About Me

Hello, my name is Landry and I'll be your host / guide. I've learned and use media production as a vessel for education. I'm pretty much self taught in many things because it's the most empowering acts you could do for yourself and am constantly also seeking new things to learn. I'm a practitioner of a non arbitrary lifestyle meaning everything I do, I try and do with intention.

Now let me tell you a little bit about my life experiences, things which shaped me, and how I went off to the beat of my own drums, and eventually became involved in sustainability and it's practices.

ACT I

My family and I moved to the United States as did so many before us looking for a better life. Education was of course top priority because that could lead to more opportunities so my parents wanted me to focus on that. I remember my first day of school well because I was so reluctant as it was unfamiliar. They literally had to drag me into the school's office to sign me up. Turns out it was mostly a big hang out with new friends and luckily I naturally excelled in whatever was being taught. So it was a "win win".

My first hiccup was when I was around 11 years old. I remember I didn't do some task and got written up so my teacher spoke to my parents and we all tried to figure out what was going on. Basically I said something along the lines of if I wasn't up to it, I wouldn't do any work. Now I didn't realize this until retrospect many years later but this was one of the first defining moments where I could identify "me". I was an all or nothing kind of person and after I finished tasks, I felt such a sense of accomplishment and relief. It wasn't until many many years later when I began to ask more questions like "What is this for?" or "Who is this for?" that the glam began to wear off.

As I entered high school, it became clear that I was more of a science and math type rather than the liberal arts type when it came to academics at least. While officially I took those STEM type of classes, in my free time I did my own personal liberal arts. I was quite interested in people and other cultures. Funny enough I became less interested in academics once I learned there was more than academics.

I was also quite physically active so i participated in a few team sports activities during and after school hours. When I became a senior in high school, I wasn't chosen to be captain, to some people's surprise as they thought I would be for my dedication to stay. You see, my other classmates had dropped out to focus on their college applications or this was just an item on their application's "to do" list that was now "done". The person who was chosen was certainly the most improved and I couldn't argue with that. In a turn of events a year later I discovered they were cut because they were doing drugs (of the recreational kind not performance enhancing kind). Now this brought up the question what does it take to be a leader? I had no intention of being a leader at that point in time so I didn't think much of it. Fast forward to now, I do think this is such an important question to answer whether you are trying to be a leader or selecting one.

Before trying to lead anything, what was I going to study? I was already quite into computers since elementary school and I built my first DIY computer in high school so it kind of made sense I study something computer related in college. I started to learn some programming while in college (but not for college) and I was at the vanguard of whatever the internet technologies were. The whole world was learning something new at the same time which I found super exciting. I recall in a conversation with one of my college professors was that I essentially was an expert already and that I didn't need to be in that class. What he said next changed me which was he said to use my free time to try and help my fellow students. This was one of the first times where I was given the freedom to make a choice and where I had the power to help other people. I did help a lot of people (in and out of college) for many years in a variety of ways because I could. Another professor gave us students a choice of how we wanted to proceed with the class. One of which was to opt out of all class attendance and quizzes and let it all ride in one final exam. Naturally I took that route because it was the most efficient and I applaud him for giving us that option. It was a lesson that life need not be so structured and linear. To this day I value freedom and opportunity a lot.

Even though the things I was working on were technical, they still involved problem solving so I still classified myself as a creative. In high school I got exposed to photography and loved it so I continued hanging out with the more artsy folk in college. Keeping up with my love of diverse environments, I also enjoyed hanging out with the international students.

After my college experience ended, I worked on some passion projects revolving around community building and commerce/importing. I started looking for work and got hired at a corporate branding and identify firm as they liked what they saw in my projects. I was a QA manager, ran the company website, and worked on other client websites. Eventually when the tech boom ended, I was laid off and it was clear upper management didn't know my value where as all my teammates did. Nobody was actually sad for me as they felt I'd find better opportunities elsewhere. I began to question how are people as a commodity? I made a decision that was first and last 9-5pm job so I went full time freelance. Nobody was going to value my worth as well I could myself.

With new found time and money, I decided it was time to learn how to live healthier. I had ulcers while in college from the stress and although by this time I was already past that, it was still a strong memory how uncomfortable it was. During my younger years I had roller coaster rides with my health and wasn't good at managing my energy well. They say food is medicine so I decided the best place to start was learning about ingredients and cooking. It was time I leveled up.

ACT II

When I was younger, I was never that serious about learning and sports, but I did recognize there should be systems in place if you want do anything. This is where I had the idea of having different states of mind, which I call tracks, came into being. Sometimes I felt I wanted to do "well" which meant I'd have to be aggressive about things and this eventually became the "performance" track. Other times I had limitations like money or time so I had to do things more frugally so the "efficiency" track was invented. As far as sustainability goes, it is the merging of both tracks. If I wanted to take care of my health in a way which was longer lasting, I had to practice things which had the most impact while minimizing my efforts.

Through a lot of trial and error and research, I eventually learned my way around the kitchen and took control of my health. I became more aware of how processes work so reduced my stress levels effectively slowing my aging. Once again I was trying to buy myself a little more time.

My tech journey was about to end as I decided to transition into content creation as it is a good vessel for teaching and connecting. Initially I did a lot of editing but learned adjacent related skills in camera work, lighting, sound, and editing. 

ACT III

If you're reading this, this is actually the beginning of Act III. It's where I start expanding and sharing my knowledge in hopes that people can accelerate their own journeys.