meaning in the moving design

Getting old is a sneaky thing. Everyone always complains about the rumble of the big 3.0 but I'd say that my 30th birthday was perfectly chill- no neurotic impulse to deconstruct my life, no aching sentimentalism about all the lost years of my youth, no reminders of how time has past and the awe or reverence that comes with that.

No... that's all hitting me now, at 3.14159... tricky dick, that 31-and-a-half. Lately I've been running into a lot of old peeps. Not just people I used to hang out with, but also (and even weirder), people that I just used to see around. Like, back was I went out more. It's a strange feeling to be outside of a community you once felt so entrenched in, one that feels like it still carries that version of you with it.

I recently ran into some musician friends from OM days. I'd met their daughter when she was barely able to walk (we had a nice bonding moment when I picked her up as she was crying and she clung to me and fell back asleep. [Especially impressive because it was the morning after a sleepless night during which I was probably up to no good]). Last week, I saw her for the first time since and it blew my mind. She's six now. Six. like a completely real, actualized person. WEEEEIIIRD.

To save me from all these head trips, I recently got obsessed with feather stars, or rather, I reawakened an old obsession. I caught sight of these wily ocean invertebrates in Borneo, I was snorkeling along and suddenly I saw this awesome wiggling, wiggly feather thing. Then, when I dove down to get a better look, it went perfectly still and pretended that it was a plant!

Check it (sorry for the shaky video):

I come from a typical middle class Chinese family. My mother was a nurse, my father was an accountant. Growing up, all that was ever expected of me was to do well in school, get a higher education and find a good, well-paying job. One of those jobs that everyone's heard of, like Teacher, or Doctor, or Lawyer, or (... shudder) Dentist.

So when I started working in the arts, my parents were not only disappointed, they were confused. "Do you make movies?" they asked. "Are you a Director?" No, I said, I present movies at film festivals. I help publicize them, and I organize classes and events that help filmmakers make better films. That kind of stumped them. There was no easy NOC occupation that went with that, no one-word answer that they could take back to their friends. In short, they would rather I be a Dentist*.

When I was in Taiwan, I made things a lot easier for my parents. "She's a Writer," they would brag to their friends, relieved to finally have a name for me. But now that I'm back in Toronto, and have made yet another lateral step across careers (this time into environmental non-profit), I've once again put my parents in the awkward position of trying to figure out exactly what it is that I do. But they're trying....

This is just one of many cute emails I get from my dad, and it kind of made my day:

(Click on this to read it)










(the other super cute thing about my dad and emails is that he always puts the salutatory exclamation point in the wrong spot, like "Hi! Anita,"
... which, when I say it out loud, makes me laugh. A lot.)

I personally LOVE not being a one-word answer. And that's probably precisely the point, I'm happy to do laps around any word, any label, any noun. Happy to indulge this childish instinct to dance around the oppressive thumb trying to pin me down...

I am a living document, dagnammit.

So as for what it is I do....

A lot. I do a lot. Come talk to me about it sometime.


*Who the fuck grows up wanting to be a dentist?? That, to me, just points to an utter lack of imagination...