Journey with me

Even though I’ve spent the last three years of my life in college classrooms being educated on things that are supposed to help prepare me for real world issues, I feel like I’ve spent the last two and a half years learning about myself. When I first got to school it was a really rough time for me. I was letting all kinds of external problems that I had no control over affect where my life was going. I came into college thinking business was the direction my life was headed in, but in my first quarter an economics class (which was surprisingly very easy for me) changed all of that. There was no way I was going through four years of that shit. At the time, there was no one I talked to more than my friend Eliana. When we talked on the phone I had problems explaining what I was going through, but while we talked via instant messenger I was able to express myself through the written word, and she noticed it. She told me that I should consider a profession where I could use my ability to write. I’ll never be able to thank her enough for being there for me at the time, and I still maintain that she is one of the best friends that anyone could ever ask for. Because of her words, I began to take writing seriously. A few months later I joined the school newspaper and realized I found something I love to do in writing about sports. Now, two years after joining the school paper, I’m going to be the editor and chief of a group of aspiring journalists, something I’m not even sure if I’m ready to do, but that’s another story. I’ve come a long way as far as technique and style over the last two years, but I’m still struggling with figuring out why I write, who I write for, where my motivation comes from and where I can find it when I don’t have any. I’d like to one day be able to take readers on a journey with every piece that I write, but right now it’s my own work that is taking me on a journey from my humble writing beginnings to where I am now and where I want to be. I recently read this quote by Winston Churchill and found it interesting:

“Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.”

So I’m giving you my adventure. All of it, without holding back. It’s me in a new light, more vulnerable than I’ve ever been.

You scribbled in your notepad and created your life
- Jay-Z

I’ve always written. I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t have a notebook full of my words. Before I decided to take writing seriously, I would write to get shit out of my system. Nothing has ever been easy for me, and I’ve never had that one person I could vent to because we moved around a lot and my inability to bring myself to speak to people I don’t know, it was always hard for me to make friends at schools until basketball season started.

After my best friend in fourth graded moved to a new school I never had a “best friend” to share experiences with until I met Davion and Fernando in high school, and by the time I met them, I had already locked up every emotion I felt was off limits in a box that I swore no one would ever get to look into (however, at some point during the course of our friendship, I allowed Eliana to take a small peak inside that box though and I’m worried because I feel like a small window to that box may be opening up for someone else now).

However, I had to get things off the chest, so hundreds of notebooks have been bleed in over the years. Without the pen and pad I would have grown insane. But back then, I didn’t pay attention to style or technique, it was more of a form of expression rather than something that should be technically and grammatically correct. Sometimes I still get in trouble when writing on pure emotion rather than technique. As a journalist, there are rules you have to follow, and I still have problems breaking old habits. My advisor still has to correct things in my work that I’ve been doing since I’ve started as a staff writer.

If you could go back and read everything I’ve written in those notebooks (all of which are gone forever because I either lost them or threw them away) you’d know my life. You would know everything I’ve ever been through and every ridiculous idea I’ve ever had – and there have been plenty. Suffice to say, I’ve moved on from writing in the notebooks. Maybe because I have a computer, maybe because I don’t need to like I use to, or maybe I have too much other things going on, whatever it is, I’ve moved on, but what have I moved on to?

I heard the beat and I ain’t know what to write
-Nas

When I decided that I wanted to do this writing thing, I had problems figuring out what I wanted to write about. If you go back and read some of my early blogs I touch on so many different topics which include, but are not limited to history, religion, politics, sports, and I even wrote a little fiction. I remember that I started writing a short story, and I was posting each chapter up in my blogs (I eventually deleted all of those because I ended up hating where the story was going, sorry for those of you who asked me to finish it, I couldn’t complete something I wasn’t happy with). I was writing, but I wasn’t necessarily happy because I didn’t really have a niche. I had been interested in so many things over the course of my life that I couldn’t really concentrate on one thing. At this point, I was already ready to give up and just change my major to history and eventually become a history teacher (which I probably would have done if I didn’t have Eliana supporting me throughout that whole first year in college, I’m forever in her debt). 2006 came around and I wrote this blog about the Final Four and a guy read it and asked me to write college basketball articles for his website. I gladly accepted and found something I knew a lot about and something I loved to write about. However, after the season ended, just a week later, I wrote two more articles for the guy and stopped after he failed to post an article I wrote about the NBA. Three articles in, and I was already done – and I was back to questioning whether or not writing was for me.

It’s hard when you find something you want to do, but you feel like you’re not good at it, and that’s where I was at that point. I read my shit and it was terrible. I had so much growing to do because it was so new to me and I didn’t have anything to write about. I was thinking at the time, “what good is a writer if he has nothing to write about.”

