Tag: hip hop

Goals For Age 43

Last night I posted a list of some of the things I achieved while I was 42, and it was an impressive list. I’ve been keeping lists of my achievements almost every year now for many years, whether around my birthday, the new year, or both, and I’m incredibly proud of myself as I watch my growth, in ways that matter more than how much money I make, which still isn’t really much of anything, but money has never been a goal except that I wish to be able to live at least as well as I do now, but independently. My life is no magnificent thing as it is, but if it were mine rather than being dependent on the government, that would make me happy… but even while I need help, I am still a person. I still matter. I still make huge waves in the universe with my contributions in many forms, and most of them are positive. I work very hard to be able to give back to the world in whatever ways I am able, because giving back is a priority for me…and I want to give back love and hope and joy and inspiration. I do not wish revenge, even for the people who hurt me most. I want to give back good to the world, in hope that I can be part of the revolution and help us work towards peace and a better world. I don’t know what that will look like. I have my doubts that peace on earth is even possible, but I work for the Universe and I do it in the name of peace and balance.

What can I do this coming year at age 43 to grow even more as a person? I have some ideas…

  • daily meditation (to my best ability)
  • get outside for air and a little walking (daily, but also to my best ability.)
  • if I don’t get outside, I absolutely MUST meditate, even just for a couple minutes
  • regular gratitude lists
  • keep creating art, trying new things and trying to master old things… one thing I wanna work on especially is drawing hands.
  • create at least one suite of tarot cards for Inktober….pot leaves, records, paint brushes, or microphones
  • do a book signing and reading at the gallery
  • do the craft show at my mental health center in December.
  • get to my cousin’s wedding party for a family event
  • redo The Godchild Part 1 and call it “My So Called Delusions: The Godchild”, “My So Called Delusions: The Mixtape Years”, and “My So Called Delusions: Becoming an Artist”
  • publish “My so Called Delusions: The Godchild” around Easter
  • get stress test
  • start walking to the pharmacy to get my own meds again, and maybe walking to the pond, and making an event of it each time… even if I have to buy myself a little toy from the toy section or a candy bar. It’s only once or twice a month.
  • get back to losing weight. After my med increase, I’ve gained weight for the first time in months, but I wanna turn that around and get under 200 pounds, or at least fit into my Skidz, which I only need to lose about 10-15 more pounds to fit into
  • start seeing friends more… inviting people over and maybe even going out
  • possibly work on new books “Moo, the Cat” and “Good Catholic Kids”
  • get back to music in some major way, whether it be writing and performing more hip hop songs (even if I can’t do it live at first), learning a song on bass or keyboard, or learning to make beats. Ultimately, I’d love to perform my rap in front of an audience again, but we will see how that goes.
  • start dancing and lifting weights again
  • possibly get one of the many tattoos I’ve been putting off for a decade, if not something completely brand new… but maybe that brick wall I was gonna get as a sleeve with VERA in graffiti letters.
  • stretch more often and maybe even try yoga
  • do another art show
  • attend art shows at the gallery
  • go to reunion or get together with Beacon friends
  • see the ocean
  • have a friend or two come visit me from out of state
  • watch some of my all time favorite movies to help inspire me for when I try to turn “Good Catholic Kids” into a screenplay
  • get to know some new music, since I haven’t paid as much attention to new stuff the last couple years
  • go experience live music
  • walk in the woods in autumn
  • add my own graffiti to the graffiti wall
  • see family more
  • finish reading the book I’m reading, and read at least a couple others. Seeing as I didn’t read any at age 42 except for my own, nearly 20 times and a few books about publishing. If I finish “On Writing” by Stephen King and read a couple others, I’ll be happy to start there.
  • cook at least once or twice a week and keep up with cleaning!!!

