Category: Fall-2020-Volume-1-Issue-1

Mischa livestreams to a social media site called “Twitch” and it is full of live streamers doing a wide range of activities. The site has different categories; like gaming, artwork, chatting, jewelry, music, vlogging, etc. Mischa streams Thursday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday from 12 pm to 5 pm est.

Mischa primarily does game while talking to her viewers. She also discusses LGBTQ+ issues and interests frequently, as both she and most of her viewers are a part of that community. Mischa’s online screen name, Mischacrossing, is based on the classic Nintendo franchise. She fondly remembers her humble beginnings enjoying the game before beginning her streaming career.

 “[M]y username on Twitch is [a] play on words of my favorite Nintendo franchise of all time and what has gotten me into streaming in the first place. [T]hanks to the good old days while I was on Tumblr and I was, and still am, obsessed with a game called Animal Crossing.”

Back between 2013 and 2015, Mischa would spend hours on Tumblr looking at things on Animal Crossing forums to get inspiration for the respective games with her friend Sarah. Sarah was also a streamer of the game before Mischa, which led to the latter's initial interest. Mischa then began live streaming herself on YouTube in 2016 when the feature launched on the site. From there, her community seemed to grow overnight. Many people were able to meet and bond over their mutual love of Animal Crossing thanks to Mischa’s work. However, as the years have gone by, she has delved into different games, expanding her horizons as a streamer, and expanding her community. Much has changed since 2016, but Mischa is much the same. Streaming does not feel like a chore to her still.

 “[S]ince I have had this job, it is easy to get burned out and tired of playing games you’ve played over and over again online, but the thing that will never get boring is the amazing friendships and conversations I get to have with my friends on a weekly basis.”

Dyllon, who is also a live streamer on Twitch, speaks about his lifelong struggles with mental health. Dyllon live streams from Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 1 pm to 8 pm cst. He helps his followers feel less alone with their struggles and encourages people to get professional help with their issues because he is not a licensed professional. He highlights the more taxing aspects of such a personal profession:

“Streaming is very fun when you don’t think about the number of people who follow you but it’s always in the back of your mind nagging you to do your absolute best. It is kind of a double-edged sword. If you focus on your numbers and they are normally low, you will start to doubt yourself. If you notice your numbers are high, you will feel the need to overwork yourself and not focus on what you want to do. It’s a complicated cycle.”

In comparison to Mischa, his desired area of discussion can be more challenging, though he still does stream his favorite game. Dyllon is a part of an online community that has a group of people talking about mental health just like him. They are called “HeartSupport.”  

“The reason my main focus is mental health is not only because I love helping people, I just want to share my experiences to people and let them know they’re not alone and it’s an integral part of my life that I am struggling with. It’s the only personal part of my life I like sharing because the rest of it is just downright depressing.”

He began to tell me how he got into streaming as well, he mentioned that he knows the same Sarah Mischa knows, Sarah was also the one who got him into streaming. He used to be in her evening streaming almost every night she streamed, but sadly he does not see her as much because of differing schedules. Back in the day, his username on twitch was different from what it is now; it was Gooperatives (pronounced *Go- Operatives) Everyone; me included called him Goop. But around the same time, I discovered his streams, he changed his username to fit his real name, DyllonKG.

“the reason I changed my name from Gooperatives to DyllonKG was because the name just didn’t suit me anymore and back then when I had that username, I was more abrasive, brash and very rude. But over the years I have learned to be patient with other people and myself. More importantly, I have learned to trust people more and let people in.”

Throughout all the years I have known Mischa and Dyllon, they have been extraordinary individuals. They have remained true to themselves and continued to cultivate their own communities and have done wonderful things online and offline. I have learned more about myself when I am with them. I am one of the people that Dyllon has helped when it comes to talking about mental health struggles, he has given me so much coping mechanisms and good one-on-one talks about how I am not alone and much more. Mischa and her community have helped me feel less alone as well! All the people in are just like me they are part of the LGBTQ+ community and I can relate to what they are going through. I love my chosen family.

Wearing a sloth floating suit, she opened the camera application on her iPhone 8plus. Once she had all the proper settings on, she placed it on the dining table and pushed the record button. And without putting much effort into it, she started lip-syncing to an audio that had already been recorded by another TikToker.

Boglarka “Bogi” Virag, a thirty-year-old Hungarian woman and CCD student, discovered TikTok as a new social media platform to express her personality and creativity. While it only started as a way for her to connect with her little sister, TikTok became the “go-to” app for entertainment.