I can’t believe I’m writing this bullshit… I’ma come up with some new shit now. I’m going to write again.
-Nas

That summer I really wanted to go back home, but I didn’t want to lose my job. I was frustrated with life, I almost transferred up north just to get away from everything. That summer ended up being the worst three months of my life. I lived with one of my mom’s cousins until she kicked me out for only god knows why because I was the most polite, respectful dude of all time while I lived there and thanked them daily for giving me a place to say.

Whatever. Fuck them. More than half of my family was worthless anyway. I’m use to it. I ended up going from friend’s house to friend’s house spending nights at places for about a week until I found a roommate to live with. I basically lived out of my car that week, during the hot ass summer, with no air conditioning – and even spent a night in my car in the parking lot where I worked one of the days I had to open up the store.

I almost ended up losing one of my best friends that summer, Carole, who I felt treated me like fucking shit while she knew everything I was going through. She’s told me several times that she thought I treated her like shit and always puts our mutual silent treatment from that summer on me and I’m always with whatever when she says that bullshit. I’ve put it behind me, no need to argue with her when she brings up the worst time of my life. Needless to say, I didn’t have much time to write that summer, nor did I have a computer or enough money to drive to the library whenever I wanted to. Towards the end of the summer Carole, who was transferring schools, had a going away party, and all of those friends she drank with (who I couldn’t stand) and brought me around throughout the summer failed to show up. I, and one of her best friends, was the only person to show up. When I left, I drove home for my mom’s birthday and decided to re-read those articles I write for that bum ass website. They fucking sucked. I couldn’t believe that I wrote that bullshit. With everything I went through that summer, I had loads of inspiration. I wrote again.

He said I write what I see
I write to make it right, don’t like where I be
-Lupe Fiasco

When school started back up, I joined the school newspaper. During our first class, the editor in chief asked me what I wanted to write about, I told her sports. That was the last time I talked to her until I because assistant sports editor the next quarter. I spent all of my time in the class that quarter with the sports editor at the time, Ariana (congratulations on graduating by the way). My first story was on our school’s pub showing Monday Night Football every week. I went, watched the game with a bunch of drunk people, and interviewed some of those said drunks and my story was put on the front page. Ballin. I ended up covering a ridiculous amount of soccer and volleyball before basketball season started. I had problems covering both sports because I really didn’t know much about either sport. I asked Ariana for advice and she told me to just write what I saw and get a quote from the coach. Probably the best advice I’ve ever received in terms of journalistic writing. I wanted to write the way I saw things instead of just writing what I saw, which makes a big difference when discussing objectivity and subjectivity.

By the time the Winter quarter rolled around, I was knocking out two to three articles a week. I owned the sports page during the winter quarter, the bylines were almost exclusively my name. Mid-way through the quarter I had realized that writing about basketball is what I was going to need to do for the rest of my life. Not what I wanted to do, but what I needed to do. Basketball has been the only thing in my life outside of writing that has kept me sane throughout the years, which is also why I feel the worst times of my life happen during the summer. I remember last summer was pretty tough for me, and I told Ellen that terrible things always happen to me during the summer. I remember about a month after school started I was put on crutches by a spider and Ellen said “it’s not the summer anymore, how do you explain that?” I couldn’t, and I realized that bad things are going to happen at all times of the year, but during the other times, I have basketball to help me deal with it. Yeah, it’s that serious.

I’m a writer not a biter for myself and others
-Jay-Z

When I first started writing, I was writing exclusively for myself. I did not want anyone reading any of the shit I wrote because too much of me was in my writing. When I started to write blogs I began to think about ways to keep an audience entertained, at least keep the audience I wanted entertained. Since my first blog, I’ve obviously come a long way in terms of content (even though most people who clicked on this blog stopped reading about 1,900 words ago). In essence, I thought the others I was writing for were my friends. Mid way through last summer I began writing for talkhoops.net, my third basketball website (I won’t even talk about the second one, fuck them) and everyone read my first article (except for Fernando) and that was it. Because it was about basketball (or maybe they just don’t read), no one read another one, even though I thought at the time it was them I was writing for. In a couple of articles I inserted inside jokes hoping one of my friends would get a kick out of it. A week would pass, I wouldn’t hear anything from that friend. He’s not reading. So now I have people who don’t even know me reading inside jokes that were intended for someone else to read.

