photography by Andrew Blooms I took myself on a day trip to Birmingham today. There is a Japanese garden located at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens that is just beautiful. I discovered it last summer and decided I'd go down there again today. It's a nice drive just about 2.5 hours down I-20 West a straight shot, just enough time to turn the mind off and drive in one direction. I love the feeling of getting through downtown, through all the 75 and I-20 congestion, then feeling the business and commotion of the city ease away with each mile down the interstate. When I went for the first time last summer, I remember I was asking so many questions about life and what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be. I felt going back was a good way to reflect and see how much is different from that time. In many ways I feel like a different person, having gone through certain lessons and accepted different truths. to be honest I'm much happier now than I was then. I am gaining a lot more clarity in my life.  I love the charm of the older southern cities. I am a southern boy really myself. I love the Birminghams, the Chattanoogas, the Greenvilles of the south. There's something about the buildings, the pace, and just like today when the weather is like this, I like to get out of Atlanta and just spend a day walking and sitting around these areas. It's something about the speed, the air, you can feel differences in the energies of different places. If I could describe it it's like the air is more open, and a calmer energy occupies the space. In Birmingham today I actually looked up on my phone if there was a national holiday that I had missed cause I really didn't see anyone, even downtown and a bunch of places were closed. I've been taking my camera with me places. I've always enjoyed photography but just got out of practice over the last year. I wanted to upload some of the photos I took today. Today was just absolutely gorgeous and the colors were so clear and crisp, almost reflective of the feeling of fall... to clear skies and the crisp and cool air.  No 3rd Opinions There is a place far back in the Japanese Gardens where there is a bamboo forrest. There is a wooden walkway that walks through the forrest and it ends with an octogonal sitting area surrounded by wooden benches. From the sitting area to the right is a dirt path leading directly to this stone monolith, I would guess about 10ft tall. These designs make me appreciate the power of the private and unseen places - placing a beautiful sculpture completely out of site. Only to be found by happening upon it. These days I feel like everyone is doing everything to be seen, to make sure everyone knows about what they are doing, trying to run these numbers and views up. It's almost as if if no one can see or applaud our efforts, they mean nothing. I think we often forget that when we do something, even if no one sees it, it still is done.  But recently, I've been liking this idea of the sculpture in the woods. Just there. It doesn't need attention, it doesn't need praise, it's not gonna go viral. It's design is simple... just stone, no paint. Nothing flashy. Yet so powerful due to its stillness and its willingness to be on its own. Just sitting in the middle of Birmingham Alabama, wanting nothing.  I feel like in life there comes a time where you eventually have to decide for yourself who you wanna be. Whether you believe its between you and yourself or you and God or whatever you wanna call it, an agreement needs to be made. Until you make this decision, you're destined to live someone else's life. This is why I no longer believe in advice - either receiving it or giving it to others... since eventually, one must make up their mind about what is true, what is right and wrong for themselves.  From my perspective, one of the worse things one can do when it comes to deciding which path to take is to start involving 3rd party opinions. This opens the door for people to talk you out of things, talk you into other things, and project their own insecurities into your decision making. You see it in relationships all the time - like for real I think if you wanna make these things work you gotta start figuring it out between just yall and stop asking everyone what they think and stop taking advice from other lost and unhappy people. Same with your dreams. You ever have an experience where you were really excited about an idea and then you ask your "friends" (heavy emphasis on the quotes) and they talk you out of it or start saying well "what if this or that happens?" or they tell you in subtle ways that you could never do it?  This is what I mean. In the end, once you find your convictions about yourself and your life and you see a clear vision for what you need to do, you stop needing to invite 3rd parties and opinions. You no longer need permission or approval, and you realize that the majority of people around you and in this world have very little outside of their opinions. Listen, you don't need anyone else to tell you what to do or who to be, or what is right an wrong. This is to find Freedom. And just like that statue in the woods, free to be without the need to change, to prove, or even to move... to find oneself truly. 