Accomplishments Of Age 42

  • held a kick ass zoom party for my 42nd birthday with friends from all over the world performing and showing art, since I never had a 40th party
  • did several paintings including this new one from September 2021
  • performed a few songs live at the Armory with Parama and Steve
  • helped elect a new president
  • high school reunion on zoom
  • many zooms events for Jam’n Java and Soulkore open mics
  • hosted 2 more zoom open mic art parties, all successful
  • found a record bookcase in the trash and collected records to fill it
  • designed 22 major arcana tarot cards
this was one of the tarot cards
  • worked on designing web site Wicked Cliche Art and Books, including page for creative friends
  • learned web site marketing techniques to get the site seen
  • picked out and framed 25 old drawings and 25 old photos for a 2 part art show with 2 successful in person shows
these were a few of the photos in the show
  • did some political activism, mostly fighting for accessibility in the local art community (Sign a petition to help save Out Of the Blue Gallery)
  • wrote “I Write the System” (autobiography)
  • wrote and illustrated “Be The Best You” (children’s book)
  • started major rewrite on the godchild (memoir trilogy)
  • designed a cover for my book
  • learned about amazon advertising and other ways to get my book seen
  • had stickers and business cards made
  • hand-made hundreds of stickers including a couple I put on a utility box over racist graffiti
  • sent out over 100 press kit announcements
  • did several paintings
  • designed and sold t-shirts and other merch
  • bought art from a few friends
  • created a home gallery
  • did major cleaning
  • put several pieces of furniture together
  • edited “I Write the System” 17 times
  • wrote query letters to about 75 publishers
  • got a bite on my book from a publisher but would have taken months to years so I decided to self publish again
  • found, created, and cooked new recipes
  • lost 50 pounds
  • visited with koda
  • went swimming
  • walked in the woods
  • went to Robin’s Farm Park to take photos
  • went to the graffiti spot a few times
  • created new digital art
  • sold a couple pictures and some stickers
  • participated in a spirituality group
  • practiced meditation
  • broke up with a sort of toxic boyfriend
  • better learned how I want to be treated
  • talked to a friend about maybe wanting to know them better
  • wrote a few songs and poems, including a poem about “The Godchild”
  • spoke up about mistreatment in a number of health care and housing situations
  • had my apartment inspected and rejected several times and dealt with the fear of having to move, which would have been a huge downgrade most likely if not homeless
  • visited my parents a few times
  • made many new friends
  • saw a few good movies and shows including “Ma Rainy’s Black Bottom”, “Kid90”, “Disclosure”, “Legend of Korra”, “Summer Of Soul”, “His Dark Materials”, “Cobra Kai”, “13th”, “Da 5 Bloods”, and now trying “Sweet Tooth”
  • tried all kinds of new delivery places I loved
  • learned to start wearing masks or face shields when i went places despite the anxiety attacks
  • got vaccinated
  • dealt with severe mental health symptoms and all kinds of extreme stress, daily triggers, and so on, and I am still here
  • started learning keyboard and got a little better at bass
  • published two books

The Loss Of Another Top Favorite Musician- Gift Of Gab

I wanted to post about Gift Of Gab, who died the other day. He was in the underground hip hop group Blackalicious, whose music helped spark my interest in hip hop, which is now my favorite genre of the last 20 years. I’ve always used Blackalicious music to convert my friends who think hip hop sucks into thinking it might be something they could actually appreciate if they knew where to find more real talent like it. You can’t listen to Gift Of Gab and say “Anyone could do that.” He was brilliant, and it was a sad day for me that even led to tears as I thought about how shitty it was that he was so underappreciated and that most of the world had no idea what a brilliant artist we lost. I didn’t see anyone except my friends from the Hip Hop Vinyl Spinners group even say anything about him that day. It’s sad, and he was young. It’s a major loss. I found him to be a Top 5 rapper. Without a doubt, one of the best… so I’m gonna share this photo of my Blackalicious record on my turntable and recommend a few songs to check out. RIP Gift Of Gab!

This first one is especially cool and one of their most well known, partly because Daniel Radcliff rapped it on Jimmy Fallon once, but Daniel Radcliff picked the song to impress.

