Winding Down ‘09

Well, people. Another year has come and gone. And as people focus on the New Year, the many promises that it hopes to bring, and the many resolutions that will more likely than not see the month of February, I’ve started mine back in August and find it incredible that it is paying off more rapidly than I could ever expect.

I am finally starting to get the hang of this organization thing. I just had to make it more creative than formal to make it work best for me. Since October, when I officially started tracking stuff, I’ve gotten more quality writing assignments together and out to various publishers. Out of the twenty-one projects I’ve sent out thus far since October about twelve of them have been accepted with a handful more with the just still out into the New Year, which is okay by me, being that I have three pending book deals that are due for publication in the New Year.

Of course, the three that I am referring to are all under my pseudonyms, including one of them that I picked up happenstance. In a blog entry a few postings back I ranted about this tired queen and the many like them that work my nerves with their bitchy attitudes. I guess I wasn’t the only one that felt that way because it showed through the project that that person was trying to put together. At any rate, the publisher felt the same way and his proposed project is already a proposed flop before it even goes to press. And because it would cost more money to shut it down they decided to go through with it (i.e., he’s already come out of pocket for the project (time, money, potential losses off of other projects) and he was looking to get reimbursed through the sales of the project), BUT—pay attention to the hook— pay attention to the hook—they offered me my own anthology project featuring my works alone. Writers who have been in the business for a minute, understands the weight behind that statement. To the average person that means that I will be getting paid royalties off of my project in oppose to the standard contribution fee that is often given to writers through a comprehensive anthology project.

For those that don’t know, they do this because whether a project is a failure or a success or certain stories are failures or successes, it doesn’t cost the publisher any extra money to continue to pay out to various writers. Plus, it is often hard to tell which stories in the collection makes it profitable or drag down the value, and if sold together everybody would have to get an equal cut. For the most part, for most freelance writers, it operates as more of a portfolio piece for the writer to say that “I’ve been published” therefore leading to more writing opportunities. So to be offered a stand-alone anthology featuring just my works is a big deal that can lead to bigger things. And if not, at least it tells the world that I am established, and could lead to bigger things later on down the road.

I must say that this organization thing has improved my writing dramatically. Not only am I meeting deadlines long beforehand, but I have found that my quality of writing is getting better with every story I write. The words are coming with more ease because I’m more relaxed taking my time to focus one thing at a time, leaving a lot less time for me to be hell-bent on whether I am phrasing everything right and questioning if people are getting what I am saying.

With the exception of this blog, of course, I always have to remind people to look at the top right corner of the page and remind them that I type this with no revisions and other junk. This is straight from the mind onto the screen. It think sometimes people, especially aspiring writers, fail to realize that it takes a long time to get words flowing and oftentimes it does not always look pretty. Flip through a book sometimes and look at the laundry list of people that had to bring it into fruition. I promise that half the people in there are those that help edit the manuscript, enough with that.

The downside with the pending manuscripts, especially when they go to press, is the lag time it takes from getting my work in print to receiving the payment for my hard work. And it doesn’t end there, because payment is pretty much based off of royalty that means I have to do my own promotions, which is sort of tricky being that I’m writing from a pseudonymous place. But I am constantly taking cues from some of the best in how to go about it.

It is because of these things that I can see 2010 being my jump-off year. While the rest of the economy might be spinning in a downward tailspin I can taste my financial freedom (i.e., being debt free), I can taste homeownership, and whatever else without the weight of debt on my shoulders. Even more so, I feel that I can sink my teeth in having a novel under my own name and right, based on the project alone and the fact that I will have so many other projects supporting it.

Trust me when I say that I’m only an optimist in training. I figure, shit, I wasn’t doing that great when things were going that well for other people, and I’ve always been a contrarian, so why not make a go of it!

I am about to wrap this up for the Old Year. I still have about five more assignments that I have to get finished and out before the clock strikes midnight on December 31st. So be safe and sound this year and next, and look forward to you reading my works in the various forms that it comes in next year.

Listening Financially

This past week I have been driving people crazy. I have had these earphones stuck in my ear listening to this e-audio book that I picked up from my favorite place in the world, the local library.

If you happen to follow my reading material on Twitter and Facebook, I don’t have to go out of my way to tell you that it is on the line of financial education and financial prosperity. I know to most that sounds like a major contradiction for a fiction writer. Shouldn’t I limit my reading to fictional items? In the mind of the narrow-minded, of course, I should stick to reading that revolves around my craft. However, I was blessed not to be a member of the narrow-minded class. Hence, the reason I never wanted to go to school for writing. I just feel that I’m too multi-faceted for this one-dimensional world that operates on one-dimensional thought, because regardless of my craft, I need to know as much as I can about finances to sustain me. Nothing stifles creativity like the looming obese bully called debt. Also, I never could read and write in the same genre at the same time, giving me a wonderful opportunity to alternate between reading and writing throughout the day without currents crossing over or causing any major confusion.

I can’t begin to tell you how many writers and aspiring writers I know that have subconsciously changed up writing styles during their writing process to reflect their reading material, either to lose momentum in their own project after they put their leisurely read down or drafting characters that lack cohesive definitions.

(And to those that are really interested, my next fiction read is How To Sell by Clancy Martin. that I hope to get to within the next couple of weeks or so, after I wrap up another book Rich Brother, Rich Sister by Robert Kiyosaki and Emi (Vereable Tenzin Katcho) Kiyosaki)

As “down in the delta” broke as am, I am always surprised at the great amount of hope these books offer to me and my circumstance. That it is possible to come up from my circumstance. That it is possible to overcome and achieve or overachieve. Most importantly, it has offered me an education that most people lack, including many that are apart of the so-called “educated” class of our society.

It is also great feeling to know things that even the most educated people don’t or won’t, particularly when most people just get their degrees and because of that feel like their education process suddenly stops or can only be achieved by a certain group of people.

It taught—or rather affirmed for me—that there was a distinct difference between an academic education and financial education. It afforded me the wonderful opportunity to discover the three primary kinds of income:

1. Earned Income
2. Portfolio Income
3. Passive Income

What they are, how I can tap into them and their various tax benefits and loses (I think listed from greatest taxed to least taxed). How to take my novice accounting skills to read a financial statement (not bank statement; there is a difference). Distinguish between a financial salesman, a financial planner, and a Certified Financial Planner. It has even given me insight to various real estate options that aren’t always talked about in the public or the media. I can go on and on and probably will once I get started.

Quite honestly, I wouldn’t have been able to come across if I wasn’t poor. A good portion of the time I’m strapped to the bus or train and being that I grew up on it, there isn’t much new to see for the long commutes. So I grab a book or now an e-audio book and listen as I got about my day. Why not do something productive with my time in the meantime other than look aimlessly at people or get lost in unproductive thought? Even when I’m driving (which is rare nowadays), I pop in a CD and listen as I drive. Let’s be real there aren’t too many great songs on the radio, and if so you have to go through a thousand and one commercials along with some chatty DJ talking much to do about nothing.

