Welcome back to REVIZE! Today I had a journal session where I’m sort of running a life audit. Essentially, it’s a way for me to track my progress on various factors in my life on a quarterly basis. Those factors include personal, health, financial, and career. I’m not sharing all of it but there’s a couple points I am willing to share. Anyways, I’m diverging away from the usual content that I post so I hope that y’all like these “slice of life” entries. It’s also another way for me to post photos that necessarily don’t have enough volume to hold on its own in segments like MACHINE CHECK or SNAPSHOT. I’ll throw it in here in a hodgepodge fashion.

To sum Quarter 3 (Q3 for short), I felt like this tiny lil’ dog in the huge world full of chaos. The everyday external factors like atrocities in Gaza, American politics, financial & job insecurity, and inflation just make me feel small. To add on top of that, the anxieties I face everyday of whether or not I’m doing as good my peers or neighbors, the pressure of being a man who needs to provide for his wife and pets, and the constant teeter-totter of switching between work & play. I’m trying to stay afloat – it seems everyone is.

In April, I left a good paying job because I was suffering mentally. I’m very thankful to be in a position where I didn’t have to worry much about money. We had money in the savings, I was applying to jobs, and my wife was basically my sugar momma. On the unfortunate side of it though, I left that job without having anything lined up. That’s when the stress really came in. 1st month in, I applied to several jobs – nothing. 2nd month in, still applying to jobs, updating my resume, and 2 interviews. 3rd month in, even more job applications, even more updates to my resume, cutting into our savings, and FINALLY a lead on a seasonal job and a on-call retail job.

You’re probably thinking: oh that’s fortunate. He found a full-time job and a small side-gig, that should make up for cutting into the savings. He’s fine!

Not really… To add onto the financial and job struggles, I had developed a debilitating health issue. From mid-June to mid-August, I had episodes of vertigo that would put an end to my day. The first on-set symptom would be tinnitus in my right ear. 30 minutes later, the room would start spinning counter-clockwise. After 10-20 minutes of tolerating the spinning and sitting down on the couch, a sense of nausea would appear and before you know it, vomit.

With the major switch from doing mechanic-work to essentially nothing other than spending majority of my day behind a computer screen surfing Indeed, LinkedIn, and Google, my physical activity dropped tremendously. Again, the pressure to find stable income was mentally taxing. In my research as a Kinesiology undergrad student, the recipe of little to no physical inactivity combined with increased screen time would have a correlation to decreased overall well being and increased stress & anxiety.

After countless visits to the doctor, urgent care, and a few specialists, we were able to rule out the cause of my vertigo. It would be my diet and my stress. I’ve made adjustments in intake of caffeine, sugar, and sodium. In the last half of Q3, I’m relieved to share that I haven’t had symptoms of vertigo. Furthermore, I’ve focused on my hobbies to get a sense of therapy and to mitigate the stress and anxiety.

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With the amount of free time on my hands, I knew it was important to spend time with my wife. I was able to take her out on more dates and spend quality time with her. One weekend, I brought her to Stanley’s Marketplace because there was a vintage/thrift pop-up. I wanted to take her shopping for her birthday and ironically enough, there was a car meet going on so even I got a surprise that day.

It’s totally unexpected for me to see JDM cars at Stanley’s. For 5 cars to show up that day was a rare occurrence. I later discovered that Tintz was hosting a Cars and Coffee (Instagram). Sitting on a set of Volk TE37 Saga S-Plus in Diamond Black was this 11th Generation Honda Civic Type R in Rallye Red.

Behind the FL5 was this Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution in really good shape.

In front of both the FL5 and the EVO was this Nissan Skyline GT-R (R35). Similar to the FL5, this R35 was sitting on a set of Volk TE37 Sagas in a Matte Blue Gunmetal colorway.

On the opposite side, there was a mobile car wash session going on. To my surprise, it was a RHD kouki Nissan Silvia (S14) looking immaculate on a set of Work Emotion T7R’s.

After drying up in the summer heat, it made a hot exit away from Stanley’s Marketplace with yet another JDM car.

If that wasn’t enough heat for you in the Stanley’s parking lot, this kitted Nissan Skyline (R33) tagged along with the kouki S14 to make an even greater exit…

If you look closely, that’s 4 necks broken by this R33 stunting on SSR Professor TF1 wheels.

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Now that I have more free time to enjoy life and reflect, these 3 months alone in Q3 entailed tons of growth. If anything I received a lot more clarity on what life should be about. Yet the anxiety that still remains today is the same anxiety that existed when I graduated high school a decade ago: what do I want to do for the rest of my life?

That’s enough talk about my existential dread I promise! I’ve been consuming a lot of hip-hop during my time off of work and J. Cole has been influencing me in his real homie talk and storytelling. That explains my eagerness to share a bit of my life… If you’ve been following hip-hop this year alone, you can sum it up to there being a hip-hop renaissance. With releases from Amine, JID, Chance the Rapper, and Tyler, the Creator, I’m positive that hip-hop fans around the world are hyped.

