“I've heard that a dog will never die at his home, so maybe he just knew something, so he left” And I want to talk about the dog. It's not my dog. It's my grandparents' dog. I first met him when I was 12 or 13, maybe. He was very cute and very lovely. Yeah, his name is Yellow. We called him yellow because he's a yellow dog apparently, but actually he's orange. Yeah, but the yellow is a really common name for dogs in China, so there are many dogs are called Yellow, Big Yellow, Little Yellow, or something like that. Yeah. We really like him because he's so clever and very kind. You know, he can tell who is one of our family at the first time. There was a time when I was shelling peanuts with my grandma and mother. He was just sitting near us as a guard. It seemed like he wanted to keep us safe, you know. I could tell that he's really sleepy because it was really hot, but he still stayed on the job. But we lost him about two or three years ago. He just disappeared. Also, actually, he was very old — I think he was very old as a dog. But he was still full of energy. Yep, but he just disappeared. I don't know why. My grandpa tried to find him but failed, so we still don't know, yeah, what happened to him. I've heard that a dog will never die at his home, so maybe he just knew something, so he left. My girlfriend also like him, and she always wants to have a dog. But we don't know if there is a dog better than him in the world.

“You could not see my face because I was just covered in boxes” I'm not sure what's the heaviest thing I've ever carried, but probably that's got to be my dog when I was a child. I used to have a Bernese mountain dog, and I'm pretty sure she would weigh the same as me. I was, I don't know how much, but I was probably 12 years old when we got her. She was huge and she was really loving, so I would always carry her. But I love carrying things because it made me feel really strong. Like whenever I go to the grocery store, I always get a lot of food, and then I always get it from the car in one, in one go, like I never come back. One time actually, I got a bunch of Amazon packages when I moved to my apartment, so I had to get a lot of furniture for cheap. So I got it from Amazon and actually all the packages came at the same time and sometimes they bring them right to the second floor where I stay, um, but when I ordered the heaviest stuff, they left it on the ground floor by the mail room. So I had to carry all probably eight boxes by myself to the second floor, which was actually probably the third because the ground floor doesn't count. And I could have came back for the -- half of the packages, but I ended up carrying all of them stacked on top of each other, and I actually felt like a cartoon character because it's a very common scene when somebody's carrying too many things on top of each other and it gets -- like, you could not see my face because I was just covered in boxes, and I was dropping them on the way to the third floor, but I was just so committed to do it in one go. I'm not sure why I'd rather do that than come back, maybe -- yeah, I don't know how it's easier. But that's, that was really heavy, I remember. So maybe yeah, the heaviest thing I've ever carried would be my dog and the eight Amazon packages.

“It wasn't a real hug, but it was something phenomenal.” I was trying to think of the last time I felt genuinely happy and that was on February 15th 2024, because on that day, I got a massive hug of encouragement. It wasn't a real hug, but it was something phenomenal that gripped my heart and kept me moving throughout the semester. I really did love that day so much. Um, I was having a very difficult time writing this paper for my LGBTQ+ studies course. And that was -- the, the, the topic of the paper was to find a couple artifacts, dig through them, get everything out of them, find the codes, find the true meaning, find everything, find all the interpretations, and tie it up with class topics and submit. But I was having a horrible time because I just had no confidence in my ability to write. I -- there's nothing worse than looking at something that you did and saying, “Wow, this is awful.” And that's how I felt on that day, so. But before I get into that I want to talk about the artifacts that I chose and that -- er, those were zines. They were “blue floral gusset” and “Travesty #2” by, uh, Spurzine, who's an Australian zinester. And the thing I love so much about zines is the completely unfiltered nature of the, of the zine. It's so phenomenal. It's a window into the mind. It's true passion, and that's what I can sniff out. That's what I love to see. I love to see true passion radiating off of my computer monitor or holding it in the palm of my hand. It just feels powerful. I was researching these zines and I felt awful about ‘em because I didn't have any confidence in myself. But I went to the writing center. I went to the writing center at my university. I sat down with somebody. They were a sounding board for the, for the ideas that I was creating in my mind. And at the end of the session, they looked at me in the eyes after listening to me ramble on and on and on for like an hour and a half, and they say, "Don't undersell yourself. You're a phenomenal writer. All of the things that you said made sense." And I like stood up from my chair,…

"I'm sitting here in my dorm, everything's absolutely in shambles" So, I am completing my first year as an undergraduate student, and it's been quite the journey, just getting here and all so, um, like completing the year itself, but specifically I'm packing up my dorm. I'm like pack- -- I'm packing everything up, and I don't consider myself to be quite a collector. If you were to ask me outright, I would say that I'm quite minimal, but after seeing everything that I have accumulated this year, I have to come with the -- I have to grasp the fact that I may be a tad bit of a collector. Um, my friends and I, we tend to frequent the crafting events on campus, and so there's usually extras, so I take like things like collages or like jewelry making supplies and I put this all into like ottomans in my dorm. And now that I'm going through the ottomans, I'm realizing I may have a tad bit of a problem with crafting, and I'm not sure how I'm going to get all home.So I'm sitting here in my dorm, everything's absolutely in shambles, and I'm going through this like, it's um, it's quite a curation of artifacts. But yeah, everything everything's in such a disarray, believe it or not. I'm supposed to be out by tomorrow, my mother is coming to collect me. And yeah, I highly doubt everything's going to fit into our car. And as a side note, I've hung up quite a bit of posters, and some of them have ripped off the paint off the wall, and I'm not trying to catch a charge, so what I've done is, because they've repainted over these walls so many times the paint kind of comes off in these like layered chunks. So they're very pliable. It's like a piece of paper. And so I have taken some of these crafting supplies that I've collected over my over the year, and I have begun gluing them back onto the wall. Um, because I don't know what else to do.So, I started taking off these like little pieces that have come off the wall, and then you know what, I'm going with my Elmer's glue stick, and I'm just sticking them back on and they're actually staying, so I'm going to consider that a win. I'm going to…

"It was a very serious gash in my leg" When I was 13, I had a scimitar-esque sword that I would play with because I was super into anime and action movies for the main character would be fighting off hordes of enemies with just his trusty blade, and I thought that was the coolest thing ever. So I would play with that thing in my room late at night, and unsurprisingly, one of the nights I was playing with it, I got myself quite badly because it was a sharp and pointy blade. So, when I did end up getting myself, it was because I pulled off that action movie move where the main character stabs somebody behind him because he's just so in the zone that he can like sense their presence. I got myself in the hip, and I couldn't feel it. I think my body went into like a protective shock right away, but I knew that I had done it. So I rushed into the bathroom and right when I saw how bad it was, I started panicking because it was about two inches in diameter and like half an inch deep, so it was a very serious gash in my leg. And my family had like first aid kits in all the bathrooms, so I wrapped myself up really good, really tight and left the bathroom a big mess. And I just went to bed after that. I was still in middle school. I still had chores to do. So I would be moving around with it. And I never told an adult about this until years later when I was sure that I wouldn't be punished or scolded for my embarrassing actions because I was just so embarrassed. But it was a very like deathly wound. At a time about a month in, I unwrapped it to see how it was doing. It was doing poorly. It was healing, but it was gross looking, like it looked like something that a doctor needed to see and even then, I just wasn't going to tell anyone. My body did eventually just heal it all the way up. The scar is very strange; it looks kind of like a potato. But I didn't die, which is surprising. The more I explain the story to people, the more people tell me that I was probably just…