RIP to my Black and Bipolar Brother

Lee Thompson Young, aka Jett Jackson of The Disney Channel Fame, aka fellow Trojan, aka the former roommate of my good friend Reggie, committed suicide about a month and a half ago. I was speaking with Terrie about why someone who seemingly had it all (a career – he was a regular on TNT’s Rizzoli and Isles, an education, good looks) would end it, and we came to the familiar conclusion that you never know exactly what someone may be going through from the outside.

Come to find out, Lee was bipolar as well, (and had been taking his meds according to Toxicology reports), and as unsettling as it was, it made things more understandable. While I could never imagine actively offing my own on switch via depression, mania, its counterpart, can leave someone so out of their rabbit-ass mind, that anything is unfortunately possible.

On Adulthood, (part two).

I wish someone had told me a decade ago to never stop hustlin’ or at the very least working towards something. I remember being at the precipice of my college graduation without much conception of adulthood or the criteria by which I would define it. For the first couple of decades of my life there was school, year in and year out, with its sequential markers of ordered progress. Ever since the stability of scholastic structure dissipated, with trips to and from graduate school mixed in, there has been a certain sense of, “now what, and what for,” that have circulated in the old thought box.

Now that the steadiness has returned to my life, mostly due to the gig at Wholefoods, there are things I do find myself wanting for myself. In no particular order here goes a short list of goals, 1) to be debt-free, whether that means filing for bankruptcy, getting or jeopardy, or both 2) to secure my name on the deed of a condo, most likely in Atlanta 3) to get the necessary dental work done to bring back the good old smile

Adulthood the Second (or is it the sixth?) Time Around

While there are still many a goal to be accomplished, it’s important, during the course of things to celebrate victories big and small. A couple of years ago on this very same blog I was writing about my desirability, or lack thereof, in the online dating world. I’m too lazy (and technically inept) to link the old blog here, but from memory I remember saying that I wasn’t exactly anyone’s “catch” seeing as how I was living at home, with no money/income/job, no car, and no cell phone. Well, all of that has changed for the better as I enter what feels like a second adulthood. I had my own place, car, cell, and plenty of disposable income (perhaps more than I’ll ever have on hand again—who knows—maybe Jeopardy can change that around if I should touch down on the West Coast again, but I digress…) at the ripe ol’ age of 21, and in before I was 23, I had upgraded from the dorms at USC to an apartment in Orange County, upgraded the Corolla to a fast car (and a faster chick to boot), and of course the obligatory cell phone (when the flip phone was still more or less cutting edge technology).

Maybe I had too much too fast. I had upwards of 20K saved up from the scholastic hustles, and received nearly double that amount from an inheritance. In any case, back to the point, these lax criteria for adulthood, or at the very least dating desirability were all met over a decade ago. To summarize for those who are just tuning it, I would lose and gain, gain and lose, go and come, and come and go, mentally, geographically, financially, etc., over the course of the next decade. For whatever reason, this time it feels different. I pretty much stay to myself these days, and tend to my own affairs, knowing that it’s all on me from here on out, to live as I want to live, and sing the songs I want to sing. Should I need someone else’s advice/input, I’ll ask for it, but as for assistance, unlikely. Approval? Nope.

 

 

Early Morning Randomness.

I don’t feel particularly grounded, well, since I don’t have much to ground me. Terrie and I were talking the other day, about what happens when people lose a significant other. I appreciate him because he knows what it feels like to deal with heartbreak and all, but anyways the point is, we came to the conclusion that for some it’s faith, others it’s family, but if those grounding influences aren’t enough there is always substance to make life worth living. For me it’s cigarettes, for him it’s weed, but it’s really just two sides of the same coin. Positive events scheduling is important for anyone, especially for anyone who is or has been depressed. Honestly, my feet haven’t touched the ground in close to a decade, a I’ve confronted the utter meaninglessness of life. I’ve just been going through the motions without much joie de vie, direction, searching for meaning where often times, there hasn’t been much to be found...

I’m hoping that the MSW will help since therapists typically report high levels of career satisfaction. If I had the motivation I could be on my second book by now, but again the direction, motivation, and meaning are sorely lacking...

