For those that have read this blog for a while, a few weeks ago I wrote a blog titled “How Do You Respond to Failure” that was about how I had messed up my first opportunity to teach kids because of a date mix-up.  I beat myself up over it, but promised myself that I would try to make up for it by making it a priority and trying it again in the future.

Well, early last week I got contacted by a friend who teaches at a charter school here in Columbus about coming in to speak to his kids about poetry.  Excited about the opportunity, I said yes pretty much immediately.

There were some small differences between this workshop and the one I was scheduled to facilitate a few weeks back. The first difference was that the kids were significantly younger this time around. Last time around I was working with a lot of upper-class high school students, but this time it was middle-school kids that ranged from the 5th through the 8th grade. This meant I had to start from scratch and couldn’t use the presentation I used before. The second difference was that I had a little less time to prepare this time around, so I started preparing immediately. I tried to have my entire talk memorized a couple days ahead of schedule.

I admit that I had a bit of anxiety about doing this.  Most of it centered around the fear of oversleeping or mixing up the date again.  I wasn’t going for it this time.  I had the date written down everywhere and all types of alarms set in my house.  Basically, any device that had an alarm on it in my house was set!  I wasn’t gonna to get caught slippin’ this time around.  Oddly enough, I didn’t even need the alarms because I was so worked up that I could barely sleep! I was awake long before my wake-up alarm actually sounded.  I was also comforted by the fact that the school was only six miles from my house, so even if I would have overslept I could’ve made it there on time.

Since becoming a full-time artist, I have always been curious about teaching and working with kids.  My curiosity has only increased as I’ve learned more about the state of the education system in this country and the dire need for role-models in our classrooms and communities.   I had been offered opportunities to teach in the past but declined because I wasn’t sure if I had anything meaningful to offer. I also wasn’t sure that I was living the kind of lifestyle that I could tell kids about.  It’s funny how things change.  Shout out to my dude Cameron for inviting me into his classroom and allowing me to have this experience.

If I were to summarize my first teaching experience I would have to say that it was extremely rewarding and eye-opening.  I led two different hour-long sessions on poetry to classes that had about 20-30 kids in each of them.  I introduced myself, talked about poetry and writing, gave them some tips and a writing assignment, then had them write and share their own poetry.  It was awesome to see kids so excited about learning.  Seeing them so into writing poetry and sharing their thoughts inspired me immensely.

Some other thoughts:

• I completely forgot how awkward most middle-school aged kids can be.  It reminded me that I wasn’t anywhere near as cool as I remembered myself being at that age.
• Every single kid in there was an individual.  By that I mean that the way we tend to think of kids is that all kids are into specific things and communicate a specific way when they’re at a certain age.  I was reminded that they’re far from a homogeneous group.  They’re no more uniform than we are as adults.  In fact, it could probably be argued that they’re more unique and individual at that age than we are as adults because they haven’t been indoctrinated and fully assimilated yet.
• Adults are jaded.  Young kids are not.  It’s beautiful.  As adults we need to be very careful about not letting our inner-child die.  There is a hope I saw in those kids that adults rarely have.
• There was a 5th grade kid who was in the second session with a lot of 8th graders and he was super smart.  It threw me off for a second because even for a fifth grader he was kind of short.  He wrote an awesome poem and when he recited it the rest of the group went nuts and pretty much gave him an standing ovation.
• Most of the kids in my first session were too nervous to read their work in front of the class and had their teacher do it, but almost every kid in the second session wanted to read their poem themselves.  Their entire group was really energetic.  So much so that we kind of ran out of time for them to present.  It was weird to see how different the energy could be even from one class to the next.
• There was a hispanic girl who wrote her poem in spanish instead of english and I thought it was pretty adorable, even though I could only read about 20% of it.  She asked me if I could read spanish and I said only a little bit, and she asked me to review her poem.  It made me realize that I definitely needed to get back on top of my spanish.  It seems like the United States is the only country in the world where the majority of our population makes no attempt to learn a secondary language.  I think that says a lot about our willingness as a country to embrace other cultures.  Either way, I picked up a spanish book from the library this weekend because I would like to not contribute to that demographic anymore.
• Speaking of demographics, I can’t help but think that we need more African-American males entering education.  In the same way that African-American children are empowered by seeing rolemodels and positive influences in their communities, they also need them in education.  Our community suffers from disproportionate drop-out rates and I believe a lot of it has to do with a cultural disconnect that effects the children’s self-esteem.  Obviously this isn’t something I can solve by myself, particularly since education as a whole in this country is in a dismal state, but I would like to make a conscious effort to try to do my part.
• I would love to do this again.  While I realize I’m an artist who spends his time putting out albums and touring, I found this to be a really rewarding way to spend my down time.  After all, art and education aren’t that different in their fundamental premise, which is the sharing of ideas.  Speaking in front of children isn’t that much different from being on stage.  If you’re prepared and confident you can kill it, but if you’re not prepared they’ll eat you alive.

