Dropping The Ball

Patience, Persistence, & Perseverance. Practicing these golden values while having faith. Keeping your head down & doing your best the whole time. That's what I believe I have been doing. Facing setback after setback, I've been regularly taking steps to improve every aspect of my life. The world is so loud, though. I stepped out into it, to better myself. I've gotten sick of talking to people about myself. Talking seems so pointless nowadays.

Even writing about my hopes, dreams, & mission feels unbearably redundant. I try to remind myself to keep taking steps. Keep showing up and going through the motions. I know that progress will come if I keep moving in the right direction. If I keep going through the motions, I will get better. I need to get better so I can bring my ideas to reality. I want to write about food, art, culture, marketing, & life. I want to express my thoughts, emotions, & inner feelings in a way that makes sense to others.

I sincerely believe this will help others just as much as it will help me. I started this year with a clear vision to hone two aspects of my life: my body & my words. But what has actually happened? I've gotten distracted. Enchanted by the flashy lights & loud noises, I've lost sight of what truly matters. To be eternally bound to a single fate, to stay on your path no matter what does sound so dreadfully boring. And yet, what is the alternative? Let's take stock of 2024: 

- I spent the first two months desperately trying to monetize what little I knew about digital marketing, only to find out that what I know is likely less than I needed to freelance successfully.

- With this knowledge, combined with the realization that I desperately needed a real, stable source of income, I searched and rather easily found a job in Feb.

- I knew when I started that my own projects would take a backseat, but I thought it would be worthwhile to earn some monetizable skills. Plus, perhaps I could use the income to invest in my body, join a gym, & really start taking better care of myself.

- Getting an expensive membership at the UFC gym, I tried my hardest to show up there at 7 am almost every day, never even going twice consecutively in the entire 3-month period I could have.

- At my job, things seemed much worse. These people barely knew what they were doing, how could I ever hope to learn anything here? I spent the next 7 months trying my hand at graphic design direction, content planning, & social media management while really trying to learn everything I possibly could about digital marketing. 

- I realized that marketing could be a good lifelong profession & a good source of income. I aimed to learn & improve my skills in figuring out: ads, graphics, strategy, relationship management, basic marketing theory, SEO, socials, content marketing, Canva, CapCut, Reels, copywriting, websites, & of course, content writing itself.

- I wrote less & less, relying HEAVILY on ChatGPT to meet deadlines. I oversaw the creation of dozens of posts & collaborated with clients & designers. I made PDFs, Catalogues, PPTs, & proposals. All of it pretty much sucked & none of it really seemed to amount to much. I slowly stopped reading & writing on my own & barely worked out.

If you ask me what became of my efforts, I wouldn't have much to say. I'm certifiably in worse physical shape than I was when I started, and I doubt what little I've learned has made much of a difference in terms of my ability to earn money. Meanwhile, the situation at home seems to have gotten worse financially. I was dead-set on being stone-cold sober for 365 days, and so far I've spent about 4 of the 8 months this year as stoned as possible. It might've been on & off, but honestly, I was high most of August & July.

I figured out that I want to do creative work for sure, to focus on shoots, to open a recording studio that couples as a photography/videography thing. I figured that combined with killer creatives, graphics, branding, copy, full-stack ad strategy, & SEO could do pretty well in the digital marketing world. Yet this brings me little comfort, as this is a pipe dream within a dream. I barely know how to hold a camera, much less use Photoshop. Sure, I'm pretty familiar with Canva, but that doesn't mean much, all things considered. 

This might seem like a rant or a monologue filled with despair, which is why I prefaced this whole thing with the three values I am constantly aiming to practice. Have I been successful in that, at least? In being patient, persistent, & in persevering? Depends on where you look at it from. Look at it really closely & I really do fail most days in achieving those ideals. But ideals are not meant to be achieved. Instead, they're meant to nudge us in the right direction. All things considered, I am far more patient, persistent, & persevering than I would have been, without the conscious aim of being so. 

Still, by & large, a vast majority of days, I feel like an utter loser. I feel so hopelessly defeated that I desperately look for help, support, or even just a momentary escape. On one hand, it seems like I'm way too close to this. I wish I could just take a step back, and be more detached, calm, & collected. I wish I could make light of things more & not take myself so seriously. I do try to let go, & not nearly enough (clearly). Unfortunately, this is the nature of the beast.