I have a new therapist, an older white guy named Scott. Since Francis and I clicked so well, I had my doubts about Scott, but even just typing this made me think about the love life. While I can’t reasonably expect the next one, whoever she may be, to replace the loves of yesteryear, different doesn’t necessarily mean worse or a downgrade. The expectancy of negativity is something I have to check. There is something called depressive realism, which says that depressed people have a more accurate perception of reality than their optimistic counterparts. As all of this concerns Scott, I went in with a preconceived notion that he wouldn’t be as good for me as Francis, but after a few meetings his more detached, sterile, and psychoanalytic style has grown on me. He takes notes when I talk sometimes, and has pointed out that I tend to frame things in term of loss. That’s something I hope to work on, maybe he can help me reframe things...

My minimalist tendencies are at an all time high. Right now, I’m looking at eight or so pairs of shoes lined up against the wall, which is about seven to many for my purpsoes. I have one pair I wear everyday, boots for the winter, dress shoes, and random kicks that maybe have been worn a handful of times, if that. I’m looking at the armoire and I have about 10 pairs of jeans, most of which are from the Old Navy Outlet. I don’t need that many, and really only a few pairs are in rotation. Maybe I got them during last winter as retail therapy, but for me it’s all about functionality as opposed to form, utility over acquisition. Just the basics are needed for my simple tastes...

Anhedonia is a term that’s used to describe a lack of pleasure derived from life. That’s how I’m feeling these days, and some of it is seasonal me thinks, the other is just a general falling off of things that used to matter. The things that used to do it for me still do it, but just dialed down about forty five notches. It’s football season, and I’ve probably watched the cumulative equivalent of one half of a game. TV, and all those pop culture series that have the nations rapt attention, do little to nothing for me. Sex? While I have fond memories of fucking, I tend to agree with Patrice O’Neal, the late comedian and fellow Bostonian, when he said, after you reach a certain age, you have sex just so you have a memory of something to jerk off to later. Sounds about right to me. I’m content to just look at the eye candy on any given day, use my imagination, and keep it moving after that. The thrill of the hunt, is all but gone...

It’s 5:00AM, and I’m just waiting for my EBT bennies to kick in an hour, so I can get some grub. I’m not even that hungry, but I’ve been on a Ramen diet lately and the palette could use something else besides sodium bombs to stimulate it...

My younger sister came into work today, and we caught up briefly. It was good to see her. She asked me if I was saving. Ha, I thought. I make rougly 1,100 bucks a month. 500 goes to rent, so the paycheck I just got last Friday is already gone. 300 of the next paycheck will go the old roommate for the whip. The other two bills will hopefully be enough to pay for the title change. The check after that = rent, and the one after that should be enough to get the car inspected, insured, and registered. So yea, I won’t have a check to myself for another month and a half or so. This should bother me more than it does, but fuck it. Money is tight, what else is new...

Next year, will hopefully be different; much different. If the school thing goes through, I’ll have refund money along with a supplication to Uncle Jackie Robinson’s Scholarship Foundation for a graduate fellowship in the amount of 10K. That’s two moves right there, and I will have damn near doubled what I’ll take home from a year of grinding at Whole Foods...

The car will open up other options, once all the paperwork is taken care of. I can look for jobs outside a walking/busing radius, and be able to go visit the house that I own with the sperm donor and older siblings to see if anyone is living there. If so, maybe I’ll see about collecting the share that I’m due. I’m already knowing that my father, being the bitchassnigga that he is, will try to stiff me. Well if it has to go through small claims then so be it. It dawned on me the other day, that the family has three houses in the state, and yet I’m paying rent to live independently. Go figure...

I’ve been in touch with my friend/mentor/old-co-worker, which has been good for me. It’s nice to be in touch with successful people. I think that’s a good note to close on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recent goings on.

My roommate moved to the OC, my old stomping grounds, recently, but while he was here he certainly made an impression on me, and more importantly became my friend (hardly a term I throw around loosely). Shady, as I called him, looked out in many a ways, smoking me out regularly, loaning me money, but his greatest parting gift (aside from his company which trumps the material) was a ’95 525 that he sold me for the super duper friend price of $800. I still owe him three bills, and the car won’t be fully registered, insured, inspected and all that good stuff for another month and a half or so, but as Shady astutely pointed out, just having it parked out front is three quarters of the battle. This is/was a major deal for me, as I have been on foot patrol for six and a half years, and I can’t wait until I can drive it legitimately. . . 