And the funny tragedy is that so many people wait to come into some money before they help themselves to financial literacy when in fact that’s when it’s often too late. Because nine times out of ten a person that comes into money aren’t going to pursue a financial education until AFTER they bought themselves and a few family members whatever they wanted and are trying to save their last few pennies. Then, too, so many of them are repulsed by the idea of budgeting, which is often a synonym for financial planning, and hence suggesting that one has to go without. Not understanding that it isn’t the case, but rather watching where your money goes. If it is going to go out the door, why not find out where it goes?

To me, it has grown financial literary has increasingly important, not because of the hogwash on television but because we live in a society that values money. Yet, if I was to ask the most frugal person to the most materialistic person how money works, nobody can tell me. I don’t mean you need money to spend money, but why are so people rich and others are poor?

To clarify the question, how do some people get rich and others stay poor?

The sad part about it, it has very little to do with intellect. It is important, don’t get me wrong, but lets be real about it. It isn’t like intellect equates to being financially prosperous or financially sound. I know some very talented intellectuals that can’t ever rub two dimes together. I know some dummies that all they can do is trip over money. I know people that floss and gloss like a million bucks but don’t have a penny to their name. I’ve know men and women that look like vagabonds and they’re sitting on bread that can carry over for a few lifetimes.

So please forgive me if I want to know how come. Just don’t get it twisted that I’m obsessed with it either. I thirst for the knowledge because I am certain that it will sustain me in oppose to useless facts that have very little to do with our lives. (I’m a historian and genealogist at heart, so I know that the past has a great influence in our present-day and future; however, I find it odd the curriculum that our education system offers has very little to do with current survival. Like knowing who won the War of 1812 is going to help me balance my checkbook so I can pay my bills! Which is scary within itself that are tens of thousands of people that can’t balance a checkbook much less read and/or comprehend. But that is a later topic.)

So why not invest time while I’m poor to find out the many options I have out there to become rich? Even if it never happens—though I work hard for that not to be the case—at a minimum I walk away with lessons of how a person can navigate through adversity to get to a means that have often proven to pay off for them.

And besides, to me, financial education in this stage of the game is the equivalent of not coming to a table full of food, a feast, because you’re hungry, “No thanks, I can’t eat because I’m hungry.”

It sounds silly right?

Well, we know a lot of people that say just that without those words. We hear “you can’t do that” or “it has never been done before” or “why do you want to do that”, etc., etc. If you pay close attention to their mouths you can often see the black hole that is their lives. There the ones that are so afraid of failing that they fail to even try to succeed, or do a wonderful job of telling you what you can’t do because they never could for whatever reason. Yet, and still do whatever they want with their time and energy, regardless of how asinine it is. (Like I got a cousin that told me he could never get rich but confessed that he spends close to $10Ka year on alcohol and other drugs. Do you know what I can do with $10K right now?!) Failure is apart of life. We’re going to fail at our best, and we are going to fail at our worst, anyway. So why not try and fail at something that might pay off?

I’ve fallen on my face so many times it isn’t funny, from life plans to life goals to just about anything that you can think of. I grew up believing that every failure was a failure and followed it up by going ballistic mentally, not as goal towards leading me towards greater success, like I tried that and it didn’t work so I will try something a bit different so that it might. We learn more from our failure than we do success. Think about it.

Even with writing. Writing is filled with constant rejection. While I’m writing this off-hand (meaning I don’t go back and check for errors, I just write it out, so don’t judge on this alone), the most frustrating thing in the world for me is that I’ve hardly ever been rejected on merit. For the most part, though I’ve gotten a few in my day, I’ve often been spared the generic rejection but given rejection that basically stated “close, but not close enough” for one reason or another. I have failed at game designed. Again, that personalized letter that states “close, but not quite there yet.”

The old me would have taken the glass half empty approach, but as I was reminded after I used to react badly to rejection that it wasn’t saying that I wasn’t good enough. It was something deeper in me that could produce something better. Like a positive DNA test, they were absolutely right. The thing was, because I was usually so good at what I did, nobody really asked me to “go the extra mile”. I was better than par, but failed to live up to my fullest potential. And I wouldn’t have seen that, if it hadn’t been for somebody going out of their way to publish an article of mine that was less than par—probably much like this one, except I know that I’m not going back to make corrections or changes. This is sort of a scratch sheet for me (a grade above brainstorming). At any rate, the small press publisher saw what I was trying to say. However, I saw every misspelled word and incomplete sentence, and the like. I knew better, but I was so hell-bent on seeing my name in ink at that time that I forfeit the integrity to my work.

Even with the game that I submitted recently, I saw so many errors in the instructions (not so much grammatical as explanation) that had I let it rest a bit more perhaps the company would’ve been more enthused about the project to take it on. Don’t fret. I’m back at the drawing board working ever so hard, because they have faith that it can viable product—even if I happen to go with another company to represent me.

I am struggling still—if you missed the memo that I’m poor and broke—but I feel more empowered now than I did when I had money because of the education about money that I am currently undergoing. Instead of aching over the money I spent on many foolish things, money that could have been used a bit more wiser and perhaps gone a bit more further, I take pride that I’m a class of men and women that rose to great heights financial after having the wind knocked out of them. (I’m in a point in my book where the author found faith and amazement in rocks and water; in short, if the Infinite Intelligence (politically correct for God) can create those things including my intelligence, He has also created me to use it along with instilled faith to fulfill my fullest potential, be it financial or whatever else. I’m know I’m not explaining it the best I can but if you happened to read The Master-Key to Riches by Napoleon Hill, you’ll understand far better than I can explain it without giving you the book.)

However, unlike many of my friends that are waiting for some magic money boat to come in just so they can then take a glance at some financial options, financial literacy, to do their own thing, I decided to take the proactive approach and hope to steady come into enough to hit the ground running, knowing what I can do, what I need to do, so I can do what I want to do, to be in a position where I am financially free of any negative debt, financially stable, financially secure, and financially comfortable. What does that spell—rich!

Just because the television and the radio tell me how bad it is out there doesn’t mean I can’t at least try. Hell, when they were telling me that things were going good, I barely got kiss of it. So why not get mine while everybody else is moping around! I know it’s seriously bad out there, perhaps as bad as many of us have ever seen it and by forecast still has a way to go down before rock bottom. However, that is why I believe that it is more vital now more than ever to get financially educated.

Think about it, when things were going good too many people took the word of somebody they thought knew more than they only to get their face cracked with messed up 401(K), IRA, etc., etc. I ended up getting in the financial hole that I dug for myself because I listened to unqualified school financial aid officers that fail to tell me the full scope of my options and had me signing student loans left and right, in essences being bitches for the pimp that is student loan companies.

I digress. It was the lack of education on my part and most Americans in our age group that were lead to jump off the cliff because we saw everybody else doing it. The same goes for everybody else as well with credit card debt, mortgages, and the like.

Financial education, everyone, financial education because while this country is poor, we are making somebody else rich with the debt we owe. I don’t know about you, I want to know who and I’m not completely satisfied with the answer that it is China and other nations. I want to know the middlemen in between.

And the tragedy is that most people are intimidated by expanding their vocabulary therefore avoiding a multitude of things, including financial literacy. I don’t know about you, but this world has a lot to offer and I want to do as much as I can with it as long as I got, preferably another 75 years or so. I’m not saying that a whole lot of money is needed to enjoy the simple pleasures of life—never that—but it would nice to know that if it comes with some cost I got it covered. Nicely covered and then some.

