I’ve been meeting so many inspiring people as of late. Yesterday I plopped down in a Starbucks to write, and it took a little while, but I caught a spark and it turned into flames as I wrote down a bunch of ideas hammering away at a new rhyme I intend to make into a song maybe. Writing rhymes is a really fun exercise for me. I found this artist called Philanthrope, their music is so goooood. Ugh I just wanna take a nap now. Strange. Maybe I Will.

I must admit that I’m still new this form of poetry where I don’t rhyme multiple words in each sentence together, I thought really that’s what all poets did, just rhymed words in “stanzas” 

the sentiment that coalaces is like the way water feels as it runs its way down the insides of your empty stomach. Soothing, Satisfying, Energizing, Thought Provoking,  but somehow as time runs its inevitable course, it still feels like it’s never enough, the soul hungers for more growth, more letters, more words, more text messages, more likes, more hugs, more connection, more music, more creativity, more friendship, more meditation, more harmony, more smiles, more metaphors, more similes, more analogies,  more more more! Then as you go through your growing process, you get thrown off, your soul starts hungering for less, less noise, less hate, less racism, less dissonance, less addiction, less conflict, less heartbreak, less gossip, less accidents, less tickets, less garbage, less bills, less lies, less less less.

It almost reminds me of a young hopeful mind versus an older cynical mind.

Finding balance seems to come natural to certain people who are really intuned with themselves and the earth it seems. Though what are we not seeing behind the scenes? Were these people we hear about, or even know in our lives born out of the womb a buddha statue? Probably not, probably took a lot of self discipline, and practice. At least that’s what my intuition is telling me. 

I’ve come to the library and sat down with the intention to write a piece of poetry that might move the people who will be listening to me since i have been asked to feature at this thing tomorrow. I really don’t even know what poetry really means or what it’s history is. Yet i call myself a poet. Do I deserve the right to call myself a poet? I don’t know. At this point though I’ve already believed that whatever i keep telling myself i am, i become. So even if I’m not a poet up to anyone else’s standards, I’m a poet thats continuing to grow my self. I guess that’s enough. 

Ever have those days where you wake up full of a feeling where you might be able to conquer anything thrown at you? I feel like that today. Sort of. I thought I woke up late today, to find a surprise that the time had changed and I actually woke up a bit earlier than expected. Had myself a nice little breakfast and met a lady named Karen. She made me my sandwich this morning. I didn’t get to know her too much past that, only that she said to come visit her again next Sunday morning. Hmm, maybe I will?

I listened to an amazing couple of videos, and well I’ve decided that, while I really want to help those around me seek some kind of new perspective, some kind of inspiration to create and move forward and be present, that I can only lead by example, or perhaps even vibrate towards others who are maybe just as passionate about something. Does this make sense? Perhaps certain individuals need to go through what they need to without the intervention of some outside force or source or whatever.

https://youtu.be/X6_O-zOFBFg

Joe Rogan slapped some perspective into my life this morning! 🤔

It has a strange way of inspiring you at times. Especially when you don’t fully understand the lesson that’s supposed to be learned from the experience that transpires. I read somewhere that the lesson will keep showing up until you grow from it or learn what your supposed to, something along those lines.

I met a friend recently, and although I surmise she is younger than me by a few years, she’s amazingly well put together. Career-wise and what have you. It’s very inspiring, though how ever long it may take me to reach some kind of security like her, I may not know. That’s when that sinking feeling returns. What am I doing by creating this “art”? Ultimately I aspire to inspire those around me, and if I could have changed one person’s perspective, or even to go as far as trajectory in life, just simply by being there, having said something that motivated change or even brought some fresh viewpoint back into an otherwise stagnant flow, if I could say a few things, make a few poems, and be the cataylst to even something small. I think I will be somewhat satisfied. But then stems the question, is that enough?

On a more realistic note, will that pay the bills? Lol. They say it’s never too late, but is that just an illusion?

