High Rise Apartment With High Rise Thoughts

It’s quite surreal this view that I look out on every morning in my new high-rise apartment. I see almost the entire northern side of western Manhattan. It really is quite something! I feel so blessed and highly favored every time I wake up to this gorgeous view.

Because I have a water moon, I have a tendency to get quite nostalgic. When I look out at my view, I’m flooded with memories and moments. Every street corner has a story or a past. I’ve surprisingly spent quite a bit of time in Hell’s Kitchen! Most of the memories seem long ago, while other memories feel like yesterday. It’s funny how perception and time warp depending on where we’re at in our lives. The moments that affect me most feel like yesterday, while the moments that don't affect me feel like many lifetimes ago.

I see the apartment of my best friend from college, Melissa, whom I go on weekly walks through Central Park with. I'm seeing her later today to do one more lap around Central Park together. She’s currently 9 months pregnant with her first child so life is going to change rather soon so I've got to absorb as much time as I possibly can! I'm looking forward to being a Guncle and visiting them in Pennsylvania when they move next month!

I can also see the old apartment of ex #2 who used to live in Hell’s Kitchen on 55th and 9th. That truly feels like several lifetimes ago but was really only 5 years prior. He was in town recently and we caught up for cocktails at Meme’s Mediterranean a couple blocks from my new place. That was the last time I drank actually and I had 2 cocktails.

It was fun and it felt like two old pals hanging out. Since our breakup he left his job and started his own start-up app. This was something I encouraged him to do our entire time together because I knew he was brilliant, I believed in him, and I envisioned him being really effective at running his own business. The skill-set was already there, he just needed the confidence. And here we are now, 6 years later, his business is thriving! I was shocked to hear the figures of monthly earnings. His dream was to create a passive income for himself and he's well on his way.

My dream 6 years ago when we were together was to build a hotel with my family. We did that as well and he was very supportive throughout, even setting up meetings with his best friend who was an architect. We went through our blueprint and his friend offered amazing advice on how to use our upstairs corner space.

We spoke these dreams into reality and while it didn't work out together as a couple, there's something significant about our time together that birthed the inception of these two businesses. I think that being part of a couple is believing in one another's dreams but only if you can realistically see that dream becoming a reality. The skill-set must be there. If the skill-set is there and I can see it, then I'm sold. If the skill-set is lacking, I'll offer a thought on what areas can be improved in order to maximize the potential to succeed. Every partnership should, within realistic reason and accurate observation, encourage the process of dreaming. Dreams are for free and the imagination can be a powerful tool for envisioning the life you want for yourself. Who knows? It might just happen ;)

A couple blocks north and one avenue west is another street corner of significance: 57th and 10th. This is where ex #4 would pick me up after swim practice while I was preparing for the Tokyo Olympics. That was a really special time of my life and feels like only yesterday. I really loved the way he drove his luxury vehicle with such precision and confidence up and down the west side highway.

Beyond this I see the George Washington Bridge, which I used to cross over everyday to go to practice at NYAC while preparing for Tokyo. I can’t see my former suburb of Fort Lee because there are buildings in the way. However, I can see the top of The Modern Tower that is a part of downtown Fort Lee. The Modern Tower are these 2 high-rise buildings next to each other with neon blue lighting around the top of each tower. This building is also another location of significance for me.

When I was living in Bergen County I used to stare at The Modern building all the time. I wasn’t making a lot of money at the time being a Starbucks Barista and all, so to save money on groceries I’d walk a mile to the bus stop and catch the bus to the Edgewater Trader Joe’s. As I’d pass through downtown Fort Lee I’d stare at that building and tell myself that one day we’d be living there. And this is what I’d fantasize about.

I’d dream that my swim lesson business would take off. I’d dream that I could finally leave my job at Starbucks and be doing what I love, which is teaching swimming and helping kids develop confidence in the water. I’d dream that I could afford an Uber to and from my groceries instead of taking the bus! Ha. I guess you could call these my Jersey DreamZ! This was The Jersey DreamZ era.

I would envision myself in the penthouse apartment of The Modern. I envisioned that it'd be south facing so we'd see the entirety of Manhattan's skyline. I envisioned that our south facing wall would host a green wall of sorts. Like a wall with tons of plants and beautiful ferns, palm trees, all luxury plants this, luxury plants that, framing and complimenting the view of the city with greenery. And when I saw myself living there, I didn't see myself living there alone...

