LastYearToday: The search for Me.
By: Yosh Weerakoone
Tags: Adulthood, Year In Review, Life Lessons, Depression, Search For Meaning

Another year has flown past in the blink of an eye and I find myself staring down the 14th of November once more. A hallowed date for me and no one else. If you’re new here — a preamble: on an uneventful day (the 15th of November) in the year 2017, I sat down and wrote a Medium article. It was an introspective piece that I wrote more for myself than anyone else. Penned in the hopes that I could put down the thoughts and emotions that are rattling inside my head on to something other than the prison walls of my mind; a final effort to keep the hounds of psychological and emotional perdition at bay. It seems to do me well, and I continue it annually. A reflection of my year’s accomplishments (and failures); the dramatic final look at the man in the mirror before stepping on to the ring once more.

This year is (has been) no different. As I write this in the pin-drop silence of my home I find myself grappling at possible ways to best illuminate to you, Dear Reader, all the things that have happened and have left a lasting impact on me this year past. After all, a write up MUST have a STYLE, should it not? This year, I think not. I have been the curator of my stories for far too long — and the stories I have told in the past have left a bloody after taste; the price of biting my tongue in the effort of holding back words lest I hurt someone close to me. But I ignored the cost to myself of bottling things that should’ve been let out before it festered. Now, for the first time, I write this fully conscient of the amputation I may be dealt as a result of this lengthy prognosis. In a world of curated Instagram grids, 4 million subscribers, and perfectly implemented Kanban boards, I have recently found solace in admiring the honest and brave few who would speak their truths fervently with steadfast composure like Atlas with the World on his shoulders. I, by no means, agree with all of their ‘truths’, but I admire their strength to stand by what they believe: I desire to be like that. After all these years of mimicry, I’d for once like to be me.

I notice that my armpits are drenched in sweat. It’s a dry and cool 10 Celcius at this moment — “the sweat appears to be a threat response?” I question.

Snap-judgment: I may be suffering from crippling anxiety.

“Meh, write it off, you’ll be fine”, I tell myself.

Let’s get on with the recap and then the eventual rant/self-mutilation at the end. For those returning, find that while my last two write-ups may carry a tone of hopeful naivety, this one will read longer and much, much darker.

This is a bit self-aggrandizing but if you are not in a good headspace right now, I suggest you read this at a different time. This is (in my non-medical, irrelevant opinion) the psychological equivalent of extracting blackheads or removing botfly larvae from the flesh. But, the endeavour at hand feels significant to me. Ye have been warned.

November and December 2018

The month of November in 2018 was a tough sonofabitch. I was going through some serious relationship problems and I was staring at the prospect of my relationship with my wife going thermonuclear. I went to a therapist and did the back and forth with him. You see, when my wife refused to go (to the therapist), I immediately inferred “yeah, she’s been right so far about most things. Maybe I’m the one in need of a fucking psych test”. I don’t know if it’s obvious but I somehow have a problem with WANTING to be a martyr for the ones I love. As I spoke to the counseller, being in that leatherette chair was the only thing that gave me ANY guidance — it must be the indents where the buttons are on the backrest or something similar of less import. I obviously only went for one visit. The ‘clinical questions’ that were (in essence) transposed variants of my own questions shot back toward me as a query aggravated me more. My thoughts were along the lines of “why the fuck am I paying you exactly?”.

Here’s an analogy: imagine a dehydrated person thirsty for a sip of water; their skin on the borderline of tanned leather. In front of said person, lays a canteen of pristine mineral water. However, the character in question is so dehydrated they barely have the capacity to move their own limbs to take a drink out of the canteen. A person appears near the canteen. “Would you like a drink of water?” they ask. The dried parchment of a man nods with great effort. The man leans in with a kind smile and says, “let’s explore why you think that you yourself can’t help yourself to some of this water”. The parchment man spontaneously combusts.

This is what it felt like to be speaking to a therapist. I am by no means, saying therapy doesn’t work. By Jove, if Mia Khalifa herself swears by the power of therapy and therapists, then who am I to express such baseless opinions, right? No. Fuck that prior sentiment, I express my opinion anyway. Long and the short of it is, I realised on my own that I had a nasty threat response when protecting my way of life. I could not fight the allure of LYING and making false promises to make myself seem ‘harder, better, faster, stronger’ when I spoke to save my own skin/lifestyle. Scary part? I believed the lies I spewed. But the lies that had initially instilled hope in my partner’s eyes were now starting to sound like a busted vinyl and she was on to the trick. So, I wrote out the truth, printed it out, and recited it word for word to my wife. Eliminated the use of ‘Wormtongue’*. The honesty plugged one hole in our metaphorical swiss cheese slice of a relationship. Ever since I broke that habit of immediately spewing a million words of lies, I’ve steadily gained the confidence to speak the truth coherently (with great difficulty) thus far even under pressure and I am proud of that. Happy with that bit of progress, I left it at that and moved on — after all, it takes TIME to restore lost faith.

