Obligatory New Year’s Post

Happy New Year, everyone!

How was your first day of 2021? I didn’t bother staying awake until midnight or past that since I had to work early this morning. It’s not necessarily my thing. Wow, this makes me sound old.

2021 is still up in the air with the calendar and all. I don’t have any clear resolutions yet. I would like to do some creative things related to Ospreyshire (the spoken word project) as well as my other creative endeavors. Videography was very fun last year, so that could be something I could try. Weirdly enough, most of my specific goals involve watching and reviewing films on my other blog. I’ve been watching some interesting things including from countries where I didn’t know had their own cinema scenes. Posting poetry is something I want to do more often on this blog.

While I do have some hopes, I have to be honest with you that I have lingering depression and there was a time earlier today where I felt like I was hopeless while thinking this year is going to be miserable, but I’m not sure. Positivity can be foreign at times for me and this has been a thing even before 2020 happened.

I hope you have a blessed new year nonetheless.

As 2020 comes to a close…

This has been such a tumultuous year, but I’m not the first or last to say so.

We know about the things that happened this year with COVID-19, the racial tensions, the political circus in America, the tanking economy, so on and so forth.

There were some ambivalent things that happened.

Let me get some of the bad stuff out there first:

-I struggled with moments of depression, internalized anger, and even paranoia.
-I felt like things were hopeless after lockdown happened.
-I had to rethink so many plans due to COVID. So many Zoom meetings and phone calls happened to talk to family, friends, and even co-workers.

Now for some good things:

-I recorded my first split record.
-Getting back into doing videos of different kinds was amazing.
-I did a lot of reading and doing my best to learn some new skills.

There were so many takeaways to learn in this bizarre, yet tense times. COVID and everything else isn’t going to magically disappear once 2021 rolls around. I’m sure we can all agree with that. I do hope things can improve in some way, shape, or form, but I know this won’t be instantaneous.

There was one thing that I’ve been thinking about when it came to Ospreyshire the blogger as well as Ospreyshire the spoken word artist. Yes, I’m a man of multiple disciplines with poetry, spoken word, videography, film reviews, fiction, and music. As far as the Ospreyshire Realm is concerned (as in the blog you’re looking at right now), I feel as though there’s an identity crisis. My other blogs where I review films, documentaries, and anime as well as my fiction blog at least have clearly defined purposes. There are times where I ask myself “What is Ospreyshire in terms of this blog?”. Look, I attract bloggers of all races, nations, interests, hobbies, and content which is really cool. While blogging has allowed me to be outspoken when I’ve internalized so many things for most of my life (saying nothing about how I’m naturally introverted who pretends to have extrovert tendencies in my offline life, but that’s another story), I feel as though things are inconsistent from a content standpoint. I will still post poetry, audio projects when I do recording, or the occasional cross-promotion to friends or creators I like which is a given. The thing is I really have to rethink about how I do new projects especially with the growing irrelevance in music consumption (not that I expected to go platinum or even gold) as well as making a more clearly defined identity on this blog. Apologies for sounding like I’m thinking about what others may or may not be thinking about me since I used to have a really bad habit of caring too much of what others think, but I want to make sure people who read this blog have some more consistency in content. This doesn’t mean I’m going to abandon my art or some of my opinion pieces because I have a few in mind that have to be said like some sequels to some of my personal posts in the past for example. Stay tuned on that.

Anyways, I hope you all had a blessed holiday season and that you have a Happy New Year!

Here’s to 2021! [clinks with my glass of sparkling grape juice]

10K+ Views Pt. II: Q&A Answers

Here’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. I get to answer the questions I got last week for my 10K+ view milestone!

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“What was going through your mind when you wrote all those 455 posts? I mean did you ever run out of ideas or did you always had a topic in your mind(if yes you did run out of ideas, what did you do to bring yourself back up)?”

from Eggsandwich04

Well, I certainly have more than 455 posts at this point in time now. Haha! Okay, in all seriousness, my mind has been at different points when I made certain posts. I mainly focused on the Ospreyshire project for my spoken word stuff with the poems, recordings, and videos. I expanded to talking about news events and my opinions about different things. I ranged from sad, angry, serious, and occasionally comedic if the time calls for it. However, I think most of my poetry tends to lead towards sad or angry in hindsight.

I can’t say I’ve ran out of ideas since new ones pop up. Some of them will affect this blog since I still have more things to do with what Ospreyshire was made for.

