Happy Monday! I’m continuing my daily blogging for this week of March 12, 2018. I’m trying to keep these fairly short too so people don’t waste too much time. If you’d like to waste some time today, though, check out today’s What’s Up Dave livestream archive for 26 minutes of me talking through the stuff below. Or read onward!

INSIGHTS OF THE DAY

The weekend was productive in that I cracked a few projects. The big ones were reorganizing the living room as a more effective coworking space and framing artwork.

The new organization of the Living Room Cafe has three more coworking spots and also improves the movie-watching setup by moving the couch (now split into two armchairs) a little closer to the TV. I can move the computer cart with my Mac on it out of the way if people want to use those tables.

The framing required that I headed out to a craft store to buy archival acid-free tape. I’d never mounted mats “correctly” before, so this was a first for me. Came out pretty good! I still need to assemble the frames though and figure out where to put the artwork.

I also found time this weekend to visit Lanna Asian Market where I buy my Asian groceries every week, and catch up with the owner. I found some interesting snacks (will talk about later this week), but the most fun thing was a giant bag of squid snacks!

Apparently there are five smaller bags of sealed squid snacks inside. Not being a fan of squid snacks myself, I passed on purchasing the bag (I think it was $14) but asked Joy to take a picture of me holding it for posterity.

Thoughts from Therapy

I also had a great therapy session today; these are a lot of fun because essentially they are story telling sessions where I talk about what I’m up to, and then Jenn (my therapist) tells me some stories back to relate with. On my mind this week was the conundrum of personal branding and how I might resolve how my “brand image” may change with me. I’ve been using “Dave Seah” as my public handle for a long time, eschewing the use of a company or studio name, because it seemed more personal. I didn’t anticipate that my name might change, or that my visual identity would start to shift from “balding male dude” to something considerably different, as I come to understand where I fall on the gender identity spectrum.

Anyway, Jenn made the comment that a lot of what I do is grounded in a kind of “approachability” that is increasing as I more actively share my enthusiasm for a broader range of interests. She said that being able to share and show my own humanity is really important as…a service? A kind of community sharing? I’ve always shared what I think and do here, because I felt it was important to be able to represent what it’s like to face and solve my own problems even when I’m not sure what I’m doing or not totally happy about it. And at the same time, I like to be able to provide moments that might help someone through their own challenges to empower themselves to take their own steps. Seeing that happen makes me incredibly happy. Jenn pointed out that just streaming myself on YouTube daily, though I wasn’t thinking it was anything particularly good or shareworthy, was having more of an impact than I possibly knew. This is quite compatible with my belief that if you don’t put something in the universe, the universe can’t connect with you so go and do anything that is of yourself to see what comes back. So…I guess I’m doing that, and from this point on I am doing it “on purpose”. It’s like my own version of SETI, the “search for extraterrestrial life”, except not searching for aliens but for other humans who want some kind of connection. Maybe my signal will be the one that helps them their own home as well.