How Did I Get Here?

& other existential questions

I had my first anxiety attack about 3 years ago, when I was on “vacation” visiting my family in the Bay Area (I use quotes because when you work at a small company and are the only person on your team, when are you ever truly offline?). It was early and I was about to engorge myself in longsilog, aka a perfect Filipino breakfast, but before I could do that, mindless habit led me to my phone and with a tap tap scroll, the work emails appeared. What happened next was a 30-minute panic turned existential crisis that unfolded right in front of my mom who was, to say the least, very worried. The sad part is, I barely remember enjoying the silog she spent all morning preparing.

Thinking about it again, but in the context of 2018, is a bit of a mindfuck. We were knee deep in the Trump era, at the height of the #MeToo movement, and despite the successes of movies like Crazy Rich Asians and BlacKkKlansman, the Oscars were, still, so very white. That summer, I posted this tweet which hilariously went viral. My boyfriend and I noticed two people sitting next to each other on the train reading the books that inspired those very blockbuster hits (mentioned earlier). While most of the convo centered around the readers choosing paper over, uh, digital, I was much more fascinated about the fact that they, two white people, were reading literature written by POC. Considering that white voters literally put Trump in office and months later, their supremacist homies gave an unnecessary rebrand to the already culturally appropriated tiki torches, the concept of these books being consumed by these two specific readers on the subway was...tripping me out.

Nearly a decade before all of this, I was sitting in a classroom defending why I took offense to the racism that was so blatantly displayed against Asians in cartoons like Family Guy (I forget why we were even watching the clips, but I was a Communication Studies major and I’ll let you figure out the rest). Not a single person in that class backed me up, not even the professor. Instead, I was met with retort and defensiveness for the choices made by the writers. “It’s satire,” they said. “Loosen up,” they said. I never felt so alone, so upset, so fucking angry. It's experiences like this that do not shock me when I read about anti-Asian hate crime jumping 1,900% in the last year. Yes, you read that right. What shouldn’t have surprised me is that black square I saw posted on June 2, 2020 by one of those same classmates. Typical.

Given every single moment leading up to that morning of that anxiety attack in 2018, when I felt the weight of the world completely crashing down on me over one, very stupid work email, it makes more sense than ever before. I dedicated my entire education to the analysis of representation and whitewashing in stories of underrepresented communities told across entertainment. But the years following felt like a complete blur. Clock in, clock out, paycheck to paycheck. The 2016 election happened and I, like so many others, continuously filled my head with those numbing questions like “what am I even doing with my life!?” or “what am I doing to make a difference!?” Tick, tick, tick, boom: anxiety!

source @sailormoonwisdom

Something I’ve continuously had to remind myself is, “you are not responsible for fixing everything that is broken.” That I can still do the work while protecting my energy. Easier said than done, because for some time now, I’ve been wanting to do more with my work. Following the capitol insurrection earlier this month, I came across a tweet where other social media managers were discussing the very thing that was plaguing my mind all those years since I made the decision to change careers, from sales (barf) to social. A realization that our 9-5’s were/are feeding directly into the belly of the capitalist beast wasn’t just coming from me, but from so many others. A resounding what can we do? will, no doubt, continue to fill our minds as the year progresses, but the real question for me is when are we actually going to see tangible change?

Just this past month, TikTok launched an incubator program for Black creators while YouTube did the same in the form of a $100 million fund to amplify Black voices. Facebook also hired a VP of Civil Rights, a role I personally am still trying to wrap my little brain around. We live in a world where a Google search for “anti-racism reading list” generates over 26 million results, yet colonization is still upheld and declared in a performance of “this land is your land” during the inauguration. It is truly never-ending.

What I’m learning to do these days is accept what I cannot change and find ways to change things I am able to. Which is why I’ve been able to finally summon up the courage to start this project, curating stories that so often get ignored, yet are so important to engage in and understand given our current social climate.

I write all this today with the intention that you, dear reader, understand the context to which I present future content that arrives in your inboxes (which, I promise will not be as long as this next time…or maybe, who knows). I write with the intention that what I share will resonate with you in some way because if not, then, I’m not sure what all of this is for tbh! That being said, I’ll close with this quote from JL Umipig that beautifully explains why our discourse should be grounded in relating to one another:

When we allow for collective and expansive knowledge to hold us and move us, we find ourselves in collective healing, growth and evolution that will transcend our generation and will become GENERATIVE.

Well, here we go…

source @sailormoonwisdom