Midlife crisis finally caught up with me. This started right after I graduated college and pursued careers and lifestyles that I deed was the optimal path — maximizing money and productivity. I had money in the bank, but I never felt quite alive. I threw money to make me feel alive but they never fulfilled a deeper hunger. Soon, that hunger, a quarter-life crisis, metastasized into a full blown midlife crisis that I was experiencing.

We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like — Fight Club

When a client walked away without paying me — wasting 3 months of my life — I hit rock bottom. My favorite quote from the movie Fight Club came screaming in my face as I slouch on the sofa, doomscrolling social media and melting my brain and weeping at my current state of affair. Like the protagonist in the movie (played by the awesome Edward Norton), I’m a shell of myself. But in my case, I didn’t have a Brad Pitt punching me in the face — I had life upper-cutting me right in the gut.

I knew I was in a rut and something is amiss. Something was being buried under the never ending grinding, screen time, zoom calls, and isolation. The zest for life had died out

I had to change something. Drastically. Fundamentally.

I dropped everything I had, and booked a one way ticket to Buenos Aires.

I had to change course 180 degree. I have to reinvent my life completely.

The plane ride to Buenos Aires was soul soothing. I glanced out at the window mid flight, and I saw this breath taking view of the Earth.

“Wow its full moon tonight. When was the last time I saw something like this? I’m lucky,” I thought to myself as I gazed over this breath-taking view of Earth mid-flight. Views like this never cease to fascinate me.

I knew nothing of Buenos Aires and of Argentina, except that at some point in my life, I’ve heard of the “passion” of Argentina and that I vaguely remember I had liked the music from that land. In the midst of my anguish, a thought popped in my head:

“Why not go do tango and learn Spanish?”

What a ridiculous idea, but I knew the patient needed a system shock — a defibrillator jolt to a heart numbed by decades of the wrong path. A full re-invention is required, and I have no idea how to do it other than just jumping straight into it.

And I am not alone. Yuki, my loyal travel companion, decided she wanted to guide me me on this journey.

Buenos Aires, the Land of Tango, Architecture, and… Steak

It has been almost 2 weeks since I’ve arrived at Buenos Aires. It is an intriguing city — a metropolitan with European architecture, merged w/ modern day concrete jungle, and lots of tango, Milongas, and steak. Argentinian asado is definitely yummy (hmmnnn chimichuri sauces, why isn’t this on every steak menu in US?)

I jumped right into tango. I took a few classes and the teacher took me to the milongas, the tango dance parties. Argentinians do love to dance — from Monday to Sunday, every night there are milongas and locals of various ages and skills come tango. On some special nights, they are also joined by an orchestra and professional tango shows.

The music of the orchestra, the improvisation of the dancers, and liveliness of the crowd drew me closer, and soon I found myself also on the dance floor busting out my tango moves.

For once, I simply followed what my body told me to do — stepping on toes and bumping into others. I didn’t care anymore. I am alive.

I have 2 months in Bueonos Aires, and I’m curious to see what “following your bliss” and synchronicities would unfold.

Here’s to a wild journey.

Another day of random doodling. After a solid week of doodling, I can now say I’m more confident on the my doodling ability — the facial expressions, the angles, and the body anatomy is mostly passable for the human eyes.

With these doodling, I am exploring what my art style is. I want to know, but right now my skill level is skill limited and my exposure to different art/doodling style is narrow. So I’m copying and scribing other famous cartoon comic strip art styles — Calvin and Hobbes and Snoopy.

Turns out my favorite childhood cartoons had relatively simple art style and character design, something that I, at my current doodling level, can definitely draw. I don’t remember why I was gravitated to them as a child. Was it the cute cartoon art? Or was it the story? Or that perfect combination of both?

I never thought in a million years that I’d be doodling cartoons, but during this process, I had so much fun that I hadn’t had in years. Doing things for the fun of it is strangely therapeutic, and doing things with my hands is soul soothing. In a digitally addicted world, and AI generative one, doing hands on things reminds me what being a human is like.

Also I discovered that the comic strip name is Peanuts and Snoopy is the dog’s name. I never knew!

I always am a big fan of Family Guy and the Simpsons. Their comedic storytelling together the cute cartoon-y art mesmerized me from age 10 to even today. One day, I do dream of making my own comic w/ something like this, so today I’m doodling Brian and Homer.

From these, I realize that if you make the characters “rounder”, the cuter or visually more pleasant they are.

I do notice that sometimes in my drawings the lines are squiggly (still gotta work on those muscles in my fingers). Is there a way to make these sketches prettier?

I threw them into AI and these are the results:

Google’s AI studio refined the lines and added colors to it. It knew I was drawing Homer and Brian and added colors appropriately (and added the missing dog tag from the original).

Not bad.

I then threw the original sketch into ChatGPT (4o) and Google’s Video Gen AI, and both of them rejected it w/ copyright infringement

These doodles of your favorite cartoons, Big Tech now don’t allow them :/

So, I suppose from now on, you can only use your original works (your own character design) with these AI.

Here I uploaded my doodle from before and generated a refined image (ChatGPT 4o) and an animated video (Googles Video Gen). The generated video was astonishing — turned my doodle into 1920’s animation

With these AI tools, any person can create art in any form.

This really speaks to this fascinating juncture of the universe — with these AI tools we can unleash the creativity that’s dormant within us. We are truly creators.

Day 3 / x of doodling.

Today I attempted to draw my dog from different POVs cuz I wanted to see if my hand muscles can go in a different direction (it can).

The challenge for this is getting my dog’s anatomy to look right. I used the facial guiding lines and it not only helps w/ getting the facial angles correct, but also w/ the rest of the body angle. Once I get the facial angle correct, the rest comes naturally.

Through these doodling exercises, I also find it easier to turn what’s in my head to paper (or iPad in this case). I used to have troubles with these POV drawings (I can only draw in one side — facing left), and now different POVs are coming together more naturally.

Practice do make progress!

This was quite astonishing experience. I created this doodle using Procreate app on my iPad. I bought this app years ago but never did anything with it — somehow the blank canvas and its many features scared me so I never drew anything. Like many aspirational things I wanted to do, my own fears — or the sense of being overwhelming the mountain of technical hurdles — hamstrung me from even starting:

• I wanted to learn Japanese, Korean, Spanish, but looking at the difficulties of the beginner’s language book paralyzed me

• I wanted to make my own app — but the sheer amount of technical plumbing required prevented me from taking that first step

• I wanted to do my podcast or start my YT channel — but the hassle of setting up camera, shooting, editing, uploading paralyzed me

Instead of looking at all these things and paralyze myself, perhaps the best way is to just start small — one crappy doodle at a time, one crappy video at a time, one crappy writing a ta time.

And who knew doodling can be this fun and therapeutic!

I can’t wait for my next doodle!

Day 1 / x of my new career — doodling / aspiring manga artist

Creativity, after all, cannot just sit in my head. They must be shared with the world, no matter how “crude” they might be.

So here comes the beginning of my new career :)