Middle Child is a monthly newsletter about the perennial state of being in between things. I have an older brother and a younger sister, but it’s not just about that. I am talking about being in between big life decisions, ideas of home, and versions of self. I am mixed-race, in between Filipino, white Eastern European, and Jewish. I am an introvert and an extrovert. When I shop for clothes, I stroll through both the men’s and women’s sections. I live between time zones – in Brooklyn and Honolulu. I am between jobs – working a New York corporate gig as a design director, and serving fresh pasta at an Italian food truck in Waikiki. I was a double-major in college because I just couldn’t pick one, and my favorite doll growing up was baby Gonzo the muppet. Gonzo. The most in-between, awkward, mishmash muppet of them all.
I think we are all middle children in some way. We feel pressure to settle in this space or that, but so many of us inhabit both spaces. And neither. In an episode of the podcast On Being, guest Angel Kyoto Williams says, “For us to be transformed as individuals, we have to allow for the incompleteness of any of our truths.... And that is really what is most challenging for us, because we want to be known to ourselves. We want to be known to others. But the moment we try to do that, we’re actually fixating in a way that traps us.” I think this is good advice for anyone looking to grow. This newsletter ventures into that space of “incompleteness” – the experience of “the middle child” — through personal stories, philosophical pondering, and an indulgence in pop-culture references (see muppet comment, above).
I also attempt to lend some visual language to these ideas. Like that banner image up there. I am a designer. Currently, I am the Head of Product Design at Bloomberg News and the Creative Director of one of Bloomberg’s video networks. I taught at The Rhode Island School of Design, where I also attended graduate school. One reason I chose design as a career is because I believed that through it, I could dabble in a variety of disciplines instead of having to choose just one (lol). But I also chose design because I am a visual thinker. I tend to imagine abstract concepts as graphic compositions, spatial arrangements, and interacting scales. I think visualizing these concepts will come in handy. Or at least, I think it’s fun.
