Since I was old enough to talk, I've been telling stories. I was impressively articulate during my single-digit years and would often strike up conversation with people much older than me, constantly picking up new words and writing them over and over in my notebooks for no reason other than childish pleasure. During these formative years, I engaged with every detail of the world around me in many ways, often drawing the ire of people who weren't used to my antics. It was during my first grade that I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker when I grew up.
Through my elementary school, I kept myself busy by drawing, writing, singing, thinking, and coding. Origami and flipbook animations colored my existence a pleasant, homely orange. These years were some of my fondest.
My middle school years brought a lot of new experiences with them - new friends, new hobbies, new feelings. The bullying I went through during these years contributed into turning me from the loudest and funniest kid in the classroom to the quietest. During the pandemic, my mental health took a very deep plummet - as did everyone else's - it took me over four years to break out of that.
Right now, I'm in high school. These school years have been tough, tiring, annoying, and altogether useless, but the calendar years they run across have brought some of my best and most mature work to date, and I know there's more to come from me in these last few years of schooling. I want to tell stories in my life, to take back my story that racial stereotyping and bullies had taken away from me. I want to provide perspectives, teach life lessons, and change minds. I want to create the stories our children watch. Perhaps it's over-ambitious and dramatic. But that's what life is, isn't it?
Although I'm incredibly conflicted and unsure of my future right now, I will continue doing what I do, growing as a person, learning new things, and gearing up for the turbulent rollercoaster of adult life.
The short memoir titled The Stars Have Eyes, available on my work page, goes into more detail.