After that hurdle, what a lot of people fail to understand is that most of the financial books out there aren’t these complicated algorithms. It is very much expounding on philosophies we already know. The interesting this is that much of it has very little to do with money, as much as it does about how to apply money to your needs and wants. In fact, many of the books out there are pretty much one in the same. It’s very much reiterate what you do know and what you don’t know into your subconscious mind. With each book taking a different angle to it, either by explaining or promoting one aspect a bit better than the other.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many philosophies to financial books featuring advice that caters to those interested in long-term investments, short-term investments, specialized investments and the like. Not only that, there books written for the lazy investor to the most sophisticated investor.

Some are written for average people that want average advice. Those are usually set aside for people that aren’t going to strain themselves physically or mentally and just want enough to “get by” later on in life. That is for people that want to be average investors. Others go through easy to understand but probably not-so-easy execute plan about how to get financially sound. I must admit that I’m kind of partial to this. If it was that easy to do, wouldn’t everybody do it? With so many of my generation afraid of a little hard work, I figure more for me to get. The rest is technical in my opinion, and are for masochists that love for not-so-complicated things to be even more complicated for them to agonize over.

Like I said, there are a large group of people that don’t know where to start and are intimidated by increasing their vocabulary by a few extra words. I suggest start anywhere and let the book lead you to whatever (I got a list further down the line if you need a bit of help). A great number of them, especially some of the most recently published ones, have a reference points or quotes to other books. In my opinion, if it is a book that is easy but a come with a few complicated points or words, it is a book worth reading. Write it down the points or the words that you don’t understand and keep reading. When you come to a break look it up, and if it is still confusing keep reading. Because if you keep reading it will eventually explain itself out OR if and when you pick up another financial book it will break that or another point further down in context to be easily understood.

I got a stack of Stocks & Commodities magazine that about 80% I don’t get whatsoever. And that 20% I do get, I pretty much get it while I’m reading it, but have the time of my life trying to apply it to real application. Mostly because, in my opinion, I don’t have the luxury to play with a mock trading account to really get the sense of it. However, I never give up because when I do I may not hit the ground running but I will know enough to ask questions, and find someone that will have the answer.

But if it is a book that it totally out of your league, then put it down pick up another. If you’re smart, pick it up from the library so that it can be easily interchangeable.

If you need to break it in a little simpler, and more consistent, I recommend picking up some financial papers and magazines like Money, Smart Money, Fortune, Forbes, and the like before tackling The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, or your local Business Chronicle.

Most people have the luxury of cable to watch the various financial networks and shows. As for myself, I watch Consuelo Mack WealthTrack, Nightly Business Chronicle, Washington Week, and the like because I know that investing, though very interesting, is also very boring.

The people who are too easily excited about it are usually the one that often lose their shirts getting caught up in what the market say day to day.

Too many people freak out about the market going down and the market going up, not understanding that what goes up must come down and what stays down has to come up.

Follow a very popular stock one day minute by minute, second by second:

Let’s say we get up Monday morning right around the time the market opened and we got a stock that started at $108.48, it goes up and down in a matter of minutes in a range of the eight hours the market is opened. The high through that particular day was $196.04 and low was $70.65 with the market ending at $112.69 by the time the market closed.

Most people would bitch and moan that they lost $83.35 because all they saw was that high number of $196.04 and saw where it ended. Not realizing that it started at $108.48 and ended at $112.69, gaining a gross profit of $4.21 off of that stock.

That’s how most people got played with their 401(K), being told that it was worth one thing, but once the dust settled realized it wasn’t what they thought. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but hopefully enough to get you or someone you know interested in getting financially educated.

Trust me, I know.

Earlier this year, I invested 2,000 shares of a company.

Sounds like I’m a big baller right?

Oh, how wrong you would be!

I bought it on the ground floor for half a penny—you read it right—a half a penny to go up to its high of seven or eight cents. (For those trying to do the math, I’ll give you the break down in a minute, so be patient.)

Do I think that I’m going to get rich with this stock? Most likely not.

But it is more than I see other people do. Next to my brother and a cousin there aren’t too many people that I know personally that even bother. I tell some people that I own 2,000 shares of a company it’s like telling them that I crossed Antarctica barefooted, little do they know or understand that it cost only $10 to do so.

Then, when you introduce someone to the world of stocks and bonds, there is also Forex (like stocks except with world currency), ETF, Mutual Funds, SEC Investments, Asset Protection, and the like.

Even thought I’m not rich, I do have a strong idea of how the rich got rich and stay rich through investments, real estate, businesses, and the like.

It a great psychological change, especially if you were brought up to believe that there is more nobility in being poor than in being rich. You know the phrase, “the rich are greedy and dishonest”. Yet, “Roscoe” with his broke-ass was always greedy and dishonest and yet it didn’t pay off for him. So I go back to the question, what’s the difference?

I’m not suggesting that poor or rich alike are all criminals. But what I am suggesting that to each its own. There are good poor people. There are good rich people. There are bad poor people. There are bad rich people. It should go without saying, but I shall say it anyway. I want to be a good rich person. And just because I say that I want to be rich doesn’t mean that I want to be consumed with money. I just don’t want to be consumed with poverty. I realize that family and good friends, spirituality and health with forever trump any monetary value that is put on dollars and coins. My thing of it is, if it is out there to be got, why not you or I? Especially when I can find a way to do it legally and help other forms of humanity in the process?

One of the greatest lessons I have learned from my reading is that if you keep a poor mind about money, there isn’t anything else but to keep a poor mind about money. I didn’t understand how true that was until I started reading books about being financially empowered from people within my own race. I can’t even begin to tell you the grief that I’ve gotten about reading financial literacy books out in my daily commute. I think I would’ve gotten more love if I was robbing people the way some people carried on. And the hilarious part about it it’s usually people that will tell you that they don’t like to read.

Wow, I realize when I can go, I can go, and I need to get out of the door, so I will wrap this up.

Many of the books that I have read or listen to over the past four years (and to my surprise many of them I have read or listen to more than once):


The Science of Getting Rich
by Wallace D. Wattles

Think, and Grow Rich
by Napoleon Hill

As a Man Thinketh
by James Allen

The Secret
By Rhonda Byrne

The Road to Wealth
by Suze Orman

The Millionaire Next Door
Thomas Danko

Operation Financial Freedom
by James Dicks

Think Big and Kick Ass
by Donald Trump

The Money Answer Book
by Dave Ramsey

The Law of Success
by Napoleon Hill

Young, Fabulous and Broke
by Suze Orman

Rich Dad, Poor Dad
by Robert Kiyosaki

Black Enterprise: Guide to Investing
by James A. Anderson

Trump: How to Get Rich
by Donald Trump

The Magic Ladder to Success
by Napoleon Hill

Success Stories
by Robert Kiyosaki

The Laws of Money
by Suze Orman

Think Like A Champion
by Donald Trump

The Courage to be Rich
by Suze Orman

Financial Peace
by Dave Ramsey

Trump 101
by Donald Trump

CASHFLOW Quadrant
by Robert Kiyosaki

Focal Point
by Brian Tracy

More Than Enough
by Dave Ramsey

Trump: Think Like A Billionaire
by Donald Trump

Young, Fabulous and Broke
by Suze Orman

Rich Dad’s Prophecy
by Robert Kiyosaki

Napoleon Hill’s Positive Action Plan: 365 Mediations for Making Each Day A Success
by Napoleon Hill