“I wanted to connect with my little sister at first, then I stopped doing it, and heard about it again from my roommate…. I got obsessed and literally, laughing my ass off watching the videos, and then I started making my own,” Bogi explained.

TikTok is a widely popular video-sharing app that used to be called Musical.ly. According to teen vogue, this app has surpassed Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat just a year after it was launched, with more than one billion downloads worldwide.

According to Oberlo.com, TikTok aims to “capture and present the world’s creativity, knowledge, and precious life moments, directly from the mobile phone.” Data on wallaroomedia.com shows that TikTok has over 1 billion users and that the app is opened by users 8 times per day on average. It is also mentioned that about 83% of TikTok users have posted at least one video, as of February 2020.

Today, Bogi has 3,912 followers and 13.4K likes on her videos. Despite the high number of followers and likes she has gathered; she does not plan on taking her TikTok experience to the professional level. She feels that becoming a professional “TikToker” would add too much pressure and take away some of the fun she has while making the videos.

Since she does not personally know many of her followers, she feels that she can be whoever she wants and enjoy acting and role-playing videos on TikTok. A big advantage of TikTok according to Bogi is an opportunity to network depending on your field of work. She made connections with different people from different places.

Another way of connecting with other people is by going live on TikTok. “As soon as you hit a thousand followers, you can start a live stream and communicate with them. I sometimes even asked for their Snapchat or Instagram tag,” Bogi explained. “There are ways to make money on TikTok,” Bogi mentioned.

Although she is still unclear on how that system works, she mentioned that many do it by adding their Venmo account in their account bio. Some companies that sell products or people who sell services have also started to promote their products through the app. They usually do so by putting up their advertisement videos or by having well-known actresses or actors help promote through their personal TikTok accounts.

When she first discovered TikTok, Bogi thought it was an app for young people only. However, she soon realized that there are users from various age ranges. In her opinion, TikTok is heading to be the biggest social media platform. Based on a survey done by Pew Research Center in July 2019, about 40% of TikTok users are between the ages of 10 and 19, 26.1% are between  20 and 29 years old, 10.2% are between 30 and 39, and 16.8% are between 40 and 49 years old.

A survey regarding TikTok use was also conducted at the Community College of Denver. A total of 15 were asked whether they have the app downloaded on their phones. Seven of them said that they have downloaded TikTok and four out of the seven students also said that they make videos on it. Eight students out of the 15, said that they do not have TikTok downloaded but they watch it through Instagram or the TikTok videos compilation on YouTube.

Generation Z was born with new media evolving and improving. They know a lot about new upgrades and what’s ‘popping.’ “People want to see live videos, Instagram stories, Snapchat, and TikTok. They don’t want to sit and read captions,” Bogi said. Walking towards the modern era, people are more into video forms.

Bogi believes that for anyone looking to make it big in the media industry, platforms like TikTok is a place to start establishing an online presence and build an army of followers, that will also follow you when it’s time for bigger platform such as YouTube or even national TV.

“I gained followers on my photography Instagram account because of TikTok. I linked my Instagram account on TikTok, and people started to see my artworks,” Bogi shared. For her, it is not about making money on TikTok, but it is about how you make connection, promote your profile, express yourself, and build an audience.

Katherine Wilson often walks around campus in her Doc Martins, clutching a tablet in one hand and a stylus in the other, always sketching out her latest piece. For her, the act of creating visual art is a ritual driven by her creativity and her macabre fantastical imagination. Every piece seems to capture some sort of absurdist dreamlike world.

Katherine is a CCD student and was the former “Printer’s Devil” for Talon. She has a passion for art and graphic design that catches the attention of anyone looking at her artwork. She gets personal and deeply unapologetic with her work. Truly, the art is not there to impress the viewer it only stares back in apathy. It is not candid, and it is not interested in aesthetics. It just simply is. Her art carries itself on its punk-rock attitude and its lavish outlandish presentation.

Her figures do not exist in worlds; they exist in voids separated from each other almost like peering into your very own pocket dimension. And for a second it feels like they were all sketched by some alternate LSD fueled version of Salvador Dali creating posters for Woodstock in 1968. If her art could talk it would probably speak a language all on its own; it doesn’t want to be understood it just wants to be heard and all we as viewers can do is listen and take it all in.

