You Were Not Built With Parts That Don’t Matter

You can try to chop yourself up, force a square peg into a round hole. But it will be messy and clunky. You can clench your fists and pretend you’re a circle, if you wish, scraping your edges round and raw. For me, however, living this way was miserable and excruciatingly painful.

Stop Telling People to Follow Their Passion

When we try to find our passion, without the roadmap of curiosity, we are looking for a living, moving, breathing and all-powerful thing. But without curiosity breathing life into our passion, it evades us. We cannot see it, because it is not doing what passion does. It is not yet moving things around, shining brightly, creating, singing, shouting, or dancing. It has not yet uttered its first sound or made its first move.

Letting Go of Gender Expectations

My son was born a male, is attracted to males and has always chosen more feminine dress, expression and behaviors. But he does not identify as she. This is hard for some people to understand. But to him, it’s simple. And he wishes it wasn’t even a thing.

Writing About Writing — The Golden Audience Pool

The thing about your deepest and most profound thoughts and ideas is that they are always more niche. Wanderings of our heart, philosophical or moral convictions, and our most niche work may fuel our purpose and ignite stimulating conversations, yet these pieces cannot pull the views that platitude pieces do.

Freedom — The Elephant Rope and The Human Rope

If you have done any amount of honest reflection on yourself, life, and society as we know it, it is no secret that most of us were conditioned to doubt ourselves from a very young age. Of course, there will be anomalies, as is always in life. But for the rest of us, our life may have started off brimming with sunshine, but inevitably, we reached a point where people began sowing seeds of doubt in our minds and hearts.

Those Who Value You Most Will Value Your Work The Least

Have you ever had a brilliant idea and been so excited to tell your people that you fantasize about it until you meet again? Have you finally reached that moment to be met with a list of reasons why your idea won’t work? Have you poured your heart into your writing or your craft and presented it to your most beloved? Were you shocked by some who didn’t even read it or barely commented?

The Opiate Crisis — Death and Deregulation

We have been invited to grab ahold of a new idea that is gaining momentum. And as passionate as many of us are about decriminalization and ending the war on drugs, it is no surprise that someone came up with such a far-out proposal. It makes sense that this nonsensical idea would make sense to some people who have no real-life experience with addiction. But to anyone who has treaded the waters of opiate addiction, it is a baffling idea to consider.

Systemic Racism Fueled by Displacement and Degradation

We must admit that these displaced urban communities are so powerful that they control the lives of every person who lives there. This is true regardless of skin color. I do not highlight this to prove that all colors suffer but to demonstrate the power of gentrification.

The Invention of ‘Black’ and ‘White’

The fuel to the fire of systemic racism is and has always been division and separation. For over 300 years they have worked methodically to divide us. They have executed long-term plans over hundreds of years in order to keep us separate. They created the terms ‘black’ and ‘white’.