I have not published a blog post since February 10th of this year. Dannnnng. I think that’s the longest I’ve gone without writing on here in a while. For the better part of the last year, as many of you have seen, I put my head down for something I really wanted to go for. I just figured I was given an opportunity to grow as an artist and go as hard and far as I wanted to. I felt like this year of my life has been such an incredible moment… where I felt like the door opened that I was knocking on my whole life. It has been nothing short of a thrill and a true adventure, and what’s crazy too is that it is only the start of it… I cannot imagine what is to come.
In May, I painted my first mural, painted and styled shoes for Doc Martens my favorite shoe company, and completed my first solo exhibition that featured of over 20 works of art. On top of this I was also tattooing and working in my tattoo apprenticeship at Peters Street Station. When May 1 came around, I set out on a mission to leave everything on the floor… not sure how I was going to be able to do all of these projects at once. I tried to hire an assistant, and even talked to Miya about taking some time off so I could have more time to complete everything I needed to do. But something about this time made me feel that neither of these options were the route I needed to take. I actually needed to think more critically about my choices and my time, and what things I was prioritizing in life. After all, I started asking myself the question, “why do I need to hire someone to help manage my life when in many ways I am not managing my own?” I ended up not hiring an assistant and not taking time off the apprenticeship, interested in the idea that maybe the issue is not that I dont “have” time, but in reality I didn’t “make” it. I went to work and made it happen… I can honestly say I am so proud of myself and actually was able to feel myself growing each day. In May I worked every single day, virtually all day. I’d be up making frames or painting til 4 or 5 in the morning on the regular. I started to feel like I was reaching a new depth of myself and a new depth of who I was to become as a person and an artist. I found a switch. May 19th, when I got to share my solo exhibition, was the culmination of all I had poured out into my art, and the feeling I had about everything was just so different. It was real pride, it was real confidence, real joy… deeper and separate from compliments, criticisms, who came, who didn’t come. I feel like if 0 people could have come to my opening and I would have felt the exact same level of accomplishment. Just like… dang man. I really did that. I made the hard choices, I dug into myself, exercised discipline and self-control… to see my dreams become reality and not just dreams in my head. There’s so much I could say about this, but ultimately what I came to discover was the true feeling of my time, my life, and my work being worthwhile. Is what you need to do all day, all the mundane and hard little gritty parts…. is it all worth it? And when you can answer that question as a resounding “yes…” then you’ve found yourself in a new place. Working hard takes on a whole new meaning once you find a passion for something and a reason to do it.
Dead Center
Even though this year has been one of the most incredible journeys and blessings of my life, I started to get this feeling that there were things beneath the surface of my life I wasn’t healthily processing. I started my apprenticeship in August of 2021… and really from that point on never looked back. As time went on, the polar nature of my transition started to become more difficult to manage and understand. Please consider that I left white evangelical Christianity and started working for one of the very first contemporary black tattoo masters in the world, in an all black community. And then on top of that I’m Asian. My perspectives started to change, and I wanted them to. I allowed myself to recognize the discrepancies and hypocrisies of my previous experience and gave myself the opportunity to pursue my own truth and find my own path in life irregardless of the opinions of the people around me. i knew so deep in me there was way more for me in life, and the way I saw it I knew I would come to regret not finding my way just cause I was afraid of the opinions of others, who in the end, I’ve discovered are simply afraid and insecure. Don’t get me wrong, there have been a lot of difficult aspects of this… turns out everyone wants you to “be yourself” until you actually do. It’s weird how that works right? It reminds me a lot of buzz words that I would hear in the church for so long, “freedom” “joy” “chains are broken” “set free” “God wants you to be you…” but ironically if you did any of these things unashamedly the same people preaching these ideals would be the first to marginalize you. It’s the same thing here… if you are considering forging your own path in life, go ahead and accept that doing so is going to reveal the true intention of everything and every person around you in your life. You will be shocked at the fragility of many of your relationships, finding that many of your connections are founded on agreeing on ideals and not really friendship. But don’t fret, you will also be surprised at the new, unexpected, and beautiful things that will fill your life now that you are not acting. You’re becoming real.
