I’m in the process of organizing my life and figuring out a timeline for my goals. Now this mainly is in relation to my fitness level and my plans for grad school. I hit my main fitness goals in terms of just becoming healthier and active, but now I’m trying to actually be a fit badass. And as for graduate school, I keep eyeing the SCAD Hong-Kong campus that is set to open Fall 2010.

But when I try to think of design goals, it become a little less clear what I can do. There are no quantitative results. I can’t say, “I want to be able to press a 24kg” in design. Creative genius comes from something inside that can’t be captured in tangible results. So how is it that I hit goals in my design, especially when I want to become a famous designer?

I could tell myself to do a new website layout once a month. Or, do three full drawings a week. Make 1 poster a week.

But does practice really inspire creative genius? I may get better technical skills, but will I really become better at concepting? I’ve learned this about myself – my talents are strongest in seeing an idea and improving upon it, making it practical and rational. I am not as good with coming up ideas completely unprovoked. So, will my creativity grow through immersion of myself into design (even moreso)? I am not sure how much more I can do in that regard. Or is it that I am too logical, and that it hinders my creativity? But some of the most creative people of our past were being logical, too – Newton, Einstein, Descartes. So hopefully this is not my problem.

Design is how I view the world. Before a woman, before a libertarian, before a Platonic-Taoist-Buddhist, before a Libra, before a goober, and even before a human, the way I see things is through design. I recognize every color and every shape and how they interact with each other. I comment on everything that has aesthetics and why these objects hold such properties. I think in fonts and images. I imagine stories without words but just pictures. I take note of signs and posters before the rest of the surroundings. My emotions get tied to design, eliciting a growl every time I see Comic Sans or Papyrus misused. Is this not enough immersion?

I just wonder what it takes to make an impact on the design world. I think the only thing I can do is present logic into the field to bring a balance between something innovative and creative but also marketable and practical.

All this aside, I come to remember my situation when I told people from high school what I was majoring in – they could not believe the valedictorian wasn’t a doctor, or physicist, or something extraordinary like that.

But really, if you know me, you know I’m doing what I am supposed to be. That’s all I can ask for, that I figured it out the first time, and it still makes me happy.

Hermann Zapf, one of my favorite geeky typographers