Bonsoir (j’ecris ceci dans le soir), je suis Daniel et j’ai terminé 365 days de Duolingo. Sometime in the future, I will be able to write a full essay in French. For those who do not know, I have been learning French for the past year, mainly from Duolingo. In the beginning sentence I said, “Good evening (I am writing this in the evening), my name is Daniel and I have completed 365 of Duolingo.” It was quite the journey sticking to this for an entire year. In the beginning, I started this journey with 3 other friends. Whilst we all started strong, for various reasons, they dropped out. I was a bit scared to do it on my own but I continued to preserve and now I am here. Excited to see how far this can take me. 

In the same week I achieved the Duolingo streak, I also completed the first week of ‘The Artist’s Way’. The author spent the majority of the time laying the foundation for the rest of the program. When I was reading the chapter, there was one specific anecdote that felt a lot like things I did. She was talking about a man named Jerry. She describes this guy that had a lot of money but did not take action to be creative. He aspired to be a filmmaker but never had any follow through. Rather than doing the actual work to become more creative, he deceived himself into thinking he was making progress by investing into someone else. He did so by funding the partner he was dating. The book mentions that when Jerry’s partner discovers his yearn to be a filmmaker, they encourage him to take a filmmaking course. However, rather than heeding their advice, Jerry responds by saying “Not everyone can be an artist.”

From the time I read that excerpt till now, I have been wondering if I have been a “Jerry”. There have been many times in my life where I recall investing into people more than I invest into myself. Oftentimes, being a bigger cheerleader for them than myself. Even placing myself back into that space, I felt that by investing into people with their own goals, I was making progress towards my own. As I have gotten older, I understand that someone can be selfish when it comes to their assistance. Helping people so that they can feel better about themselves. I will save this topic for another day but I can’t decide whether or not this is a bad thing to do if the life of the person being helped is improving. 

Back to me being “Jerry-like” though. Ever since I have been reading the Artist’s Way, I continue to uncover the many ways I have been running away from myself. What’s even more interesting is that each instance I remember this happening, I could physically feel the frustration I was having with myself. “Why help them when you aren’t helping us?” or “Why don’t you care about us?” are some of the questions that I would ask me, and they are questions that do need answering. Why are you putting the needs of others over yours? When a father creates a child with a woman, leaves the child, and takes care of another person’s kid, do you know what they are called? DEADBEAT. The artist within us all is a child and rather than using the knowledge and resources we have accumulated to nurture and grow our artist; we are pouring it into others. Now I am not arguing against helping others, it pays to lend a helping hand. I am just saying that one cannot possibly be an effective servant if they do not pour into themselves.

“But what does pouring into myself look like?” Great question. Pouring into yourself is actually quite simple. It is a combination of two things: using your knowledge for you and having an action-bias. The first one is simple enough, you know all of the bookmarks you have in your Instagram? In your TikTok? In your X (formerly Twitter) account? All you have to do is to go through them, and figure out which one you can apply to your lifestyle and goals today. That is it. Now I am not sitting here saying that no one you care about should know about this. All I am saying is to make sure you gain the benefits of knowing the knowledge before sharing it with others. Next, one needs to have an action bias. It is no use knowing everything that needs to be done but nothing is being done about it. There’s a certain point (it becomes apparent after someone does it enough times) where preparation will turn into procrastination. One only needs to know enough to get past step 1. Once they are past that, it is just a matter of winning/learning forward. 

It has been around 3 weeks since I started my sessions with my life coach and I have to say, I’m getting my money’s worth. Specifically, in the second session, I told him how there has been this struggle to balance my academics, business ventures, and creative endeavors. I was failing to understand how to prioritize what. The suggestion he gave me, opened my eyes. He said rather than putting academics as a first priority, put it last. His reasoning was that I have already spent a considerable amount of effort and time on my academics. Since I don’t have any current feelings to drop out, I should do just enough to complete all my assignments and pour the remaining time I have into creative and business endeavors. Definitely, was not expecting that kind of advice but since hearing it, I have been allowing myself to learn the creative fields I want to get involved in (I do hope to share some of the things I have created soon).

I still have about 9 sessions left but I will continue to report my experience and how my life has progressed or gone backwards since starting this. I truly appreciate you all sticking till the end of the blog post. This post’s song recommendation is coming from the JPEGMAFIA/Danny Brown tour that I went to last week. It was definitely an experience to say the least. For starters, I am walking to the line to scan in my ticket. A guy compliments my MIKE shirt, so I stop and chat with him for a bit. After that, I go inside and get some merch. I get the merch and see him. I go up to him to say wassup again, why is this guy going to project his extracellular fluids all over my face? I was immediately done with the conversation, and I started making my way towards the front of the concert. So, the concert starts and everything’s cool. It’s packed and it’s Houston so we’re all starting to get hot. The security guards in the front were nice enough to pass around ice cubes and cold water. HOWEVER, these nasty people in the front, are going to grab the ice cup, grab some ice with their bare hands, and pass to another stranger. It got even worse when the water cups went around. So many lips touching the same cup, I’m like 🤨

But the song of the post is Steppa Pig by JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown.