i met steve carell I’m never going to fail

certified hater boy

shout out jimmy o. yang, i had the most fire conversation with him the other day, man is hilarious 🎟

shout out yuki and quincy who made the big jump into making their own production company. i’m so proud to know them and be able to continue to work with them as both friends and collaborators. 🎥

maria made a cake for patti smith (yes, that one; i know niggas who know niggas) and worked so goddamn hard on it, i’m so proud of her 🙏🏾

shout out @calilive on twitter, this note’s for you, boo! miss you too! 🤝

shout out wooster alum roz who finally became a therapist! been a minute, i’m proud of you sis 🧠

shout out valerie, miriam, maria, noor, rama, jordana, karen, ashley, poppy, grace, ray, mikey, milly, doye, edgar, and laci for helping me find my center this year and fight for myself, my boundaries, and my autonomy in 2020 💪🏾

shout out to my mini therapy group “simply just vibin with the homies” that we’ve been doing for four straight months; holding space for one another to be heard and to hear while centering joy and support. love y’all. 2021 we lit! 🌱

shout out mikey and ana who are about to bring a beautiful baby girl into the world who i plan to be courtside at wnba games with had to make sure she hit the streets drippin this christmas 🏀

shout out frontline workers, healthcare personnel, delivery drivers, scientists, etc, big ups y’all we appreciate you ✨

ambivalence all 2021

if you in a whip driving towards happiness and success, don’t worry about what mfs on bikes hating on you gotta say, keep pushing that schwinn, my guy

my favorite part about being off social media is the passive way that it clipped off people who wouldn’t notice if i wasn’t around at all, reminding me that we all aren’t really that important to the people who are passively voyeurs into our day-to-day lives. it really re-centered me around actively talking to my friends, checking in, three-hour long phone calls where we talk about everything and the joys of missing out on something in the moment and finding out about it months later. plus, i have more time to write longform, builds treatments, and pilot stories as an exercise to not sell them but to just have fun, and to experiment with structure and format in a way that social media made me feel like i wasn’t capable of.

more people like to gatekeep other people's growth then they like to grow themselves. do not wait for them to give you the green light; give yourself the patience you need and cultivate relationships that will see you where you are on the trajectory of your life not based on where they want you to be in your life

social media really normalized manipulation as a main form of communication. liking a photo from months ago to send a message, posting a photo or a tweet to indirectly needle someone, leaving people on read intentionally, extremely biased and one-sided views of one another. dead that shit in 2021.

imposter syndrome, indirect conflict, not advocating for myself, poor boundary management, my filter, assuming the worst, and binary thinking were left in 2020.

white culture is indirect conflict. tell them to drop a pin in 2021 and see if they really bout it or on some dj ak*d*m*ks ish

multiple things can be true however i find it difficult to be around people who both know progress is not linear but also hold people to perfectionist standards as if we are not all freestyling life right now. over the last few months, i found myself gravitating away from these people and surrounding myself with people with more patient mindsets.

yeet the rich

horrible white people: gender, genre, and television’s precarious whiteness - taylor nygaard and jorie lagerway

one of my mandates as a writer is to always subvert expectations and when writing, i do a lot of media studies research to see what trends are coming and going, what genres can be flipped, etc. the behavior from white characters that then gets adopted or reflected by white viewers, often in subconscious ways. for instance, abbi and ilana are hilarious to watch on tv but you know how fucking tired you would be if you knew them in real life? and don't get me wrong, i love broad city and fleabag and better things and you're the worst however they have normalized a behavior model where white people get to be horrible in a way that still centers whiteness, white fragility, and puts black and non-black characters (and other characters from other marginalized communities) as tertiary characters that only serve white stories or arguably worse white versions of people of color’s stories. highly recommend, a super deep dive into various phenomena on television)

blindspot: hidden biases of good people - marzarin r. banaji and anthony g. greenwald

i got to remind you niggas that i have a degree in cognitive behavioral neuroscience because guess what? i got that shit and then put a career in therapy on freeze to chase this pipe dream of being an activist and artist. now that's out of the way, read this book. i think that the good-bad binary has done a lot of damage historically but in this present moment when we are all looking for people to be better, we should not expect them to be perfect and this book highlights some of those very specific policies that people who perceive themselves as “good” have. it is a social neuro book but is very accessible. perception and action is what i really love exploring and this book dives deep into that using some media analysis, the implicit association test (amongst others), and an analysis of race in america. extremely my shit.

