cooking dinner at 6AM

I never thought I would become so excited by rejection.

When I woke up Friday morning, I knew something was different. The way I was bopping and weaving throughout my morning resulted in me cooking a full dinner from scratch before 8 AM. Are you the type to set up your coffee pot before bed so it’s just the press of a button in the morning or start to finish in the morning? It depends on my mood the night before with me. This morning I had to set up the coffee pot from start to finish which was no problem, I needed to be focused on something besides my thoughts at the time.

the backstory.

My living situation has been interesting, to say the least since October 2023, but since April 2024 it’s gotten just plain weird. We were literally about to be on the streets in San Diego when my wife reached out to her family for support. We just needed a place to sleep, shower, and eat for 3 weeks and I’m forever grateful that her father took us in. A family of three is a lot to take in and we know this so we never come to people as a burden. We buy our food, prepare our meals, and share plates with the people hosting us. Whether it’s regularly cleaning the bathroom including washing the shower curtain or keeping the sink clear of dirty dishes whether it’s ours or not, if we are in your space you can expect this behavior from us without asking. But we infest people’s homes with our strong family bond and unconditional love for each other that surprisingly triggers the parents we reach out to for help.

Being at my father-in-law’s house has highlighted this and caused us to feel like we are in a prison, not a home. If I’m not up by 5 AM to have my coffee and write/read, I can’t guarantee I’ll get the time that day, especially Wednesday through Sunday. For almost three months we’ve been confined to a room, three people in one small room with an air mattress we bought after sleeping on the floor the first night here. We stopped taking up space because the times we did we were met with monitoring eyes picking apart our every move and decision.

‘Why y’all ordering groceries that’s expensive?’

Well actually it’s not expensive and we have to because we don’t have a car or access to the community’s gate to come and go freely. Besides we are never offered to be taken to the grocery store or asked if we need anything during house grocery runs. I remember one day we walked to the park to trail blaze and ran freely in the grass, upon our return we were locked out of the house. Ringing doorbells, knocking on the doors, and calling phones, until we finally gave up and just sat on the front porch hot, thirsty, and in disbelief. Almost twenty minutes later, the door opens and you laugh as we quickly run into the house. After that day, we stopped going places as a family out of fear of being locked out again. You work in a prison at night and you treat the people in your home like prisoners on your off time. Your daughter is becoming more like me (optimistic and finding the positive in situations) and reminds me that you aren’t forcing us to be like this we are choosing to, but I remind her that you don’t want us here and you’re making sure we know and feel it.

So naturally when I know my family is not wanted somewhere I start to stress when trying to conjure a plan to get us out, I’m the protector of our energy, while my wife is the protector of our physical safety. I have to shield my family with an energetic armor from people who send us negative energy because once it surfaces my wife will destroy anything and anybody that tries to harm us. That trend about having a black cat or golden retriever spouse, not mine, I have a fucking overprotective pit bull that doesn’t play ‘bout her family. And I love this for us but we are physically, emotionally, and mentally drained being here.

The clock is ticking for us to go before you say it, and we’ve exhausted every resource we have in this city. I know in my spirit this city is not for us, it’s too familiar. It feels like the home I moved away from and I admit I wanted to make it work so I could feel that familiar feeling again.

cooking my way through big feelings.

That’s not how following your dreams work though, damn I wish there was a handbook on what will occur as you pursue the unknown. Although there is no handbook to keep my nose in to study, my soul found a way to navigate my rapid discoveries through cooking. The moment when my body starts craving the process of peeling potatoes, cutting them up to put in boiling water. Then followed with snapping the ends off freshly harvested green beans I know there’s a breakthrough on the way.

my great-grandmother has been on my heart and mind heavy lately so I felt her presence while I was snapping green beans with my cup of coffee and that's what inspired this piece

At 6 AM on Friday, I was shearing chicken thighs to the perfect golden color that I left seasoned to marinate overnight to infuse flavor to the bone before adding them back to the pan accompanied by a mouth-watering creamy sauce as another layer of packed flavor. While that simmered on the right I got to mashing my potatoes on the right adding in my butter, seasonings, and milk to get them creamy. A quick taste test to impress myself with the punch of flavors in my mouth I break to top off my coffee that got cold sitting as a bystander in the process.

Now on to my favorite part, snapping the green beans.

