This 50th entry marks the halfway point of my 100 days of consecutive writing. Here’s to 50 more entries!

What have you been showing up for consistently? It doesn’t have to be consecutive days, but it can be. What are you doing that lights you up? Can you do more of it? Do you think you would benefit from doing it every day? If you answered yes to all or any of these questions, keep going, even if you miss a day, pick it up again. I know I promised a longer entry, and I’ll have one for you soon. I’m also working to do a better job of recharging my own batteries when I’m burning that midnight oil.

Thoughts become things. Words have power. Thoughts form words, and words shape narratives.

We can choose our words. We can name ourselves. We can create the world that we want to see, by speaking our vision into the world. Let us tell better stories to create a better world.

Super late edition today, not because of the Super Bowl, but because of a couple of other writing deadlines I had to complete. Exciting times. One down, two to go, plus a longer post tomorrow. Ask and ye shall receive. I asked for more acting, writing and speaking opportunities, now I just have to walk through the door. Even when it’s technically past midnight, I am committed to writing every day, right here. Let us not let technicalities prevent us from doing the work to create the change we seek to make.

Morning routines, goals, ambition, plans, steps on the path. We get the opportunity to do so many things while we are here, and if we know what we want, we have to work at it every day. Having routines, systems, and a good overall workflow can be super helpful. I’m sure having those things down would make things much easier for me, but as is the case with so many things, it’s a work in progress. One thing that I have is a few things that I strive to do every day, be they morning, noon or night. Meditate, practice gratitude, visualize, and write. It is bedtime in my household, but I had to come back and write this post. If I publish this today, and then do it again for three more days, I’ll have reached the halfway point of this journey, writing every day here, for 100 days.

I’m trying to become more of a morning person… which is difficult considering I’ve been somewhat of an insomniac since… well for as long as I can remember, but definitely since I first confronted my own existential dread at 8 years old. Maybe it kicked in after my parents divorce… nothing last forever, this life included.

However, this new play I’m working on, about my Grandfather who I didn’t really get to know very well, is making me rethink my whole concept of life, death, time, and the power of storytelling. I know that this life as we know it ends, but like all things I’ve experienced, endings don’t actually have a finite point to them, there’s a flow. If there’s a flow that we are part of, then we are in the same water we were in before, and it’ll still be the same water wherever we end up next, although the scenery and level of rapids may change.

Expressionistic words, go straight to souls from me.

Ain’t no mystic mystery, just the history I see.

My message people fear,

For Far to real to hear

The cries of unmasked eyes I see,

It’s the truth I know that people flee.

Does snow make the barometric pressure change? Short answer, I don’t know.

I was gonna write a noodle about how thoughts become things, especially if you write them down, and I will get to that soon, but today, this evening and the past few days I’ve been feeling a kind of weight on my head. I felt it in training today at the dojo, and I feel it right now. I felt it last night, and went to bed relatively early, and I believe I got a decent amount of sleep, but I’m feeling it again right now.

Quick little online research pulled up that barometric pressure changes can actually have physiological affects on people. How they correlate and what they do exactly is a question I’m not going to explore tonight… because the barometric pressure, it’s getting to me.

Or maybe it’s all in my head. But just because it’s all in my head doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Hot air? Barometric pressure.

So clubhouse has become the latest social media platform that is buzzing, and it took off during the pandemic. The big difference is that unlike Tik Tok and Instagram, other than the pictures in the profile, it is all live audio. It kind of reminds me of a combination of chat rooms and party lines that existed in the late 90s. I only officially joined within the last few days, so the jury is still out about what I think about it. I’ll say if it provides an opportunity for people to feel heard, I support it, personally I’m just trying to make sure I’m intentional with the noise I take in. As is to be expected with social media, there are a lot of toxic conversations as well as conversations about how to best leverage the platform and social media itself. I ended up in a pretty good one today that was about what “Pro Black” vs “Anti-Black” means exactly. It was refreshing to hear and participate in a fairly nuanced conversation on the subject. Everybody agreed that it’s not a simple answer, it doesn’t look the same for everybody, and that there are many ways to be pro-black. Happy Black History Month.