Overall, I’m so glad that I didn’t let the bad experience I had during my first attempt at teaching discourage me from doing this.  I was nervous but it got increasingly easier as it went on.   I walked away feeling like I had finally done something that was long overdue, and would gladly do it again.

Word is Blog

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Teaching 5th-8th grade students about poetry and my career as a hip-hop artist

For those that have read this blog for a while, a few weeks ago I wrote a blog a few weeks ago titled “How Do You Respond to Failure” that was about how I had messed up my first opportunity to teach kids because of a date mix-up.  I beat myself up over it, but promised myself that I would try to make up for it by making it a priority and trying it again in the future.

Well, early last week I got contacted by a friend who teaches at a charter school here in Columbus about coming in to speak to his kids about poetry.  Excited about the opportunity, I said yes pretty much immediately.

There were some small differences between this workshop and the one I was scheduled to facilitate a few weeks back. The first difference was that the kids were significantly younger this time around. Last time around I was working with a lot of upper-class high school students, but this time it was middle-school kids that ranged from the 5th through the 8th grade. This meant I had to start from scratch and couldn’t use the presentation I used before. The second difference was that I had a little less time to prepare this time around, so I started preparing immediately. I tried to have my entire talk memorized a couple days ahead of schedule.

I admit that I had a bit of anxiety about doing this.  Most of it centered around the fear of oversleeping or mixing up the date again.  I wasn’t going for it this time.  I had the date written down everywhere and all types of alarms set in my house.  Basically, any device that had an alarm on it in my house was set!  I wasn’t gonna to get caught slippin’ this time around.  Oddly enough, I didn’t even need the alarms because I was so worked up that I could barely sleep! I was awake long before my wake-up alarm actually sounded.  I was also comforted by the fact that the school was only six miles from my house, so even if I would have overslept I could’ve made it there on time.

Since becoming a full-time artist, I have always been curious about teaching and working with kids.  My curiosity has only increased as I’ve learned more about the state of the education system in this country and the dire need for role-models in our classrooms and communities.   I had been offered opportunities to teach in the past but declined because I wasn’t sure if I had anything meaningful to offer. I also wasn’t sure that I was living the kind of lifestyle that I could tell kids about.  It’s funny how things change.  Shout out to my dude Cameron for inviting me into his classroom and allowing me to have this experience.

If I were to summarize my first teaching experience I would have to say that it was extremely rewarding and eye-opening.  I led two different hour-long sessions on poetry to classes that had about 20-30 kids in each of them.  I introduced myself, talked about poetry and writing, gave them some tips and a writing assignment, then had them write and share their own poetry.  It was awesome to see kids so excited about learning.  Seeing them so into writing poetry and sharing their thoughts inspired me immensely.

