Category: L2LYM

Advice To past Joseph Amodei’s from twenty-nine year old Joseph:

Advice To Joseph Amodei at twenty-eight: Hold onto Eevee and Olivia, everything is temporary.

Advice To Joseph Amodei at twenty-seven: Now would probably have been a good time to get back into therapy.

Advice To Joseph Amodei at twenty-six: Tell Ian how he is not being a good friend.

Advice To Joseph Amodei at twenty-five: Be more supportive of your sister’s decision to marry whomever she wishes.

Advice To Joseph Amodei at twenty-four: Write more in your journal.

Advice To Joseph Amodei at twenty-three: Hold onto the feeling of an open future, you have a long way to go still.

Advice To Joseph Amodei at twenty-two: Start taking care of your back now, this would have been a good time to start doing yoga.

Advice To Joseph Amodei at twenty-one: These past few years have been hard, but keep making art and don’t worry it seems that so far you have not stopped.

Advice To Joseph Amodei at twenty: Go easier on your body and try to sleep more.

Advice To Joseph Amodei at nineteen: Enjoy the time with your friends. Alos, no need to wait 8 months to start therapy, just go for it, it’ll be p good, I promise.

Advice To Joseph Amodei at eighteen: Probably don’t start smoking.

So this small scab like looking scar (not super obvious) sits on my right wrist right next to the jutting out wrist bone, but acts as a hallmark of a moment of raw stupidity fuelled by a small amount of 12 year old anger.

I went on a school trip to France during the final term (I was living in England at this point) of my Middle school. There was an agreement overall that the students weren’t allowed to use their phones, but the tone set by the school wasn’t that it was for our well being and health to enjoy the outdoors but rather to prevent contact with unnecessary parties. So my 12 year old brain decided halfway through the trip to try to email (because that was the only function by iPod Touch had to communicate) my parents and say everything was fine. Now, the internet at this little French hotel was so awful from my hotel room that I had to precariously lean out my window in order to get even a minutiae of  connection. But lo and behold as I lean out the window who should also be leaning out their window but the teacher who was staying in the room next to us. Ensue awkward exchange of glances, a retreat into my room and a knock on the door. My iPod was taken, much to my behest and confusion considering other people’s blatant use of their devices throughout the trip. However, the real cherry on the cake was the somewhat ludicrous speech our assistant headmaster gave the next morning about his outrage over device use. This speech was of particularly note because he was clutching my iPod as he was giving it, waving it back and forth like some form of conductors rod of middle school student rehabilitation. My name was at no point mentioned in said speech, but I was particularly sullen and outraged throughout most of it. And this outrage fed into my stupidity.

The next day we headed to a little water park about 30 mins from the hotel. My dejected form taunted by the battery of technology usage around me on the bus ride over. Finally getting changed and proverbially leaping for joy at the prospect of a water park where I could just let go for an hour or two and forget about my 12 year old woes, I dived hands first into a pool meant to catch you from a slide. Now, these pools aren’t meant for swimming but rather are to curb your momentum from the water slide, and as such was really only 2 feet deep. Well I noticed this mid dive, and turned slightly to my side, catching most of my momentum on the wrist (enter scar) and side rather than right on the noggin. It is also important to note that the bottom of these little pools are purposefully roughed to make sure you have enough grip to stand up and get out without slipping. Good for not slipping, but also good as an abrasive. It is also worth pointing out that blood plus swimming pools equal big health and safety no no, so when I noticed what I had done to myself my responsible brain kicked in and immediately went to a teacher to get fixed up. Fortunately they possessed the ultimate solution to a 12 year old’s stupidity in the form of waterproof bandaids (after a generous amount of dabbing at said wound and letting it dry) so I was still able to enjoy the water park a little.

However, the real cherry on the cake was that as we were leaving the park our assistant headmaster went up to me, gave me my phone and with a particular tone of pity in his voice said ‘you’ve been well behaved, here’. So all in all, an okay day.

BONUS MYSTERY SCAR

I legitimately have no idea how I got this scar.

