Story

I came into this week – the last week of my 34th year, feeling like I was just making it. 

I have to couch that phrase.

I wasn’t “just” making it in terms of rent, food, companionship, community, creative fulfillment, or personal safety. Everything just seemed to be moving way too fast, including myself. My attempts to limit my internet use felt like trying to stop a spigot with my palms, and by switching over to books I found myself replacing triggering headlines with existential dilemmas and bigger pictures to concern myself with. 

The perfect term for this feeling is whelmed. Modern use of the term is all but nonexistent, though we’ve come to use its extremities – overwhelmed and underwhelmed – regularly in our lexicon. In fact, the dictionary definition of whelmed pretty much gives it up as a synonym to overwhelmed which I think describes our society and times in a nutshell. But to be whelmed is different. It still leaves opportunity for control. It’s submergence without being swept by the tide. You still have a choice.

There’s nothing wrong with being submerged as long as you can tread and can understand breath control. My goal wasn’t to become over or under, to just be. The solutions I found for the past few days is so specific and short-lived so far that I don’t know how helpful it would be to anyone else, but since I find myself in a constant cat-and-mouse game for my own gravity I figure at the very least I can leave this breakdown here for myself to rediscover during moments of disillusion:

Honor my spiritual pasts: As you know, I’ve been meditating every morning for the past 2 years. It’s the longest I’ve gone with this routine, but every time I do it there’s a part of me that recalls another period in my life when I was meditating in the evenings. They felt like the more magical years, when life seemed less complicated and I could recognize the frivolousness of things that entered my thoughts at the time. They didn’t weigh down on me like the concerns of today. I was able to reach what felt like a different state of consciousness – my entire body felt like it was lit up, my lips and eyes would tingle, I’d emerge from my sitting feeling like everything was vibrating. The other night I was finally able to reach that state again, but only through meticulous planning. I set aside the time at night, resisted all stimulants, closed the doors, found the feeling. It came to me before I even cleared my mind. It reminded me that most of this sensation was due to the physical motions with which I was going through my breathing, that it’s not like I ever stopped being able to do it. I was able to let go. 

Clear my chores of guilt: I finally got the process going for iLL-Literacy’s iB4the1.1 to be distributed to streaming sites. It took only a single evening, but it’s been on my to-do list since 2014. It was one of those tasks that felt easy to keep kicking down the road, but I eventually realized that breaking the habit of delay was the true challenge. Eventually, it became a “if not yesterday, then why today?” mental block. I can’t say that I thought about it everyday, but since I finally cleared that assignment, I realize how much of a fog it had been in my day-to-day. Such a small, simple, but incredibly intimidating obstacle was finally fielded. What other pebbles in my shoe can I finally stop for a moment to pick out?

Reset the stimulation: I recently cleared my primary stimulants, including decreasing the time I spend on social media, the headlines I read, the podcasts I listen to, the coffee I drink, the sugar I eat, the alcohol I consume, and the television I watch, exchanging it for more time with music, silence, and fruit. In recognizing how much less effort goes into the production and consumption of the latter list versus the former, I realized that the simplicity I desire cannot be found in innovative products or finding some deeper research in how the human psyche works. Physical and mental digestion just happens more smoothly with things that occur naturally, that contribute to the balance of the universe. This new dynamic has made it easier for me to sleep earlier and deeper, think with more complexity, and not feel like a passenger in my own mental state.

On Sunday, amidst a beautiful, sunny bike ride home, I stopped by the water and laid on the grass. But I found myself getting up every 15 minutes, putting on my shoes, and getting ready to leave, only to realize that there were still hours of coveted sunshine left and I had absolutely nothing on my to-do list that was demanding my attention. Where was a rushing off to? Or did I just feel like I needed to keep on moving, hitting as many destinations as possible? I’m learning how to slow down while not assuming that doing so means I’m less committed to my creativity, driven in helping address issues of the world, or eager to experience life in abundance. But it’s also helpful to recognize that sometimes the problem isn’t scarcity, and that in itself is a blessing and a privilege. 

