Put a camera in my heart and you’d lock me up in jail. You wouldn’t let that beast see the light of day because of how messed up it is.

I used to have thoughts of punching people in the face. Now, I still do, but it doesn’t stop after one punch. I’ve had plenty of other thoughts that scare me – how can my heart be so dark. Sorry parents if you’re reading this. I’m not right in the head.

But I’d go so far to say that all of our hearts are wicked. Put a camera in all of our hearts and we’d have an overpopulated prison problem.

Some would say, “You need Jesus.” And I agree. And then I think of all the people who have Jesus whose hearts are still wicked. I think of when I feel like I had Jesus and my heart still frightened me.

Maybe I can blame it on my parents. I’ll share some sob stories so I can win your empathy. I used to cry over a lack of food on the table. My dad sometimes slowly drove through the neighborhood and openly stared at other women. I’m so tired of feeling icky when the police officers don’t take their fucking shoes off when they walk into my home. I almost killed my sister when we were playing with the futon, and I didn’t have the courage to ask my dad for help.

Sometimes I miss being depressed because if I killed myself, I’d be okay with it. Whereas now, if I killed myself, I’d feel like a stupid idiot.

So welcome in to my wicked heart. If I ever give off the vibe that I have it all together, I don’t. I’m a professional. I’m literally trying to make money off of telling other people how messed up I am.

So grab a seat and come on in. Tell me about your wicked heart, so I at least can feel like I’m not alone.

Heart to Heart, Fart to Fart, and Everything in between

I fear some people might think these silly songs are too revealing. "I miss the days when people kept their private information to themselves."

But what about the supposed "goodness" that comes from talking about your problems out loud?

In the journey of making a movie that’s hyper specific to me, in order to cut through the noise, I have to talk about the gross stuff. I definitely don’t want to. But when creating a personal brand, you are to lean into who you are. And this is who I am. You’ll know what I mean when you watch the doc.

Neil Gaiman said, “The moment that you feel, just possibly, you are walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind, and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself…That is the moment, you might be starting to get it right.”

1-2 years after the movie is done, we’ll see if I got it right.,

If you’re an emerging filmmaker you kind of have to play status games.

• Get into Sundance Ignite

• Have a lot of followers but not too much so you’re not an influencer

• Know a guy that knows a guy who’s Spielberg’s grand daughter

• Live in LA and workout (twice a month at most) at equinox even when you can’t afford it

• Get your films into SXSW, Cannes, whatever whatever. Look I’m cool guys. I swear.

It sounds like I’m jabbing at these things. Which I see how my tone conveys that. They’re not bad things. I applied to Ignite. I sent a short to SXSW and Sundance. I know a guy that knows an even cooler head honcho. When you’re emerging, you rely on these opportunities, these little games, to get your work out there. How else will you get recognized and then given more opportunities to make money? And it’s all about the money.

Here’s a completely made up case study on two filmmakers who started on similar paths and now are completely different.

Enter Casey Neistat. Grew up poor. Teenage father. Scrubbed forearm deep clam chowder in large stock pots. In 2009, he and his buddies Josh and Benny Safdie create a movie called Daddy Long Legs. It’s the brother’s first feature. I’m assuming Casey’s too.

It gets into Sundance. It gets into Cannes. I’m not sure if 2009 Sundance was on the map, but here’s a couple movies from that year:
Precious
Bronson
The End of Line
The Cove

Have you watched any of these? I sure as hell haven’t. Have you heard of them? Yes most likely.

The next year in 2010, Casey gets his own TV show on HBO. The brothers keep making features and shorts. Reception is pretty good.

Casey quits the formal industry announces his vlog in 2014. It gets big. He starts his company. In 2016 he sells Beme for 25 million dollars.

With lots of work to show on their belt, the brothers cast Robert Pattison in Good Time in 2017. It’s a fantastic movie. Next is Uncut Gems. The brothers now make their own movies. Josh’s next one has Timmy Chalamet as the lead. Benny’s has The Rock. Okay great.

This is how I interpret it. Casey said eff the status games, I’m doing my own thing. Amasses a huge fortune and audience.