Some other thoughts:

• I completely forgot how awkward most middle-school aged kids can be.  It reminded me that I wasn’t anywhere near as cool as I remembered myself being at that age.
• Every single kid in there was an individual.  By that I mean that the way we tend to think of kids is that all kids are into specific things and communicate a specific way when they’re at a certain age.  I was reminded that they’re far from a homogeneous group.  They’re no more uniform than we are as adults.  In fact, it could probably be argued that they’re more unique and individual at that age than we are as adults because they haven’t been indoctrinated and fully assimilated yet.
• Adults are jaded.  Young kids are not.  It’s beautiful.  As adults we need to be very careful about not letting our inner-child die.  There is a hope I saw in those kids that adults rarely have.
• There was a 5th grade kid who was in the second session with a lot of 8th graders and he was super smart.  It threw me off for a second because even for a fifth grader he was kind of short.  He wrote an awesome poem and when he recited it the rest of the group went nuts and pretty much gave him an standing ovation.
• Most of the kids in my first session were too nervous to read their work in front of the class and had their teacher do it, but almost every kid in the second session wanted to read their poem themselves.  Their entire group was really energetic.  So much so that we kind of ran out of time for them to present.  It was weird to see how different the energy could be even from one class to the next.
• There was a hispanic girl who wrote her poem in spanish instead of english and I thought it was pretty adorable, even though I could only read about 20% of it.  She asked me if I could read spanish and I said only a little bit, and she asked me to review her poem.  It made me realize that I definitely needed to get back on top of my spanish.  It seems like the United States is the only country in the world where the majority of our population makes no attempt to learn a secondary language.  I think that says a lot about our willingness as a country to embrace other cultures.  Either way, I picked up a spanish book from the library this weekend because I would like to not contribute to that demographic anymore.
• Speaking of demographics, I can’t help but think that we need more African-American males entering education.  In the same way that African-American children are empowered by seeing rolemodels and positive influences in their communities, they also need them in education.  Our community suffers from disproportionate drop-out rates and I believe a lot of it has to do with a cultural disconnect that effects the children’s self-esteem.  Obviously this isn’t something I can solve by myself, particularly since education as a whole in this country is in a dismal state, but I would like to make a conscious effort to try to do my part.
• I would love to do this again.  While I realize I’m an artist who spends his time putting out albums and touring, I found this to be a really rewarding way to spend my down time.  After all, art and education aren’t that different in their fundamental premise, which is the sharing of ideas.  Speaking in front of children isn’t that much different from being on stage.  If you’re prepared and confident you can kill it, but if you’re not prepared they’ll eat you alive.

Overall, I’m so glad that I didn’t let the bad experience I had during my first attempt at teaching discourage me from doing this.  I was nervous but it got increasingly easier as it went on.   I walked away feeling like I had finally done something that was long overdue, and would gladly do it again.

Word is Blog

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Word

A little while back I was asked this question about sampling on Twitter.  I wanted to answer it there, but I realized that would be pretty difficult because of the 140 character limit, so I decided to write some thoughts on it here.

@printmatic I'm curious about your thoughts on this vs sampling vs fair use via the "transformative work" clause. Where is the line?

March 14, 2012 5:34 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@TysonHabein

Tyson Habein

To discuss sampling properly, I think it’s necessary to talk about it from three distinct perspectives: the artist doing the sampling, the artist being sampled, and the rights owner of the sampled material.  I’ll write my thoughts on each perspective.

1. As an Artist Who Samples Other People’s Music

This is the role I’m the most familiar with.  Before 2011, every single piece of music I ever released had samples in it.  In my opinion, one of the main tenants of hip-hop is its’ ability to take things out of their natural context and redefine them.  From fashion, dance, language, to other genres of music – hip-hop has survived by re-contextualizing other elements of culture and reintroducing them as hip-hop.  In my opinion, nothing embodies that process more than sampling.  Music that is hard to find, unheard, and often unappreciated is reinvented and reintroduced to the hip-hop audience through sampling. The majority of this audience would have never heard that music without the hip-hop producer who dug into the crates and brought it back.

That being said, I love what sampling has done for hip-hop and I will always love sampling.

Most hip-hop producers spend a lot of time flipping and bouncing samples in attempts to make them unrecognizable.  Part of this is to hide the sample from a potential lawsuit, and the other part is simply for the sport of it.  This brings me to the question of fair use in sampling.  How far does a sample have to be flipped before it’s considered transformative?  How much do you have to transform it before it’s yours and not theirs?  Who gets to decide?

It’s sticky.   However, I will say this:  I don’t think we should ever forget that what we are sampling is somebody else’s creation.  We can dress it up all we want, say that we flipped it or chopped it, but there is no denying that our work wouldn’t exist without the original sample, and that fact makes it difficult for me to deny that our work is derivative.   If you’re sampling, then what you create is derivative.

