—Self-Introduction Blog—

Greetings!

Before I introduce myself, I wanted to say thank you in advance for being able to give at least
a few minutes of your life for reading this blog, because if you are not aware of the saying
that “the amount of time we get to live on earth is uncertain but surely limited” then I think
it is best to reassess yourself on how you treat time as a valuable matter. Well, my name is
Giovanni Piolo V. Rayla and you can just call me by my surname (Rayla), though it is also
fine if you call me through my first name either by Gio or Piolo.

Out of all the website that I have used, I’d say YouTube is my most preferred, perhaps
because it really helped me in exploring the skills that I want to enhance at and the things
that I want to understand such as a video content that has anything related to filmmaking,
for example, if I wanted to know more about a certain director whose films are of my interest,
then I could just watch a video of them being interviewed based on how they did the film so
that it can provide me some inspiration. Also, since I am not an avid user of Spotify, I just
usually listen to music in YouTube. More than that, I think YouTube has reached a
phenomenon just like any other social media website where it becomes threatening in our
life, something that all of us can experience if not met with a certain precaution and limitation
to what we are consuming. Anything can be dangerous once we become too comfortable of
something because it makes as oblivious and numb of the real situation.

Generally, I am more involved into the Art of Cinema so whenever I discover a film with a
brilliant story and remarkable style of directing it motivates me further to study and
understand much of how to tell a narrative skillfully and artistically. But I think what really
triggers my curiosity is whenever a film has the ability to resonate a genuine emotion to me
that I cannot explain nor understand why for a longer period of time. That certain situation
begs a deeper understanding of its art, that’s why I’m honestly interested to have an activity
based on arts specifically in the cinema on the following weeks.

As of this year, I am aiming to read some ethical philosophy particularly, the Stoicism, which
deals with the concept of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive
emotions and judgement of things. I stumbled upon this philosophy just last year when I was
trying to find ways to cope with pain and stress at that time and as of now, I’m trying to read
the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius which is heavily influenced by Stoicism. It was not
supposedly published as a book, but it was originally a journal of a Roman Emperor named
Marcus Aurelius. The book is a compilation of his daily journal writings often full of
remarkable spiritual reflections and exercises to combat his daily struggles while he deals
with trying to understand himself despite of the many harmful nature in his surroundings.

Whenever I write something, whether a narrative, essay, report, or a reflection, I always

struggle between my ego and rationality, because most often I tend to challenge myself to
create a perfect output which just always lead in to failure and procrastination because of
the never-ending argument in my mind that “Less is More” and “the More, the Better”
mindset. When I involve myself in reading, the one key problem that I always had to struggle
with is the environment that I’m in while reading. My mind has this quirk habit of finding
an isolated and peaceful place so just I could start to understand better what I’m reading at.