Typing...

You know, this lockdown gave me time to think. I mean, I'm always thinking, yeah, but it's been less an intellectual exercise and more an intrapersonal utility for musing.

I started thinking about my theatre of experience differently, and everything changed - I started thinking ''how will I see this choice from my death bed'', and everything changed. I started treating myself like a brand and my life as a marketing strategy, and everything changed. I started seeing my activity in this world as a first-person video game, and everything changed.

I don't know, I figured my life would be easier to live if I started looking at it as something I'd want to see myself in - everything down to my alarm waking me up, I treat like an occasion. You gotta be authentic in how you occupy your space.

If you enjoy reading, maybe you're the brave protagonist on a hero's journey. If you appreciate sports, maybe you're the brilliant upstart who's hungry to change the game. If your joie de vivre comes from music, maybe you're the talented artist who's about to transform your industry.

Whatever it is, we all exist in some kind of providence; from the choices we make to things we adore, there's always a sense of ''I was meant for this'' whenever you do that one thing. Finding a way to ''become'' is something we admire in those who've done it, and turn judgement on ourselves for being unable to do.

The only real thing that separates one from the other is that at some point along the path, all the good advice started to sound like lessons that finally had relevance and practical application.

My mentor, F-K, talked about it a lot: how to ''be cool'', the consistent fullness of your best expression. I didn't realise it at the time, but he was tooling me to identify the values within myself that defined me in all situations - he showed me a way to create my own personal sense of home, in and around my element but never out of it.

Three years after, and he's still taking me to school.

He graded my papers; often encouraged my strengths but worried that I simply laid down ideas without really elaborating on them. All my life, I'd survived as an academic on natural ability - focusing almost entirely on what I was good at and ignored everything I struggled with.

But even with the things I did really well in, I approached with a kind of half-heartedness because I knew people knew that I knew, you know?

A quote that's stuck with me since I was eight years old goes ''being brilliant isn't enough, young man - you have to work hard. Intelligence isn't a privilege, it's a gift''.

It's only making sense now that I'm growing into self-sufficiency and accountability, which both used to terrify me; there was something... disconcerting about the idea of living life to make choices and face the consequences, whether they're good or less than. It made me feel vulnerable - if I screwed up, I'd be the one who screwed up.

But when your life's a video game, who cares if you screw up, right? There's always the retry button after you fail a mission, and you get to start right where you left off with just a little more muscle memory and neural experience.

It's an ongoing journey, but I started thinking about things differently, and everything changed.

Grace and peace, bud. :)

Coolest regards,

- Your Friendly Neighbourhood Kenji