Growing Up

Sup guys, Cutiejea here!

So, if you subscribed to my channel or any of my social medias, you may have heard that I'm now officially 18 years old! This basically means I'm an adult in my family and in the Philippines but in Australia, the official adult age is 21 (18 is the legal age but everyone is more inclined to 21 years old being the official adult age).

Here is the video talking about what I've learned in 18 years of existence (Uploaded on my birthday):

So it's been a few days since my time as an adult and I have to say... it kinda boring (but how should I know, it's still my holidays!)

Today's blog thou is about growing up and how there are some parts of your life you tend to keep, move on and decide if it should be part of you or not.

Ever since I reached this point in life, I've been doing a bit of spring cleaning within myself and started doing stuff that I never knew I was capable on doing (I don't <bleeping> care if it's summer). For starters, I've decided to be a total 'girl' and start to buy my own clothes for university, my commitments on learning the ukulele is still growing strong and there are other parts of my life that I've first considered odd for me to do but I did wind up enjoying it (An example is me swimming in the beach where most of the time, I would never enjoy it! Now, as long it's in Bondi, I will consider swimming with a bodyboard).

But there are also parts of me that I feel like letting go. An example this this old website I made. Sure, I may keep it running but I have thoughts of deleting the site and updating around 20 videos, removing the link in the description. Another is my love for gaming. It's not my fault, my laptop can no longer run the games made these days since it's 32 bit!

But even if I feel 'grown up', there will be times where I will act like a kid and it will piss off others since they expect me to be more mature and how can I since my 2 of my role models are like 28 - 29 years old and they act like kids!

I hate that the idea of growing up is for you to be 'very mature' and 'not make any mistakes' or 'be conformed to society' and all that jazz and it annoys me since I still want to goof off! I still want to make silly mistakes that people consider to be 'You cant do that since you're 18!'. Does it look like I give a flying <bleep>?!

I know there will be a time where I will have to let go of being a kid and just grow up but if you do lose your childhood, you will lose the part of you that makes you happy, that tiny part of you that clings you to what made you... well YOU! And this is where doing what you love comes in as if you still have that tiny 1% of your childhood in your life, then you know that you're not becoming a brainless sheep. Yes, there will be times where you will have to let go of things or decide if it should still be part of your life but in the end, whatever you decide will be the cause on how you feel about life in the future.

I end this blog post with a quote from Dan Howell from The Amazing Book is not on Fire 'I guess I just want to say, this thing we've created - is ephemeral*' (Ephemeral = Momentary).

So you guys have the choice if you want to grow up, remain a kid forever or do both! For me, it's both but I also have to mature in order to survive but I still need to retain that part of me that kept me going which is my innocence.

So my name is Cutiejea and this has been my Life Out of the Camera.

New Years Resolution

Sup guys, Cutiejea here!

Happy NEW YEAR!!! It's finally 2016... the year where.... I go to university... yay?

But anywho, how is the first few weeks of 2016 treating you? Got any new gear? Any ambitions/goals or are you just starting school (just saying, years kindy to 10 is fine, just rock up and do average but year 11, a shitstorm of stress will be impacted on day one and will not stop till year 12).

But anywho, I want to talk about New Years Resolutions and what they mean to me.

For most people, NYR are tiny goals they want to achieve in under a year like 'Try new things' or 'dump boyfriend' or 'tell parents how you really feel'. For some, it's doing something... somewhat impossible or really extreme that they want to try out for one day like 'Get drunk for first time' or 'skydiving' or 'become a rock band'. And for some, it's tiny improvements in their life like 'Get better grades' or 'Not get a grade of C' (btw, that was my 2015 NYR for year 12... Totally failed that one but I did get Band 4 in Advance English). And just saying, I'm not judging you or anything, I think New Years Resolutions are good, it gives us something to do in between the days of work and school.

And most of the time, they end up being unachieved or piles up into more complex stuff

Example: It will start off 'Get drunk for the first time' and soon end up 'Give up alcohol' a year later

But for me, I treat my New Years Resolution as a Bucket List.

That's right! My goals for the year, I want to treat them like 'How I want to live/improve my life for the long run' so doing stuff like 'Skydiving' or 'Getting Drunk', both may not be good thing to add on my list (however, there is this wine I tasted back in NYE in 2014 that I want to get my hands on again).

So in the spirit of this post and the new year, I would love to share you some of my New Years Resolutions and explain how it will help improve my life for the long run.

1. Improve YouTube channel content

My channel has reached 200+ subscribers and 10k views by Christmas and I want to let those numbers grow. I'm not saying I want to have 100k subs by 2017 but I just want to improve my content so that I can learn how to make better things. I made the ERB Phan Rap Battle video using 2 giant pieces of green cloth I both in Lincraft for $40 (Ebay is cheaper, I know, my folks just have trust issues on online delivery).

This is where my university studies come in as my course is Bachelor of Communications, majoring in 'Media Arts Production' in where I will be learning how to used advanced equipment and the teachers will be giving professional editing tips (no... Phil Lester is not my teacher... but I wish he was!)

2. Learn an Instrument

In 2015, I befriended Sophie (AKA: AmazingDogpie) via Twitter as on the day I followed her, she followed me back so DM was possible between the both of us. From there, after my HSC ended and TATINOF was being held in London (and I heard she was going), we began to talk to each other throughout the entire November.

