There are certain things I’ve given up on in life.
Some of my most notable include becoming a princess, having a successful career as a vlogger, and being a world-famous fashion designer.
While my vlogs will unfortunately never be shared with the world and remain in the memories of my cousins who would receive them – giving up art remains the most bittersweet of them all.
In a world where stability in a career is prioritized, the argument made for choosing STEM as a major crept up on me the further into high school I got.
There’s nothing wrong with doing what you love as a career, but you also have to realize that not everyone has that privilege.
I didn’t always want to be a pharmacologist. There was a time in my life when I wanted to go to art school and wanted nothing to do with the medical field. I really didn’t want to give in to the Filipino stereotype of becoming a nurse, which my grandma would heavily try to push onto my sister and me.
Actually, when I told my family I was thinking about chemistry as a major, they were all shocked. My aunt even admitted that she always thought I would go into a more creative field.
After hearing those words, I had to admit it stung a little. It reminded me that choosing one path would mean giving up another.
However, now that I’m older and looking at my future with more intention than before, I realize that giving something up doesn’t mean I have to completely rid my life of it. Art found its way into bits and pieces of hobbies, even if I wasn’t pursuing a career in it.
I can remember when I got my first set of colored pencils. There were so many colors, and all I wanted to do was learn how to use them. I used to spend hours a day at my desk with printer paper I took from my dad’s work and the infamous Pinterest reference photos propped up in front of me.
My mom told me these were the pencils she used in art school, so I proudly showed her every piece I made.
My interest spread to watercolors, alcohol markers, acrylic paints, and even gouache. I wanted to try it all. But the more I tried, the more I realized that I was pretty mediocre. I compared what I did to what I saw online and to what the people around me did, and slowly, my motivation to continue faded.
Each day was now filled with never-ending homework, timing my naps between meals, and waking up at outrageous hours to study for a new test every week.
That’s when art came back into the picture; this time, it was quieter but more comforting than before. I was able to escape my somewhat mundane schoolwork routine through hobbies, some new and some rediscovered.
I picked up sketching again, each time with a different colored pencil, reminding me why I enjoyed it in the first place. I began junk journaling – saving receipts, logos stamped on napkins, and whatever was eye-catching to paste in my notebook.
Doodling the meals I ate or the places I went made me look at the little things that changed in my day-to-day life.
Although I know my focus seems to be everywhere else but on art, there hasn’t been a time in my life when I didn’t create.
My art took the form of writing and making cartoons for my next article. Whether I was crafting hand-drawn cards for friends and family, practicing sketching expressions and faces, or making collages in my junk journal, art wasn’t something I stopped enjoying just because I chose another path.
There is no denying that what’s ahead of me will be unfamiliar. Even so, my reassurance is in the way I can escape to my hobbies, the hobbies that redefined how art could keep its place through my changing life.