[*Grima Wormtongue, for those unfamiliar, was a character from the Lord of the Rings that possessed the ability to convince and/or corrupt others by simply uttering words. Also to no one's surprise, the dude was a right c*nt.]

Meanwhile, on my work and passion ledger, I had finally found a banner to find shelter under: “A Filmmaker”, I called myself. After the short film that I made, I was proud of that title. To maintain that, I worked tirelessly on that front, and thankfully — the effort wasn't lost on my surroundings. Soon a friend (no longer) reached out to make his (and my) debut into the filmmaking world. He came to me with a request to record one of his live sets at a bar. I pounced on the opportunity. I thought what better way to showcase my work than to start my own brand and company that focused on filmmaking and photography and launch it alongside this video.

“I’ll call it LumaChroma Studios” I thought. The Art of Light and Colour.

The word ‘studios’ represented the grand scale I wanted it to operate at, one day. I have been a sucker for glory since I was young. Even today I try to cut out that cancerous itch that forever drives me to be unsated with anything that I have and will achieve. Some say if your goals don’t scare you, you’re not dreaming big enough. I don’t even know what I want anymore. I wished for contentment in the conclusion of my last write up; yet here I am one year later — more confused (and discontent) than ever.

Back to the story: everything travelled smoothly until the end portion of the video. I concluded the final touches and shot it out to him and his obvious lack of knowledge in the technicalities of filmmaking was… brow furling. I endured to try and get him on the same page and share some knowledge of the trade. Look, I’m not one to judge a person’s lack of experience in something. In fact, if I’ve learned anything over this year it is the fact that I am pretty shit at most things that I think I am bloody marvellous at. So in that spirit, I opted to show him and negotiate but he clearly took on none of it. “I don’t have the time to learn this stuff man,” he said; a sentiment I concurred with. He was playing gigs and working full time — his locus of experience (and passion) was not here. However, when I flagged that some of the things he was doing were reducing the quality of the work I had produced, I had to stand up for myself. With sweaty armpits in tow, I stood my ground and said that I will not stand for the reduction in quality when it concerned my brand that I was about to launch with this video. He took offence to this, I just didn’t realise how deeply at the time. I apologised as is customary and offered the olive branch first by offering him complete control of the video provided that my branding on it was removed. He was happy (or so I thought), and I met him for a drink and I believed it when he said that it was, and I quote “water under the bridge, mate”. The whole thing left a sour taste in the palette but I took his words as a statement from a sane adult and moved on posthaste. [Note: place a mental marker here because this will become relevant later on.]

Soon after, another friend reached out to work together on his debut music video and I jumped head-first into that challenge in order to cleanse my palette. I was so far out of my depth here as well but I figured if I were to drown, I’d do it in the ocean instead of the abandoned inflatable kiddies pool next to K-Mart. Thankfully, this friend was much more inclusive, understanding, and forgiving. I loved every moment of it: trials and tribulations, the lot. We scoped out locations, made plans and followed through — over and over and over. It was therapeutic. The end product would take shape to be a music video by the 31st of May 2019 (I’ll explain why it took this long). That’s downplaying its significance to me. This was the FIRST music video that I directed and co-produced EVER. I was proud, happy, and scared shitless for the obvious stream of “this is a steaming pile of faeces” from the world. Those words never came. It was surreal to see a bit of my work on other peoples’ screens. I was confused about why no one criticised it.

January 2019

After a pleasant holiday season and witnessing the final whimper of 2018 be smothered by the cacophony of fireworks, I was feeling rather accomplished for some inexplicable reason. It may have had something to do with getting permanency within the hospital where I work as a cleaner, but I will never know for sure. I mean, sure I had completed a short film and started work on a music video but this was no ‘Titanic’ and I, no James Cameron.

But, I could smell the complacency set in. Even though I could’ve very well started that music video at this stage, I kept pushing it forward citing “I don’t have the necessary gear to make this as good as it can look” or “we need x, y, and z — then we push ahead”. None of it was conceptual or planning issues, they were all hardware issues. Nothing I had was apparently ‘good enough’. Some called it GAS: Gear Acquisition Syndrome — the need to buy something so that you feel more confident, on the baseless basis that it will somehow circumvent the obvious lack of experience you possess as a creator.

As I watched the tidal wave of new year resolutions flow inland with great gusto and lose its vigour in the mangroves of mid-late January (not all of them mind you, but most); the ones that stuck to their goals inspired me. I thought, “You need to get into gear. You need to suit up and get ready to bitchslap this year into shape”; Right! So I recorded my first YouTube vlog on my phone and set myself some goals. I wanted to get out of my own head and stop giving myself excuses and I aspired to sell one photograph and one video by the end of the first quarter (March, not the financial quarter). I also committed to the #365challenge on the 16th of January, 2019. For the unfamiliar, that is when someone decides to (in good conscience), post a picture every day, consistently for 365 days. As it is, it’s a big goal to commit to. A year’s worth of work at ANYTHING is a lot of work; but in my infinite wisdom, I decided to do it WHILE editing all the photos that I put up in the hopes that it grows my following on Instagram and convert my grid into my portfolio (there’s that unquenchable thirst for fame and glory once more). I’m sure there is a proverb or an idiom about casting too many lines at once but I’m not a fishing man; so hopefully, you get the idea. I put up another vlog a week or two later, roughly reiterating the same points as the latter vlog. Both are quite an eyesore (IMHO) to watch, so do your best to refrain from clicking the links. I add them only for reference.