I’m recognizing that wisdom isn’t as much about acquiring knowledge as it is about consistently putting into practice what I already know. I’ve been trying it out lately, felt like it’s about that time. It means not going for a second plate when I know I’m already full. Not reaching for that extra drink. Going the fuck to sleep instead of squeezing in that extra episode. Not tapping that app icon just because there’s a red dot with a number on the corner. Just slowing down in general.

Respecting the thresholds of my appetite, my mental clarity, my wakefulness, my attention, my pace, has been a challenge for someone like me who has always placed emphasis on being up on that new shit. To be a curator, a tastemaker, and, these days it seems, to just be a relevant member of society, so much currency is placed on being able to say “oh, you haven’t heard about woompty woomp?” But my past few months of intentionally (not always successfully) limiting my internet consumption, while also being more selective of the foods, liquids, and substances I put into my body, have heightened my sensitivity. And just like how you can get hella faded on a single drink after a dry season, lately I’ve returned to social media with a low tolerance for information. Whether they’re important headlines or petty threads, all of this information is pointless when passed through instead of processed. These bits of knowledge that lack wisdom are like empty carbs – I feel them course through my veins, they make my eyes sore when I go to bed, and linger in my skull when I awaken. 

(The only social consequences of not being up on every headline this past month have been 1) feeling dumb when I didn’t know Beyoncé was headlining Coachella, and 2) accidentally giving a shout out to Junot Diaz this past weekend. If neither of these references mean anything to you, it’s likely that you’ve just been better at resisting FB than I have.)

A trope of both intellectual and spiritual wisdom that often eludes me is the ability to approach life like a child. For me, the challenge hasn’t been in staying curious, or open, or questioning. My challenge has been in staying prolific with the right thing. Since I was a kid, I’ve been prolific in one thing or another, whether it was drawing, writing, or these days writing emails (a sucky thing to be prolific with). Lately I’ve also been prolific with cooking, something that I do every day that I can, even though it siphons at least two hours that could otherwise be a lot more productive. I should clarify that these two terms are not synonyms. Productivity, even when self-driven, pleases an external entity. It is a contribution to society, a token of success in which your value is appraised by your output. Prolificity, on the other hand, isn’t always necessarily “productive.” In fact, when my productivity equates to my prolificity, I’m trapped. My personal fulfillment is measured by a rubric that remains elusive and opaque, in that it’s via the perceived judgement of others. But to be unproductively prolific is to be self-sufficient, is to be self-fulfilled, is to be free.  

This blog, gutted of analytics, comments, and any other imposed rubrics of productive success, has been the grounds for cultivating wisdom that I, in my unwiseness, keep neglecting. I desperately want to commit to writing more regularly in the same way that I want to do other simple tasks that for some reason seem so harrowing – eating slower, making more eye contact, listening deeply. It’s here that I would typically find external players to hold me accountable, but that wouldn’t really be the point, would it? This week, while in the Bay and taking a day between traveling for this endless parade of conferences I’ve been on, my mom asked, “When do you find time to process it all?” She quit her job a year and a half ago and has been doing nothing but processing. She’s been incredibly unproductive but extremely prolific – I’ve never witnessed my mom with thoughts and ideas so well-packaged. Even after these four short paragraphs, I’m beginning to feel my spine straighten, my blood flow, my mind clear. Maybe it’s all in my head. But maybe that’s all that matters. 

When I was a senior in high school, my cousin Curtis loaned me a pair of Geminis to help me follow my new interest in DJing. But all the other DJs I knew at the time had started when they were sophomores and juniors and were already juggling and scratching in ways I couldn’t imagine, so I gave up.

When I moved to Oakland after college, my roommate was Mai-Lei, one of the best DJs in the Bay. She had a set of turntables sitting in our living room and we threw parties every month. PLUS one of my best friends in town was DJ Phatrick, yet another incredible selector. I never asked either of them to give me a basic training.

