I’ll admit, it’s a warm and fuzzy thought. Which makes it suck to have to be the one to come and pour cold water all over it so publicly — but some things are simply a matter of duty. If I don’t do it, nobody will. Especially not here.
I’ll start with me. Do you know where I would be in life if I unconditionally did the best I could, one hundred percent of the time? There’s no telling.
I wish I did the best I could, even most of the time — but the cold hard truth is I don’t. I don’t know I ever have, actually. To give my all? Yes, there have been moments. Often involving physical strength. Because there are caps to that. …
Not a suicide note
I am 33 and most mornings I wake up feeling at least twice as old. It feels as though I have lived and died multiple times and yet I still manage to wake to a bleak reality every day.
Like an unfunny, less ironic version of the movie Groundhogs Day but without Bill Murray. There’s just me, my past I seem stuck in and a future I don’t quite believe in.
Every day is the same. One is as torturously bland as the next and the thought of hurling myself off the nearest highway overpass just in order to feel something has crossed my mind more than once. …
Entertainers, artists, and writers are often taken advantage of and it’s unfortunately no different on this platform
Imagine a platform that preaches equality and inclusivity, being biased, judgemental, and exclusionary. One where they rope you in by dangling a carrot on a string in front of you, but you’re never quite able to reach out and grab it. Yet that very same platform has the audacity to send you emails every month informing you of all those who brought home a bag of carrots in that 30 day period — but all you were given was a bag of dirt.
You don’t have to imagine ladies and gentleman, because you are here. Welcome to Medium, where the CEO regularly finds new and innovative ways to feed off the souls of writers and has the nerve to call them Betas and improvements. …
I’ve continuously lost in life. I’ve lost love, loved ones, family, and friends. I’ve lost astounding amounts of money in a fraction of the time it took to acquire it with absolutely nothing to show for it after — other than maybe a sad story to tell.
Some days, it feels like all I know how to do is lose. Which is ironic considering how much winning once meant to me. I had to have the last word to win arguments. To land the last punch to win fights. …
With the national spotlight on the city I love and call home, I’d like to kindly remind republicans we’re not the ones you want to try and bully.
I was six years old, and it was game 6 of the 1993 World Series. Our apartment was three blocks from the Cottman and Frankford Avenues intersection, Northeast Philly’s very own version of the infamous Broad Street.
Remember the kid who drunkenly climbed the street light pole after The Phillies won The World Series in 2008, before having the very same people he was celebrating with throw full cans of beer at him from below?
Well, that perfectly sums up Broad Street celebrations.
Cottman and Frankford is no different. I saw the exact same thing happen there with my own eyes after The Eagles won the Superbowl — and this time the poles were greased. Didn’t stop us. Neither did the likely potential of unopened cans of beer being thrown at you for no reason. …
In the wake of the ‘College Drop Out’ rapper receiving 0 electoral college votes and dropping out of the presidential race — let’s take a look at what America missed out on.
For starters, let me give credit where it’s due. As ridiculous as the whole charade of Kanye’s campaign may have been, running for president takes — something. And apparently, Kanye West has that something.
Not only did he run, but he managed to convince a completely ineffective yet still absolutely noteworthy amount of people to cast their vote for him — picking up a total of over 50,000 votes in ten states I was able to find verified information on via www.news.com.au.
Sure, not nearly enough to pick up a single electoral vote, of which a candidate needs 270 of in order to win the presidency — but hey, he may have genuinely impacted what is being dubbed as the most important election of our lifetime, with America’s very soul on the line, given the tight nature of it even well over twelve hours after the last polling place in the country closed. …
Why I’m grateful for the random moments captured I never knew would be worth or would need remembering.
As I sit here, involuntarily shifting my focus from my computer screen to the television monitor, I have my Chromecast plugged into, as it randomly shuffles through and displays pictures from my Google Photos account. This equates to essentially every picture I’ve taken or posted to social media in the last decade-plus. So many of these frozen moments in time from my own life that I’m lucky enough to have captured before they forever faded feel like they took place another lifetime ago, if not several.
They feel like experiences lived by someone else, vividly repeated to me so often they start to feel like mine. Faces of old friends I haven’t seen since in forever and a day ago flash across the screen, ones I was once certain I’d never need a picture of to recall accurately — have since become those I could pass in the street later on today and likely not recognize nor be recognized by. …
And the existential fears of a 33-year-old: Why I’m back at school for the third time in fifteen years
Back in March, I decided to register for classes at Community College. School just started for me in September. This is my third time being enrolled at Community College of Philadelphia and my first time back in school since 2013.
My first stint was one I was forced into right after graduating high school in 2005, as my Dad wasn’t real fond of my “taking a year off” plan. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t force them to drink it — and this horse hardly showed up for class and ended the semester with three Fs.
The second was voluntary, but I only went back because I was lost in life and didn’t know what else to do. …
Being who you are and sharing it with the world is becoming lucrative in today’s wonderfully strange world
I distinctly remember watching MTV’s then hit reality show Rob and Big back in 2008 and not only being entertained — but also being enamored with and inspired by skateboarder Rob Dyrdek and his bodyguard best friend, Big Black.
There they were, on national TV with a presumed audience of a couple million on a channel as popular as MTV at the time, hanging out with their ugly but lovable bulldog Meaty, on their way to buy a pet mini horse — and it was beyond genius.
Rob Dyrdek made a name for himself young as a professional skateboarder, but the MTV show turned him into a walking brand with sponsors from the likes of DC, Monster energy drink, Silver trucks, and EA Skate. …
The painful part about great things is they end — but try and remember there’s plenty more where they came from
Sometimes it seems like my entire life is nothing more than a series of endings. Of things coming to an inevitable finish, even though it’s often without closure on either side. For a painfully long time, I couldn’t help but see this as taking one step forward and two steps back — time and time again.
Not only did I feel like I wasn’t making any progress or getting anywhere, it often seemed as though when things ended, I was worse off than before they began. In turn, I think this left me with a nihilistic view of life. I found myself asking what was the point — in anything — if it would inevitably end. …
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