This year of 2009 has been an interesting one for me. As 2008 was coming to a close, I could have sworn 09' was gonna be MY year. I was gonna shake up the world and ascend to heights that I had never seen! Well apparently life had a different plan for me. In fact, contrary to my sensationalized optimism for the new year, 2009 had a pretty cold ass-whooping waiting for me. Sorta like when your mom tells you she's gonna whoop your ass when yall get home after she receives the report that you had a bad day at school but she doesn't do it immediately. So a few hours pass and you're assuming she forgot and you're feeling all good like you got away as you proceed to hop in the shower around sunset thinking you're gonna hop out, have a good meal, and just relax. However, just as you're hopping out the shower, she busts through the door and beats your ass while it's still wet as the fusion of leather, cold water droplet and flesh stings like a thousand paper cuts sprinkled with alcohol...yeah it felt like that. Not to be intentionally esoteric but only black kids can identify with that kind of pain. If you're white just compare it to your dog dying... if you're Hispanic compare it to the dodgers having a horrible season (gotta love stereotypes).
I'm not exactly sure when it happened but at some point in my life I had evolved into a robot. I'd wake up and get freshened up, have a shady-ass breakfast because I was rushing, go to school from 9am to 2pm, eat lunch, go fold clothes (a.k.a work in retail) from 3pm to 10pm, come home and piece together a plate of what had been cooked for dinner (if anything was even left), wash dishes (whether I ate or not because that's how I pay rent in my household) and try to do homework while I was tired ass hell until I fell asleep and had to start all over again the next day. As songs like "This Can't Be Life" by Jay-Z and "Spaceship" by Kanye West blared from my speakers while I drove to and from "the triangle of despair," (a name I came up with to describe the three places my life seemed to revolve around...home, school and work) I began too ask myself questions like, "what am I good at that seems to come naturally?" and "what could I be content in pursuing if I was broke for a period of time while doing so?"
(By the way, don't be afraid to admit you have conversations with yourself because people claim you're crazy if you answer your own questions and all that other bull. If that's the case then I lost my mind a while back because now I'm at the point where I even noticeably giggle at my own jokes in my head. Me and myself have an amazing relationship that most people would be jealous of.)
In early 2008 after vowing to never work in retail again (I'm seriously scarred for life and have the utmost sympathy for retail associates) I stumbled upon an opportunity to work with a buzzing unsigned artist as his personal assistant/roadie. For the remainder of that year things were awesome! I was going to industry parties, I was having meetings with record label executives, and I was networking with A-list people...but like all good things, it came to an unexpected end in early 2009. So After being fired from my job and not receiving the fee-waiver I needed to afford school enrollment and the other associated fees...things began to look pretty grim. In retrospect, I can honestly say I went through a mild depression. Being unemployed and not in school, I'm sure you can understand that I was hardly a "catch" for the ladies."Excuse me miss, if you can just ignore the fact that I'm an unemployed college dropout, I'm really a great guy if you take the time to get to know me." How's that for a pick-up line? Not to mention I had to quickly get really good at bull-shitting my answers to that question every adult likes to ask young adults,"So how's school and work going?" I hate that damn question! It's actually really depressing because it makes you think "damn, is that all life is supposed to consist of right now?" Unfortunately, the reality is, if you don't consciously take the time to think about what else life has to offer, you can easily find yourself limiting your life to those two mundane aspects (I guess until you graduate... then it's just work). Ironically, it actually took me crashing and burning this year to realize that I wasn't happy with life's "generic path to success and fulfillment" and I needed to find the passion in my life that would help me create my own path to those same two destinations.
The month was April and 2 months of joblessness had passed after filling out my 567th online application to no avail...I had nothing but time and drool on my hands. As I began again to think of some sort of escape from my sad existence, I started to reflect on my childhood. I remembered that at a certain age my mom got tired of whooping me and would instead punish me by making me read books and write extensive, multiple paged book reports. Although I didn't understand it at the time, I was cultivating a very significant and essential skill that I would later learn to manipulate into something I loved. As I continued to reflect on my grade-school years I began remembering that English was the only subject I ever cared about and did exceptionally well in without much effort. It was starting to make sense. The very thing that I was looking for was already within me but I had been overlooking it because it was something I once associated with punishment and never realized that it could be used creatively in many different contexts. At last, (en)Lightning had struck my rod of passion and empowered me to produce (if you will). That was the moment I decided to be a songwriter, screenwriter and blogger. I began linking up with people I had networked with in the industry to build the foundation of my songwriting career, changed my major in school from Psychology to Film to build the foundation of my screenwriting career and lastly but certainly not least for the sake of you reading this, I began to blog. Since discovering my passion for writing, my reality and perspective has changed from that of another participant in the "corporate ladder climbing contest," to that of an individual who wants to positively contribute to the world one word at a time.
Much can be discovered in a time of lack. This year I've truly learned to appreciate meditation and reflection without self-distraction...something perhaps I would've never realized if I had not been forced to by circumstance. Sometimes we get too busy for our own good. We get so caught up in working for a decent paycheck just so we can go to school to graduate and get a slightly bigger paycheck that we don't take the time to realize what we want to live for. The most fascinating thing about this year, in heinsight, is that I've never been broker but I've never been happier. What's even more fulfilling is that when this eventually becomes lucrative for me, it's going to be icing on top of a cake that already tastes good without it. That's what I call success...being able to live off of what you live for. You should make sure you can say the same about your passion. Otherwise you're not living, you're just existing. For those of you who haven't found your passion yet, maybe you should try looking around rock bottom. Isn't the recession pushing you down there anyway?
