2018: The Year of Continuing

2018 Monthly Portraits

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2018 Favorites

Favorite Song: What About Me – Lil’ Wayne (September 2018) // God’s Plan – Drake (January 2018) // 24/7 - Meek Mill feat. Ella Mai (November 2018)

Favorite Album: Swimming – Mac Miller (August 2018) // Dying to Live – Kodak Black (December 2018)

Favorite Movie Watched: Landline (2017)

Favorite Television Series Watched: The Office (2005-2013)

Favorite Destination Visited: Pittsburgh, PA (December 2018)

Favorite Purchase: My first pair of Yeezys, 700 Mauve, (October 2018)

Most Practical Purchase: All-weather liners for the Sequoia

Favorite Sport’s Moment: 16-point Chargers’ comeback win over Pittsburgh at Heinz Field (December 2018) // Watching Grayson Allen play at Duke at PNC Arena (January 2018) // Watching Grayson Allen play at Duke at Barclay’s Center ACC Tourney (March 2018)

Notable Artistic Happenings: Legends of Kempsford (Podcast, 2018-2018), A Few Moments with Ratha David Loun (Audio thoughts, May 2018), the running diary 1 year anniversary (Blog, March 2018), March 2018 (Song, March 2018)

In 2018

Everything we experience is a product of continuing. Progress can only be made through continuing. Goals can only be achieved through continuing. Life does not exist without continuation. Do you get it? We live by continuing. This year wasn’t a blur like most years. I took things day by day and it made my time multiply 10-fold. I made the choice to come back to school and finish out my B.S. in Biology. Being back on campus felt amazing. I remember my first day back I felt so damn good walking to class. It felt like I was writing new endings to old beginnings. Rarely in this lifetime do we get a chance to do things over, so when we are presented with the opportunity to do so, we should greet life with appreciation and courage. To be expected, college-life isn’t what it was when I left it, but to be fair I’m not the same either. Admittedly, after a few weeks I felt alienated, but then again (not to be confused with a search for acceptance), when have I ever felt like I belonged? After class one day, a fine shorty came up and began talking to me about organic chemistry only for our conversation to veer into surface-level small talk leading her to reveal she’s 20, which means when I was a freshman in college she was in 8th grade. Bruh how??? Another was when I was walking into the library to print a few documents and I overheard a girl who said she can’t wait for the year to end to move out of Sanford. Sanford is a high-rise dorm for freshman only. I lived in Moore, the building adjacent to Sanford, freshman year 7 years ago. Doing the math, that means she was born in 2000, which means she may or may not have been 1 years old when 9/11 happened. Alienated or not, I’m here to make the best of things this time around.

Favorite photo taken this year————New York City, Ratha David Loun (March 2018)

2018 was a continuation of divine-like coincidences in my life. They may be few and far between, but they stick with me. One snowy March night I relayed to Obed over dinner in Times Square of how I wanted to visit the American Museum of Natural History, specifically the Hayden Planetarium. I spoke on my love for the Cosmos and Neil DeGrasse being a driving force behind it. Less than 24 hours later we’d be eating Indian in an upper westside Manhattan restaurant where Neil would walk through the door and shake my hand at the end of our meals. Back in January I woke up in cold sweats from a bizarre dream I had of a friend in high school. We were hooping during the second half of H.O.T. lunch (that’s what they called it at Holly Springs) and he told me of a pit bull puppy he was selling. I wake up and he’s on trial fighting two murder charges with a key piece of evidence linking him to a similar robbery being a Facebook post of him advertising a pit bull puppy for sale. He would end up getting two consecutive life sentences with no parole, a verdict I’m not quite at peace with because of who I knew him as when we were kids. A more recent coincidence happened during an 8:30am class this past semester. We were put in groups to discuss resolutions for food insecurity. The professor randomly picks a person to speak from her roll, and of course it’s me. A few of the guys in the back laugh because afterwards they told me they had a feeling I was going to get picked. Things like this always happen to me, but that’s not the focal point of this story. I sit front row of the class, so I never notice anybody, but I noticed an attractive girl in the group I was placed in. Two weeks later as we’re taking the midterm, I finish my exam and turn it in. As I hand my paper in, so does the girl who was in my group. She says something to me as we’re walking out and we begin conversing as we walk. At the end of our conversation, she asks for my Snapchat. I told her I’m never active (which was the truth at the time), and she asks if I have notifications turned on. I tell her no, but we still add each other on Snap. I walked to my car feeling good, feeling like possibilities and desire didn’t have to be mutually exclusive. I drove home hoping life would feel this good more often, and truth be told, I’ve been active on Snap with the noti’s turned on ever since.

These occurrences make me believe more is possible than my doubts and intuition tell me at times. I don’t know who is responsible for writing the script I’m living, but I suppose the director is attempting to tell me something. I do my best to read the uncertainties of life and perceive the signs sent my way, but at times it’s best to stop and be. During this life we tend to forget things in order to relearn them when it’s least convenient albeit most beneficial for us, and that’s something 2018 has taught me. Life is a belief-oriented process, and I’m beginning to believe again. I’m believing in myself once more like the naïve teenager I once was. It’s hard not to feel chosen when you have much to be appreciative about. I believe we’re all chosen because we’re all here, together. Siblings are made of the same exact DNA, yet they’re unique in that they’re themselves individually. There are many forms of life, yet no two living things are the exact same. Perhaps we didn’t get to choose who or what we are, but there’s peace in realizing we get to choose who and what we become.

I truly believe so.

In 2019

I hope to continue into something, perhaps even someone, wonderful.

2017 year in review HERE