My Ambitionz As A Writer

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." - James 1: 2-4 

I've taken the route of being raw with my readers. No holds barred.

A lot of blogs I read tend to beat around their own personal truths and give hypothetical scenarios. But, I want the people who read what I write to connect to my journey and in order to do so, it needs to be truthful. You never know who you might reach with what you put out into the universe. I feel we all experience trials and tribulations in order to not only make us wiser and stronger, yet to also have a testimony that makes us relatable to others.

I wrote a post a bit back on the shock of the expenses that come from living alone and it seems every time money comes in, more is having to be shelled out and I just am not understanding. I received a pay increase a few months back and seeing the number on paper is about the only impact I've seen from said increase.

In my industry, the norm tends to be to hop around in search of higher pay. But, I've tried to remain faithful to the philosophy of doing what you love and the rest following. Also, I actually like my job and I haven’t wanted to sacrifice that for more money.

In addition to that, I'm also a spiritual person. So, I often have talks with God. One of my number one prayers (outside of good health and well being for my family, friends, and myself) is financial stability and general understanding in regards to life.

I like to think that I'm a go-getter and that I work for my blessings, yet I'm not sure if that's true. Actually, I know that it's not. I've been getting a multitude of signs and I’m interpreting that to mean that I am not taking the proper actions to fulfill my destiny. I feel that as a result of that, I’ve been dealt these hardships in an effort for God to break me from a cycle of complacency.

From the outside, people tend to believe I'm doing well for myself. I have a good job, I make a decent income, I took a leap and left home for the “big city”, I'm living on my own and whatever else people who look at my life think is an accomplishment. And for the average 24 year old, I think the above is great. Yet, for Alexis, it’s just a nice start.

I don’t want this to come across as me believing that God punishes us to get his point across, but I think he reaches us in the ways he sees most effective. I'm a hustler (by nature)...being with nothing motivates me to do better. Yet, in recent years, I’ve had the basics sort of lined up for me. The average level of success is something that has typically always come easily. Yet, the journey to greatness is exactly that. A journey.

Prior to the increase mentioned above, I had a severe level of dissatisfaction with my career. I found reason after reason as to why I could be, should be, and needed to be better. I began carving different avenues that would help me to be great and then the increase came along with some slight changes in my work situation and I accepted that as my reward. I dead ended all of the avenues I was once pursuing and now looking back I realize that hindsight is always 20/20. I now believe that I could have potentially been baited back on the path of complacency.

A lot of this thought stemmed from the rapid succession of people in my life turning twenty-five. It reminded me that my own birthday is just around the corner. It also reopened the floodgates of the pressure I felt on the eve of my twenty-forth birthday (reposted here):

For the past twenty-three years of my life, I was afforded the luxury or time and it’s been socially acceptable for me to take baby steps and watch my life just happen. But now, I feel like time is gone and if I don’t make things happen in this next year of my life that it’s never going to happen and I’m risking being just another person who once had a dream but did nothing about it. 

I don’t know how many chances we’re given in this life to succeed or get it right. I just know that I can’t continue on the path that I’m on and I’m thankful for my current struggle for being a the push I needed to get my act together.

There’s no resolve at the conclusion of this post. I’m just sharing where I am on my journey and the lesson’s I’m learning in the process. If you’re reading this, I hope that you are able to take inspiration from it and be able to apply it to your own situation. I was recently inspired by a Youtuber that I subscribe to, D3zira3. Although her current struggle is not my own, I was able to apply it to my own situation and reinforce that...

“...weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning” - Psalm 30:5

Employing Your Passions

I have a lot of conversations with myself (via writing, of course) involving whether I'm really doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

I pacify myself with saying I need to be doing what I'm doing in order to build experience and have proof as to why I'm capable of x,y,z. Yet, I'm still left with this feeling of being incomplete.

My generation has been fed this notion that your job is supposed to be something you would do for free. We're encourage to be artists and writers and that we can live our passions out through our professions. Yet, what I've realized is that this has bred a lot of confusion and mixed feelings about my situation. It also leaves me measuring what I do professionally as my contribution to this world.

After recently fully digesting the knowledge that advertising is just a shift in perception not necessarily quality of life. I'm feeling quite shitty about this "contribution" I'm making.

On the flip side, this brings me back to my initial reason for entertaining the current segment of the field that I'm in---multicultural. In which, I've been of the belief that I can use this logic of altering brand perceptions into also altering perceptions of people of color within media.

If I've learned only one thing, it's been that advertising drives every form of media that we consume. If you combine that with the fact that advertising is based on making sales and the growing multicultural population is what's growing those sales. Theoretically, this should encourage more accurate portrayals of the multicultural consumer within media. Right?

Let's bring this to African American specifically, since that's my personal passion point.

Where I'm seeing the challenge, is most traditionally African American specific properties have this outdated hierarchy system. They employ these older and out of touch professionals to speak to a generation of African Americans who grew up way differently than them. Older African Americans fail to realize that we all didn't grow up being oppressed, in overly impoverished environments, or needing someone to "have our back". However, we grew up with access to different types of people and experiences.

The limited bubble of who and what the African American experience is will continue to be the downfall of African American networks and older African American agencies. African Americans in general are always pushing to break stereotypes, yet I find these properties more guilty of perpetuating them than their General Market counterparts. The oversight is that we are in an era in which you can reach people via their interests and most times that is more impactful than targeting someone based on their ethnicity.

I will feel like I've accomplished something, if I'm able to switch the limited perception people have of African Americans. We're always painted as this one-dimensional being, yet there are so many things about us beyond the associations that can be made based on the color of our skin. I find it remarkable how often I surprise people with my varied interests. Or when people realize that just because I'm black, it doesn't mean that I can pull off being the cool kid in every situation. Or that I'm deeper than rap and although it is a passion point of mine, I have a wide array of music that I like and appreciate.

Stereotypes need to be broken, true. But all I want is for people to not be surprised to find out the depth of my being. That simple.