The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success
by Brian Tracy

Guide to Investing
by Robert Kiyosaki

Multiple Streams of Income
by Robert G. Allen

Sudden Money
By Susan Bradley

Why We Want You to Be Rich
by Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump

In The Black
by Aaron W. Smith

The Total Money Makeover
by Dave Ramsey

The World is Flat
By Thomas L. Friedman
(not a finance book but very informative)

Forex Made Easy
by James Dicks

The Master-Key to Riches
by Napoleon Hill

Rich Brother, Rich Sister
by Robert Kiyosaki


This isn’t all of the books that I read in the Financial/Prosperity/Self-Help, etc. Genres

I am not stating that these books will give you rich alone. If so, I would already be there. lol. However, I have come to appreciate greatly how it has changed my outlook and even calmed me down mentally so that it’ll get me to that place of financial freedom and financial wealth. Investing and financial intelligence isn’t an arms race. If somebody told me four years ago that I had to read all of that I would’ve looked at them crooked. The time passed anyway so why not get away with learning something substantial?

A Blog Entry about Nothing

There isn’t much of an entry that I have to put in this week.

It isn’t that I’ve run out of things to talk about already since I finally made room in my life for this blog. To know me is to know that that would be a total lie. There is always something for me to talk about.

The hurdles of life and other general topics, and given that the Thanksgiving holidays have passed, there is always something within that. Even though it has been many years since a good family drama broke out simply because of the holiday. Then, there is my favorite-yet-not-so-favorite subject the ass that is my near-forty-year-old sister doing a ton of wrong just to get over on people in oppose to doing an ounce of right to work to at least try to further herself in this life for the purpose of her son who deserves a life better than the life he got.

That can be a few entries.

Oh, I almost forgot a couple of things. I am less than a hundred shy of having 1,000 friends on Facebook without even trying. The downfall to that is that I inherit my first stalker that I had to block. I had to try and tell the lady to calm down but she was acting banana. Every time I logged in, she was sending me messages and chat to the point it just got too much. She was phyne—or at least the picture of her profile—but I’ve had my fair share of beautiful crazy women. They’re good to take to bed. They’re not so safe to sleep next to. The second thing was the queen that I talked about in the last two blogs (below) decided to hit me up on Facebook last week. I was thinking he was trying to win my good graces. However, I don’t think he made the connection that I am the same guy he just got into it with a few weeks ago. He saw a man. He saw some dick. I just see a got-damn shame, too dumb to know the people he has pissed off. I guess there is just too many names and faces too remember.

My lack of an entry is not due to laziness. Rather, it is because I’m not that I don’t have time to committee to a full-on entry about something. I am in the final-final stages of finishing up this book to send off. I wanted to send it off tomorrow—a decent rough draft—but that doesn’t seem like it is going to happen. The problem with sending it off next week is that my mom is going to have outpatient surgery after that and will need me to see about her. So, if I get it out by the 14th or the 15th of December, I’ll be good. It will be a nice gift for the publisher.

The only wise words I can muster this morning to pass on is not to wait until the change of a new year or a new month to make your New Year’s resolution. Start now. I’ve been trying to live mine since the tail end of August, so that it will pay later on.

Meanwhile, that is it other than I have fallen in love with this Graff watch (MasterGraff 47 Ø) found at www.graffwatches.com

Tired....

…explaining the prior blog posting…or at least trying to…in a more refined tone

…even those it is a raw journal.

I am utterly amazed that even though only a handful people official follow my blog, EVERYBODY is wondering what got under my skin to write and post the blog that I did this past Saturday. Particularly, from people who know me to be of the quite persuasion.

Well, because I got so many hits on Facebook and in my email (especially my email and all, if not most of the addresses that I didn’t even know you had), let me try to explain in a short short, if the other posting was a bit to manic for you. Typing at the speed of thought is something that makes a whole lot of sense during than after. Yet, it does a whole lot for the cleansing process.

About a few months ago, I was asked by one of my editors to contribute to an anthology project for another one of his fellow editors. I was busy trying to get my own stuff together for my other publishers—still am—so I figured anything that could offer free publicity to me or my one of my pseudonyms is always good thing. For the simple reason, let’s say someone come across your work elsewhere and really like it or, at a minimum, seen it before, they’re more likely to check out whatever else you’ve written and the possibilities are endless from there.

At any rate, I agreed to the project, promising to do the story for his December deadline. So the editor I worked with gets back with the editor spearheading the project to let him know that I’m down. So the editor that is doing this anthology sends me a sweet but brief paragraph of everything he is looking to do for this anthology and sends me detailed instructions about what he wanted.

I should’ve known that there was going to be a problem when his working title was the same as one that already existed and is selling well online. (Titles can’t be copyrighted. However, if your goal is to sell based on originality DON’T go for somebody else’s sloppy seconds.) Whether he took the advice to change it, I don’t know and I don’t care. (Though, given his ego and nastiness, he probably didn’t, and I will let Amazon and whoever take care of him.)

But at this time, I try to be helpful while maintaining my own busyness. Because I am all for anybody succeeding in any endeavor they pursue, and when it is one of us, even more so. To the point that after I found a free spot in my schedule, I wrote a story and sent it out to him about three weeks ago.

No problem.

So, having another small break in my schedule earlier last week, I wrote another story and sent it out. I’m feeling good because I sent it off to him far beyond his deadline. If he likes it he likes it, if he don’t he don’t, and I can probably accommodate him if there are any changes that needs to be made.

Come Thursday, because I was just bored, I started checking my emails, deleting pages and pages of crap and other things when I come across this email from him. Usually, it isn’t that much of a surprise because for projects like his they’ll drop a simple note that says the story is fine and make any necessary changes for final submission, etcetera, etcetera. So when I go to open it, he basically tells me that he doesn’t “understand why he has to tell some writers to double-space their work” but “in the future” I need not make this mistake.

It isn’t a long email just a couple of lines at the most, but reeks of this gay faggot bitch-ass tired queen mildew to the 25^th power. You know the kind, the kind that needs to either suck a dick for protein or eat a banana for potassium. I don’t know exactly what they do for attitudes but he needed a serious one adjusted.

If you know me, you would know that I’m not like most people that will immediately fly off the handle at you just because you come at me wrong. As a personal philosophy, I try not to because I don’t know what kind of mood that person was in before they hit the send button or what, so usually I can let shit like that slide.

It isn’t nothing but dirt off my shoulders.

So I did the next best thing, which is what I always do, see if I was in the wrong. Obvious, that tired mess was in the wrong, but did they specific something to me that I might’ve overlooked? Even if I did, they were still in the wrong.

So I calmly sifted through my emails from the editor that hooked me up to this obviously overdramatic, self-loathing motherfucker.

There is absolute no specifications regarding paragraph spacing.

Everything else over the months, but not paragraph spacing. Even down to the week before I sent of the first story that he rattled off verbatim guidelines.

Now to give you perspective of what the big deal with double-spacing is (or rather was) is to give you a quick history lesson in professional writing.

