Snow Days: A Travel Diary

It is no longer winter. The clouds are clearing up, clear skies and fluffy white clouds are appearing, and the heat is creeping back into the typical SoCal 90-100 degree destructive heat.

But — let’s not think about that. Let’s pretend it’s so cold, you can’t feel your nose or hands. Your feet falls onto the soft crunch of snow as you walk up the snow covered street. The sound of a crackling fireplace entices you to starting making s’mores. You breathe in cool air into your lungs. You are in the mountains, and it’s a snowy day.

I took two trips to the mountains in the last year. One with some friends in 2018 and one this year with Austy. The two trips actually could not have been more different, but yet they were both refuge from the main thing we were all trying to escape from — home.

The mountain retreat with friends was communal. We played games, drank a little, snowboarded, and ate a LOT of good food — mostly breakfast and hot pot at the end of a long day of snowboarding. It was warm and comforting — home without needing to be at home.

The mountain retreat with Austin was solitude. We played games, mostly in the snow, drank a little, ate bomb food around the area — and let ourselves reflect and create. We would sit in the comforts of our heated cabin, revelling in the quiet companionship while the rest of the world behind our double paned windows was blanketed in soft snow. It was warm and comforting — home for my thoughts without needing to be at home.

That is, until the heater stopped working at one point and we were left in the freezing cold in a cabin surrounded by 30 degree weather, and until we had to put on snow chains towards the end of our trip, which was a struggle with just the two of us.

I never grew up with the snow, so being able to experience it a few times during my adult life is a blessing in disguise. For one, I am grateful I never had to experience snow on a daily basis — although idyllic and soft at first glance, it is unforgiving when the heater doesn’t work or when you’re struggling to drive up a snowy hill.

The snow is a magical place to rest, a place to call home for a few days — but it is not a lifestyle for me. And because of that, it has made me appreciate home that much more — although chaotic, restless, and neverending — at the end of the day, home is warm and comforting.

The Job Hunt - A Work in Progress (Literally)

Job hunting has gotten to the point where it is a job in of itself. The current employment climate is fierce with competition. No one wants to see your carbon copy resume and cover letter. That trick might have worked 3 years ago, but a trick can turn into the norm in a split second. The ever changing and ever demanding recruiting system wants to see people that stand out, that are willing to go above and beyond and do whatever it takes to get the next job, that are the perfect fit.

So progress begins.

The job hunt becomes another job. You carve out time to pore through the job description, pick out keywords to add to your resume. Then you use those same keywords to craft your cover letter. You package it up into a nice format that you decided to create on Photoshop to show off your creative design skills (a subliminal way to show off another keyword). You send it to the employer, which is most likely an online job board that takes your full-time's worth of work into the void. Never to be seen.

So progress continues.

You try to network. Coaches say, "Networking puts you at the top of the food chain by 99%." So why am I at the bottom of that food chain? You reach out, you pick their brain, you learn some things from people who you genuinely want to get to know. It's a hit or miss -- you either get a nice response or a nice piece of nothing after your email request asking to do some brain picking. Still nothing, even after cultivating and growing your network, even after meeting people who have already made their claims to the stake, who already have something going for them. You're happy for them and you're glad you met them, but so are hundreds of others as they comment "Congrats" on their LinkedIn announcement. You start to wonder if the "networking trick" just turned into the norm.

So you go into progress again.

Job hunting is keeping your eyes on building your resume and not on the person who just got an offer for their dream job. But still you get deterred. Disappointed. You breakdown. You question your self worth. You stop applying to jobs because you don't want to take on another job that's just as worthless and disappointing as your day job. But as the monotonous days go by, you realize how shitty of a day job you have and how you have to desperately leave before you become too ingrained in the 9-6+ hustle, the draining work life that gives you no time to do the work you actually want to do. You feel the shackles chained to your wrists as you type away at your desk, the years you've worked at the same company like a life sentence in prison.

No, you're better than that. I'm better than that.

And so you progress.

