I’ve been doing something very unlike me.

I’ve been shutting down Photoshop, closing Illustrator, and turning off my computer. I can’t tell you the last time I had off from work and sat at home, glued to a flat screen monitor making things or sending e-mails. I have a few projects with no deadlines that could use some work, but I know that they’ll get done. Right now, while the skies are clear and the air is warm, there are other adventures to be had.

So far, this is turning out to be an awesome summer. The streets of Philadelphia are sticky with steam, the air sizzles with sun, and I can’t move a block without sweating. I hate sweating, but there’s something glorious about collapsing in bed after a long day of adventures, tired feet, and new suntan lines.

It feels good.

Yesterday, I returned from a five day stint in a neighboring state where I visited my significant other. I forgot my laptop cord at home and was forced to keep my computer off. I had an abundance of free time and I used it foolishly: I booed up, ate delicious meals, drank cups of coffee and sat on benches in the local park. We went for walks holding hands, did laundry late at night, slept in when we could, stayed up way too late, and sometimes watched TV. We cooked breakfast for dinner. We hung out on the deck at night and smoked cigarettes, long curls of grey that filtered through his skinny brown fingers, lit ambers that faded into the ground below. We stopped and saw the sky; a starry night unlike the ones in Philadelphia, a sea of twinkles and glitter, far away.

We even started a new project, one that excites me, but we never let our work get in the way of our play.

Get out. The e-mail will still be there when you return. Get out. Finish that flyer later or share some of the work food on your plate and get out. Go out and look at the night time sky, feel the sun on your skin, and let blades of grass kiss your toes and ankles. Sweat some. Kiss the face(s) of the one(s) you love. Hold hands. Laugh. Break breadsticks at Olive Garden, drink your favorite drink on a patio or someone’s stoop, and spend time with friends. Make new friends. Ride the train or a bike, visit a favorite store, or just put away that project and start a new one: the act of getting out.

Here’s to living the life you’ve always dreamed of with the people who help make these dreams come true.

Picnic Party Potlucks is something that started last year. I was looking for a creative way for folks to get together to eat, drink, and be merry without spending a lot of money. Philadelphia can get pretty costly, so how could we all hang out and have a good time without going broke?

People will often throw potlucks as a solution to issues like this, but no one I knew had the space for this. We all either had tiny apartments, lived at home, or simply had no space in their homes to open it up to a bunch of random queer folks trying to bust a grub. Eventually I decided to organize them at a public park to alleviate these issues. There were a few last year that turned out to be a lot of fun and now we’re back at it again!

Join us for the second annual Jazzy in July! Taking place at Rittenhouse Square Park, this should be mad jazzy! Bring a dish, a drink to share, plates and napkins, friends, whatever you have! It’ll be jazzy!

Monday, July 5th from 5pm on
Rittenhouse Square Park
Contact me for more information

The idea of activism used to terrify me. I used to grapple with this understanding of mediocrity, that I wasn’t meant to shape or change the world, but simply exist in it. Sure, I was nice to people, I was always friendly at work, and I tried to be a really good friend. I didn’t know enough about policy or procedure to really change things and I didn’t think I was smart enough to redesign systems or change the way the world works. Could I?

I couldn’t ever imagine myself on a stage in front of thousands, giving a big speech that made onlookers feel empowered. I walk too slow to lead a march on Washington. I don’t know enough about history (and, not surprisingly, managed to take world history a total of three times in high school). And even though I’m a leo, I wasn’t particularly opinionated on politics or policy.

Activism, it seemed, just wasn’t for me. 

Over the past few years, I’ve learned that activism isn’t just about marching on Washington or powerful speeches to thousands. While that’s a part of it, there’s a lot of other parts, too. I am capable of changing the world in very real, postive ways without having my name as the headline of a newspaper.  I don’t need to be on CNN or in the White House to make change. I can, in fact, create change in my regular every day life and for the people in it.

I started my personal journey as an activist in August 2006. A friend of mine from high school was coordinating a campaign against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Honestly, I wasn’t even that aware of DADT and was apphauled to discover that LGBTQ people were unable to serve openly in the military. As a native and resident of Philadelphia who passed as a heterosexual, I was oblivious to the oppression that queer folks face. I had heard a few heart-wrenching stories of friends and foes, but I thought they were obscure, isolated incidences.