This one samples the song “Me and My Arrow” from the animated film “The Point“, sung by Harry Nilsson.

and this is just one more I like…

I hope you took the time to watch these. Goodbye to one of my biggest influences.

The music will live forever.

Creativity Is For My Health

The days have been a challenge and I can only hope that means better times are on their way. I haven’t been my best self lately.

I went to the doctor on Thursday to get an EKG and some blood tests. There doesn’t seem to be any huge concerns other than my sugar being a little high, but they want me to come back soon and do a stress test in a couple months.

I stopped on the way home to mail about 40 press kits and drove by Spy Pond where the sun was sparkling on the water. I’m still struggling to get out. I really should have driven around or went for a walk to take pictures, but I’m struggling with agoraphobia and institutionalization after being kept indoors almost two of the last three years.

I took some photos when I was out, and when I got home, I found that the free editing program I’ve been using was no longer working on my phone. Technically the app went down in 2018, but it still worked on my phone until the other day. I asked for suggestions of good free photo editing apps and was told to try Snapseed and PicsArt, so I gave them a go.

These were the photos I took…

Jymi Cliche in a johnny

I thought that one was kind of cool with the grunge effect. It would make a cool book cover for a psych ward book.

That same day, my parents went to the beach and my mom sent me a picture of her wrapped in the towel I gave her for Mother’s Day from my Wicked Cliche Store.

I did some work on the Wicked Cliche Creative Friends page that features art by a very diverse group of artist from around the world who I call friends.

Please check that out.

I got a gift in the mail from my friend who makes soap. She’s listed last on the Creative Friends page under WickedSoftOrganics. This is the Trans flag one.

I listened to my favorite Nas album, God’s Son on vinyl.

and I cooked this delicious meal….

I cheated and got pre-made sour cream and chive mashed potatoes, but I made the chicken which had salt, pepper, and fresh thyme on it, and was cooked in a sauce made from honey, pineapple juice, Dijon mustard, garlic, and cornstarch, plus pineapple chunks and cashews. It was delicious and easy. I’ll do it again for sure.

Here’s an inspiring song from the God’s Son album by Nas…

Happy Juneteenth, if you can really say that. It seems more like it was made a holiday to shut people up while actual actions to fix systematic racism are not being taken.

Peace

FTM Transition: 25 Year Difference. Healthcare, Stress & More

I haven’t made a blog entry in about a week. It’s been a rough one. I believe in my last entry, I tried to keep the focus on what I was grateful for, and I don’t wanna get carried away with the negatives now either.

I’ve been very busy; so much so that I’m kind of concerned for my mental and physical health. It’s been a real challenge, and lately my health CARE has been the main cause in making my health WORSE, and seeing how I have a history of that, like being sexually assaulted, beaten, tortured, experimented on, drugged, lied to, laughed at, etc. by my health care workers at times over the years, I find it very triggering when my health care is the cause of my stress. To be a professional psych patient for thirty years is not a great life. Luckily, I am fortunate enough to be blessed with many amazing people in my life who help bring me some joy, just as I am blessed to be the type of person who is easily self contained. Give me something to write and draw with, an instrument to play with, a book I’ll like, a good movie, or access to a variety of music, and I’m good for entertainment for awhile. A combination of all those things, and you may never see me again, as has been the case this year. Unfortunately I do need a lot more social time than I’m getting. With as much stress as my old friends used to cause me, I hardly had any rage for all those years when we were hanging out, other than a few times here and there. It seems like so much more the last few years since I kicked them all out of my life and began to put my own life together.

I guess being an artist in a gallery can be extremely stressful for me unfortunately, and all the other stuff I’ve taken on since choosing to give my life an honest shot. Plus, I had a full blown psychosis breakdown just a couple years ago, not long after the art gallery moved from Medford, which was accessible to me, to Allston and Cambidge, which is not. The fact that we may be losing the new gallery in Somerville which is extremely accessible, and forced back into the space in Allston is not helping my stress. The fact that everything regarding our space at The Armory went to shit right before the show I spent five months preparing for and putting a lot of my stimulus money into didn’t help my stress either. Speaking of which, please sign and share this petition.

