This is my home town. Initially, we lived in the inner city, but by the time I was either 2 or 3, we moved out into a suburban area. What is interesting is that where we initially lived was a block or two away from where one of my best friends (Charlene) grew up too-- who knew. Anyhow, both myself and my sister were born here, as was my mom. When we moved to New York, it wasn't easy at all, especially being a child because you don't understand everything happening. All you know is what is in front of you-- in my case it was that I was moving away from my school, my friends, and my family, and going to some place else. Like most kids, and some adults, I remember telling my 1st Grade classmates that we were moving to New York, and everyone immediately thought of New York City-- even I thought that's where we were going to. And the only thing we knew about New York City was the theatrical play Cats because they use to have advertisements for it on television even down in Columbus. So everyone, including me, thought I was going to see Cats! Then I found out we were going to Buffalo, but of course, being a child, a little thing such as distance was not fully comprehended so, I figured Buffalo was close to New York City. Only thing I knew for certain was that Buffalo was away from the family I had grown to know and love, and that I had no family waiting for us in Buffalo.
We did not immediately move to Buffalo, and in fact, we did not move into the city of Buffalo itself, but the southtowns aka suburbs because it was closer to my dad's job. When we first moved to New York, we lived in Ellicotville. Anyone familiar with Buffalo, and particularly skiing, is familiar with this area to some extent. It’s all mountainous region. Kind of like those small towns a lot of Stephen King novels take place in. I can't say I remember much. I do remember that we lived in at least 2 places in the course of the 6-8 months we were there. The first one was a condo of sorts. Me and my sister had to share a fold out bed that was connected to the wall. I remember the place being nice, but it was Ellicotville. You have to remember, I have always been one who likes to be around a lot of activity, and it’s only been in recent years that I have learned to appreciate having a balance between a busy and non-busy setting. So Ellicotville was, well, boring.
The second place was some spot that was right up against a mountain ridge. It only had 2-3 spaces available for rental. It was brown, next door to a ski shop that was closed (b/c it was the off season). The only other place I remember is this laundry mat we use to go to, and this huge dog they had. He was a very friendly dog. I loved dogs. We had one in Columbus-- 2 actually-- named Snowball. The first one was a she, and she passed away. We got another dog, this one a male, and upon one of our longer trips to New York before moving, he thought we had left him, and he ran away and never came back. Use to look for him out the window all the time but he never returned. Then we had a third dog, a collie dog (the other 2 were german sheperds) named Jim, that we had gotten from my grandmother from GA (my dad's mom). He was with us until we moved, and then my family said we couldn't take him because of the condos (they didn't allow dogs), so we gave him to my grandma, which is where he stayed until he passed away. So seeing the dog there at the laundry mat felt good, he was my replacement for my other dogs. My mom didn't like him too much because she was always scared he would hurt me because he literally would jump on you and this dog, when on his hind legs, was way taller than I was.
Went to second grade there for half a year. Don't recall much from that experience. I just remember being happy to leave the area, just felt too lonely and boring for a child like myself. I wanted a neighborhood, family and friends again if possible. I wanted to move back to Ohio, which at the time was a possibility-- supposedly-- because I was told we were only going to live in New York no more than 2-3 years, and the goal was to return to Columbus or some place near.
