In the sum­mer of 2018 I decid­ed to start a per­son­al blog + jour­nal. In it I chron­i­cle life anec­do­tal, entwin­ing the thought life + writ­ing life into a dou­ble helix of no frills fun. Why take it so seri­ous­ly any­hoot ? I’m not try­ing to mon­e­tize this. For me it’s for me, yet for you too. How can it not be ? I know what they say, write like nobod­ies watch­ing, and I do. I’ve nev­er hon­est­ly held the opin­ions of men with much high regard. I found most peo­ple were 90% pre­dic­tive in their behav­ioral pat­terns. They loved to breath neg­a­tive and destroy any­body who didn’t sub­scribe to a reli­gion of fear and hate.

But you see I’m a cre­ative being, I’ve always been an artiste + a writer since the first day. And I firm­ly believe in order to real­ly be such you need to have a inner reser­voir of love, light, and laugh­ter. The world’s already chock full of these yup­pie type artists who smear fecal mat­ter on can­vas and call it art and want peo­ple to buy it for exor­bi­tant prices. But pre­ten­tious­ness aside all art and cre­ativ­i­ty has noth­ing to do with the seal of approval of those who can­not do, cre­ate, or per­form. Nobody requires these mid­dle men who are char­la­tans look­ing to get rich off of the blood, sweat, and tears of the tru­ly inge­nious, tal­ent­ed and bright broth­ers and sis­ters of the pen or the brush. Dif­fer­ent strokes for dif­fer­ent folks indeed, and weapons of mass cre­ation may dif­fer in tech­nique and method­olo­gies but ulti­mate­ly strive for the attain­ment of per­fec­tion through vehi­cles of imper­fec­tion which is our­selves.

For all of the kudos, mad props and admi­ra­tion of cre­ativ­i­ty we live in a gen­uine­ly anti-cre­ative world. We cel­e­brate tech like it’s the end all be all but yawn when some­thing impres­sive and beau­ti­ful is birthed. Cod­ing isn’t cre­ativ­i­ty, it’s a frame­work of pre­dictabil­i­ty using log­ic and field test­ed lan­guage blocks that devel­op­ers snap togeth­er into apps and web­sites. It’s not real­ly praise­wor­thy in my opin­ion. Indeed all I ever see is that the world of cod­ing is full of inse­cure, often arro­gant and intel­lec­tu­al­ly vain peo­ple who are hyper com­pet­i­tive to be per­ceived as genius­es. What this real­ly is is a deep­er need for val­i­da­tion, love, accep­tance and you can’t get that through such means. If I cre­ate some­thing awe inspir­ing­ly beau­ti­ful and it touch­es somebody…that is good and well, but they can do bet­ter than this I tell them. I don’t ever cre­ate with the goal of inspir­ing envy in oth­ers which seems to be the case in many respects. A hyper aggres­sive com­pet­i­tive­ness that goes beyond nor­mal­cy. I heard one devel­op­er actu­al­ly say that web devel­op­ment was a ​“lifestyle”. It isn’t, it’s just a means of income. It doesn’t define who I am, nor should it. Art doesn’t do that, poet­ry doesn’t, cel­lo doesn’t. These facets are sim­ply tools, vehi­cles, and paths in my own life, they aren’t what makes me me.

Soci­ety tends to instill these types of val­ues in peo­ple with­out any. It con­veys a false sense of worth, mean­ing, pur­pose that is alto­geth­er decep­tive­ly illu­so­ry. Do this and be ful­filled, act this way for some great reward that nev­er comes. If you just keep try­ing you’ll make it, you’ll beat all your com­peti­tors like your life is a real­i­ty tv show (it isn’t). Burn out is what fol­lows, stress, dis­ap­point­ment, anguish, lone­li­ness, despair, and depres­sion are the side effects of this.

I start­ed to pon­der recur­ring themes in my own per­son­al hand­writ­ten jour­nals which I start­ed col­lect­ing recent­ly not because it’s ​“trendy” now, I’ve been a writer since I could pick up a pen. I’ve sim­ply resus­ci­tat­ed it because its ther­a­peu­tic, it’s a good tool for self dis­cov­ery. Some do it for var­i­ous rea­sons such as to impress oth­ers, to seem more art­ful and beau­ti­ful, or to actu­al­ly get real with them­selves. For me it’s a mixed bag. There’s some­thing very fright­en­ing­ly nos­tal­gic and pow­er­ful when you go back in time in your jour­nal and read a page of what you did on this date last year, and how dif­fer­ent you feel now as opposed to then.

But I didn’t want to inun­date myself with use­less minu­ti­ae. A habit I’ll admit I’ve adopt­ed from hav­ing read the Vam­pire Chron­i­cles in high school which were sources of inspi­ra­tion and dis­trac­tion for me. Every­body in high school dur­ing the 80’s couldn’t be qui­et about Anne Rice, I even vis­it­ed her home in the Gar­den Dis­trict when I first trav­eled to the Big Easy back when I was but a young impres­sion­able bright eyed lad. I was read­ing books about some Dark Elf ranger named Drizz’t Do’Urden too while ad&d was my guilty indul­gence.

I have much to say, and my tone now is refined a bit, my words might be edgy and deep because I am. I know that now, I’m okay with it, I’ve accept­ed it. I live in a world thats con­stant­ly bom­bard­ing you and I with the wrong­ful, decep­tive mes­sage that it knows who I am and aren’t bet­ter than myself. The war with­in is con­stant and bru­tal and only the Almighty him­self can help a man through the thick of life’s sea­sons and rag­ing storms, of which I am all too famil­iar. For most of my life I’ve been like so many liv­ing with a vic­tim men­tal­i­ty that burned. Why am I not the best ? The bright­est ? The rich­est ? The most attractive/​intelligent/​greatest at every­thing under the sun. The world and life con­tin­ues to dan­gle these car­rots that lead us off the path we were pur­pose­ly designed to embark upon, and that road isn’t easy and it isn’t prob­lem free. We all labor tremen­dous­ly to ensure bet­ter times, but can­not do any­thing to shape and manip­u­late the future. We are vari­ables swim­ming in a sea of vari­ables, that’s the math of life right there. If we then are com­plete­ly pow­er­less to sway things in our favor what was the use in even try­ing ? Which I had warred with all my fury to do all the days of my life, hat­ing fail­ure and reject­ing defeat out of stub­born pride. I had a Bruce Lee type of vengeance against such things, a cer­tain kind of fanati­cism of life that raged on and was incur­able. It was par­tial­ly mad­ness and an inde­scrib­able pain of help­less­ness.

There’s the glass half emp­ty and half full camp. On one side peo­ple count all that they have, the oth­er they count all that they don’t. I was some­where in the mid­dle of it. I real­ized mate­ri­al­ism didn’t sus­tain me, the accu­mu­la­tion of things and adu­la­tion of oth­ers didn’t affect me. I only had a desire to lead a qui­et life away from notice of oth­ers, away from atten­tion seek­ers and the peo­ple play­ing this pop­u­lar­i­ty real­i­ty show in their heads…bumping into walls and each oth­er and coltish­ly try­ing to keep abreast of all that oth­er lotus eaters pine after. Each try­ing to win fake love, nev­er giv­ing fake love, nev­er know­ing true love.

So here­in I seek to encap­su­late and write things well with a mod­icum of love and life and some of my best jokes and of course things which may inspire and delight. I pray this finds you well and can be a small token of light unto you. Thank’s for stop­ping by !