The brothers have their status signals with the festivals, getting into Venice, Cannes again, SXSW. And subsequently get huge (in the industry). But maybe you’ve never heard of their name. But have you seen Oppenheimer? So you’ve seen Benny’s face.

All that is to say, whatever path you choose, the games or not, with a butt ton of hard work, you can get successful. Okay back to working on my applications so I can start winning these games.

It’s the second time I’ve gotten coffee from this lady. The first time she didn’t think I spoke Cantonese, so she said to her coworker, “Wow he’s really handsome.” I looked at her with understanding and said thank you.

A couple months later, I see her again, and she mutters under her breath, just loud enough for me to hear, “He really is handsome.” This makes me feel good.

We love compliments. Asian cultures don’t often use their words to express affection. Because I sometimes exhibit cowardice and for the sake of this blog, I’ll write down some compliments here for my friends.

1. Trevor has a kind caring heart. He visited me in the hospital many times and tried to pull his doctor connections to get me through the emergency room faster. He also has a nice smile. He would be an excellent politician with his true North.

2. Teresa also has a nice smile. Is kind, real, isn’t ashamed to be herself, and is quick to laugh and be joyous. What a great trait!

3. Uday loves coding. You can tell he feels it in his bones. He has a knack for solving coding problems  and that translates to everything else in life.

4. James looks good without hair. He is a leader. Whether that is from learning on the job or being a natural at it, whatever it is, he’s put in the necessary and hard work to get to where he’s at now.

5. Joe is a world traveler and has a heart that deeply feels.

6. Jae can command a room with his presence.

7. Aidan is loud in all the right ways.

8. Emily looks great for her age. Her friend Shegalla too.

9. Fabio is the best bjj teacher in Hong Kong and his gym is making a statement.

10. Greig can beat your ass and also has a heart that has a large capacity to listen, care, and feel. I will regret having never gone skiing with him.

11. Christina is the best out of all of us. She can laugh, listen, be serious, get things done, be a supermom, command a stage, sing, rock a baby to sleep while giving a presentation on mental health, be a superhero, care deeply, cook delicious shabbat food, and much more. If I didn’t meet Christina during my time in Hong Kong, my time would’ve been robbed of more than half of its goodness.

12. Wes is funny. He doesn’t turn away when I jokingly shove the karaoke mic down his throat. He claps with his feet and is himself no matter who’s in the room.

13. Kelly is musically gifted.

14. Jojo is the most gifted person I’ve met at thinking of funny puns on the spot.

15. If Joy from Inside Out was an actual person, it would be Karene.

16. Gabe possesses deep theological knowledge.

17. Flo would be famous if she worked in Hollywood because of her administrative, organized, leader-heavy, and scrupulous personality. Even with all of this, she’s joyful, funny, and kind.

18. Sophie is good looking.

19. Alex excels in everything he points his mind to.

20. Evelyn has a deep, rich way of thinking with nuance. She also would excel at being a movie producer. She has an empathetic heart, loves deeply and widely, and is really cool.

21. Francis is a ride or die. Perhaps to a fault. That means ride or literally die. He’s athletically gifted, is hilariously witty, actually sings really well on the karaoke mics, and works hard.

It’s Chinese New Year in Hong Kong, and I don’t have many people to spend it with. That’s okay. It’s a holiday for families, and I thought it was a good idea to move 8000 miles away from home. Historically, I’ve never felt good about this holiday. My mom would give me $100 or sometimes $200. I would feel bad, because she doesn’t have that kind of money to spend. And she has four kids. I would join her at the Chinese Restaurant, making $8 an hour, to help her stay on top of the grueling lunch and dinner rush that lasted hours and hours and you didn’t even have time to sweat. At the end of the day, the boss would unjustifiably keep some of the tips we worked hard for. Now here in Hong Kong, without any friends inviting me (except for Trevor, thank you Trevor), I stare at my empty wallet and think, "Shit. CNY money was supposed to pay for lunch next week."