Looking back, I remember there were some really rough days. The rough days were always the long ones. These were the types of days where I’d wake up at 5am to do an 8hr shift at Starbucks, followed by a commute into the city to do 2.5 hours of weight workouts and swim practice. Some days I'd finish with a private swim lesson, and after teaching I’d be shattered. Absolutely exhausted. Dozing in and out of sleep on both the subway train and bus ride home.

When I’d be on the bus heading towards Fort Lee, eyes tired, I’d stare at The Modern Tower. Then I’d close my eyes and imagine myself being in the penthouse of The Modern Tower. I wanted that south facing apartment. I wanted that green wall. I visualized myself living there, brewing a cup of coffee and getting ready for the day.

Then the bus would stop at the G.W.B. in Fort Lee and I’d always wish my body could somehow find a way to walk itself back home. Sometimes I'd get picked up at the bus stop and that was really nice. He'd roll in like a knight in shining Volvo and his handsome face always made me smile.

It was hard but hey, this was the path I chose. This is what I wanted to do. No point in complaining about it. I was building the life we wanted and it was going to take a lot of hard work to get there but I've never been afraid of hard work. Working hard is something I want associated with my name. I want that associated with me and my brand. I want kids to know that if I'm on the pool-deck coaching them, I'm working hard for them, and I can only hope in turn they feel inspired to work hard for me in return.

All of this hard work paid off. And now, I’m living in a high-rise apartment, overlooking The Modern Tower I used to stare at! The same tower I'd stare at catching my bus to do the groceries. The same tower I'd stare at catching my bus home after a 15hr long day of non-stop moving. The same tower I drew strength from to motivate myself to step my money game up. How oddly full circle is that? I'm truly blessed and highly favored but I earned it. My Aquarius North Node is full.

My Venus, the planet of love and devotion, is in Aquarius, which is conjunct with my North Node (also in Aquarius). This means doing what I love is only going to bring out the best in me. And the way in which I choose to show love is through service to others.

So I've made a career out of doing what I love and now I don't feel like I have to "work" a day in my life, and it just so happens that this is what's needed from me to have reached my nirvana according to my star chart. Leading a group doesn't come natural to an introvert like me, so it took a long time to get comfortable with the notion of steering the ship, but now that I've learned the skill, I do feel a deep sense of fulfillment in my life with what I currently do. That's what's really powerful about our North Node in our star charts, when we follow it, which is usually something outside of our comfort zone, this is where we'll find the most fulfillment in life.

Leading isn't something that comes natural to me but a skill I had to master in order to experience fulfillment in this life. I am a natural born leader and while it is uncomfortable, it is what I was brought here to do. Because my North Node is Aquarius, my South Node is going to be in direct opposition to the North Node. The South Node are all the skills from our previous life carried forward into this life.

Leo is in direct opposition to Aquarius in the star chart, so in my previous life I was some kind of entertainer or theatrical presence in this world. Leo is the sign of pride and performance. Leo as an astrological sign is also tied to aristocracy and the upper-echelon. If Aquarius is all about leading the masses, the people, and the underclass, Leo in direct opposition to this is all about exclusively, the elite of a select few, and the upper-class. Leo, the lion, is all about pride, honor, regality, and above all: putting on a show!

So my basic skill set from my former life (south node) is rooted in theater and performance. And the skill set I need to master in order to reach fulfillment in this life resides within the star sign of Aquarius. Aquarius is an air sign that's all about leadership and social change. Most revolutionists in history were Aquarius: Galileo the inventor of the telescope? Aquarius. Rosa Parks the civil rights activist? Aquarius. Abraham Lincoln, freer of slaves and writer of the Emancipation Declaration? Aquarius. Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb? Aquarius. All leaders. All innovators, revolutionizing their respective fields.

I don't know if I'm ever going to be that revolutionary in this life, lol. I do know that mastering the art of leadership is going to feed my soul so I'm heading in that direction. Learning and mastering leadership is really uncomfortable for me but in order to grow in this life, I really feel we need to be pushed outside of our comfort zone. When I'm leading and navigating a group, no matter how uncomfortable the experience might feel in the moment, I feel incredibly fulfilled once it's all over.

