‘…A life perfect ain’t perfect if you don’t know what the struggles for, falling down ain’t falling down if you don’t cry when you hit the floor, it’s called the past cause I’m getting past and I ain’t nothing like I was before, you outta see me now…’
The last time I posted here I was almost at a point of burn-out. I was at the point where I found myself questioning why I was working so hard – in the long run would it even matter? The last time I felt like this I simply put my head down and told myself to keep working, thinking inspiration would find me. BIG mistake. Instead I found ruins and a shift in my life so great, I am still feeling the aftershocks.
So this time around, I went looking for inspiration.
Last weekend I went digging through my boxes of storage – most of which hadn’t been touched since I left LA. But I had a pretty good idea what I needed was in there – My old diaries. I think I’ve always been a writer (I wrote my first screenplay when I was 9) but I didn’t start keeping a journal until my cousin gave me a beautifully bound blue book when I was fifteen. Off and on for the next five years, three volumes would emerge as the sole witness to some of the most fulfilling, tumultuous and often bizarre moments of my life. And in times like these, they would be my reminders.
So I sat on my back deck – in the sun, with Charlie Murphy at my feet – and I started at fifteen and worked my way forward. Three hours later, I was a little sunburned, Charlie was looking for shade and I realized one very important thing, I wasn’t hungry enough.
I remember being 13 or 14, riding in the back of my friends mother’s car and looking up at the moon – see growing up we fluctuated between times of monetary excess and praying the lights would work when we flipped the switch and eating day old donuts cause that was the only option – And I remember clear as today, looking up at that bright full moon and understanding clearly that my life was meant for more, that my journey would take me far as long as I was willing to work for it.
Years later, as I kissed my mother goodbye, gave away all my worldly possessions, ignored my father’s disapproval, and with $800 to my name, moved across the country to live with cousins I barely knew in Compton. I’d leave the house at 6am and ride three busses each way Monday through Friday up to Beverly Hills to a 10-hour a day unpaid internship at a Production Company. Why? Cause I wanted a life so much bigger, and I knew my chance would come and I would do whatever I had to, to make sure I was ready. In short, I was consumed with hunger.
But over the years, that same comfort of knowing that I would be alright – that feeling in the pit of my stomach – the very faith I’ve come to rely on to see me through some of my darkest hours has somehow made me…Soft. Complacent. Stagnant. Ego has replaced learning. I’ve come to cherish ‘things’ over experiences. I’d begun to confuse pats on the back with winning…
I still hustled, but my hustle was from a position of safety, from a place of calculated risk. And it occurred to me, all of the things I’d been experiencing as of late – the challenges, the adversity, the exhausting never-ending uphill battles – Perhaps this was God’s way of saying, ‘Remember when you believed enough, that you would do anything?’
A big fish has never been caught from the shore. And anything worth having that’s ever come easy, has never been kept. I set out looking for inspiration but instead found something greater. I found purpose.
Now don’t get me wrong, the struggle continues. But at least now I will fight knowing I will risk my life to win it because now I remember what it feels like to have something to fight for…For the first time in a long time, my hunger outweighs my fear and I’ve got more on the line than just proving to myself I can do something.
My ribs are touching and it is a beautiful feeling…
Roc with me.