Guys, I've been praying recently. There's something in me that is really needing to connect with a higher source... for more insight into myself, into life, and into what the right thing to do is. Sometimes I feel pulled in many directions at one time- by the demands of society, requests of friends, things I wanna do, things I feel are expected of me to be or do. I feel like after a while of that you can lose yourself if not anchored to a core identity or purpose. I am discovering more of what it means to be on a spiritual journey... one that I've been on this whole time... I've been wondering about the source of things - how I act, how I think, who I've become up to this date. Where is this all coming from? I've been hard to reach recently, I understand that. It's just that I'm taking some time to gain clarity of my mind and my heart. Trying to remove the toxins from my environment, my world, be it distractions, additions or people. Sometimes it's hard to identify those things when we don't take any time to sit and consider the contents of our lives.  I talked to God yesterday and my prayer was that he would remove the impurities from my life. The things that are blocking me from my true purpose and my higher self... the experience in this life I know I've come to have. I feel like there is a lot in my way right now - by the nature of my choices, environments and attachments. Something like running in the mud, knowing I was made to fly. At the end of the day, I had to come to realize the truth in the idea that we cannot do this on our own. Taking away everything superficial and the mask we put on each day in the world, we are truly vulnerable and fragile. What control do we really have in this world? And when I reached this juncture, I realized I had to turn back to God, or a higher source of power, if you will. I am realizing that I need to cultivate a clearer relationship with this power for guidance, clarity and revelation... and how much this relationship is under threat in our everyday modern existence.  It's weird y'all, I just woke up one day recently and saw the world completely differently. The things I used to crave - my needs- need for validation, material things, lifestyles, attention... everything outside myself... started to seem stale. Nothing was able to satisfy me. And thus begun this path I am taking now.  In my prayer the other day, when I asked, things began to shift. Almost immediately, things began to change. I could feel it, the decisions starting to look different, the people starting to look different, the breaking of the status quo. I felt like the moment I was able to admit this desire out loud to myself and to the universe, the world around me began to change. It is quite an uncomfortable time during this shift, as many things - patterns, relationships, and attachments - must completely break down in order to make room for new things. but I am ready to take this path for myself. I need to change and to evolve. I need to climb the next and higher path on this mountain we call life.   

Right now I’m sitting in my new studio, looking out at the Atlanta skyline on a beautiful fall night. I just got the keys last week and have been slowly getting the place together. During the day, the light is absolutely stunning, and each day I try to race down here around 7pm just so I can sit and watch the set out of these windows. Today, as I was carting the last of my canvases into the space, it kind of dawned on me that I never really took the time to sit and just think about how far I’d come and just how I found myself right here - realizing wow, I really am living a life that at one point 6 years ago only existed in my head. I realized I’ve kept myself so busy that I haven’t really taken time to just sit and appreciate this and in a way, appreciate myself for choosing to climb up this mountain I’m on. Since moving back to Atlanta in 2020, I learned how to tattoo, had gallery shows in Atlanta, put on an art and music festival, opened 2 shops, initiated the revival of the Atlanta Chinatown, developed an art market concept that takes place monthly at both Ponce City Market and Chinatown, completed multiple murals around the city, have my art in multiple restaurants, cafes and business offices, been on the news multiple times, got published in the newspapers, and have been on billboards. I’ve taught hundreds of people in the Atlanta area and outside how to create their own Asian art, and have brought my art class experience to businesses, corporations and governments. I set out to make a name for myself in Atlanta and beyond as as an artist, as a way to prove to myself that there was a way to create and design your own life and own way of moving through this experience we call life… and after all this time I did just that. This experience, however it looks online, came with many costs, failures, heartbreaks, sacrifices… all mixed in there.. but produced the most invaluable lessons I could have ever asked for…and in turn provided experiences and countless teaching moments that have built into how I see the world. Where I Been Where I Been What’s crazy is that the last blog post I did was exactly a year ago yesterday. My god, I feel like the last year in itself was one lifetime in itself. I look back on what I was writing (you can scroll down and read it) and realized I was going through some sort of spiritual death or crisis. In a way, I felt like I had to go through some time to really find the truth in my spiritual experience, and to separate it from my religious experience… and sometimes to do that you have to completely blow everything up to see what remains. And I got that point, where I just had to jump off a complete unknown deep end… allowing everything… to begin to understand the truth on a deeper level… a truth I could feel that I built and experienced myself. I am still unpacking a lot of this myself, but I do feel that I am gaining clarity on what exactly is true about the world, and what is just designed and presented by man to advance hidden agendas. For a while I felt a massive distrust for all people… I guess something they don’t tell you about starting a business or becoming an owner, or becoming someone bigger in this world, is how lonely it can be sometimes. After a certain point, I was having a hard time trusting the people around me… wondering if their motives were to just get an opportunity from me, or to somehow gain something from me. I had a hard time connecting with people because I could never feel like I could be myself around people… that I had uphold some sort of image to maintain a narrative. I felt like there was people around me all the time, but I didn’t know if I could ever be myself. In a way, I felt like I didn’t know myself. I guess to sum it all up, I had to face a decision about whether or not I would continue to be open and giving, despite having discovered that there a lot of people in the world that take advantage of these kind of situations. I had to make a decision as to whether or not I wanted to bear that sort of weight in order to stand for something different in this world and to be something different than the status quo. I had to decide if I was gonna go “fuck everyone and everything” or “embrace everyone and everything.” These are the situations that keep me up at night really… whether to forgive or to say well "fuck u forever then.” Same World, Different Views For me, it became all about what perspective I wanted to see this world from… something each of us must decide and act on. Everyday, billions of us rise with the sun and live another day, billions of different perspectives and experiences. My big question became… well how much do I have a say in this? And that’s what really dawned on me today as I sat here in this space… something I’d dreamed of years earlier… that I always had a say. Through my decisions, my mindset, and my steps… all led here. There was always a reason. I think once I realized that I had a choice in the matter, I wanted start making different decisions. I have a dream of how I want to go through this lifetime - what I would like to experience and be a part of - and now knowing that it is all in my power to achieve… then I better walk wisely. 6 years ago I saw myself with a skyline view loft apartment downtown Atlanta GA, and here I sit in it in 3D. What more is possible? but more importantly, are you willing to take the necessary steps to allow it? For me, my necessary steps as of now are: take care of the physical vessel (the body), rise earlier, and organize and prepare my physical world as a reflection of the spiritual - clarifying my physical spaces to clarify the mental spaces. More than ever am I realizing that the outside (life’s expression) is a direct reflection of the inside. This is what they mean by “so within and so without.” So, I have work to do on the inside, and the outside only has to follow. Wish me luck.