I made one more video a month later but that was all she wrote because the lines that had been cast and forgotten by yours truly had gotten the attention of some very big fish (projects, for those not following the metaphor). I was getting more offers for work than I could humanly keep up with at the time, and in my haste to live up to the #HUSTLECULTURE brand my generation romanticised and is so enamoured with, I said yes to all of them. Multiple paid photography shoots, multiple music videos, murmurings of corporate gigs, and all the other daily chores of adult life basically kicked YouTube to the curb and I went into DEFCON1:

“All hands on deck. A break is a word we do not have the luxury to use.” I told myself. You can sleep when you’re dead.

The life I wanted had finally arrived, but the sound it made when it arrived at my door was not the gentle pitter-patter to crescendo of a spring shower as I had imagined. It was more like the entrance of a tactical SWAT team: splintering wood, a flash and a bang, tinnitus and crunching of glass underfoot, tactical callsigns bellowed with odd flicks of the wrist — an orchestra of violence. At its busiest, I was easily clocking in 130 hours of work a week. Barely enough time left over to handle biological necessities let alone relationships. I endured anyway and with every passing day of that endurance, a workflow appeared. Some developers in the software industry suggest you plot your workflow and scope BEFORE you initiate implementation. “Who has the time for such (relative) inaction when your goal is so monumental?” I thought. Caution meet the wind.

March 2019

March can be equated to perhaps that final emotion a bug would feel before it hit the windscreen of an automobile travelling at a 110kmph. I was recording my friend’s music video, juggling multiple photography projects from portrait shoots, the Princess Theatre, and the Tasmanian Symphony orchestra. It doesn’t sound like much but, add to it the smaller scale gigs and the full-time job for my bills, the volleyball for my health, and the little bit of downtime here and there — and it becomes a ravenous, all-consuming beast. I was out of energy both physically, mentally, and emotionally. There was a silver lining though — I was getting paid for MOST of this. From my past failures in business, anyone and their favourite investor will tell you that “traction is everything”. Boy oh, boy did I have fucking traction. I was putting out so much content (on the photography front) that most friends and family thought that I had got a job at a big firm called LumaChroma. The guffaw that erupts when I think about it is almost as sudden and involuntary as a kick from a mule. That was a secret I held for a while. Somehow it gave me solace and affirmed my hard work (and my secret desire to be heralded from the highest tower). However, as I started concluding these photography projects, I arrived at the realisation that photography is not my calling. The seed of video that had started with my short film had turned into a malignant tumour — an incessant scratching right behind the left eye socket. I was slowly falling out of love with the saturation of the commercial photography market. Photography was a means to express myself and somehow, doing it for commercial purposes tainted it and the love I held for it.

Public Service Announcement: Please understand the photography industry and the commercial photography world isn’t as bad as I make it sound here. It truly is amazing to meet such passionate people and the places photography can take you are truly endless. This is just the honest emotions of MY experience. If you’re an aspiring photographer, do not let this write up convince you otherwise; because ultimately, neither you nor I know conclusively whether I am just a bipolar jackass that has other serious mental health issues such as not being able to commit. Don’t believe everyone and everything on the internet. If you have the unscratchable itch to follow your passion for photography, then do so with great gusto and never forget why and what you love about it!

I had achieved the goal I had set out to achieve (and beat it by a significant margin) by the end of the first quarter. By the end of March, I had stopped taking on photography projects unless they specifically piqued my interest (or paid ridiculously well. Yes, I am in fact a whore). Here’s the thing about making commitments before realising the scope of the undertaking — you run the risk of fucking shooting yourself in the foot by saying something stupid like “I will post a photo every day”. It took precious minutes out of my stupidly busy schedule that I could’ve used to take a nap or associate with the other human I have committed to living with. Never the kind of man to back down from a promise or a commitment (especially ones made to myself) I pushed forward with posting a photo a day while doing everything else. This is not to say there weren’t ANY positives from this commitment. You see, if you do something long enough the learning curve eventually plateaus and you enter a different stage of expertise; like a winding murky river that finally opens up into a turquoise blue ocean that is vastly more infinite. When the difficult becomes mundane, you achieve an almost zen-like flow state which allows you to express yourself creatively and develop your own style via the medium (*chuckles*) of choice: The subconscious guides the brush now. By this stage, I could operate Lightroom and pull out an edit in under 120 seconds, often while doing something else parallelly. Not just any edit either, a decent edit that’ll hit AT LEAST 20+ likes on my rather meagre Instagram account (there’s that need for fame and recognition once more) AND appease me in expressing a little story.

3/3 • Minute Motivation Series •

“Reach”

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Once you master both the ‘art of failing’ AND forever ready to pounce, the final step is the stuff you see on the motivation posts: “reach for the stars”.

