Funhouse Mirrors + Creative Candy

Digital/pen drawing 4/19/2026

It's not uncommon for me to have something of a personal crisis when I get a glimpse into the disparity between how other people see me and how I see myself. It triggers some monsters that have been in my closet since I was a kid, misunderstanding casting a long shadow on my wall, eclipsed only by the larger looming threat of embarrassment. 

I was a self-proclaimed "weird kid" from a young age, a title I embraced as a form of armor preemptively shielding me from outside judgment. As I got older, I embraced the title of "bitch" for the same reason. These things were not bold statements of self-acceptance. It was more like a dunce cap than a badge of honor. 

My first Zine! A creative kid exercise (inventing new monsters issue no.1)

my homemade monstar costume	the cover of my zine

 Today I made a mini hand-drawn zine!

I've been thinking about making a zine for a while, but it always seemed like a big project. In my head I'd have to get all my friends together, receive submissions, edit and assemble and distribute. But today my friend posted a really cool zine they made and it inspired me to just start making one.

My goal recently has been to get back into creating freely, without overthinking, just letting things flow out of me and removing resistance. I like the quote that Tyler the Creator shared, "Create like a child, edit like a scientist." I want to create like a child at the very least, to connect with the ways I created when I was younger. I want to heal my inner creative child and nurture the interests I've had my whole life. And try to get past the resistance I feel to creating in general, since it's so easy to just be on the internet and stay idle instead. I desperately want to make things, somehow. I have to both force it AND let it flow.

So I looked up how to fold a single sheet of paper into a zine. Then I gathered a few materials which were easy to grab, and then I just started drawing. The first topic that came to mind, in the spirit of connecting with my inner creative child, was monsters. I was a monster kid, I had monster themed sheets, and my mom made me an awesome handmade monster costume for halloween (pictured above, probably 2008 or 9?). I used to draw them all the time, but I called my creations "monstars", named after my most commonly drawn character, who was some type of green dinosaur type guy. I don't remember very many of my monstars, but I'm sure they're in a box somewhere in my mom's house.

Mourning my Restlessness

Baby restless Celina (2014)

I was a restless and sensitive kid. Of course, looking back, I know that it was partially my ADHD, which wasn't diagnosed till I was 15, and that I wasn't medicated for till I was 18. But more than that, it was the trapped potential energy of growing up in a suburb when the larger world was so exciting and full of novelty and adventure, but lay just out of reach. I remember coming out of movie theaters or concerts feeling like a profoundly changed person from the experience. I used to stay up late into the night painting and writing and singing, lighting things on fire and playing guitar til my fingers bled, getting lost in different fantasies. I remember the restlessness feeling like torture. It was lightning in a bottle, but I was the bottle, getting shocked by it constantly. I never had a clear idea of what I wanted to be when I grew up, I just knew that I wanted to experience the world, as much of it as I could. 

In high school, for a brief moment I planned to do an exchange program somewhere in China, probably because it was as far away as I thought I could possibly get. I fantasized about disappearing, reinventing myself, and never again feeling tied down by my small town and family and school. And I opened myself up, the rough and vulnerable parts, freely to anyone who would listen. It was like my chest was cracked open, and my heart was exposed to the air. Everything stung, but it felt like the only way that I could be, like it was the only way to experience life in all the ways that I needed to. I fucked things up, I was bad at things, I practiced til I got it right, I made messes, and I was myself unapologetically. I did all of those things publicly.