In August 2006, I participated in my very first campaign, my very first concrete and visible form of activism. From there, I’d go on to a number of really big, visible campaigns. But something else even more important happened in August 2006: I started learning. It wasn’t just textbooks or internet articles, but really learning. I started to see the ways in which things connect and interconnect, the webs we weave and in which we live.

Through this, I learned some valuable lessons, mostly that anyone can (and everyone should) be an activist. We should all work towards creating a better world for ourselves. We should recognize the ways in which we are all connected and strive for creating better connections. Connections with consent, intention, love, joy, positivity, and happiness.

How can we do this, then, without marching on Washington? Without a really well-prepared speech, a published article on a major news site, without writing a book or even riding a bus for two months? Here are some things I’ve learned (and am still learning) along the way.

• Look around. We should understand the interconnectivity of all forms of oppression, but we should also find areas on which to focus. I understand how race and class affect sexuality and gender, but my main focus is sexuality and gender. Look around and see where you’d like to devote the most time and energy.
• Learn! Why is it like that? We must figure out the source of oppression before we can start dismantling it. For instance, misinterpretations of  the Bible are generally the source for oppression for LGBTQ folks but why? What texts are used? What impact does this have?
• Learn more! Education is the key to activism. The more you know, the stronger you are likely to be. Ask around. Have conversations with others and gain as much knowledge as you can.
• Share! I view activism as a form of sharing. I have this knowledge, these smarts, that I want other people to have, too. Loving queer and trans people for their entire selves has made my life better. I want to share this enlightenment with others! Understanding trans/queer topics and trans/queer people has helped me understand my own gender and sexuality and has empowered me to live a more authentic and intentional life.
• Create and complete projects and tasks, even on the fly. I have a coworker who once initiated conversation with me about LGBTQ folks and how he thought our “lifestyles” were wrong. Immediately, my task was to have an educational conversation with this individual and share my enlightenment. I stayed calm and completed this task; he eventually walked away with a lot to think about. Additionally, my job has no policy or procedure in place for hiring and accommodating trans and gender variant people. How can I help them? This is my next task.

Anyone can do these things. Anyone can find an area that needs improvement and find create ways to improve them. We shouldn’t be overwhelmed with images of activism that we feel we can’t meet. We shouldn’t even feel burdened or weighed with this idealogy that the system is simply too structured and solidifed for change. If each of us recognizes the activist within ourselves and did what we could do to make the world even just a little bit better, imagine the impact it would have on all of our lives.

I support the idea of pride. That folks can get together and really celebrate integral parts of themselves: sexuality, gender identity and/or expression. Two core pieces of self that effect every other piece of self. There is something beautiful about getting to show up somewhere as your whole self.

Unfortunately, most of the pride events in Philadelphia (sans Black Pride the Philly Dyke March) are heavily populated with gay, cis white men. Cis white men in general already take up a lot of space in the world and sometimes it’s disheartening to see the lack of representation from queer folks of color, trans people, visibly queer folks, and basically any demographic that is not a white cis gay man or a white cis lesbian.

Having pride in something that is traditionally shamed is a gift. It brightens and beautifies your life, offers courage and support, and gives you the confidence and liberation to show up each day as your entire you. When you are able to do this, there is almost nothing you can’t do.

I am someone who carried around a lot of shame and guilt. What used to sit on my shoulders like a heavy backpack eventually lesioned my skin then poisoned me. Internalizing insufficiency made my insides weak with decay. I didn’t want to be Asian or queer so I would navigate my life in ways to keep these facets at bay, a series of smoke and mirrors, thin steamy streams of uncertainty, carefully constructed to unveil a not-me.  I didn’t want to be the way I was made so I made myself something else.

For a lot of my life I kept these things at bay, using  technicalities and loopholes to justify that I was straight and white. I desperately wanted those privileges, that sense of belonging, that ability to be filled with pride without having to own myself or anything else. I could just be. As a straight, white American, I could just be. I didn’t have to be celebratory or ashamed, I could just be. The reality, however, is that as much as I struggled to construct not-me, everyone else was seeing me.