It happened. NYC got the big storm we’ve been waiting for for the past several years, we have probably several feet of snow. At least in our Bushwick backyard. The pandemic is the perfect time for a snow storm, we are used to the everything kind of being on pause anyway.

Today, I spent a lot of time on screens. Most of the day. It’s a blessing to have these little portals to the world available to us at all times, but too much time in the virtual world really takes it out of me. My wife invited me on a walk in between my final meetings of the evening, and I almost said no, before realizing that I needed the fresh air. While the dogs enjoy the access we have to our backyard, they appreciated the walk too.

When we realized how much snow was accumulating this morning, I was able to convince my wife to stay home for the day. Here’s to hoping you and yours are cozy and warm this week. And if you find yourself on a lot of screens, bundle up, take a few minutes aside, and experience this winter wonderland. And if you’re one of my friends who currently lives near a beach in a warm climate like Miami, or Corpus Christi… you know who you are… enjoy it, it enjoy it for all of us who are in the cold North.

There is a storm coming.

That storm’s name is change. In fact we’re in the midst of several storms, that seem to be colliding together to make superstorms. Superstorms are a real thing, and so is compounding change, in fact little changes make up major change.

Mind: time. In my zone.

Own the path I’ve been put on.

Master Arts and keep on growin’.

This what I’ve been workin’ on.

Speak that truth and keep on flowin'.

Tell them stories, sing them poems.

Work that body, keep it goin’.

Muay Thai, 8 limbs, y’all be knowin’.

I came here to tear the roof off the illusion.

Bring a calm voice of clarification to the confusion.

Which path are you choosin? Who them fools think they really fooling.

The masses ain’t dumb, but for too long we been snoozing.

We need to elevate.

It ain’t never too late.

But we cannot wait.

Collective minds, liberate!

I came to set it straight.

I ain’t no featherweight.

Storyteller, Heavyweight.

Let us all be great! (let us all be great. let us all be great…)

We must become the Superheroes we wish were coming to save us. That’s the thesis of the keynote I’ve been working on, and sort of my working ethos.

But how do we do that? I was listening to a podcast a while back with a wise monk who really resonated with a lot of things I’ve been thinking about lately. He was big in the Tao, something that my friend Cait Courtelyou pointed out sounded like a lot like what I was talking about at the time. Tao means the way, and what I love about it is that it isn’t saying that there is one way… and at the same time it is saying that there is a flow that all things are a part of. Kind of like the force. It sounds simple, and it is, but it runs super deep.

Time travel and magic have been on my mind lately. I find it interesting how once you name yourself, once you speak your wish out loud, you start seeing reflections of that manifestation everywhere. Time travel has been on my mind lately because of the play I’m writing about breaking generational curses, and understanding that it’s not too late to connect with my ancestors. By putting myself in their shoes, and imagining those conversations, they become very much alive. I can hear their voices speaking to me, and I can see how their legacy lives on with me. By telling the story of my Grandfather I didn’t know well but share a name with, memories spark of my other grandfather who I knew and very much enjoyed the time we had together. I need to call my Grandma, I need to write to her, she’s the last grandparent left. The stories I’m putting together of my Grandfather I hardly knew, are coming together, but it’s difficult because it’s been decades since he passed. I need to connect with my Grandma while she’s here, so that I can pass those stories on to the next generation. I’ve been doing a lot of writing, plays, stories, songs, music… this. I’m still figuring out what this is. For those joining now, this is 100 days of writing, here. As I said, I write in many different places, in many different forms, but I want to develop a daily writing practice, I’ve attempted this several times before. This time, I’m going for 100 days, this is number 38, where will I go from here? The answer to that will only be answered by staying consistent. I’m looking forward to seeing what the 50s, and 70s look like… in pages… but sure also in years.

Mindset is Magical. On a podcast I was listening to today, Impact Theory, the guest, Benjamin Hardy shared a quote by the author Peter Levine from his book “Waking The Tiger: Healing Trauma.” The quote from the book is, “trauma isn’t what happens to you, it’s what you hold inside in the absence of a sympathetic witness.” I take that to mean, and Benjamin Hardy went on to say, it isn’t the event itself, the thing that caused the trauma that harms us psychologically, it’s our inability to move past it. A lot of time these destructive events and the trauma they cause us, hurt our possibility to elevate in the future, because we buy into some idea that what happened before has to happen again. If we can’t let go, they can limit our ability to believe in new possibilities for the future.

