Personal | The Chexican

The Books That Made Me

by thechexican | Dec 27, 2025 | Personal

A rumination that’s crossed my mind multiple times this year has been the first stories that made me: my favorite books as a child, and just how deep their influence ended up running. I started reading before grade school. I’d had exposure to reading basics in pre-school, and more importantly, strong supplemental at-home efforts by an elder sister. It was through her guidance that I was taught to read out of my collection of Walt Disney Fun-to-Read Library books. These beginning reader books were fascinating to me, stories featuring my beloved Disney characters that couldn’t be found in their TV cartoons or movies. And In book form, they weren’t just entertaining me, they were providing instruction and making a good case for its usefulness in life. Some were original stories expanding beyond what happened in the movie, such as The Ugly Stepsisters Cinderella story. But many of them were adaptations of classic stories and fables like “The Tortoise and the Hare” (Goofy’s Big Race) and “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” (Donald Cries “Wolf!”). Between that set and the encyclopedic Fun-to-Learn library, those Disney books were my constant companions in the lulls of childhood before portable electronic devices. They taught me to be curious about the world and appreciate it for what it is. I feel rather guilty for having forgotten them altogether in the time since, and only just remembering them now as I started to write this. The books I’ve held in memory as my favorites from back then are the ones I read after starting elementary school—Arnold Lobel’s Fables, which ended up steering me to The Aesop for Children. Those were incredible, it was like finding the unfiltered originals that the Disney cover versions I had loved so much when starting to learn to read were based on. And since they weren’t interpretations featuring licensed characters, those stories could be more explicit about real consequences, including punishment or even death. They spoke of the world without...

Unburdened

by thechexican | Dec 17, 2025 | Personal

While this year has been spent prioritizing my academic obligations as an SDSU student, all the while I’ve also been following up on the court case against my harasser. Moving the case to the appellate court took so long that it ended up being the Fall final exams that it conflicted with. Nonetheless, I was able to get my appellant’s opening brief completed and submitted (thanks to the extensions granted) last Friday, my ungraded no-credit 4-6 unit equivalent magnum opus this year. It was filed by the reviewing court a couple days ago. And today, I finished and submitted those other administrative follow up items identified earlier in the year. Now all that’s left is to wait while this all plays out over the coming months while I finish my final semester and graduate SDSU; there won’t be anything else major for me to write/submit/file at this point. Hopefully this all resolves in my favor as it should have from the start. Regardless of the outcome, I look forward to the procedural aspects of this reaching their conclusion so I can move onto opening a can of First Amendment all over these matters and fully tell this story once I'm no longer preoccupied with university student life.

A Trying Year Completed

by thechexican | Dec 16, 2025 | Personal

I did it. All final exams and presentations done. Opening appellant’s brief finished and filed. Final “group” written report that I ended up self-writing to about 13 pages of copy, 25 pages total with cover page/table of contents/appendices, riding the momentum from all that legal brief preparation. What I feel most is accomplished. Dealing with full-time academic course loads all year while also self-representing a case through the appeal process has felt like running two mental marathons at the same time for 11 months straight. So much pressure and stress, all kinds of mental and emotional duress, all powered through to bring me to this moment in time when I can look back on them instead of having to actively live them. Relatedly, the other major feeling I’m having is one of cathartic relief, like I finally have room to start being the “real” me again, not that myopically-focused forced stoic facade privately brimming with resentment and anxiety. I physically feel like magically I lost 15 lbs overnight, and my full capacity for a gratitude mindset has returned. At this point, both matters are no longer future unknowns, they are now mostly-done. As the year winds down and the upcoming personal decade milestone of 2026 gets ever closer, I’m feeling confident and capable in driving my undergraduate studies and appeal case to their conclusion.

Almost Free of This Year

by thechexican | Dec 11, 2025 | Personal

The SDSU Fall 2025 final exam period has been a capstone gauntlet on a very challenging year. Back in January, I was a fresh transfer student having just completed all of the final requirements for my associate’s degree in the summer of 2024 and applied on a whim during the final month of the admission period for the Spring 2025 semester just to see if I would even be accepted. When I accepted the offer that was extended, I took on an accelerated curriculum to ensure that I’d be eligible for graduation at the end of Spring ’26. This would serve the dual purposes of minimizing student loan debt over more semesters, and allow me to graduate both one year after graduating from community college and on the milestone turning year of the next age decade in my life, reasons both practical and symbolic. The months in between have been a mentally and emotionally demanding sustained pressure, the high stakes of this undertaking ever present in my mind. As an independent returning adult student with no financial support or safety nets, this has all been a very real do-or-die stakes journey. It’s only through both my own student loan debt and state assistance grants/scholarships that I’ve been able to even attempt this academic climb to begin with. So there’s no room for failure, either with individual courses or overall. Not only do I not have family to be able to fall back in an emergency, my obligations to my dog demand that I achieve continued successes to be able to care and provide for him. Those fears and feelings of obligation to myself, my animal, and my financially supporting home state of California have been my sole motivators for the entirety of this year. With 16 units in the spring semester, 10 units over the summer session, and another 16 units this semester, this year has had only the briefest 1–2 week respites from the burdens of academia. Consequently, there’s so much I’ve sacrificed along the way. Gatherings with friends, holiday celebrations, engaging...

Re-Graduation Pending

by thechexican | Nov 18, 2025 | Personal

Last week, I had my registration appointment for next semester's classes.Yesterday, I got an email notification about the graduation application period opening.Today, I got the confirmation. It's jarring to go from the excitement of becoming a new inbound student at San Diego State University in January and find myself staring down the finality of this University student life only 11 months later. Having such a very short window in which to get to know more people and form that alma mater connection makes this current goal of lining up graduation with my upcoming milestone birthday year bittersweet. In a more ideal timeline, I would have taken semesters 12 units at a time, a two-year University experience with more bandwidth to engage in extracurricular activities and relationship building. Instead, extistential pressures and economic reality drove me to pursue efficiency, this current timeline where I'll be having graduation commencement cermonies back-to-back: 2025 from City College as a Fall 2024 graduate and 2026 from SDSU. It's been an exhausting endeavor, a near-monastic state of being with such a high opportunity cost that I exist only as a scholar and a walker to my dog. I've done very poorly at maintain other areas of my life in balance, from my fitness workouts to my journaling/blogging. However, there's still much left to do at SDSU before it's truly done, including the coming end—and related final exams—of the current Fall semester.

Eight Months of Academic Progress

by thechexican | Aug 19, 2025 | Personal

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.

Fear 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

Before the Fall

by thechexican | Aug 10, 2025 | Personal

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...

Change of Tack

by thechexican | Aug 2, 2025 | Personal

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.

Forging Ahead

by thechexican | Jul 6, 2025 | Personal, Website

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...

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