05:
What first drew me to Kristan was a picture of her and her dog! She had a Jack Russell terrier mutt and being that I used to own a Jack Russell, I have a big soft spot for them. She’s captivated me with her writing, and I’ve cheered her on when she entered a writing contest. I was very honored to guest blog for her one day (in which I first publicly announced my big Asia plans!) and so I couldn’t help but to return the favor. I know she has a big passion for writing, the kind of passion that drives you. And so, I wanted to hear her story:
The wordy nerdy halfie chameleon
by
Kristan Hoffman
First, I’d like to thank Floreta for inviting me to guest blog for her. I’ve been a fan ever since I saw her old panda logo. Not only is that little guy adorable, but he’s also indicative of how creative, independent, and fearless Floreta is. Seriously? This girl rocks! So it’s an honor to be among the bloggers that she trusts to fill her void.
Second, I didn’t really have a second.
And third, oh yeah, I guess I’ll talk about identity. Since that’s the theme and all.
The chameleon
As a young child, I had a handful of close family friends, none of whom knew each other, all of whom knew a certain version of me. Then there were my school friends. Then there were my Chinese school friends. Because I wanted to be liked by them all, I learned to act a certain way for each of them, and I started to think of myself as a chameleon, constantly changing colors.
The halfie
Speaking of Chinese school… I’m half Chinese! And do you know what’s really weird? Being half of something. Because then the other half is something else. Something different. Sometimes even something incompatible. Fortunately for me, my Asian and Caucasian halves seem to get along okay, but as a whole, I still have issues with my ethnic identity.
See, whenever I went visited my mom’s side of the family in Taiwan, I couldn’t speak to them because I didn’t really know Mandarin. That made me feel inadequate. Not Chinese enough.
But then, when I was with my dad’s side of the family, and I wanted noodles and cucumber cooked in oyster sauce, or some other weird Asian thing, I felt out of place. Not American enough.
I couldn’t win.
The word nerd
At age 4, I wanted to be a ballerina. At age 6, a cowgirl. At age 7, a veterinarian with a dude ranch. Don’t ask.
Then at age 9, I had to write an essay about the most beautiful place I’d ever been. I busted my butt on that essay, and I got an A+. Ever since then, I’ve wanted to be a writer.
The result
I often worried about these 3 aspects of my identity. People always talked about “staying true to yourself,” but I was constantly changing to please those around me. Wasn’t that bad? And I was the only brown-headed kid in Chinese school, where I took a special class with kids half my age. Wasn’t that weird? And writers, well, they don’t make any money. They live in cardboard boxes and mooch off their friends. Isn’t that pathetic?
I told myself that as I got older I would outgrow these parts of myself. Eventually I would learn that I didn’t have to be a chameleon. Eventually I would perfect the art of being Asian as well as the art of being American, and those would just become two more colors that my skin could switch to. Eventually I would stop wanting to be a writer and do something that you could actually make a career out of. Like programming. I liked programming a lot.
But that’s not what happened. Instead, as I got older, I outgrew my worries, and I grew into my own skin. I realized that a chameleon can change the color of his skin, but he cannot change his spiny lizard body or his big googly eyes. I realized that being half of two things meant I got the best of both worlds. I learned that writing was really the only I loved enough to do for the rest of my life.
So here I am today, a wordy nerdy halfie chameleon. It’s a hard thing to be, but it’s me. And I love it.
What I want to know is, who are you? When did you realize it? And more importantly, when did you embrace it?
This post is part of a series on personal development, career and identity. It’s not about who you want to be when you grow up, but being who you ARE. The key is to find out your true calling and passions and then figuring out how to live it. We all have stories to share, and I want to hear yours. If you’d like to guest blog for the Panda, please submit to floreta@solitarypanda.com.
03:
Jeremy is a talented illustrator and artist at jeremytheartist.com. As “creative types”, we hit it off pretty fast on 20sb. His creative process involves hand inking cartoons, scanning them on the computer and then coloring through photoshop. It’s a bit different than the digitized wacom tablet process and I appreciate his merging of traditional with digital techniques. As someone who finds it hard to channel my passions, I have much respect for people who have such obvious focused passion… Enjoy!
The Walk So Far
So my journey has been somewhat of a bumpy ride, but who hasn’t had their share of bumps eh? I definitely think I still have awhile to go before I am bountiful in material wealth, but I like to play with the notion that I’ve learned a thing or two along the way so far..
I included a drawing for this post that might carry my story along a bit better than I can. Each “panel” is marked with a number so it goes as such:
I was a fetus. And as you can see, I was wearing my first pair of glasses.
