A Year Of Reflection: Boosting My Confidence, Making Connections, Dealing With A New City, & much more

Growing up I had a grandmother-like figure who owned a liquor store next to my home. She was Chinese which meant that every Chinese New Year she'd make my brother and I celebrate, handing us our red envelopes, making us wear red to manifest a year of luck & appreciating our ancestors. Though we were obviously not Chinese, she shaped a tradition in our lives that continues to live on today, even when she is no longer with us to celebrate. The reason why I am bringing this up is because this year was the year of the wooden dragon, which for us symbolizes strength, courage & good fortune, all that I believe I attained this year.

Besides giving you a little bit of history context of my childhood, I want to talk about how I changed my own perspective in life, adapting to healthier habits & ways of thinking. I think that my online persona often makes others interpret me as a girl who has it all, and in some ways, I can selfishly say that I do but that is not my main source of happiness. I grew up carrying the weight of handling my mother's illnesses, always focusing on her needs before mine, which tends to make me a selfless person in general. That selflessness is a beautiful trait to acquire, but throughout the years did a lot of damage to myself in friendships, including the worst one I was ever in a year ago. Ever since that experience I learned that although selflessness is something great to have, it is easy for me to be taken for granted which made me shut down a lot in the beginning of this year.

Now you might be asking: but Val, how did you over come that? Well see what I do not let a lot of people know is the inner problems I keep inside my mind. I know I am my own critique and due to the past derogatory friendship experience I had, I became a very difficult person to befriend if I did not already know you. I wanted to keep to myself majority of them time which led to me finding comfort in my alone time or being only with my two other friends, Jenn and Cecilia. I thought that I was in the right for doing this because I deserved to be alone and even pushed away a person who now is someone insanely significant in my life (if you're reading this & think it is you, then you're probably right). Not to say that I was never happy in this period of time, because I was, but it definitely took a lot for me to talk to newer people who shown interest in my life. I overcame this knot in my mind when I realized I was close to moving to Santa Barbara. I had ended in great terms with my job but within the weeks of awaiting to move I made myself aware that my whole life was about to change.

What Santa Barbara brought to me was a feeling of starting over again, to no longer feel afraid to go out and beware of the girls who brought my self confidence down and to make new friends, which is exactly what I did! I met a lot of people who again, at first, I feared a bit but they taught me I should not act that way. I learned that being afraid won't get me further into life especially with the career I want and even though the same people who did me wrong are basically in the same field as me, to learn to forgive and move on from a situation that won't matter in the span of 5 or 10 years. I think the moment that mindset was implemented on me, it was much easier for me to communicate with others and step out of my comfort zone to make newer connections once again. Ever since I was a little girl, it had always been a dream of mine to pursue school and belong to a big campus where I could learn the unknown. I knew that out of everything I wanted to do in life, whether it was being a designer at nine years old, an aerospace engineer at sixteen, or a groupie at nineteen, I knew I wanted to prove to myself that I could do so much more to my life. I knew that the terror I had in life was going to keep me sitting down in the same couch I sat in while bands did soundcheck and I saw the women in music business working the jobs I wanted. That negative mentality I started the year with would've made me nothing but a muse to the teenage girl tunes Twitter loves.

The fears in my brain diminished when I learned that I am more than just what those girls who self-loathed themselves thought of me. I know that I had strength and courage to move on from those situations and become enlightened. The good fortune now are the people who are currently in my life, people who do not mean any harmful acts but will act upon when something does not seem right on their end. At the end of it, friendships are what bring happiness to my life, not the idea of having it all or depending on my online persona to make me feel satisfied. I do not know how much you can grasp from this but one thing I am sure of is this: Do not allow a group of people to stop you from accomplishing the dreams you have for yourself. In fear of looking crazy or insane for reaching so high, if there is anyone who can believe in you, it is yourself. Act on it and the right people will surround you the moment that mindset switches. Cheers to the New Year!

In moments of feeling a knife on the throat, all I could do is is write

The Hollywood Palladium in Ecstasy

On November 21st of 2021 my life completely changed. The day started off pretty regular, at the time I was working at a coffee shop on Melrose Ave and going to college online because of Covid regulations, but still spent majority of my time on the web making friends and discovering new music. Through this virtual exposure, a failed trip to LA that some friends from Arizona had planned landed me with some tickets to an Irish rock band's show that night. I really only knew as much as the music my Arizona friends had shown me but nonetheless found myself making my way to the Troubadour that night alone, unaware of the outcome to my one woman mission. To not bore you all, I'll cut my juicy little details of the night to my biggest achievement, meeting a girl who would turn my world upside down and guide me through the craziest year of my life.

