Personas

Most of my life, I’ve always seen myself in other personas. I’ve always come up with a nickname to escape my personal identity. I never liked that person. I associated too much pain in that person. I always wanted to escape reality as much as I could. Whether it was through video games, rave names, dj names, aol instant messenger, Instagram handles, whatever have you, and in a sense I still do. It’s completely ingrained into me. Mostly out of a space of fear initially right, because for some or maybe even a fair portion of us, we just want to be someone else or something else.

Because, why should I have to own the name that wasn’t even mine to choose, why should I, like the name my parents chose for me, when they weren’t even present for my childhood or most of it, anyway? Even today right now, though already I’ve accepted my name, and it took a whole 3 decades to do so, I still don’t really use my given name. But that’s besides the point, maybe some of you agree?

Personas have been a powerful thing for me, it was a form of medium for vision. For character building. Before I became a DJ I already said in my mind I was, I even went as far as printing out business cards that said I was a DJ on it and passing them out even though I had no idea how to DJ. But it totally manifested into reality in my life.

I use this now in my current days I create a title for myself, I call myself a writer but what do I really know about writing? Perhaps slim to none, but as I call myself that, I begin to see it and I begin to believe it, and as I’m going through the process it starts to become solidified into the essence of my being. It starts to flower into my intuition and creative space. I start to manifest the creative people working in the same sphere. There’s probably books written about this method, and explained in great detail.

I’m not learned in the mechanics of how or why creating a persona works for me, but through actual experience this has been true for me. Maybe this could work for you as well? Who do you see yourself as?

Dissonance

Where does one find inspiration to write? Is it in the books that we read? Is it meeting a homeless person on the street and caring enough to even say hi, how you doing, getting to know them, giving them more than 1$, giving them a full meal and having a heart felt conversation?

Does one find inspiration from the dissonance that happens in a persons life and then write about that? Do you have a fight or an argument with someone and then write down all your frustrations and anger and release all the thoughts of fear onto a medium? Is when you sit there and try hard to write something that has a bit a prose, digging deep into the thesaurus or dictionary, and referencing favorite authors to dig deeper into the creative writing space using parts of your brain you don’t normally use to get through the mundane workings of “normal” everyday life?

Finding your voice is definitely an every changing puzzle. Its like once you complete certain little puzzles, the puzzle gets bigger and more convoluted. There is always room for improvement especially when your first starting out it seems. “A friend once told me, your never gonna be at where you want to be, but you gotta remind yourself, you aren’t where you used to be. So give yourself credit once in a while.” I actually agree with this, and I feel it is an important process, even though it may feel like conceited or coming from a space of ego, but it really isn’t in my opinion, its more like congratulating yourself because you made it this far. Its more like a private victory that you share with your self because your going through the motions. Its more like you got up, you faced your anxiety, your fear, your loneliness, your depression, your whatever the fuck it is, call it the EGO, call it the FEAR BASED BEING that has shaped you for the past how many ever years. BUT hey! Your here, your reading this, your writing, your acting, your singing, your gaming, or doing whatever it is thats allowing you to grow. OR maybe you’re not. BUT your still alive, which means you STILL have a chance, you still can cut those old circles of friends off that isn’t growing you, and if you don’t have many friends, well you CAN, face your fears and get out of that comfort zone and go learn how, (or you can friend me, I’m always looking for new growth buddies lol.) you CAN quit that nasty cigarette habit, by replacing it with some new habits.

Thing is, I don’t even know what I’m doing with this blog, and probably neither will all of humanity when they first start things. BUT I do feel a pull, and eventually you’ll get that one person that acknowledges what you’re doing, and gives you dabs. Like for example, I totally randomly found this person named Anh’s blog and it HELLA inspired me to write because her prose was so on point yanno? So I left a comment and I started following her. And you know what, SHE READ SOME OF MY POSTS, and sent me a COMMENT, a RESPONSE, and I was ABSOLUTELY baffled. I couldn’t even believe what I was reading, it was an actual comment from an actual person with real feelings and a voice and she stepped out of her zone to say something about. My writing. I mean WHAT?

Anyway, I guess just keep pushing, in a nut shell, is what I’m trying to say. I think its a lot easier for me to just say fuck it and post whatever it is thats on my mind on this blogging site, because in all reality only like 2 people I know in real life, know about this blog. I feel like I can just be myself here. Where as in real life my ego feels like it needs to protect who I was in the past so these people around me don’t judge me. I’m slowly getting over that way of thinking, because to be honest, someone once told me while I was locked up, “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

I just googled that quote and apparently its from Dr. Seuss lol. Have a blessed day y’all.

For the sake of mastery.

Ever get intimidated by just the thought of writing something just for the sake of writing? I most certainly do. Especially when it’s for an online medium right? Because wow people might read this! Actual people? I dunno maybe. And then I struggle with the fact that people may not even read it.