So fuck it. Introducing DJ WITH A EGG ON TOP, the new moniker I’m taking as I take amateur nights in DC by storm!!!! I’ll be posting my gigs and playlists here. Watch it.

Often, during moments of frustration, Lovely expresses that her mind moves too fast for reality. Every brain is different, so I can only interpret this from my own experience, and it manifests in the way I’m unable to pay attention to any one thing for that long. It’s not attention deficit, if anything it’s attention surplus. I’ve long accepted that my favorite experiences as an audience member – at concerts, museums, and films – are those that are so inspirational that my mind goes off into its own daydream trip, even as my body stays put in the seat. It doesn’t matter how captivating the work is, and sometimes something I witness can be of incredible quality, but it dissipates with my short-term memory if I’m unable to seed ideas of my own out of it.

It happens in conversations too, and it’s not a rare situation for someone to get upset at me when they notice my eyes start to wander while they talk. “Tell me what I just said,” is one of the worst things you could say to me, if you were inspirational enough there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be able to repeat it verbatim.

One of the reasons I stopped my daily writing years ago was because I felt like I had wired my brain to think in journal form. I started chasing down experiences just so I could write about them later, only to get there and piece the words together as I experienced them. I was never in the moment. Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai says, “stop writing about the snow and be in the snow.” But now we’re living in an era where everyone “does it for the Gram,” where anyone at any given moment may be motivated by the ulterior motive of making a post out of it. Or getting a CV line. Or something else that, as I write, I realize might not be so bad after all. Unless you sit at home and philosophize all day, life is a series of transactions, either with others or with yourself. I’ve been in my head lately (as I tend to do during these crummy months of winter), negotiating my time and energy and I’m not quite confident I’ve been getting the best bang for my buck. I end up exhausting myself with buyer’s remorse for my own time, and then feeling shitty when it seems like everyone on my timeline is just living their best selves in the moment. I need to remind myself of how our experiences are manicured these days, that it truly takes great effort to convey oneself as care-free.

My morning began today with a call from Sunny Dooley, one of the most influential people to enter my life in 2017. Sunny is a storyteller, in that it’s literally what she does. It’s her calling, her livelihood, and what she does best. Whenever we talk, narrative spills from her tongue – whether it be a creation story that has been passed down for generations, or a grand account of a sandwich she ate last week, when Sunny speaks, you can’t not listen.

Sunny is a refreshing reminder that storytelling is a real thing, and storytellers are real people. In this day and age, I’ve heard so many institutions and companies call themselves storytellers, but how many of them actually have stories to tell? Where are the characters and plots, the meanings and morals? Or is the word story the latest to be hijacked as a more colorful way to name advertising schemes? I too have been guilty of describing the need for stories without actually telling them, and my friendship with Sunny reminds me of this often.

I told her about how I recently met the filmmaker Angelo Baca, who has been telling his own stories to defend his home at Bears Ears. Sunny responded with the ultimate “did you know,” describing how the mountains in Utah are actually the ears of a larger bear that lies throughout Navajo Nation, including its spine which runs along Mt. Taylor which I visited with Lovely and the Bombshelltoe crew last fall. She spoke about the lava beds that are also part of the bear, and how this blood is what connects the land to other sacred spaces like the Mauna Kea volcano that is going through its own protection campaign in Hawaiʻi.

I’m reminded of what I was reflecting on yesterday, about how far the Word has brought me in life, and the fact that the truths we speak are sacred. It’s Monday, so I’m bout to dive into a sea of emails and memos, trying to keep perspective of the stories that truly matter.

I’ve been waking up each morning to a battle between reason and purpose. The fact that I haven’t written here for the past month is evidence that the former has been winning out.

Approaching each day with reason is a pathway toward productivity. To complete each of these days means to cross off everything on my to-do list, to complete all social and professional transactions with a sense of accomplishment, maybe even make some headway toward my long-term projects. A day of reason is a day well spent.