More recently I think it was yesterday morning I listened to a motivational video and one of the speakers said, strive for greatness, so then is being satisfied with motivating just one person or inspiring change in one person enough? Or should I aim to motivate and inspire millions? Puzzles.

…

My uncle’s dog woke me up this morning. Its like 3:00 am. Well its 3:27 am now, now that I’m sitting down at Denny’s. I think this was like the universe telling me that I need to reprioritize my life. So here I am. Turns out that the seat I picked just so happens to have an outlet for my laptop too. Strange how in this whole restaurant I seemed to pick the seat that was right next to an outlet to juice my thirsty ass laptop on 18% battery. I ordered a big melt Philly cheese sandwich. Of course the first thing I choose to do is rant on WordPress. Somehow it’s just easier to drum up thoughts here. Maybe I should make this post private. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that the dog waking me up lead me here so that I could spend an hour or so just re-prioritizing my life again.

Lately, I’ve been getting this feeling that I’m taking too many things onto my plate again. I started making beats recently with Logic Pro X. I absolutely love it, I can get lost in it for hours on end. Though, if I really wanted to make beats and produce quality beats its going to take a lot of learning. which means less time to write!

Though lately, I haven’t been writing much anyway. Not, poetry, not anything really. I wrote a little in the memoir I’ve started, but even then they were more like journal entries, much like this one.

I went to a little writers gathering a couple Mondays ago. It was pretty refreshing to meet new creative faces who all have projects going, or projects that they want to start and things of that sort. I missed this Monday’s gathering. All the better because at the end of that gathering they actually ask participants to set some goals with their writing and well. I didn’t even come close to even starting the one I set. TERRRRRIBLE LMAO.

Here I am totally procrastinating on writing again by tricking myself. Deceiving myself into thinking that, though I’m not working on my writing project, that through writing this post that somehow I am still in the space of writing, so not all is lost. Haha. It’s just a shitty excuse to derail me from thinking about the writing project perhaps. O-O. Or maybe its just a form of wetting my brain with words so that it’s a bit easier to continue writing the story I intend to finish?

super slacking on writing right now. just picked up Logic Pro x and started fiddling with making some hip hop beats O_O.

Is it ok to just let the muse wander? I don’t think it matters I guess. Eventually it might. But at this stage in my writing I think it’s probably more important to just get those nagging thoughts out into spilled ink. Instead of marinating there in the mind like a rampant child throwing a tantrum breaking everything inside my brain. That wild child that knows only disruptive behaviors. That inner child who’s wishy washy. This lady said that to me once. “Your being wishy washy.” This really hurt. Why? Because she was fucking right. It always hurts the most when you know that it’s right. It set me straight though. I’m still wishy washy af, because I don’t think I’m used to sharing feelings and all that mess of hogwash. Because who the heck shares their feelings. 

Born with a stamp between my legs meant growing up in the 2000’s as a male with suppressed feminine energies. Testosterone was supposed to be the hottest trend. O_o. Now in 2019 they’re saying it’s ok to feel. Cry your eyes out. Its perfectly normal to have feelings if you’re a man. The fuck. I’m already programmed like a fucking robot on steroids from Terminator ready to destroy everything in sight thats soft and snuggly. (at least thats the mindset, I’m don’t look anything like a robot on steroids.) How the heck am I supposed to deprogram myself? Like normal shit that moves people to tears, I feel tears welling up in my heart, but nothing shows on the surface. I carry myself differently than how I feel a lot of the times. Or should I say project. I’m learning to listen to people more now, to really understand where they are coming from. What they’re struggles entail, what their experiences were like. I found myself in the past comparing it a lot to my own struggles and then the Ego inside of me saying, “pffft bro you trippin you aint seen shit yet, what the fuck you complaining about?” To, really understanding that, yo. Not everyone going through the same things. What they perceive as trouble or obstacles may not be the same as what you have gone through. Everyone’s obstacles are different. To be honest, theres some people who’s gone through some way more messed up stuff than what I’ve gone through. So it’s pretty important to understand that and to listen emphatically to whats going on in the conversations, coming to find out.  