What if every aspect of my life has become a performance, now unable to identify with the reality of things or the things that truly matter, sitting off somewhere out of site. I’ve never felt to truly understand the journey that I was on, or where it was leading… yet always understand my answer to the call to the unknown - a yes. I’ve always wanted to find out… to find myself out there outside of the confines of convention. The fear of becoming normal. But sometimes I feel like I’ve gone too far… flew so high and out of site I couldn’t find my way back home… or even remember what that feeling felt like - to live at a home… in communion with others. I made the mistake of looking backwards… over the things that never worked… the things I thought would never affect me again… things stuffed in the closet… all now continuing to appear. I just never wanted to live the same twice, only to find myself nowhere to spend these days. A lot of unhappiness comes from being stuck in the past. Always wondering about the what ifs, how you could have done things differently, wondering if you made the right choices along the way. I look around and ask if we do know each other at all, and looking back on my life did I ever give you the chance to?

I have begun to find that the antidote to much of my suffering is the willingness to admit to myself more and more each day that I am the problem. I began to understand that blaming anyone or anything for the state of my own life was ultimately to surrender my very own freedom to that which lies outside of my control. I realized that in every situation in my life, the very own single common denominator was this: that I was there. In the beginning, it is a bitter pill… but after swallowing, it birthed the very essence of what it means to hope…which is, in my definition, the opportunity to participate in my own life, and the power to further explore the intimate relationship that I ultimately have with my own desttiny. This is by no means self-condemnation, but quite the contrary, a high love and a great service to the self. I can only heal so far as I can begin to accept that I have a choice in every situation, circumstance, and moment… and if life is comprised of these 3 things… then I might have a choice in my life - freedom. Suddenly, we have forgone the idea of a savior - be it a God, a relationship, or simply something or someone to blame -as we realize are not helpless after all. It’s just that so many of us will spend our whole lives, searching the ends of the Earth for someone or something who might have the answers when that very person greets you in the mirror each morning.