Where do we draw the line?  Unfortunately, I don’t think the person who does the sampling gets to draw the line.  I’ve always believed that if the owner of that music recognizes their music in your beat, then you’ve crossed the line, and they have the right to do whatever they want to stop it.  From cease and desists, to pulling your record off shelves, to lawsuits – it’s within their rights as the person who created it to do what they think is necessary to protect the integrity of their work and get paid fairly (or unfairly) for what they wrote.

If you sample other people’s music, you should expect to get sued if they can recognize it.  Because if they can recognize it then it’s not transformative enough and you haven’t done your job.

I believe more people would sample legally if it were affordable and easy to do so.  Sampling lawsuits have basically driven the art of sampling completely underground.  because the only people who can get away with it legally are the super-rich rap stars like Jay Z, Eminem, and Kanye West.   The rest of us have to either do it very low key or release music free so we won’t get sued.   I think this needs to change.  I think sampling laws and rates should mirror the rates for doing cover songs.  As it stands, it’s much more expensive to sample one little piece of music than it is to take the entire thing, which makes absolutely no sense and creates situations where less people sample.

2. As an Artist Whose Music Has Been Sampled

Before I started writing my own music it was very easy for me to say that people shouldn’t care if I sample their work, or that using somebody else’s music as my main idea and melody was OK.  To say the least, my opinion has shifted a bit since I started writing my own material.  Now I feel like we should be more sensitive to those we are sampling, and that building a career off sampling will ultimately lead to a dead end.

The truth of the matter is that writing a great melody is hard as hell.  Anybody that has written one knows this.  I believe most hip-hop producers appreciate a great melody at an aesthetic level and for its’ value as a great sample, but I don’t think they fully understand the process of writing a great piece of original music in the same way most writers do.  I know for a fact that if somebody jacked my melody without permission and made a song I didn’t really like, I might be kind of upset.  If the song blew up I would be even more upset if i weren’t given proper credit or compensation.

However, the biggest difference between me and many of the music composers who get sampled is that I think the degree to which an artist who samples my work should have to pay me should be based upon how much of my music they sampled, and how much they have transformed it.  Unfortunately, it seems like most lawsuits are based around an all-or-nothing approach.  Meaning that you pay the same (through the nose), whether you sample a small amount or a large amount.  This is a big problem with sampling and brings me to the main issue.

3. As an Owner of The Rights to the Songs

Many people do not know this, but most of the artists who release music on major labels do not own the full rights to their songs.  They sign away most, if not all, of their rights when they allow the labels to market and distribute their recordings.  The remainder of these rights are often bought by publishing companies when artists need money and have to find new ways to make money off their songs when they’re not in the public eye anymore.

Knowing this, it should come as no surprise that sampling laws and rates are as extreme as they are.  And to tell the truth, they will only get worse as the industry seeks to find alternate streams of income to replace lost record sales.  Labels and Publishers take more and more until the artists don’t really own anything, and can’t even perform their own songs without paying somebody else.

The owners of the rights don’t care about anything other than making as much money as possible and most don’t even care about the integrity of the works. They’ll take the most revolutionary song and license it to McDonalds or a stupid political campaign add if you let them.  Sadly, most artists have no say in where their music appears.  The really smart and powerful ones have better deals in place and have retained their ownership.  But most of the pop artists you see don’t write their own material and have very little say in how their music is used or exploited, and this includes sampling.

I don’t expect this part of the equation to ever change.

In Conclusion

While I will always be an advocate of being creative and using samples, I fully understand that sampling as we once knew it will probably never return as the mainstream style of hip-hop production.  The owners and publishers have made it entirely too expensive to do so, and they’re even policing underground artists nowadays for uncleared samples.

I think the sampling rates should be less expensive and the sampling laws should be less strict.  This would inspire more people to sample legally, knowing they could really push the music further without the fear of a lawsuit.  More people sampling legally translates into more money for the music industry as a whole and more diversity in the music.  That’s something we can all get behind.  Until then, there will be more synthesizers and studio musicians and less samples.

