Expectations

I don’t even know why I bother. I can’t seem to deprogram myself. I keep expecting things and then I quickly remember that that’s a no-no. I shouldn’t expect things from people because I wouldn’t want anyone to expect anything from me. In fact, I don’t want anyone expecting anything from me unless you employ me and I signed some sort of contract. Now we are both in compliance and both should understand what is expected of me.

However, with no hint of a sealed fate, I can’t say I’ll do it. I basically want to be treated the way I treat others. Is that a crime? Probably, this is America and people will find a way to stone you and justify the crusade against you if something you do offends them. Expectations have been the death of me lately because I keep slipping back into that frame of mind. I blame all of my problems on social learning. This fucking society and having to learn about it has been the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

I hate the codes we live by and the guilt trips I get anytime I go against the grain. I hate the fact that you’ll burn more bridges or burn in hell (there’s always burning in hell) just by being misunderstood.  I get swept up into the trap of our oh-so honorable system of expectations that I’m constantly disappointed in others and myself (the shame! the horrrooooorrr!) Then I snap out of it and remember to just, “stop with the expectations and shit,” – Unknown.

It’s all a set up. Having expectations is a set up for a miserable, depressing, face full of tears life. Don’t let anyone tell you any different. It’s a trap. Okay, great, hold people accountable. Accountability:  prove to me you’re serious about whatever it is that is expected of you, prove to me your love, prove to me you care, prove to me you’ll be there, prove to me so I can prove to you what can prove to me– accountability. Listen, where is the contract, where is the compensation, where is the meaning of it all because that’s what this country has conditioned me to think about – the money and motive.

Is it the integrity part? Is that what is trying to be upheld here?  Well what if, just what if, without assuming those things still won’t be in tact despite me not meeting expectations I did still uphold the integrity. I guess it’s because I’m so cool about it and understand the ridiculousness of its extremity. In fact, sometimes I come off as meek and docile when really it’s the depth of my understanding of a lot of things that put me on the offense.

Once you understand something it isn’t a problem. Problems come by way of not understanding. I do. That reflects in the way I handle things and my character. I can’t ask for someone to be like me. I can only explain where I’m coming from and hope to be understood. No more getting pumped up to be let down. If I want to do something I will. If I don’t want to I won’t. That should go the same for those around me. That’s how anyone can truly be themselves honestly and openly and not be condemned for it.

Without expectations no one would do anything? Is that what you’re asking me? I don’t know. We haven’t gotten that far as a people consciously to truly really know. Without accountability no one will do anything? Is that what you think? I don’t know. We may never know. No one is forgiving enough, patient enough. Everything in the world depends on the absence and presence of something to validate its existence. We increase or decrease our value to others in this respect. It’s a science. My advice is to find something that makes you laugh, grab your favorite book, and live. 

Cyclical Hunches

What are your beginning, middle, and end? This is how you unfortunately structure each blog and blah, blah, bl - oh hey guys. You snuck up on me! I was hoping you were some big corporation coming to swoop in on my blog and pay me millions to continue writing as these priceless memoirs can’t write themselves, but I guess not. Do you guys even remember me? Probably not, nonetheless, excuse the first sentence as I am trying to recall basic first steps to writing – you know, in order to keep my readers interested (ha!)

“Spill out everything onto the page,” they say. “Go for the jugular,” they say. Well, I’ve been missing in action for a while so here I go:

Today is a crappy day and I have a hard time focusing. I mean hard. I normally, no matter what, can just snap back into focus (especially if I am at work because I’m stone cold like that), but nope not today. A young lady named Sandra Bland is the topic or hash tag if you will. There is information about her coming in all at once. She was 28 from Chicago trying to move to Texas for a job. She’s dead now. Hearing this news led me to write. A lot of emotions are surging through me at rapid speeds after realizing she is dead and herein lies the thick of my anguish: I couldn’t catch her. Me - I couldn’t stop whatever happened to her. I would have had something amazing to say to stop the fate of a stranger, but I wasn’t there.

This was a journal entry from a while back that still rings poignant to me because it reminds me of why I fight for life and freedom so much. Machiavelli said it best when he wrote,“What am I here to reproduce at this time? I am only a figment of what has been to bring to the world something it has already seen just not in this particular timeline. What O’Lord am I to recreate that you so desperately need the world to see again? To remind us of what again? Please whisper loud enough for me to hear.” 

I’m unsure of the remarkable words that would have surfaced that day but trust me incredible was coming out. A trail of genius tends to slip out of my mind sometimes and what I want to say is too much to write down. Again, it probably would have been the most amazing crap I’ve ever thought but just too much to remember. A snapshot would be, “Look, like we’re all fucked anyway,” or something along those lines. “Capitalism is rotting this country. Black people don’t belong here, but we’ve been trying to belong for quite some time now. We’re all going to die,” yada, yada, yada – stuff like that. Maybe, “Read and utilize the past in order to shape, and understand the present.” Okay that isn’t me it’s Machiavelli, but seriously the advice would have been A1.

I hope to overly stress that in order to identify with yourself more you must identify with others. Try to stay alive, healthy, and sane in the process of identification, and in every situation give thanks. In every situation remember the situation before. Remember at one point you never really knew how the situation could or would change or when. Remember that it eventually did. Something happened one day, things shifted, and you slowly progressed into another part of your life.

Today I chose to identify with Sandra and let it be known that we’ve been stripped of our core ingredients (love, compassion, empathy, patience, forgiveness) for the all mighty dollar. I have to keep saying that until people start or realizing it. Being gone for so long has taught me how to stop correcting my intuition – not even slightly.