We moved into the suburbs halfway into my second grade school year. The area was Orchard Park. The school, initially, was Armor. But at the end of the year, my parents put me in a private school-- St. Bernadettes, where I would remain upon graduation from middle school. The neighborhood I lived in, I had fond memories of. No family here, but lots of friends. At the time, race for me wasn't an issue. I was a child so I didn't see any of that. Turned out my parents saw something different though. Not by all of our neighbors, but enough, enough for my mom to worry about me and my sister's well being in the neighborhood, but fortunately, nothing happened to us. I would not fully understand where she was coming from with that until after living in New York City and feeling very uncomfortable just walking around in the neighborhood that I grew up in (for example, I went running one morning with my mom a couple years before they moved out of the neighborhood, and a cop car just 'miraculously' went driving down the street at 7am and could not even acknowledge my presence). But as a kid, that wasn't an issue for me. There was Dan Cross (who was my best friend for a couple years when we first moved there), his younger brother Johanthan, Evan, Mike Bennetto, Matt Malloy, Jordan, Kevin and his brother Timmy, another guy named Matt, Tammy, Chris and Nick, Anthony, Dave, Tom (in later years)-- there was a squad of us. We were all different ages, but the name of the game was the same. There were others eventually too that either we knew but didn't hang out with, but went to school with like Krissy and Mike Penfold, Justin, Amanda, Dan's sister (who was actually my age but we never hung like that)-- and of course the older kids like Jordan's older brother (who we all looked up to), and a slew of others whose names I cannot remember right now but I can see their faces. But the group I hung with, we were all about games. We had a park that was right behind us. Dodgeball, freeze ball, freeze tag, water gun wars, water balloon wars, baseball, basketball, football, volleyball, videogames (Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and Genesis were the systems of those times). The more videogames you had, the more popular you were because everyone want to play them. Borrowing videogames-- I mean, it was a typical childhoood when I think about it. As we got older, we all went our own separate ways naturally. Some people moved, other people still live in the neighborhood, or just their families do. Me-- I couldn't wait to leave. And it wasn't because of the neighborhood-- actually it was. I wanted to be around my family again. I also wanted to be around more activity. So my interest in going to Canisius High School was very much bent in that because it was based in the city of Buffalo. I knew that was more than likely the only way I could get into the city regularly, along with being around more people of my race (b/c in my neighborhood, we were the only ones of our color-- which wasn't bad, but as I got older, it did start to mean something and there were things I felt I was missing out on as a result). Wanted to move back to Columbus all the way up until 8th grade when we went on that infamous class trip to New York City-- then all of that changed. Yet, it was ultimately in the cards for me to move back to Columbus for college.
Undergrad. It was not what I was told it was going to be, lol. I think back to undergrad, and much like high school, it was a time where I can say I appreciated it for the lessons learned more than anything else. I had fun, don’t get me wrong, and it actually ended up being better than I thought it would, but, at the same time, it wasn't all that I thought it would be either. Before going to OSU, I was more bent on going to school in NYC, by that time. I wanted to pursue film, but it didn't happen. I chose OSU because it got me away from Buffalo, and financially (in terms of loans) it was more affordable. The family factor didn't matter anymore. I had lived away from my family for 11 years by then, so I was use to the distance, and was more interested in my career pursuits by that time. My mom is an alumni of OSU, and she always missed her home town. She told me how much fun OSU was going to be. How I would find a lot of people of similar mentality as myself there, of good/friendly nature,that I would really come into my own there. So I walked in with that mental-- thinking people would say hello if you said hi to them back. Was also looking for a girlfriend too because mind you, I was told that's how it works: you meet your soulmate in college and graduate and you two get married, etc-- the same story a lot of people are told that come from similar backgrounds as I (I call it the small town mentality-- and I say that because in places like nyc, most people don't seem to have that same upbringing in terms of lessons from my experience). Well I went there expecting this stuff-- I was open. And boy did life give me a reality check. Folks were as cold as they were up north. Say hi to people, they would act like they didn't see you, the games the girl played were just as prevalent, even worse-- if you weren't flossing money, an athlete, acting a fool to get attention, overly popular, or a frat member, you could forget it-- especially if you were a freshman. Then they had the big brother program at the school-- tried that too. The guy assigned to me called once. We spoke for like 5 minutes-- never heard from him again. Family wise-- in terms of my cousins-- same ordeal. Called them up when I first got into town to tell them I lived there now. The response-- great, we definitely need to get up, we'll holla at you and we can do something. Did that call ever come-- no. Definitely not what I was expecting. Most of my friends were up north-- in Buffalo or New York City (from AMS), so I spent a lot of my time talking to them on the phone seeing how things were going for them my first year there. My roommates though-- we were cool. They were both brothers- one older and the other younger. The older brother, Jason Mangen-- a computer wizard. Brad-- a management wizard. Brad, though we've lost touch in the past year or so, definitely one of my closest friends. Jason got married by December, and ultimately left the college before the 2nd quarter started. Brad finished out the year but didn't come back afterwards. Then the music-- they were into that southern rap stuff. I was strictly east coast at that time. I couldn't stand it. No Limit this, No Limit that-- I was like this stuff was horrible!! Then there were the classes. There was no film major-- or minor-- which upset me a lot. I was going for Computer Science IT, and I hated it because that's all I was majoring in, mainly because that's what my parents said I had to do, really, there was nothing else that I knew of at the time. It didn't help either that the course set up was not based in programming at all, but mostly theory and ideology-- they expected you to know programming before even walking into the class (I only knew extremely basic c++ from HS at the time). So it was extremely difficult.