Sadly, the way the record industry and major labels have handled sampling is the same way they handled the introduction of MP3s and downloading.  They fought tooth and nail to get napster removed, but failed to understand that a) illegal downloading would just pop up in other venues and b) that kids were tired of spending 17.99 for CDs.   They could have seized that opportunity to work out something that would have increased the entire market.  Instead they held tight to their old methods and, as a result, have seen sales decline as music listenership has increased.

Getting the major labels and publishing companies to relax their rules to allow more flexibility in sampling is the key, but I’m not too optimistic about that happening.  Until then, sample what you want, but be aware that if you get too popular it could get you into a lot of trouble.

Word is Blog.

Earlier today I was having a discussion, or better yet an argument, with a family member and came to the conclusion that most people don’t really know what peace is.  Therefore, when they talk about wanting peace, they’re actually talking about something completely different than what peace actually is.

I’ve noticed that many people think peace and quiet are the same thing.  This confusion makes it very difficult for them to actively engage in productive discussions about how to achieve peace.

It’s important to understand that when these people say they just want some peace, they’re really saying they want to be left alone.  They want quiet, not peace.

The there are two problems with thinking peace and quiet are interchangeable.  The first problem is that it allows the person to adopt an individual approach in achieving peace.  Peace becomes the bi-product of their detachment and isolation, not the result of a communities’ hard work.  Peace to one person means harmony and cooperation with others, but to another person it means silence and isolation.  This outlook is troublesome for any conversation about peace.

If an individual approach to peace is to be taken, it must entail identifying and eliminating the problems inside yourself that impede the peace process of your community.  Otherwise, peace will not be achieved.

The second problem with thinking peace and quiet are interchangeable is that it completely ignores the inherent conflict that creates the need for peace.  I’ve noticed that people who confuse peace with quiet often overlook the conflicts that they are involved in that threaten their communities’ ability to achieve harmony and peace.  In denying the war that is taking place all around them, which they contribute to, they remove themselves as a willing participant in its’ resolution.  This outlook is also troublesome for any conversation about real peace.

We say we want peace because the image most of us associate with peace is of a person sitting alone in a quite place, not being bothered by anybody else.  Unfortunately, that’s not really what peace is.  That’s quiet, and it can be achieved very easily, with very little effort.

Quiet is isolation or detachment.

Peace, on the other hand, cannot be achieved until we have fully accepted the reality that we are involved in a conflict with our environment, and that the resolution to that conflict cannot occur without the willing participation and cooperation of all parties involved.  Some of these conflicts are direct, others are indirect, but the results are the same.

I realized in talking with this family member that until they admit that they are involved in a conflict, then all of their talk of peace was a waste of time.  You know how it is when you try to mediate a conflict and somebody always says something like, “I’m not mad at them, they’re mad at me,” or “They started it, I’m minding my own business,” or “I just wanna be left alone but they’re always hatin on me. I don’t have a problem with them.”  Statements like this often deny the existence of the conflicts and stand in the way of peace.  If you cannot acknowledge there is a war going on, and therefore your part in it, then you will never be able to achieve real peace.

Real peace is actually the opposite of an isolated existence.  It is what happens when opposing forces achieve a harmonious existence with one another.  The key word being “achieve,” which indicates that it takes work and compromise.  Finding quiet is as easy as siting in the corner and not talking to anybody.  Any of us can do that, yet we are still unhappy.  Real peace requires much more of us.  The truth of the matter is that peace cannot be “found” at all, it can only be achieved.  The phrase “finding peace” sounds like something people do when they’re wandering around the woods by themselves and stumble upon a secret place where nobody can bother them.  That is not peace–that is quiet and isolation.

What does this mean?

Well, first it means that before we can achieve peace, we must do the work required of us.  On ourselves and in our communities.

It also means we must acknowledge that we are passively and actively involved in conflicts that require our participation to resolve.

If we really want peace, we must do the work.

Word is Blog.

Two years ago today I decided to take small break from drinking.  I needed to clear my head.  A week into it, I felt good and decided to keep going.  After a month, I felt even better.  Once I got to two months sober I made a decision that I didn’t want alcohol to play a part in my life again.