ANYWAY, all this to say, never underestimate the power of visualization. I dreamed of being in a high-rise and while it isn't south facing and I don't have a green wall yet, I'm well on my way. When you're in a tough spot, and you're thinking of giving up, think about that one thing you're wanting and visualize yourself getting that one thing it is that you want. It's the law of attraction but beyond that it's a quick way of motivating yourself to stay on track to achieve whatever it is your north node is telling you to do.

My Cleanse Is Wreaking Havoc On My Emotions

Ugh. I went another day without writing and I feel bad because this is a 30 day writing challenge. Good news is: readership is up! The website’s getting hits even when I don't post so that makes me feel like people are enjoying the pieces that are going up. I apologize for disappointing you yesterday. While not really a reason, more of an excuse: this cleanse is wreaking havoc on my emotions!

I'm not even a week into it and while working well for my health, the emotions are a little intense. Practitioners say that the mental effects and emotional strain of the cleanse was going to vary depending on how bad the illness is. I knew this was going to be quite bad.. nobody can ever really mentally prepare to deal with some of these emotions. One of the biggest reasons why most people give up this cleanse is because of the emotions associated with it, so practitioners say it’s best to postpone the cleanse until one feels strong enough to go through it.

Physically, I have a pretty high pain threshold. I've always told myself that I'm tougher than most because I'm an Olympian. Perhaps this is a lie bc these emotions are way worse than any physical pain I've ever felt from training. And I really love to push my body to its limits with training, so I like to think I know a ting or two about dealing with toughness because I do tough training everyday.

Emotional pain though? Turns out I'm a wimp. I can't seem to get it together. I'm practicing self-tenderness like my therapist encourages, but I'm still walking around really fucking angry all the time.

According to TCM, every organ is related to a certain emotion. The lungs are associated with grief, the kidneys are associated with fear, the spleen is associated with worry, etc. Can you guess what the liver is responsible for? If you guessed anger, resentment, and contempt, then you'd be right. So this would explain the intense rage that I keep finding myself in. The hormones are angry hormones and my body is releasing them.

I don't think I am a particularly angry person and maybe that's the problem. Instead of releasing my anger in the moment and allowing myself to really go into an emotion I'm uncomfortable with, I bottle it up. I think that by suppressing it, I'm going to help myself and others around me by not tapping into that emotion, and in some instances perhaps maybe it does help. It certainly gives me more time to think.

Me and my therapist discuss at great length the reasons why I avoid the feeling of anger. It's definitely connected to my childhood. I grew up in a childhood home where there was a lot of rage. There was a lot of love too, don't get me wrong. Love my family to death. But there was a lot of anger in our childhood home.

I remember as a kid not wanting to be an angry person when I grew up so I just pretended that emotion didn't exist. And now here I am, 32 years into life, paying the physical price of a messed up stomach because I avoid this emotion rather than feeling it.

Our childhoods affect us in ways we don't even know! And what's crazy is that as I'm doing this cleanse, it's as if my body is releasing years worth of anger, resentment, and contempt that has accumulated and calcified. The only person this unreleased anger hurts is myself and I refuse to die with liver toxicity due to repressed rage! So I’m getting it out there.

I went into a Starbucks with my best friend Melissa for our weekly walk in Central Park on Mondays, and I smelled something. Since I started my cleanse my sense of smell as intensified. And it wasn’t just any cologne either. Louis Vuitton, the most expensive one. The guy wearing it was Middle Eastern and decked out in Kenzo.

It was the smell of somebody I used to know. It took me back to a weird time and place. My heart felt, and still feels, somewhat unfinished. Closure is a fickle thing and oftentimes it escapes us. A big part of growing up in life is learning to sit with the ambiguity of it all. This is such a big part of the human condition. I know now that people are very lucky in life if they get any semblance of closure on things, and that a lack of closure is actually the norm.

I mentioned the smell to Melissa without mentioning the association and asked her thoughts on the scent. She said it was nice but that it was also heavy. This made me laugh. Mel prefers lighter, fresher scents. I named the scent and the guy wearing it turned around. He was impressed with my knowledge of colognes. Then me and Mel fell down a rabbit hole discussing scents!