As a small boy, I drew a lot, ranging from dinosaurs to monsters to family members to family members on dinosaurs eating monsters. You think I’m kidding.
“The Band Years”. ‘bout 6 years there where the only “real” drawings anyone saw were my banners I made for the different instrumental sections to put in the band hall. That, and a couple t-shirt designs I made my senior year of high school.
Me at the present time. “The Man With The Talking Head”, “Jeremy The Artist”, “Jerms”.. “Sexy Pants”…though I don’t really prefer to be called the latter.
I like to think myself an artist most days. I take considerate joy, especially in the art of cartooning, a career I am grateful to have started a few years back…
My father was the cartoonist for his collegiate newspaper and it is something I’ve always taken great pride in…telling all the other kids that my dad could draw was something I cherished…one of the great things growing up was looking at all his doodles in this scrapbook that he kept, of all his cartoons he did for the paper…
That went to the top of the list in my head as far as what to do when I enter college. Sure enough, one of the first weeks of my freshman year, I found the collegiate paper and asked to be the cartoonist…it was one of those “heart thumper moments” ya know? “Hi, I am interested in drawing cartoons for the paper?” *tha thump tha thump tha thump*……. “sure.” …… “ok”…leaving the office, I thought to myself…how the hell…do I draw an editorial cartoon.
Little did I know what that would blossom into…a 4.5 year career as the Editorial Cartoonist…in which time I am proud to say I learned a small portion of what the hell I was supposed to be doing, even receiving 1st Place Editorial Cartoonist at a newspaper competition event I went to my last year..the whole Editorial Cartoonist experience is something that I will always treasure, for both the lessons I learned and the people I shared it with.
In that time, I can definitely say I grew and understand more so the dynamics of cartooning. I began to study the Sunday newspapers and any other comic/cartoon strips I could get my hands on…studying their specific compositions, styles, transitions, etc..
Cartooning, before college, was something I had enjoyed but not necessarily considered as a serious career. Drawing those editorial cartoons every week, and then eventually launching my own comic strip for the paper, I began to understand more about what making a cartoon is all about.
I compare cartooning to doing comedic stand up…it’s the greatest thing for someone to walk up to you and tell you how funny your cartoon was in last week’s issue. ..knowing that you made a person laugh, chuckle, smile or even a small smirk just makes you feel great inside…and you work your hardest to make each and every cartoon you do that much funnier and enjoyable for your readers.
I’m currently applying for my masters in Graphic Design, but cartooning is something I carry along with me next to my heart…I know it will be something I will do until the day I leave this earth and I am content with that knowledge, regardless of any other variables that will be affecting my life.
Cartooning is my passion, makes the walk so far a lil’ bit easier to tread.
This post is part of a series on personal development, career and identity. It’s not about who you want to be when you grow up, but being who you ARE. The key is to find out your true calling and passions and then figuring out how to live it. We all have stories to share, and I want to hear yours. If you’d like to guest blog for the Panda, please submit to floreta@solitarypanda.com.
01:
Andrew and I go way back when I posted on his internet forum that he has managed and built from scratch for years. After seeing my interest and passion for blogging, he got inspired to start his own at Don’t Feed the Animals; a witty title stemming from a reference to one of Chuck Pahliunuk’s novels, Choke. He writes smart, thought-provoking and well written essays about life and society from a convincingly Atheist perspective.
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I’m 27 and I only recently figured out what I want to do with my life. This is how I came to that decision:
When I was in my late teens, I thought that the entire world could be explained by a mathematical equation. Of course, I never found that equation, but I was sure that it existed. Maybe I should blame the movie Pi for that, but I had really always been a logic-over-passion type of person. Personal happiness, my conjecture began, is as simple as plugging in the variables. Now, while I am no longer as naive, I do feel like I was on to something. Recently, for my 27th birthday, a friend handed me a book called The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Written by a former trader and lifelong philosopher, this book appeared on the surface to be about economics and mathematics. However, beneath all the talk about stock market crashes and the Mandelbrot set, there was a real sense of practical clarity. The volatility of the various markets, one realizes, is no different than the everyday lives each of us choose to lead. There are markets for any personality; low risk, high risk, bland and exotic. Why, then, can we not take the approach we make toward money and apply it to real life?