Katherine Wilson’s love of art was fostered at a young age. “There was never not a time in my life where I wasn’t creating something and if I wasn’t it was really bad,” she said. She refers to art as a “survival mechanism” in her life.  This admiration and complete love of visual creation would remain a hobby until high school where her official art career began.

At the age of 16, she was mentored by a teacher for a year and had the privilege of getting some experience with various digital software such as Adobe Photoshop. This mentor proved to be an asset. In her words “She showed me how to set up my resume and how to not be taken advantage of as a young freelancing artist.” This was her introduction to the world of freelance work and art commission, which comes with its own risks and rewards.

You can set your own rates and work, for the most part as fast or as slow as you wish. But on the internet, there is always someone trying to steal from you. For every good commission story, there are at least 3 bad ones. Katherine recalls an experience when she accidentally sent a work in progress to a client before they had paid her for her time. Suffice to say she never heard back from them. But she does not look back on it as a massive mistake.

Instead, she acknowledged her mistake and owned up to it and reshuffled how she structured her commissions, so it did not happen again. Occurrences like this are sadly common in the freelance world and even the more prestigious art world of galleries and museums. People very often do not want to pay for art no matter the price. Art in a business setting is a commodity. It is viewed as a good that has monetary value regardless of its deeper meaning.

In short, the art business is cutthroat and largely apathetic towards struggling artists. Part of this is caused by the integration of software such as Photoshop. If everyone can open a program and make art is it still valuable? Is the work of the artist diminished because of the digital nature of the art itself? When asked what medium Katherine preferred, she said: “Do you want to be a starving artist, or do you actually want to make money?”

 Digital is more lucrative and easier to market and trade. However, people simply do not view it in the same way as they would view a master painter. They tend to view digital artists as a dime a dozen and artists that primarily work in a digital medium are often seen as talentless, almost like the program is holding their hand through the process of creation. which is simply not true. As a businessperson Katherine has been able to achieve a level of success that is frankly quite impressive given her very esoteric style.

Her main platform is Instagram under the name “spicykatastrophe.” She charges 100 dollars upfront for each piece she creates and makes a point to inform the consumer that this payment is non-refundable “It’s still my livelihood. The idea of selling your art as a side gig seems very peculiar at first, it seems unstable. And let us face it, where there is a market for art, there are also critics ready to tear you to pieces and point out every minute flaw in your art.

This, despite themselves never having even touched a box of crayons. It is not an easy side hustle, but it is rewarding in the best possible way. When you create something for someone else it can really mean a lot to that person that you took the time out of your day to give them a piece of you, and you can’t just buy or sell that. Money, in this case, is the byproduct, not necessarily the endgame for most artists.

When asked if creating art ever felt like work, Katherine’s answer was no. “The only time art has ever felt like work to me was when I was an art student,” she added.

Katherine Wilson is someone I would describe as an artist’s artist she makes what she wants, and she enjoys creating for the sake of creating. Selling her artwork is a bonus but it most certainly is not the main reason behind her work.

The art is a part of her and is intrinsically tied to her emotional state of being. In her words, “[Art] is really tied to my overall happiness as a person and my overall functioning.” In essence, Katherine has found a way to bridge the gap between starving artist and successful artist using social media and has achieved a type of balance. In doing so, she creates the things that she wants to create and there are people out there willing to pay for them. She is at or close to creative and financial harmony.             

Being a babysitter is a hard side hustle; it takes a lot of patience and care. You need to know what you can do, how to keep the child entertained, and how to take care of the child in an emergency. Sara Ayoub, a student at the Community College of Denver, babysat for four years because she loves kids and loves taking care of them. She started her babysitting journey by watching her little cousins and never felt like it was work, it was more of a creative fun experience.

However, when it came to making plans for the kids, she often had a hard time coming up with a backup plan in case of need. With babysitting, you must be able to think on your feet. Kids can be stubborn and sometimes they do not want to go to the park, or they do not want to color. It is helpful if you have multiple plans in case others do not go well.

Due to changes in her living situation, Ayoub stopped babysitting after four years.  However, she had many great things to say about her experience.  An advice she gives to anyone looking to get into babysitting is to “Always keep an open door for communication, be prepared for almost everything because suddenly things will come up, organization is key and lastly have fun.”

