Life isn’t easy. Most of the time, it’s not even fun. Most of life is hard, but that doesn’t mean something is wrong. On the contrary, it’s part of what makes life so beautiful. Making it through those challenging moments—when it feels like the whole world is against us and we can’t catch a break—is the only sustainable path to joy. And we chase that joy like a fiend after a fix because it gives our lives meaning. Imagine, for a moment, a world without hardship, where it was just all fun and...
15 days ago • 4 min read
“The good news is, nigga, you came a long way The bad news is, nigga, you went the wrong way.” —J. Cole, “Love Yourz” Everyone knows that “practice makes perfect.” You may have even heard the adage, for added clarity, “Perfect practice makes perfect.” But what many people forget is that this sword cuts both ways. If you practice the wrong thing, you become proficient at the wrong thing. Something I see repeatedly in boxing—and that I think applies to many other areas of life—is people...
20 days ago • 4 min read
There Is Never Enough Time The following is an excerpt from my book, which is an excerpt from a post I made 14 years ago. You never have enough time, and the struggle never ends. Few things remind you of this like becoming a parent. Although this passage is taken from my book about me enlisting in the military to get my life back on track, the message is even more serious now that I have a child. I have to find time wherever it exists—and sometimes, I have to create time that doesn’t. This...
29 days ago • 2 min read
Universe 25 Showed Me The Real Reason People Stay Poor “We never free a mind once it reaches a certain age. It is dangerous. The mind has trouble letting go.” Those were the words Morpheus spoke to Neo in the 1999 film “The Matrix”—the movie some of the teenagers in my boxing class describe as “The one that came out last century, where nothing is real.” While that description is technically correct, it sure did make me feel a little old. And while yes, that movie where nothing is real came...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Everyone is a gangster until some real gangsters show up. The problem is that most people in most societies don’t ever actually run into real gangsters. Now, when I say that it’s a problem, I don’t mean that everyone’s lives would be better if more people claimed a set, a crew, or belonged to a family where you have to “make your bones” to join. I grew up in that environment, and there’s a reason why I moved my black ass to the suburbs. As much as I think societal decay and inflation are...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
A few years ago, I learned about a rather controversial experiment involving a colony of mice, and the more I read into it, the more familiar it sounded. Not because I’d ever run an experiment on mice, but the conditions, patterns, and outcomes of the experiment looked eerily similar to what I’d seen and knew about the hood. The experiment was called Universe 25. It was designed to create paradise for mice—a world with unlimited food, unlimited water, no predators, and plenty of space....
2 months ago • 3 min read
You don't remember the most important thing about yourself. And I'm not talking about your first kiss, where you grew up, or who your best friend is. That stuff is kind of important and is a part of you, but it’s not what makes you who you are. Those are the things you’ve done. I'm talking about the things that happened to you that you can’t remember, because your mind decided you couldn't handle them. So those things got buried so deep that you don't even know they're missing. Here's the...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Gen Z stopped drinking, and it’s cost alcohol companies almost $830 billion dollars in the past 5 years. But that’s not even the biggest story. The bigger story is how this has fundamentally changed society and how it will topple the college scam market, possibly even faster than AI and the student loan crisis. Fewer people are drinking alcohol than ever before. Now, I personally have been sober since December 23rd, 2013—almost 13 years—so my feelings on the matter should be obvious. However,...
5 months ago • 3 min read
Most people who grow up in traumatic childhoods don’t make it.Addiction, prison, poverty, broken relationships — the statistics are brutal. But there’s something interesting about the people who do survive it. There are a lot of bad outcomes for people who go through traumatic childhoods. This should come as no surprise, but children who endure abuse, suffer through neglect, and spend their formative years surrounded by drugs, poverty, and violence don’t have the best adult lives. I’ve...
6 months ago • 3 min read