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Set yourself obscenely impossible goals. Set yourself goals that when you look at what is to be done, you sit down and have an anxiety attack, but one rule. You should be able to achieve within the day. Keep doing this. Until one day the fires of the Forge become your new NORM, and at this moment, you are ready to sculpt yourself anew. Now, go get after it ❤️🤘🏾

Christ, someone give this man some Ketamine and put him to rest… The romanticism reeks to the high heavens.

The Accursed April of 2019

This April past is one of those months that could’ve just outright fucked off from the space-time continuum and no Sri Lankan (both at home or abroad) would’ve missed it. I call back to the witness stand the first-ever project with the ‘no-longer-friend’ I mentioned a few paragraphs back. On the 19th of April (a Friday) this whole situation that I had fully accepted was “water under the bridge, mate” went critical. Apparently this man had waited on a red carpet invitation to a FREE PUBLIC screening of the short film that happened on the 17th of April. Mind you, I threw out a generic event invite (because, you know — it was a free public screening) on my Facebook page and refused to spend the time or the energy to pursue sending individual invites to everyone that was involved or I cared for because I just had that much work to chew through. I just accepted that the people who could make it would make it, and those that couldn’t would have their reasons. Who the fuck am I to judge another’s life and workload? Less than a handful understood mine, so I expected others would be just as busy with their own lives. Alas, that’s not how this went — he went full mental on a Facebook post that rivalled the Tripitaka in length, shaming two people (myself and funnily enough the friend I made a music video with after the whole disagreement kerfuffle). I read through the post quite amused by his musings and was shocked at the degree of narcissism and entitlement he possessed. My first thought by the end of that Aesopian fable was: “how the fuck did you not see this guy for the raging lunatic he was?”. Believe it or not, I was more bummed about my own lack of ability to correctly gauge this delusional man than the fact that I, my friend, or my brand was being dragged through the coals. To me, this was a blatant breach of my internal character firewall. I accepted that I needed to cynic the fuck up to prevent further blindsided attacks which were quite frankly a distraction I did not need. I reached out to him directly and wanted to meet up and confront the whole situation like a normal human being but all I got were excuses and demands of a scared little manchild whose ego had been shattered by none other than his own expectations. I wished him the happiness he deserved and promptly redacted his existence from mine. In hindsight, this was such a good call because that same weekend, other cruel excuses for human beings were plotting and actioning something so vastly more diabolical that if this whole situation in my personal life could be equated to a ton of TNT going off, the other act was a G-type star reaching critical mass and going supernova.

I was at a photoshoot when I saw the first few messages trickle in via various Whatsapp groups about a potential bomb blast in Sri Lanka. I couldn’t focus on any of these messages while working so I remember saying in a confused Achchi amma (grandmotherly) tone to my wife: “some people are saying there was a bomb blast in Sri Lanka?”. We both shrugged it off and moved on with the shoot. I figured this was just another situation being blown out of proportion (pardon the pun) or some oversight on some half-wit’s part (at a factory or something). It’s funny how accurate that snap judgement was in hindsight; only the scale of the event was completely off and the half-wit in mention turned out to be none other than our illustrious leader President Sirisena. I came home after the shoot and sat down with the news. Every major outlet read the same death knoll in tuxedo colours: “Easter Sunday Terrorist Attack. Hundreds dead”. I want you to try and conjure the feeling you would get as you approached a very low balcony balustrade at full sprint if you were residing on the 76th floor of a building. As the horizon approaches and fills your vision, your body physically roots itself and drops your solar-plexus into the abyss like a frigate dropping anchor in the hopes of protecting the meat sack that contains you.

This was the landmark feeling of that day because it only got worse from there. As I scrolled through the hundreds of messages I had received by now on every conceivable platform, every headline and tweet I read shaved off a sliver of my faith in ALL religions and humankind as a whole. A little bit of the light inside me was extinguished forever that evening. You don’t come back the same from an act of violence so macabre, and I wasn’t even directly affected by any of the attacks. My family, extended family, and so on were fine. Some friends of friends had perished in the attack (may their families find peace) but if I’m being honest, I felt like a gull sitting on the mast of a sinking ship: cursed to witness with no voice or power. I can only imagine the damage done to those that were truly affected. One minute you’re an innocent fussing about going to Easter morning mass so early, the next minute your mother, father, and younger brother are no more and you are an orphan. The psychological trauma is incalculable. I wasn’t equipped to handle this physically, mentally, or emotionally with my workload and situation.