And with planning and organization, babysitting can be very fulfilling and enjoyable. Whether you are looking for a hustle in babysitting or it is your first time watching a child, here is how to babysit. The way to get started is to first get CPR and first aid certified. In case of an emergency, you want to be prepared. The next thing you want to do is work on a set schedule for when you are available to babysit. Once you set the days you’re available, it makes it easy for your clients and yourself to schedule a shift. 

After preparing, you should market yourself. You need to let people know when you are available. Word of mouth is often the easiest way to land this job. Start babysitting for people you know. Ask friends who are babysitters and if they know anybody that needs assistance. Another way you can market yourself is through babysitting websites. The only problem with marketing through websites, however, might be age, because many of them have age limits for sign up access.

With any new job, you need to prepare. Some ways to do that is: getting parents’ and child’s information, finding out what activities are okay, and figuring out the child’s schedule. This step is important because every parent teaches and nurtures their children in different styles. Another thing you need to know is their usual diet. Kids are very sneaky, and they might try to sneak something into their diet that they do not normally eat (like candy). When the kids try to misbehave, you need to establish with the parents, what they typically do for small misbehaviors. You do not want to punish them too little or too much.

After you prepare for the job, you are now in the phase of watching the kids. You want to spend time getting to know them, growing a relationship with the child will get them to like you and listen to you. Being creative and active with them is vital. You want to know what they like to keep them engaged. Telling stories and creating fun projects for you guys to do once a week will make them excited to see you. Parents are paying you to watch their kid, try to stay off screens. You are paid to be an entertainer for them and to keep them safe.

Throughout the day, it is important to check in with them. Kids do not have a sense of time as adults, and they usually forget to perform basic bodily necessities. Check every hour to see if they need to go to the bathroom, drink water, eat or even just rest. They will most likely not tell you these things on their own, so always be sure to ask.

Avoiding mistakes is also vital while watching kids. Do not leave the children in your care alone. As a babysitter, you are there to watch the children in their home and under no circumstances should you leave them. You should not have people coming over to spend time with you while working. Only allow people over if the parents have agreed to it. And with electronics more prevalent now than ever, you have urges to be on your phone or scrolling through social media. Like other jobs, your electronics should only be used for emergencies.

A major part of babysitting is cleaning up after the children. This part is often forgotten; because you are constantly on the go with kids, but it is important. The parents are probably coming home from work and will appreciate coming home to a clean house. A way to get the kids into cleaning up after themselves is to play cleaning games with them. Say whoever picks up the quickest wins or sing the clean-up song. When you give them an incentive, it will most likely get them excited.

Babysitting can be a hard job at times, but it can also be very rewarding. The child’s safety is the number one priority. If you babysit for a while, you will realize that it teaches you skills you never noticed at the time. You learn communication and relationship building, multi-tasking, time management and organization skills, and negotiation. This will help you with many other occupations and are fully transferable. It makes you confident, you can become a well-rounded person who is not afraid of a challenge.

Becoming a babysitter is a big deal. Parents are leaving you in charge of the most important people in their lives, their children. So, it is important to take the task seriously and do it responsibly. With this, you are now able to start hustling as a babysitter.

In these strange times, staying connected feels desperately important. We call old friends and distant family, we email our favorite high school teachers, and follow every name we recognize on social media. Technology is our new communicator. Well, maybe not so new. But within this larger conversation about what is and isn’t essential, it’s beginning to feel pretty important.

The arts have managed to make their way to the forefront of this new, technological connection. From the Berlin Philharmonic’s digital concert hall, to Denver’s own Mercury Cafe live open mic, we are creating and maintaining artistic platforms. Right now, this is what’s important to us. Live streams from musicians, new support for local artists’ online storefronts, open mics where poets and musicians make sure to be heard; this is our new world.

So what does that mean when all this is over? Will the arts remain an ‘essential’ part of our world? It’s nice to imagine that this distant yet stubbornly connected community will continue on in the days after social distancing. Mass gatherings at cafes to hear poetry, local musicians and artists finding enough support to live off their passions. When this is all over it’s important to remember that we turned to the arts for comfort. That during this insanity we were most grateful for our artists and the escape they offered.

Your heart feels like it’s racing a million miles a minute, your fingers are trembling as you stare at your phone screen. You know that if you could just obtain these shoes, these shoes that have been so hyped up, then you could find out the secondary market value of these exclusive kicks. At one point in time, Jasmine O., Julius B., and Kevin U. have all felt this feeling of intense addictive excitement. These three sneakerheads all do shoe flipping as a side hustle to make some extra cash.