Now I speak all the stuff I did above because that would set the tone for what would happen over the course of the next 3 years because things got better- a whole lot better. Life turned around after one event-- the NSBE nationals. I don't know if it was that event itself or just the timing. The weather was getting warmer by then (March), Block Party was coming up, I would meet my best friends throughout most of college years (one even afterwards) and officially have a click I rolled with throughout Columbus, discovered the Neon and learned how to truly appreciate southern rap, talked to a lot of females (became a habit of collecting numbers at parties and clubs)-- and was learning video and writing classes along with the computer courses I was taking. Was very active with NSBE by then, knew a nice amount of people on campus-- yeah it was cool. By the time Freshman year ended, whatever complaints I had were gone, and I didn't want it to end. It wouldn't be until part of my junior year after I got into a horrible relationship, and saw the true colors of some of the so called friends I had over those years that I would find myself just ready to leave OSU. And it wasn't so much the school itself, by then it was just the people. Kept finding myself in these situations where there was no benefit in allowing a situation to stay in gray territory-- had to choose sides. And usually, choosing sides kept causing me to cut more and more people off until by senior year, I went from having what I called 10 true friends that were borderline like, or really were, family, to 1, and even we by the time I left for nyc, had a time period where our friendship strayed. Some of those particular people I still speak to, others I don't, other relationships came back around and are more solid than they were before because we all had to do our own growing up individually to get to where we are now. But whatever the case, I guess you can say college was bittersweet-- makes me smile a lot when thinking about it, makes me have regrets or sad in other ways as well.
But outside of the lessons of college was the lessons of family. It was because of this time period that I really got to know my Uncle Howard, my Aunt Mildred, a slew of cousins, and of course, my grandparents. If there's anything I wouldn't change about that time period, it was getting to know all of them. This is also when I and my Aunt Iris became very close- and I learned about how much family I actually had in nyc.
So in college, a lot of the educational foundations I still use to this day were established. Some very good friendships were established here too. It was also because of this time that my family became a much more integral part of my life, but I also learned a very important lesson about people in general too-- which was time was the best determination of a individual's true intentions and character. I also learned about the difference b/w myself and a lot of others in terms of their mindsets and my own. Most of my friends were not concerned about their future post college until senior year hit, while I was planning mine out before I started freshman year, and working towards it. I didn't see how that was a big deal until my senior year, but at the end of the day, it really does have an impact. My dreams of going out all night (well as late as possible b/c 2am was when everything shut down in Columbus then) were a regular thing. Freshman year-- senior, heck even when I didn't have a car, I found my way to all the parties I wanted to hit, even if it meant, taking the bus! The family thing though-- getting to know and see my grandparents in action was something-- they became human to me rather than just patriarchs in my family tree. And even with that said, all of the adults of my life became human, including my parents. Some of us, many of us are trained, or as kids, look at our elders (parents, etc) as flawless, and any chip to that, we often disregard because we just can't believe/accept it. During that time period, I learned about the many flaws that years before either I was still growing to accept, or did not know about, that they had which came with being human beings, which in many ways made it easier for me to relate to them. Seeing my grandma and Aunt Mildred fight like teenagers always made me smile. And grandpa brag to me about his days on the road and all the females he had-- even before he passed, he would tell me about how this and that nurse was hitting on him, but that he didn't want to mess with them because he was too old for that now. Me and my Uncle Howard just chatting away-- tried to take me to his favorite club/bar a couple times, but I wasn't old enough-- had to be 25 to get in. Seriously-- yea, some good memories. My lessons from that time period came more out of the classroom than inside.