Back in the day, if you were ever to submit your writing to anybody it was customary for the writer to double-space their work. Because, back in the day the sheet of paper that you sent an editor for review was the same sheet of paper they had to make corrections on.

What changed the old guard? Emails.

When sending work via email became popular in the early 90s, most jobs wanted it sent in the inline text because of the trouble of opening up an attachment and the possible viruses it may have contracted. So if you typed a document in Word, double-spaced it, cut and copied it to the body of an email, back in the day, it went from being a double-spaced to something that was quadrupled-space, making it look like a mess. So, most publishers decided if it was going to be sent that way that we might as well leave it single-spaced. And because of the beauty of attaching a file, most publishers again said leave it single-space, because it afforded them the luxury to make changes in what kind of spacing, font, and size they wanted it in, for paperless corrections or printouts.

Double-spacing is still commonplace in writing, in particular with hardcopy submission. However, those that still practice the old guard via email will specifically ask for it, and will more than likely as for it as an attachment. So I am always super-conscious about this as it has become an industry standard over the past three years.

I probably could’ve let it go, if he had said something to the effect three weeks ago when I submitted my first story that he said was fine. The one that wasn’t double-spaced. But, to be honest, I would never really know because life is to short and their pay was too cheap to be bothered with that headache, especially when you’ve sent me emails about wanting this and that and the thing you want to go off on me about never came up.

Then, too, to me he spoke of his own ignorance. Because he let me know that this so-called problem he was having was all across the board, telling me that he wasn’t specific in what he wanted. That’s fine too. People overlook stuff all the time. However, when you decide to throw a punk-ass tantrum at somebody for something that you forgot to do on your end and then hit send don’t be mad because—putting it in terms he could understand—the nigga skeeted in your mouth and you preferred that he came in the toilet

I mean, really, don’t get mad because of your inadequate planning.

So I sat on it for a couple of days, and I thought that although he didn’t hurt me in anyway, from one brother to another brother (or sister?), I might need to warn him that he might want to watch his tone in the way he address people that are trying to make his project a success. Considering that his last project he edited tanked and his Amazon reviews and rankings not only reflect that but even the publisher that he’s working under practically sees him as an afterthought (or aftertaste, given my previous analogy.)

And I really tried to be nice about it, constantly telling him that what I was same came from a loving place, especially when the people that are writing for you aren’t getting paid shit. Therefore can leave you at the curb where they’ve found you. Because I hate when black men, particularly black gay men and even more so the queenlier ones, get a little taste of any kind of power, gives them a right to be nasty. And then gets upset when you give them a taste of their own nasty and bitter medicine. (Which to me, brought up that whole Kyle incident that I talked about in the last blog.)

Of course, anybody that knows me know I didn’t do that. I could’ve. I really could’ve, but chose to stay on the hire plane even though I was sure that they weren’t. I even went so far as to show them the poignant point that if you were having these sort of problems with most, if not all of their writers doing the same thing, maybe it would’ve behooved them to ask them nicely to double-space their work which would’ve taken no more than a few second.

Unfortunately, I learned long time ago when you’re dealing with nasty queens there is no such thing as offering advice or showing them love. Love is only meant to be received if you love yourself first. And when you’re dealing with somebody that is self-loathing, self-hating, disgusted with themselves and the world, love is something that they cannot accept. From my experience, all people like that know is revulsion and cannot understand why is it that is all they receive.

They’re too petty in trying to find self-worth in other things instead of really working hard in trying to find it within themselves. So the below is my actual response to them:

First off, my apologies, but, most importantly, there is something of a bigger issue that needs to be addressed for future reference with ANYBODY that you’re trying to work with.

I can understand aggravation and frustration, or simply having a bad day from time to time. It happens to the best of us. However, it is my tried-and-true belief that before going off on a little email tantrum and hit send, it MIGHT behoove you considerably to CHECK what you’ve sent before, past and present. Because in reviewing my records, once again, which I operated off of before submitting, there isn’t any mention in neither email sent out by you or [named person] regarding the double-spacing of the submission, because if it had been I would’ve been more than happy to oblige you since industry protocol is rapidly pulling away from the ways I started out with.

Perhaps, since this seems to be an ongoing problem with the submissions you’ve received thus far, this may explain the reason why you’ve received so many submissions that were not double-spaced.

I don’t know what happened between the time you’ve sent out your original request, to me, and now. Perhaps you’ve caught the oversight and changed it since that first email was sent out. Again, I don’t know. It wasn’t addressed in the information that I received. Therefore, I didn’t know. But I am not above apologizing to you, if you felt that I offended you in someway. In fact, I thought it was odd that unlike [named person] or [named person] that there was no request of the first five paragraphs, especially in working with writers that you’ve never worked with before, or whether or not it should be sent in the inline text of an email or an attachment. Because even when I sent out my other story, [named story], three weeks ago, under my Diesel King pseudonym, I would’ve been more than happy to accommodate you in double-spacing it and made sure that my most recent submission, [named story] under my R. Talent pseudonym, would’ve reflected that as well.

It would have been nothing to me.

Now, I’m not saying all this to get under your skin. The reason I took precious time out of my day to write you is because I don’t think you understand the history that you are apart of. It took many of years for many black gay and bisexual writers including myself to get [named publisher] (first and second time) to take on black writers and accept their black-based characters. To the point that you could edit for them. So, snapping at any writer, especially the few good writers that are trying to help you in making your project a success isn’t the way to go. Especially since none of us are telekinetic and can read your underlying intent within the confines of what you’ve written, and can submit our work elsewhere for far better pay.

I hope that you take my words with love that it is given and go forth, and realize there is a nicety to doing thing. Speaking for other writers, it would’ve been nothing if you’ve just asked (politely) if we could double-space the submission for you instead of the short nastiness I happened come across in the previous email…considering in my records there is no such request.

Like my boy Shannon Holmes once said, “faget it, I told ya enuff already.” lol

Sincerely,

[me]

P.S. Enclosed in the attachment [named story] and [named story] double-spaced. I know you don’t need it now, but I thought it was important that I showed you how a little bit of kindness could’ve eased your workload a tenfold with me and the other writer, simply by asking (nicely). Brother to Brother.

So, in trying to help this person, his lame-ass thought he had some power by rejecting both of my works.

Which, if you don’t understand the nature of the beast that is writing, it is very commonplace. Usually, though, it’s rejected based on merit or lack thereof and not petty bruised egos. And besides if I was to leave my babies in his hands, they should’ve just gone ahead and call DFACS on the both of us!

The beautiful thing is that because I knew, even with the sincerest of intention, how it was all going to go down (like I always say, the “simple don’t stray too far from the script”), him rejecting my work afforded me the opportunity to earn three times more money on the same work by submitting it with a different publisher.

I just printed and signed the contract before I even sat down to write this.

Even if I didn’t, it would’ve been okay, too, because there is always somebody accepting something now or down the line. It is nothing like a writing having an assignment prepared during the beginning stages of submissions. First come, first serve. If not that, I could’ve easily thrown it in with one of my existing projects.

I guess what set me off the other day was this uncalled for nastiness over some really petty shit. At 27, I feel like I’ve dealt with it for fall too long from the same kind of people. I’m not saying that people aren’t going to change or that I expect ill-mannered people to rise to a plane that is near civilize. But damn! If you want me to treat you with some respect, maybe it would work to your benefit to give it.

