We all have a story to tell...

With this post, I thought I'd try something different. Warning: This post will be heavy on the writing. Yesterday my office hosted a guest speaker which is a pretty rare occurrence in and of itself. The guest speaker was an author from the Houston area that goes by the name of Katherine Center. She's released 5 best selling novels in the women-lit and chic-lit categories. Obviously, its not something I am familiar with at all for a number of reasons. 1) I'm not a book reader. I haven't read a full book since either middle school or early high school and 2) if I did read a book, I can almost guarantee you it wouldn't be women-lit or chic-lit. She gave a captivating speech and I was able to relate to a lot of what she said because of my own experiences writing in this blog.

Her speech was about the power of stories. I derived a lot of inspiration in that because at my age and with all of the things I've done, seen, and experienced, you know damn well that I've got some stories. I think that's why I get so much satisfaction from writing and posting in this blog. I don't care if anyone sees it or reads it. As a matter of fact, only a handful of people very close to me have taken their time out to check it out. [You know who you are and I'm very thankful and grateful for your unconditional support fam.]

ATM Sony A7II . 33 mm . 1/60 sec . F/5.6 . ISO 4000 . Vibe: “Going Home.”

When I was in college, I was the man on campus. I had started an Asian-Interest Fraternity with the help of 5 friends and it blew up from there. Before we knew it, we had grown to over 40+ members and had become the largest multicultural fraternity on campus. I am a man with a lot of opinions and as a result of that, I have a lot of things to say. The frat gave me a great outlet to express leadership and practice my public speaking. Not only that, but I was given the opportunity to constantly share my values, ideas, and beliefs through telling stories to the younger guys. The stories varied... sometimes they were about the struggle of getting the frat up and running and other times they were about my experiences back at home on the shadier side of the tracks. But that was a long time ago. Now a days, I don't have such an outlet. A lot of the things I have to say just stay bottled up inside occasionally coming out in conversations with friends and family. I'm no longer a story teller. I'm no longer a leader of anyone. I no longer have a bunch of young bucks looking to me for advice or guidance on school, girls, or life. But this is just an unintended consequence of the path I chose to move forward with in life.

Don't get it twisted. This is the path I chose. I choose to surround myself with close friends/family with whom I have relationships with that exceed beyond the boundaries and needs of leadership, advice, and guidance. We're right there with each other. In the thick of life, coming from the same place, trying to figure it out one day at a time, each in our own way, each on our paths. There is no longer a need to express my ideals because they already know. They've known since the beginning because they were there with me and growing with me. There is no need to lead. There is no need for story telling because my best stories are their stories. It comes simply down to enjoying eachothers' company. And relationships like that, can not and will not be depreciated.

hall Sony A7II . 34 mm . 1/60 sec . F/5.6 . ISO 125 . Vibe:“Another small path”

With that being said, there is no denying that a void exists in my life. I've taken on many hobbies and constantly searched for different interests from getting into politics, binge watching TV shows, starting a little aquarium, attempt fishing, playing the guitar, and getting mind numbed by video games in order to find a way to fill that void. But none of those things were really able to allow me to fully express myself nor were they capable outlets that allowed me to get the thoughts in my mind out into the world. Enter soulxtran - who introduced me to this world of blogging. Soulxtran is my sorority little sis and we've remained close friends since our days in Greek Life. She's been on a very inspiring journey of self discovery as a result of a recent heartbreak. One of the ways she's found that helps her along this journey is to put her thoughts down and instead of pen and paper as the medium, she uses the internet. I was impressed by the heartfelt honesty in all her posts and wondered when was the last time I was able to read something with such real emotion tied to it. I soon found myself saying to myself, "I WANT THAT." Lately, I felt like my "honesty" was only skin deep and I haven't been able to get into the meat of my thoughts and let it out. This was going to be my new outlet and I was going to use my latest hobby, Photography, as an excuse to explore this.

bbq Sony A7II . 70 mm . 1/80 sec . F/5.6 . ISO 5000 . Vibe: “Indifferent.”

I'm a writer. I've always been a writer. It's something I've known I've been decent at for a long time but I never cared to explore it outside of school. It wasn't a cool way of expressing yourself. Definitely not as cool as photography. And no doubt about it, I had way too big of an ego to even consider keeping a journal. It wasn't until recently when I started receiving compliments about how I wrote in these blog posts that I thought "ok maybe I can start pushing it further." So that's my aim now, my aim is to push my writing as well as my photography further. Perhaps by adding stories to each photograph - this will increase the value and significance of each snap.

bottle Sony A7II . 33 mm . 1/100 sec . F/4.0 . ISO 100 . Vibe: “Testing Testing”

So since I'm a beginner at this whole photography thing, I'm kind of just taking pictures of the most random things in the world. Anything and everything. I'll take a picture of whatever (ie. water bottle) with the hopes that maybe it'll turn out good enough to edit into something awesome! Some pictures won't have a story to them and I'll be honest about it. For example, the picture of the BBQ pits above. Yep, no story. That is honestly just a random ass picture taken outside my patio while I was showing a buddy my camera. I'm not even sure if it even looks cool. haha. However, there is a story behind the picture of the Texas A&M coaster. Let me set the scene for you.

Texas A&M is my Alma Mater. I love the school and its a source of extreme pride to me. My friends know this and my family knows this. Basically anyone that matters knows this. I had tried baking my old truck headlights in the oven (don't ask why...) and I had placed it on some A&M coasters I had to keep the plastic from touching the metal racks in the oven. Sure enough, it melted the coasters and the plastics and just made a big mess. I wasn't even sad about the headlights as much as I was pretty torn up about these silly $15.00 coasters that I had bought back in College Station. I was constantly reminded how the coasters I had were just not 100% anymore whenever friends would come over and I wouldn't be able to slide them a 100% coaster to put their drink on. I'm sure not too many people would notice this but count on my best friends to notice. We'll call them C & T for the purposes of this post. C & T surprised me with these coasters. It's a small gift but man would you believe how ecstatic I was? It was as good a gift as ever and so random that they would even be able to find such a thing. I still use these coasters everyday and every time C & T come over, I make sure to slide them a coaster.

Look at that! That little story had all 3 components that the guest speaker said were part of a good story:

Stakes: People love things. I love my school. People hold significant value to otherwise invaluable objects. In this case, the coasters I got while in college.
Specifics: What kind of headlights? Old truck headlights. What kind of coasters? $15.00 Texas A&M Coasters. Who surprised me? C&T.
Struggles: Imagine the struggle of having water circles on your coffee table because you don't have good coasters to lend to your guests... and then the struggle to have to clean those circles. It's human, you've been there too.

Sorry about that, I just wanted to try that little story writing exercise. If it sucked or was boring, here's a dope ass picture of Discovery Green to make up for it.

Sony A7II . 70 mm . 1/13 sec . F/4.5 . ISO 6400 . Vibe: “Discovery.”

Katherine Center yesterday said, "Great stories make you feel something." RELEVANT.That is what I want to do with this blog and with my photography. I want to make you, the readers, feel something. I also want to make me, a year from now or 5 years from now, whatever, feel something. "Once emotions kick in, you're hooked." That's probably the secret to all those TIME MAGAZINE photographs. They capture those moments in the world that are so pivotal. They capture moments that shock us, awe us, or moments that we'll always remember. As this is just another hobby to add to my list, I doubt I'll ever get to that level. That's not my goal. The point is to just fill that void I mentioned earlier whether it be by online rants like this or by a series of photographs. All of us have those deep thoughts whether they are fleeting or stagnant. It's a human experience. However, far too many times do we get trapped, like I am, into keeping those thoughts and feelings bottled up inside until one day they explode. I've seen it and you've seen it. It comes out as emotional bawling, aggressive yelling, fighting and violence/punching walls/people, and worst of all quiet depression. Well, we can't let that happen! I'm too much of manly man to cry, yelling is exhausting, my hands are too beat up to punch anyone anymore and I'm so out of shape I probably wouldn't last very long in a fight anyways, and depression? No thanks, I like to be happy.

silohuette Sony A7II . 70 mm . 1/80 sec . F/5.6 . ISO 1000 . Vibe: “Going Home.”

VIBE . LEAD . NGUYEN