A Hiatus Continues? ~ What I'm reading ~

My perfectionist behind has finally completed the Google Data Analytics capstone and it can be seen here or here as well as my GitHub portfolio. This project makes it look like I can code in Python, but I don’t yet believe that. I need to take another course to be sure.

Similarly, while the Google cert hypothetically taught me R, I want to do another project or take another class until I believe I can use it.

That said, I've completed enough courses on Tableau that I’m three-fourths done with my next cert!

I’ll be keeping my completed homework assignments on my Tableau Public page with the assumption that there’s nothing wrong with transparency as you learn.

I find Tableau quite fun! I plan to add more projects with greater style, complexity, and skill. Likely, the rest of the SDStories will be hosted here. I’ve long known what kind of visualizations I want to use (sankey, chord, dumbbell chart, dendrogram/tree, etc…). Now that Tableau is becoming intuitive to me, I feel like I’ll be able to do these more quickly.

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A Hiatus

It's been a while! I'm just going to give you an update before I say goodbye for a couple weeks or months.

On the data analytics front, I recently completed a SQL certificate with honors. I had started to doubt my skills in SQL, so completing this course was useful for me to reaffirm my knowledge. I still need to develop a project that will let me show off my SQL abilities on my resume.

Secondly, I've started a different course focused on Tableau. I similarly have been doubting my Tableau skills so I wanted to take the course focusing on data visualization. I ended up signing up for the entire 8-course certificate (I'm 3/8ths through!) so let's work this big ole brain and see how quickly I can finish it—and with an A, of course.

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In any case, the writing and the job search are currently battling for highest priority in my life while data analytics will take a backseat until I feel more economically stable.

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How MENSA Improved my Mental Health

Last year, I joined MENSA.

As a joke, mostly.

But also because it was a childhood dream of the Maya who picked up that those in my intersecting social categories were often dehumanized, who realized that she was good at school, who yearned for meritocracy to be a real deciding factor in the world, and who believed that education was the path to a successful and prosperous future.

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But what if you never get better? & other small reckonings

You ever have an epiphany, forget you had it, and rerealize it?

I recently rerealized that some people who think they like me actually like who they think I would be if I magically stopped having social anxiety and became more confident. People don't like "Bad Vibes" so having a mental illness that makes you permanently a bit neurotic makes you less appealing, less attractive.

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dreams of a gay myspace killer

I spend a lot of time wondering what it would look like if Facebook were rooted in the science of relationships and positive psychology instead of capitalism and the science of addiction.

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Rather than the whiplash of seeing newborn announcements, police assault videos, global crises in headline, and metaironic memes with a mayfly lifespan all colliding into each other; maybe Grammarly-style tone detectors could suggest post categorizations that people could either accept or insert their own. Those categories could be used to filter the timeline: I may want only to see pet photos today, but tomorrow I may review which of my queer friends in crisis are holding GoFundMes. If I’m well enough the day after, I will review everyone’s achievements and life updates with only compersion without envy.

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I am trying my best to not be a lizzo hater, but...

I doubt myself a lot; I probably always will.

I think a lot about the time a (female) interviewer told me straight out that she chose a (male) candidate over me because he had more confidence. Interviewers have told me I lack confidence multiple times.

I think a lot about the (Black female) recruiter who boasted of lowballing her client because her client didn't think to ask for more. "I just offered a candidate $85,000 for a job that had a budget of $130,000. I offered her that because that’s what she asked for and I personally don’t have the bandwidth to give lessons on salary negotiation." She said, and tagged it #beconfident.

Not all skinfolk are kinfolk, I know. But if it's feminist to use the “insecure” or “ignorant” as lessons in this way, then I want none of it.

I'm alive only because of the softness of others.

The people who claim the world is a cold cruel place and no one’s going to hold your hand or coddle you are 100% the people making the world cold and cruel in the first place lmao

I also apologize a lot; it's ingrained in me by now.

I think a lot about the time a white woman coworker told me to apologize less and to say "thank you" more, "You should try that." I distinctly remember how certain she was as she told me—not suggesting, but commanding with an air of annoyance.

I think a lot about the time Lizzo, one of the music world’s loudest drumbeaters for self-esteem, angrily condemned music writers to unemployment because a (fellow Black female) music reviewer gave Lizzo a very critical review.

If that is what confidence looks like, I'd rather remain apologetic. I will apologize for apologizing, again and again.

i remain wary of unkinfolk, and devote my mind to the women, the black women, the black men, and the others who upheld my watery, airy self in interviews, as supervisors, as colleagues, and role models. i want to thank every one—gratitude inflates me & i no longer need to apologize once i am allowed to.


still, my brain returns to that ex-coworker and all the other shapes she may take. i wonder if she, in another body, told tell bell hooks to capitalize her name so that she doesn't look like she's downplaying herself.

i wonder if she told bell hooks to write her name in all caps: “other wise the world won’t take you seriously. otherwise, the world/i will can’t support you. Other wise I (the world) will eat you alive.”

What’s So Good About Anime Anyway? [Part 1!]

I want to talk about the accidental properties of anime that were lacking in American cartoons as the time that anime exploded, the things Nickelodeon and Hanna-Barbera could have leaned into even before anime inspired them to do so.

I want to think explicitly about the things I try to apply in my own work even only under the surface.

I want to focus on craft and considerations that go deeper than “big eyes and blue hair.” I want to dig deeper than style.

I want to talk about what’s so good about anime.

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Bending English with J-Pop: FictionJunction YUUKA

But yeah, to be more explicitly pro-Asian in a way that fits National Poetry Month, I want to talk about what non-Native and bilingual speakers of English taught me about how to use the language. Some people call it “broken English” or even worse “Engrish,” but I’d like to think of it as bending English, a language which was a flexible mongrel. I mean, as a fan of AAVE/Ebonics and skin-official siblings of the coiner of “based” and “bling,” I should know a thing or two about the extra-boxilar possibilities of English.

The non-Native and bilingual speakers in this case are all J-Pop and J-Rock artists, hence the blog title.

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