With the start of the Fall semester looming, I keep reminding myself that at the end of this next term I’ll only be 9 units away from major program completion, 12 units from completing all requirements by the end of the Spring 2026 semester.
I grew up in a time when the “boy’s don’t cry” attitude was still a prevailing and unchallenged social attitude, and with everything that happened to me in my adolescence, my response was to grow callous and rid myself of the high emotional sensitivity I had in early childhood. It certainly didn’t help that those were also times in which presenting as straight-passing was a prudent survival mechanism. In turn, this has created a high bar for art in any medium to clear, and why I highly value media that is able to elicit an emotional reaction from me. The stronger the better.
For everything going wrong in the world—the U.S. specifically—2025 has been a rich year for me in this regard. In music, television, and gaming, I’ve experienced very strong works that didn’t just entertain, they’ve moved me to tears and inspired a sense of resolve that feels critical in enduring the future ahead.
Ryan Coogler’s blockbuster horror film certainly lived up to the hype. Without getting too deep in the subtext reeds and attempting to unpack a lot of the underlying meaning that the Black contingent on social media platforms have already discussed at length earlier this year, all I feel necessary to say is that the musical sequence midway through the film was worth the price of admission alone.
That amalgam of Black culture across time that is deeply synonymous with American culture was poignant enough, but the inclusion of Asian dancers associated to represent the two Chinese secondary characters resonated with my Chinese ethnicity, in total a stunning representation of the power of music and the oneness of humanity. It was an excellent warm-up to the visual feast that was…
Beyoncé tours are more than just music concerts, they’re major cultural and economic events at this point. Ever since her 2016 Lemonade album, she’s been on an insane ascent as an artist, no mean feat given that she’s always been an undeniable front runner in the entertainment industry. The level of detail, intentionality, and overall quality of all of her recent works is unparalleled, and has pushed me from “she’s good, I like some of her songs” squarely into fan territory. 2023’s RENAISSANCE tour will forever be the experiential apex of live music, but this year’s Cowboy Carter tour was still impressively magnificent—especially for a country themed album that I was not musically as enthusiastic about as I was its predecessor.
At face value, it was a live performance. In context, it was a celebration of Black history and excellence in the presence of the peak artistry. More than that, it was a soothing of the American soul, a time and a place where the Star-Spangled Banner could once be symbolic of “old glory” and not modern racism.
In terms of actual 2025 music releases, the standout piece was Japanese band Sakanaction and their latest single, ｢海珠」(Kaiju, meaning “strange beast”, usually given as “monster”). The song was the first new release in years, it came on the tails of a publicized struggle with depression by frontman Ichiro Yamaguchi in both news and a couple of documentaries. Both musically and lyrically, the song is astoundingly dense in poetic beauty. From the perspective of someone intimately familiar with depression and living in these modern post-truth chaotic times, the message really hit hard when the music video (with an official captioned translation) came out a few weeks after the music release.
「今何光年も遠く 遠く 遠く叫んで また怪獣になるんだ」
“Now, I’ll roar so loudly that I can be heard from many light-years away, and turn into a kaiju again.”
Despite being around for a good while and being very popular in their native Japan, the song ended up being the first time the band’s music was used as an anime theme song. Although I don’t usually watch anime, repeatedly reading comments praising the show and the song’s thematic relevance eventually led me to…
This anime adaptation of a manga by the same name technically debuted at the end of 2024, but I didn’t come upon it until earlier this year; luckily by then, it was available to stream in its entirety. I started out highly dubious that a fictional period piece anime about heliocentric cosmological model would be able to retain my attention. Yet in a world where flat-earth conspiracists exist in this day and age, there was something fitting about a contemporary artwork revisiting the dogmatic oppression of knowledge and a universal truth that did historically happen.
With the plot’s driving conflict rooted in our reality, the ultimate resolution is also implied; the story arcs and the characters in between make the journey worth it. In them lies the notion that the experience and fruits of enlightenment lie a beauty worth dying for. It was a layered take on mortality, meaning in life, and nature of reality. Yet, for as great as Orb was, it pales in comparison to the masterpiece that is…
I could, and probably eventually will, write extensively on this unexpected marvel. To try to capture it adequately in a summary paragraph or two is a lost cause. The first game by a French indie game studio, and in one fell swoop eclipsed every entry in my lifelong relationship with the Final Fantasy series. It is musically unimpeachable, visually stunning, and fantastically well written. I haven’t been compelled by a game to learn the head writer’s name since Amy Hennig gave us both the Legacy of Kain and Uncharted series, but I’m already a big fan of Jennifer Svedberg-Yen.
“For Those Who Come After” and “Tomorrow Comes” are brilliant in their simplicity as catchphrases.
Read moreFear and Anxiety are what drive us to compare ourselves to others because we start deriving our sense of who we are and what our value is based on how we stand next to other people
Although the San Diego State University summer session doesn’t officially close until the 15th of this month, I got all my remaining coursework done earlier this week. Another pair of A’s locked in for the transcript, and the start of a very brief respite ahead of the Fall 2025 semester. As autumn looms, the looming circumstantial pressures are causing me a fair deal of worry and anxiety. On top of the upcoming 16 unit course load, it’s also become highly imperative to find a new income source.
In the face of these adversities, the unhelpful specter of comparison has also been invading my thinking. Be it my own peers or even younger adults of a different generational cohort that are thriving professionally and/or financially, it drives a painful poignancy of how far behind I am from my envisioned actualized self; a double whammy of negative self-perception, inadequacy in relation to others as much as my own personal standards. Left unchecked, that line of thinking devolves into lamentations over my personal history that lead up to this present existence. Specifically, all those prime years in my 20s and early 30s lost to reorienting myself mentally and emotionally after all collective trauma my younger self endured, all while the world at large has continued to spiral out of control.
In the monomyth of my life story, this is my Apotheosis stage, all preparation for the more difficult part that is the road ahead. In the context of everything before, it’s tragically comical to think that has all been the “easy” part of this life.
In the down time between job search efforts, I’ve been focused on doing all the little things needed to bridge that gap between my lived reality and idealized perception. I’ve been actively drafting personal essays, journaling, working out, and making updates to the website—I got a color scheme defined, the beginnings of an actual landing page laid out, and have been getting reacquainted with the relevant web technology principles. Pushing these type of milestone updates again feels like a good start, but as always, there’s still so much more to do.
Along with my usual introspection, I’ve recently started organizing and revisiting my past journal entries & blog posts spread among different digital archives. In doing so, it’s become very apparent to me just how much I’m still being held back by my old ways—the fears of failure and inadequacy, the guilt of having failed my child self, the shame for struggling with the challenges in my life as much as I have. It’s all stuff I’ve long identified as unproductive and unfairly self-imposed judgement, yet nonetheless have never been able to fully unburden myself.
It’s a large reason why I’ve long-kept my online activity sparse and light. Blog posts and social media engagement seem trivial in the face of pursuing a higher education while simultaneously trying to further develop a long-running professional career in need of more notable achievements. But in this modern hyper-connected world, keeping a low profile and neglecting the digital landscape only make outcomes harder and longer to reach.
My self-expression has long been in the aim of becoming somebody else and delineating myself from who I used to be, but now, the attitude has changed; my past is something to be reclaimed and embraced, and in doing so, I may also find my true voice and motivation.