We’re both grown men! Come at me like one!

Don’t act or come at me like a little bitch and think I won’t respond!

Even if you don’t consider yourself a man because of what’s left your penis, try to act like the lady you want to be! Trade in that small dick for a big clit!

I’m not really even mad at him coming at me like he did. I’m teed, obviously, but not mad. I am livid at the idea that he probably came at someone else like that. He didn’t know me from Adam, and I was asked by somebody else to help him out on his project because obviously he couldn’t secure his own people for his own project—explaining a helluvalot and will show its head eventually. Trust me. The thing that I think about or stress over is whom else did he come after like that? My flaw over the years that I’ve discovered is that I am a very empathetic person. And I see too many times of people not developing the backbone to know that the self-loather feed off of intimidating others.

It’s like sex to them.

I’ve watched it go on for too many years in silence, and it was time to say something.

I wasn’t aware when I started the last blog where it would lead me, down memory lane and an outpour of revelations.

And I guess all the stuff that I mentioned in my previous entry was a long time coming out, and I tried to be humorous with it towards the end, to let everybody know that it wasn’t getting the best of me.

So I will part with these words: The next time you come across a tired nasty queen like the one I mention above, if you can tell them to kiss your ass and let a fat one rip. They love the smell, it reminds them of themselves in the mirror.

The Tired Queens of Working My Nerves!!!!!

Let me start off by saying to those that are visiting my page for the first time. This is sort of my scratch sheet for ideas and what’s going on in my life. This is not a reflection of my “specialized” writing. So the prettiness that you’re used to seeing on a professional blog isn’t going to be found here. There are going to be errors and jump-off-the-rail running thoughts going on here considering that I find myself typing at the speed of thought. I really do try really hard to break you in slowly. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…



It has taken me many years to get to a place on the outer walls of nirvana. To find that sparkle of peace, that though, life isn’t where I want it to be right now I am moving in that direction. That if I hold steadfast to that dream that I would soon be there, that I am almost there, at least. So why is it that the devil is trying so hard to knock me off my course?

I know, I know what you’re thinking. To the strangers that might read this, I am not of the religious kind, so to speak. I am not apart of no church or mosque or synagogue. I am however a spiritual person not confined the hypocrisies of most religion but try and respect anyone and everyone that is…or so I would like to think. I can hear in my head those that know me so well, near and far, laughing there heads off and asking “since when?” And to that I say I could sprinkle in a few expletives right off the bat but I figured it is way too early in this blog entry to use them right now.

Where was I? I was at peace…searching for peace…you get the gist. Well, in my quest to get three manuscripts and a board game ready for next year: two for two promising small press publishers (under my pseudonyms) and another for commercial press publisher (under my own name) (after finish writing it, proofreading it, querying an agent, proofread it again, hopefully have the money to hire a professional proofreader and obtain a literary agent, publisher, etc.), and, of course, the board game. If that wasn’t enough stuff not to get paid for, I decided to take on the additional task on top of other additional tasks that I am not getting paid for to help out a friend in need. Or so I thought.

And before I go any further, I thought I should state that money isn’t a factor in my work. It would be nice, extremely nice, but it isn’t a factor because I hope in the end it would be like planting seeds and picking a bountiful harvest.

I’m reading Napoleon Hill, and hence I why I call this my liberated journal because I type what come to mind, so excuse the errors and whatnot.

So I get the assignment that isn’t really specific in what I need to do per se, in regards to writing style and submission format. To know my friend is to know that he is not only one of the sweetest men you’ll meet he has a very high standard of what he wants. When I emailed him about the change, he informed me that it wasn’t his project. He just told us it was to get enough people on board to help out a struggling friend unable to secure writers for his upcoming anthology project that he proposed to show to some publishing company that he was starting or his friend was starting, whatever.

I can’t speak for the eighteen or so writers that signed on the project, but I can say that I wasn’t too upset because I’m really trying instill book that I’m reading The Master-Key to Riches by Napoleon Hill into my life. And I’m in the zone about going the extra mile, so it wasn’t that big of a deal to me. I began to open dialogue with this person, trying to get where his head at. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take but a minute via a couple of emails to figure out that he wants the world and hopes that everything falls into to place but has no means of making that happen. Which in my book is sort of alright, I give people leeway especially if they are just getting their footing in.

But here’s when my leeway ends.

When you got eighteen plus people operating on instructions that you’ve given them and they’ve done exactly what you’ve said, and all of a sudden all of them are wrong and you’re not. Something is wrong.

Okay. Remember I am at peace. I am at the outer wall of nirvana until I received this nasty email over something very minute, something that could’ve been corrected in like less than fifty seconds. No big deal. It wasn’t even something to get nasty or upset over. I don’t even let that get to me. But when I get word that I’m not the only one that got it, then it becomes a major problem for me. We didn’t know dude from shit, and we had no obligation to help him whatsoever and could’ve left his happy-ass without any writers to help him. And, again, we were acting on his instructions to the letter. So why in the hell are you going to show your appreciation by disrespecting people that are trying to help make your project a success?

I won’t go into what the email said because it was too short, and I would have to give you the verbatim of the back and forth responses to really get it. All I will say is that it was short, but had that sort of nasty, messy stereotypical “queen” element that automatically puts anyone off.

And I start to question why is that?

Why is that when you’re trying to help people like that and things don’t go their way for one reason or another that they think they can talk to you (or email you in my case) like any old thing? Like, they feel like they can walk around and say stuff without any repercussions? Or rather, are offended when their mud pie is dished back at them?

I am not saying “kiss my ass” in appreciation for what I’ve done for you—though I’m not above telling them to kiss my ass and let a fat one rip now—but I can only do what you ask since you perpetrate that you’re all that and you’re not better than the dog bootyhole you hailed from.

I guess all of this is fresh in mind because of what I saw about three weeks ago.

People who know me know that I am late. I mean really late, in regards to watching such and such show on television show, considering I’m not much of a televisions watcher or a radio listener being that I’m pretty much chained to my tablet, and now that I got a new computer, to it too. So I was at my brother’s house using his computers in between my computers at the time, and I happened to catch this show called College Hill: South Beach running some sort of mid-season marathon, I think. Obviously, or most likely, most of you are more familiar with it than I am. Anyway, most of those folks were childish and trifling (from what I saw I didn’t see it from beginning to end to make a definite conclusion, so I can’t speak full on that, because to know me is to know I like to know things that I talk about well) for a bunch of college students. And I was highly disturbed—not really surprised—by this character named Kyle. I won’t talk too bad about the brotha because I hope, either during the following episodes or at least after the show that he has developed and grown far better than what he was on that show.

If you saw what I saw I don’t really think I have to really explain why I was disturbed. Don’t get me wrong, I got his story, and am empathetic to his pain from the bits and pieces that I heard. And maybe I got a better perspective of things after going through counseling myself a few years ago, but there comes a point that you cannot make people that have nothing to do with your pain pay for something that someone else has done to you. Shit, you can’t even make those that done you wrong pay for what they’ve done because nine times out of ten they probably don’t even know that they’ve done it. And even that one that did, he or she would never know the severity of the mark that they left on that person.

