I’ve Been Thinking of You. 

One of my favorite pages from my comic, Man. 

I’ve recently uploaded a story very dear to me called I’ve Been Thinking of You. I hope it inspires you to work through your pain with art. 

My Summer Playing Overwatch, and Why That’s Important

I think it fair to say I’m at a rather odd point in my life; I’m a mix of the the joy that came with finishing my degree and the absolute loneliness that comes when operating between jobs. My days are spent looking through listings and conjuring up new ways to make myself sound qualified for jobs that don’t exist yet. My nights are spent wondering whether or not my dreams are worth planting myself in quicksand with a “do not help” sign.

But I also think it’s fair to say we’ve all had moments like this in life. While we’re in them, it feels like we’ll never escape. I certainly empathize. But, when we look back at them, they become our very own halcyon days. They’re periods of decompression, and we’ve managed to wire ourselves to hate them when we’re going through them, and love them when we’re not. We’re frighteningly good at blaming ourselves for any bit of joy we derive from something that doesn’t come with a paycheck, and even better at longing for that joy through rose colored glasses when all we’re working for is a paycheck.

I’ve found myself in familiar bits of self-loathing this summer. As I wait for a dream job I know may never come, I’ve had to reckon with my own mental fragility. There are days when I can’t find the energy to open a web browser because I know my inbox will be as empty as it was the night before. The masochistic dreamer in me still checks the email app on my phone. On those days, I harkon back to the 20 hour work days I spent over the last four years studying, commuting, and drawing comics. This current period of my life should feel like some sort of vacation, but my mind has managed to turn it into a dick measuring contest with all the past versions of myself who struggled through no sleep and little reassurance to chase a personal dream of recognition.

So it’s been a fun summer, to say the least. I wish I could provide some answers to people who may be suffering some of the same problems I’ve been having, but, I think it’s just as important to write about these problems when we don’t have all the answers. I’ve received all sorts of helpful tips over the past month or so, but I don’t think my mind is quite ready to hear it. So instead, I’m going to force myself to recognize one of the most valuable parts of being stuck, and I’m not going to feel guilty for it anymore.

Over the past month or so, I’ve played about a hundred hours of Blizzard’s team-based, first-person shooter Overwatch. I would venture to say that most people my age know Overwatch, whether that be from experience playing it during the peak of its release or from its recent exposure on ESPN. I would say I’m about 10 seasons too late to really gather a significant view of the health of the game, but honestly, I’m not sure my opinion of the game really matters in the context of this journal. I will say I’ve had a lot of fun playing as Tracer, mostly because I’m finally attuned with a character who represents my sexuality in a noncommercial way (I’m not even sure if that’s true; I’m just hopeful).

My writing about my summer with this game has little to do with actual gameplay and more to do with our connection to art. Art is almost synonymous with honesty, and not with the way we are but the way we want ourselves to be. It is a constantly changing mixture of the parts we want to hide from people and what we want them most to see. Two of three years ago, I challenged myself to better understand the roots of the Japanese language for my degree, and so I applied to work at a market that employed Japanese speaking cashiers and managers to better service the surrounding community. I wanted to move beyond my own introversion, and take some sort of leap to improve my Japanese and actually use it.

What followed was a rather outstanding display of that same introversion that ultimately resulted in a chance meeting with my now best friend, and little other connections. Despite my best efforts, that introversion that I wanted so badly to push away leaked into my job. I could only find a connection with one person, but ultimately, my introversion helped me to connect with that person in a way nobody else would have been able to.

Trying to grow out of my introversion wasn’t a bad decision. I think it was actually a brave thing, but looking back, my, “flaw,” turned into something beautiful. When we play games, when we communicate on the internet, we try to push back the parts of ourselves that make up who we are in the hope of being more honest with who we would like to be. Whenever we’re confronted with that idea, we recoil, and we even feel guilty.

I’ve spent a lot of my summer nights playing Overwatch with a friend in-game I met from Oregon. When I started the game a few weeks after graduation, my goal had been to reconnect with a friend who had moved to New Mexico, but my relationship with the game changed when we connected with a random person from our team chat. In the interest of winning more games, we sent him a message, and that message turned into a connection and someone I now consider a friend. Together, we’ve wasted away hours and screamed and bonded and experienced something truly wonderful.

But that brings me back to my original point, doesn’t it? Those long hours bring sleep, and when that sleep ends I find myself feeling guilty. I check my email, I apply for new jobs, and I worry that this is the way that I’ll spend the rest of my adult existence. I punish myself.

But, I’d like to not do that anymore. I’d like to recognize this period of in-between as something I should enjoy in life, too. A year from now, or maybe even a month from now, I’ll find myself sitting in a chair, typing away on this computer, hoping for a few hours of fun from Overwatch.

So for now, I’ll consider myself a lucky guy.

Please check out my portfolio! Hope you have a grand day. 

The Spectacular, Gut-Wrenching ‘Eighth Grade’

The feeling of my seat in that California movie theater was familiar, like I’d been in that very same seat a thousand times. There was an unmistakable, amazing, and embarrassing nostalgia that washed over the 20 or so people in that theater during a screening of Bo Burnham’s ‘Eighth Grade’, but it was the feeling of that seat that captivated me through the film. The cushion of it managed to feel like the plastic of my chair in seventh grade when I was making my very first friends in middle school. That brand of nostalgia felt very natural in a film centered on the perplexities we experience in the in-between of middle and high school, but my feelings of familiarity didn’t stop there. I found myself in the front seat of my old Silverado, remembering the ridiculous things I used to say to my parents, and later I felt the rough wood of my old computer chair, the screen in front of me a reminder of a girl I liked when I was in high school announcing her new relationship with one of my best friends on Facebook. 