So, what is shoe flipping? It is simply sneaker buying and reselling. They aren’t just your basic shoes you see on an everyday basis. These shoes are rare and can have really cool backstories about the design. Shoes are no longer the basic thing you wear to protect your feet. Sneaker reselling is now very common and profitable; according to a Business Insider article, “Sneaker reselling is projected to become a $6 billion dollar business by 2025.” Being a sneakerhead used to be a whole different thing without the online channels that are used today. People would rush to stand in line for hours and they even camped out to try to obtain the hot new shoes that were dropping that weekend. The people who were buying learned about the shoes from word of mouth and catalogs. Nowadays, to hear about the latest drops, there are many sources to get information from; social media, apps and websites such as HyperBeast and High Snobiety play a huge part. With shoe flipping becoming more popular, there is even a SneakerCon that takes place in different areas of the world. This is a great place to meet your fellow sneakerheads.

Why resell sneakers to make extra money? It’s a way to potentially make hundreds or even thousands of dollars. While speaking with Kevin, he said that he made a profit of $1,100 after he sold one pair of Travis Scott shoes for $1,250 when they originally retailed for only $150. Julius sold three pairs of shoes and made $1,500. Jasmine wanted to make room for more shoes, so she sold a few pairs that she no longer wore anymore and made a profit of $230. All these three had to do was get the shoes in the first place. Once they obtained the shoe, the hard part came. “Do I keep this or do I sell it?” as Jasmine stated. When purchasing shoes for resale, you need to know your market. You need to know what sizes sell the best.

In order to sell these shoes, you have to go through a process to get them. First, you have to know when a shoe is releasing. There are multiple ways for a shoe drop to happen; it can be as simple as the shoe dropping in store and waiting in line or it can look like being entered into a raffle on the shoe website and hoping you get called and they have the size you want. When asked about any crazy stories that have happened when trying to get a shoe, Kevin said: “I remember this one. I was in line for a pair of Pacsun x Fear of God Vans dropping in Pacsun stores. There were a couple of guys who cut in line. A fight ended up breaking out and security had to escort them out. I ended up being the first person in line for those vans.”

When purchasing shoes that are being resold, you have to be careful as well. Jasmine, Kevin, and Julius have all been sold fake shoes. Once this happens, there is not much you can do other than accept the fact that you got jipped. When you are purchasing shoes from a reseller, do your research and trust your instinct. Try to avoid buying fakes and ask for receipts. Check the prices of other sellers and remember that each shoe size has a different range of demand.

            To get started with shoe flipping, not only will you need a love for sneakers, but you will need some money in the bank as well. Julius gave the advice to “save at least $2,000” to get started since these shoes can be expensive. The most that Kevin spent on shoes was $989 for a pair of Balenciagas, Julius spent $800 on Red 11’s and Jasmine $400 on her pair.

Two recommended websites for resale are Grailed, StockX and an app called Frenzy that alerts you about release dates. The best time to buy is the initial release date and if you are able to, try to buy in bulk. The most that Julius bought at one time was 15 pairs, all of which he turned around and sold.

As a hustler, you need to be aware of the potential problems you could be faced with. Sometimes the process can be complicated. Even though there are apps out there to help, there are still ways it can all go wrong. Violence and theft can occur with sneakers that have a high price tag and people will go to great lengths to obtain them. Once, when Jasmine was selling a pair of shoes to a younger kid, he ran off with the shoes without paying. Thankfully, she was able to get her money's worth for the shoes after contacting the child's mother who presented him with an ultimatum: pay what you owe or return the shoes.

Even though there are problems and risks that accompany shoe resale, for college students struggling to make ends meet, it can be a very lucrative and worthwhile side hustle. A diverse and tight-knit community is an added benefit of this particular line of work.  

Now that the Holidays are over and the year 2020 is already well on its way, the time for giving back is upon us. If you are not satisfied with the amount of goodwill you’re feeling or the amount of unconditional love you receive, try volunteering as a read-a-loud person for the Denver Public Library. There, you can let your inner child run free as you read books to children of all ages.  This non-paying position can be done in any area that the library serves.  What it lacks financially, it more than makes up in warmth, smiles, hugs, laughter and unconditional love. The joy it brings is enough to make the job worthwhile.