Petition to help save OOTB Gallery at The Armory

And if you wanna learn more about my current show at The Armory, you can read more here…

“Wicked Cliche Art Show” Falling Apart, Breaking, and Putting Myself Back Together Through Art”

Other stuff has been stressful too though, as I plan to put out another book that I’m hoping will have more success than The Godchild Trilogy which was not a total failure, all things considered, but I feel I have the potential to do much better, and this next book could reach a lot of people, and my family may not like it, similar to The Godchild, which I was afraid I’d be disowned because of. While that didn’t happen, and the world didn’t end, like I also feared, I don’t know if that was just because of how few people have read it so far. I don’t know if I do end up having some success and begin to get read, if that’ll affect things differently. I suppose things will probably be okay, but I worry. I also mentioned my sister was in the ER last week for a heart issue, and I’ve been having them too, and my pulse was extremely high when the nurse was here the other day. I’ve made an appointment with the doctor for tomorrow though, as well as with my psychiatrist and nutritionist. I also weighed myself the other day and I’ve gone down a few more pounds in just a few weeks. I continue to be heading in the right direction with that on a slow but steady pace.

I realized that this month is 25 years since I graduated high school in 1996, from Beacon High/New Perspectives in Coolidge Corner Brookline, in a class of eleven kids, which was the record for the largest graduating class there at the time, yet was doubled with 22 kids the next year, I believe. There were only 44 kids in the whole school, and many never finished. I loved the school, but my last year there was rough after gaining over 100 pounds from psych meds, and a number of traumas and hospital visits and loss of friends and other difficult shit…

Here is a picture of me at my graduation party in 1996 where I was smiling because I was surrounded by friends and family who were celebrating me, but I was extremely sad and chronically suicidal, and on the right is a pic taken a couple days ago, when I was grumpy due to some recent stress, but am overall a much happier person now.

I got away for a few days of sunshine with the family this weekend…

Moo was demanding attention when I got home

I am grateful for my few days away, the good food, sun, fresh air, family time, and my dad got my car inspected for me with a new sticker before I even woke up.

I’m getting lots of work done on the web site, I’ve spent hours working on press kits, I’ve been eating mostly healthy but delicious food, I’m getting support from all kinds of people in all kinds of ways, and life really isn’t that bad, even with all the stress and the recent symptoms that have been bothering me.

One of the ways someone helped me this week was something that I didn’t even need, but I thought I’d ask for help if anyone didn’t mind. My friend Luke went to Newbury Comics and picked up a record I wanted from Record Store Day, and I am now the proud owner of a limited copy of “Peace Beyond Passion” by MeShell Ndgeocello who was one of the only openly queer artists in the 90’s. I love this album, and she is in my top 5 bass players along with Flea, Roger Waters, Victor Wooten, and Les Claypool.

I will leave you with a song from the album and wish you a good rest of the week…

Arting Around with Friends

I’ve been busy with a number of things this week. I had the art show Saturday, an appointment with Nikki Sunday, I think I cooked and cleaned Monday, the nurse came Tuesday and I had a friend stop by that night, I had a call with Nikki Wednesday, and yesterday I had a zoom with the nutritionist. Tomorrow I have Jen coming by for what I think is my last appointment with her, and then I was supposed to go up to see my parents this weekend, but it looks like that’s not gonna happen due to the weather, but they might be coming to see me, and then I’ll see Nikki again Sunday, yadda yadda. Time just keeps flying by. I made these stickers a couple nights ago and offered 6 for $10 and a new friend ordered a pack. I made a few more that I didn’t take pictures of and am sending them out later today.

