Yea I’m an 80’s baby.

What can I do to make this year count?

How can I change my life for the better this year?

Why am I not who/where I want to be?

Who is holding me back?

Who do I need to say no to in order to say yes to me?

So today at work I got the opportunity to give a flu shot to a 14 year old black kid. Could have been me. Except he was “cool” at an age where I was knee deep in books and back street games of basketball; girls were a land that I longed to visit but had no idea how to get to.
Anyway while prepping him for a flu shot I got the chance to talk with him.
Of course, with my preoccupation with dreams, I asked him what he wanted to be. His reply which I don’t fault him for was “A pro” ..”Pro-what?” I asked. “Professional Football player.” ..Now I didn’t want to down his dream, and Lord knows that dreams are individual so who am I to impose my expectations on him. But it made me think. At his age, I think I wanted to be a rapper. Yep..I’m pretty sure. A rapper. I might still want to be one, depending on whether a good beat is in my presence. Anyway. It made me think about the life-cycle and strength of dreams.
When your young..your dreams seem right around the corner, just about to be realized. If you just work a couple more months, or a couple years at the max..we’re all sure that we’ll be discovered, found, appreciated and thrown onto the world stage. As you age..If your dreams aren’t broad enough to find a connection to your real world it can be easy to get discouraged.
I think that parents have the all-important job of feeding and broadening our dreams. Especially if a child has a dream that is super-specific and or super-difficult to achieve. If I can’t look at my current situation and see the seeds of a dream then, I think life can feel purposeless. With a dream to serve as the fuel and the map, life is more of an adventure and less of the completion of a checklist.

If I had money like Oparah..I’d take all the children I could around the world and introduce them to all the fabulous people doing fabulous things. I’d also show them the kids who were less well off…let them know that’s its their responsibility to their particular gifts and talents/God to become the best version of themselves that they can.

Btw: The Roots album is the truth!
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/28/142873013/first-listen-the-roots-undun <— First Listen (Do yourself a favor!)

Wale.

“nobody see you when you being humble”

Yo. Sometimes I feel like Jay-z on Ignant shi*.

“Y’all niggaz got me really confused out there
I make ‘Big Pimpin” or ‘Give It To Me’ one of those
Y’all hail me as the greatest writer of the 21st century
I make some thought provokin’ shi* y’all question whether he fallin’ off” – Sean Carter

When you try to do the right thing and be a gentleman/upstanding citizen/someone positive, turn the other cheek, and so forth – certain people take you for a joke. Not understanding that this is a choice. That you’ve been the other dude. Disrespectful. Selfish. Short-tempered. Cold as a ice-cube in a polar bears coke.

Guess you can’t throw pearls before swine, and whatever other cliche fits. My patience grows thin however, and ever the investor – I’m wondering about the return i’m getting on being a “good guy”. Still trying to find the balance that works for me.

Day by Day.
Fly or Fall.

OFO

To always be what you are.

I just got new tires.

Yea, I know, Hooray for me. You’ll pop a bottle of bubbly next time you see me.

I had to get them replaced because the previous front tires were “cupped” (the term the grease monkey used) – which meant that they were making it sound like I was driving in the ukraine during the cold war. It was God-awfully loud inside my car. Cell phone conversations were just me pretending to hear what the other person was talking about, then texting them later pretending I forgot the details of the conversation and asking for a recap. (sorry J.) smh. I kept the “cupped” tires on for awhile because even though they were noisy, they really weren’t dangerous – just loud and annoying.

What? Why the face? Your not interested in my car troubles?… hold on,hold on – I’m getting to the point. geesh.

Anyway, after they replaced my tires and I started on down the road toward home, I literally was shocked at how quiet the ride was. Article of Evidence #1: My brother fell asleep on the ride home. Article of Evidence #2: I could turn down the volume on my radio to below 20 and still hear NPR…which as a 27 yo male I do enjoy from time to time. (dont judge me)

I mean, I “knew” that the ride before the “cupped” tires was quieter but it was surprising at how fast I adjusted to the noisy ride and made that my new normal.

Not only did I adjust to this new normal, but I literally forgot or just couldn’t recall how nice and quiet it was previously. Since I couldn’t remember just how peaceful new tires sounded, I had no real desire to get the tires replaced. In fact if circumstance/chance hadn’t met in the form of a suspected new problem I would never have gotten them replaced.[P.s. sometimes I’m lazy]

Of course, this made me think about old relationships. Old jobs. Really any situation where we get so engulfed in our lives that we literally forget how things were before this person/job/situation came around.

This used to hobble me in relationships. I tend to fall in love pretty rarely, and as a result when I do fall – its pretty bad. I mean roses, rainbows, horseshoes, and marshmallow balloons. In the past when I was in love, my life tended to contract to about the size of me and my significant other. I’d go all Ninja McGuyver with arts and crafts projects and construct poem books, little surprises when they awoke, bigger (on a budget) surprises at work et al, etc, and so on. Older me looks back at younger me with a little bit of shame and admittedly, some envy. Because of this tunnel vision, if the other person wanted to leave the relationship, although I’d try not to show it [Ice Cold!] – i’d panic inside, because I literally could not imagine my life without the other person. I’d basically forgot that there was a life before them. Or that it was enjoyable. One or the other, or both.

This was a problem for me in relationships until one day I over heard a friend of a friend say something. Something I know we’ve all heard in some iteration (either with a fist in the sky or a tear in the corner of their eye) – “I managed to live all this time without you and I’m sure I’ll be to continue after you” – I’d probably heard it a million times before but at the moment for whatever reason it finally made sense..and I was instantly able to understand and literally step back from making one of the bad decisions that I tended to excel at during college.

Today, I try to make sure that I don’t get so used to the status quo that I’m willing to sacrifice anything of value to me. Part of that is making sure that I maintain the correct perspective on things, which because life tends to be pretty consuming at times, can be difficult. Quiet time helps me. Prayer does too. So does writing.

What helps you? Make it a conscious part of your schedule 🙂

Fly or Fall.