Being a volunteer reader for the Denver Public Library has been a mainstay for me since leaving mainstream theater. Though my opinion carries some weight, it is one place where I am not in control. My actions are assessed by a classroom of three and four-year-olds, the teacher, Miss Jocelyn, and her assistant, Breanna. Each week, I go to the library to pick up my assigned reading. I have now added specific authors to my favorites list, including Leo Lionni, who penned more than forty award-winning children’s books all by the time of his death at 89 years old.

While the oldest library dates back to the city of Alexandria, Egypt, which contained the world’s greatest collection of works from scholars, kings and people of the world, the initial Royal Library was part of a palace built after Alexander the Great’s death by ruler Ptolemy and his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus.  It included a sprawling temple to the muses and housed many people who lived there communally. Money was also held in common and a priest who headed the Museum was appointed by Augustus. Here, scrolls were kept on shelves under the covered walkway and in specially built niches throughout the Museum. This library became a great learning center of antiquity. Scholars would come from all over the world to study philosophy, mathematics, science, nature, art, literature and medicine.

            For the enjoyment of children, we have an assortment of children’s books for all ages. The library selects between four and five books per week for the children’s half hour of reading time. Each read-a-loud session begins with big hellos as the children file in from their lunch and it is my job to select a song to entertain my crew and settle them down for the stories to begin. It benefits me to hear the continued instructions from the teacher because being a student at CCD, I am reminded to raise my hand when I wish to speak and not to spew out verbosely without exercising any self-control. When a child has a problem accepting instructions, they are reminded to take a break and must sit in another part of the room away from their classmates. When leaving the room for the day, I often pass by the child who is waiting for their “pardon” to be completed. I try my hardest to leave them with the feeling that I, too, have sat right where they are at and have learned the art of respecting adult figures in the world of education. One day, they will realize the benefit of the shaping and molding that happens in the classroom.

My very first year doing this kind of volunteer work was when I was transitioning out of mainstream theater. I invited the teachers and students to come and see Beauty and the Beast which was one of Phamaly’s (Physically Handicapped Actors and Musical Artists League, Inc.) favored Walt Disney Productions.  It was on my last day of reading to this particular group of three and four-year-olds that I happened to notice two young boys sitting in the back row. They were rolling their eyes and lifting their bodies in emulation of the highs and lows that my own voice created as I read. In an instant, I recognized that at this age, these children have no malice or guile. They were not trying to induce any kind of harmful feeling toward me, they were simply trying to act as though they were reading. Their voices had been able to master as best they could all the personification that I had given to them during my reading. For the first time in my life, I was flattered by this form of mimicry. The realization that these children had not been changed into anything but “wide-eyed optimists” was more than I could handle. They were unburdened by any type of growing pains that would, for the most part, seem automatic at later points in their lives. My form of growing pain was in selecting the song we were going to sing that day.

Alberto Pellicer is the read-a-loud super-source at the Denver Public Library (Central Branch) and he, quite frankly, can read a children’s book with all the onomatopoeia, chagrin and silliness it takes to bring the children’s book to life.  He is both caring and personable to a fault and he takes his responsibility with astute seriousness.  If there is a team that I could draw benefit from I should like it to be the Denver Public Library who is celebrating their 130^th birthday this year. They welcome old and newcomers alike into the multi-floored building that houses computer labs, reference materials, great sculptures as part of its close proximity to the art museum and a complete CD/DVD collection available for consumer check-out and use.

In deciding which song is my all-time favorite, I had to first check out several DVDs in order to listen to the performers as though their very lives depended on it.  The first was Haunted Honeymoon with Gilda Radner, Gene Wilder, and Dom DeLuise. It holds within the confines of this wonderful comedic suspense-thriller a wonderful rendition of Ballin-the Jack.  I also plucked Victor/Victoria from the shelf to hear the incomparable Julie Andrews perform the ill-fated last of her singing career since I intend to use Le Jazz Hot to perform at The Mental Health Center of Denver’s talent show coming up on January 23, 2020. I also checked out several scripts that I will be using next spring for my continued education. Like those who lived in the ancient city of Alexandria, Egypt, I have reveled in the many tombs of reference materials; books of knowledge and learning to mysteries and historical works, and lastly, children's books.  I love my volunteer work for the Denver Public Library and highly recommend it to anyone who wishes to give back from their heart.

As a side hustle, photography seems to be the easiest and most effective way to make extra money. As well as a popular hobby. Knowing your personality as a photographer can help particulate unique identity as a photographer; or in this case, your key to having a successful side hustle. As well as managing your expectations. What make photographs worth needing.