To step into the battlegrounds where fortunes are made & lost, where lives are upturned & legends are etched in stone. The notorious "real world" I've heard so much about, in all its mundane disappointments, callous cruelty, & chaos. Loud, for sure, but also surprisingly rich & diverse. Filled to the brim with tiny miracles, ugly brutality, countless colors, & cosmic horrors. Ready to burst into a billion sparks of varying spaces. Complex systems made with countless moving parts, all moving in different directions. 

Irresistible temptations, tantalizing treats, bitter truths, & repulsive infections. Distracting & demanding, even the things that put you off seem to carry a certain undeniable attraction. Hard to ignore the world around you, especially with an open heart, a curious mind, & a hungry soul, just like they all ought to be. When trying your hand at something new, there's no way you can win or excel immediately. No living being ran without crawling nor flew without falling. There's always something shiny & new just around the corner, it's the nature of reality to change, mix, mingle, & evolve.

These things will catch your attention, & you will think how nice it might be to have them, and rightfully so. It might be quite an experience to try all those fresh things, but are they worth the price? We see the things we want & feel a sense of longing, the desire to achieve them enchants us, pulling a veil full of vision & promise over our eyes. But things rarely come with an accurate price tag in the real world. 

So what price have I paid & what is to be done now? I care only to nudge myself in the right direction, rather than forcing extreme states of being. First things first, it's clear that the environment will influence the creature to a great extent, and that is by definition out of our control. We can choose to focus on certain aspects within an environment, and we have a certain degree of autonomy in choosing where we exist, but that is severely limited. 

Chasing after all those things: MMA, fitness, intellect, knowledge, skill, competence, marketing, business, money, relationships, etc. They were by and large a cause of great stress & frustration. While worthwhile & absolutely necessary, I refuse to let them hijack my entire being. I must not let myself give in to them completely. This is about me, myself, & I. It's about my happiness, state of mind, & life experience. Surely, I've always had a great ambition to try everything the world has to offer, for myself, first hand.

Every new drop in that ever-growing bucket does bring me a certain degree of satisfaction. Not only do I welcome all kinds of experiences with open arms, I long for them, I adore them. They make me feel more complete. They make me more sure of myself. It gives me courage, hope, joy, & excitement. It also fills me with immense fear & dissatisfaction. While I do long for newer things, I think reaching out for them is a real waste. Why not let them come instead? That makes them ever more "them," in the sense that the element of surprise complements novelty so well. 

In what little or long time I've lived thus far, it's abundantly clear that new things will come, whether I seek them out or not. In the desperation of anxiously planning out my future to ensure the perfect balance of everything is simply killing the abundant treasures the present already offers. "HA! wHaT's thE FucKinG BiG deaL wItH THat!?" you might say. Everyone knows you're supposed to live in the present moment, accept what they can't change & focus on what they can!

"LOLOLOLOLOLOl u friggin retard! You just realized that now!?" I doubt most people are that obnoxious about it, but you get the point. The problem with having a set of rules to life is that every moment & unique situation requires us to face it differently. That's putting aside the fact that our conscious selves are different from our experiencing selves. This is why we pray and come together in various forms of organization to remind each other of these things as they might apply to our present circumstances in unique ways. 

The fact of the matter is, you can't just know what's right & what's wrong. You have to know when & how to apply which things for what reason. Meaning, it's not enough to know a formula & have the right answer to the question. You only get full marks when you can show the correct line of reasoning in applying those formulas to get the right answer. Only then did you actually win, and you'll keep repeating the same levels until you clear them. You might get lucky sometimes and get a free win, but that wretched old problem will come up again on the next level, & it'll surely be harder than it was before.

If you fully clear it with sincerity, then you will enjoy the challenge, and eventually, you'll win the whole game with the satisfaction of a platinum completion, after which you can choose to replay if you'd like when you'd like. The picture is different when you're stuck on a level & forced to play. The game becomes a torture device & you long for a quick death, only to realize much later that you chose to play for pure & simple fun in the first place. This here right now, this is the frequency that I truly vibe with.

The state that figures things out, connecting the dots, leaving behind no words to be said, just the quiet satisfaction of a job well done. Like the high-pitched ringing of the angels or the sounds of God, such times bring me such a clear sense of inner peace, where nothing has to be done, and everything is perfectly in its place throughout the entirety of existence. This is one of the most consistent ways of achieving a state of flow that is available to me. Now I know because of past experiences that I feel the same about drawing & making art. 