I came out in 2009 as a person of color. I came out to myself in 2009 as a person of color. Those around me met this debut with shifty, confused eyes and a series of elipses. I was telling them what they already knew. Some people backlashed, claiming appropriation, were in disbelief and denial. White people. I slowly began unpacking my racial baggage and my perspective cleared. I immediately navigated the world with stronger strides and steps, a relief.

In 2010, I came out as queer. The past few years had been tumultous, trying unsuccessfully to find and claim and own an identity that encompassed me in an authentic and full way. A journey that began with a genderqueer, genderfluid, transmasculine boyfriend (or, as he might say “boifriend”) in 2008 and trying to fit ourselves into a clean, crisp construction. Straight. You’re a boy, and I’m a girl. Straight. A title that fit in technicalities but not in practice, impractical rationales and long drawn justifications. Snooping through loopholes, a splattered rainbow trail behind me, queering it all up.

Even as a queer rights activist, a human equalist, as someone who had been arrested a total of three times for LGBTQ rights, who had lost a job and a social circle and been belittled and dehumanized countless times already, I clung to what few privileges I had as a “straight ally”. I built a bridge between them and them and got to be the mediator, the one single string in the middle of misunderstanding and reality. LGBTQ folks liked me because I stood in solidarity with them and straight people liked me because I was one of them. Here, I was different, but safe.

My not-me was different, but safe.

My not-me was not me.

Over time, I learned to embrace and celebrate the things that made me actually different and, in some ways, unsafe. The things that made me abnormal and less than in a partiarchal, heterosexual white society. Owning up to what took away my supposed privilege was more liberating than the privilege itself. I wasn’t going to not-me or other me, I was just going to be me.

Figuring out who you are and learning to not just live it but own it offers you a level of liberation not otherwise possible. Suddenly, it’s all freeing. You do what you do because it’s you. This, my friends, is pride.

An old coworker of mine, Tiffany, has a side hussle similar to a lot of folks I know: music. She is vocal artistry. She’s not just determined, she’s doing and she’s documenting her adventures online. I appreciate Tiffany because she doesn’t take a “can do” approach, she takes a “will do” approach. We’re all capable of a lot of things, but does that mean we are doing them?

There are lots of challenges and obstacles that keep us from acheiving our ultimate goals. Often times it’s finances, other times it’s a myriad of other concerns: knowledge, time, resources, ability, etc. We are all both the recipients and the victims of systematic oppressions and privileges and sometimes, we are born with so many odds stacked against us, it seems we are designated for failure before we even start.

I grew up in an interracial, LMI (low to moderate income) household. My mother is a brown skinned Filippino woman and my dad is your average white guy–a handyman who drives a big van and does home repair. I have an older sister who looks white and an older brother who looks white, too. And I, I look ambigious.

My year round tan has served as both a disadvantage and an advantage. On the one hand, never worrying about the sun is a luxurious summer time commodity while said darker complexion often allows others to make a number of assumptions about me before we even meet. Does she speak Spanish? English? Spanglish? People love playing the guess-my-race-game and almost no one gets it right.

Additionally, I come from what used to be an impoverished neighborhood (but is now a hipter neighborhood, thanks to gentrification) and went to a low-income Catholic school six blocks away in my hood. It was your typical inner-city school mixed with kids in every color and insufficient supplies and resources. A usual walk there in the morning would include drug addicts still up from the night before and sex workers on street corners, trying to earn a day’s keep.

My genetics make me prone to diabetes, arthritis, addiction, and obesity. I am a female-bodied woman who lives in a city with rough edges, rape, and violence. Only one member of my family is a college graduate, my mother never finished high school, and my father can remodel your kitchen but struggles with the Sunday paper. I grew up in the public healthcare system, familiar with public assistance, and in love with store brand cereals. I could go on and on about how my life was, in a lot of ways, designated for failure before it even started.

The reality is, though, that hasn’t kept me from starting my life.

I know that I have a lot of disadvantages. I will have to work extra hard to get things that are given to white people or folks from “higher” classes. I don’t get very many things handed to me and probably never will. But that’s not gonna stop me from trying. It’s not going to keep me from dreaming, working, achieving. I recognize that as a queer woman of color from a classic LMI experience, it’s not going to be as easy for me as some heterosexual white bitch from Connecticut. That might delay me, but it’s not going to keep me.