Thank GOD Mel was there as a distraction. But as I'm writing about it now and realizing, the smell might have been triggering for me. Fortuna and Mercury were both being quite cruel to me that fateful Monday. We don't even go to Starbucks! We usually go to Dunkin' but that day they ran out of iced green tea. I’m inclined to say that the Universe wanted that to happen.

Why did the Universe want me to have that experience? Who knows. I started thinking about my life and how happy I am with where I currently am. Things are really starting to take-off for me at the moment and it makes me happy to see all the hard work and patience I've put into my career is starting to pay off, literally.

I needed to develop my skills as a Coach, and the only way I can do that is if I'm out there in the field developing that skill. Like I told y'all, anything in life is a skill and it can be learned, honed, and perfected. There was a time where I couldn't coach because the pandemic was still very much uncertain and my roommate was autoimmune compromised. The choice was either to stay and not work and accrue debt, waiting for the pandemic to end; or, I could find a new place, continue to work and pay rent/bills, and start learning and honing my craft.

I made the very difficult decision of doing the latter and obviously it was the right choice for a long list of reasons. For one, I learned how to be a good coach. I got that pool-deck experience. Now I'm feeling super confident in my job. I know exactly what I'm doing and I'm really proud of the work that I produce. The kids can see my love and passion for my job and it shows in their positive reviews.

My company knows this and they continue to give me work. I even got a text from the President himself, thanking me for the work that I do. I was so embarrassed that I didn't even respond. I know! Terrible. Sorry David but you know how grateful I am to work with you. Please keep sending me work! Haha. Typical Venus in Aquarius not knowing how to react to emotions lol.

I know people will read this and think I’m bragging and so what? I’m good at what I do and why can’t I celebrate that! I'm sick and tired of surrounding myself with people who are threatened by my success. Me succeeding has no bearing on your level of achievement whatsoever, that's all decided by you and your work ethic!

This next part of the blog post is directed to all my haters.

I take full satisfaction knowing that every time you tear me down, you take one step further away from building happiness and success for yourself. So keep tearing me down at the expense of no-one but yourself. Nothing you do affects me, it only affects you. Isn’t it funny how it works?

This form of magic is powerful yet effortless because it harnesses the natural governing rules of Universal Law. Kind of genius if you think about it.

I'm entering a phase of great abundance in my life. Me and my roommate were discussing it last night on our Restoration Hardware leather couch. Isn't it crazy how changing the energy around you can also change your ability to connect with the universal law of attraction?

I truly believe that because me and my roommate have a kinship that's locked into a higher-frequency, we're able to attract and magnetize so much together. We almost never argue, and when we do it is so healthy because there's a mutual respect for one another. We might disagree on something but we don't think the other person is stupid because of it. We recognize that life is complicated and we can both be right and wrong at the same time. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter who is right and who is wrong, what matters is that we work towards a solution together. And maybe it’ll take a little compromise from one, more compromise from the other, but that’s life. That’s love. That’s how you make a household run. You keep your eyes, ears, and most importantly, heart, open to all.

One thing I know for sure with my current roommate is this: we always come back to this place where we're trying to uplift one another. We are both hard working people. Extremely hard-working, both of us. Neither of us lack discipline and both of us are considerate of the other person’s feelings. This creates a solid foundation rooted in trust because we both know neither of us has malignant intent. It really is quite mature how we handle our day-to-day. We don't sweat the small stuff. We save the drama for when it counts.

Even reading these words will hurt but rather than focusing on the pain of those words, why not try and find a lesson in there somewhere? Maybe you’ll learn how to have a healthier dynamic in your interpersonal relationships. Maybe you can finally silence the ego of your inner-child. The whiny one that always seems to find a reason to give up.

There’s a war that's waging within every human-being between the adult and the child. I want you to ask yourself: why do you keep allowing the child to win, each and every time?

I dare you to be an adult and to grow and to change. I dare you to make the difficult decision of being happy for me, the same way I’m always choosing to be happy for you. Do you know how many times I’ve chosen to be happy for other people’s success while I’ve been in a dark and miserable place?!? Countless times, man. Countless times! Yet I still choose to be happy for them because being anything other than that repels good things away from me. I want success in my own life and I learned long ago that resenting the accomplishments of others is only going to drive success away from me. Instead I channel that energy into the things I can control within myself to be a better person.