ok that first line was a bit aggie, my fault, people forget I know about my mentals

black fatigue: how racism erodes the mind body and spirit -  mary frances winters 

y'all, i'm tired. i'm sure you're tired. i can say without a shadow of a doubt that every black person in the world is exhausted right now. i don't got a label what would tired of if you don't know you don't know and if you know you know however this book is a must-read for anyone who likes having a text to point back to to explain all the ways in which you might be tired and other black people might be in 192 pages. i will say for a lot of black people, you might know a lot of what's in this book however some of the framing of it is very helpful in explaining it to other people ( should you be inclined to)  some some queer analysis in here as well, great resource.

⚡️⚡️2020 spotlight⚡️⚡️

i may destroy you - michaela coel for bbc and hbo

i want to write a longer piece on the show because it is the trifecta: a personal story that can only be told from michaela's perspective, a deep dive into the gray area of consent in a way that is balanced yet specific to her experience, and emotionally rich and funny throughout the entire run of the show. i don't talk about this often, however, i had someone very close to me in spring 2016 raped and it broke me in a way that i'm still recovering from and fully understanding. so many people have no idea this happened and i spent a lot of time trying to support her and suffering in silence as it made me look at the world in a very different way; my senses were tuned up to a million, always looking out for my friends, especially femmes, cis and trans, there was nothing that i could have done to prevent it yet i blamed myself for years and it is one of the driving forces behind why i aggressively try to champion bipoc women and help them get their stories out. i vividly remember that being one turning point, pacing on the block with murder on my mind, then, several weeks after that happened, i myself was harassed and assaulted in a way that didn't give me a path to communicate (because y'all know how masculinity is set up) and it’s something that i'll probably still be working through for the next 5, 10, 15 years. when watching this show it became the bar; while i love shows like ‘atlanta’ and ‘insecure,’ this elevated storytelling in a way that was nonlinear, that had little discoveries all along the way,  and more personally gave me something to point at as the difficulty in reporting, talking about, and finding support for survivors who happen to be male. i have never talked about a tv show more in my life than this show and with no hyperbole at all, this is a show that saved my life. deep dive on kwame soon come. thank you michaela for sharing your story.

• new york is healing; a homeless lady swung at me the other day off the strength and i thought i had to give her a two-piece and then someone tried to jux me on my block

• streets are getting wild so free advice? think about your juxability quotient and your fadability score before you get out of the house every single day. if your jq and fq is high, stay inside, we're supposed to be socially distancing anyway unless you tryna be socially distanced from your goods. i don't really have any advice when it comes to lowering  your jq and fq but maybe do some push-ups and stop wearing dirty off-white sneakers and canada goose?

• give me pedro pascal or give me death

• i don't think having fresh kicks and chains is flexing, flexing is having a mattress that when one of your haters sits down on it, they know they'll never feel comfort like that again

• my partner told this white girl who was bugging out on her the other day “these hands work” and i’ve never been pregnant faster

• hate living in a country where they’d rather drop bombs than two racks on people

• if you can drop a billi on bombs, you can spend two bands to make sure people don’t die

• cognitive behavioral therapy for all tbh

• i’m finally more comfortable being out as on the ace spectrum these days and less scared of labeling it. realizing that you don’t fuck with anyone truly is liberating; i highly suggest it. lovely to meet with other ace writers this holiday break too.

• we repotted my monstera vic and she looks beautiful

• a white girl changed the music from some backstreet boys to gil scott heron’s “whiteys on the moon” when me and shorty were making dinner the other night and i haven’t been the same since

• redid the website, check it out here.; there’s a secret link and easter egg there for things to come, check that out when you get a chance.

• y’all ever wonder what jd power and associates would rate you if you were a four-door sedan? yeah me either…probably pretty good though…

• hey siri, how do you 3d print a guillotine

• "this year's about to my ye*gunshot*"... "you thought!!!"*car peels away*

ego death soon come. 2021 let’s get it 👊🏾