My artistic passion is video production, and I've only made one piece that truly fills me with pride. I've made a lot of objectively good videos, and a lot of popular videos with millions of views, but this video I'm sharing today has a special meaning to me. It's one of the only times I was able to share a message that matters to me, without diluting it to try to appeal to people. I talk briefly about how to overcome an anxiety attack by asking simple questions, a technique called grounding. My goal is to connect with people in a way that I can positively influence them. I know this goal sounds broad and unfocused, but I think that's the beauty of art. One video can have so many different meanings to someone, and it can influence them in so many ways. The video I'm sharing here was helpful for some simply because it reminded them that they are not alone. It was helpful for some to understand other people's mental health better. It was even just plain entertainment for others, with no emotional impact one way or another. As far as my lie and why I feel this way, it's been nothing short of a trainwreck. My very first memories are of losing my house to a fire, and that's led me down a path where happiness and positivity have been a challenge to find. My parents spent most of my life being angry at the world and directing a lot of that anger at my older brother and me. They taught me to be angry growing up. They taught me to fight with anyone and everyone when emotions flared. I want to escape that life and spread the opposite message.

My biggest goal in life is to help people take care of their health. Both physical and mental health. I see a hospital system in place where patients aren't connected to the resources they need to take care of themselves. Whether it's because those resources don't exist, or the business doesn't know how to connect people to the care they need, I want to be sure people are getting the help they need. I've been asked a lot about this goal and how I plan to pursue it, and unfortunately, I don't have those answers right now. I wish the problem was something as simple as saying, "Let's make healthcare free!" but the truth is I understand there are thousands of little nuances that go into it like figuring out where that funding comes from. I mean in a perfect world, I would create a free healthcare system for everyone, while simultaneously maintaining our current success in research and paying doctors well. I could hypothesize about how we could find ways to cut military spending and use that spending on healthcare, or how we could potentially run non-profit hospitals that thrive off donations and grants, but I don't know the logistics of it. As for the other question, what excites me most in this world? Cats. Cats are pretty cool, and I like the way they purr when you pet them.

Legacy to me has a few different meanings. I see legacy being something you leave behind. Work to be remembered by, and potentially work for the future generation to improve upon. In many ways, this is the only kind of legacy I would feel comfortable with. The other legacy I often think about it, is the legacy of leaving behind children who inherit your success, whether they can reproduce it or not. When I think about these kinds of legacies, it makes me feel so disappointed that someone can be born into success while others can work hard and be their best selves without ever receiving recognition for their work. On the opposite side, it also makes me disappointed that someone can be judged for a potentially negative legacy left behind by their parents. Personally, I grew up poor. I grew up really poor, and my family still to this day has nothing but anger issues and poor financial skills. When I spend time in my hometown, all anyone can ever see me as is the angry Manville kid even though I haven't spoken to the majority of people in my town. I'll walk around and people will refer to me as Guy's son or Andrew's brother, and they fail to see me as an individual. They have the preconceived notion that I'm just like my family when most days I want nothing to do with them. In my struggle to get away, I moved out of my parents' house at sixteen, and I started working full-time in Hayward. Work took over my life, and I was prioritizing making money over any kind of education because I needed to survive. My grades started to slip, but I was able to move to a new city and meet new people and start living a life where I could do things without being judged for my family's actions. I spent some time getting to know people, getting involved in my new community, and after a while, I started reading hundreds of self-help books so I could be a better version of myself. After a few years, I moved again to get away to a new city and try again. I found myself in San Diego, and I was working very hard, getting out every day, making friends, and for the first time in my life, I found other people were looking up to me and not down on me. Right now, I'm still trying to improve, and I'll probably move to a whole new place sometime soon again so I try again and keep inspiring new people. I'm pretty sure I've already broken the cycle, but only time will tell.

It's hard to sit here and think of something good to come out of the pandemic, and I only really have one positive thing to pull from it. Over the last sixteen months, I've been able to complete four semesters of college, and I never thought I'd be able to complete any college. I think if we didn't have the pandemic, I'd still be laboring away barely trying to scrape by, and having the ability to get away from work for a while has allowed me to pursue an education in a way I was never able to before.

I'm probably going to sound conceded, but I'm my own favorite artist. I create things that help me express myself and feel confident about my day-to-day activities. I know there are other talented artists and scientists out there, and they inspire me, but I've had more impact on my own life than they ever will.

Well, in short, it's because I'm missing a kidney and doctors have really let me down in my life. I don't think I'll ever be able to forget what it was like sitting in intensive care for four straight days hooked up to IVs and having a mix of doctors changing my fluids, and hospital administration trying to figure out how I was going to pay for everything. People were coming to bother me about money when I couldn't even get up to go to the bathroom. They were showing me payment plans, asking why I was uninsured, and I genuinely had no idea what to do. On my third day in the hospital, one of the nurses came to talk to me about my finances, and I explained to her I didn't have money. Definitely not for kidney failure. That nurse was the first person to try to show me other options to get insurance, like Medi-Cal. I know it might sound silly now that I'm fairly far into my adult life, but I really had no idea there was Medi-Cal out there for struggling people. I can only wonder how many other people don't know about it. When I think about the way the hospital system currently works, it's just beyond disappointing. In my current daily life, I do not know anyone with any kind of insurance or regular access to healthcare. I've watched the people around me choose to keep working through injuries and sickness because they can't afford time off or medical debt. I hate waking up every day and knowing the people in my life don't have access to basic healthcare just because they grew up without money. It drives me absolutely mad to watch them suffer from problems that we have the technology and medicine to solve. I want to get a medical education and a business education so I can bridge the gap between the needs of the healthcare industry, and the needs of a business to stay successful and profitable. I want to find a way to connect struggling patients to the resources that can help them through their situations, and if those resources don't exist, I want to play a founding role and making sure there is some kind of system available to help patients in need. I want to improve on systems we already have in place, to make them easier to access and more widely available to people in need. But most importantly, I just want people to stop suffering. That shit hurts my soul.