What is my passion?

The above photo is one of my favorite pictures.  It was taken circa 2014 in a dressing room that had floor-to-ceiling mirrors on two walls.  The end result had seven images of me, seemingly, from different angles.  Which of these sides is the real me?  Is one more important or more representative than the other?  

This is exactly how I feel about choosing which one of my interests is closest to my heart.  It is not either one of my passions alone--multimedia/documentary filmmaking and scientific research--but the aggregate of these interests that defines me as a whole person.   I am an amalgam of diverse raw materials; I am a remix, familiar samples of melody in a never-before-heard composition.  I am very fortunate to have had the opportunity to engage in a number of ventures.  Not everyone is afforded a chance to do martial arts, pursue their scientific innovation, participate in the Girl Scouts program, perform in a theatre play, or make documentary films.  [On that, here is my advice to younger kid: take every opportunity you can get.  Every!  Try it out, taste it.  You will learn something from it, it'll point you in a direction you never considered before. The little lessons you learn along the way will come back later on, guiding you, quietly.  With over a decade gone since some my adventures, I am continuously amazed to see how vignettes of these experiences keep influencing me all these years later.]

Before I link my historical documentary short films, I would like to link a few of my writing pieces (essays).  All of my film projects start with the script, and I could not make any film projects without the love of writing.  You can read a few of my personal essays here.  

With that said, documentary filmmaking and science have had the most indelible impact on me.  To an outsider, it may seem that this is a rather odd combination, but I find that my two interests complement each other beautifully.  

On one hand, I cannot imagine living without curiosity, without chasing research: I could never not investigate an outlier, I could never stop asking what created the phenomenon.  I cannot see myself not wanting to discover what is responsible for the amyloid protein tangling associated with Alzheimer's Disease, the cruel disease that took my grandmother and left my mother with the evil genetic variant.  I will never stop wanting to have the answers.  But it is this same desire that makes me want to document life.  I want to memorialize it for others, I want to enlighten and enliven others.  I want to learn from our past mistakes and I want us to be able to learn from our history as well.   [You can find my historical documentary short-films uploaded here.]

I firmly believe that science without humanities can have the propensity to lead us to a mad world [atomic bombs? biological agents? Artificial Intelligence gone rogue?].  No matter what job we have, no matter what sector we work in, humanities are the interstitial glue that holds our Earthbound life together.

I know that I will continue to dive deeper and deeper into neuroscience.  Finding a way to heal people is a mission that's personal to me.   I hope that I will have the opportunity to devote time to my other passion, documentary filmmaking, as well.  I may not be able to work on as many projects as I would like to, but I'll take the opportunities that I can get.