On Preparing for Christmas Eve

Christmas is just around the corner, and so is Christmas Eve.

I've been preparing for Christmas Eve, on Nochebuena in Spanish, all year. It's kind of my favorite day of Christmas. Most of the time, we celebrate my paternal grandmother's birthday on Christmas Eve whenever she visits Chicago from Mexico.

This year, she isn't going to visit since she spent the whole summer through October in Chicago. But, I saw that my tía Coco decorated the corner of her living room for the holiday season.

I have a mostly positive life experience with Christmas Eve. I even made an experimental documentary film about one Christmas Eve in 2016. Then last year, I wrote a poetry minizine that sums up my experience with the day before Christmas, or the night of it. I decided to make copies of it to pass around.

I can't wait for Nochebuena. I've waited all year for it. Happy holidays, folks, wherever you may be!

Appreciation for Bath & Body Works

Over the weekend before Thanksgiving, I went on a mother-daughter-son trip to the Orland Square mall. One of the stops was of course Bath & Body Works.

A space mostly for soaps, fragrances, and candles, Bath & Body Works is one of my comfort shops. I don't know the limit when it comes to my sensory intake of smell as an autistic person, but I enjoy smelling the candles.

The accessories for the shop are genius. Here's an example:

The photo is rotated, I know.

Anyway, if you haven't been to Bath & Body Works, the holiday season, or any season, is your chance to go see the items and experience the unique atmosphere. It's not a retailer, but it's a different experience.

The Dreams I Had About High School That Was Different From My Former High School

I want to share with you guys the recurring dreams I have about my former high school, or the distorted version of my former high school.

To give a quick backstory, the high school I went to, and graduated from, was Back of the Yards College Preparatory High School, or BOYCP. I graduated from the school in 2017. I had a rocky freshman year, but things slowly improved from sophomore year; senior year was not only the most crucial year for me, but it was also the best year of high school for me.

The dreams began to happen during my final semesters in college. I do recall seeing the hallway of the third floor of BOYCP, but something told me that the school I knew and adored had been morphed into my dreams; and it felt too good to be true.

At first I didn't mind how distorted BOYCP was in my dreams, but overtime, I just wished my dreams could make an exact, and correct, replica of my former high school. What's worse about those dreams was that none of the people in it were fascinating. I did see my favorite people from high school, like Omar, in those dreams, but they were infrequent.

Nowadays, the distorted high school began to infuse my past academic experiences, from middle school, into the dreams. God, it's been awhile since I looked at my high school yearbooks.

Before I end this post, I want to share an old mirror selfie I took at a classroom at the art wing. I was a senior when I took the photo. I remember hanging out at that classroom everyday with my favorite teacher, Mr. Nagle. Here you go...

One more thing: always remember the place you hold dear to your heart.

So It Started Snowing in Chicago...

On November 20th, snow began to fall in my hometown of Chicago. Specifically when night began. I saw through the window in front, it was rather wonderful AND calming.

I woke up in the morning of November 21st, seeing that the snowing had continued. Here's how it looked like:

I think 3 inches of snow occurred. I think.

Anyway, I know for sure it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. I turned on the wax warmer lamp, carried the CD boombox to turn on the radio, and made the living room holiday central for myself despite the fall/Thanksgiving decor. I highly recommend doing this activity. It truly romanticizes Christmas during November.

My Thoughts on the Targetcore Aesthetic

Target is one of those retail stores we, and I, can't get enough of. That's common knowledge. If that's new knowledge to some of you, there you have it.

I have a mostly positive reception for Target. It has been my comfort retailer since the Kmart near me shut down a long time ago. The store feels like a wonderland to me.

Lately, Target has become an aesthetic. With the bullseye logo, and mascot, the center of how the stores sell products, the franchise has become its own identity with Targetcore goodness.

In my opinion, I find Target influential, as well as inspirational, for shoppers across the board. When it came to the holidays. Honey, I go to their site or app to do some online window shopping.

I find inspiration from Target much so that I made a collage on Shuffles by Pinterest.

Almost all the cutouts were from the screenshots I took from the Target app.

So yeah, I embrace the Targetcore aesthetic.

KUWC Now Has Substack!

EDIT: I created a separate newsletter for Keeping Up With Cristobal, so my username for my profile is @cristobalmartinez, while the site for Keeping Up With Cristobal newsletters will have a separate subdomain on Substack. Find the KUWC site here.

To my KUWC fans,

It's me, Cristobal Martinez. I know I said that this blog started as a current newsletter for my therapist, but I can now share my creative thoughts with ALL of you thanks to Substack!

Now, you can subscribe to my Keeping Up With Cristobal newsletters with this link. My username is @keepingupwithcristobal, since my name appears as a publication name.

I'll still write for this blog, and on Medium (if I have the urge), while speak my thoughts on Swell. As for the "newsletters" to my therapist, I'll have to give it a new name: Cristobal's Water-cooler. It's basically me giving personal updates to my therapist.

I hope you'll join me on Substack! I'll be happy to live inside your inbox whenever you check your email.

Imaginary Friends Are Easy to Interact With

What is the purpose of having imaginary friends? Coming from someone who has an overactive imagination that has issues with actual people, I'd say they are beneficial for many creative outlets. Even if I have executive function, I would create something different inspired by an imaginary friend or two.

However, I didn't start my creative journey with that in my mind, in the past. Throughout my life, I was a perfectionist. I still am. I struggle with perfecting everything and I usually blame it on Happy Gonzales, my imaginary friend. But not anymore. At first, she was quite a handful, given that she was a cartoonish version of the little girl who once bit my finger too hard when I was a little kid.

I didn't get along with Happy throughout my youth, and my early 20s. But, as I am currently in my mid-20s, I knew she had potential in being part of my creative works. I evolved her into a Plotagon character for my animated web series, Dr. Camay's Slice of Life. Here's her in the first episode.

I since used the Plotagon character version of Happy for an episode of my podcast, The Cristobal Martinez Podcast, and, as part of my hobbies, flipnotes.

Here are two collage photos that feature Happy Gonzales, in which I made with Shuffles by Pinterest:

The latter image is my favorite of her appearance.