It brings me back to the this saying once I think it went like, “we all playing the same game with the same devils, just different pains and on different levels.” Something like that I think. Deng I gotta find the quote again. 

Here I am staring at the blinking cursor desperate almost to put something worthy to the page. Something that won’t strain the eyes of potential readers. Substance. Where do we find this? Is it through the countless hours we spend as writers or as any type of artist making what we think is substantial to the current level of craftsmanship or penmanship that could be absolute trash to another person’s perspective because their level of mastery is much higher?

There is something that still consumes me, and that is what if my writing is not good enough to the public eye? Suppose that don’t matter much if you don’t have a giant following. To be frank I don’t even know if I even care about that. I mean I suppose it would be nice to be self sustaining through a passion or just artistry in general, but doesn’t that mean writing for a niche, marketing and branding, and pretty soon it’s not even about your material anymore but how your marketing it?

So in a sense it’s not even a passion anymore but a business. I see these peeps writing and promoting themselves saying they got a blog and how to make money off of it. That’s all their blog is about. Hmm.

Alright. So here we are. Sitting, well, standing at Starbucks. My new headquarters. Well. Old headquarters now, because I’ve been frequenting Starbucks way more often ever since the beginning of February this year. I can’t believe the year is almost over already! I think I’ve grown as a writer, though not as fast as I realistically wanted to grow? I definitely have been writing a lot more since the beginning of … I wanna say April? Wow, actually I’m not too sure when I dove into writing a lot more than I was. But these days it seems that writing is becoming more prevalent in my day to day routines. Self analysis is pretty key I found out because, through all the years of conditioning, it almost becomes autonomous the little habits that we are already used to doing. Breaking out of those habits can be a really tough thing. I don’t know why I started talking about this. Probably because I’ve ingrained the habit of always doing something with writing. Which is what I wanna do. I want to progress as a writer, I want to write with fancy prose (maybe) and I want to have a nice command of the language that I grew up around.

Funny thing. I never was an avid reader. It took extreme isolation for this to happen. I don’t know if extreme is even the word to use correctly. Though I can’t wait to be able to tell more about my whole experience in and out of the American Prison System. Then again, I don’t know that I want to revisit those memories. Maybe it’s still too fresh? It’s also the reason why I’m really desensitized to a lot of violence, and also desensitized to people’s feelings, and also heightened skepticism in people’s intentions. It took a really long time for me to come out of my shell this last stint. It was very damaging to the human psyche, at least this is my experience. I guess I wouldn’t have it any other way, because as I continue to grow and heal I can take away really good work ethic from my experience there. It was in that place when I spent 16 straight months in a tiny little cell, that I was able to really… find myself… I think… I read countless books which was a blessing because someone loved me enough to send me nearly 800$ worth of books. I read every little thing I could get my hands on, and wrote a lot. I mused, and mused, and wrote long ass letters to anyone I could get an address from. And when they didn’t respond I would write them another letter. It was my escape from that dejected place. It was my only solace, my only hope of really not going insane. Not feeling so depressed that I just wanted to sleep 18-20 hours a day. And that happened once in a while. It took a while to work up to not sleeping like a depressed cat.Though it still happened a lot until I came up with the epiphany that I should treat this cell like a personal concrete college. So bless my soul there was someone who loved me enough to send any book I requested for the time that I was there. I read a lot of novels, alot. of. novels. So what does prison do to a person? It turns you into a fucking soldier. You train every fucking day, like you’re about to go to war. I gained probably 50 pounds. I did nearly 700 burpees every week. Not including squats and whatever else it was in there. And why did I do this you might wonder? Because at any moment something can go wrong. And you need to be able to defend yourself. And its also kind of like, If you see a super buff person who trains like a UFC fighter every day, your probably less likely to start something with him. lol.