One of our conversation topics was 'What instrument can you play' and the fact that Sophie can play more than just the Ukulele made me feel overwhelmed as all I can do is sing. Not only that, I also started Phandom Aus/NZ on twitter and 3 of my friends who help run the account plays an instrument and it just made me feel worse!

I want to learn an instrument but there were just 2 problems:

1. I'm a lefty (like Dan!), meaning not many instruments will accomodate for my needs (and if they do... it will cost more)
2. Lessons are expensive in Australia (and there is no way in hell my dad will pay for them, not to mention, take me there!)

My first plan was have vocal lessons again but my folks won't go for it. Plan 2 was learn how to play guitar (my brother used to have lessons till he gave up after 1 year) but it's too much work and I think I may need an actual instructor rather than my iPad to teach me (I do know how to play the basic chords thou so that's a start!)

So plan 3: why not something smaller! I'm now having thoughts on buying my ukulele.... What? Sophie said in her Q&A that it's not that hard and she learned how to play in under a year so it's probably not that bad! Plus it cost $36 in stores!

3. Learn how to Drive

Whenever I go to Facebook, I get intimidated when I discovered 5 of my friends have their 'P's' before 2015 ended and it made me feel bad as I need to learn how to drive... Fast... in a legal pace!

I checked my learner's license and it said that I have 3 years till it expires and 3 years is how long my Uni course runs. I need to get my 'P's' before I graduate or else I have to take the test again! I can't go through that again so whenever I can, I have to buckle up and drive!

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So those 3 are some of my New Year's Resolutions for the year and hopefully, I can pull them off. I can share you more but they're more personal so I don't think it's a good idea to share them. But as you can see, these resolutions are stuff that may improve my life and can actually be put into use in IRL and online situations.

So what we can all learn from this is that, treat your resolutions as a bucket list and pick things that may actually be useful in the future. You can call me lame but picking stuff like this but I want to think of the benefits it can provide for me.

So my name is Cutiejea and this has been life out of the camera!

The ATAR and my past and future

So... I'm back and this time, for a blog about the ATAR (aka: the rank needed just to have a guaranteed entry to university) and how the missing experiences from my past is somehow reflected to my rank. For this blog, I will not say the names of the universities as I may end up in trouble.

So at 9 am (or for my case... 8:57 am), I got my rank and before all of this, people tell me 'Go get that good ATAR' or 'a High ATAR = Better future'. I'm not joking, when you reach like late year 7 - early year 8, everyone will brainwash you saying getting that high rank equals happy life and from there, that kinda got stuck in my mind.

Yesterday, I got my marks and I went to 5 ATAR calculators to predict my rank. All said 63.70. Today, I got 62.90.

So when I got my rank... I'm not saying it's a bad rank but it's decent enough to get me into ONE university. I'm not joking... out of god knows how many universities are there, I can only get into one... well, I can do private college but... best not to comment about that.

My grades thou were decent... I mean, Band 4's and 1 Band 5... that's amazing but if your subjects are low scaling and had unsupportive people who tell you 'YouTube is where rapist/strangers can find you' back in 2008 before you even made an account and had literally have no idea what you wanted to be till the end of year 11, that's when you know you kinda fucked up your life.

I didn't know I wanted to work in media, my ENTIRE family were pushing me to the teaching degree and whenever I ask stuff like 'How do you make a website' cuz someone in your family made their own successful website, they ended up avoiding it. And again, I was given an intervention about me being banned from going into YouTube because I watch 'Who killed Captain Rockhopper' and a bunch of Club Penguin fan fic videos that they think that working in media/doing something creative means rape or something bad, you know that there is something missing in your life... like you haven't found who you truly are in the required age. Due to this, I did subjects irrelevant to the course I actually wanted.

If I can go back in time, these are the subjects I would have done:

• Advanced English
• Music 1
• Design and Technology
• SOR 1U (I was from a catholic school so this is mandatory)
• VET Entertainment
• Visual Art

At least with these subjects, I could have received MORE bonus points than the subjects I have now.

And to everyone just going to say to me 'But what's done is done' and all that bullshit, I just want to say shut up for one second as there are many things I wanted to do in the past that I was forbidden or unselected to experience. I could have created a YouTube channel in 2008 or made my own website blog in the age of 7 but I was sheltered because my family thinks some rapist will find me or I will end up dead.

Sometimes, I wonder if everyone was just goddam supportive about this... like they would just tell me how they made these things and so on instead of pulling me away from this because I bet, when I enter university, everyone has high quality DSLR with long experience while I'm just the girl who records stuff with an iPad!

So overall, what I want to say to the people who are about to embark on the same journey, my tip of advice for you is to fully figure out what you want to do or who you want to be before year 11 starts. If you wanted to make a youtube channel at the age of 6... GO FOR IT since Troye Sivan did it and he's now a famous pop star! Want to be an adventurer, do it!

I know I can't blame my past for all of this but I would have been nice if I had some support in a young age rather than people worrying that I'll get rape just because I go to a website where I can watch videos.

Overall... just do what you love doing, if people are pushing you away, then just push forward as if someone told me this in the past, then maybe my future would have been very different.

This is Cutiejea and this is life out of the camera.