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 yall, 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 lsat of my canvases into the space, it kind of dawned on me that I never really took to 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 advatnage 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.