2020: Unbecoming

It's becoming a serious cliché, complaining about 2020, so I will try my best not to do that here. Either way though it has been one hell of a time for significant things happening in every single one of our lives. For me it has been yet another time of unbecoming something only to become another. There are multiple ways this has happened in my life, but I will focus on the most meaningful one to me in the current.

I moved to Manitou Springs, Colorado in 2017, stayed one year, and came back home in August of 2018. At that time I moved into the apt pictured above to start a new journey back at home that I never thought I'd embark upon, finishing college. My life had become a bit too untethered, and I got lost in the mountains of Colorado. When I came back I needed direction, and I needed a catalyst that would facilitate me figuring out what I wanted to do with my life finally. I decided that Computer Science would be a great field for multiple reasons. Great pay, total job security, flexibility, opportunity to work anywhere in the world, the perks were endless. Plus I did have a fascination with tech and world of computers.

I began my college journey all over again in January of 2020 after not having attended in nine years. I had no clue what was about to happen. Needless to say my first semester back was rocked in March of 2020 when we were abruptly moved to all online schooling, and I was permanently laid off from my job of two years due to covid. I pushed through and finished my first semester though, and enrolled for the summer, in which I had my first computer programming class learning Python. It was a summer session, so fast tracked and very dense. I did decently, but not ideally. Enter Fall 2020.

I had signed up for a full semester of 12 hours, during a pandemic, with still no steady work, and all the insecurity in the world. I had already began to doubt my computer programming skills a bit after my mediocre performance in my first programming class, so when I entered Object Oriented Programming I in the Fall learning Java for the first time ever, my confidence level plummeted, especially when I start learning and coding, and realizing that this was very likely just not my thing in life. I enjoyed learning it honestly, but doing it in a rigid school setting, especially online without any direct guidance from my instructor, was very difficult, and I quickly became completely inundated with some of the most uncomfortable and unproductive stress I've ever experienced. Something needed to change.

What I didn't anticipate happening was a pivot move that has ended up being the best thing to happen to me this year. My Computer Science major allowed for a choice of four concentrations, and the one I chose was in Digital Arts. In the summer session I experienced my first Digital Arts class in which we were introduced to three Adobe programs, Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, and created multiple projects for critique and grading throughout the summer. It was tough at first as I had never used anything with Adobe in my life, but after I finished that class I felt like I had awakened something, and the projects we did I actually thoroughly enjoyed once I start learning the software better.

I was able to create multiple fun and informative digital projects that summer, and the two above were my favorites, and the magazine article was my best grade. When I entered the Fall semester, which I am currently still going through right now, I had my second Digital Arts class, in which we would be learning the foundations of Motion Graphics, and creating complex video projects using Adobe After Effects. This quickly became my favorite class and I have been doing well in it.

In the meantime my Java programming class was coming to a close, as my grades suffered, my focus faltered, and my motivation to do anything in that class completely faded. I panicked a bit and took some considerably deep meditation time with myself and my mind to figure out what I was going to do, because I had to make a stark decision quickly or I was going to ruin my entire semester. I decided to change my major, and then discovered there was a full Bachelors of Fine Arts in Digital Arts major available to me. Here came the pivot. I changed my major to Digital Arts officially two weeks ago, withdrew from the programming class, and am focusing on finishing strong in my current Digital Arts class. I haven't felt this good all year honestly.

I don't claim to have everything figured out now, and I'm sure my journey will continue to evolve, especially going into whatever we are blindly going into in 2021. But today, I am much less stressed, feel more fulfilled, more focused than ever, and determined to do this. I have always spent my life in the clouds, always enjoyed any form of art, especially music, film, tv, literature, comics, just the written word in general, and I have created a lot of music for myself in the past, written songs to play on piano and sing, have recorded myself playing and singing, and created some video content for my YouTube channel. I just have always felt unfocused and lackadaisical with my creativity, even though I wanted to do significantly more with it in the past several years. I feel like I've come into a new time period in my life, where that sharp focus and drive with my creativity is about to kick into the highest gear I've never been able to motivate myself to get to, at least not in my adult life. I seemed to have more motivation as a teenager until the age of 17 when everything in my life stopped for the next 13 years, but that is a story for another time.

I am new to actively and consciously creating content, whether it is videos, blogs, writing online, social media (not new to social media lol), and whatever else I am about to embark upon, but I am so hungry to learn and soak up whatever I need to break into this multiverse of creativity more and create effectively and consciously with my vision of this world we are in. I've shared other stories about things that happened in my life to just be able to help someone else relate and not feel so alone and insignificant. I have felt like that a lot in my life, and experiencing stories from people in whatever way possible has been one of my biggest lifesavers in nearly 38 years that I've existed on this planet. I want to offer the same.

Below is the first video project I created in my current Digital Arts class using Adobe After Effects. This project kind of broke me, in a good way, as it was an assignment to create a 1:30 video autobiography in AE, using whatever we wanted...old photos, video clips, music, text, narration, and so forth. The creation of this project became quite the catharsis for me, and by the time I finished on a long all-nighter, I was emotionally and physically exhausted, crying here and there, emoting to myself, but more than all of that feeling very accomplished. Even with the obvious beginner quality of the video production, I still felt like I achieved something great for myself, and honestly it felt wonderful, and gave me a natural high that kind of hasn't gone away yet. I have felt this throughout this class, and if that is any indication as to how the rest of this new journey I'm on will go, I have no fears in 2021, even in the midst of whatever will happen. It will be our year to take our world and lives back from submission to fear and death. I wish the rest of your 2020 blessed and protected, and here's to the future and our willingness to go through it. My love goes out to all reading this, and thank you for making it to the end with me.