3 Things I Pondered Today
- Why is having a very specific hobby or thing you like important?
- Why is it important to be yourself?
- How can a shirt have multiple meanings?
Today I saw an article for somebody I appreciate who I went to school with. To be frank I didn’t read the whole thing I just glanced and saw a paragraph that stood out to me. This person has always been a very nice individual and seeing them be successful always brought me joy. I know that this person worked very hard to get to where they are and they have a very specific niche they are involved with.
The important of seeing this article was a reminder to myself that it is crucial to be yourself. This person was themselves and they were very passionate about their niche. I think that part of their success is attributed to them being true to themselves and fully embracing their favorite thing. Seeing their success was a very nice reminder that you can have your strange (to some) hobby or like and it doesn’t matter because the people who are into the same thing as you will find you.
If there is one thing I have always done it is to be myself. With my friend in town I had a continued reminder of this. I have no issues being myself and even as a kid I was sometimes the weird one who had their own way of doing things. I consider myself getting better each day towards achieving my goals and my progress has been moving steady. I think that there is a nice movement or flow that I am in at the moment and the biggest contributing factor to my current success is authenticity.
When I was waking down the street I saw a t-shirt in the window the said Hi How Are You with a Frog. The name of this image is Jeremiah the Innocent. I stopped everything I was doing and needed to walk into the store to buy that shirt. It was such a big deal to me that I get it because not only is it a famous Austin mural there is just way more to it than meets the eye.
The drawing is by one of the musicians I admire named Daniel Johnston. He is a low-fi musician know for his self release tapes. He would hand them out to everybody in Austin to the point where people knew him from his tapes. I firmly believe he lead the way for a lot of independent musicians. The shirt was also famously worn by Kurt Cobain a fan of his.
When I went in to get the shirt they had a couple tank tops but I really wanted the shirt in black with white or gray graphic. They happen to have them and it was a super soft American Apparel top. When I looked at it further it was an officials shirt.
I was so freaking excited to wear it that I bought it and wore it the next day. It’s funny because every city I have lived in aside from Chicago it is taboo to wear a local shirt in the city you are in. To Austin residents and even myself I do not care what people thing and I was super pumped to wear it.
I put a small selfie on my story to see if anybody would recognize it. The surprising thing is that the majority of my online followers are in different cities and most likely countries. I got several replies about how they loved the musician and such and it made me very happy. I know a lot of people have “fan” or “followers” but my followers are very niche. They love the things I love and today was a small reminder that there are others like me who love the same thing I love.
One of the things I love are tape cassettes and this shirt is kind of a subtle inside commentary to others who like his work. Of course on a large scale a lot of people know about it from the mural itself. Maybe they know the musician, maybe they don’t. It doesn’t matter because my reason is a lot deeper than meets the surface.