Shoot Promos on Race, Class, Gender, Etc

"To recognize one's own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence." - Eckhart Tolie 3/11/2022. I'm meeting with Zachary at a coffee shop in Lakewood to select the photos from my photoshoot on 3/8. I assumed that I was only going to limit it to 20 but my best friend assured me that I wouldn't be able to resist going with the package of 30 photos. Sure enough as we went through the 150 or so photos he showed me, we kept whittling it down until we couldn't whittle it past 30. I called Piper and put her own speaker so she could tell me "I told you so", which I enjoyed giving her the opportunity to do so. Zachary and I would meet 4 weeks later so I could pick up a beautiful box with my 30 photos enlarged in 11x14 prints. I would also receive the digital copies of my photos. When he asked me what I intended to do with the photos, I shared that I intended to start a blog series and tell a story or anecdote wit...

"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well." - Ralph Waldo Emerson Warning: the following blog deals with areas of mental health and suicide ideations that may be triggering. I won't take it personally if you skip this one. Based on the viewership the last few weeks, y'all skipping anyways. So f*ck it. LOL "What is going well in your life?" My therapist RB asks me through the zoom screen. During our last session two weeks ago I shared that my mental health had declined and it felt like I was back at square one. The throbbing headaches returned. And the quality of my sleep had been inconsistent. The suicide ideations returned and whatever progress I had made over the previous six months felt like it was all for naught. And what actual progress had I made? I was still heartbroken. Though I tried to cautiously date since then, every "I...

"I am a series of small victories and large defeats and I am as amazed as any other that I have gotten from there to here." - Charles Bukowski The early 1990's was an interesting time to be introduced to comic books and superhero stories. In the context of the post-Reaganism, glorification of "yuppie" values (an obsessive devotion to career and materialistic lifestyle; think Gordon Gekko in  Wall Street  "greed is good" speech), and the AIDS and crack epidemics of the 1980's (thanks a f*cking lot Reagan, depending on how much you believe they were government conspiracies to specifically target Black, Brown, and LGBTQ communities), the early 1990's can be characterized by "grunge" and the popularization of gangsta rap, music genres and cultural subcultures characterized by a darker, edgier expression riddled with angst. The comics of that era with characters reflecting these darker themes of the supernatural and paranormal like The San...

"All it takes is a beautiful fake smile to hide an injured soul and they will never notice how broken you really are." - Robin Williams I first remember watching Robin Williams in Hook where he played an adult Peter Pan, the child who never grew up (or in the case of the film an adult who rediscovers his inner child) that I associated with him going forward. His voice acting work in Aladdin where his boundless improvisation and riffing talents took 10-year old me on a virtual "acid trip", before I even knew what that meant. In Mrs. Doubtfire , where his transformation into the lovable Mrs. Euphegenia Doubtfire taught me how comedy could allow one to digest the more serious themes of divorce, separation, and the impact on the family. I watched  What Dreams May Come  at a sleepover with some of my church friends, where I was way too sober to enjoy the "creative" portrayals of death, suicide, and afterlife. As an aside, I witnessed my friends get stoned and...

"On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a playful, joyous energy behind what you do." - Eckhart Tolie "Life is meaningless".  In a room of 150 people (obviously pre-pandemic), I'm sitting among the back rows, toward the aisle, taking copious notes, even though the course instructor encouraged us not to take notes. That "bombshell" produced some looks of bewilderment, some people exhaled deeply like the weight of the world was removed from their shoulders, some began laughing at their own absurdities.  Landmark Worldwide is a personal and professional growth, training, and development company focusing on helping achieving success, fulfillment, and greatness. I signed up for "The Landmark Forum", their introductory course in April of 2018 after I made acquaintances with Juls, a woman I gave a Lyft ride to a month prior. I didn't have the disposable income to pay for the course and Juls offered to pay for...

"A lily or a rose never pretends, and its beauty is that it is what it is." - Jiddu Krishnamurti Music is such a time capsule so we will romanticize the music from our formative years as the "golden age". I will resist the urge to be old man yelling at cloud and say that the music of the 80's and 90's is far superior to the music of Gen-Z, signaling that I'm officially washed. One of the formative songs of my adolescence was 1995's "I Wish" by Skee-Lo, the very definition of a one-hit wonder. While rap music can often characterized by braggadocios hyper-masculinity, this track was a humorous, self-deprecating lament on personal shortcomings. "I wish I was a little bit taller, I wish I was a baller. I wish I had a girl who looked good, I would call her...". Even though Skee-Lo was a black man from Los Angeles via Chicago, "I Wish" was for me the quintessential Korean American male anthem, as a 5'9" Korean male...

  *Let me preface this by saying that I have not been clinically diagnosed with depression nor am I on anti-depressants. Though I am strongly considering it and will most likely seek either therapy and/or medication at some point in 2022* I have been living with depression for most of my adult life. I think many of us have the misconception that depression are intense feelings of sadness, like when people say "i'm so depressed..." staying home, watching TV, eating ice cream out of the carton, and wallowing in self-pity.  I can't speak for anyone else, but for me depression looks like going through days, weeks, and months in a perpetual haze, like a giant fog that you can't see through. It looks like showing up for work everyday and going through the motions and hoping no one criticizes or even worse, compliments me in my work. It looks like scrolling through social media for puppy videos and memes, for those little shots of dopamine to get me through the next hour...