It’s not rewarding being an empath in the times we exist in. We exist in one of the most amazing periods of the Holocene Era but for some inexplicable reason, heartbreak and soul-crushing news is just a swipe and a tap away, however, the means to make a difference feel so far from reach. There’s never enough money, power, support, or influence it feels like. Thankfully, these feelings didn’t have much time to fester because the Founders of various startups (which I was once a part of) just rolled with punches much better than I. The tune of the messages on various platforms started to change from confusion, shock, and helplessness into a directed and focused action plan. I joined in and went to work helping cull fake news and build graphics and provide support however I could for a fundraising campaign: Sri Lanka United. The calamity that was taking place on my end with regard to the ‘no-longer-friend’ was a case of reckless abandon at this stage and my friend was dealing with his fair share of emotions that I could not assist with as much as I had liked. Sri Lanka United is an entire story by itself so I’ll summarise it to — we worked relentlessly and achieved our goals of raising a significant amount of money, and distributing it in a sensible manner via accountable organisations for those displaced and had truly lost in the hopes that they can make some kind of future for themselves against the odds they were facing.

This accomplishment would soon be overshadowed by the rage that burned white-hot when eventually the news started to arrive that the government that WE the PEOPLE employ, had LET THIS CALAMITY HAPPEN by way of NEGLIGENCE. Criminal negligence. The current president will have the most innocent blood on their hands by way of pure inaction. I prayed that this single act will taint his bloodline for generations but alas, Sri Lankans really do have very short memories. I wouldn’t be surprised if we vote in another of his bloodline 5 years down the line (after we vote in another idiot this coming election). Can you tell that I’ve lost faith in the Sri Lankan government yet? I focused my efforts back into my work and left the situation high and dry. There was nothing else left for me to do whilst sitting an entire hemisphere away besides being a keyboard patriot, and that I was not willing to be classified under because the ‘REAL PATRIOTS’ soon started to crawl out of the woodwork — rioting, burning, and destroying innocent Muslim lives. A typical Sri Lankan reaction: when you can’t take the humiliation from the world from your own mistakes and failures, you come home with egg on your face and you beat your innocent wife and child senseless in a drunken rage. At least that’s my take on it. Some others who are far more educated in politics than I suggest that it was another divisive campaign by The Rajapakses which focused on starting a racial war by leveraging the anger and sheer numbers of the uneducated majority vote.

A racial war (or at the very least a lynching), much akin to an avalanche being set off by the tiniest of sounds gathered momentum and soon the country was plunged into the dark ages, with internet and communication cut off to hinder further propagation of violence. This didn’t work as with all bandaid solutions the Sri Lankan government is capable of in its infinite wisdom but some people never lost faith in Sri Lanka and its humanity. To those people — I salute you. You know who you are. I wasn’t strong enough to be like you, but some even in the face of neighbours conspiring against them for simply being Muslim, they never lost faith. Sri Lanka doesn’t deserve you as its citizens, my friends. As the month drew to a close, things were getting back to business as usual, but the scars on my soul and heart — they remained, and forever they will remain. Don’t ask me why, but it’s very hard to explain patriotism without sounding like either a megalomaniacal dictator or a left-wing libertard these days. I told how distraught I was to my wife about the whole situation at home and she set me straight with cold, calculated logic: you did everything you could. No matter what YOU do, nothing will EVER make a difference for the better on that island. There was a physical pain to when my heart broke, and I no longer wanted to feel anything ever again.

May 2019

There was no time to stop regardless of emotion — the work that had been ignored for far too long beckoned (vociferously). Within the first few weeks, I had co-produced and directed my second music video for another talented local musician. She had an appetite for the great stage and a voracity to get shit done that honestly, was refreshing and exactly what I needed to move past my own thoughts of inevitability after recent events. This project turned into what is now my first ever crewed shoot: Cam ops, drone ops, WHS (work health and safety), and talent all on set for one single purpose — to shoot a music video. Sure it wasn’t a massive crew but it was a little victory for me and a life-altering glimpse into the grassroots of filmmaking. The whole thing was set in the rural west coast ghost town known as Lake Margaret and even though I would do none of it differently and enjoyed every moment of it, it was a downright calamity on set.

When you set out to drown, you most certainly will; an inexperienced crew, electromagnetic interference from the nearby hydropower plant, and weather fluctuations that turned on the dime made the 6 hour shoot day quite literally hell on Earth. We had gear failing, light fading, weather going from a manageable 16 degrees to an 8-degree freezing rain in a matter of hours. With my talent in a short dress, she was NOT a happy camper. The drone going AWOL was frying my drone pilot’s brains, and the delays were stressing me beyond comprehension. Add to all of this the looming anxiety of the light fading and the fact that we were AT LEAST 3 hours from the nearest hospital, a rolled ankle would’ve easily made this shoot, the worst EVER. Troubleshooting gear took up a huge chunk of time since no one had the foggiest idea that it was the EMP from the power plant that was messing with the gyros on the drone and other electronic conveniences like Bluetooth. EMP, thou art a callous wench! We got it all in the end, but we stayed there well past our welcome until the WHS officer had to literally drag us out by the ears in the pitch dark like petulant children. We had to ‘scuttlewrap’ (that’s now an official filmmaking term according to me) the shoot so quick that I left my Bluetooth speaker in one of the abandoned houses! She (the Bluetooth speaker) had a great adventure on her own and you’ll be happy to know she made it back to me a month later safe and sound having braved the world by herself. Ultimately we managed to put out this music video, which I am very proud to have directed and be a part of. To everyone involved in the project, I doff my hat to you. Couldn’t have done it without you all and your can-do attitudes.