I finally made it-- the apartment, Cingular Wireless, and a Taste of Seafood were my first stops. I came to nyc with 3 bags to my name over stuffed with clothes, books, and one case of cds-- and my gameboy. The rest of my stuff was in Buffalo in the basement. The move was bittersweet. It’s too much to get into, but lets just say for most of the year, I didn't think I was going to go to grad school despite my efforts and aspirations, and grades. Then in less than 2 months before grad school would begin for me, a computer error at Brooklyn College's Admin would prompt a letter that was sent to me and set off a new journey that led me to having to prepare to leave Columbus in less than 4 weeks to move all of my stuff to Buffalo and then off to nyc a couple weeks later. I moved in with my Uncle Russell who lives in Harlem. I had packed a few boxes that after I had settled that I had asked my family to mail to me that contained additional things of mine. Brooklyn College, by train, was a 1 hour trip one way each day-- but I didn't mind. Grad school went fast for me-- I loved every second of it. Every class was fun, and the only upset I had was that I couldn't take more classes. Outside of the classes, there was my additional pursuits into the industry. Character Studies was my first internship. And I continually looked for more-- I read trade papers, attended conferences and seminars-- I wanted to waste no time. In fact, I felt like I had a lot of time to make up for-- 4 years worth to be exact. I knew where I wanted to be by the time I finished-- or at least I thought. What ultimately happened is that what I thought was the epitome of my journey, as I learned more about it, I realized I wanted more than that, so the journey extended itself. Personal life-- I was a nervous wreck. Not because of the city itself, but my nerves were shocked from what I had just gone through before I moved. I was still in shock that I had moved, let alone was in nyc because by the time I had moved, I had accepted I was just meant to stay in Columbus or Buffalo. My uncle got me into salsa lessons-- something that I enjoyed, but to this day have not really practiced, and need to. Friendship wise-- I knew a couple people when I first got here. Sad thing is all of the people I knew prior to moving from AMS, we either fell out of touch over the years, or upon the heads up I was coming to town, folks went hush. And I remember finding that amazing because some of those individuals would contact me whenever they needed an ear and support, but now that I needed their aid, they were suddenly hush. A few of them I wouldn't hear from again until after they learned I finished grad school and was working in the industry, and of course, those people, I never paid any mind to outside of acknowledging their existence, which was more than they did for me (and they know who they are if they're reading this). I had been through enough of that in college, and learned from it, so didn't feel the need to live through it again. But, there were folks like Kim Monroe, and Lisandra Sanchez, my Aunt Juanita and Cousins Brian (aka chump-- I hope he reads this, lol-- chyeah!!), Jeffrey, Keith, Aunt Iris and Uncle Seymour, Uncle Russell (of course), Godmother Carrie and her family-- they all came through, so I ended up being alright. But it took time, a lot of time. And in terms of my career, four people-- George Dessart, Ray Blanco, Richard Willis Jr., and Krystol Cameron-- had the most impact and lessons I learned from them, and continue to in 2 of those cases, and people I met as a result of them, has helped pave the way I'm on to this day. For the first few years though, I felt like I was just playing catch up. In grad school, it was catch up. Then afterwards, while catch up was still felt, survival was the name of the game because of the path I had chosen.
Upon graduation, I had the option of going freelance or going desk (working at a network). I chose freelance first with the goal of learning the freelance industry and then transitioning into a network environment within 4-5 years. I had a number of reason for this. First of all, I wanted to understand production. I remember when I was at All My Children, I told them that when I graduated, I wanted to go into production as a PA to learn the field, and if there were any positions open for that. The response I got was instructions on how their process worked-- ultimately taking a good 4-6 years before being able to be one. And granted, it was union based which makes a difference, and the responsibilities are more in line of an AP versus a PA now that I think about it, but all I remember thinking was, 6 years? I could leave here and get some PA jobs as a freelancer a lot quicker. I wanted to learn as much as possible as fast as possible. The other reason was from the people I spoke to at the different seminars in Ray Blanco's class. Every one of them had spoken of times when they found themselves unemployed at some point in their careers. They were all in great positions when we spoke to them then, but this was in the years prior to. One guy in particular I remember telling us about how he was unemployed for over 6 months before he got another job. All I could think was, I didn't want that to be me. I kept asking myself what could I put in place that would enable me to stay in the field even if I found myself laid off or found myself quitting a job at a major company because of the environment? I couldn't imagine having a family or even being able to raise one and not being able to provide-- even if it was just for me alone. And after all the years of work to get into the field, I couldn't imagine having to venture out of it to survive either-- I didn't want that. Then the last component was value. I've worked a lot of freelancing gigs over the years, and one common thing was that I always had to keep my education quiet. It didn't help and in some cases made things worse, so often I would only speak on having a BA and nothing more-- would even avoid talking about that too if possible. And most of the people I talked to didn't read trades. Most of our convos were about previous gigs, music, girls, and movies- but business talk,very rare. And in many ways, it made sense b/c that type of interest really has no relevance on the level of work that we had to do-- but I knew in a network environment it would matter. At the end of the day it was like this, ok, if I was to go from network to freelance-- would that be seen as a positive in the freelance world-- ultimately adding some value to my credibility? From what I could tell, and from those who had done similar, the answer I came to was no. However, the other way around-- that was something different. The ability to put together a project if you're working at a network, and because of your contacts from freelancing, and ability to navigate in that environment which was much different than the desk environment-- I could see the value in it. And then there was my own family's past. My family moved out of Columbus not by choice, but because of survival. My dad had been laid off from his job, and the job in Springville was the one that we ultimately had to go to as a result. We had to move from our family, friends, our life-- for me, that was too much power for one entity to have over another. And for a good 6 months my dad was looking for work, in the meantime, having to live off of savings and whatever else. That move was significant because it has always made me more bent on being independent than most regardless of the cost. The idea of letting someone have that much control as to if you can eat or how/where you can live I could never fully accept. Times like what we're going through now in 2008 is a primary example of what I mean. All the jobs lost, all the people who's lives are basically gone as they know it because they were reliant on others/entities to determine their well being and have their best interest in mind—it’s scary. All of these things resulted in me deciding to go freelancing first.
