Soul-Building
“... how about soul-building?”
- Steven Le, 1/29/2019, 7:51 pm
This piece explores skin and armature in a multidimensional sculpture; skin: the two-dimensional image in a mirror, how it appears real, how it is taken from perception only in the jarring halt of touch, and armature: me.
I’ve never been so consistently scared about a piece before. But talking with the grads cemented this idea in me: it’s only not art if I’m not pushing myself. The goal is to be uncomfortable. And boyo was I uncomfortable.
3/11- Monday: “Sometimes I’m scared about this project— scared that it’s not truly a “project”. But whenever I’m working on it, I couldn’t be more certain.” <3
Tomorrow will be the first anniversary of the day that I almost died. The day after tomorrow will be the first anniversary of when my brain started making memories again, when it felt like waking up in pure, white light, screaming. It’s common that survivors of traumatic events find themselves feeling (emotionally and physically) how they did around the anniversary of their incident. I fell off my bike in the parking lot, I walked to class to avoid falling again, I questioned whether a classmate I’d seen every day all quarter was merely a figment of my psyche, I couldn’t sleep until five am once, and four am another time. I felt confused and sometimes broken. The key, I’ve found, is to live vividly, defiantly in the present.
Soul Building is broken up into two categories of constant and never-ending growth: the physical and the spiritual.
Physically, I’ve been invested in athletics and fitness all my life. I did gymnastics for over six years and trained on the Olympic Training Plan for four years in the pole vault. During this project, I’ve created an exercise plan to help me reach my fitness goals. I’ve applied to the ARC as a foot-in for becoming a personal trainer, I’ve gotten back to being roughly as flexible as I was in gymnastics, and I’ve blended the 4 Hour Body workout from Tim Ferriss with supplementary exercises to fill muscle chain gaps and develop Type 2 muscle fibers through plyometrics.
Spiritually, I’ve been on a journey of personal development for over a year and a half.
What started as a natural step to getting gold became my primary reason to leave training for it.
Especially recently, I’ve been in some tough spots. But I’ve fallen back on my support structures and practiced bearing these sufferings well. Because I deserve the journey and I deserve the growth.
I dove back into a more consistent meditation practice, began analyzing and synthesizing articles from leaders I respect, and continued my personal education even from fiction. Every day during this project, I outlined goals for how to live each day. I don’t like To-Do lists because they’re not especially motivating, so I approach these writings as opportunities for things that I could only ever do this way once.
Every night (excluding some particularly challenging nights), I sat down for 10 minutes to over an hour and answered some key questions:
Was I better today than yesterday?
What have I given today? In what ways have I been a giver today?
What did I learn today?
How has today added to the quality of my life or how can I use today as an investment in my future?
I spent time synthesizing information from my myriad of sources, and if I was lucky, I began to divine some philosophy of my own from the mundane.
I could talk about this all day for three days, so this is the introduction. Thank you.