There’s nothing wrong with a day with reason, but even still, I prefer a day of purpose. You know those days. They’re the ones when, regardless of what you had scheduled for the hours ahead, everything that was seemingly important gets brushed aside so that you can zero in on what truly matters. Sometimes, purpose arises in a time of crisis – a loved one you have to drop everything for, a fire you need to put out for the greater good, sometimes when you’ve been on such a roll with reason-filled days that you’ve neglected everything else and your body shuts down and forces you to get some fucking sleep. But in the best of cases, it’s when the muse shouts so loudly at you that the ideas can’t just sit in your mind and rot anymore. It’s when the spigot of purpose ruptures, it’s what some people call going back to the source.

Ideally, each day would be driven by purpose, but reason would still be sitting shotgun, maybe even take the wheel for short stints. In the best of circumstances, each task of my day is a stone to grasp as I climb toward my destination. When any task that’s a detour is, at the very least, treated as a garnish to allow space for surprise, as opposed to a distraction that leads me down an endless detour.

This year, I’m doing my very best to get back to my source as a writer. With the whirlwind of projects and passions I’ve picked up, sometimes it’s easy to forget that, without the word, I wouldn’t have had any of this. I heard recently that, when you write regularly, your brain gets rewired. My experience is a bit different. In the moments when I blow past all the distractions of reason, when I put value on the time spent toward piecing thoughts together simply to engage in the practice of piecing thoughts together, my brain doesn’t get rewired – it gets unplugged. My mind gets tuned in. I get free.

I’m getting my wisdom teeth extracted tomorrow and I’m FREAKING OUT MAN. I’ve never been one to be nervous about going to the dentist. When I got braces in the 6th grade, I looked forward to my monthly visits where I got to choose the color combinations of the rubber bands that corralled my teeth together. Orange and black for Halloween. Red and yellow for Lunar New Year. Neon green and hot pink for the summertime. I actually got eight teeth out in preparation for that, but at the time I was bursting with a sense of immortality that I don’t have these days. I shouldn’t have waited until I got to this age, when getting up comes with a groan and I have a wider vocabulary to describe my morbid concerns. But all my life people have told me about these true legends that dwell in my mouth, these ticking time bombs that, unless pulled out, will be certain harbingers of unfathomable and unending pain in my latter years. So the appointment is set – tomorrow, my mouth gets gentrified.

The dentist insists that I go under, which is the main thing that gives me unease. The idea of a chemical coursing through my body, climbing my spine and altering my brain to the point where I won’t mind someone slicing my gums apart and breaking my teeth to bits before excavating them from my face, gives me the shudders. I’d rather know what the fuck is going on. I’d rather be keen on every sound and stroke, aware that this odd but universal natural phenomena is being so brazenly addressed by the glory of human science. I’m probably saying this now, but hopefully tomorrow will recognize that the risk of going under and never waking up again was worth it.

The cost quote makes me wonder if I should just spend the money to fly to Southeast Asia and get it done there. I could probably get the roundtrip flight, week of hotels, daily banquets, and a Harvard-educated surgeon for a fraction of the cost. I think about the places I’ve been in this world and if wisdom teeth are a problem everywhere, if they’ve been so for all time. How is my mouth still teeming with teeth, despite me removing almost dozen of them already? Did we smile wider before? Did we just accept that, as we got older, our grins would resemble picket fences in swamps, crayons hurriedly stuffed in boxes, groupies gushing in the front row at Summer Jam? Or did we just spend the first humanic eons greeting each other by peeling our lips open, revealing with jaws aching our arsenal of yellowing ivory pillars – not fit for avatars and headshots but still ideal for cracking open sunflower seeds, tearing thread, and chewing the toughest of fibers from the latest hunt? Do we still find happiness like we used to, even with our modern smiles?

Today’s the first day of the year that I woke up and, instead of meditating, decided to dive into the social media wormhole. It suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked.