I have been sober for two years straight today.   It has been an amazing journey that has forced me to confront many things about myself that I didn’t like.  I’ve learned that everybody drinks for a reason, and the people who drink the most have the most reasons.  If you don’t understand the “why” then you will be doomed to repeat the cycle.

The memories of my previous lifestyle are still very fresh in my mind.  Almost everything around me still reminds me of that time and, in that sense, I will never be able to forget the feeling and realities that prompted me to quit drinking.  The memory of what I went through and who I used to be are still enough of a motivating factor to prevent me from going down that road again.  I don’t think alcohol is inherently bad or that people are bad for drinking.  I have plenty of friends who are able to drink and maintain a healthy lifestyle.  Unfortunately, I was not one of them.

Outside of quitting my job to try my hand at being a full-time artist, quitting drinking was probably the best decision I have made in my adult life.  I don’t want anybody to get the impression that it was an easy change; it was not.  But I would encourage those that feel like alcohol is starting to play too much of a role in their lives to give it a try.

I would like to write about some of the biggest differences I have seen in the past two years.

Physical Activity – I have always been into riding my bike and playing basketball, but all of those activities came to an end during the height of my drinking.  Nobody wants to work out when they’re hungover.  I had no idea how the two were tied together when I was drinking, but now that I’m sober I have much more energy for working out and physical activity.  Working out makes you feel really good and actually gives you a reason to not drink so much.

Inquisitiveness & Learning – One of the benefits of drinking is that it allows us to let our guard down and go with the flow.  This is achieved by suppressing the minds natural inquisitiveness and activity.  Over time, I saw that the I more I drank the less I had the patience to learn and process new information.  I went through periods of my life where you couldn’t stop me from picking up a book or learning something new, yet during the time I was drinking heavily I could barely read one or two books a year.  In comparison, I read ten books in a two week period last month alone.  It really is a night and day difference.

Less Patience for Mindless Entertainment – I pretty much stopped watching television about four or five months into my sobriety.  It wasn’t even a deliberate choice.  I noticed that my mind would find everything about it to be boring.  I later realize that this “bored” feeling is because my television doesn’t really challenge your mind, it supplies all the brain activity for you.  There is nothing to interpret, contextualize, or figure out.  There is no problem solving or critical thinking involved in watching television.  As a result, it puts people’s minds to sleep, if that makes sense.  Without alcohol my brain activity increased (i.e. my mind just wanted to be fed information), and besides sports like MMA and movies I can’t really watch television anymore.  My television on comes on when my family visits me or when i’m playing a movie while creating music, but that’s really it.   I can’t watch football, baseball, or basketball anymore.  Nor can I watch sitcoms or anything else.  Trust me, I have tried, it just doesn’t work.  The sheer sound of television and it’s constant flickering and flashing commercials actually freaks me out nowadays.

Time – Time flies when you’re drunk, but when you’re sober you become acutely aware of time.  This means that you become very aware of the instances where you’re wasting it.  Life isn’t something you wish would fly by anymore.  Life slows down and you feel more aware and in control of how you spend your time here on earth.  I used to feel like I had plenty of time to do the things I wanted to do every day, but now i feel like I don’t have enough, and will never have enough.  I don’t want time to fly anymore, i want to enjoy every second of it.  I don’t want to forget any of my experiences.  I had a lot of great times drinking, but it’s a shame that I’ve forgotten so many.  Amazing conversations that I can only remember in spirit, not in specifics.

Less Emotional – I used to think that drinking is what I had to do to prevent myself from slapping people everyday, but now realize that drinking (and the emotional roller-coaster that came along with it), were actually the problem.  I wanted to slap people a lot more when I was drinking heavily than I do now.  Now I get into much less drama.

Productivity – Because I am so much more aware of time, I get a lot more work done.  I still have my periods of inactivity but they last a lot shorter now.  It’s a night and day difference.  My increased productivity has done wonders for my self-esteem.  I feel like I can do anything now as long as I put the time in.  I didn’t have that level of confidence before.

I feel like I’m barely scratching the surface here and could probably list ten more things like this, but I don’t want this to be too long.  Hell, I could probably write a book about the experience and have been considering it.

