Watching the sunrise at Abu Dhabi International Airport in the transit to Washington DC
Looking back in 2016, I have spent time around six months each in Washington DC and Bangkok, going back and forth. Things I have learnt from it were life as a migrant bird seemed to be the pattern now and these physical traveling weren’t as intense as the inner journey I’ve had.
January-March
Continuing from August 2015, I was in DC until March. Those eight months shook my mental state into identity crisis and self-doubts. The biggest one would be why I keep running into an uncertainty like that again and again. That created a quest for me to try to comprehend it.
At the same time, work-wise, I was pleased to see the last video I produced at the last job in Bangkok in 2015 was finally published. It was another video I pushed through, using live action to convey messages of a report on Thailand’s education system.
This is the final post of the series. Out to Space has come to year twelve. And most posts of the year are what I’ve been looking back in those years of the blog. Why am I doing this? Not only because it reveals to me why I blog but also gives some directions where it could go next.
Instagram selfie with a rainy view at Thailand Creative and Design Center, August 2014
The previous year of Out to Space was pretty much hollow in its content, I found. But there was at least something in it. The following four years when I lived in Bangkok, the blog was almost void.
There were 141 blog posts from year eight to eleven (April 2011 – March 2015) including automated tweet posts. Whereas year four, when it was most active, there were 176 posts. To break them down:
Year Eight (2011 – 2012)
73 posts in that 53 was automated from weekly tweets. There was one series on Luang Phrabang travel in January 2012.
By April 2010, I had been actively blogging on this space for six years. It mostly reflected on the passion about the work I did so far in photography and videos. But after I finishing the school at College of Fine Arts, the big question was what next! My life became vague and the blog became hollow.
Well, I was supposed to make a living as a media artist/producer, wasn’t I? But the harsh reality was that it wasn’t easy. Even though I got a regular casual job as a video editor to live by, my career needed to be more sustainable.
Street photography or multiculturalism didn’t flare up to me anymore. There was a revisit to the urban bird and back yard theme but that wasn’t it. In fact, I hardly picked up the DSLR at all. No concrete new idea for photography.
There was one trivial series on morning toilet paper I drew on it while taking a crap and took a picture of them everyday. (What I did with them after that would be a bit gross to elaborate.) Strangely, it was somehow a part of my dealing with depression.
One moment I was in the zone was chasing shadows of people on the streets and capturing on video. That became my first entry to Kino Sydney. It was well received by the audience and I was pleased. That was it, to make another short film.
Intermission! So I reckon @apostrophepong‘s IDENTITY CRISIS is the pick of the night so far. #KINO37
That would be about anxiety, yes, and another mental issue. I put my project up for crowd funding. Unfortunately, my heart problem emerged and it was terminated before the campaign due. I had enough. My focus shifted from it to getting back to Bangkok.
So, life in Australia came to an end in December 2010 after nine and half year. While I was flying back to Thailand, I watch the Wizard of Oz on the plane. It was like Dorothy waking up from her dream. I tapped ruby slippers and chanted, “There’s no place like home”. Back then, it seemed bitter when I left but I would not trade the experience there with anything. And this blog was a big part of it.
Luckily, the day before I left, I got phone call to offer me a job in Bangkok. It was an online producer for World Bank in Bangkok Office I applied for six months earlier. The long process of recruitment made me give up this prospect. But it turned out to be such a perfect timing. The question I had for the whole year was answered. I finally had a sustainable job, a decent one.
In the other hand, that affected my time for the blog as well. It would have been filled with posts about the resettlement in Bangkok and my reflection on the native country. However, I could only do it in January 2011. Once the job started, the blog was almost completely ignored and empty.
So, I would this year seven of Out to Space was the beginning of the hollow of the blog, sadly.
At the basement of my house with College of Fine Arts classmates, directing the final project, August 2009 Photo: Stilgherrian
The previous year of Out to Space was a transition to study at College of Fine Arts. Most of the posts in the year six were still about the education that got very intense. It wasn’t just the posts about the compulsory final project, but the subject I chose to do was also about the mental illness I had been dealing with—depression.
The school prepared us for the project in the second semester from the script development to preproduction. Then the final semester, we got to shoot the film and did the postproduction. But what I liked the most about it was that they forced us to report the progress on their student blog. It came handy for me (probably not for other students). And I published those posts later on this blog. It was the only and the most comprehensive behind-the-scene blog series I’ve done. There hasn’t been a chance I’d do something like that again, sadly.
Other than the posts about the school, there was hardly a motivation to go out the shoot photos and I was done with the dump series from the previous years as well as other photo subjects in the early years. And the blog started to fill in with automated weekly tweets.
2009 was also one of the toughest years in my life. I had no income and relied on the dole to live by. The study was really stressful. I had to work on the script about depression that I went to the deep dark place. It was the year that exposed that side of myself the most.
By March 2010, I officially graduated but this space didn’t seem to go anywhere. It might have needed a break. Looking back how intense the year was. There were ambitious goals and they archived. What an exhausting learning curve!