So don’t tell me it’s not about money. Because it’s all about money. You can be a pack a backpack and find yourself during your 20s, hopping from country to country, kissing girls in clubs, drinking beer from bottles you can’t read and throwing up in a language you didn’t know you learned, finally begin your career in your 30s with the cushion of daddy’s money under your ass, and proceed to try your best to not feel bad about yourself. Or you work your ass off despite a far less favorable hand, get into an elite school, get a job in consulting or finance, and work your family out of generational poverty.

Or your me: you couldn’t bring yourself to do the corporate thing, though you tried with your first job, being paid a fair wage for only working 1/8 hours in the day and watching YouTube videos with the rest. After graduating from an elite school without paying a dime because of your family’s low income level, you did the country hopping too, because you wanted too wanted to "find yourself." And now at 25, you have consumer debt and medical debt, and you used to laugh at people who had debt. And you think, "How am I going to dig myself out of this?" So it’s about money. And you need money to solve money problems. And you need to build a fortune before you can say, "Wow I still feel empty even with all this money." But you still have to get there before you can confidently make that claim. So happy Chinese new year. May this year bring you dump trucks filled with dollar bills.

While my mom works at a Chinese restaurant again this year, more than ten years later from the first time I did with her, I sit on my keyboard, tap tap taping away at this blogpost, complaining about how little money I have. Sigh. I find it so unfair for someone to tell me that it’s not about money when they make more than me and give less than me proportionally. So I guess all my eggs are in this film thing, to break my family out of generational poverty that seemingly started with my parents. Then I get anxious. Of course like any high achieving child, I want to buy my mom a house that’ll be too big for her to clean and too, "Son this is nice, but you know I love you despite this." And I want to buy my dad a Tesla because he’s been riding a piece of shit on four wheels since he moved to the USA in ’96. And to get there requires lots of hard work and lots of gatekeepers saying yes to the work I make. And I think sometimes I’m not cut out for this, and I’m not good enough. So what do you do? Foot on the gas. Nose to the grindstone. Trade parts of your soul (or all of it) for some numbers in your bank account. That’s even if you have the chops to work work work and work. I don’t know if I do. Happy Chinese New Year.

It’s the first time you’ve stayed overnight at a hospital.

You’re 25 and you thought maybe you could make it longer.

First you go to the private one because you thought it wouldn’t be that expensive. Plus all your rich friends can afford it so of course you can too when you make nothing compared to them.

You stay for 5 hours and you realize fuck it’s way more than you thought. Like WAY more. So now you’re 3k USD in debt.

So you leave mid antibiotic cycle and wait in line for 5 hours to be admitted into a public hospital. The vibes are different. There’s a girl repeatedly dry heaving in a wheelchair in front of you, and you don’t know what to do.

Two hours after you’re finally admitted, you’ve miraculously fallen asleep in the bed despite the crowded ward full of oldies with problems more pressing than yours.

You got your problem from pretending to playfight grown men. And you blame it on one of the grown men’s long fingernails who sliced your leg. Yet it’s your fault for not taking care of it sooner.

And the doctor shouts your name at 3am and you awake and probably the other oldies too, so you feel bad. And he speaks to you for thirty seconds, and you feel like you can’t stand up for yourself.

So your head wanders for the next two hours, and the doctor yelled for the lights to be turned on, so your circadian rhythm is getting messed up, and you’re thinking of all the ways you’ve been weak before in your past. You wrap the hospital jacket they gave you around your eyes but not over your mouth which is hard but helps you sleep.

And suddenly you awake and there’s an IV stuck in you. But you have to go pee. So you ask the nurses how am I supposed to go pee, and they hand you a cylinder carton of milk looking thing. And you’re like wtf how do I use this? And they just hold it near their groin. And you say well shit can I have some privacy? So they close the curtains which they only close for special occasions.

And instead of being an idiot and trying in your bed like all the other patients do, you stand up and pee straight into the carton and feel better. So you set it on the ground, but you’re unfamiliar with this shape, so you don’t set it down well, and it falls down and the pee goes everywhere.

