Month: August 2019

Chia’s Failure Resume

August 10, 2019 by Chia Amisola

Aside from my every waking moment being a disastrous anti-portfolio in itself, I wanted to take some time to be mildly introspective on my setbacks since I’m already overly self-deprecating on the regular anyway. Putting this together (and maintaining it) — I’m most ashamed about not having more failures to list down. (I am also ashamed with how bad this title is.) I was inspired by seeing Kat Huang’s failure resume on my Twitter feed. Sometimes it’s nice to be open about our challenges as they happen; especially in that rush of being young and feeling our achievements lose their glamour as you leave your teens and enter ‘normalcy’. I feel like I often only hear about failure once someone’s writing rigid LinkedIn posts and selling their coaching services, or on the keynotes of conferences where we’re sitting in the back and so far removed from the speaker’s journey. Not that their stories are any less inspiring – but when looking at academics, celebrities, or C-levels reflecting on things a decade ago – it’s not particularly moving. With our current landscape, I want to surround myself with people who are unapologetically open about process as they are with resume bullet points and humblebrags. I feel like I tend to walk between groups that are afraid of taking any amount of pride in what they do, undervaluing themselves – but also with people who ingest failure so regularly that it becomes procedure without insight. I’m no stranger to extremes: falling into this mentality where I’m undeserving of anything but also – if I didn’t get something I really wanted and even in the slightest, perceive my resume to be a point better than someone else’s – believe everything is all rigged. It’s ridiculously toxic, and I know I’m not alone with it. Hopefully this list helps in developing a more intentional consciousness about yeah – the randomness and unfairness of trying (especially with things like college applications maybe) – but also how we’re just not meant for most things, and that’s okay. Again, this isn’t a new or special concept. There’s a New York Times article about it. I do hope to see more of these from people my age. I hope you learn something from me. 2019 Internship season is here, so expect this to grow! Resume round reject: GoDaddy, Google APM, Honey Product Design, etc. Rejected from Microsoft DiversityMore?

Gay girl prays for a gun

August 3, 2019 by Chia Amisola

Dealing with my pansexuality, and sexuality as a living void that I couldn’t come to terms with — and am still trying to understand. It’s not really just easier to say “bi”, I often don’t say anything at all. I’m nineteen-years old and answering emails in the middle of a storm while many people I love march for pride in cities away, in a nation that has long misunderstood what it is we are celebrating. This is a nation that has granted me the privilege of silence. My family exists with votes thrown for the yellow party; in that sense — gay people are something to be tolerated. I buy overpriced $15 rainbow socks from the middle of a crowded street in Japan and wear it when I get my hair cut for $2; the hairdresser looks at my mother and asks me if I’m “you know…” and she answers that I just wear it for the colours. Some days, I’m still trying to figure out if I’ve actually fallen in love with m best friend. I dig up old messages where I scream about going gay for girls, long before I knew it was okay to be gay. When I first looked at porn, I looked at drawings of boys kissing each other — and enjoyed it more when they had an emotional connection to one another. During the more vulnerable days I would fantasize this scene with us in place: on shitty beds and sidewalks pushed, looked down upon, taking in the voyeur of knowing there was something so intimately wrong about every single touch. I’ve written a lot about loving boys. I’ve loved them in the form of music, in the form of their warmth in a crowded auditorium despite never having known them outside a theater or a mall. I’ve loved them in a college dorm room before a relapse and in the dark of a field with dozens of other people, making out and feeling them next to the plastic ID in their pocket that costs us 20 dollars to lose. The premise of these anecdotes is to tell you that I’ve loved in the most fucked up (read: awkward) circumstances possible; there was no tender, forbidden love in a summer church camp, nor did I pass notes with anyone in class and receive a promposal to seal in my heterosexuality. In fact, I endedMore?