If that seems a bit dispassionate to you, let me make it a little more vivid. I don’t know what you’re doing with your life right now, but whatever it is, I’m sure you can classify it under one of two categories. The first category, which Taleb refers to as Mediocristan, is where every day is generally the same; you can expect some variation, but even on the best or worst days, the overall experience doesn’t modify the landscape of your life. Consider waitressing: even your best day can occur within predictable means. A $500 tip would be outstanding, but it wouldn’t change your life. The second category, called Extremistan, offers a much different range of possibilities. In this environment, the majority of your days may seem just as monotonous as Mediocristan, but the potential for life-altering circumstances always looms. If you’re a writer, for instance, you can spend a lifetime in obscurity, earning meager recognition for your labor. Then, suddenly, you’re a hit. The ceiling on your potential success at this point is non-existent. Furthermore, the success you do achieve will undoubtedly alter your immediate life and your future, in addition to justifying all the years of toil you spent to get to that point. It all depends on what you expose yourself to.
Let’s go back to cold, unfeeling math for a moment now. At the heart of our two realms of existence, we have two types of probability; negative and positive. Negative probability works like this: if you’re a restaurant owner, the best you can realistically hope for is that your restaurant achieves success enough for you to either live off the returns or open another one. However, the worst that can happen is that you lose your entire investment (maybe more) when nobody shows up to eat your food. The general analysis? There is a lot invested for a mediocre, measured gain at best. Many of us choose this route because we are comfortable with the idea that the modesty creates a greater chance for success. Meanwhile, we have positive probably to consider as well. It works in the opposite manner of negative probability; small investments have a low chance of making it big, but when they do, the positives can easily outweigh a lifetime of negatives. The performer Eddie Cantor once said, “It takes 20 years of hard work to become an overnight success.” The first step in exposing yourself to the right kind of environment is to identify the type of probability at play within it.
Scalability is another key component to potential success. Consider that it would take considerably more work to make a million dollars as a waitress than as a writer. Though on your worst day as a writer, you will make less money than a waitress on her worst day, all it takes is one good day to change it all around. As a restaurateur, you’re required to keep opening more and more restaurants if you want to increase your profits; a single location can only earn you so much. However, as a venture capitalist, one can make an unlimited amount of investments, while only needing one hit to consider the path a success. It maximizes serendipity. Some people dream of wild success while working at a desk job or providing a personal service. I’m not here to say that they’re caught in a dream. Instead, I want to make a point out of their potential; no matter what heights they reach, they are always limited by the number of hours in a day and breath in their lungs. If we want to reach the stars, we know we can’t simply walk there, we have to be a bit more clever than that.
The most important factor in choosing what to expose yourself to: What will make you happy? Despite all I’ve said about success, I undoubtedly endorse the world of Mediocristan if you just want to be happy. What we’re talking about is a lifetime of small, incremental victories versus a lifetime of letdown after letdown, all in the hopes of a single moment of vindication. Any psychologist will tell you that the healthier path is the one that rewards you constantly, though modestly. When you live in Extremistan, you’ve got more than just probability working against you. Let’s say you do succeed and your life changes, what then? Suddenly, your standard for success has risen and now even the tiny victories are unsatisfying. We all know how this feels; we get what we want and we still want more. Even a repeat is disappointing if it doesn’t top what you achieved before. The path through Extremistan is not for the pleasure seeker, but for the dreamer.
How do we apply these ideas to our lives? I’ve done so by mixing both worlds together. I consider myself a writer and my goal is to be paid to write my own topics (enough to live comfortably), but I know that the chances of this are low – very low. It is a life of constant output with little to no feedback and, so far, superficial success (I’ve gotten a few articles on the front page of Digg and Reddit, I’ve even been on the radio to talk about one, but I have not earned a penny from any of it, nor has my blog maintained the initial burst of traffic provided by these successes). I retain my motivation by seeking validation in other areas. I have a day job that provides me with a means to earn and save money consistently. I also have taken up rock climbing, an activity in which I see improvements in both my physique and my technique that please me every day. While this may not sound like such a radical life, that is part of my point. You don’t need to martyr yourself for your lofty dreams, and you don’t have to settle for a boring existence.
Find the balance that works for you. Some people need to devote their life to a single goal, others juggle many balls at once. Then there are those of us who are happy to live in a hut by the beach, catching our own food in the ocean and ending every day with a sunset over the water. What worked for me was understanding the potential of the activities I got involved in and reconciling that with the dreams that drive me. Now that I’ve decided what I want to do, the next step is actually doing it. I’ll let you know how that turns out.
This post is part of a series on personal development, career and identity. It’s not about who you want to be when you grow up, but being who you ARE. The key is to find out your true calling and passions and then figuring out how to live it. We all have stories to share, and I want to hear yours. If you’d like to guest blog for the Panda, please submit to floreta@solitarypanda.com.