It really is a small world, and it’s also definitely round. What goes around comes around, and we are connected more than we realize. It’s easy for things to feel like they don’t matter, like what we do and say exists in some kind of vacuum. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, there is no void, the things you do and say matter. At least 3, but probably 10 things reminded me of the invisible thread today. The thing to know is that we don’t always get to see how things connect right away, but just because you can’t see the connection right now, doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. So do and speak the things you want to see and be. Words and ideas are powerful things, but to harness their potential, you have to bring them into the world. That dream you have? See it, speak it, build it, and do the things that the person you want to be would do, and that’s who you will become.

So one of the books I’m currently reading is called Brag Better, by Meredith Fineman, which we are talking about in the Jen Waldman Book Club this month, FYI. If you want to know more about Jen, check out Blog post XXXIII (33).

In Chapter 3 of this book Meredith talks about how a lot of us undercut our own success as if we haven’t been working at it for a long time, we forget to give ourselves credit for our own accomplishments and triumphs. “Most of us just need to hear it from someone else before we can believe it for ourselves.” That rings so true to me.

Which is why I was so pleased to release Episode 122 of Bushwick Variety Show this evening. It took me a while to finish editing it, and I to my heartbreak, I accidentally deleted the intro that I recorded earlier so I had to do it over. The reason I was so excited about this is because of what Emily White did for me this past summer. She saw and heard my work, and then extended her platform to me and allowed me to collaborate with her on a podcast with The Public Theatre.

Researching the stories of our ancestors who departed when we were young, plus those who were gone before we were even here, is quite a task. Learning from a father about his father and the family dynamic that they had. I’m talking more to my Dad now than I have in years, and also learning how he was both close with his Dad, and at odds with him at one point, the way I was with my Dad, the way fathers and sons tend to be. These sentences are running on a bit, and have a cyclical quality, but it’s a lot to unpack. I’ve written a few pages of the newest play I’m creating which is going to dig in to this subject matter, but right now I’m soaking up the music of the time. Where does the time go?

Yesterday was a very short entry into this blog, because I took sort of a last minute gig helping out with a production. As is often the case, I spent a good part of my journey to the gig second guessing my decision, a habit I’m learning to find a more healthy balance with. Meaning, it’s good to learn from our experiences, but we rob our experience if we aren’t present for them because our mind is elsewhere. In the end, I think my decision yesterday to go down the unknown road was a good one, as would have been staying home and digging into some of the creative projects I already have on my plate.

I’m happy to say that the people I met through the project yesterday were also super cool, and I look forward to possibly collaborating with them in the future. When asked how I got involved with their final day of shooting, I explained that one of the PAs on their set reached out to our shared network at Jen Waldman Studios. One of the things I missed out on yesterday was JWS at night, and evening where the studio members share their work in a more casual, but magical environment. It’s hard to explain the magic that is happening at that studio, the way I described it yesterday was a community of people that show up for each other in so many different ways. We share ideas, resources, projects, and strategies, but on top of that I feel like most people that come in there are already operating at a pretty high level, but I’ve seen and experienced so much growth. And to be clear, the studio was brick and mortar, but since April it’s been online, and while it’s changed, it has not lost the magic.

So apparently today was the 21st second of the 21st minute of the 21st hour of the 21st day of the 21st year of the 21st century. That will happen again for 22 in 100 years… hopefully we take care of carbon emissions and build a world that can sustain humanity in a kinder way, otherwise calendars may no longer exist. But still, that’s kind of neat, right? Not the part about the course of self destruction that we’re on unless we change direction, the part about the 21s. I also started some new pages for my newest play, which is exploring the theme of the Break The Curse post I made a few weeks ago. It’s exploring the story of my Grandfather and how his story affects me, and how our collective stories affect one another, which is why I want to become The Great Storyteller. We need to tell better stories, not just accept the stories that have been written for us. Take back the narrative, or take it if we never had it in the first place. We need to do what we came here to do, and share it with the world.