my space
January 31, 2026
i'm a semifinalist for Fulbright and now i'm so fucking scared
because it feels like the highlight of my life is one arbitrary decision away, one not up to me
just that much closer to the dream of conducting a research project for niche musicological archival studies and adapting to a completely different language and culture for a year
so i'm just begging and hoping -- literally on my hands and knees -- that my project's uniqueness will do the job, along with the fact that i'm literally working in classical music radio.
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but i can't control much so i'll focus on what i can control. for those of you who read this quiet blog/hidden website/whatever this is, you may have noticed some changes! added some images to my "seeing me" page from 2017 and before because i dug up an SD card with photos i'd taken with my digicam literally over 10 years ago. little isabel produced selfies too and i find those more charming than the ones i'd sometimes take with my overused phone
the home page to this site now has an image of my 2015 bedroom -- a still from a video i took of my sister. inspired by a new media artist i recently found out about, Maya Man, whose alma mater is in the same college consortium as mine. i now wish i took more videos and photos of my childhood bedroom, and (or) if i did, that i didn't delete them.
i find myself wondering if other people my age had digicam photos they took when they were 12 and what they did with them. for some reason, i am of the impression that a handcoded blog like this one is the perfect habitat for these vernacular photos -- photos so everyday that the older they are, the more precious they get. in the words of my grandfather, "unobtainable even with all the money in the world."
so i'm just grateful that i have some of those records especially because i was not given a phone when i was 12. i was not even allowed to bring my phone to school in high school. i have a video from my high school years of my mom, frustrated, scolding my sister for not practicing violin, and while that typically triggers some deep-seated pain within me, has since been an acknowledgement that truly so much has changed...
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amid the schedule that makes up my life, i have been working on so much recently that everything i do feels like it's supposed to contribute to my identity capital or portfolio or some ill-defined future goal. as i tend to this tiny corner of the internet after some time away, i'm feel comforted by the fact that this is probably one of the only spaces for me to go that will never be work-related. i say that knowing that my portfolio website is hosted on neocities too.
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my fellowship got extended and while i really want -- and my heart really wants -- to return to LA, a part of me wonders if it's better for me to stay here for another year?
nah...?