ricelily

It's been a busy spring and summer so far. A lot has happened since January and the major thing that happened was that I graduated with my Masters Degree and I'm looking for work.

I've been job hunting since March, close to the start of the final semester. As usual, racing towards the end was hectic and stressful. But school responsibilities are over and I'm left with the debt.

Finally joined in the crisis of my generation.

As I was sending out feelers into the vastness of the animation industry. I did get two responses from the studios I applied to. One studio gently stated that the position had been filled but really were impressed with my work to keep under their radar. No telling when another position might open, I just moved on and wait until the opportunity comes again. The second studio had a bit more luck, like unexpectedly good luck to the point where I made it to the Interview Threshold and I'm currently waiting for a response of some kind.

There are times when I can't help but feel I'm not as strong of a storyteller to compete with the veterans out there. But my mentors remind me that landing the first job is really all about being at the right place, at the right time. And I believe that to be true.

So I'm keeping busy and trying to slow myself down a bit to work on personal work. Luckily I've been blessed with friends who have projects they want me to take part in and gladly join in. I hope I can do them proud.

That's all for now.

Ah it's been a while sine my last entry. I got caught up in school mostly and I kinda forgot about this place. But a considerable amount of things have happened since my last entry.

Some family drama just sprang up out of nowhere and caused quite a bit of discord in the few weeks that led up to Thanksgiving. We, as in the family, tried to carry on as normally as possible. Despite the obvious, awkward elephants in the room at the holidays.

I acquired a new addition to the family; a dog! I He's technically my sister's latest adopted puppers but since there was during the midsts of brewing drama, the little Chihuahua/Pincher? Mix came to live with us. I never had a dog before and it was...quite the learning curve. Luckily, he's very well-behaved, loving, and gentle with his new feathery family too. In fact, he gets bullied a litte by the 8 ounces of terror.

Skating-wise, I've made some significant progress and entered my first skating showcase at my home rink. Nothing really huge, just a Christmas Show that every rink in the world puts on this time of year. It was fun though. During rehersals, I've gotten to know more about some of my fellow rinkmates and acquired a few new friendly faces to talk to. I hope that they feel the same way about it. I think it was a smart decision to take the adult advance classes a second time around and be more comfortable with jumping and other edge focused moves. I still feel weak on my left (which is not unusual.) but I haven't been visiting the rink much during their holiday hours, and for good reason. (It's so fucking crowded and dangerous, the ice turns to snow so fast.)

The showcase went pretty well, ....better at dress rehersal but it was fun. I had a good time. If I'm still around in town, I might do it again or perhaps even attempt competiting O.O!! We'll see how I progress and things progress with school.

Speaking of school, the final semester is finally coming up. This coming Spring would be my last semester at AAU and then into the real world. Before the holidays hit, I quit my job at GameStop and it's been liberating to be there for my family and not stress about working for a terrible boss who undermines your work ethics and angry customers. The only person that was hard to leave was the ASM, he and I became quick buds and he was sympathetic to my complaints about our boss. I carried them through the Black Friday fiasco which wasn't as hectic as I've previously experienced. Anyway, I've had my share of asshole coworkers but I was not willing to work for someone like the last boss. Especially when I'm close to graduating and transitioning into my career route.

Admittedly, it's scary to do something so drastic but there are positions out there. It's just a matter of putting in the grit and time to prep my portfolio to send off to these employers. There was an opporunity that sprang up during Thanksgiving in Burbank for a new show, most likely the position has long been fulfilled at this point. Idk, I'll have to check again. It would be ideal to work my first job in the Capital of Entertainment but I kinda have my heart set for working in Canada. (Which my ASM and fellow GA were very encouraging about choosing Canada).

As the title mentioned about "Strange Dreams" I had a particularly strange dream yesterday morning. I dreamt that I returned to my retail job (not the same store luckily), it felt like I've been gone for a few months and came back to a whole different setup from before. The membership pitches were the same and all but the system to process them was different; unnecessarily roundabout, and still running on a SLOW processing system. In the dream, I was helping a customer. A regular to the store and blessed with unbelievable patience. It felt like all the usual tasks that should've taken seconds to get through was done in hours. I was so frustrated with myself and for my customer. Looking back at it now, I can't help but feel this is some metaphoric representation about my current situation about starting my career.

Seeing all these job opportunities passing by and not being able to present anything is just stifling. I want to do it but I can't. I mostly wanted to talk about this earlier but I got so caught up with updating instead.

Anyway, I think my frustrations are manifesting into over the top representations.I just wanted to stay that much for now. I'll try again later.

Today (referring to 8/12) was a rough start. I had a family emergency this morning that caught me (and my prick stepdad) off guard and I was prepared to missing the final session of the quarter (to my dismay). But once the emergency passed, I was dismissed to head to my lesson despite my willingness to skip it.