This task in the kitchen is nostalgic for me because I always think of when Grandma Louise first taught me how to snap the green beans we picked from her garden that afternoon. Cooking is my creativity, but this is new because I used to use cooking as a way to a man’s heart. Yeah, read that again you're not tripping. In Grandma Louise’s kitchen cooking was a self-sufficiency skill that all Black people needed to know, in my mother’s kitchen cooking was how you get a man.

In my kitchen, I’ve been redefining what cooking is for me and that’s freedom to flow in my creativity. No meal is ever prepared the same, and that allows me to explore my creativity more with each dish. I’ve learned to pivot best in the kitchen, if I don’t have something I can quickly improvise and the meal will still have my family licking the plate. Friday morning’s dinner preparation was my soul reminding me to get back in the flow of pivoting if I truly desire freedom.

---

some of us need to learn how to fucking pivot.

That’s what I’m realizing this journey for me is all about. At first, I was looking at it from the perspective that the delays and setbacks were evidence of punishment for leaving behind my family and home. I thought my days of running to escape had finally caught up to me, and life was beating me while I was already down.

The truth is, I might be the drama and maybe life hasn’t been whooping my ass. Perhaps I have been my own abuser trying to control the narrative.

You know that saying ‘If you want to make God laugh tell ‘em your plans’? That’s been my reality since starting this journey home because every plan I’ve had has not worked. My original plan to get to California didn’t work and I had to pivot which led me to experience the wonders of farm life, my plan to get an RV and travel cross country didn’t go as planned so instead we flew across the country and lived in an RV for two months in San Diego. The funny thing about that was I wanted the RV lifestyle to live at the beach and that’s exactly what I got just not how I wanted it, and the original plan to come to California was to live on a farm here in California. It sounds like I should be used to pivoting right? Wrong! Yeah after I’ve acted like a brat and cried my eyes out for a full 24 hours cussing the Universe for punishing me I come to my senses and recognize how to pivot. But truthfully I show my ass when things don’t go my way, at least I used to until these last two weeks filled with rejection.

After receiving emails and text messages saying, congratulations you’ve been approved, I’m still houseless on the search for a home. How is that? Well in all honestly, I haven’t been going for what I truly want, let’s say I’ve mastered how to pivot into selling myself short. I conditioned myself over the years to play it small for the sake of surviving, rather than being uncomfortable while achieving my goals, I formed the habit of suppressing my goals to settle for being uncomfortable when things seem unachievable or out of reach. Since 2021, I’ve been giving sign after sign after sign of where I needed to be in California yet because I felt it was out of reach I never attempted to go for it. However, on Thursday when I got that final rejection about a home something in me shifted and I had had enough of the limitations I set on myself, and my desire to break free broke the chains I put on myself. I applied to 14 apartments and over 20 jobs in the city I truly wish to be in, and would you believe on a holiday weekend I’ve gotten more responses than the entire 2.5 months of being here?

Pivoting is only hard when we look at it from the perspective that our plan is the only one available. I have struggled with believing that another plan is available when I am in a downward spiral with my thoughts. When I view my situation from the perspective that it’s happening to me rather than for me, you can bet your life savings that you can find me balled up in the corner crying myself into a panic attack. This reaction has been an expected theme and when things magically work out from thin air I feel incredibly embarrassed and ashamed that I responded so poorly. Not this time. I have become more aware of this struggle in my ability to pivot so to counter my normal reaction I am choosing how I respond. I’ve been praying more for my peace and patience in the midst of shitty situations. To my surprise, the more I intentionally call in peace and patience to my situations, the more I’m able to pivot when things don’t go as planned.

a visual of me pivoting from chaos to peace.

Grace means that all your mistakes now serve a purpose instead of serving shame.

-Brenè Brown

life is telling us: ‘get in, I’m your Uber driver’

That hack is taking that risk you are most scared of and having a couple of plans in mind, not putting all your energy into one plan. I have been putting all my eggs in one basket and when the basket breaks and I lose eggs I freak out as if I didn’t know this was possible. Silly right? That’s how we are when we put all of our energy into the safest plan and when that doesn’t go according to our plan - we dare to act as if life is working against us. No! Life is working in our favor showing us that our plan will keep us limited to what we know and that there is more to experience. I am noticing that this happens when I start to settle and stop going after the things I truly desire because I don’t see from a surface level how it could work out for me.