Overall, my life has changed tremendously since I stopped drinking, and today marks a very important milestone in my life.  I’m still taking it one day at a time and I know that it will take even more discipline to keep going for another two years. I am encouraged by the positive effect it has had on my life thus far, and hope to continue on this path.  For the sake of not making this a ten-page blog I have chosen to keep this shorter, but I hope that this may serve as inspiration to anybody out there that is drinking heavily or an alcoholic but considering sobriety.  It is not an easy decision, but it does get easier, and I believe the experience and benefits are well worth it.

Be encouraged.

The other day, a friend made a  comment on how in shape they thought I was.  I’m not really ripped or anything like that, but I am pretty lean and thin.  I think the comment was rooted in the fact that I don’t really come off like a health freak or obsess about working out, and usually people who don’t do either of those things are out of shape.

I’m sure a part of it is genetics, but I would like to believe (or at least I tell myself) that I put a decent amount of effort into staying healthy.  I try to ride my bike two or three times a week, for an average of 10 miles each trip.  In the winter, when I couldn’t ride my bike, I lifted very light weights two or three times a week, and walked on a treadmill that I’ve got in my basement.  I despise running or jogging, but on the days that I ride my bike I also shoot some basketball by myself.

Around January, I decided to stop eating so much meat for a couple months.  I lost ten pounds as soon as I cut meat out of my diet.  Unfortunately, it’s very tough to keep it out.  I went the first two months without eating meat at all and now eat meat once or twice a week on average.  I never had plans on becoming a vegetarian, but my body has responded positively by me eating less meat and introducing more vegetables into my diet.  I don’t know how to quantify it, it just feels better.

The absence of beer and alcohol has also contributed to me feeling much better and as well.

I still pig out and eat dumb shit once or twice a week, but at least now I make a conscious effort to eat right the rest of the week and balance it out.

The whole thing has made me want to discuss this with others and see how often you guys work out and how active you are right now (if at all).

How often do you work out?

Do you consider yourself in shape or a work in progress?

Is it something that you’ve started recently or have you been consistent with it?

What kind of results are you getting and are you happy with them?

Word is blog.

About six weeks ago, I was contacted about teaching two workshops on writing to a group of High School kids. The person who contacted me had originally reached out to me a couple years ago, but for whatever reason we weren’t able to make it happen.  It looked more likely this time around since my schedule was clear; I had been at home writing my book for several months straight and had no plans to be on the road for a while.

After giving it some careful thought, I confirmed the date and started to prepare.  Admittedly, I was nervous about teaching, but since I had more time to prepare I felt confident I could put something together that the students and I would be happy with.

I got really excited while preparing the material and decided to talk to some friends about this great opportunity to teach some high school students on “the last Saturday in April.”  I’ve always wanted to share the things I know and inspire others, so this would finally be a chance to do both.  I was on vacation two weeks before my scheduled appearance and brought along some books on lesson planning to assist in writing up my agenda for the two workshops I would be facilitating (spoken word and recitation).  A week before the workshop I had completely written out my entire presentation for both workshops and was very comfortable with what I had.  I began the process of memorizing and practicing it for at least two to three hours every day.

On the Thursday before I was scheduled to appear, I exchanged a few emails with the teacher who coordinated the event to iron out some final details and answer some last-minute questions.  Then I ran through my entire presentation three times with hardly any errors.  I felt extremely confident.  I went to bed around 4am thinking “If I’ve got it this solid with all day Friday to prepare, I’m going to nail it Saturday.”  I planned on waking up around 10:30 to practice again, and then scheduling two more rehearsals: one in the afternoon and one at night.

Unfortunately, it didn’t go down like that.

On Friday morning, I received a phone call around 10:30 am from the teacher asking where I was at and if I was going to be late.  I was confused and disoriented because I had just woken up.  Then, to my horror, I realized the workshops I had been telling myself for the past month were happening on the last Saturday of April, were actually happening the last Friday of April.  They were happening at that moment and I wasn’t there because I wrote down the wrong date.

I had totally blew it.