Which is why for the life of me I never understood why so many people give their power to another person when it comes to a relationship? Oh my good! She hurt me! He cheated on me! They both put me through the wringer! Boo-hoo, I’m going to make every motherfucker pay for what that person ever did to me! I won’t let anybody get close! I’m sorry, I have yet to met the person that could put it down like that that I would happily fork over my power to so that they can control the rest of my life without knowing it. The best lovers in the world are broke men and crazy women, and like I said, I have yet to meet the one!

But going back to poor Kyle, like I said, I was disturbed by this image, particularly, when it is the only a one-side portrayal that no one can rebut in offering even more diversity into the community. Unfortunately, I can’t say that I was all that surprised by it, though. (Though, I have to admit that even with him, I was glad that the showed a realness behind the “show.” Which in large part to me explained the “show.”) And I wasn’t surprised because of the stereotypical-ness that is often portrayed when it come to gay characters in television (my mind automatically shoots back to the short-lived show Second Time Around when the gay character Omar (I think?) in the first episode went from being a man that happened to be gay (because I was so proud for anyone to buck stereotypes) to a cookie-cutter typecast (Florida Evans’ Damn! Damn! Damn!)). I wasn’t all that surprise because I know that character. Unfortunately, I’ve seen that character too many times in my life to want to remember.

Now, I’m not one for uniforming people to act a certain way, or even to treat everybody equally and whatnot. (And what I mean by that is that you’re going to treat certain people certain ways because of your personal relationship with them.) But I am a staunch believer that everyone regardless of whatever (See the EOE handbook for specifics) should offer everyone a degree of decency and respect.

Again, again, again, when I am trying to help you.

I can feel myself rambling. If you feel it too, I am truly sorry. This is a truly a sore spot for me because my mind reverts back to a memorial service of a great friend of mine that I attended about six years ago.

Let me explain.

While I have been spared the full wrath of these self-loathers, which is what many of them are in a nutshell, I’ve seen enough of their destruction in their messiness and trifling ways not to be impressed. And because I never sought their approval, I never was on their radar so to speak. But for a number of my friends, coming into the life, it was almost like these people were the gatekeepers. Their appeal was that, in spite of being filthy and nasty, they were open about what they did. So for someone that spent a great amount of their lives being suppress, oppressed, etcetera, etcetera, it was like they met someone that understood them and their plight and they were willing to forgo anything just to be accepted by people like them.

Which is why (sadly) as I sit here and write all of this out that maybe a large part of why I “fell in love” with certain people was because they offered the total opposite in few and selective droves? Revelations. Wow! I just now caught that.

Okay, I’ve enlightened and you’re probably want me to make my point already. I promise you that it is coming. Well, in watching some of my friends trying to become accepted by people like them, I watched too many of them do some crazy ass shit just to be accepted. I mean fucked up shit that could be wrapped up in just calling it risky behavior, be it sexual or criminal or whatever.

But the queen bee was this fat slob of a queen that had the tongue of all tongues. It could be the nastiest of nastiness to the lowest of low. Even thought I didn’t like this person based on the attributes that began me to write this thing, I always made a point to extend a kind word to them. They may never had one for me, but it was okay. Fine, whatever. That is until my very good friend ended up dying before his time, and they decided at the memorial service, after this person idolized them and thought they had built some kind of friendship with them, to get up in front of the audience and tell them that they weren’t friends and that basically they didn’t understand why we were there when our attention could’ve been focused elsewhere. Now mind you, he wasn’t asked to speak as much as volunteered to do so, to say this kind of mess.

I know what you’re probably thinking that was one person.

True. You’re absolutely correct.

However, that person, even in that moment never shied away from their nastiness and their filth. They were trifling when I met them and they showed their trifling ways even during a memorial service to someone that thought highly of them, and had nothing but kind words for them even thought they weren’t even deserving of it or made some kind of lame excuse for their nastiness.

That is how he is. That is how he was.

Fuck that!

It is bad enough that everybody else wants to oppress someone else just because. It is bad enough that they already got to fight the world, so why strap some more weight on a person’s back? And for what? Just so they can be big in their own minds? Make someone as unhappy as they?

So when I see or hear or read people going out of their way to be nasty to another human it makes me extremely mad. And it has nothing to do with the political aspect of what it looks like on the community, as much, if not more, than it has to do with the social aspect of it all, the human aspect.

Usually, I am the kind of man that can take a deep breath, chalk up any negativity to a bad day and move on. I don’t know about you, but I am sick of this shit.

Why is it that I have to get “niggerish” with another human being?

Why?

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Why is it that I have to get “niggerish” with these bitch-ass queens to put them in check?

Really? Why?

…and do it in such a way that they don’t realize they’ve been cut until after they start to walk away and fall apart.

I am so freaking sick of these bitchy-ass queens that act like the world has only done them wrong. And that they feel like they have a right to take it out on someone else.

Life is tough shit! Shit!

I want to tell them to suck a dick for protein or suck a banana for potassium, same difference. Either way let your jaws get tired so that you don’t work my nerves any more!

My logic wants to come in place of my emotion, and the writer in me wants to tell you how I tied in a simple spat with these stories. For those that have lived in the frustration, I hope that the answer is simplistic, right in front of you.

But if not, I will spell it out. And apologize if I was so caught up in feeling that I failed to put the connecting words down for it to make sense:

I am sick of these tired queens!

Everything is so fucking dramatic!

Don’t cock an attitude with me because you didn’t articulate something.

Why is the itty bitty shit such a big deal? All the motherfucker had to do was tell me what he wanted and it could’ve been taken care of in less than fifty seconds!

…y’all motherfuckers thought I lost it! Ha! I’m just getting older and a bit more vocal (well at least on (virtual) paper) about it.

Wandering in Creativity

This was originally an article that I wrote back in Spring of ’99 that I found converting my files from 3½ floppy to flash drive. I thought about making corrections to it but decided to leave it well enough alone. These were my thoughts a little more than ten years ago at the age of sixteen.

