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?

Progression

So I’ve been doing this thing lately, I learned it from a podcast I was listening to. I’ve set three alarms on my phone and labeled the alarms as actual affirmations and little reminders to be creative throughout the day. I have one set at 7 pm PST, it says, write a blog post, write a poem. Of course I should probably adjust this timing maybe? I don’t always follow through with it. As of late though I have been able to come through, I think probably twice.

So anyway, I think in the last blog post I was talking about my friend whom I went with to this so called “Mountain of Truth”, anyway it was here that I found my passion for writing, but I hadn’t even known it yet at the time. To be honest, now that I really think about it, my writing stemmed from when I was a child. My mother, wasn’t actually what you would call the run if the mill mother. That in itself is a whole entire other blog post, maybe a few. Anyway, the earliest memory of me really getting into writing was probably when I was an 8th grader, and my mother at the time was going out with this guy who worked at the casino where she was working at. So they were hookin up or whatever, but I didn’t know that at the time.

I come home from 7th grade spring break and she tells me to pack my bags, and that we were going to Vegas. So I pack some clothes and left all my things. We never came back to California.

Story for another blog post.

So fast forward, I’m in Michigan, living in an apartment with my mom and her bf or whatever the fuck title he held at the time. And well I didn’t have friends, and we didn’t have much money let alone afford a tv, eventually they got one and working cable even. But before that I had nothing but a notebook and a pen, and comic books that I borrowed from the library that was a 3 mile walk away. I would walk there every day just to log onto the internet for an hour and then read comic books because back then I wasn’t into actual books. Shame because nowadays its harder to find more free time to read a good book.

Its like Jim Kwik says, “…its no longer self-help, its shelf-help.” Lol so lately I’ve been trying to get my friends to read more and its not working. I guess they gotta want it for themselves bad enough to make that change.

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.