“Who would say is or makes your blog audience?”

from Khaya Ronkainen

That’s a question that I legitimately thought about. I guess the people who I know mostly view and comment on my posts are usually other poets, some bloggers that cover serious issues, and anibloggers given my prowess in multiple blogs. Funny how I have that kind of crossover appeal with different types of bloggers.

“Do you have any favorite poets or collections of poetry?”

from Eggheadluna

Some of my favorite poets include Langston Hughes, Buddy Wakefield, The Last Poets, and so much more.

“Do you think you’ll still be blogging in five years and if so, care to guess how many views you’ll reach by then?”

from Lynn Sheridan

I believe I’ll still be blogging in the next 5 years. I don’t know if I’d be working on multiple blogs at once, but I could see myself managing at least one of them that far in the future. If I were to gauge how many views I could get then, I’d say 20-30K by then. It took 4 years to get 10K here, so I don’t know.

“What do you think is the best story you’ve written?”

from Scott of Mechanical Anime Reviews

Hooray! I’m glad there are people who know about my fiction/author exploits! That is a really tough question. Hollandus Landing was a very important book for me since it was the first time I showed off my cell phone novel projects let alone a full story to everyone as I serialized it live back in 2017. Another important story I wrote would have to be in the Revezia series like Praxis of the Disenchanted or the Electrum Trilogy. By the way, you can get Hollandus Landing for free or donation!

“It seems that you still have some hangups about yourself as it pertains to anger about self-worth based on what others have done to your self-esteem, so having said that, has this blog done more to aid you in self reflection and instilled in you a true sense of self worth or are you letting others get into your head and instill their thoughts, their prejudices, their biases as it pertains to you being bi-racial?”

from Shelby Courtland

Yeah, I still struggle with these issues, but I do appreciate you checking up on me. It definitely shows with some of my poems and some of the news stories that touched a nerve with me whether it’s racial issues or when I did that infamous rant against a certain movie last year. One of my weaknesses is that I can care too much about what others think of me. It’s NOWHERE near as bad as when I was younger, but it still slips in from time to time.

This blog has certainly helped with self-reflection and catharsis. I am slowly rebuilding that self-worth that was diminished after dealing with bullies and people getting away with their abusive behaviors even when I would call them out. There are times where I wished I was more aware about subtle forms of derogation like projection, dog whistles, or low-key insults when I was much younger (I guess taking a psych class might have helped for some of that in hindsight). Speaking as someone who is biracial, I did get my wake-up call years ago about how those who are mixed tend to be treated whether they have a white parent or not. Knowing about that reality certainly allowed me to do my own research about things I wasn’t taught (various historical events mainly like Black Wall Street being a major one for me then). At the same time, I’ve had a bad habit of having to prove my humanity, competency, and authenticity to anyone regardless of my ethnic background whether online or offline. I’m not singling anyone out because I’ve sadly had that mindset with anyone I communicate with. Getting rid of these prejudices, biases, or even assumptions out of my head has been quite the task. Hopefully, this answers your question.

“If you could witness the writing of a poetry collection (or novel), whose would it be, and why?”

from Ashley Capes

If I had to witness the creation of such books, I would’ve liked to have been there to have seen the process of the Circle trilogy from Ted Dekker (I read all the books years ago) or if I were to cheat with manga, I’d say Hikaru no Go. Wow, I sound like such a stan with the second example.

Thank you so much for your questions. I still have something else planned for this milestone!

An Avalanche of Creativity

This has been an eventful month for me to say the least.

In addition to my normal work life outside of blogging, I’ve been on the grind in regards to creating things. I just finished my Katauta 52 Project last Wednesday which was an accomplishment, been working hard at publishing some of my fiction projects, and I’ve been in talks with some people for some cool projects (stay tuned).

While it’s been fun creating things like music, literature, reviewing and other things, I do admit that I have gotten overwhelmed at times. Part of it is a huge drive with me trying to accomplish as many goals as possible this. Another aspect is me trying to find time whenever I can to make content here, my blogs, and other avenues. I just hope I can do everything that I can while getting enough sleep. Granted, two of my other blogs are on hiatus until some of that content will be on full display.

Have you ever felt this way before? I just don’t want to overwork myself.

Katauta #41

I got to use one of my Christmas presents for this Katauta.

It’s the first one of the new year, so I might as well write a poem about it.

However, I prefer goals over resolutions.