I have always been a wandering spirit. Though when needed be, I've always focus on what needed to be done: Things like walking to the grocery store and getting the groceries to getting my assignments done. Each and everything I do I try to learn something new along the way. If not, reiterated lessons I have long forgotten to put in practice.
What I have learned from this wandering spirit is although creativity is a free-floater; the two doesn't always mean one in the same. When you learn that the two doesn't necessarily intertwine, inner conflict brews until it can no longer be contained like steam in a teapot eventually evaporating into the surroundings.
Antonneah asks playfully, looking over at the pen in my hand overcastting the napkin on the table. "What are you working on Mr. Hutchinson?"
Not interested in the assignment I suppose to be doing or working on the novel I suppose to have the first draft completed two weeks ago, I answer "nothing." When in truth, I find myself doodling a poem on the napkin at Taco Bell.
I'm embarrassed.
I've found even more things to describe this lovely girl's beauty. In the course of two months, today was the day she chose to go with me to Taco Bell. Now that she sits in front of me, all I want her to do now is get out of sight so I can write a poem about her beauty, inside and out. Redundant, I know. Antonneah was never my girlfriend (although I wanted her to be); she was a girl that was a friend that I cared for a great deal. And for me to care for another soul when I didn't care about myself was quite a scare to my tortured being.
"Another poem?"
I nod, sipping on my drink and eating on my Big Beef Meximelt.
Although I was known as a writer to most in my class, I was most noted for being a poet. Which was ironic because I never let many people read my work. I never feared anyone not liking my writings. My biggest fear was others taking credit for it. In the sense that someone would say that it was their poem (because it describes their feeling(s) or it sounded similar to another's work) or they thought they were the inspiration for the poem. Even though many of my teen works were abstract, in my opinion.
She asks, "How does that come to you?"
With a poked mouth, I finished chewing and washed it down with a good gulp of Hawaiian Punch.
I answer with a question, "Writing?"
She nodded, laughing. There was always something about my facial expression that always made her laugh. Apart of my creativity were a smile and the unspoken words I said. I continued to poke food in my mouth wanting to think about how I wanted to answer her question. Coming off the top of my head I knew I would stutter like hell. My main goal at the time was to get to know her on a more intimate level; or try to somewhat impress her.
Understand we were fifteen or sixteen at the time.
"Sometimes it comes to me like a bolt of lightening. Everything that I want to say and how I want you to hear it comes together and makes sense on a piece of paper."
What I didn't say to her was that my wandering spirits do, so my creative spirit can pursue. That is doing as they feel. But since I didn't want that to be open for loose interpretation, I closed my mouth.
I called myself a wandering spirit because physically I've always wandered. In my youth, I bounced from place to place. So, eventually, I began to get a taste to explore things outside of my usual realm. (Something that had really started when my mother left my father for the first time.)
After moving ever so often, I became numb to stability because anything and everything were up for change at any moment. I was numb until I began to wander within myself. Wandering to places that I have only heard about, read about. Wandering to simplicity; complexity; and enlightenment. Wandering to the feelings I felt denied to express. Those feelings that were so bottled up within me that they came out in lashes of reality. Never a supportive balance.
In my exploration in yonder, I found creativity. I found those things I was without sensibly in creativity alternating what was for what could be or could have been. It was this I thought my wandering spirit and creative spirit was kindred spirits. For many, and for myself, it would be safe to assume that they were one in the same. It was through my wandering spirit that I was able to find my right brain's creative spirit. A spirit that may have been already there, but wasn't expose until my wandering spirit drifted me from reality.
For many years I enjoyed having a wandering spirit. When thing got too heavy at home or other places: Tap, tap, tap! I could tap into my wandering spirit—a spirit of trance—until that part of me found some creative spirits within me. Usually, and not consciously trying, I would find my creative flow. When it came to poetry, most was abstract to other while clear as a crystal bell to deep-minded. Other writings came out the could've, would've, should've, of a situation mixing the realism of my life with the various imageries of my mind, my spirits.
It was cool in the beginning being able to express myself on paper than I ever could verbally. It was through my wandering spirit to my creative spirit that I could say just about anything and everything I wanted without repercussions. (Later, I would learn all words have repercussions.) It was in my wandering and creative spirit that I was able to trust. There was no certainty in wandering nor was there any certainty in creativity, but there was a trust. Hard to explain…No‚ it's not. Creativity and the wandering path had no reason to cause me harm.
Boy, was I wrong.
Because a wandering spirit is wandering there are never any grassroots planted in the ground. And you cannot get anywhere halfway off the ground. I under the assumption that my wandering spirit was taking me everywhere only to learn I wasn't going anywhere. I was seeing everything; the possibilities. Yet what I wasn't seeing was the reality of not going anywhere.
Originally, my magnificent creative spirit took me up to Cloud 9 where I slowly ascended from there. After time I could reach that creative peek without any prior thought. When I did, I was being lifted so high and so quick to my creativity, when I reached my level I was bless to stay there for awhile before I was slapped to the ground by reality.
What I had to cope with was a wandering spirit needing to be anchored. And when I say 'anchored' I don't mean weighed. I speak of my wandering soul not being halfway off the ground like it had been. Instead, being firmly planted on the ground with a sense of direction. And understanding that path within "direction" isn't as concrete as we think. Can be changed if willing to risk. Then, we are grounded in the sense of finding an anchorage, or stability.
I had a creative spirit that would take me up and let me down like the reality I was force to face. That up and down; over here, over there; no stability. I had to make creativity, or the spirit of creativity a stability. Holding on when it took me up. Holding on when it tried to cut me loose. (Hold on for dear life, don't let go. And if you do, land on the trampoline, grab on and don't ever let go).
Then, there was the father behind my two spirits. Reality. REALITY. A reality I was so destined not to face that it gave me this wandering spirit. It was already equipped with creativity. From reality's creativity gave me my wandering spirit. Why? Because I had to face the good and the bad of reality. A task that I wasn't able to face at the time. My wandering spirit showed me the potential of everything while floating in one place. It [reality] knew that my wandering spirit would eventually show me to reality, but not before facing creativity.
Through the eyes of reality, the wandering spirit—the ability to go anywhere without going anywhere—gave me insight through my creative spirit to write. Anyone will tell you that beautiful things, realistic stories, were written from this creative spirit. Apart of me that I would have never been able to find through the basis of reality. This is where I steam in the teapot started to blow.
All the while I thought in order to get to my creative spirit, I had to go from my reality through my wandering spirit to get to my creativity. Being that wandering part of me had to wander, and my creative side had to base itself off of this wandering spirit. I was quick to believe my wandering spirit and creative spirit of them being one in the same. Where I come to learn they weren't one in the same was when reality broken them up.
By way of a self-induced depression.
When my wandering spirit showed me most of everything, and not taking me anywhere. I fell apart. Why? Because I was once able to see everything, the possibilities, and I couldn't anymore except for what I had seen repeatedly. I was immobile with myself, not able to explore my possibilities because this wandering spirit encaged me. A spirit that could look out, but I couldn't go out of the very cage that I thought reality had cast me.
My wandering spirit left reality. Rather it asked of me to leave the pain of my reality behind. It raised me, halfway off the ground to see other horizons and possibilities. I couldn't do that anymore. Yet I was able to hold onto creativity. Again, why? Creativity never asked me to leave reality. Instead, it [creativity] asked of me to turn my reality into something creative. Making it so that it carries some of the joys the pains without suffocating who I was. And it was my creativity that reminded me that in every step taken you will always come back to one. Reality to wandering to creativity and back. Whether I went from creativity to reality, or me having to go from my creativity through my wandering spirit back to my reality, I always went back to one.
I always thought that I needed my wandering spirit to be creative. I come to learn, that yes, I needed my wandering spirit to show me my creativity. It was a lesson that my reality had to show me. But the intent wasn't for me to be fixated on that wandering spirit to achieve creativity. I've come to believe that it was through that wandering spirit that I was to see reality through the eyes of creativity. Reality and creativity were parallel lines. That wandering spirit was that line that connected the two. Exposing me of the two similar, but different realms of reality and creativity that I was unable to see shortsightedly.
"Are you done?" Antonneah asks, as I take the last bit out of my Big Beef Meximelt and the last sip of my Hawaii Punch.
"Sure. Whenever you are ready to go."
It was then that maybe my creativity doesn't come from my reality. It could be it comes from staying up all night from eating spicy foods.
Nah, it's the perception of reality.