Getting lost in it for hours, enjoying the process of doing something beautifully. That's why I so desperately tried to do so much, in the hopes of attaining a physical space where I can truly do all the amazing things that'll bring me the greatest joy. I know that making a comic book & working on a story could very well do that for me, and that's why I feel so desperate to make it happen. All my struggles, all that running around, it's all working toward that end. Of course, why look to the future when I can do something about it now? That's why I got into writing.

If nothing else, I can map out the bare bones of these wonderful, larger-than-life, never-seen-before visions of awesome stories that I have in my heart of hearts. At first, doing it made me scared, because what if I couldn't? The first roadblocks tend to be simple & cliche that way. What if I sit down & try & nothing happens. & guess what? That's a legitimate fear because that's exactly what happened! Of course, nothing will happen when you've never written a story before & you set out to figure it out for yourself. 

Of course, you can't do it, no one can!..... until they can. Nothing happens when you finally sit down in front of that blank page.... until it does. & then the going gets slow, and your work is pretty garbage. This isn't the vision you had in your head, this is messy & reeks of clumsy mediocrity. What you saw in your mind's eye was an incredible feat of marvelous storytelling, not this basic, typical garbage! Well, the thing with that is you only saw the finished product, which is exactly what you would see because it's pretty much all that matters. That is the nature of most mediums.

Chicken roulades don't grow on trees, & animation doesn't spawn from the perfect rainbow. Yet there is little value in a grilled chicken breast or a micky mouse imitation when it's pretty much all been done to death. You can surely make a living, exchanging goods & services, making ends meet. But that has nothing to do with the vision. The value of the idea is in the finished product it inspires. The value of a vision is in its manifestation. Yet the process is the process, and good things take time in the oven. It's important to recognize that on your journey.

I was also level-headed enough to recognize that getting lost in this wonderful experience of creation is good and all, although I'm not sure exactly when this dreadful stagnation became a state of flow. I only focused on what little I could do at the moment, and that was good enough as a step in the right direction. It all built upon itself, collecting & compounding until simple diary entries bitching about the day's struggle would occasionally transform into insightful, articulate, & worthwhile strings of words. The path ahead is long, and I have much to learn. 

I must juggle many more things at once, taking my time to integrate them into my being. Surely I'll drop many more balls while I struggle to find my way. Just as I have neglected many things & struggled with keeping my path until now. Yet the pattern has not changed. I set out to do something for a just cause & fail miserably. Encountering roadblocks & digressions, I lose my way again & again. A new challenge forces me to let go of my things, yet new things bring me great discomfort & anxiety. They make me restless & destroy my spirit. Imploding in on myself, I get burnt out & feel like dying. 

I wish I could cry about it & move on, but life is stubborn in doing things at its own pace, just like the reality that birthed it.  All in all, at the end of the day, I guess you could say I'm having fun with this. Take this article, for instance. I'm writing after at least 2 months, and I bought a new mechanical keyboard that I'm making excellent use of here. Typing is so fun now. Just thinking about how much faster I can write and express my thoughts now on paper makes me kinda excited. You have to be a lot more deliberate when you're writing by hand. Also, I actually started writing my story on paper, by hand, in a notebook a few months ago. 

There was no electricity at my office and work was stalled. I went alone in the conference room with a pen and my notebook. I wrote the title "Soul Fever" and I just started writing some shit. Whatever I had collected in my mind, I started putting on paper. Before whenever I started, I felt paralyzed by the sheer number of things that came into my mind at once. Every single thing that I had to think of in order to create a brand new believable reality from scratch. Safe to say it was way too much to handle. The progress was so slow that I thought, FUCK IT. I can't afford to take my time with this, I need to secure my living ASAP.

Make money, secure my lifestyle, then take your time with it, I thought. It made sense and I honestly think it's a good decision. I could pretty much fight the world and stay at home doing nothing else but work on this. But: a) That doesn't do justice to the reality I want to selectively recreate in my story in order to make it actually impactful & useful, both to myself & others. b) It'll surely hurt me in the long term, and I might very well begin to despise the very thing that gives me a purpose to live. I have written this article/entry in 3 different settings, so if someone is viewing this, I am sorry for the messy inconsistencies & awkward repetitions. 

