I miss writing. Now that I am in college, technical writing takes up most of my time, but my college experience should be more than nonfiction objective academic jargon. I wish to submerge myself into the habit of writing things down, posting these thoughts, and having documentation of my experiences. I jotted down thoughts before, usually in a notebook. But when I write in a notebook, I put the notebook on the shelf, never seen by any critic besides myself.
If I post these thoughts to Facebook, then internet code prohibits me to do so since Facebook is not a place to be political or opinionated, which inevitably it is.
Anyway, I will stop ranting about what I want to do, how often I will do this, or what exactly I aim to accomplish because the answers to all of these questions I myself do not know.
I made a friend at Orientation from Taiwan with whom I always have awesome conversations about human nature and politics and the universe and humanity over lunch.
He started our conversation stating how everyone is power-hungry and self interested. I knew we were in for one hell of a debate. We deciphered the Republican debate and how everything there was an aim to further the candidates' own position in the polls even though Donald Trump (arguably the most self interested of all) is at the top. We discussed the topics that we learned in class about statism, the idea of bolstering power in the state to heighten the state's own position in the world. He then made a reference to Kevin Spacey in House of Cards and how Frank Underwood tramples over people to get what he wants, prominent in the political system that we live under today.
With this, I assessed the reality of what my goals were professionally. I realized that humanity has made it difficult to make progress through government, hilariously demonstrated through Parks & Recreation when a group of the citizens of Pawnee blame the government for there not being enough benches to sleep on.
The point is that there are solutions to problems. Although solutions may be self-interested like my counterpart argues, I believe in the power for there to be solutions to problems. History has shown leaders formulating these solutions through strategy and logic. Problems crippled states in the past from economic depression to pandemics. We know that the future will bring about more problems like climate change and billionaires funding government candidates and immigration, and society will combat these upcoming problems by coming up with solutions.
On another note, I love hip-hop. I invest myself in the hip-hop movement because the movement prompts me to feel good about myself. From dance to rap to music, hip-hop fosters both a good vibe and a good community. Hip-hop is filled with delight these past days. For one, Drake and Future dropped their mixtape "What a Time to Be Alive" which has fans scrambling to memorize lyrics and start analyzing them for the sake of revealing the major shade being thrown at Meek Mill.
Today, I had the privilege to rap alongside twelve emcees who have curated their own art-form of free-styling. I stay for the entire session, getting in practice and input from fellow emcees. One young man in a track suit saw us and addressed positive vibes in our group, further drawing input into the art that he invests in on a daily basis. The two major take aways that he left me with were to always be true to the things that you free-style about and to keep the practice going. I always rapped from a point of ignorance, talking about things I had no clue about and a sound that I never internalized. He saw me picking up from my environment, talking about Houston like it was the back of my hand, about the things that make Houston both challenging and great as a city.
The blogs and the videos that I turned to in times of trouble never taught me that. How do other people do it? How do they sit down and write hit songs and make things come out of thin air?
I find that my best content comes from what I know and what I am familiar with. I draw continuous inspiration from artists like Logic and Lil Dicky. Logic talks about how life in Maryland really is and draws from much of the language and social norms that he grew up around. Lil Dicky talks about the life a normal guy, the guy who does not have the money to afford a Lamborghini or a yacht. He talks of a more real experience, one that a whole lot of people are more familiar with.
My endgame for now is hard to really pinpoint, but as I said before: I don't know the answers. That's what I am here for. I'm here for those answers. But I heard somewhere that showing up is only the first step.
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