As I applied for apartments here in the city where my wife was born, just hours away from where I desired to unpack, I knew I was settling and would not truly be fulfilled. I have a natural gift about me, that allows me to make the best out of any situation. Similar to some of my best meals in the kitchen that derived from having limited ingredients and making the best of what I had. So I was willing to make the best out of a studio apartment of less than 600 sq ft. as a family of three because it would be our own space and we would cultivate the most comfortable home. I stayed open to living in the same city as ‘family’, although we intentionally set out to seek freedom and start our own family tradition. What I wanted and needed was a comfortable place to be so I could finish my book, publish my book, and the opportunity to set up a P.O. Box to have my books sent for me to sign and mail out as preorders. I had unfinished business with the Universe that needed to be completed before settling home. I started looking at my journey from the perspective of society (I need to get a physical home or else I am going to be homeless) and not from the vision that was given to me.

I’m realizing at this moment that I do have a job, and my job is no different from a pastor or minister, actually, I am technically a prophet. My work is missionary work and I am paid for my service to others in various ways. You could say I am a contracted employee of the Universe, and my contract provides me with housing, travel, and all expenses paid as long as I continue my work. This assignment called for me to write about my discoveries during my travels. My discoveries just so happen to be real fucking life experiences, and my only instruction was to be as raw, authentic, and vulnerable as possible so the people, my people, Black people, will know ‘you are the truth’. By me speaking so openly I mirror to you what you are experiencing so you find comfort in my space because I am not ‘marketing’ to you I am showing you in real life my experiences and what I’m discovering through them.

I am showing you in real-time how to pivot. I’m teaching you how I am pivoting. I am confirming that we have to master pivoting because making plans is how we control. And when we control, we micro-manage life which will never go to plan. In the end, we are only hurting ourselves when we resist pivoting. Do the thing that makes your throat knot up and your stomach drop into your ass and makes your chest beat out of your chest like Bugs Bunny. But when you do it, don’t take the wheel (that is taking control) instead sit ‘passager princess’ and let life show you how good it could be. Allow life to take control and bring your heart’s desires to life, because if you knew how to they wouldn’t lay dormant in your mind and heart they would be your reality. Accept that it’s okay not to know how to bring your dreams to life, it’s not your job that is life’s job. Your job is to take the inner guided action, be fearless and confident that life is driving (in control) and you just have to get in (trust and take action).

---

the meal.

I circle back home to my discoveries, which start in the kitchen and end with a meal. In the kitchen, I flow freely in my creativity and when I am in a rhythm of flow the meal reflects this through the richness in flavor and warmth within, the satisfaction of being full.

In my search, well journey home, I see that my writings are home to my discoveries. I started rewriting my story when I started writing my book. I am writing my blueprint as I go. I am Jesus as a human, following instructions from God with blind faith, to free my people, Black people, but not just from other people from their conditioned minds and beliefs pushed by those other people. I do not have to sacrifice myself but I did sacrifice my normal life to walk this path of life. However, through my eyes, I never sacrificed anything because the reward makes this experience feel more like a return on my investment. The investment was broadcasting my raw and vulnerable moments, but my return is my wildest dream being fulfilled for the world to witness.

I did not ask for this life but now I see why I was assigned to this life. Not many are willing to give up their comfortable life to journey into the unknown in today’s society. I believe that is why the beginning of my life was never rooted in comfort to teach me how to make myself comfortable in uncomfortable environments. My journey serves as great entertainment for some and inspiration for others. Either way, I just entered the part of my story where I start to receive the return on my investment. I just pivoted into my fulfillment era which means I completed my assignment, and now that I found freedom living in contentment is the next journey!

these photos serve as timestamps for some of my most memorable pivots throughout this journey.

---

more of my writings and other ways to support my journey.

My book, Un-Trap Da Hood, is now available on Amazon or support me directly by ordering an author-signed copy on my website which truly means the world to me that I’ve sold over 40 copies of my book and it just published in May!

As much as I got coffee at home, I do enjoy spending my morning at a cute coffee shop writing, so if you would like to buy me an iced matcha latte with oat milk and vanilla that would be a nice reward.

…and as always each like, comment, and share serves as little rounds of applause for me showing up once again, and here are a few of those moments throughout my jounrey so far.