Background
Having been brought up with supportive parents and lovely friends, I wouldn’t say I have gone through extreme hardships in life. My personality is one that is optimistic; one that believes in the magic and beauty of the world.
Upon closer thought, I realized the things I find beautiful always involved the element of escapism – they let me immerse and lose myself in them. I made a small rubric to pick an activity and its corresponding object that references my life the most closely.
| Activity | Object | Resonance (1-10) | Advantages | Considerations |
| Playing soccer | Soccer ball | 8 | Photos could be very dynamic; wide range of shots to be generated |
Would have to capture motion – not confident enough with my DSLR No one from my soccer team goes to NTU so it’ll be weird playing by myself |
| Reading | Book | 10 | Very familiar and dear to my heart –would probably not run out of ideas with the time frame given | Complex – books make me feel a wide range of emotion so it might be hard to choose one consistent mood |
| Playing the piano | Piano | 6 | ? | Hard to transport piano around so I wouldn’t be able to do much with the background or lighting |
| Painting | Paintbrush/Palette/Watercolors | 9 | Could shoot from various angles and possibly explore the most visually | I personally feel that it’s overdone |
Decision
Out of these, one that is always cozy and I’ve been doing the longest time is reading.
I remember reading an awful lot of Enid Blyton voraciously. I’ve kept my entire collection – about 50 books – for more than 10 years, because they’re my comfort books.
Enid Blyton books move fast – almost as fast as comics – and you never get bored on any page, no matter how many times I read it over. I like to flip through them once in a while.
It’s not great literature, but it doesn’t need to be.
I picked “The Fairy Kitten” because it was the first Enid Blyton book I got. The day I got it at a book fair, even though I came back from school exhausted, I didn’t take my usual afternoon nap because I couldn’t wait to start. I remember falling asleep on it because I could not stop reading.
Nothing’s quite like lazing around in your bed with an old book in hand. I still fall asleep whenever I take it out and read it – it’s almost become a habit, the way my body tells me that “Hey, this is familiar, and easy, and it’s okay to fall sleep if you don’t want to stop”. If not just for the stories, the delightful illustrations carry me into fantasy realms where toys talk and goblins exist.
Plan of Action
I grouped the emotions I experience when reading it into two main categories: one of comfort and one of childish delight. As they are both complex and I didn’t want to shortchange myself by dismissing an emotion I felt too early, I decided to explore both before finalizing on a singular narrative.