Today marks the 12^th anniversary of the “procedure.” A dozen year’s later, the rapper Common’s sentiments are still profoundly true: “$315 ain’t worth your soul.” It’s crazy to think I would have an eleven year old, and I often wonder what he/she would have looked like, sounded like, and generally how much different my life would have been with, “Pookie” (as we named our unborn). Big Sigh. . .

I called Brenda a few days ago, and she picked up, much to my surprise. Yes, I was slightly buzzed, and maybe that had something to do with the call, but it was nice to hear her unmistakable voice. We caught up for over an hour and a half plus since it had been over a year and a half since we had last talked. Though we keep in touch pretty regularly textually (i.e., FB, email, texts, etc.), the phone is more personal/favorable in my book… call me old school. . .

Speaking of old school, despite the misgivings voiced in my last post I finished my application to USC’s MSW program. All that’s left is for my recommenders to submit their letters and for my transcripts to be sent. The admissions office called me less than 24 hours after I submitted my application to see whether I was applying for the on campus program or the online one; either way, I took their speedy reply as a hopefully good sign of an acceptance to come (knocks furiously on wood!). Boston College’s program is the more logical choice as it would obviate the need for a cross country move. However, that said, I just found out yesterday that a co-worker of mine at Whole Foods has her MSW from BC (keep in mind it’s a top ten program- BTW USC ranks closely behind at #11). This struck me as odd and slightly unsettling to know that she has her degree and is still ringing groceries, but there could be an explanation for this. I still have yet to really talk to her, but I did confirm that she completed the program yesterday. Meanwhile, the two MSW’s I know from the alma mater are gainfully and very happily employed in their field of choice. Either way, come late March, early April, I’ll have an answer (and something to look forward to, keep me going) as to my admissions’ status. . .

I did some ghostwriting for an old co-worker of mine recently (and it’s on its way to being published if it hasn’t already been). I asked him about the world of literary agency, my own project, others of his, and somehow or another our talked ended with him offering me 7.5% of his split share in a small publishing company in exchange for the overseeing of his next project. Let’s just say it is pending further review on my end, though it could be the synergistic lead I’ve been looking for. . .

Scholastic Misgivings, Too Cool For School, And Such and Such

If it’s not a step in the right direction, it’s a step in the wrong one. While this may sound glib and reek of “all or nothing thinking (one of my favorite cognitive distortions), it does seem apropos given the thoughts in my previous entry about returning to school. Sure Social Work would afford me the opportunity to help people, a passion of mine, it’s an approximation towards my ultimate goal of doing so through my writing. It’s not like being a therapist wouldn’t provide rich writing material (even with confidentiality mandates), but after a certain point, it’s like stop beating around the fucking bush, be direct, ignore B-Y and jump straight from A to Z.  Sure there is something to be said for respecting the process, but the only one holding me back from me is me, and perhaps that’s the most frustrating part is the actual execution of it all. Am I too rigid in my thinking (me? Never, ha!) The proposed writing project doesn’t have to be a memoir, perhaps something of the self help variety? The latter would be far easier, due to the logistics of retelling a decade of memories clouded by chaos. Furthermore as it regards certain processes, there is a time to respect the process, and a time to say fuck it, who are you the processor, or institution that’s doing the processing, to evaluate, grade, license, test, etc., me? That was a major issue for me at Berkeley with the interminable hoops through which they expected me to jump for MA/Ph.D. It was one thing in college, which was completed out of parental expectation, ease, and naivety to some extent, but as someone once so astutely observed, you have to graduate at some point, and then it’s back to square one, or two. Develop the career, progress professionally, etc. I remember being conscious of this during my final years at USC; I went hard because truthfully, I didn’t want to go back for any reason, which would explain my grand four year hesitation in finally committing to graduate school. Finally free! “And you want me to sign up for more of that bullshit?” Often times, you don’t know what you are doing until you stop doing it, and when forced to re-do that same thing, the perspective granted is eye-opening.

