i used to have a reoccurring dream when i was a kid where i would let out a deafening scream at some unknown terror and no sound would come out. it used to scare the shit out of me. i used to have night terrors up until the age of 5 as well. i don’t know why some people are more prone to horrid dreams than others. i really don’t care to google it either right now to be honest. as i’ve gotten older, i've come to have more of a passing curiosity and fascination to my nightmares as they occur. i can’t really explain it but in the rare occasion now that i do have some sort of “bad” dream, i can find myself within the dream itself being able to switch from first person to third person throughout. and when i happen to switch into third person i feel this sense of awareness that comforts me, but i don’t use that comfort to try and redirect whatever is supposed to happen within the nightmare itself. or force myself to wake up. i like to let them play out. it’s more rare now that they do occur, but when they do, and i wake up, i immediately start writing down as much as i can remember. writing it down really grounds me and excites me at the same time. it feels like i’m this half awake researcher or something that’s studying my own psyche. i don’t believe dreams are any more than your subconscious expunging whatever it is you’ve been harboring for some amount of time. they still fascinate me nevertheless. i used to really be into trying to find the “meaning” behind my dreams. i now think it’s largely misleading and contrarian to my beliefs. except the one where i’m screaming as a child with no sound coming out. certain stills from those dreams have stuck with me as i’ve gotten older. i haven’t had those dreams in a while, but i cannot help but to feel so intertwined with what i believe to be the reasoning for them and their past reoccurrences that live with me to this day. i honest to god believe it represents my childhood upbringing and the reality of feeling like i was/am never truly being heard. my opinion was never truly taken in by those i wanted to share it with. so i resorted to not saying much if not requested. i don’t mean that to be a dig against anyone specifically as i don’t place the culprit of this truth to any one person exclusively, but rather just the reality of the cards that were dealt to me growing up and the instability of my household. everyone’s got their hand. this is probably the genesis as to why i am more wordy when i write and when i talk in certain environments. in those environments around certain people, and when i write, i feel like i have more freedom to go on tangents that are unnecessary, to vomit out more words than needed, to misuse words at times, and to change up the flow sometimes even within every sentence because there isn’t anyone to stop me from doing so otherwise. that makes me feel heard. like right there, i probably could’ve ended that sentence at “stop me” but in the moment i wanted to end it with “otherwise.” completely unnecessary but it felt good to let out. sometimes when i write i feel like i’m making up for lost words that were blockaded by years of never being taken seriously in conversation. wanting to help but to be told i was too young to know what i was talking about, being corrected by particular family members extended and otherwise that i talked to loud, talked to fast, i needed to think more before i spoke, “why do you use big words?” because of my family’s separations and moves, i feel like i had to grow up faster than usual. i really want to feel like i’m my age and not older but every time i do it feels clunky. the hidden fear now stems from feeling like i won’t be able to say everything i need to say before the people in front of me lose interest. so now i either don’t open up at all, or speak super fast so at least i can have the peace of mind that i got whatever it is that i wanted to say out. oftentimes i’m met with “bro say that again.” it kills me. i already don’t like how my voice sounds through years of being reprimanded that i didn’t sound masculine enough. my voice used to change sometimes throughout the day in high school without me being fully conscious of it and my friends used to point it out. kinda like tyrese haliburton. all of this is probably why i don’t say much in new situations until i feel truly comfortable in my surroundings. sometimes that can take months. i still don’t feel fully open at my restaurant job and it’s been 6 months almost. i feel like a shell of myself out here. i don’t like it at all. i just want to crack one irreverent joke to give my coworkers a taste that there is a whole different authentic human being inside. i have a deep rooted insecurity with talking in unfamiliar places within a group of people i don’t really know. it robs me of something to say. people think i’m so nonchalant and mysterious but in reality i’m just ready to get the fuck out of there. i’ve gotten pretty good at faking it to a point. i need to be better. this is probably a covert reason as to why i’m really doing what i’m doing right now in the city. to be heard. perhaps a delusion but a desire i need to get out. to explore that insecurity through a creative lens that invigorates me and fills me with confidence. work i can be proud of. shit’s challenging. but i don’t have these restrictions when i write. i can communicate unabashedly as myself when i’m on here. no fear of my voice changing, no cop out jit talk, no me not knowing what to say, no fear of saying the wrong thing, no yelling without sound.

this month really revealed a lot of beautiful moments and reminders of how fast i’m growing up. primarily through seeing where some of the closest people in my life are at right now. my best friend might have found the love of his life, my brother is moving forward with medical school, my mother and stepfather just got their dream car, i’m rekindling a relationship with my father and doing what i’m doing here. i always get reminded of how fast time flies. this year more than usual. these moments more than usual. just when i think that the previous year and what that has brought me could have been the fastest, the subsequent year comes in and sets the new record. it’s beautiful and terrifying at the same time. second guessing where i am in life in these times becomes more of a temptation for me. soft restarting things becomes more of a temptation for me. i won’t get into this again. i daydream a lot of when i’ll return to a state of homeostasis with joy in my life. i feel like that longing reverberates through how i move on an every day basis. i know this is a trap mindset, but for the life of me i do not know how to shake it. there are seasons for everything but this season has overextended its stay. time is flying and i fear of being swept up with nothing to show for it. i want to practice what i preach more. i want to love and be loved. i want to do work that i can be proud of. i want to be content with materialism. i want to be the best father i can be one day. i don’t want to roll a rock up a hill for much longer.

on a whim i started to read calvin & hobbes again. i used to read a ton of it when i was a kid and i’m now reminded of how formative it was for me growing up, and how much joy i used to get from reading it. i always resonated with calvin. i saw myself a ton in him. stubborn, absurdly annoying, often preoccupied in escapism with whatever fantasy he could conjure up in his environment, then over-intellectualizing said fantasy in only a way a kid can. i looked just like him too when i was his age. i was a cute kid. still am. bill watterson was a really intuitive writer. you felt it in the pages. for example, as you’re reading he would often do this thing where you would be in the thick of calvin’s imaginative situation, and just as you were the most deeply invested watterson would break the flow for a square just so calvin’s mother could say something monotonous to him off in the background like “lunch’s ready” or something. and in that blip hobbes would return back to a plush animal form, the environment would return to resemble reality, and calvin would be momentarily taken out of his fantasy, again, just for a single square. and before you could really understand what that was all about, you were thrusted right back into whatever calvin and hobbes were up to in calvin’s imagination in the next square. like you never missed a beat. i loved reading those moments. they were like basic intuition exercises for kids. reading comics again has given me a ton of self-permission to tap into my inner child more. so much love i have for them. watterson whether conscious of it or not really knew how to step into the life of a busy minded child trying to make sense of the world. he was a g as well for never agreeing to license his work for commercial usage outside of literary publication. he turned down an estimated 500 million i believe for a quiet life in ohio. purely for the art. baller. tell lil b i said what’s good.

— jacob