I followed and interviewed my subject Cam Yarumian on the “Evolution of Journalism”. Learning her ways of having photography as a side hustle and a quick and easy way to make a living. As we talked it out, she gave me the insights on photography itself. How fun and easy it is to take a camera and capture one’s moment to love and cherish forever. Her main go to was wedding photography.

 Since she has remembered, she grew up with photography as a hobby. As a child it was all fun and games to have a toy camera and view the joyful cartoon character SpongeBob Square Pants flip through each slide as she would click to the next slide. As she grew up, her interest in photography never vanished from her life. It continued with the good o’l trendy I phone. Taking pictures with her best friend in the creek area behind their houses, staring to take shots of its atmosphere.

Then, later in her life, she received her first camera. A Cannon point and shoot. With no ability to change the lenses but just about good enough to get a good enough shot. To a Nikon, then upgrading to a Cannon G 320 as the result. “I have the first one that I started with, but I actually don’t have the Nikon anymore.”  From that day forward, her passion for photography grew and grew to the point of where she would never give up on being the best at capturing precious moments. “I Guess like my passion for photography grew from doing it all the tie with my best friend. And it just progressed from there where I just really enjoyed photography that I like to take photos of really anything.”

It all began with just something to post on social media. As known as Instagram. Just to get something out there for her followers to view. But then, became a free-lance hobby in California where she used to live. She would begin taking pictures at events from the   such as her friends reaching out to Cam to taking pictures of friends' weddings, backyard concerts, kid events, photo shoots, or senior pictures.  Later caring on her legacy to others making her voice heard to gather more professional experience. “No I never worked for yearbook or anything, I'm co enrobed with ACC, so I’m actually the photo editor there.”  

Although Cam pays by the hour and extra for editing work. She still makes a mean piece of art.  “If they want editing work done then I would charge extra because that’s more time on me.”  Considering caring on her legacy with photography, without it being a job related thing. But to open the windows of golden opportunity. Expanding her horizon to getting familiar with the passion and easy way to start a living. “I would never want it to have it as my only job, that’s why I want to go into photojournalism”

I was disgusted, just keeping my hands to myself and sanitizing myself every time I left a store. Feeling my brain get tased at the thought of how I would have to wash everything again even after I just did before I went out. I was looking in a store, seeing as kids drew their eyes to many colorful items, as adults let their children run around the shops unsupervised, putting their hands everywhere while touching their faces and touching things again.  

The anxiety was building up inside of me just thinking what would happen if I didn’t because I was unaware of how everything worked. Like calculus or being trapped at an art museum, trying to comprehend what the artist was trying to convey.  

My hearing wasn’t focused on my surroundings, but my sight fell upon everything just perfectly. It felt like Halloween was just around the corner, and so many happy faces were searching the warehouse of Halloween decor. What looked like the only thing really putting on happy faces, even if it was through the thick fabric of the masks. The sound of mixed music filled the room as everyone walked around, picking out costumes and accessories.  

“I don’t know.” I tell my mother after she asks who I want to dress up as this year in very echoey voice. Much like she was talking straight into an active fan. Everything I was seeing, I wanted to be home more than touching anything. Knowing how much of a germaphobe I was, I had mixed feelings. I felt the world was never going to be the same because of how I couldn’t see how things really worked. How germs spread, where they were, and how often I need to defend myself.  

Having the thought stain my brain at the fact no one was listening, and everyone was trying to end my life. But things perked up once I got into the spirit, ditching the many negative thoughts, placing them aside as I laid my eyes on what could be the new me. “I was trying to be Doctor Faciliar.” I tell my mom as we wonder the many selections of wigs, picking one up and observing how the whole costume would work and how I could really pull this off. The more we talked about it somewhat whipped my mind off the cons, bringing in the positives and smiles to my face. Reminding me I was just over thinking things the whole time, seeing the world worse than what it really has come to be.  

I tend to exaggerate almost everything. Whether it’s a good or bad thing. What the situation might be, but I won’t know unless I see it for myself. Then the bright side starts to shimmer. Especially with Covid taking over my brain almost every second, it's hard to just brush everything off. What is happening around me, how much things are changing, and what must be done in order to prevent it before bigger events save the day, curing everything so things can be like normal. But who knows when that will be. For now, all anyone can do is wait.