Summer 2018: A Reflection

1. Your passion doesn't always need to be your day job.
2. Know what you love and what your values are. Your North Star will continue to guide you and remind you of who you are and why you're alive.
3. Intention, Attention, No tension -- Get clear on what you want, focus on what you want, and give it time and be ready to receive.
4. Your pace is your own pace. There is no rush. You are where you need to be.
5. Stress can break you down, but you can jump back to a routine with keystone habits.
6. Rebalancing takes time and energy. Be kind to yourself as you take this time for yourself.
7. "Just like a muscle – you start the day with 100% reserves. But as you go through the day your willpower naturally wanes through fatigue, but also because of decisions you have to make." Spend your willpower wisely and recharge when necessary.
8. Your ego will never stop talking. It's up to you to decide if you want to listen to it.
9. Without a self-care routine, I am nothing but a shell. Take time for yourself, whether that is to read, write, meditate, yoga.
10. A memorable summer does not have to always involve a long, fancy trip to another country or to another state. You can always find things to do from your own home. 
11. Remember that "this isn't your whole life. This is a season in your life."
12. "If you stumble, that's a great sign. It means you've found your edge. You tried something that didn't work and now you know."
13. If you internalize, you will end up externalizing, probably in the exploding kind of way. Vocalize to the right people.
14. Be open to connections, even if it is with people who are much older than you by years and years. You never know when you will find a friend.
15. Being vocal about seeking coaching and counseling is okay. We all need help.
16. When you find work that you love, it won't feel like you are suffering. You will be living and thriving.
17. Persist and visualize, no matter what. This is how we get what we want.
18. It's a cliche -- but this is the process. These are the moments where we are being planted. Growth will only happen from here on out.

An Independent Loneliness

Nowadays, it only cuts me on the surface. It no longer feels like the knife has sunken deep and stays for longer than is necessary to kill me. Nowadays, it just feels like an old wound that cuts open with the prick of the knife every time I think about. And I think about it all the time.

This independence that I have built for myself took a long time for me. Even though I'm in a committed relationship, I enjoy spending time alone at coffee shops, at the mall, at yoga and the gym, on airplanes, in my car, and even at the movies. I find myself doing this because nowadays, it's hard to find people, specifically women, who are willing to commit to friendships outside of their immediate, inner circle. It's easier to commit to myself than to commit to others who aren't willing to reciprocate.

ANOTHER BLOG?? WTF JANNA

I know what you're thinking. ANOTHER BLOG BY JANNA?! What's new honestly? I think I have gone through 10 blogs during my lifetime on the internet, with 4 of them being public, and 1 of them being a Tumblr (so not a true blog but kinda sorta?)

My last blog, Skyline Soul (RIP), was my last ambitious passion project and a testament to why I could never be a true blogger. Listicle and article writing were not meant for me. The fun seemed to seep out from the looming pressure to gain as much traffic as possible and build a business out of something I wasn't even so sure about.

So I stopped feeling passionate about writing and took a break to pursue other projects. I wrote, filmed, and edited my own short film, which became a finalist at a Los Angeles film festival. That led me to producing one of my friend's short films, which is currently in post-production right now. I was surprisingly promoted into a job I never thought I would actually get, and to be honest, it has made me uncertain about my career path. So I took up more hobbies to satisfy my curiosities and creative musings -- consistent bullet journaling, photography, building content for a Fil-Am content platform, editing and filming content for friends, etc. TLDR; I stopped writing for awhile.

But something always take me back to writing. When I think about what my life's purpose is, I think back to when I was a driven, overzealous student in high school who had read so many YA and fantasy novels that I basically kept my own library. I was just barely getting into videography and filmmaking, but did not actually understand what that all meant. I didn't care because I knew I was working towards my biggest dream -- to write novels and adapt them into film.

The thing about dreams is that they can easily fade over time. Slowly, that dream molded itself into other reiterations of being a creative in entertainment and media. I thought about being a DP, an editor, a screenwriter, even a YouTube creator. Now I have shifted into becoming a producer, which I think blends my creative and logistic/admin skills together beautifully. But writing fiction and blogs about the human condition and experience continue to trickle into my mind. And I miss it so much. After a lot of self-reflection and meditation, I finally learned what my life passion is: to tell creative stories that inspire, influence, and inform others of the human condition and the state of the world using different mediums. Different mediums. I can't subject myself to JUST films and video. One of my pillars in life was education and reading, so books and writing are just as important to me as the films and videos I grew up with.

So this is the birth of The Unfiltered Cafe. A casual blog where I write about pretty much anything I want --all unfiltered and probably written in a cafe (I'm in a K-Town cafe as I write this). Mostly I see myself writing think pieces (with some Janna humor sprinkled in) about my life, travels, minimalism, self-development, and character development exercises for short story/short film ideas I have that take space in my brain. This space is basically fair game for any creative writing I can think of. I'd love to have an audience, although I don't expect it in the way that I did for Skyline Soul. This is all going to be completely organic, and if people are drawn to my writing and opinions, I at least want it to be because they were genuinely curious about my work and not because they were served an ad in the interwebs. But we will see where this goes! It might be another list to the many abandoned blogs I have created, but I want to embody my dreamy high school self and hope that this makes an impact in a small way, whether that be for myself and my writing, or if it resonates with someone out there.

We can't know unless we try.