I decided to take a week vacation. I wanted to be inspired by art and be around the water and the trees, so I came to Savannah, GA.. about a 3 hour drive down for me from Atlanta. I got myself an airbnb under one of those huge moss trees and came for a week to look at art, make some connections with some old friends and new friends, and be inspired and changed by whatever it is I was supposed to discover. I also came to do some personal processing, allowing myself to lay out my life - my actions, choices, values - in front of me to evaluate what has been helping for me up til now and what things I may need to leave in my past. I came to find that while art and my rookie career as a tattoo apprenticeship was flourishing, parts of my soul were really struggling. I wasn’t sleeping, not eating good, not having a clear grip on boundaries when it was coming down to alcohol, weed, dating and just indulgence in general. I started to get this feeling deep in my soul that i needed to make a change. I came to get away from everything and to take a look at this one very important question. I started by just writing this on a piece of paper.
“What stands in the way of who you are today and who you want to become tomorrow? and be honest.”
To me, this is how I define a true spirituality and spiritual growth. Within this question, I am interacting with God and Spirit, opening up my life to be guided by a true knowing deep within me and around me. That’s God to me. I don’t know what He looks like or who He votes for, but that’s all okay with me. It’s these processes and prayers that make up the real foundations of a true spirituality. REAL God moments. I find it so ironic in our day and age that almost everyone can tell you what their sign is or their enneagram number or their allegiance to a certain church or denomination, yet are unable to answer honestly simple questions about their own soul… We would be wise to always look beyond the surface and beyond peoples’ words.
For me, personally, I needed to check my relationship with coffee, alcohol and dating. I had to come to terms with the fact that I was on auto-pilot in my relationship with these things. I realized that my need for coffee was hurting my body (fucking up my stomach constantly), alcohol was clouding my mind, and dating just to date or simply finding validation from women in this way was crushing my soul… and all three were bleeding time and money. For the past little while, I’d find myself at a club or at a bar, or spending time and money on night out with people I even don’t know, on a hinge date, or just out drinking spending more money… and I’d have moments of zooming out and looking around… never able to ignore the question that was coming from deep inside… “yo, what am I actually DOING here?” It has really come down to - I’m realizing what I really want and what kind of life I want to create for myself, my community and the world at large. As I’ve started to discover this, it has became harder and harder to invest into things that weren’t returning the same level of purpose or joy as things like art has… or doing art shows, or helping people, or teaching a drawing class, or observing nature, learning. These are the true treasures of my life, and I realized that it was my habits that would ultimately become my own blocks to be able to express what I truly love into the world. I’m going to work on my life… and this benefits me, you, and every person I will ever meet in the future.
I titled this blog post “dead center” because I am starting to accept this idea that every part of my life’s experience has in some part to do with me and the choices I made to get here. Good and bad. With the exception of extreme cases, you are where you are and you have the life you live partly because you are playing an active role in choosing your experience. You are in the job you are in because you have accepted the job you are in. You are in the relationships you are in because part of you is choosing it. I find it off-putting when people explain their lives to me as if they are a helpless within their own context and everyone and everything around them is “making” their life the way it is. No. We are responsible for our actions, even down to what and who we allow around us. It is hypocrisy to complain about your life or the place you have found yourself in without the willingness to factor in and consider your own choices and values that brought you there.
I’m come to see that I am not out the outside looking in on my life. I am not a helpless observer, watching the waves of life - it’s temptations, illusions, lies, it’s very hurt and complex people - toss me too and fro...deciding my fate and my experience. I have the power to change my decisions today and to envision a better experience for myself as a human being, who, for all I know, am just passing through this life this one time. I exist at the center (practically, not spiritually) of my existence, a free agent of my own choices… and therefore able to change my life at any given moment if I want to. It crazy how time slips away, stuck in toxic cycles for days at first, then weeks, then years, and boom it all that time flew by… only to realize I could have made better choices at any given moment and started really LIVING good earlier. I am doing everything in my power to spare myself from that experience.
I took some time to redirect my values. I am thinking now about physical, emotion and spiritual health. I’m thinking about what I allow into my world and into my body accepting the simple truth - “you are what you eat.” and I want to be good.
Go on the journey of discovering what you really want in life. Find what makes you come alive and do that, for it will turn into what your mission will be, and then that will then become your purpose. Go on the journey of discovering truth that cannot be found in the bottle, on instagram, or in a one-night stand…but deep within yourself. Find that it has always been there, waiting patiently for you to go on your life’s TRUE grand adventure, the discovery and the developing of a loving and trusting relationship with your own soul.
Do this and watch all the bullshit slowly melt away into what it always has been: of no use at all.
more blogging to come soon! back on it.
with love, AB