Now, this wouldn’t be the end of the world if the workshops were taking place right across town.  If they were, I could have hustled over there in 30 minutes.  Unfortunately, these workshops were taking place in Toledo, Ohio which is about two and a half hours from Columbus.  This is when the weight of my error really hit me.  I felt sick to my stomach.  I told them I would head out the door in the next ten minutes.

I took the fastest shower known to man, got dressed, packed my notes, and left the house in about ten minutes.  I knew I had let down the teacher and those students who had been bussed in from area charter schools and it was extremely upsetting.  I pushed as hard as I could and got there in about two hours.

The students had just started giving their presentations when I got there.  This is when it really hit me just how much I had dropped the ball because I was supposed to help them prepare for their presentations.  There were about 80 total kids presenting and competing in different categories: persuasive presentation, original spoken word, and recitation.

I hadn’t been around that many high school kids since graduating, but hearing their presentations was one of the most inspiring things I have ever seen.  Some of those kids were truly amazing.  They were so positive and supportive of eachother.  During the moments where one of them would struggle at remembering their words, the entire crowd would rally behind them in support, telling them it was ok, while cheering them on.  There were about five or six kids that were talking about things so personal that it would almost bring tears to my eyes.  It reminded me of how jaded and guarded we become as we get older, and how important it is to keep our inner-child alive.

I was able to judge their competition, but I could only present about 5-10 minutes of the talk that I had prepared all month for, and had to do it right before they announced the finalists of the competition because everything was running behind schedule and the students had already been there all day.  I felt so embarrassed for ruining this great opportunity to reach so many bright kids.  I gave away a few copies of my book away to the finalists but it seemed like no consolation for what I was supposed to have done.

To make matters worse, the teacher who brought me in insisted on paying me for making it out there.  So not only do I have the guilt of being late, I’ve also got this check that I feel too guilty to cash that’s haunting me.

Needless to say, I did a lot of soul-searching during that 3 hour drive home.

How did I let this happen?

How do I make sure this never happens again?

How can I improve my organizational skills?

But the most important question that I asked myself was, “How do you respond to this failure?”

See, the technical parts of failure are easy to identify and fix, but the emotional part of failure is probably the most important to address.  If you don’t address the emotional part, you will have a hard time bouncing back.  How we respond to failure determines whether that failure brings us down even more, or whether we will use it as an opportunity for growth.

I knew this one was going to be tough for me.  I had already beat myself up over it quite a bit and I hadn’t even got home yet.

I decided that my first response to this failure would be to try to make up for it.  There was a teacher there from Columbus that mentioned she would like to get me in to speak to her kids and I would like to do it no questions asked.  I have to follow-up and make it right.  Otherwise, this situation will haunt me and emotionally drag me down.

Second, I have decided that instead of looking at this as a one-time opportunity to speak and teach, that I should continue working on the material I had prepared and make it something that I can offer at any time.  That way I won’t feel like my work was in vein and there will be no anxiety if I’m ever offered another chance to present.

The third thing I have decided to do in response to this failure is to make teaching kids more of a priority.  This was not the first time I have done workshops or taught, but this was the biggest one.  I have been offered many opportunities in the past, but have had to pass because I have either been on the road or didn’t have enough time to prepare.  No more of that.  I need to empty my head of all this information and knowledge in a way that allows me to always be prepared.  From beat-making, to DJing, to creative writing, to performances–I have learned a lot and have a lot of things in my head. I need to make a conscious effort to write these things down and get them out of my head because they can help others.

I’ve realized that if I don’t take action on these things, this failure will haunt me, and I might feel so discouraged that I may never try to teach kids again.  I’m determined to not let that happen.

Everybody experiences failure.  It is how we respond to it that determines our strength of character.

Word is Blog.

p.s. please feel free to share your experiences of failure and how you bounced back in the comments section.

“The task of resisting our own oppression does not relieve us of the responsibility of acknowledging our complicity in the oppression of others.”   - Beverly Daniel Tatum, PH.D  (From the book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in The Cafeteria)

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“When a man’s undivided attention is centered on one object, his mind will constantly be suggesting improvements of value, which would escape him if his brain was occupied by a dozen a dozen different subjects at once.” – P.T. Barnum (from Art of Money Getting)