Meeting Halfway

The past few weeks of summer have been largely filled with learning, writing, teaching, reading, exercising, and the occasional adventure. The weird thing is, I wake up earlier in the summer than I usually do for school. You'd think that I'd use the summer time to get some sleep, but really, I just don't want to miss a moment of summer (I'm more than willing to miss some school to be honest). Right now, I'm not completely following through with my predetermined schedule and bucket list, although it helps keep my days more structured. I'd like to think of them as something that is set really high and in order to reach it, I'd have to jump. Even if I don't reach all my goals, I'd still be further than I would be without them. Weird analogy, I know.

For now, I'm just looking for anything super angsty to get some writing and art inspiration.

The following photos depict little fragments of summer: tree climbing, the zoo, getting caught in storms and some weird nature outings.

Retreat

When summer first started, I was admittedly worried that the given 75 days might be put to waste at the rate that I thought it was going. As of right now, 20 days of summer have past and there are 55 more to go. That's scary. One third of summer is almost gone.

From June 29th to July 12th, I attended a Buddhist retreat where over 70 monks of different rankings from all over Canada and the United States gathered at Phap Van Buddhist Centre to study Buddhism  together. Buddhist monks across the world retreat annually every summer to share their learnings and interpretations of Buddhism with each other, as well as study and get appointed to a higher ranking.

This retreat has been very enlightening for me. I usually don't come out as openly or passionately religious but with Buddhism, I've come to understand it logically enough that it is something I truly believe in (it's basically to achieve eternal happiness by escaping the cycle of suffering). The course of these ten days were a time of deep self-reflection and observation. I would go more on what I learned but I don't want to come off as someone who would overwhelm others of their own religion.

Each day of this retreat starts at 5:30 am with a 30 minute meditation (it's actually really great and calming). Meditation is all about having your mind be really aware of your body and surroundings. It really practices the mind to calm itself and the body when encountering anxiety-inducing situations (calming of the heart and breathing patterns). Meditation is followed with reading mantras and suttras. Those who don't understand suttras and mantras can still benefit from its calming and enchanting effect (reading suttras and mantras in Buddhism is almost like Gregorian chanting- it's almost musical?). After that, there's breakfast (which is vegetarian- actually, all food in Vietnamese Buddhism are meat-free), then classes. I would go into more detail but that would be a bit monotonous to read.

Seize The Summer

Summer and school-free days have finally come around, and this year, I can only hope to make it invincible. With a bucket list, schedule and a countdown in hand, I can only hope to achieve great things this summer and make it unforgettable. Here's to 75 days of summer, 75 days to seize.

School Ended

    3 years of high school have ended and now I am doing card commissions for my sister.

Project: School Literary Magazine

For the past month of May, students in my school district have been staying home, as a result of job action by the school board. With this, I was able to stay home for more than three weeks. During that time, I've embarked on an unexpected journey in creating the school literary magazine, which is a collection of writing, photography and art from students in the school.

Creating this magazine has taught me an incredible lot of things I never would have learned if hadn't taken myself up to such a task. Many parts were put into consideration during the creative process of this magazine. For example, I learned about the importance of font size, margins, the colour and font palette as well as layout and coordination of writing with art. Establishing the theme and aesthetic approach before working on this magazine played a huge role into creating this work. After that, I think everything just really fell into place. These things that I've learned would usually not be incorporated into normal design work that I do, like creative banners and posters.

Being head of the school literary magazine may have been the best thing I've done all year. Here's to more projects like this in the future.

This photo is one of my submissions to this magazine.