Live & Learn - The Starting Line

So a new term has come and with that, I'm writing a blog for the first Action Project of my Humanities course called Endurance. This first unit, Morpheus, we focused around The Hero's Journey and endured our our physical challenges, focusing mainly on increasing our own strength. An FE we went own featured us doing a bootcamp style exercise, which had ourselves pushing past our own limits. So this unit was to see how far we can go and how far we're willing to go beyond that breaking point. The Action Project for this class is to write out an autobiography and talk about my childhood but speak about the future of where I see myself in a few dozen years, as if it had already happened.

Chapter 1: Timid to Tenacious

When I was young, I didn't have much of a childhood. Things like holidays didn't necessarily exist and my dad was more than busy working to support this family of 4. The 6 year gap between me and my brother was actually something that kept us rather distant, and my memories of my mother consist of her being stressed by my brother. On that note, I was the exact opposite. I was shy, never really spoke out, and whilst I loved being social, I don't think I ever really went out of my way to be social. I had a few nice friends until I was transferred to different schools all around the city, whether the was because of me or because of my brother always depended on the situation. I have fond memories of my 2nd grade, 5th grade, and middle school life because they were when I actually wasn't being constantly bullied or when I learned how to make those kinds of people stop with such judgmental and scrutinizing behavior. However that didn't come without its struggles. That means for the other 4-5 years of my childhood, I had to try and keep myself up when I was constantly pushed down, which was without a doubt a mental challenge for my kiddie brain. I was taught that life was black and white, right and wrong, which couldn't be any more presumptuous than most stereotypes. Slowly I grew to understand that it was the refusal of humility that made me kept being bullied. If I went along with some teases or made it a competition of sorts to exchange insults, I wasn't nearly as ostracized as I was if I just went to being frustrated or upset. This was actually quite the good lesson to keep me charismatic and social, impacting my public speaking skills and allowing me to gain confidence towards who I am because I started caring less about what people saw just by looking at me.

Now the challenge of pushing through the barrage of hurtful words which would sometimes be said at home was what definitely drove my passion of art to its fullest. My escape from reality back then was cartoons, TV shows, and other fictional works that would distract me from my heavy worries. While sometimes they would distract me from responsibilities too, the main benefit of being ever so heavily immersed in oh so many communities of fans when I was a kid and even a teenager made it so that I always felt welcomed somewhere, even if it was a place that didn't have any real people. My mother, being a brazilian immigrant, clearly couldn't communicate with me properly in English as well as a parent probably should. Me as an American raised in English speaking schools means that I had very limited knowledge of Portuguese and couldn't communicate with my mother all too well when I was young either, but that also came from the hesitation caused by fear. I don't think saying the way I was parented was abusive is corrected, but it used fear to the fullest. Ironically, I have... Not so fond memories of my mother questioning my intense fear or hesitation to speak during these moments of her intimidating me, and whether or not it was necessarily sarcasm or even ever on purpose is something I still don't know... So in other words, me being bullied and having no practical (or productive) escape from said stress —an always tense atmosphere at home, being isolated through a majority of elementary school— was like Aron Ralston cutting off his own arm to free himself from the boulder that crushed his hand. Me immersing myself extensively in fiction took a couple of tolls on my academic productivity, so but alleviated me the stress that would block my creativity or thought process to even complete any school assignments. It was a double-edge sword, and just like Ralston, I had to hurt myself in order to progress further in my life, or else I would have just been stuck where I was. That mental challenge of trying to bring a balance between immediate necessity and long term needs was definitely one of the aspects of my life that molded me into who I am today, the internationally recognized manga artist.

Some of you may even recognize my work, as this is the avatar I used for my early career when I was creating series such as "Clans", "Labs", and a couple other series that seem to have their own animated adaptations... It's really quite fascinating to see how far I've come, like Batman from his first year to his dozenth. My skills once were simply mediocre, and now I've achieved my dream of bringing my creations to life. They're even on the big screen, and even if I didn't direct those adaptations, they've stayed beyond faithful to my original work. I've truly achieved my mission in life... I've gone through troubles and struggles when I was young but had the help of fictional worlds to console me. now I can do the same for others.

"VTR". VG. 2017

But getting this far didn't come naturally. My greatest physical challenge was back some hundred dozen donuts ago... I was young, still in college, looking for employment. The only opportunities I had involved harsh physical labor, so I went for the job for an industry I can support. The food industry. In some twisted and ironic fate, I became a water delivery man, just as my father once was when he was young. The job was supporting my college life but I was lacking back support, and the hours were rough... The delivery of oh so many gallons so frequently actually reared down my back greatly, but I was able to continue my art career in college because of it. The stress of carrying the literal weight of water and the weight of my courses was as heavy as the boulder Sisyphus eternally is pushing up the tall mountain. However enduring through that struggle, I've managed to reach the end goal of my life. Granted I'm not nearly as physically capable as I once was due to long term strain, I did manage to reach my goal. Making comics, illustrating, creating stories. That's my career. I've successfully managed to pull it all off. And my key to success was believing that I could. Despite that sounding cheesier than a pizzeria, I kept myself confident by imagine the end result of my hard work, and the satisfaction is... Well no metaphor there, it's truly indescribable. My childhood wasn't the greatest, and that may have weighed me down or upset me the more I thought about it, but knowing that it does sadden me is exactly why I don't think about it. Perseverance, persuasion, and even being under pressure. That's how I went from some timid child who didn't see much value in himself into someone who's humbled to be love by such a vast number of people just from doing what he loves. However the most priceless diamond of mine is my patience. If I —as narcissistic as it sounds— hadn't been gifted with foresight and the ability to process logic as well as I do, I would most likely by some criminal by now, because I'd just say nothing is worth it. My limits in themselves are limited, but learning the value of humility as a child and understanding that soon enough I'd be free from my job as a young adult, I was able to dial down the input of stress or disbelief that grew in me.