Our beliefs are never more clearly expressed than through our decisions. Until we put our convictions into actions, we may question whether it is a real conviction in the first place. Making a different decision in life, breaking the cycles whether large or small, is proving to be one of the most difficult tasks we can ever hope to attempt. Even changing something small, like a eating habit or a netflix habit, sometimes feels like an insurmountable mountain to climb. But these small moments, when we do have the opporunity to change the rudder, correcting the course of our ship even 1 or 2 degrees, means an entirely different outcome in the long run. I’m working a lot right now probably too fucking much but this has been my life for about 5 years. What I enjoy about this process though is that I can feel my mentality and understanding increasing in depth and resilience as I continue to deal with problems that arise when trying to conduct business and trying to work with and communicate with people. Starting a business has been this very enlightening love/hate relationship… because while it is an amazing opportunity to be an owner, you also have to address all the problems as the owner, or the final decision maker. Sometimes in a daydream I wish I could just not have to make certain decisions, but at the end of the day, I do. I’m realizing that one of the most helpful things to staying sane in this world is finding the option to let things be. Let things happen, let things come and go, let people do, let people think, let people go. I know that my default is feeling the need to control circumstances and people to fit exactly what I’m envisioning the ideal situation to be… but this was making me so unhappy… so then I discovered the magical option - to let it go. I have been making attempts to better myself, to clean out my mind. to change some habits that are getting in the. way of my true =desires. Sometimes you find yourself in a place where your mind is so filled with all this bullshit that you realize you don’t know how you truly feel about anything… It’s like realizing that you were coaxed along into another person’s world, or will, and before you know you it you are living as a piece of furniture or as a battery in someone else’s dream. Change is all but an idea until a different choice is made. That’s why decisions hold so much power - that this is the moment your conviction has materialized, and that it is actually compelling you to live differently. From one perspective, you could look at your decisions and arrive swiftly at the truth of what is at the core of who you are, since nothing is more revealing of your true desires other than the choices that are made inevitably from them.

It seems trite to use the metaphor of the caterpillar, cocoon and butterfly… but the more I think about this process the more it amazes me. That the caterpillar, entering this mythical darkness… a death, to transform into a completely new form. The cocoon has been used as a symbol over and over again as the dark and lonely place of death and transformation. The caterpillar enters it alone and transforms alone in its secluded pod… away from the influences of the outside world. You don’t realize how much you are influenced until you fight to find a quiet place in your mind. To discover your own point of view is to climb the proverbial heights and walk the unpaved paths within the mind. It is very possible to go through much of our lives completely and totally influenced, led along, by the happenings of the world around us - communities, friends, family… though all an integral part of our lives, offer a constant stream of input, opinions, and social expectations. For whatever reason I needed to hide in the cocoon for some time… to allow my self to ask myself questions, to think of my true answers. I started to realize that there are no ultimate teachers, and no one who holds the ultimate answer. There is no one single way, but more so that the “truth” or the “way” is reflected and inherent in everything around us - everything we experience and perceive. What and who are we looking to to tell us how all of this works? What can any of these celebrities, channels, e-books and influencers tell you that you could not begin to understand if you were willing to undergo the process of self-discovery - the cocoon. I am enjoying the silence- and the clarity that comes with solitude and reflection. To be able to understand oneself amidst a larger context than “my life” has proved to be the antidote to many of life’s daily sufferings.

If we were to zoom out on history as far back as we could we would see that the same problems have plagued our existance since the beginning. The idea of war and of the survival of the fittest has been a part of our experience throughout all recorded history. In today’s society you feel a pressure to protest things. To raise your voice and repost the Instagram stories. But I just can’t help but think of all of history and how there have been protest after protest after protest, opposing sides acting as the fuel for their enemies cause and vice versa. Sometimes I wonder if it is our very participation in these matters in a way continues to fuel the problem… Just like in an argument amongst individuals. A bitter pill I’ve had to swallow is realizing that when there is a drama happening in front of me, it is only because I continued to return the volley over the net… each turn growing with more and more force and hostility between me and my so called enemy. I find it an interesting stance that Mother Theresa took, to never participate in anti-war rallies, and only peace rallies, as she believed it was only helpful to participate in a positive message (creating) versus a negative one (tearing down). Negative actions tends to have a spiraling affect, until quite literally we are willing to end life in order to hold on to our point of view. In my recent years in Atlanta I saw situations turn from minor slights, to habored hatred, to ending life… all to be right in the end… and to hold on to our need to feel right. Nowadays I hear people complain all day about the state of this world and about the evil of the “other" - the men, the women, the democrats, the republicans, the president and elon… i don’t even know anymore. just whatever the algorithm daily instructs my conviction to be. The depth of what is happening to us cannot be understated, that we are further being disconnected from a genuine sense of responsibility over our real lives and the immediate world we live in… made to feel completely helpless against the circumstance of the “world” that is presented to us each day through our routine channels. Nowadays everyone presumes to knows everything, including the sum of an individual based on their instagram profile. It has become frightfully superficial. One of the greatest lies that I believe has been the cause of such demise of societies over and over and over again is this idea that our enemy lies in anyone else except ourselves. It is only when we, on the individual level, begin to exemplify, in action, positive alternatives the very things we hate in this world, will we then begin to take steps towards a true healing. To break the cycle and open up new possibilities for the future other than the continued destruction of life. I been asking myself recently. “what will you create?”