June 2019

June brought with it another series of experiences of a different wavelength. A far cry from the creative/narrative work that I had been happily working on for the past few months: corporate gigs. The first-ever corporate gig couldn’t be an easy one (in my eyes. #HUSTLECULTURE bruh!) so thanks to one of my closest friends, I was able to secure a freelancing role in performing videography and photography for a major technology company’s analytics and cognitive team in Melbourne. I invested some of the money I had made into a new camera to allow me to perform the gig to a standard and this gig ran like an atomic clock. One minute I’m on a flight across the pond at dawn, the next minute I’m calling in sick at work while riding in an Uber to the event, the minute after I am neck-deep in the top brass of said technology company. “I was intimidated” is quite frankly the laziest description I can string together at 0342 in the morning and I’m certain deserves better, but it will have to suffice. I pushed through it and just like it all began 24 hours earlier, I was back on another early flight across the pond, getting changed in the car to go straight into my day job. Christ… thinking about it makes my bones ache. But the rush? The rush of fabricating illness while hopping on planes for secret missions that feed my soul and creativity — nothing comes close. I guess I never really lived out my rebellious years when I was younger because I was too busy being a holier-than-thou little shit vying for the ‘best son’ award. If you are young (and you are somehow miraculously reading this write up instead of blowing up a neighbour’s post box), then know that rebellion is the only gift left to give from the young to the ageing. Scratch that, that’s terrible advice to young people. Be rebellious in a healthy way? Fuck it. I haven’t figured it out myself so I’m not gonna pretend to be wise here.

Corporate gigs are a different beast as I voiced earlier. The events and people have a very Stockholm syndrome vibe and there’s almost always something off about said events. I’ve been to a few corporate events in my business life but I always felt like something was missing right up until the cocktails and mingling begins. The music is always too loud, there’s never enough meat-based food left, CAG (compounded annual growth) numbers always make the next fiscal year seem like it’s the next best thing since sliced bread, and the musk of frenemies in the air is overwhelming. Oh, and there’s always that team/duo that’s always way too ‘try-hard’. Where have I seen that before? Oh yeah, in high school. I’d say I’m pretty happy to be out of that world but you and I both know that once you break into the upper echelons of any sufficiently large industry, it has its fair share of the same. Coming back to the point, it’s always very difficult to make a corporate event look even mildly ‘interesting’ or ‘appealing’. It’s not impossible but it takes huge amounts of effort to make it not look as sterile as a surgical theatre. You have to employ the same techniques of ‘hoodwinkery’ as supermarkets, with the use of different temperature lighting for their red meat displays (seriously, go have a look the next time you’re at a supermarket). The only saving grace of doing such mind-numbing ‘creative work’ for corporates is the exorbitant amount of coin involved. So, although I don’t explicitly enjoy this kind of work, I foresee it certainly won’t be my last. The added benefit that most other corporate figures stand erect during negotiations when they hear the name of my prior corporate client (who is a big a one) is always a tactical advantage.

July to Present 2019

June also brought another opportunity (unpaid, this time around) to take up the role of Director of Photography (also known as a cinematographer) on a short film called ‘Three Guys’, written by Kryz Woodhouse and Directed by Shaun Hume.

Three Guys — Directed by Shaun Hume

What a fantastic experience! Just when I was starting to lose hope that this whole filmmaking thing might end up being a lonely job (mostly thanks to YouTube and the algorithm that dictates the process, which is widely accepted as a very lonely and burnout inducing workflow) this project restored and recharged my desire to be part of even more projects of this scale and pace. The feeling is akin to walking in the rain after the hottest day you’ve ever experienced, or that heaved sigh after a hot shower post extreme physical exhaustion. Even though I already knew that things took longer in the narrative and cinematic world of filmmaking (and quite literally everything else in life), I was staggered at exactly HOW much longer everything took in real life beyond the confines of YouTube. Prep and planning took a few weeks. Shooting the whole film took well over a month. Editing the whole thing, also well over a month. As I write this, we are still in the audio mastering and finalising stages. The golden master (a software dev term but works the same) may be another month away. This was the first instance that I started to look inwards and realised what everyone meant when they say “take your own time to achieve what you want to achieve” to creatives. It was also the first time I wondered whether this blind dedication to #HUSTLECULTURE was really advantageous to me as a creator.

With this thought, I went on to reboot my YouTube channel which offered me just the perfect amount of self-fellating in terms of the creative direction of the content but just rigid enough to present a routine. I also joined one more feature-length film thanks to one of the actors in the picture above. The man is young, passionate, and driven: everything I WAS NOT during those formative years of my youth. Instead of envy, I feel proud to have met him and been part of his grand undertaking (as baseless as that sounds. I mean, I did just meet the guy). Through him and his project, I met another amazing person — a Hollywood veteran and a producer. One thing about good humans of the world is that once they deem that you too are a worthy human, the cascade of amazing-people-introductions grows exponentially. There are so many things to say here regarding potential open doors and future opportunities but I will refrain from behaving in the typical naive and overzealous manner I usually do, and leave that for next year to be recounted, rather than predicted. I also wish I could’ve woven the word ‘titillating’ into this paragraph but alas, the irony is sweeter.