Regardless, I made it to class a little late but I didn't miss anything major. I think I mentioned in the last entry that my class had dwindled down to two students. We were graded by our crossovers and learned a few new things on top of it.

We tried out the "Check" position, a technique to exit out of a spin gracefully; and the first basic jump! The "Waltz" Jump, for the first time. Needless to say, we were both terrified and my legs never felt so heavy.

The summer semester is entering it's final "week" or module and I'll be free to do regular practice on the ice again. I haven't gone all week. Not even Sunday.

This week has been inconvenient in general for a lot of reasons.

Despite the drawbacks, I graduated to the advanced course where the real fun begins. I was looking through the list of techniques and wow....I can at least do one of them. lol

I really liked Jenn, my coach. She was really tentative and an encouraging teacher. Hopefully, the next set of coaches I meet are just as so.

Until then, I got a lot to work on until my first lesson in Advanced. I was also recommended to do the workshops as well but I don't think I'm quite ready for that yet.

I'm entering the final year of my MFA program and that means there will be a large focus on preparing my Thesis for graduation. There's a storyboard artist job practically screaming at me from DHX Studios. Until I get a taste of what's in store for me this coming Fall, I'll just increment my way through skating. I don't plan on giving up on it even when I leave to a new place for work. As long as there's an ice rink that offers lessons, I'll learn all I can.

That's it for now.

So as I mentioned before, I'm not very good at keeping up with journals. More or less it boils down to a lack of subject to report on. But I have come to a solution to save this journal from becoming a void.

Ice Skating.

Yes, Ice skating.

Last March, I decided to take up figure skating. It goes without saying that Yuri on Ice was definitely an influence behind my motivation; however, that alone can only take you so far. As a matter of fact, I've always been into figure skating as a sport and always wanted to learn. Despite a past traumatizing childhood experience.

It's not the first time an anime/show had motivated me to take up a sport. In college, I joined a tennis class because of Prince of Tennis. (Mind you the show exaggerated the sport but it still had all the facts.) And I had a lot of fun playing in single and pair events. In the final week of class, I tied in first place in our class tournament. (not too shabby.)

Alas, I don't get to play Tennis because I don't have a partner to play with ;n;

I still have my gear and always willing to play.

Fast forward to March 2017. As a reward to myself for passing my Midpoint Review for my Graduate Thesis, I went to a free try-out skating session at the old rink I went as a kid. I was super excited to get back on the ice after so many years and I ended up loving it.

At my first lesson, I wasn't sure how the structure was handled. It turns out that in the adult class are a various levels; some having more experience than others and the coaches (at the time) were there to help you work on what you wanted to learn. As a total beginner, I had no idea and I felt lost. Nevertheless, my first lesson was doing "Crossovers" (the transfer of weight from one foot as you crossover the other foot.)



I could barely skate backwards, let alone trust my feet to distribute my weight on ice. Luckily, I had free access to public skating sessions at the home rink and I spent 3 hours practicing and working my leg muscles to skate backwards and the other techniques I learned at the free try-out.

@Try-outs:
-Forward Swizzle
-Backwards skating
-Rocking Horse

Initially, I was rather self-conscious about skating at my age and starting so late. I didn't think there was much I could do with figure skating other than just a hobby and I was cool with that. Just being able to do what professional skaters do was exciting enough.

At my next public skate session, I started practicing Crossovers. It was frustrating to battle my weight, fear, and not understanding the construct. Which resulted my first bad spill on the ice where my toepick caught the ice and I fell forward on my right shoulder. It must've been a bad fall cause the whole rink paused like deers in headlights.

Falling is to be expected. It's part of the game.

After my spill, I did my best to skate it off and continue practicing but I called it quits when I couldn't hold up my arm anymore.

Injuries: busted shoulder, bruised knee and hip.

My bruises healed just fine but my shoulder took two months to heal completely.

More or less, I was pretty traumatized doing crossovers on my left side for while but eventually pushed through the fear and I can do both right and left forward crossovers.

----

So after the first lesson, I wasn't really liking the structure of the classes. Also, the rink was 20 minutes away from my house so if I wanted to practice, I'd practically had to plan a morning there (stay for 3 hours or so). I decided that I should move my home rink to one closer to my house.

I canceled my lessons at the other rink and joined the new home rink, The Kroc Ice Arena. The class structure had a better set up. The adult course are divided up into: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. Then there's additional classes that are focused on jumps and spin (Beginner-Advanced). To say the least, I much prefer this structure over what I had, although I'm grateful for the "sink or swim" discipline for most things. I feel like I have a stronger foundation at Kroc.

More later.