I continued to write blogs for my friends who don’t like sports hoping they would read those. Some do, but most don’t, yet, I continued to write for them. These same them are ‘the them’ who get my support in whatever they do. I can’t count the miles I’ve driven, hours of youtube videos I’ve watched, times I wanted to call out your new found ‘faith’ etc. It’s almost been a year, and my friend Fernando wouldn’t be able to tell you the name of the website for, but he’d be pissed if I didn’t show up for his first sermon – one he didn’t even invite me to. I heard about it through our Davion, who happens to be very good friends with both of us. I sat through this guy Fernando crying over my sister and he can’t even read one of my articles. Not one? But every fucking time Davion performs he’s right there front row. What am I to you if you can’t read one thing, if you can’t come down to watch one game, if you can’t call me while you’re in town? I was the one at all of your fucking football games, I was the one who gave you someone to hangout with when Davion moved to Visalia, I should have just spent all of that time with Theron, Travis and Eliana. I just couldn’t believe that you had excuses for not being able to spend 10 minutes of your fucking time to read one fucking article. It’s whatever, you’re just like half of my family. You’re worthless. You don’t bring anything to the table. I’ll be better off without you and I’m done writing for my ‘friends’ because they’re not reading my shit. The only people who I know read what I write on a regular basis are writers themselves. I really have all the support I need in Celia (who has written this same fucking blog about a week ago) and I get a lot of positive feedback from Zach, the editor at talkhoops.net (who ironically has written this same fucking blog today).

The thing about you, Fernando, is that I wrote the previous paragraph a week ago, but I held off on posting this because I continue to give you chances because you were a really good friend once, or at least I thought you were. But somewhere along the line you became a lying, money hungry, Jesus freak who would rather spend time with his bum ass girlfriend instead of supporting, or even hanging out with an old friend. So, I’m hoping you read this. Fuck you. I’m done trying to salvage a friendship. It’s over, and it was over this weekend (only two days after I reminded you… AGAIN of the name of the website I write for) when you still couldn’t filter through your adolescent mind that I wrote for talkhoops.net. What’s worse? I know you weren’t at work on Saturday night. I’ve heard your reasons for not showing up, but for you to have to lie to me… to me! After all of the shit I’ve done for you, that was the ultimate slap in the face. Fuck you.

And to the rest of my fucking friends who don’t read my shit. I know you’re not doing it. It’s whatever. I’m only supporting those who support me for now on, and I’m definitely not thinking about you the next time I write something.

Put it in writing, but who are you writing for
-Amy Winehouse

I find it unfortunate that it’s taken me over two years to realize that 95 percent of my friends don’t read my shit because I’m going to be a better writer because if it. I’ve never been a needy person, I’ve always been pretty independent and outside of my immediate family, I’ve never really had much support, so I’m used to that shit. Me thinking that I should be writing for you, assuming that ‘the you’ reading is one of my friends, is probably one of the main things that has held my writing back for so long. Who am I writing for? I’m writing for me. I’m the one who is going to need a career after college. I’m the one who can only express himself through written word. I’m the one who loves this, not you, assuming ‘the you’ is not Celia or Zach, because they both have a love for writing. This paragraph was written completely differently this morning, and I changed it because I had a conversation with Celia last night. We talked about our writing frustrations and who we should be writing for. On Saturday, she told me that she’s writing this piece on Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt and worried weather or not the reader would understand or even care about what was written and the way it was written. I told her that she shouldn’t worry about the reader, because if they don’t get it, they’re bums. Last night she told me the same thing in her own words. I don’t know why I needed to hear it after telling her the same thing just days before, but the idea resonated a bit more after hearing it from someone else. So for Celia and Zach, don’t write for anyone but yourself. Your friends might not read what you write, but I know someone will. For Davion, only dance for you. Not all of your friends are going to watch your videos, but someone will, and that’s all that matters. Carole, don’t take pictures for anyone, take them for yourself. You might not get who you want to your art shows, but someone will see them. Eliana, I don’t know if you’ve decided on becoming a Physician’s Assistant or if you’ve decided to go into dentistry, but whatever you decide, make sure it’s what you want. We all have to be selfish to accomplish what we want, so do your shit for you and everything else will happen the way it’s supposed to, because I’m sure as hell only writing for me.

By the way, for Fernando, I still hope you can become the best minister or pastor you can be, just know that I’ll never attend one of your sermons again. I hope you don’t burn bridges with everyone you know and love because you’ll just become as bitter as every other Christian Pastor, and when you only have the Bible to turn to, times get extremely rough. However, I will say this, if you’re going to really do it, I mean really become a Pastor, do it all the way. Don’t half ass that shit, and don’t preach for anyone but you. I know you only started going to church because of my sister, and I know you only stayed because of Shanika, and then Za, but make sure you do that shit for you.

Stay Hideous
-PB

(Word count to date: 26,275
83 days and 73,725 words to go)