And you say loudly, fuck, shit, fuck. And you realize what you’ve done. But nobody hears you because you’re in a foreign country and fuck, shit, fuck doesn’t hit the same for them.

So you try and hit the nurses call button without stepping in your own pee and getting your leg double infected.

And you feel like an effing idiot and tell the nurses sorry and you can’t look them in the eye.

And the cleaning lady drops some paper towels on your pee and gets a broom and dust pan and swipes it up.

And you think how in the heck is that sanitary.

Then think why the heck did you spill your pee all over the floor in the first place.

And you can’t console yourself with, "this happens to everyone." Because this does not in fact happen to everyone.

So now you’re afraid to go pee. You’ve never peed in a room filled with sick old people before, hiding your carton under your sheets.

So you think okay I’ll wait till it’s lights out, rip the IV out, pee in the toilet like a normal human who’s been practicing for 25 years, and get back in bed.

But your leg is effed from surgery and so numb you can’t move it.

So what you do. You just want your dignity. You just want to feel like a normal person in this hospital, instead of a weak burden who’s $3000 in debt.

And you haven’t brushed your teeth or washed your face or showered.

And you might be here for one more week.

And what the heck will you do when you need to poop?

So what do you do?

12 hours later, you wait till there’s no nurses around, and start to grab one of the cartons, but a nurse appears around the corner, so you divert your hand to a different direction.

And you wait till he walks away. Then you grab your carton, hold it under the sheets, start to pee, while another nurse starts to come, but you don’t look at her, and she must know what you’re doing because both of your hands are down beneath the sheets, maybe she was supposed to go talk to you, so she starts to stall, or you’re just creating stories in your head again, and shoot the carton is getting full, or at least you think, because they’re so dang small. So you stop mid stream, check, and it’s only a third full. But you can’t start again because you’ve already stopped.

But you did it. You peed in a public hospital with people all around you.

You did it. You defeated the pesky pee demons.

Imagine ripping the IV out, trying to hobble to the toilet, getting there, starting to pee, losing your balance, falling and slipping in the stall, and now it’s even more embarrassing than just peeing in your hospital bed which is not embarrassing at all.

So sometimes you have to lose your dignity in order for you to gain it again.

A study my friend told me about: – participants put in a room and told to write until their hand is messed up and disfigured that you can’t write anymore
– when you’re done and in so much pain you finish your part
– now go ahead to the back of the room to sign the form and receive your money for participating
– somehow they all found the strength to sign their name even after their hand felt like a beehive.

Because it’s about motivation. Their motivation to get the money was greater than the pain in their hand. Add social pressure into the mix and you’ve got yourself a recipe to change your behavior.

So you want to lose weight. You could sign up for Stickk. It might work because it’s strong social pressure.

Or put your ego on the line for a bjj tournament at a lower weight class. Of course you don’t want to lose play fighting another grown ass man. So you starve yourself.
Yes starve yourself. Say you do it for 5 days. Tell other people. Feel good about it when they praise you for your discipline. But then you’ve lost too much weight: around 10-13 lbs in 3.5 days. So you cut the starvation early. You start to eat. But you’re afraid of binge eating again. But you won’t cause you want to win the tournament.

You lose the tournament. Feel like shit. Why did you put yourself through that? Okay now gorge your face. Put all the weight back on in less than two days. Now you’re fat. You feel fat. You feel like shit. What do you do? Gorge your face some more.

Okay now you’re fat and you want to lose weight. So what do you do? Around and around we go. Giddy up merry go round rider because you’re in this for the long haul.

Congratulations. You have an eating disorder. Hip hip hooray you fat bucket of lard.

Today I taught students how to edit their film. One of the energy ones said, "The intakes are just as important as the outtakes."

So anything that is not a blooper is important. All the main footage you will craft the movie with is important. Yes, that seems like common knowledge.

But when the student said it, it sounded really profound.

When is the intake even more important than the outtakes? When is the good stuff so much better than the bad stuff? Going on good dates far outweighs going on bad dates.

Eating clean food is better than the literal outtakes you’ll have from dirty food.