Now you may be asking, why am I beginning this blog post with a 3 year old story that many of you might already know and others may now be curious about? The truth is that although I am a major nostalgic loser, this story somehow revisits me within every time that I get to see that band perform again. This weekend I had the greatest opportunity to see Inhaler live again for what seems to be like the 50th time, it is truly a set I will never get tired of experiencing. I have been lucky to see this band's shows from the beginning of their career, playing in rooms like the Troubadour and the Subterranean to now seeing them fill the Hollywood Palladium up. I found sitting in the VIP section much more appropriate at this time as I've become aware that while I toured in the past with the band, I had no sense of responsibility compared to the life I have now. Though I am aware that I am no longer eighteen, sitting upstairs and not connecting with the crowd below me gave me a bit of fomo, dragging Gigi down with me to dance along to Who's your Money On? and Dublin in Ecstasy, Inhaler's best songs (in my opinion).

What is this infectious feeling teenage girls have in seeing this band perform over and over again? I notice it a lot with the Inhaler fan culture through the years and I am not complaining when I say it feels like something straight of the movie Almost Famous. If I were to talk about the "Bandaids", or better known as the original girls who I got to form beautiful friendships in the past, I can assure you they're still around, making their rounds to different cities and though we are not all connected like we once were in the beginning of this ride along with the band. It is still fun to see a familiar face whenever attending these shows because like any other artist, Inhaler has obtained higher exposure meaning that newer crowds are normal to see. I, myself, have a very strong connection because this is a band I wanted to experience everything I could with. Through Inhaler I got to see the world itself and the beauty in music. I got to go to festivals like Lollapalooza and Outsidelands, exploring cities beyond just a normal family trip that girls at that age take, and absorbing everything I did not understand at eighteen that now I question at almost twenty-two.

The palladium might have been the only show I went to for this recent North America tour because as many of you guys know my life is not so flexible in the traveling aspect, but I enjoyed my only night right. I don't ask for much from the band but to just take me back to when reality was worrying about living in a city like Chicago at nineteen. I think too much on my past because I know that my current present is what will allow me a much more accessible future to the music industry, to experience more cities and shows beyond just the beauty that Inhaler has gifted me. That night while I sat at our booth next to Gigi, I allowed myself to appreciate everything that this band has put both of us through, that if it wasn't for the Arizona girls who couldn't make it to the Troubadour I wouldn't have sat at the palladium this weekend and perhaps I wouldn't even be writing this today. Inhaler was the gateway to my passion for music, friendships, and has created the most clearest vision of a profession I crave attaining more and more every day. There will eventually be an actual night where Gigi and I will experience Dublin in Ecstasy but for now, Hollywood will do it for us.

Best of Both Worlds

Heads will Roll is a classic Halloween song without it being a Halloween song. That is a statement I heard all throughout my teenage years and into my twenties yet I had never gotten the chance to even hear that song play in a party......until it finally happened.

A week ago I dressed up as a cheetah (classic of me I know!) to experience my first ever outing in Isla Vista in terms of pre-halloween festivities. Walking into the first event of the night felt like finally experiencing what all those movies like project X or Spring Breakers makes you think college is REALLY about. To the left of the entrance there was a couch with a couple making out and towards the kitchen a group of people surrounding what seemed to be a beer pong table. All of this happening under red ambient lights while Heads will Roll played, a universal experience I finally became apart of. I didn't give myself enough time to let the college life absorb me though and without even acknowledging it I was already sitting in the balcony thinking about the life I had in LA, a life I'm lucky to run back to even if it means sitting in my car for two hours long.

It feels wrong to crave living in two worlds, one that consist of the beach and riding my bike around school and the other full of wild nights and dancing on top of bar tables. Of course the nightlife is not the only thing I miss about LA, it's mostly the atmosphere that surrounded me, the friendships I had and the potential life I could have attained which sinks into my mind in the middle of my day. That thought itself is what drives back home every weekend, to diminish the feeling of no longer belonging to a world that I so deeply felt connected to, and what better way to get lost inside that world again if it isn't for Halloweekend? I love the idea of dressing up as someone else for a night, to put a costume on so I can have my character's mind rather than my own making impulsive decisions I don't usually take. I twirl around feeling the fringe in my costume dancing along with me. The disco balls hitting the reflection of the mirrors where I can see Alice Ayres, no single version of me in sight. Now you might be asking, if I am so deeply obsessed with this world why did I ever leave? The truth is nothing is ever as beautiful as it seems, especially not the nightlife. I'm writing this today to clear up my name from the scene I was constantly being seen around, to make you understand that although I did see a beauty in being so youthful dancing around with strangers, it is something I do not consider life in the long run. It is beautiful to reminisce in things, I completely fall into that state more than I should now that I'm in a different era in my life, but that is completely fine, right? I've come to realize that Isla Vista and LA have different scenes, some may even say I'm currently having the best of both worlds, but when it ends what is next? That to me is more important than the rest. For now, I at least have the similar universal experience of admitting that Heads will Roll is a classified Halloween hit, even if it has nothing to do with Halloween.