Why is it so hard for humans to be happy for others? I dare you to be happy for another person’s success instead of resentful. Go on hater, do it! Most people can’t and many people won’t. Why buck the trend and break the cycle? And so the vicious path of Saturn returning continues until you decide to learn a lesson in humility.

Overcoming pride, hubris, and ego is a fast track to the North Node. However, it takes a world of strength, hard work, and self-discipline to get there. Are you strong enough to be with me at the North Node? I want you at the North Node with me. I really hope you choose that path. But only you can make that decision.

While awaiting your Saturn return, I'll set fire to the rain.

Sorry For Not Writing Yesterday

Yesterday was weird. I apologize for not publishing a blog post. I did write something yesterday and published it very briefly but once I started reading it, I decided it would be best to leave it unpublished.

For whatever reason, yesterday I felt off-kilter. My emotions were all over the place and I felt incredibly charged. My body felt hot. I felt this underlying, seething, white hot rage as I went about my day. How funny is it that only the previous day I was talking about how important it is to have low cortisol levels! And then here we are very next day with cortisol seeping out of every pore. Perhaps it was because the moon started in Pisces and quickly shifted to Aries the next day. Maybe it's because I'm back to being a health nut again and my body is detoxing. Who knows!?

In any endeavor, that aggressive tone made its way over into my writing and it was not good. So I decided to stop what I was doing and practice some self-awareness. I went to the gym to de-stress, which is usually my outlet but yesterday it seemed to make things worse. I then sat in the dry sauna for 20 minutes, trying to sweat it out. And all of a sudden it got worse.

I called my therapist and we spoke about it. They suggested I do activities to de-stress other than the gym. They also said that anxiety, anger, and sadness are both all very normal feelings to be experienced when going through a cleanse or detox program. They said that the gym is beneficial for the detox process, as is the Sauna, but overwhelming the body with a strong detox will come with overwhelming emotions. The stronger the detox, the stronger the internal cleansing. The stronger the emotions, the more necessary the detox is. After a quick Google search I see that the G.I. tract is associated in Traditional Chinese Medicine with feelings of anger, resentment, contempt, lack of forgiveness, and sadness. They don't call it "liver fire" for nothing!

Wow! These are literally exactly all the feelings I've been experiencing throughout this lifestyle change. I'm glad that I'm making this brain, body, gut-heath connection!

So at the advice of my therapist, I decided that as a means of de-stressing, I'd dance in my room for a little bit. Lol! Sorry, can't talk! Gotta dance! Literal Doctor's orders. I put my headphones in and danced to Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and Nicki Minaj. I gyrated my hips and threw my arms around like a crazy person. I did it with the blinds open too, so that all my neighbors could see what mental instability looks like, lmao.

But seriously, I felt so much better afterwards. Them therapists know a good ting or two when you find a good one that you can trust and open up to. Today's song goes to Britney Spears. Yes, the tabloid Queen has been splattered everywhere lately but I really love Britney Spears, the artiste. I always thought Britney had much more depth to her after watching the "Stronger" music video at 10 years old. I remember thinking: "she's really pretty but she's really saying something here!"

The song has become an anthem lately of sorts. When I was training for Tokyo 2020 and living in Chelsea, I'd Citi-bike home from NYAC and blast this song in my ears.

It was until recently that I realized the lyric: "My loneliness ain't killing me no more" is actually a play on the lyrics from Baby One More Time ("My loneliness, is killing me"). Now I do my daily high intensity interval training while listening to this song!

Honestly, Britney's mind y'all we don't deserve her! Literally curing my depression alongside Onika Tanya Maraj and Stefani Germanotta:
”You might think that I won’t make it, on my own.
But now I’m stronger than yesterday,
Now it’s nothing but my way!”

Too Much Cortisol is Bad For You And This Is How You Fix It

Continuing the theme of Saturn’s return from yesterday’s blog post, I’m sitting here wondering what lessons I’ve learned within the past 30 years of life.

