The personal record
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.
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...
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.
Life right now feels like it's in limbo. My quotidian existence for the last 3 years and counting has largely been flattened into three simple aspects: the college student, the dog owner, and the basic self responsible for the lower levels of the Maslow hierarchy of needs who since last year has also been required to take on self-representation in the court of law. That last one has (and still continues to) cost me so much time, effort, and mental-emotional overhead. While I recognize the objective validity of these challenges in my life, they nonetheless feel like a privileged problem set compared to the other horrific realities being faced by people in today's America and across the globe. People are being aducted illegally on U.S. soil by the government, others are being starved and killed in pointless unnecessary wars abroad, and here I am fretting over finances and the weariness of being "me". Right now, I'm little over 1/3 of the way done through my short scheduled student tenure at SDSU. At 16 units the inaugural Spring 2025 semester and 10 over this present summer session, I'm on track to meet my goal of graduation at the conclusion of Spring 2026. Even though that's still little under a calendar year away, I'm already stressing about what comes after, whether it's having to find an employment opportunity that puts my hard-earned degree to use or stressing over how to afford the cost of a Master's degree program. Given that I'm currently on track for a Magna Cum Laude honors designation having a GPA that's fractionally above 3.7, it's looking likely I could finish with the highest Summa Cum Laude honors. As to my dog—my raison d'être, the main motivation in my life to keep pushing forward—I often struggle with the guilt that instead of being able to give him a maximalist life full of adventure, he's instead apartment bound with me while I tend to these academic and/or profressional obligations. It helps that I'm fortune to have a network of local dog...
Last Sunday morning, June 1st at approximately 10AM, my roommate took the dog out with him for morning coffee walk before I got up myself. Leaving the apartment minutes later on my own quest for a latte, I had a couple of regular faces around the neighborhood ask where my dog was. I replied that I was having a one of those idyllic days for parents where the kid is off under someone else's care and you don't have to worry about it. Morning coffee in hand, I returned home to have my roommate inform me that he needed to tell me something. Apparently, they had gone to a different local coffee shop, Good Omen Coffee Co., and had spent a few moments seated at a table outside, making conversation with a couple of other patrons with their own dog while the pets socialized together. During this, my roommate saw my harasser, off at a distance and putting his biological baby child into a carrier inside of a car; Good Omen is the designated neutral location used for child exchanges for his unsupervised visitations. Thinking nothing of it, my roommate was suddenly distracted by another passing dog whose presence triggered and unpleasant response among all the dogs present, requiring him to frantically scramble to detain my dog without any advance indication. As the other dog finished passing without incident, he looked up to find the harasser with his phone out recording him and my dog. Upon noticing this, my roommate started drawing the attention of the couple he had been talking to and anyone in their vicinity toward Leonardo, the crazy man standing off at a distance recording them for no reason, getting them to verbally acknowledge that it was strange and weird behavior. As I was told, the harasser was parked and recording them approximately in the area denoted by the red rectangle This is all highly reminiscent of last summer, when on July 15, 2024, the harasser took advantage of crossing paths with my roommate while he was walking the dog—having had multiple instances of...
It's been a few days since I graduation from San Diego City College on Thursday, finally getting to walk after having completed all my required coursework in the Summer of last year and my degree not issued until the conclusion of the Fall 2024 semester. Dated December 16, 2024 and received in the mail back on March 3rd of this year, it’s an accomplishment that’s been stuck in a state of suspense and nice to finally have played out in full. I was curious as to how I would feel that day, having never done a graduation walk before; I had tested out of high school at the start of my senior year, obtaining a legal diploma equivalent by way of the California High School Proficiency Exam (CHSPE). Thereafter, I had made peace with living a life in which I would not be a college student/graduate, and the opportunity to walk for a graduation ceremony a faint and highly unlikely possibility. I never really felt like I missed out on anything special by skipping my high school senior year and its processions, and after 20 years of mentally treating graduation ceremonies as something so personally meaningless, was unsure where my perspective would land that day. It ultimately ended up being a very gratifying experience. I wore my regalia while I took the dog out for a walk before heading down to Balboa Park to check in for the commencement ceremony in the early afternoon. It was nice to show off to everyone I know, and to get congratulatory acknowledgements from strangers throughout the entire day. While it’s been great to bask in the accomplishment, reality doesn’t wait, and I immediately have the matter of financing the summer session and choosing classes for the upcoming Fall semester to contend with. Not only that, the commencement ceremony also brought a bittersweet poignancy to matter. Getting my associate’s degree is something I’ve already done, it’s time and effort already spent that I no longer have ahead of me as my future but instead as my past; that much...
This month has flown by so fast. All of April leading up until last week was an academic gauntlet, sole focus on ensuring my academic success while sacrificing every other aspect of my life that isn’t my dog. In the week since finishing the Spring semester at SDSU, I’ve been preoccupied with catching up on personal administrative/financial work, and preparing for the graduation commencement ceremony from San Diego City College. In this time between classes, it feels like I’ve got a lot to do in order to prepare for the upcoming Summer session and the Fall semester to follow. Optimizations to my homework/study space, and to my lifestyle. Over the past 1½ months, I’ve been sacrificing all of my fitness and recreational activities to concentrate on academics; I haven’t journaled or exercised much at all lately, and any updates here at all. The goal between now and the start of the upcoming summer session is to apply the takeaways from my inaugural semester at SDSU and get everything in place to make sure the next one goes even better. Not will there be the remaining academic workload to tend to, but also my other projects and initiatives. Things are only going to get busier, and also form the foundation for the things to come—but that’s a train of thought for another time.
Had the last two final of exams for this semester today, one at late morning and other in the early evening. It's hard to believe it's already over and done with. As much I'm glad to progress and keep moving forward, there is a certain melancholy over how fast it all seems to be passing. One down, two more to go.
In August of last year (2024), I was taken to civil court by my harasser—my downstairs neighbor’s baby daddy—marking the beginning of a painstaking gauntlet that brought to light how flawed and broken the legal “system” is, just how badly we're living in a post-facts world where truth and objectivity do not matter. How the local court system is as incapable and capricious as the US Supreme Court is compromised and corrupt. Earlier that year in March, he came to my door trying to force his way into my apartment with the intent to fight me. This was a short while after I’d embarrassed him into leaving the premises, having been altered by dog of unusual activity out front and stepping out on the balcony to find him yelling at and antagonizing my aforementioned neighbor’s sister and roommate, and subsequently yelling at him in broad daylight that nobody that lived in the building wanted him there, that he was trespassing, and to “get the fuck out”. A few days later, he had flowers delivered with a throwaway apology on the card. Months later, he initiated suit against my neighbor for full time custody. Knowing that I had a police report on file over that behavior and would be a huge liability to him as a legitimate witness, he falsely alleged that I—and my roommate—had been harassing him, on an ongoing basis from March until July, including but not limited to stalking and threats of physical violence. What ensued was a months-long unwanted crash course in legal process. The initial cases were dismissed without prejudice, the Judge at the time noting my cross-petition was a much closer call. Three weeks later, he began passively harassing me again such that it drove me to file a new case against him. Though at one point I hired legal representation for the short while I could afford it, I ended up largely self-representing, including the arduous research and drafting of formal Motions for Sanctions against my harasser and his attorney. In the process, I learned just how...