I dramatically decreased my social media use after reading an interview with technologist Jaron Lanier. He didn’t go into any kind of deep analysis of human psyche or privacy or capitalism, but rather a nonchalant well obvz it’s all for behavior modification. I’ve heard/read/thought so many reasons why companies like Facebook probably don’t have my best intentions in mind, but what I appreciate about Lanier’s reason is that it places the responsibility not on someone else’s terms of agreement or monetary aspirations or prowess to protect against hackers – instead, it’s about me. And I know my behavior has definitely been affected, if not somewhat driven, by my decade of assertive online presence.

What does it mean to wake up on the wrong side of the digital divide? For starters, all the days leading up to today, I quite enjoyed exposing my eyes to the light outside my window. I don’t know the first thing about describing the difference between blue light and full spectrum light, other than the fact that the former comes from my phone and the latter comes from…the universe. What I can tell you on a molecular level is that waking up and immediately glaring into my phone is the optical version of starting off my day with a breakfast of fries and Mountain Dew. My eyes immediately began to feel grainy, and an unsleepy tiredness overcame me, one that didn’t feel that different from food coma.

When I come out of my morning meditations, I feel motivated and thankful, calm and fulfilled. But my 10 minutes of morning Instagram scrolling managed to pack in feelings of outrage, envy, self-loathing, and inertia. Oftentimes, even positive conversations about social media at some point ends up with someone saying what am I doing with my life? and if there’s one thing that I can confirm doesn’t help lead to a constructive answer to that question, it’s unwrapping each day with the rude awakening of the internet.

I’ve learned that what distinguishes good days and bad days for me is control. If I feel like I’m managing things by carefully processing and approaching with some foresight, I can take on pretty much anything. On the other hand, allowing myself to spend my first few moments scrolling through posts – each one packed with the potential to take me somewhere I’m emotionally, egotistically, politically, or physically unprepared for – even the dumbest, most minute thing that has absolutely nothing to do with me can derail me.

This morning was kind of shitty but a great reminder of the opportunities that await each day. Seize or be seized.

Two words were deposited into my vocabulary bank toward the end of last year:

Neophilia – a love or enthusiasm for the new and novel

Biophilia – a love of life and the living world

They seem to be opposing concepts – one centered around that which is new and maybe even fleeting. The other focused on that which has existed for eons, and will continue to grow and thrive well beyond anyone’s time on this earth.

So what does it mean when a neophyte like myself begins to become a biophile? Can I call myself either, knowing that I may only have a mild case of both? I love the new, but I know how to commit. I have a deep and growing sense of connection with nature, but I still live in the city and am addicted to plastic. Can I straddle both, or does the temporality of one and permanence of the other mean I have to choose a side?

I think what draws me alike to the exhilaration of new things, and the comfort of nature’s constancy, is that both are unfamiliar. In both circumstances, I approach not knowing much, feeling like I need to earn my place or have something to prove. My challenge is to recognize that what I need to prove myself to is not to people or a field or a society, but to a situation or an environment. It helps me recognize that, living in a world that has existed for billions of years, all of us are neophytes. And even the most urban of us dwellers ultimately breathe air and drink water. We could all be neophytes and biophiles.

But so many of us go through this world resist change and fight nature. We enter unfamiliar situations with fear rather than awe, and so many of us have been raised to equate dirt with dirty. In the past year I’ve been lucky enough to spend time in rainforests and deserts, mountains and the ocean. What draws me to the mysterious forms I encounter is that same obsession with newness that often sets me racing toward the latest release or product or task, rather than just sitting with what has always been.

The challenge now is to embrace the part of both philias that I’ve failed to mention thus far – love. My neophilia has introduced me to so many concepts and issues, some that can be summed up as distractions that last less than a week, and others that stuck to me and have come to define me. I’m not sure if I can force my new infatuation with nature to be love, but like a good neophyte I do my best to be completely open.