I think for me, my Saturn return was definitely health related. Obtaining self-discipline when it comes to food has always been difficult for me, but I know I'm finally there. Because I had a high metabolism for so long, I got away with eating whatever I wanted. It wasn't until I lost my health and found it again that I really learned to appreciate my body.

Without going into too much detail, everything that has gone wrong with my body can definitely be traced back to a Candida Albicans overgrowth. I've never been diagnosed with a candida overgrowth officially, but I suspected this was what was going on and the only way to fix it naturally was to completely change my lifestyle and attitude to food.

I used to eat for flavor and taste and now I eat for sustenance and bodily healing. Everything that I put into my body, from the soups I stew, to the salads I whip together, right down to the water I drink, and the nutritional supplements I choose to weaponize, all of it is carefully curated to ensure that I get the most brain function and energy out of my body everyday.

I know it's obsessive but every single chemical going into my body is measured and dosed carefully, and all of it serves a purpose in healing my gut. Even my pre-workout supplement is literally 2 chemical compounds: glutamine and l-arginine, which are 2 amino acids that encourage encourage muscle growth while simultaneously healing the gut. I haven't taken creatine in years! It hurts my stomach. But I may choose to try cycling on and off again and see if it has an effect on my training.

In order to have had an athletic career as long as I have, I’ve needed to look after my body. This extends beyond just nutrition and balancing vitamins and minerals. Rest and recuperation is essential. I always make sure I get enough sleep so that my adrenals aren’t fatigued.

Adrenal fatigue happens when the body produces too much of the stress hormone, cortisol. Cortisol pushes our body into its "fight or flight" mode under stress. When we overproduce this cortisol in our bodies, it wreaks havoc on our chemical balances and throws off all our hormones.

This isn’t some wish-washy silliness either, it has been studied extensively in medical journals.

If the mind is in a constant state of fight or flight, the body sends signals to the brain to protect the vital organs. Where do all our vital organs live? Around our stomach of course. It is believed that enlarged bellies and big stomachs are a symptom of high-cortisol levels because the body is defending itself from stress by protecting our vital organs.

High-cortisol levels is also related enlarged breast tissue, which gives men the unfortunate and dreaded man boobs. This is once again because the body is under stress and trying to protect the heart by layering it with extra tissue. High levels of cortisol are also linked to elevated levels of cancer in women.

So what does that cortisol release feel like? Well, it's sort of like when you have too much coffee in the morning and you get the jitters. There's a feeling of dread and anxiety that underlines everything. Everything feels a little off-kilter. You can't concentrate and you're feeling a little bit nervous and on edge. And it can be triggered by literally anything upsetting that you've seen.

It could be something you read or seen on the news. It could be something you saw on social media. Have you ever seen something on social media that's upset you? Like, maybe your crush is out on a date with somebody else and you're seeing it on social for the first time. Your palms start to sweat, your heart begins to race, and your stomach tightens. Am I the only one that experiences this feeling? Lol. When my cortisol fires suddenly, to the point of Adrenalin release, I can feel the front of my head, home of the adrenals, starts to ache.. It's almost like my forehead is burning like Harry Potter. Those are all feelings associated with cortisol release.

What keeps cortisol at bay?

Whenever I start to feel cortisol releasing I immediately practice patience, mindfulness, and try to breathe my way through the hormonal release. Because blood is rushing to the front part of my brain, to my adrenals to produce cortisol, it doesn’t leave enough blood flow to other parts of the brain that allow me to practice critical thinking. I breathe deeply and calmly and try my best to use vinyasa breath control (thanks yoga) to push the blood to other parts of my brain that can allow me to think rationally, with clarity, and without panic. Giving the brain enough time to breathe works wonders, the problem gets fixed quicker because we are not in a state of panic. This isn't a skill that came natural to me, this is something I had to learn to do after being in many stressful situations that required a world of calmness to get through.

Prioritizing the art of balancing your hormones effectively is also super helpful to keep stress at bay. What I mean by this is that minimizing the stimulation of your central nervous system. When you drink alcohol, it stimulates your central nervous system and you create more dopamine, but then when you stop drinking the dopamine also stops and the body begins to detox. This process of detox, whether from alcohol, drugs, or whatever, throws off our endocrine system. As a consequence of a hampered endocrine system, our hormones are out of balance. So the easiest way to have balanced hormones is by not messing with those fickle hormones in the first place!