When are the outtakes more important, or equal to the intakes? Obviously when you’re editing a behind the scenes/blooper reel.

When you’re trying to think of a good idea, you need to have tons of bad ideas. Learning how to run a marathon, you have to first run half a mile and slowly work your way up. When you start a martial art with belts, you need to start at a white belt and develop a base of knowledge to get to black belt. Without that knowledge you wouldn’t be a black belt.

In a way this is, journey is better than the destination.

But Naval Ravikant says if you didn’t have a destination, then you wouldn’t even have the journey. So it’s all about the destination.

Or maybe it’s simply this: in life you have intakes and outtakes. And one of them will be better than the other. But you can’t have one without the other.

You can’t make a good film without messing up some shots. You can’t learn to draw without a crumpled pile of papers next to you. You can’t find your significant other without going on some unpleasant dates.

There’s rainbows and rain. Cold days and warm days. Intakes and outtakes. It’s all the same.

When I was working, I saw a man with the shirt that said “Dublin” on it, my hometown in Ohio. I was driving. He was walking around the round a bout. I yelled out the window, “are you from there?”

I looked at his face and immediately recognized him. It was Mr. Eckhart. He was my fourth grade language arts teacher. As soon as I knew it was him, I yelled his name out multiple times in shock. I told him to stop walking so I can park and say hello. He was with his wife and family. It had been about 14 years.

This is one of my fondest memories of life. The only other time I had seen him was maybe two years after I left his class, I was walking into the grocery store with my mother. I felt vulnerable he could see the brokenness in my relationship with my mom.

Then all those years later, I get to see him again and say thank you for all you did for me and reading. I loved reading in his class. I loved how he loved reading. He told us to read Percy Jackson and Inkheart. In his classroom, I developed the desire to genuinely want be a wizard in hogwarts.

I learned pig Latin in his class from a book on the shelf. I learned to sit still in silence with a book.

Now I get to teach some students film and possibly have the same level of influence Mr. Eckhart had on me.

It’s been hard. It’s not the end of the world or anything but I didn’t think it’d be this hard. I’m coming up on 1 year of editing this doc. In 2 more months. Yes I have lots of progress to show. but im honestly ready for it to be over. To just show people, celebrate it, heal from it, and make the next movie

First, you’re no longer a teenager. And then you’re at the legal drinking age. Then it’s your Taylor swift era. Then Jordan year.
Then Kobe year.
And now you’re 25. You’re halfway through your 20s. It’s your senior year of being an adult.

Next year, you’ll be 26. You’re officially part of the next option in the drop down when you put your age in a survey.
What will this year be called? Your Caamp year? What will next year be called? In How I Met Your Mother, Ted is 27 in season 1. So when you turn 27, you have a 1 year to watch season 1. And when you’re 28, the same for season 2. All the way until season 9, when you’re 36. These are your How I Met Your Mother years. You have nine years, nine seasons to continue making mistakes, having fun, watching your parents grow old, watching your body change. And somehow when you blink at 27 and wake up at 36, I hope you’re happy. I hope I’m happy. Damn of course we won’t be happy. But at the very least, I hope we can look back and think, those 9 years were packed in the best ways, and I’m so proud.

Hank said he had to give a testimony today in court so he’s feeling a little down.

He’s only 15 and has the communication skills to say he’s feeling down.

It’s hard to know what to feel when you hear what crime he committed. He’s only 15.

He wanted to cry which made me want to cry. I showed him how Americans dap people up so he’d have a positive touch point but i don’t even know if we’re allowed to touch them.

What if my actions don’t align with how my heart feels and I lose interest and fail him like every other adult in his life?

Today they sang Amazing Grace. And when the mic got passed to him, he sang it too. Yeah timidly, and he probably didn’t know what the lyrics meant, but that’s what I’m holding on to.

Sometimes I don’t know what to say so I asked if they serve good food. Of course they effing don’t. It’s juvie. I said don’t worry we’ll get good food when he comes out. He gave a short chuckle. What if he goes to prison?

We’re only allowed to visit 3 times a month, so what will happen next week? Who will be a positive light in their life?

