Just Do You Boo

How much time do you spend on your phone? On Instagram or on Facebook? On Snapchat or on Youtube? I know I can spend hours on these apps. I sometime ask myself what could I be doing that would help me in future. I even sometimes wonder where I would be in life if I use the time I spend on my phone towards building a legacy. Don't get me wrong, I love myself some Instagram and Youtube, but as a person that has huge dreams, I found that spending too much time on these things can lead us to a road that we never intend to go down. That what seems to be long and dark road is a road call comparison.

So I'm a musical fanatic. I sing at a place in Denton, TX called The Bridge. I also write, compose, and produce music, I can produce almost any genre. Because of this, my social media is filled with singers, producers, actors, writers, motivational speakers, etc. I love to learn and support as well as celebrate people's victories, thats something that we love to do at The Bridge. Then sometimes I'm just bored and I just go through my timeline. I am also a YouTuber, so of course I'm constantly on Youtube looking at my favorite Youtubers. Although there's absolutely nothing wrong with what I'm doing, the issue comes when I don't properly balance that time and use part of that time to cultivate and actually work on my craft. It's a struggle sometimes, I know. Especially if you've built the habit of getting home from work/school, going to the bathroom, going to the refrigerator to get a snack, and get right on social media. It's a challenge to renew your mind and build a new and healthy habit. The good thing is, just because it's tough, doesn't mean it's impossible. You may ask how this ties into comparison. I'd like to answer that by telling you how I got stuck on that long and dark road.

Remember I mentioned the issue is when you don't properly balance time on social media and cultivating and working on your craft? Well I would love to tell you, that was 1000% me. I would be on social media so much that I would waste 70% of my day. Then I would look up and be like "man I don't have enough time to do music" or "I don't have time to upload a video on youtube". This would then cause be to feel like a failure, 1 being because I love to feel like I've something productive at the end of the day, and 2 being because after about 2 months of the same thing, I'd look and see that I have nothing to show for those 2 months. This is when you really start to look around at what others are doing.

I then found myself seeing other people getting awards, making crazy money, traveling the world, and all sorts of things that I really want to happen in my life. You'd think that would drive me to dig into my work and go hard and grind. NOPE! That caused me to constantly look at what others were doing and only wish that my life would look like there's. "I want to travel and sing". "I want my music to be heard". "I want 1 million followers on instagram". "I want 100,000 youtube subscribers". Then I had the AUDACITY to ask myself what am I doing wrong. A father of mine, Duane White (Huperman) once told me "You can't just sit there and expect things to just fall in your lap, you have to put some work in". We've all heard faith without works is dead. That just simply means that you can have all the faith you want for something to happen, but if you don't put some action with that faith, it's just like you're not doing anything at all. I'll never for get that conversation with him. When you decide to get off your butt and get to work after spending months on the couch, it's not going to be easy. There was a time that I tried to be creative and make music but it was just too hard and I went home. A person named Alex Vasquez who is a boss of mine, asked me "You tried to be creative for 2hrs and quit because you couldn't come up with anything? Come back when you've tried for at least 8hrs". I thought he was out of his everlasting mind, but deep down inside I knew that his everlasting mind was right.

You know that feeling of having to start back over in the gym after quitting? Like before you quit, you were getting all the gains you wanted, achieving goals, losing weight? Having to push through those first 2 weeks and get up to go to the gym feels like hell has entered your body. That's how it felt for me to start back being creative. Eventually, writing became easy again and even more fun than what it use to be. I learned that when you compare yourself to someone else, you only tear yourself down. The power of life and death is in your tongue, so you frame your world with your words. I also learned that comparison will cause you to fall into depression. I was so depressed because I just felt confused and useless. The way to overcome that depression is realize that you were born to create and conquer.

All things are possible when you have the right One in your corner. It is 1000% okay to be on social media and celebrate someone's victory. It's okay to see what people are up to on your timeline, that's what it's there for. Let's learn how to balance that time with time we spend working on and cultivating our craft so that our dreams can become our reality. It's okay to get ideas from other people's work, but don't get stuck looking. Be original, and add your own flavor to your work. Just Do You Boo!