Today is my boyfriend’s birthday, and we talked more of our plans when he comes to visit in July. I’m looking forward to that. I had fun with my friend the other night too. He is an artist I know who I relate to a lot and had a great time hanging out with him. There is also someone in my neighborhood I’ve been meaning to see again too. There are a number of new people in my life I’d like to maybe see now that we can hang out with people but I also don’t wanna do it so early on with the restrictions.

He brought these cool beers and we just hung out talking, which I need. It helped lift my mood a lot to have the social time with him and the event Saturday.

I’ve been busy with all sorts of projects, including the fact that despite the fact that I keep saying I finished my new cover, I keep changing things.

That’s a photo of it on my computer screen. It won’t be blurry like that, and I have to center it better and possibly change the font, but I think that’s what it’s more or less gonna look like.

I finished my 8th edit of that same book and it’s shaping out nicely. I’m getting ready to start writing a one page description of the book to send out as a press release with stickers and business cards. They won’t be as big of packets as I did for The Godchild… no 8 pages of reviews and quotes, probably no prints, and then I’ll do one original sticker and I’ll possibly buy cool random fun stickers in bulk, or if I can get professional stickers of my logo made in bulk for fairly cheap, I may do that instead.

I’ve realized I probably won’t get around to my next book for a couple years. I wanna redo and re-release the first Godchild book first, and I’ve actually been going through that and taking notes on what to keep, what to purge, and what important things I need to keep in the story from the stuff I purge. I plan to completely redo the beginning. There’s so much unnecessary shit and so much important shit I somehow managed to leave out completely, so I’ll give the first 1/3 of the book a complete makeover.

Here’s me and Moo. Aren’t we cute?

Don’t mind my ADD. I’m listening to jazz right now but I did a couple new hip hop videos for tiktok. The link is through Instagram though since that’s where I have more followers. I’m trying to get ready for the upcoming open mic.

and another…

And yeah. That’s about it.

My First Art Show In Over A Year & Trying To Save the Gallery

If you are from Boston, you know that gentrification has closed down most of the art and music spaces in Boston even before the pandemic and almost nothing remains here for us now except for a few places including Out Of the Blue Gallery/ Parma Chai Gallery, which moved into The Armory in Somerville right around the beginning of the pandemic, and they’ve spent the year fixing up an ancient building that is an actual armory and small castle from the Revolutionary war. It’d been run down for decades and wasn’t until Out Of the Blue Gallery moved in there last year that it turned into such a remarkable, gorgeous gallery that is sure to add hugely to the Boston art culture once people get back into going out again. Out Of the Blue Gallery is accessible to real artists who may not have had the privilege of being born rich or going to art school, or even knowing the right people. The gallery took in starving artists for decades in its previous locations, and that is where I, a transgender, non-binary artist with Complex PTSD and Bipolar Disorder who spent 20 years in and out of psych wards and then ten more years in abusive relationships, managed to turn my life around. The gallery is extremely diverse, from the owner to every one of the artists, yet the fancy, rich, and mostly straight and white Somerville art people seem to be attempting to buy it out under us for themselves, in the name of “saving art”. I am not an expert on the subject, so you may wanna read about it in The Herald or follow the gallery on Facebook…

https://www.facebook.com/ParmaChaiGallery

Please sign this petition to help save the gallery…

https://www.change.org/p/city-council-help-protect-ootb-gallery-and-other-arts-businesses-in-the-armory?recruiter=622598&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_abi&utm_term=petition_dashboard&recruited_by_id=2bc642c0-54a5-11e7-bf6d-0f936dc062c6&utm_content=fht-28916467-en-us%3A0&fbclid=IwAR0DBAals8Nr726BqPw6x3WBGHNn3nwE-UmMhVbWaaXpSCcs2PJQhMg7CBU