Elsie Fisher is a star in her role as the frustrated, socially awkward Kayla, and her supporting cast is filled to the brim with performances that make Burnham’s depiction of a suburban middle school feel more like a recent memory than a movie. In many ways, the film feels like an ode to the 19 and 20 year olds like myself who are either in college, or fresh out, and have little idea of what to do next. The world that surrounds Kayla is vapid, and as adults our initial reaction is to reach out and reassure our silver screen friend that her days will get better. But we stop just short of that reassurance, because time and time again this film has a way of making its own audience feel just as heated and out of breath as its star does. 

Watching ‘Eighth Grade’, I was in all the embarrassing places I had been earlier in life again, but this time, I felt all those moments play out on a screen surrounded by people who had no idea who I had been or was now. In many ways, I was the awkward girl on screen, and the people seated around me were the the kids playing at a pool party I was haphazardly invited to. I was vulnerable all over again. But in that vulnerability, I started to understand what makes this film so much more than just an ode to who we used to be. As much as Kayla struggles to find the words to share with people around her, that struggle isn’t unique to her. Her father, grown up as he is, fails to properly communicate with his daughter. His words are more refined, his sentences more complete, but his conversations with his daughter feel much more like a lonely kid trying to reach out and find a friend. Kayla wants so badly to connect with just one person, and her father wants so badly to reassure his daughter in that same way. Finding a way to communicate with another person, or even failing to find that way, isn’t something unique to our younger selves. Embarrassment isn’t something unique to our younger selves, as much as we’d like it to be. The beauty of that realization, and the stark reality of it, made the people around me feel more like fellow humans than mean kids at the pool. 

When you peel back the first layers of ‘Eighth Grade’, it becomes obvious that this film wasn’t meant solely for any one group of people. Life has a way of always making us feel like we’re somewhere in-between where we are and where we should be, and it’s in the pain, the learning and the eventual understanding of her own life that Kayla experiences that we find ourselves appreciating our own little embarrassing moments. 

‘Eighth Grade’ is more than the age of its own characters, because it’s more than just a story about the eighth grade. It’s about people, about what it means to struggle, and more importantly, about what it means to struggle for the people we love most, including ourselves. 

Writing to improve. Still. 

Star Cream. Trying to get better. 

Pool

The algae does its best to stay afloat,

It drifts out there, on the pool’s water.

The salt of the sea has traveled far;

The white foam of it amongst the vendor carts.

A koi paints himself the color of the rocks,

Undoing the bond of fish and pond.

He bleeds orange, sifting through the water.

Picking at the dark spots of wood at the counter,

Noodle shop smell is a summer sweat and steam.

The noodles of the ramen are a murkied gold,

Hidden by the slack green of cut-up Nori.

The lights above the pot are stars flickering about,

And I hear the clicking of briefcases as the ghosts head out.

Still I wait at this pool. The orange of the koi.

The green of the algae.

Dandy Tanaka

Seasons

Our bikes we leave to rust aside the cedar,

And the sweat we drip against the grass.

The mud splashes up, touching our legs,

And I try to match my feet with your prints.

We stop at the clearing, and I watch you,

Laying on the bank, fingers drifting on the water.

I sit, back against a tree, just a few feet apart,

And we whittle away these summer days.

Walking through the woods, my hand on your back.

The morning has come, our nightly veil rotten,

And I watch you pedal away, an opposite street,

Here is where we part, the ending of a season.

I am on the train home, smoke in the air,

And I write a letter to you, the words I cannot say.

My hand begins to ache, every word smudges,

And I long for the clearing, such a bittersweet feeling.

Dandy Tanaka

Port

The sand is wet cake batter between our toes,

And the salt from the morning breeze trickles in.

The moon is milk, and I hear the clanking of our spoons;

We gobble up the last bits of cereal mush.

Sweat has pooled round the back of your shirt,

And trickled down the veins of your forearms.

Streets of brick we wore down on broken bikes,

Waiting for the waking sun to begin their mourn.

Boot strings hang from your right hand fingers,

And I hear the growl of your stomach over waves that linger.

I had hoped to stay a little longer, on this beach between,

To sip the honey of your laugh; it makes the years seem longer.

A ship from across the bay hums closer to our shore,

And the clicking of your shoulder bag starts a morning song.

The water rinses the bottoms of your feet and you wave goodbye,

And as you lace your boots, I remember we are at port.

But I wish we were out at sea.

Dandy Tanaka

MILK

There is citrus running down my throat,

But on my lips, I taste milk.

As a child I hated it, but it splashes my teeth

And there is no doubt I am unchained.

The foot of the bed is smooth wood,

And the sheets are the almond smell of you.

The steam from your shower leaks in,

And from across the water comes the sea breeze.

Your jeans are folded around the corner of the bed;

This gold zipper is winter in a California summer.

The fraying of your jeans, the splash of feet in the shower,

You are asking me to stay long after, after hours.

My feet feel the cold of your wooden floor,

And the steam is a siren as i pass by your door.

I nearly die on the drive back home, asleep at the wheel;

I dream of a milk drink, and the foot of your bed.

Tanaka Dandy

We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.

Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (via nai-ssu)

Please check out my comic, Man! This is the final portion of this story, hope you enjoy it. 

Please check out another chapter of my web comic, Man! The Protein Shake Blues.

Please check out my comic, Man, on Taptastic! I am uploading it in five parts, and I really enjoyed writing and drawing it. Thanks!