Kat's LIA Blog

One thing that I now know for sure is that no matter how independent or free I feel like I am, I don’t ever feel completely at home without my loved ones and the things that make home… Home. I thought it was just yp4 and then at the beginning of paris I thought it was that I loved LA too much to be fully anywhere else… Seeing all thesefolks super comfortable And loving with each other makes me wanna find my friends and give them hugs!!!! I miss having those people Around me who already know me and love me despite my uneven edges..

I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s not only external factors that influence my impressions and, though I mY hate to admit it, it’s often the inner struggles that keep me from developing relationships with other people at retreats…

My friend came to visit today. But that is irrelevant.

I feel incomplete. I didn’t feel extreme sadness after the graduation today, which I normally do when I say goodbye to friends and loved ones. I’m talking life shattering, tear bearing sadness. I hate goodbyes and tissues boxes are not sufficient in soothing my extreme emotional discomfort. Today, however, what I mostly felt was fatigue. A need for sleep. The other interns, namely Sasha, gave me the warmest hugs, and I didn’t feel warm at all. I didn’t feel empowered or connected or loved. I just felt tired.

I will miss them, that’s for sure. I’m not at all saying they weren’t important to me. The LIA interns changed my life, mostly because I came back from the other conference feeling detached (that’s another story within itself) and walked into this internship and felt interconnected, intertwined, at home. It always felt like home—a place where I didn’t have to small talk or pretend to be someone I’m not. 

I wish I said better goodbyes and told everyone how so important they are to me. I really hope I’ll continue the friendships I’ve made with them this summer… so that my shitty goodbye won’t be the last thing they remember about me.

Leadership in Action 2011 <3

And ignoring my tumblr. Such interesting articles that show up on my feed. By the time I’ve figured out how to mash my thoughts into less than 140 characters, I’m too tired to post about it on tumblr. This maayyy be because my internship is exhausting. Well, was exhausting. Today was my last day.

My days will no longer be filled with advocating for the LGBT community within the API community. A part of me just died a little thinking about it. I love my APIEQLA family and I am going to miss it more than I can express in words.

as seen on personal tumblr.

Brian’s poking stick. The gentle nudge that precedes, “Hey, hey you! I need help!!”

Just kidding. Just another inside joke between me and my community organizer. :(

thing I will miss most. honestly? hanging out with Brian, the other interns, staff, and the lovely volunteers of API Equality-LA. I was in the presence of such beautiful, strong community leaders on such a daily basis; being treated like an equal gave me strength and the belief that I could one day be as great as they are.

I’m going to miss that.

also. there was food at every meeting. college organizing is DEFINITELY not like that. WHOMPWHOMP.

Brian invited me to come and intern in the spring if I can work it out with school and whatnot. Irresistable offer. If not, I know that I will continue to volunteer with APIEQLA in some capacity or another because this summer has absolutely changed my life, and I’m not ready to give that up!

mariamiscellany:

and I don’t wanna think about it.

:’(

the end is near. LEAP employees will have to drag me out of the API Equality-LA office, because i’m going to grab on to Brian’s leg and NEVER LET GO.

just kidding.

I love my internship. Why does it have to end? :(

So last week Brian gave me rebranding as my newest project. Oh my god, it sucks. Just kidding, it’s actually really interesting—and who would think that they’d entrust an intern with such a huge task? With Brian’s help, I’m redesigning the logo (really just tweaking), picking APIEQLA’s font, making business cards—basically redesigning all materials that the public would see.

I’ve always been a techie, so I thought this would be EASY-PEASY. Not. Wow, I totally underestimated this project. all my editing skills exist only within Adobe Photoshop and this project calls for ILLUSTRATOR, which is a program made probably only to make people feel small and stupid. Not joking. I have never worked with Illustrator before, so working with it this last week has definitely been a challenge. It took me about three hours just to figure out how to move one object without moving another. And, another thing—all my tech skills I learned in high school and they’ve since gone to waste. Most of the time, I’d rather edit a picture on Picnik than load up photoshop and work on a photo for hours. Whomp.

But ANYWAY. Rendering the logo from a raster image to a vector image took a lot of work, even though in reality the logo is really simple and it shouldn’t have taken as much as it did. Again, Illustrator cripples your self-esteem. Then I went on to redesign logo (made like 20 different version for the steering committee to look over) and then I redesigned the T-shirt and 3X3 inch stickers that we pass out at outreach events—that wasn’t all too difficult, seeing as I’d already clocked in probably 6 hours working with Illustrator.

The struggle narrative began again when I was assigned to re-design business cards.

The first one I made was super simple—your standard business card.


Brian thought it was boring (which it totally is), so I wiped away my tears and went to work again. After brainstorming, we decided to try a portrait style instead. I made another boring portait style card before I decided that maybe the background need a little color:

Still, something was still off about this business card. It was still too plain and now we were getting into the discussion of fonts; in the landscape card, the font is all century gothic, but Brian and I thought that it might be nice to try changing some of the text fonts to make the card look more dynamic (this conversation is still in process, we’ve not yet picked one).

This whole time, we’ve been marveling at other business cards—specifically NQAPIA’s business card. It is SO PRETTY. Who ever thought a business card could be pretty? Anywho, the NQAPIA card has a faint background graphic that transforms what would otherwise be any other boring business card into one people marvel.







And then today I had the brilliant idea to add texture to the background by adding in continual circles within circles. I TOTALLY DID NOT REMEMBER that circles within circles are also referred to as target circles or moire circles, so i kept googling circles within circles. Kat fail, I know. ANYWAY, I just spent four hours trying to make perfect circles and aligning them manually because I totally forgot that I learned how to align things in Illustrator just two days ago. I live a big life of fails; I’ve come to terms with that. Here’s the most recent prototype. I’ll probably hate it tomorrow. YAY FOR BLOGGING.