I had a clear idea about what I wanted to write when I started. I knew exactly the things that I needed to acknowledge, unpack, figure out, and process in other ways. I've done my best to cover each one of them one by one. The idea behind this blog was to have a long collection of things to work with, that I could come back in the future when I feel stuck & find some inspiration in the form of ideas. Yet now it feels like I'm building my chops here. Each time, I feel like I'm able to write something just a tiny bit better. Of course, the proper process of writing involves many drafts, edits, & revisions, and so it will be for me. But For now, I want my first drafts to be as good as possible. That's what I'm focusing on.

As for the intended content of this article, I've essentially acknowledged that I've been overextending myself to a fault. I've been chasing things that are too far apart from one another and it is clearly hurting me in multiple ways. I must practice stronger faith and focus more intently on things that fill me up. Writing, working on my creative self-expression here, getting better at conveying and developing my ideas, and just creating things in general is thus essential to my overall well being. Doing this keeps me on the path I dream of as I make steady progress. 

For the first time ever, it's not a matter of whether I can do it, but how can I do it as soon as possible. Clearly, that's an upgrade & a step in the right direction. Granted I am facing a ton of difficulties in almost every area of my life, as long as I live I shall never be defeated. Tons of things are happening, perhaps more than I can handle, and I'm ill-equipped to deal with it all. But I have many people to look up to and around for help and support. In another first-ever, I finally know exactly what my people look like. 

It's important for me to note here that while I want to do and achieve many things, it is an incredibly powerful practice for me to give my all to just one thing at a time. Let this be that one thing. I watched another clip from Niel Gaiman's masterclass and I didn't even remember all the things I haven't finished yet. The lecture made me realize that my greatest reward is lying in wait upon completion of my mission. As long and hard as it may be,  I wish to commit to just this writing thing and give it my all. I truly believe that if I do so, unimaginable blessings lie in wait for me and for all of humanity. 

In order to remain focused, I must learn to control my energies far better. Easier said than done perhaps, but only by being empty and by being able to focus on my inner godliness can I actually find the space needed to nudge myself where I want to be. As this is my prayer, let this be my pledge and my request to myself: Just breathe. Take it easy, learn to do nothing, and forgo your reactions. The more I practice this calmness & the more intently I am able to focus inward, the better I will be able to make real, lasting progress.

Exercise, work, earn, and maintain relationships, but only and only in order to feed your one true purpose to the best of your ability. Let your walks get the juices flowing, the endorphins & dopamine bringing forth all my ideas with a rush. Earn money so that the bills stay paid, spending as little as possible so that you may remain undisturbed with your work. Be nice and stay in touch with those who claim to care about you, whether they know the real you or not, for that will free you from their petty obligations that eat away at your precious time & energy. 

Dropping the ball is part of the process. In showing up here once again, learning to make the best use of my brain, its thoughts, emotions, & ideas, and attaining a stronger mastery of the linguistic writing ability that I have already developed, I shall make all the pain and suffering worth it, and then some! I might fail again in the future and face even greater setbacks. I might be forced to do things that I despise and feel tremendous pressure. For times like those I hope and pray that I may keep my faith.

I must believe that all this is working toward my highest good. I must believe in myself and my intuition that tells me with such unwavering assurance that I am beyond worthy of amazing things, and that I just need to listen to my own heart in order to move mountains and become happier than I could've ever imagined. I must remain steadfast in my belief that I'm, well on my way to achieving my wildest dreams. If I just stay on the path that I've chosen, great fortune awaits me, the likes of which people rarely ever get to see. 

Good things, rewards, self-affirmations, or otherwise, bringing my ideas to life is one thing I would love to do for its own sake. So focus inward, have faith, learn to relax, and take it easy. Then perhaps you can truly enjoy the carnival ride that is this fucking circus of a life. Stay calm, practice nothingness, & keep fueling yourself with small tiny creations, as often as possible. Even after all that I feel like I'm missing something, like I remembered another important thing I wanted to mention here and that it just slipped my mind as swiftly as it came.

Anyway, it's late and I must get going. Whatever has slipped my mind will return as it always does, and when it happens I shall hope to recall it tomorrow, or whenever I write here next. Until next time, my fellow comrades.