Now, I was no gangster, nor was I affiliated with any gangs or anything like that. I was just a normal person who got hemmed up for some drug charges because I sold illicit substances in the party scene. But I wasn’t a stranger to how gangsters live in prison. Thats for sure. Anyway, theres something about the place that makes you conform to a certain image. Oh yeah I remember why. Because in prison the system is majorly segregated by races, and this is just a guess, but the culture inside is run by the higher ups in really popular mafia’s or gang leaders. So, if something happens, say for example… your really dirty and don’t keep your bed area clean, you’ll get jumped and beat the fuck up. So you either shape up, or you get your ass fucking trampled and kicked out of the dorm, by the inmates. Let’s say for example, You’re wallowing in your own shit. You don’t care about what anyone thinks, and live like a homeless person on the streets, lets just say for example your so depressed about being there that you don’t shower, your bed area is a mess, and your just a “dirtbag” (thats the term they use in there for unkempt inmates) in general. So this is something I’ve seen before but, it’ll be something like, your going to the restroom to relieve yourself, and all of a sudden BAP you’ll get mauled by 4 inmates and it happens fast. You’ll get floored and they will beat the crap out of you until either you pass the fuck out, or the guards on patrol finally notice. Though, usually theres always another inmate or team of inmates on the look out for patrol. So they make sure the message gets sent across. 

For me I just didn’t want to get fucked with, so I kept clean, kept to myself, talked to the few inmates that I vibe with, and I just worked out like a fucking mad man, because if something were to happen at least it would be 95% less likely to have anything to do with me. Don’t get me wrong though, most inmates are just there to do their time, and most of the time I spent there was “smooth sailing” which means no prison riots really happened ‘cept for like 2. And most of the time any type of physically violent incidents only have to do with rival gang members and of that sort. But still, if a race riot happened, it literally includes everyone. So you had to “be on your toes” as the saying goes. 

Wow. I just realized something. It so much easier to write when your just writing from experiences you’ve had in the past. Writing fiction is hard as fuck. But I start talking about my traumatic experience and bam 1000 words down in 20 minutes. What in the fuck. lol. I think I’m getting better at this writing thing. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Thank you Universe. 

Ah. I could probably go on for hours about this topic. And maybe I should? Because my fingers are on fire right now. Should I just ride this wave and just get all the inspiration out there? I don’t really want to write about this experience anymore. Though it is super liberating. 

It fucking sucks, because this is a part of me that I keep hidden. I hide it because it shames the fuck out of me. Everytime I meet a new person, and want to make new friends, it inhibits the fuck out of me because, I never want to get that image I have in my head, where the people I meet, get that look on their faces like The Rock during his wrestling days. 

Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. It was in my past. And it is part of me, it is part of my history, I cant do anything to change that. But its not who I am anymore, and I’ve come to the realization that, I had to leave that fear behind. Its true what they say, what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. And my God. That whole experience made me hella fucking weak. But hella fucking strong at the same time. I think. Not 100% yet. 

It definitely was one hell of a roller coaster ride I’ll tell you what. 

You know what, one thing still scares me. Is that when people find out about my past they wont give me a chance. I think this is stemmed from all the jobs that refused to hire me after they find out I have a rapsheet. This has been the most debilitating thing, and its on going. Though I just believe that a chance will come my way though if I continue building good work ethic and tenacity to stick it out and hone my creative abilities.

Maybe I won’t make a lot of money, but maybe I’ll make enough to continue serving humanity in small portions and save a few lives from the same detrimental paths I’ve taken. Will that be enough ? After you’ve gone through so much pain, when you find a bit of solace, is it enough to just be? Is it enough to count your blessings, stay in a space of gratitude and be at peace with what you have already on this earth?

Often people don’t see what they truly have until you’ve been on the concrete starving without a pot to piss in. Because though we hear about all these kinds of extreme conditions, most of us haven’t lived it ourselves. So we don’t truly understand what we really take for granted.  And in a blink of an eye. Another 700 words. Yo, one day I’ll accrue the courage needed to walk without fear of being disowned by the new people that will inevitably come into my life. And it all starts now. I implore you to, if, you’ve stuck around long enough to read all of this, that you too may find strength in whatever venture you set out on. Have a beautiful week.