As far as school goes, it was my bread and butter from a very young age. If I were to fully commit to an MSW program and give myself every opportunity to succeed by choosing a program wisely there is no doubt that I could excel were I able to quiet the, “don’t test me voices.” Honestly, being tested at this stage in my life, in any form or fashion in general, but academically/professionally in particular, seems like a juvenile exercise in discipline, order, and authority. Even with the extra-curricular mayhem at Berkeley, I excelled GPA-wise, but even thinking of being tested for the MA Orals was indescribably irritating. “You really want me to sit down, read these forty or so canonical texts, and regurgitate their contents to you on command?” Besides being a waste of my time, it seemed and still does to be pedagogically inefficient at best, depending how your training and temperament. It was Maya Angelou who said, “there is a difference between being trained an educated.” If I want to have anything to do with a train, believe me, it wouldn’t be of the academic variety. I’m already knowing for the MSW, there would be a master’s thesis, then an internship, then a licensing exam, then countless renewals and evaluations as the years progress. That’s a lot of testing for someone who long ago lost the tolerance for them. If focused, I will pass, defeat, break, and defecate on any such test that requires academic recall. Don’t test me, don’t push me, don’t try me. My resume dating back to elementary speaks for itself, and at this stage in my life, feeling the need to prove something to someone would be akin to acting. I’m nobody’s Denzel. Like OK, teacher or supervisor or whomever, why are we playing this game again. Games are the province of children, so why stick to the puerile script, so to speak.

Had to get that off my chest.

Nas captures my sentiments brilliantly in song called reachout. If I would more technically proficient, I would embed the link, but instead, here go the lyrics to the first verse, with my favorites in italics:

3:45 am can’t sleep, can’t dream
I’m stuck, money problems pop up
How will I survive, guess it’s best to decide not to decide
So that’s my decision
Whatever happens happens
I keep makin’ my millions
Can see myself in presidential campaign dinners
But I’m passin’ blunts around a bunch of gang members
When you’re too hood to be in them Hollywood circles
And you’re too rich to be in that hood that birthed you
And you become better than legends you thought were the greatest
And out grow women you love and thought you could stay with
Life become clearer when you wipe down your mirror
And leave notes around for yourself to remember
I like to teach and build
With brothers about how easy it is to reach a mill
All you need is some skill, then it’s grindtime
Imagination better than knowledge, say’s Einstein
It’s all in the mind
Nasty the nicest, I’m somewhat of a psychic
Just one minute after it’s heard
You all excited, you all repeat it
So call me a genius, if you didn’t
Now that I said it I force you to think it
Write in my little vignettes, sipping Moet
When you vision me, you vision the best
When I was young they called me, Olu’s son
Now he Nas father, I was the good seed
He was the wise gardener

About the Growing Cost of Stability.

If the cost of stability is mind-numbing (or perhaps mind-rotting) monotony, then it’s growing less and less worth it as the one day blurs into the next. While manning the register once seemed like a daunting task, I have now capped out as far as my cashiering efficacy goes. I’d say 90% of the produce PLU’s have been committed to memory, and I have now resorting to doing mental register math to stay somewhat alert during my shifts. It’s been great to dust off the mental number line, but alas, even regurgitating change upon receiving whatever denomination of bill is handed to me has become simple.

I worked 8 days in a row, had two out of three days off, then was scheduled for what would have been nine straight. I say would have been, because, as my luck would have it, my throat became scratchy yesterday at work, so I went home. Normally I would have toughed it out, but I have a wedding to attend this weekend (which will hopefully provide some much-needed inspiration as well as a change of scenery) and didn’t want to risk worsening my condition immediately prior to this joyous occasion.

It’s come to the point where I am starting to fancy returning to school for yet another crack at this grad school thing (fourth time’s the charm right; to be fair, while technically it’ll be my fourth strike, so to speak, two attempts were foul tips). If I were to do it, my first and probably only choice would be Boston College. My grandfather, Casper Augustus Ferguson, was recognized as the first black graduate of this fine institution, but genealogical legacies aside, it simply gives me the best chance of succeeding with the bevy of growing support networks (from medical to personal) that I have in place in the area. Stability is the name of the game, if it kills me, and while I feel it would be a step up the ladder, providing an entry point to an actual career (as opposed to a dead-end job for which I have no passion), I do have a feeling it would be a circuitous path to my ultimate goal of writing for a living.

A Master’s in Social Work, while equal parts magnanimous and rewarding, would be something that empower me as far as options (and certainly an increased salary) and occupational prestige go, but however noble the field is, it strikes me as a tad bit roundabout way to achieve my objective(s).

My issue with writing for a living is two-fold. One, I would like to write what I want to write about as opposed to having whatever abilities I may have be exploited by simply taking on random freelance jobs. Second, there is the motivation, or lack thereof, factor. When asked to write for other people, I can knock it out the park on my first swing, but left to my own devices the memoir, (a very early draft of which I finally found in my inbox) is still a work that is only about 2% complete.