We Are All a Work in Progress

I just finished watching Akeelah and the Bee. Akeelah is an 11 year old girl with a talent for spelling and she gets encouragement and support along the way to reach her goal. It made me think of my own childhood and how my parents were there for me financially and spiritually but were unable to reach beyond that and give me any practical help about "what I wanted to be when I grew up." My dad always tried to pressure me to do something without trying to find out what that was. He always talked about "passion" but didnt know how to instill it in me. He made these vibrant speeches about why you had to have it and he was deadly serious. I was scared of him. Growing up, I was always trying to entertain people. I put on magic shows and entered talent competitions for stand up comedy. But that was it. They never asked me about why I did those things or made any attempt to lead me in a direction. My dad just wanted me to have some direction. I remember one time he put so ...

Some people have commented on the strangeness of my last post. Some people haven't commented at all. While some others have not read it. I feel bad for those people, because they'll never know what it's like. Now there is a good reason why I was so off last week. I've been working like a maniac all summer. No hold up. Let me tell the story first for those who came in late. Life in New York City has been really hard. I lived in Brooklyn with a sumo wrestler who subsisted on hot dogs and corn flakes and my other roomate smoked 5 cigars in the apartment a day and yelled at his mother weekly on the telephone...at 3 in the morning and 6 in the morning...Then he produced an eviction notice showing that I had to get out in 7 days. This was fun, because I had been there for about 5 months then and so I was really getting some semblance of stability. I loaded all my stuff into my car and then paid an old man to sleep on his couch for 5 days. He kicked me out 2 days earlier than ...