Why (do I do what I do)?

 I make things, and y’all love it when I make shit. So much so that I befriended hundreds of you over four years just because I create. I don’t ever think for a moment that that was supposed to happen, but y’all have been a such a treat anyhow, keeping my world spinning.

 I have shitass memory. Unearthing the family camcorder around the time I began getting into video editing has been a lifesaver. From 7th grade in quarantine to now, I have recorded my life. Naturally, y’all are involved as we went to shkewl. In order for me to remember and for y’all to consume, I edit these recordings down to the highlights and throw a bunch of effects to keep y’all drawn in.

 Media editing has always been and will be an outlet for my errant ideas, and as a crutch for my memory. That's probably why I hate traditional filmmaking so much. So much arrangement, choreography, and for what? A fictitious series of events, yeah. But if I were to treat my life like a movie set, I couldn’t trust the video to accurately portray my life then.

 My greatest three inspirations for my editing style are CSCoop, ratlobber, and nohluhn.

 I was admittedly a CallMeCarson viewer until his whole debacle in 2021, and as I got swept up in the diaspora, CSCoop took on the role of my favorite content creator. CSCoop was a constant presence in Carson's videos, so I was already familiar with him. But his editing style absolutely sold me. It is very barebones, but evolved over the years to include many elements I copy, including fast and punchy editing, green screen graphics, social media videos mid edit, 2000s visuals, etc. He has described his content as being a fever dream mixed with acid trip.

 Ratlobber is another gaming Youtuber, one who makes sleek documentary-adjacent videos on video games, videos I consider barely deeper than surface level, but his intro and transitional graphics are heavily laden with 90s-2000s visuals which I sorely aim to recreate.

 In a similar vein, Nohluhn is a multiplatform editor who needs little introduction. However, their editing skill and style is second to none, and my efforts to catch up in After Effects are directly because of their edits.

 I got into photography around 2018-2019, when my oldest brother bought an entry-level Nikon DSLR and let me whip it around when he wasn’t. I wasn’t crazy about photography and never took it seriously, but it turns out that it’s one of the few things I’m good for. I never properly understood the logic behind working a camera until the summer of 2025. I kinda just knew what the buttons and dials did, and didn’t bother to understand anything else.

I have a similar distaste for arrangement and choreography in photography. I almost always point and shoot. The black box in my hands always makes itself known, and I’m known to take pictures, so no one needs to be told to look. What’s the point of taking pictures if you’re just gonna fake everything? So you can show it off later? To who? About the good time you had? That you shoved a rose tint over? Are the people and how they are naturally not good enough for you?

 Of course, that doesn’t really apply when you’re posing for casual shit, like a crossfaded selfie in the bathroom with ya friends.

 Graphic design is something I have a complicated relationship with. When you’re a kid, you draw pictures and write stories and shit, and I always got frustrated with drawing, so I just gave up. I got back into making visual art in 2020, and at the same time, I got into video editing. I made a lot of bullshit, and didn’t really do graphic design until I took a graphic design class in 2022 and fucking abhorred it.

 My teacher was petulant, hardly taught us anything, and I hated every minute in the print shop. I picked up graphic design on my own time to spite that class, and since I never considered graphic design my thing, I never showed anyone what I was making. Why would they care?

 I’m a stubborn shithead to my core, and it took a while for me to accept that a career as a video editor isn’t a hill to die on, and the next viable career that I was at least interested in doing is graphic design. I used to look down on K-pop fancam editors who pirated After Effects just to spam effects on their idols for a fifteen-second edit, but that's experience, they’re professional editors now, and I’m stuck drawing lines in sand. I have a lot of catching up to do in the graphic design space as well, but I think I got it.

 Part of my graphic design journey is my interest in cartography, or more specifically, alternate history mapping. I am very interested in “what-ifs,” including batshit alternate geographies and completely fantastical present days. It’s fun to imagine a place completely unlike our own, but a lot of my alternate worlds concern some flavor of “what if everything was worse?” Probably as a result of the world-traumatizing events of 2020 onward, IOTL.

 Writing is and always has been my baby. Accessing American education was the priority of my upbringing, my parents emphasized learning English. English literacy suitably gave way to my passion for storytelling and my lifelong pursuit of creativity. Everything you see above, previous, below, and after is because of this. Reading led me into writing and drawing, then photography, sound design, and eventually photo and video editing.

 Beyond myself, I create for the enjoyment of y’all. It delights me to see the positivity y’all have towards my work, even though I suck at making it and putting it out. It’s weird now, in the aftermath of public education, as I find myself picking up the pieces as I did after middle school. It’s like I’m finally cleaning my room again after a period of neglect; all of the unfinished business stinks of sour laundry, but it’s all said and done now. The regret will be washed away, and all that’s left is a record of what happened, not only in videos, photos, and captions, but through memories, relationships, and hearts.

 And all I’ve got now is time. Time to work on making my final tributes to us and our time fucking around. And time to ponder what the fuck I want from life, who I am, what to do, how to secure my future, etc. As we wade through the morass of adulthood, in an increasingly hostile world that seems perfected to break us, I hope you can find solace here, or your own haven, and appreciate what you had that was good before, what you have now, and what will be good after.

 Either way, when we're all said and done, our matter will all reunite with the Earth. I will be with you, my family, my friends, you all will be with me, one together, someday.