Then my ego steps in and pretty soon you don’t write anything at all! Because my Ego says, “yo your writing can’t compare to all these people who’ve been doing it for years.” “Yo no one’s gonna read your entries, you won’t even matter to the billions of people who are already following those who inspire them.”

Eh I guess that used to my old mindset, not that I don’t revisit that same old mindset every once in a while. It’s just been so ingrained into my way of thinking, I think I’m still in the process of unlearning old ways of thinking and building on a new process of how I tackle daily life.

My ego gets fed though because I add these little tags to my wordpress post and random strangers who are building blogs or want to generate more traffic to their sites give me a sense of… well people digging the stuff that I’ve been writing about. It gives me a sense of validation in this world. My ego is fed just enough for me to keep posting.

But these days I tend to just not care about that aspect too much anymore, I just want to post consistently so that I can grow my self as a writer. Then maybe eventually I can post something worthwhile? At least to myself right, because every writer who spends a lengthy amount of time coming up with words to paint a picture on a page is probably proud of their own progress at some point. At some point you go, ” Wait wow, did I just write that? I actually sound a bit intelligent.” So your ego strokes your brains dopamine or seratonin or whatever happens that triggers some kind of pleasure zone in your brain, and your like dude let me re-read that again, and again, and again.

You start to want to share this with anyone who will even listen or read your most private most vulnerable thoughts, in high hopes you will get some sort of feed back, that in some way your writings, your musings, will inspire someone, or provoke some kind of feelings out of them.

I actually didn’t fully realize that there could be a passion in writing for me. It wasn’t until one of my good friends was going through a really tough battle with heroin and reached out to me, that for the first time writing became a viable passion for me.

My good friend was on a kick from one of the worst substances to get addicted to, and he came to me for help. I really didn’t know what to do, but I know I really wanted to help him out of the situation, so in a desperate attempt to help him out I hit up a friend of mine who was from the Bay Area and drove out to Concord near San Francisco, he offered us a spot to chill for a couple weeks!

We drove north to his house up in Hoopa Valley 5 hours north of San Francisco, my friend and I named that place the mountain of truth. There we ate packets of ramen noodles and baked potatoes for 2 weeks and created. After that day I also got into writing… I’ll finish this in another post.

Muse

The inner muse is hard to describe, it’s a growing process much like planting a seed inside your heart and mind and watering it with consistent thoughts of creative growth. Probably the most important part of that process is actualizing it on a medium where you can get your creative process recorded.

Perhaps that is actually what I intend for this “blog” of mine. To enter a space where I can feel comfortable sharing my inner most thoughts and at the same time increasing the depth of which I can write to fully express deeper sentiments. To find my voice in this busy world I suppose.

I say I am a writer, and a budding one at that, but most days I am conflicted on my prose and literary concepts? I always feel like my writing isn’t up to par enough with the writers around me, and that in itself is just a self limiting belief. Truly just getting out of the comfort zone and putting words on a page every day would be enough to form and sculpt my writing skills I guess.

Wiped out

So today is a long awaited day off! Time to be a bit lazy I guess. I’ve been super active physically and I think I’ve reached my limit! My body went kaput today. Luckily it was my day off because I literally way overslept.

I feel like a straight bum. I got invited to a Spanish themed event tonight in Pasadena. I think I will go. With the intention of listening to great music and to meet at least 5 people and start a conversation.

I want to hone my people skills! Though it sorta becomes a chore after a while. What’s really cool though is you never know who you might meet without opening yourself up. Like for example, I was at a bar in San Diego county, my friend Brandon invited me to go with him when I went down to Carlsbad to visit him a while back.

And if I hadn’t went to that bar, I would have never met someone who I totally vibed with! Out of the whole bar I bet we were the only ones who could talk in depth about anime!

Here’s the thing though, at first I totally got rejected! I walked up to a group of women and tried to start a conversation, and they were being totally, what’s the word? Stuck up? No… something along the lines of giving me the cold shoulder. I think I said something like “yo that’s a sick hat” or something and the leader of the pack came up and shooed me away saying they were having a ladies night or something.

So I said “ok obviously not interested in a conversation!” I turned to leave and before I left they shoved one of their lady friends in front of me and we started chatting away. We’re still friends today, albeit we don’t speak much often. But it brings me back to my point, you never know who you might meet! Gotta put yourself out there I guess.

Sometimes though I get struck with this feeling of dread almost, like I’ll go out with the intention of meeting people, but my inner self talk convinces me that I should just leave, like last night! I went to this event called Open House, and it’s a dance studio that’s open to dancers to come and practice dancing. Everyone was so open and super cool, it should have been a perfect environment to meet some amazing people. But I got intimidated and left a bit early. No idea.