In other, related news, Out Of the Blue held a small, private showing of my May photography exhibit on Saturday and it was a lot of fun. A few close friends came and hung out in the new performance space they are in the middle of fixing up and preparing to hold events with live music again. Here are some of the pictures I took…

sometimes the masks end up upside down

The Armory, Somerville MA

Here is some info on my show, which is going on through June. It’s called “Falling Apart, Breaking, And Putting Myself Back Together Through Art”. The Armory is open to the public Monday-Saturday 9-6 and they even have a cafe in the building.

http://wickedclicheart.com/wicked-cliche-psychosis-art-show-at-out-of-the-blue-gallery-with-art-photos-a-poem-by-jymi-cliche/

For music this time, I’ll put up a video that was taken at the Armory this past year, inside Out Of the Blue Gallery, of me rapping over Parma Chai. It was completely improvised and I’m still sort of a beginner, so there were parts that sound better than others, but it was pretty awesome and I’m hoping there will be more to come.

New Painting, Business Cards, Twitter, Duolingo, Parents’ 45th Anniversary, & Doing What I Can…

It’s been a busy few days. There’s been some stress over the possibility of Out Of the Blue Gallery losing our space at The Armory, and so I’ve been posting about it and yesterday I wrote letters to the mayor and the art council in Somerville to urge them to take a look at the new gallery and the time and effort put into it. I also mentioned how OOTB has helped me as a disabled person who otherwise had no access to the art world, and how far I’ve come in the last few years because of the gallery.

Here is the link to the gallery to learn more…

https://outoftheblueartgallery.com/

Today was my parents’ 45th wedding anniversary. They also have the same birthday…

I’ve been trying to set things up for when I put out my next book, including making a new LinkedIn and Twitter account. You can find all of my links here…

https://linktr.ee/wickedcliche

I also made new business cards with my web site on them

I was gonna use this image, but it would have been too small…

I didn’t get out for a walk to take photos as I hoped, but here is a photo of my cute cat…

and a photo of the chair with the canvas that I’ve been staring at for weeks, trying to figure out what to do with it…

Of course, as usual, I forgot to take a picture of the old painting before I painted over it. It was basically just the background. I added the hand and arm today, as well as a few minor editions to the background.

I’m calling it “Holding Onto My World”

I also recently decided to try the free app Duolingo to learn Spanish in memory of my good friend Randy who I recently lost to suicide, and he was big into taking online classes for all kinds of stuff, including many languages.

I’ve been practicing the keyboard, eating healthy, put some of my records that I wanna show Koda into chronological order, I met with my mental health worker yesterday and played the Igor album by Tyler the Creator for her on the record player because it’s one of her favorite albums and it’s one of the many albums that sounds a lot better on vinyl. She wanted to know what the difference was between vinyl and just listening to an mp3, so I wanted to show her, and now she wants a record player of course, haha.

Last but not least, I got some much needed sleep today and wasn’t even too grumpy.

I’m grateful for my day… Here’s a random video from the early days of Youtube that is still the first video to pop up on my YouTube page because I need to edit it, but it’s cool…

DBT Skillz To Pay the Billz (Or To Just Help You Through Stressful Situations)

There’s been some stress the last few days, but I’m trying not to let it get to me and I’m being as assertive as possible to get my needs met. There’s a skill in DBT to help with communication and getting your needs met and stuff. There are two sides with similar charts; “asking” for something, and “saying no” to something. On both sides, you evaluate what’s most important, getting your needs met, keeping the relationship good, or feeling a sense of self respect. Depending on what your biggest objective is, this can can change how you ask or say no. Like, if you need a favor from someone and you mention it and they sound unsure… if your objective with that person is to keep the relationship good, and you can find someone else to help you, then you decrease the intensity of asking, but if they are the only person who can help and it’s something you really need, then you increase the intensity of asking. There’s a lot more to it. It involves charts and acronyms and all sorts of stuff, and it takes a lot of practice, but learning to use it effectively can really improve your interpersonal relationships. I found myself using it a lot today, and am grateful for it because I’ve had some challenging moments with people and handled most of it a lot better than most people would have in my position. I was proud of myself, but at the same time, I feel a little guilty about “increasing the intensity of asking”; especially with my mental health worker. She’s the best though and I’m grateful. I’m just feeling overwhelmed by all I do in the world for almost nothing in return.

