just not a good grade personally for myself. I was so unsatisfied with it, I didn’t even show anyone in the production the film. At that moment I felt so drained to make videos for paid jobs or school. Having an estimate time to make a film felt to pressuring for me, but I guess that’s part of life to not waste time.
After that, I’ve just been working to get money and doing any kind of business with photography. I was given the opportunity to shoot a wedding for a family member of mine back in late July. They wanted both photography and videography. This seemed like a lot of work so I asked my cousin Darar to help me out with the gig. We both did a good job on site and they felt satisfied. But the problem with myself is that I don’t know how to use my time wisely. I gave a bad estimate of when I would finish editing the photos, even with their wedding video. I had finished the photos the following week, but I didn’t get done the wedding video until day before Christmas Eve. Having all this delay was because of me stressing about life, there was so much going on in my life that was emotionally draining, I would just go out a lot. But going out a lot lead me to paying fines, which I won’t get into big details about. Due to that situation, I struggled getting around and even to school or work. I’m close to getting all that situated very soon so that’s an up.
Those being big factors of most of my unproductive moments in life, it also affected my time to practice break dancing. This year for breaking has its ups and downs. Towards the end of the year, basically when I started my fall semester at Rutgers, I wanted to focus more on school, but still tried to practice when I get the chance. My top goal was to make tops 16 in competitions that I competed in, and I achieved that. June at Prove your Groove, I made it to top 8, November at Second Sundae I made it to top 16, and mid November at Rutgers Melee battles representing Rutgers Camden, made it to the semi finals repping with my crew Cypher Syndicate. This was a huge accomplishment for me and it made me so eager to keep practicing. But of course when life hits you, you have to focus on that first. People would always hit me up and be like, “I haven’t seen you come out bro where have you been? you slacking in the scene.” or tell me to come practice. Well I guarantee you that I have not been slacking in the scene, this year my crew has been making a come up from when we were starting up, with competitions and running jams. We’ve accomplished so much as a unit and even alone in this life of breaking and outside of it. Few of my members have gotten married and I could not be more happy for them. We may not seem like we aren’t out there like that, but we are out there getting our lives together. Sometimes we just need to focus on our goals and priorities one at a time, and I’m one of those people. In my opinion I feel like I have been very sociable in the breaking scene, I’ve met and became friends with so many people from around the world in the breaking community and its such a blessing.
Not only I met new friends in the breaking scene, but in school too, which should be a common place to make friends. Since I wanted to focus on school I also left one of my jobs. I mainly did that so I could socialize more with people at my school. My time in college I never really socialized with people like that. After my classes I would just go to work or home, so I wanted to change that. It started off just knowing my friend Kai, who is in my break dancing crew. He became the president of a Filipino club so I joined to support him. Being in that club has changed my college experience, because I never met so much great, genuine people. I’ve grown to be really close with the people at this school now and they’re always there for me and I can never forget that. For me, I have a lot of trust issues. I always felt that having few really good friends was all I needed, those people I’m still close with. But having a group of really good friends helped me not feel so alone. Having them also helped me focus on school a lot more, even though when we are all together we get pretty loud at the campus center haha. But it’s all about building a community of good people. The breaking community taught me that, so I took that in mind with my life in college and life in general, and I’m very thankful for every moment. I’ve lost some really close friends this year, but that lead to meeting new people along the way in replacement of that feeling of being lonely. Sometimes I still feel upset about the situations because I miss them but I guess they have their reasons and I have mine for the ones that I’ve cut out. With situations like this, it’s all about finding real friends, not friends to go fuck around with. Find those friends who will continue to support you and push you back on your feet to make you move forward.
Regardless of my 2018 having their ups and downs, it’s all about thinking of them as lessons and moving forward. Keep having your head up high for greatness. I’m still working on bettering myself, but I’m continuing to be a student in life everyday. I can’t guarantee that this year of 2019 will make its come up because I don’t want to jinx it, but it’s best to try and not get my hopes up. My goals for this new year is to learn to be positive with any situation I am in and continue to create content that I am known for. I want to be able to inspire others to do what they love doing and to continue that for the rest of their lives. For everyone who has impacted my life in 2018, Thank you, you know who you are.
2019, lets make some moves.