Aside from music, the 2 main things that have been keeping me happy are photography and cars. In this quarter alone, I’ve taken pictures for 3 SNAPSHOTS and 1 EVENT. In the same time frame, I’m meeting more enthusiasts and am becoming more involved in my community. My hope is that by continuing to photograph cars, a byproduct would be expansion of my inner circle. I’ve been so comfortable in my introverted ways that I’ve been neglecting human connection. Cars are the glue for me and I need to constantly remind myself that the person behind the car is even more important.

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I was walking my dog at a local park while I was scouting a location for a potential car meet. As I was walking around, this old Ford Fairlane sedan caught my eye.

At the time of writing this, it’s peak season for fall colors. Me and wifey are fortunate to have had a weekday off together so I took us up Guanella Pass. It was a bucket list item for me to take photos of my car in the mountains. It was a bonus to have the leaves in the back to be yellow to depict the fall season.

The intention behind these photos was to imagine I was in Photo Mode on Forza Motorsport or Gran Turismo hence the dynamic angles sporadically appearing below.

If you zoom closely, you can see my wife “chucking up the deuces” (or throwing up the peace sign) like Chris Brown. Look even closer and you can see a scary, handsome face of our husky, Chapo.

There’s that car video game angle I was talking about. Oh, so sick.

If you’re ever in Denver, I suggest taking the ~1 hr 30 min drive out and coming up here. Guanella Pass isn’t open year round so be sure to catch the views whenever you can. This is the exact spot where we pulled off to capture this magic.

The first half of the incline on Guanella Pass was already worth it because of this view. I’ll speak more on that later.

I love how this photo came out. It was the runner up to be the feature photo/cover photo of this blog entry.

Everytime I think I want to commit to converting the FA5 to an FD2, I see pictures like this and think otherwise. This is my dilemma: my paint sucks and I’m going to have to paint the whole car anyways. Do I just repaint the car? But my front fenders are cooked from the previous owner? I might as well just convert it to an FD2 front right? Ugh, regardless I’m just going to enjoy my car in this dormant phase.

The second half of the climb up Guanella Pass was absent of fall leaves on the trees. It’s all green and the roads are windy with a slightly steeper incline. Eventually you end up 11,000 feet in elevation with views of 14’ers – Colorado’s famous 14,000 feet mountain peaks. I was stoked to do the drive, don’t get me wrong. I just wasn’t expecting the landscape to simulate a map from Halo 3…

A week has passed since we had a small trip to the mountains and I still had a scratch to itch. I wanted to meet more car enthusiasts and capture more cars before winter came. I had 2 events on my schedule. First was a “Kyusha JDM Meet” at a local coffee/bakery shop. The second one was a Lexus meet. Since my wife owns a Lexus, I joined the Club Lexus of Colorado group on Facebook. Well, I go to the Kyusha JDM Meet fashionably late and there were only 2 other cars there: a daily driven Mitsubishi EVO 8/9 and a recently imported Nissan Avenir. We didn’t stick around for long so we all parted ways after a short exchange of names and descriptions of our cars.

I had that second meet in mind which had a greater turnout. In the sea of well-maintained Lexus’ there was this outlying RHD Toyota Celsior (UCF21). Before I get into detail with that, I talked with a couple more enthusiasts. We started at a ground-level parking lot before we moved to the top of a parking structure for a group photo. Eventually I had the pleasure of speaking with Jared, owner of this VIP Celsior.

Here’s a quick rundown:

He bought this 1998 Toyota Celsior in August of 2023. Slowly but surely he’s been modifying it to achieve a period-correct VIP build. To achieve that, he upgraded the front and rear control arms, installed AirLift 3P air bag management, relipped the Locksmice Duke wheels, added a front lip, and finalized the interior with VIP table/trays & laced seat covers. He states that this stage is “V2” and is currently planning “V3” with a major exterior upgrade.

The most unique part of the Celsior to me is the OEM paint: Atlantis Metallic Blue. It wasn’t until Jared pointed it out to me that majority of the UCF21’s you see are in black or white.

It was a pleasure talking with Jared and getting to know more about his whip. Just as the rest of the Lexus guys were leaving, I asked Jared if I could take a picture of him posing with his whip. It was icing on the cake to end our exchange with this photo. After that, he dipped and I left that meet in my Honda posing as a Lexus…

That’s all for now. Q3 of 2025 is coming to an end, yet there is still much more to achieve in Q4. I hope you enjoyed this read and you can all relate. It’s easy to feel alone in this day and age where we have our phones on us 24/7 but don’t interact personally with those around us. I’m fortunate there’s a select few people in my life that I can text and catch up with so I hope you have that sense of security also. If it’s not that, maybe you have a North Star you can look at. For me, it’s cars, car culture, driving, and capturing those moments with my camera.

Thanks for sticking with me and I’ll catch y’all next time. JVZY out!