That experience has been bittersweet, like most of life. Like everything, there's ups and downs. At times, I feel like a walking contradiction because, I love freelancing, but I also love stability. And those two don't go hand-in-hand in that world, especially in your first few years until your name is known and you get to know some people. But even then, it’s not stable. You can't expect to get a check every 1-2 weeks. Your pay is determined by your own work ethic. It’s not like a desk job where if you don't feel like working one day, you can just sit at the desk and bs around, but still be comforted in the reality that there will be a check waiting for you at week's end. In freelancing, if you don't get on your grind and make the calls and put effort to assure you have worked lined up, then you can forget about a check ever coming. Plus, the checks come when they come. Might take a week-- might take a month, maybe longer. And in that mean time, you better have something to live off of until it does. The benefits, you make your own schedule. You could work for a couple days and take a couple weeks off-- or however you like. That's what I love about it most, the flexibility. I enjoy working with new and different people on various jobs-- keeps things unpredictable and exciting. But again-- some jobs are better than others, and sometimes consistency is good. When I first started to transition out of doing freelancing primarily last year, I missed it a lot. Still do, however, I'm doing it still on the side now.
Two years back, I did start to transition out of freelancing unexpectedly. I got an offer from Krystol Cameron, initially starting off as freelancing, then transitioning into something solid, to help with the development of his internet distribution based television network. It was grounded in the new technologies that I had been reading about all of these years in the trades, and seemed like a proper transition. It combined, the computer science, writing, production, and business skills I had learned until that point. Until April 2008, that is all that I worked on-- day and night. Loved it. Got my first apartment out in Jersey. It was in Jersey City. Was close enough to nyc to go in/out as wanted, but the neighborhood itself was more like my neighborhood back in Buffalo-- trees, a skyline, backyard. Even a nearby park. It was peaceful, spacious-- my family liked it a lot when they came to visit.
Then life changed again. The network had to weed out some internal staff issues, and around the same time, the economy became what it is now, causing for a lot of the work we were doing, and money coming in, to freeze. The final result forced me to have to move out my apartment (which I still miss) at the end of the lease, move back to Harlem, and go back into freelancing as a primary source of income. Also had to learn in the last year how different applying for network positions are when compared to freelancing positions-- had to learn the hard way. Been a long time since I even had to deal with that, so it’s like starting from scratch. In the last two years, I found out how much I enjoyed, and was ready, for the other side of the game. If it had not been for the opportunity from Simply ME TV, I would still be solely focused on freelancing, would have completely forgotten about the original plan.
Aside from that, I've been focusing on keeping my mom's tutoring service alive, Brooks Learning Center, as well as a couple other business ventures that are more geared around the entertainment industry which I'm not ready to speak on. I found it important to keep my mom's business going because it was her life's work. I see a lot of potential in it, but I also know that is not where my path is meant to be on-- as you see, mine has been about the entertainment industry since before I realized it.
You look back and it’s something-- goals that I wanted to hit-- the big ones like moving to nyc, getting into entertainment, being self employed, attaining background in writing, technology, and production-- ended up getting all of that. Even got an executive title (with executive work to go along with it) for a couple years as well. Even somehow stayed on track with the freelance to network job transition as well. This economy situation in 2008 has me leaning more on my business venture knowledge than I ever have, and 2009 could prove to be very interesting if I am able to implement what I'm setting up. But who knows, because at this point, I wont even try to predict the future. I have no clue what to expect in another few months, probably one of the most unpredictable times in my life so far, but hey, you adapt-- that's how it works.