The result of those few weeks of introspection served me well because the realisation about myself that I came to shocked the hell out of me: I realised that I CRAVED (starving human craving for food kinda crave) fame and the influence. Now, I’m not really sure if that’s a bad thing, to be honest, but the more I watch my mentors, listen and work with others who had walked the gilded halls of Hollywood, and those that have completed a much larger body of work than I to paraphrase Ira Glass, I’m not so sure if being in it for the fame and influence is the way to move forward in enjoying this craft, and creating my own flavour of storytelling. As I waded through the streams of retrospect, I further distilled that fame and influence is a downright TERRIBLE reason to be in anything at all — after all, this sort of deep philosophical thoughts only occur to 0.1% of the purest, most brilliant minds this world has ever seen — such as myself. Add to this the fact that there’s no precedence of this statement being mentioned anywhere else: go on try it — paraphrase it to Google, there are only a measly 19 billion books, videos, and TED talks that express this same sentiment.

*Please insert facepalm here*

The Good:

The TL;DR: this year wasn’t all bad. I may have described whole year’s experiences through a thin veneer of internal conflict and resentment for self-aggrandization, but I am merely pouring the contents of my soul into this Medium-shaped container. Just because there’s a certain degree of sediment in the contents that makes it less potable, doesn’t necessarily change the nature of the content.

So for posterity’s sake, let’s boil and distil. In this instance, I achieved a lot: I found direction, ambition, and confidence in myself as a filmmaker. I started a massive undertaking as a photographer. I am still fit and healthy thanks to volleyball (which I didn’t mention much here since it has become part of my life and routine now). Started a brand of my own. Earned quite a bit of coin via something I thought I’d never be successful at. Made many new acquaintances, and added a few of those into the almost extinct ‘Friend’ category. Begun slowly undoing the virtual chains of social media on my life. Growing my YouTube channel at my own pace. Made some progress with regard to my relationship with my wife. Involved in three short films in some capacity. Directed and Co-produced two music videos. Got offered a public screening for my short film. Completed two (almost three very soon) corporate projects with a massive technology company*. Learnt important lessons regarding my biases and adjusted my moral compass. I became financially stable and self-sufficient. Trying my hand at writing scripts, with drafts for 3 shorts, 2 feature lengths, and 1 web series. Planning a feature-length documentary. Realised that I have some really fucked up issues from my upbringing and life thus far. And hopefully, by the end of this article, coming clean about myself with a willingness to finally accept responsibility for my own goddamn happiness.

Not too shabby then.

[*I wish I could say the tech company reached out to me via my own merit but this is just pure marketing BS right here — one of my best friends, she's the real talent. She and her company are the ones that were awarded the contract on her merit. It was SHE who thought I was brilliant and brought me onboard. Thank you.]

The Bad:

As with all good things, bad things go hand in hand:

For what is a life that is all good?

Without the spice of sadness and regret,

to make it all compute.

The relationship with my wife comes in at the top spot this year. As I mentioned earlier, we’ve made progress but our relationship is still well and truly fucked as it stands and I for one have no fucking idea how to BEGIN ‘fixing it’. Because it affects me and my mental health directly and on a daily basis, this has been one of the largest points of anguish in my life this year. I won’t go into too much detail as there are plot components of this narrative that are not mine to tell, but I will express a few of my emotions in the “The Ugly” segment below. Even though it wasn’t one of the first bad things to happen, the Easter bombings take spot number two in my list this year. The whole who, what, when, where, why, and how it all happened (now that the facts are straight) is mind-numbingly fucked up. I’m still not over it for some inexplicable reason and I’m beyond trying to explain it at this point. The rest in no particular order or weighting: I fell in and then out of love with commercial photography; I’ve been at my permanent job as a cleaner for a while and that’s getting pretty fucking annoying but I still NEED it to sustain my current lifestyle; I had a friend turn into a complete stranger; The more I learned about filmmaking, the more I realised that I didn’t really know anything and that I made up all of my beliefs regarding my capability; I found the direction, passion, and drive but now I struggle with an even more basic question of “why?”, as in “why am I still not content/happy?”; The 365 challenge is a real pain in my schedule; I’ve discovered some really fucked up things about myself and some of the trauma and baggage I carry from my past. Some of it truly scares me to the point where I am no longer confident in my own thoughts and convictions anymore. That’s as good a segway as any.

The Ugly:

I’ll put it into a short and sweet blanket statement: I have lost HOPE from my existence; but it goes deeper than just that.