I woke up one morning this semester, did my morning routine and sat down at my desk and as I sat down I noticed pain in my upper right arm. Sure enough I rolled my arm meat over and saw that I had a fairly small, thin and long cut along my tricep. After a couple of days I noticed that the scab looked particularly like a zipper which was kind of curious.

Such is the tale of the mystery scar.

Task: Photograph a scar and write about it.

I made an infographic of my girlfriend’s scars from being a sous chef. She also has a gnarly scar further up her arm from trying to stand on a plastic reindeer as a kid. She fell off the reindeer and impaled herself on the antlers 🙁

Make a gallery of the art in your parents’ boyfriend’s house.

I’m now in Burlington, VT, staying with my boyfriend and his roommates. It’s great & helpful to be able to spend this time with someone I love.

But we haven’t spent this much time together in a long time, and it’s weird and new and challenging to say the least.

All the art in his house is slightly crooked (lol). We got a good laugh out of that the other day, and decided that it felt like a Wes Anderson movie or something, where all the decor is just slightly off. There’s a vase on the mantle, but it’s empty. There are a couple plants, but they’ve definitely been neglected. It’s kind of cozy, but kind of incomplete; kind of home-y, but kind of unsettling. It’s a good match for how I feel.

I know Meijie, she’s in the design program and we have a bunch of classes together. We’ve hung out a couple times in a group context, but I wouldn’t necessarily call us friends, at least not close friends. She’s incredibly close with one of my best friends, though. Thinking of friends’ friends (who wouldn’t fall into the category of my own friends), Meijie was one of the first people that came to mind. I think this is because she’s just visually very distinctive. She’s one of those people who even if you don’t know her, if you’ve seen her you remember her. Anyway, she came to mind and I drew her.

I ended up calling my twin brother and following the prompt:

Ask your family to describe what you do.

I think there’s something sweet about this prompt, in that at the core of having family describe you, they want to convey their love.

I tried to make some ambient visual accompaniment to this audio, but decided to just leave it as a sound clip after attempting a few iterations.

1. Take a flash photo under your bed.
   
   When I got to CMU, I purposefully raised my bed to have more storage space underneath. Unfortunately, as I am mid move-out, it isn’t as densely packed as usual. The assignment also says “We are looking for photos that depict the space between the bottom of the bed and the floor, please do not send us photos if your bed is flush against the floor or if it is a loft bed.” and since I actively use the space for storage I’m not sure how much it counts. But there’s no harm done in taking the picture.

2. Ask your family to describe what you do.
– My Mom: [she] builds and uses existing interfaces so that she can create beauty or amusement for or unique expressions of or enhancements to human life through the medium of technology
– My Dad: I imagine that Jacqui wakes up and checks her e-mail, making any responses that are necessary in  a timely manner. She cleans up, dresses and grabs a pre-made breakfast item and bottle of water on the way to her first class or appointment. In between classes or meetings, she will chat on-line to colleagues about assignments, or about any of the various extra-curricular activities in which she involved. Lunch will be an ad-hoc affair as opportunity allows. As the afternoon progresses, there will be time for some computer work, as well as some on-line diversions for U-Tube, games and topics of interest. Dinner will quite often be part of an extra-curricular group meeting or discussion among friends.  In the evening, there might be a movie or a rehearsal to attend, followed by a late night of scholastic work occasionally punctuated with a board game or puzzle activity among friends.
– My youngest sister Elise (17): I think you go to classes to learn how to code better, do better graphics, etc. I think you make lines of code as part of a bigger program to make it function. I think you work digitally to make both film projects and computer animations.
– My Grandmother: I would say that my granddaughter works on the computer a lot, and she likes to do film, and she likes games. And she tries to create them in the computer. That’s all I know how to say.

I didn’t read her full description until after I had asked several people, so I have more than 3, each with kind of different interpretations of the assignment.

For my photo of the sun, I have decided to take a picture of my bedroom light. Since I’ve been spending an enormous amount of time in my room I thought of the sun as my electric light rather than actual lighting since it wakes up with me in the morning and sets when I’m going to bed.