I am a product of my circumstances, not a victim of them. I will keep moving forward. I will have a ”will do” attitude, not just a “can do”.  And hopefully, you will, too.

People are often curious about the source of my graphic and web design journeys. As a child, I mostly wrote and while I did once place second in a city wide art contest, I was usually more interested in words than pictures. I even went to an arts high school where I majored in writing and had big dreams of some day being an English teacher.

How then, does one make this leap?

I had my first home computer in 1994. I was 10 years old and I was immediately addicted to the screeching modem sounds, the dings and bells, the instant messages. It was a way for me to connect with other people in the safety and shelter of my own home.

In 1997, just three years later, Hanson made their debut. “MMMBop” was the #1 single for a while and before long, I was in love. I was on the cusp of 13 and, like many others, felt feelings I had never felt before. I was in lust. (Coincidentally, this was my first known interest in genderqueer folks.)

My real life friends (and yes, even my internet friends) were quickly on the Hanson band wagon. We bought the CD, would cut posters out of Tiger Beat, and would develop elaborate stories of how our lives would change when we’d meet them and fall in love. I even had my then BFF Jill convinced with every fiber of her being that Taylor Hanson and I were, in fact, soul mates.

I would spend hours on the internet sopping up every morsel of Hanson I could find. I had the books. I knew their birthdays, their favorite colors, and that they all liked Dr. Pepper. I knew every word to every song, I went to every show in Philadelphia, and I spent most of my free time obsessing. I was so in love, in fact, that I wanted to create the best lives I could for them.

Personal websites at the time were often lacking. Tacky animated GIF files were illuminated with embedded MIDIs and flashing banners. Times New Roman was all the rage! Guestbooks, page counters, broken links and missing images were where it was at! Even in 1997, I knew this shit was tacky. I wanted better for my boys and the only way to do that was to do the damn thing myself.

I built my first Hanson website later that year. I taught myself enough Paint Shop Pro to do what I needed and would steal code from other sites to make easily navigated frame menus to create a website that was both fashionable and functional. While these early Hanson sites never really went anywhere, I immediately found something beautiful: solice in creation and design.

I could take all of my pubescent angst and direct into into basic HTML. I could spend hours escaping the pains (haha) of my life then and disappear into a world of hyperlinks, image sources, and image creation and modification. In the end, I’d both feel better and have created something that anyone with a dial-up modem could see. It was amazing!

Eventually, I moved on to the Moffatts and created what would become one of the most prominent Dave Moffatt fan sites on the internet: Artificial Infatuation. I poured my heart and soul and kept myself motivated to learn more, do more, create more. I remember making seamless fames, expanding into Photoshop, and really finding a balance between creation and implemntation. Making something that was both attractive and functional.

I could go on to detail this journey: making my first mass produced flyer in high school to promote an alternative to a school sanctioned event; building my first website for a client at 18; the series of social justice-type events that compelled me to use my skill for a greater good, and all of the other roads, speedbumps, and detours that lead me to compiling this website.

Today, though, is the release of “Shout It Out!”, the latest Hanson album and as I listen in on my new favorite classics I can’t help but realize. I owe it all to Hanson.

I used to sit on the planning committee for this particular conference until I left for the Equality Ride, so I was excited to go and help in whatever way I could. Mostly, this was workshop room monitoring.  I lucked out by monitoring mostly workshops I intended to attend and thus I was able to maximize my time at PTHC.

Not surprisingly, I hit up a couple of spirituality workshops and was most excited for the spaces catering to significant others and partners.

Finding good workshop presenters is always a struggle. I have been to enough conferences to know that many folks will often submit an amazing proposal then provide a subpar workshop at best.

I find myself in a lot more spaces lately where I really want to learn a lot but find myself leading instead. I can’t determine if it’s because I’m a leo and my natural tendency is to lead, or if the reality of the situation is that somehow, I simply know more than the teacher and, as a result, cannot excel as the student. Whatever the case may be, maybe it’s my time.

Expect frequent changes and updates.