To those that have read this far, thank you (and please forgive the casual tone in writing and the dramatics) BUT, I don’t know of a better way to describe what I feel right now than try and capture a raw snapshot of the thought-process inside my head about all of this. This stuff is hard enough to muster into thought, let alone weave into coherent sentences. I am tugging at the floss-like thread that sticks out from the most rotten and ugly core of myself, and it is downright scary. Especially so, when you’ve built a personality around these rotten foundations. Most people would look at me and my life from the surface and say something like: “Your life is pretty close to perfect brah! You’ve got a house, you’ve got a car, you’ve got a wife, you've got a permanent job, lovely friends, you’ve found passion, you’ve worked hard and seen the growth in your skill, your YouTube channel is growing, people that can take you places are noticing you, and your prospects are looking bright!”. To which I would respond (if I were brave enough to be honest) with, “yeah, for a dead man walking”. Trust me, I rolled my own eyes at that teenage-nihilistic response, but it’s true — that’s how I feel right now.

Look, it’s not that I don’t see the achievements of this year or of the past. If the start of this article (small book now) is anything to go by, it’s not that I do not appreciate what I’ve come to achieve. I truly do and I am super proud of myself and really thankful for every single person and experience this year, BUT there is a void of darkness that I cannot fill or overcome. With recent observations, finding out the root cause of the void has uprooted my entire view of Me as an individual. I’ve been through depression, so I recognise the signs better now but this is different: it is similar but not the same; like the difference between a wolf and a wolf-like dog. Like the black holes that exist in interstellar space, this void inside me behaves in a similar manner: the smaller the void gets, the denser the void becomes. The denser the void, stronger the gravity well surrounding it.

Note: I was in a flow-state and I wrote an additional 2500 words here about one of those rotten fundamental philosophies. As if a massive burden was just lifted off my soul, I feel much better after putting that into words; however, I have redacted that and moved it into a completely different project. It was distracting from the point of this write-up which is to retrospectively look at my past year in summary.

Now, as to WHY I’ve lost hope is a whole other article but I will try and summarise — I have certain core functions of my personality that are rooted off deeply unhealthy experiences and emotional trauma.

I began noticing it from the constant expectations I have from my relationship with my wife. Now that this has been revealed to me, I am now on the path to address these deep-seated issues to undo/mitigate/act despite them to become a better version of myself.

To use a metaphor, it’s like buying a house and then discovering (a few years after the fact) that there’s a blatantly obvious stink that you can’t seem to fix no matter what you do. Eventually, after much time performing trial and error experiments, you find the source of the stink: a goddamn hole in the basement where the wall and the foundation of the house meets. Upon examining the hole, you now realise there are signs of a haphazard brickwork job that isn’t on the plan that cordons off an entire area of the house: the plot thickens. At the start, you’re afraid of taking the wall down, so you try and pry in a tool to try and widen the hole just a hair to get a better glimpse of what lies on the other side. As you play around this hole (despite the stink) in the hopes of determining what's on the other side, the hole gradually gets larger and larger by the erosion caused by you meddling with it. One day the hole is large enough to let through something tangible: a human skull. The blatantly obvious now stares back at you with its two black pits embedded in bone.

At first, just like this person who accidentally discovered a human skull behind his basement wall, I discovered some of my rotten core and (understandably)— I freaked out. So I left it well alone, until one day I gather enough strength and courage to open the hole a little wider. Out flows more body parts and damning evidence. I, (like the metaphorical person above) freak out once more, retreat to safety, deals with the overwhelming evidence, and gains the courage to widen the hole further. And so it continues until the whole wall is undone, and the secrets lay bare.

These emotional wounds have a deeply troubling property to them: I have fully assimilated beliefs that stem from these wounds as ‘the norm’ and thus, a part of ME. I know I’m being vague here, but that is the best way I can explain this without resorting to writing 2500 words. With my newfound stability over the past two years on the fronts of finances and spirituality (through my creative endeavours), there was only one other primary area that was causing me grief: emotional stability. By reducing the search area, it let me hone in on the real dark shit, and now that I have found the metaphorical ‘hole in the basement wall’, I am actively unearthing the past and consolidating the damage.

All this time, I’ve been trying to ignore the void and just keep improving on the good stuff so that this little void of despair will get jostled and shuffled until eventually it got banished into the recycling pile in my brain; now I am BEGINNING to understand WHY that didn’t work out. I’d like to think I’m being empirical about this whole thing but, if I’m being honest — I have no fucking clue what I’m doing. A question I grapple with these days is: “Am I causing myself, relationships, and my personality more harm by not seeking out professional help to deal with these issues?” Perhaps. My mind poses a counter-question to the latter: “Could this just be your deep-seated issues defending itself by trying to avoid detection?” Perhaps. Whatever the case, I know for a fact that I must first uncover and catalogue the bones behind The Wall for myself at my own pace. Once I am satisfied that I have, I will seek out the necessary field experts for their professional prognosis.

So, in conclusion — this coming year is gonna be a shit show, but I look forward to it. Nay! I embrace it! I welcome this new knowledge (and the heartbreak that will surely follow) about myself and my issues. I am going to strive to be stronger for myself and do my level best to undo the damages within (and accept the consequences that may follow) so that at long last I might look at the man in the mirror and be content that regardless of what was, what is, and what will be, I — in the end, found and understood myself and acted despite it.