Again, Who Am I Kidding?

I have respect for your time so I’ll make it quick.

It’s strange. The more I create and try to follow my dreams the more I sense this imaginary person sitting next to me giving me the side eye. What is that about? Oh great – it’s not enough that folks who physically exist give me the side eye, but now my hyperactive imagination wants a piece of the pie too – son of a b****. I wake up, get the courage to do and grow, and each bold step I take somehow only comes off as this risky, stupid, ugly business that is only ruining my reputation as a competent human being.  I love it.

Is it just me or does walking this nonlinear line we call life everyday sometimes have you feeling like you want to brush your face and wash your teeth in the morning instead? Oh it does? Good! That’s right – we’re all f***** up. However, I have a solution to this. After all, “I’ve observed that life never presents us with an unsolvable problem. The solution may humble us or require us to do things that we’ve never done before, but there is always a solution.” – Psychology of Wealth

All of the ups and downs and ins and outs I have should be charged to the game. I’m going to charge each and every hour to the damn game – my hours of mastery that is. I read that it takes 10,000 hours to master something (go look it up lazy pants!) So for me it doesn’t matter; a book read, a word spoken, a sentence written, or a conversation had – I’m charging it. As I jam Kendrick Lamar, hoist my little sails, eat my oreos, and start moving forward through these turbulent, uncharted territories I will try to remember these words:

“You don’t have to be afraid to take a risk. You just have to be prepared to do the work.” – Psychology of Wealth

“You have to just march into your fear. Oh-well, everyday just march on in there.” – The War of Art

“There are no accidents; there is only some purpose that we haven’t yet understood.” – The Psychology of Wealth

“Your work will inevitably be the timeless communicating to the time bound” – The War of Art. It is fundamental that you continue to be authentic, vulnerable, and courageous for this reason because the cycle must redeem itself and continue.

…And now I’m just writing a bunch of quotes. I should have started a quote blog not a blog for creative thoughts. Nonetheless, consciously invest in yourself no matter how you are perceived by others, no matter how bleak it may seem, no matter what look the imaginary bum is giving you, and no matter the circumstances. 70 % or more of our thoughts are negative and redundant. Be audacious for change. Start mastering.  

Not Your Typical Growth

“When eloquence meets brevity therein lies the keys to success” – Tyra Clark

I am learning how to speak two languages: complex and simple. Knowing the difference between the two is important in order to reach all types of readers/viewers, and being short and to the point yet expressive is hard, but as a writer, as a woman, and as a creator it is downright one of the greatest skills one can ever master.

It requires a different sort of discipline, a contradictive intelligence; a constant plunge into chaos with a profound clarification. The audience prefers that one beautifully [gets to the point].

Knowing that, I demand this: today is about recognizing good growth, true growth, any growth; even the smallest little inkling of it. In retrospect, the classes as a sociology major that stick with me are those that dealt with theory; the elite vs. the working class (the proletariat, Marx), and philosophy (philosophy of science), claiming that nothing is really absolute just common knowledge, and only common pending the natural course of constant verification of any falsifications of said absolute; if research proves the once common knowledge false, results could cause a paradigm shift, where the once perceived absolute is no longer relative, and now there is a new common knowledge; a new “norm”; a new reality.

Did I lose you? Nine years ago I would have lost me too but keep reading.

Contrary to what I usually spend my time doing, I have been listening to audio books lately. Why not listen to a book when you drive, work out, or in your place of peace right? For some of you this is your norm, for some of you I can ask this question and after me saying, “Right?” You can quietly throw around the thought, “Hmmm, I guess I could, that is different.”

Why not fall asleep to positive affirmations? Why not try something different to see if it works? Where is your balance? Where in the script do you get to be selfish and take the time to develop yourself? I ask myself this often, as should you. Be clever; change what you do in the environments that you are in the most and see where that takes you. Maybe not so simple to say now because of the conscious state that you are in at the moment, but with patience ultimately as my syllogism, that is the simple suggestion.

Wisely so, I am enthusiastically taking heed. While listening to the certain books I am choosing, I pay attention to what is and what is not sticking to my conscious mind (which is probably the most important thing ever given to you, that, and free will – Neville, the Power of Awareness). I am noticing a pattern in my conscious growth. I am absorbing what I am listening to at ferocious speeds, which lets me know I am still perceptible to this type of knowledge; I needed this. I believe we involuntarily absorb information we subconsciously thirst for in order to consciously sustain. In an essence, knowledge can definitely be compared to food/nourishment.

Interesting, as I write I notice a pattern. The phrase I am occurs frequently. The great I AM. Intriguing concept (see www.audible.com search Three Magic Words by U. S Anderson).

Considerably so, after deep reflection it finally dawns on me that my thoughts are outgrowing “normality” or the current common knowledge. These thoughts feel bigger than my existence. It is vital that I recognize this. Kind of like that feeling you get when you have outgrown a feeling, a person, a situation, a city. It is somewhat scary, however, what usually happens next is growth, be it that you get over that feeling eventually, you move on from that person, you finally do what it takes to change your situation, or you move to another city that better suits the entirety of you.   

Derailing your mind, if off its natural healthy path, is, therapeutic; a conscious effort to achieve your truth, however unorthodox, is critical. I question how I handle things, the way I think, how I operate, the level of motivation and drive I encompass, and the level of my faith in the name of growth.

Through my endeavors I am challenging a typical day, a typical thought, a typical life; I am starting to understand what most people do not. It is but a matter of time before my own paradigm shift.