This is a painting I sold at an art show 3 years ago. Here’s a few other photos from that day…

Tom Tipton: Founder of Out Of the Blue art Gallery

I’ve been doing these shows with the gallery for a few years now. This was when it was located in a house in Medford. Now they’re at the Armory in Somerville, but they need help. You can read about that here…

The Center for Arts at the Armory needs your support

Please help if you can!

In other news, there isn’t much other news. I’ve just been editing, and I created a LinkedIn account. You can find that here…

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jymi-clich%C3%A9-566a57211/

and here is a picture of my cute best buddy cat…

and a picture I found of myself from 2009

I look about the same, except I had short hair then and wore scally caps.

Here are some songs. This just came on the random playlist; a favorite from 1992…

classic… and because I was wearing a Beastie Boys shirt in that old photo, how about my favorite Beastie Boys song?

and that’s it…

New & Improved Book Cover, Queries, Soap, Medicine, Clouds & “The Most Valuable Poet On the M-I-C”

I’ve had a busy day today. I woke up at my parents’ house, showered, packed, ate a bagel, and drove an hour drive home. The drive wasn’t bad at all. Now that I take an exit to avoid part of the highway that I don’t like, and I know the exit numbers have changed, at 3PM on a Spring day there’s no traffic or blinding sun, and there was no rain like I’d anticipated. It was just a beautiful Spring drive.

When I got home, I comforted my cat right away. She’s an anxious cat who needs to constantly be comforted and she has a hard time when I leave her but I was only away from her for one full day. Still, she’s howling like crazy in the other room as I write, but I’ve given her some food and attention… maybe not enough…

I got some popcorn teriyaki chicken for dinner, talked to my mental health worker and my boyfriend, and I re-did the cover for my upcoming memoir while waiting for my weed. I’d made one yesterday, but I felt like I could do better. I definitely think I improved it a little bit, even though it’s the same basic idea.

I liked this idea of a claw machine representing a very flawed and rigged system, pulling my androgynous baby picture out of a pile of photos of me from various stages of my life. They are the same photos I used in the one I made yesterday, but I added the 8th grade, big hair photo, since 8th grade is an important part of the book and it’s probably the furthest from my true self that I ever was. I also changed some of the details of the person I drew, who is supposed to represent a young soldier.

As soon as I finished, my medicine came…

This is one of my favorite strains. LA Confidential. It’s recommended by Snoop. You can read about it here…

https://www.allbud.com/marijuana-strains/indica-dominant-hybrid/la-confidential

I saw that my soap came from my favorite soap shop on Etsy. This was one of them. Gorgeous!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/WickedSoftOrganics?ref=profile_header

I took out the trash and took a couple photos of the clouds…

I’ve been listening to music, took a bath with my new soap, smoked a little bit of my new weed, and I sent out a few more queries. I got another encouraging rejection today, and this one included a link to a web site kind of like the other two I’ve been looking for people through, but this one has a bunch more people I haven’t tried yet, so I researched four of them who were looking for memoirs and sent them each what they wanted, which were all different. It was hard work as usual, but maybe it’ll pay off. I feel like maybe I’m giving up too early. Now that I’m editing again and fixing a lot and am halfway through, I feel like it’s worth trying some new people. If I was close with a few like they’ve said, maybe this extra edit will be enough. I thought I was out of people, and I haven’t heard back from them all yet, but I don’t know what to expect. I only know what happened last time. This book is stronger in most ways. I do believe in it. Even if I self publish, I think this one might get read more and a little more buzz. I can only hope it reaches the people I’m meant to help with it.

I listened to Big L in my car on the way home. He was a brilliant artist. Some of his lyrics are potentially offensive if they didn’t make for such beautiful poetry.

And that is that.