Tomorrow he’s looking forward to playing basketball. He likes to shoot from faraway. I hope he has a good day.

They told me I was too young to visit the prison ministry, so I was assigned the juvenile home instead. I was dreading it for multiple months, but it kept popping up in my head. Then multiple people brought it up to me, seemingly random. So I finally said I’d show up to this juvenile home with troubled youth who only speak canto, and I barely speak canto.

I was surprised how happy some of them were. Even though sometimes they didn’t listen to the old chinese lady playing piano and her white husband playing the saxophone, they were smiling. Sometimes they even joined in with the singing. They had never seen us before. I stood there awkwardly, I saw them looking at my arms. I should’ve wore a different shirt.

The organizer volunteer told me some of them get sent here from a court order from a social worker or the police. They might be beaten badly in their home, so they live in the juvie for about a month. Sometimes they come back.

I thought of my own home. Sometimes my dad would leave me and my siblings at a car dealership because they had free drinks and popcorn. Sometimes the lounge was really nice, with black leather couches, and a large tv. I remember I’d get a bit anxious every time the workers would walk by and still see us there. One time they approached us and asked where our parents were. We were too small and shy, and didn’t the schools tell us not to talk to strangers? So we weren’t very cooperative and they were talking about social services or child protection services or something, and I didn’t know what that was, so I didn’t know what to do, and I was the youngest too, so what was I supposed to do. Then my dad finally came back and spat with the workers because they were concerned for us, but he didn’t like them in his business.

What if he took 20 minutes longer? Would I be in one of those homes? What if they didn’t catch him this time around, but on the plethora of other visits we had to car dealerships. Sometimes he’d come back late and pretend to buy a car. Or what if they caught him when he left us at a library in a faraway city for like eight hours.

Me and the organizer volunteer talked with two of the boys. They were 14 and 15, and seemed so young. I thought it wasn’t etiquette to ask these questions, but the organizer started asking them how they got there, if their parents hit them, where they hit them. Maybe the shy one did want to talk about it but just didn’t know how or was just completely uncomfortable. He told us he didn’t get along with his dad. They argued often. His dad hit him often. But he did get along with his mother. But then the organizer asked, "Does your mother hit you?". "No. She kicks me.", replied the kid. Everytime he brought up his parents’ abuse, he blatantly looked away from us. Completely turned his head the other direction. I also wanted to, but I’m not sure it would’ve helped if they saw me crying.

I just want them to be okay. I want the dads to stop being complete fuck ups.

He told me on a scale of 1-10, living at the juvie is a 6. Kid, we can get that number higher. I’m so sorry you’re going through this right now. I’m so sorry.

It’s these fucked up adults that fuck another idiot and have a kid and beat them. These are the ones I hate. But now more than ever, after that visit, I’m reminded how important it is to love your peers, especially the tough ones, because they could be future child abusers.

And sometimes I think of how fucked up I am, and if there’s even any hope of becoming a good father.

Kid, I hope I can convince the both of us that you will be okay.

I sat next to a dad and son on the subway today. The son was recounting something that happened at school. I think he got made fun of for having a "dad bod." He was probably 9 years old. The dad responded, "this is why you don’t have friends."

I was shook. Do I say something? Is it my place? Okay what if I say something right when I have to get off, so they can’t say anything back to me? I realized I didn’t have the courage so I just sat there and eavesdropped.

"You said you don’t want to be my father anymore."
"I didn’t say that. Stop making things up."

Silence.
Then a few moments later, the dad puts his hand on his son’s head and pulls him in close. They got off on the stop before me and hold hands.

Maybe things were okay after all. But after all my practice talking to strangers, what have I got to show?

Another jiu jitsu competition in 1.5 days. I limit water and food intake so I can lose the weight. Am I even excited about this? Yes… I am. I’m just a white belt trying to feel about himself. Because maybe if I win this, I can prove to people I’m tough, capable, lovable, a really good white belt.

Man who cares about any of this. Who cares about winning a local competition that has absolutely 0 value to society. I’ll just go and have fun. It’s the best cliche answer.