Some of the most successful and effective people in this world have done away with alcohol altogether and this is no coincidence. Abstinence from nicotine is crucial also, as that is the worst offender when it comes to cortisol production. Any smoker that is experiencing the symptoms of nicotine detox will know firsthand what cortisol release feels like because this is what they feel every time their body starts craving a cigarette when they choose to quit.

Dopamine and serotonin are two neurotransmitters that are best kept balanced! If you're going to produce those chemicals, make sure they're produced naturally within your body the old fashioned way. Exercise everyday and find ways to sweat for at least 30 minutes, minimum. The hardest part of working out is showing up, so if you can make a habit out of exercising everday, you're golden.

Working out is supposed to be fun so if lifting weights at the gym or doing cardio on a machine doesn't work for you, find something that does! It can be a dance class, a bike ride, a walk through Central Park, a yoga class, etc. Movement is movement no matter what and it's good for humans to develop a healthy relationship with exercise. Whatever it is you choose to do, make sure you're doing it long enough to feel blood flow to the brain and make sure you sweat. Sweat and salt is life and don't you ever forget it! My sinuses always clear up when I workout effectively and I find myself sleeping so well at night. Setting a solid and uninterrupted circadian rhythm is also important for keeping cortisol at bay.

I can safely say that the times when I've made poor decisions in life have usually been due to a poor night's sleep. When I have 2 nights of bad sleep in a row, I get really cranky and my body begins to release cortisol, which then in turn plagues my ability to discern and think clearly. I can function on at least 6 hours, but I know that I feel my best when I get close to 7. I feel like a brand new person when I get 8 hours of sleep.

How do you get a good night’s sleep? Set yourself a routine that you look forward to doing every night so you wire your brain to enjoy the process of getting ready for bed. It’s also wise to stop/minimize all stimulation before bed. Turn the lights down low as you get closer to sun down. Make sure you read a book before you go to bed so your eyes get programmed to the real world and not a screen before they close for 6 hours.

If you are a smoker, quit. But also, make sure you aren't smoking right before you go to bed because stimulation of your central nervous system with nicotine isn't going to be conducive of a restful night’s sleep.

Use your brain the next time you're groggy and tired and exercise some Saturn returning discipline. Forgoing momentary pleasure for lifelong fulfillment is always going to be worth it in the long run. Have you ever thought about committing to something and following through with it? And when things go wrong, rather than giving up so easily, how about finding ways to rise to the occasion, challenge yourself, and exercise some serious Capricorn self-discipline.

People become champions because they’re winners, and winners find a way; losers because always make excuses. Have you ever noticed that? Heroes really own their victories while losers hold nothing but excuses. I know which one I’d rather be. In fact, I already know which one I already am haha. Excuses keep losers trapped in a perpetual cycle of self-victimhood and they’ll never, ever win.

Sometimes it's easier to focus on all the things you're going to be blessed with once you find the strength to make sacrifices. Instead of thinking about the drink or the smoke, think about the good night's rest you're going to have that night, or the elevated energy levels and brain power you'll possess the next day. Temporary sacrifices are easy to make when you remind yourself of the wider picture. It takes courage to hold yourself accountable to a goal you’re trying to achieve, are you brave enough to do it? And if you mess up and make a mistake that's fine! 90% right and 10% wrong is still passing with an A. Just remember that it’s the recovery, this is what's important.

These were lessons I learned from my Saturn returning. I had to be super disciplined and tough on myself, but I learned to like that. I enjoyed the process of testing my own personal limits and pushing myself. I'm not 100% successful all the time but what's essential is the effort. I'm not a total teetotaler, I do drink on occasion, but it's closer to a quarterly affair than it is monthly, weekly, or nightly. I prefer to sleep well at night, keep the cortisol at bay, and have my head on right for building my Swim Academy business this upcoming fall.

After a little break, we're looking forward to continuing the hard work we did this past summer. Fall 2021 is all about self-discipline, flexing our ability to self-control, and maintaining balanced hormones baby, get into it!

Music Monday: Same Ol' Mistakes By Rihanna

Welcome to our first weekly "Music Monday" post where I talk about a song I'm listening to.

In anticipation of the Full Moon in Pisces tonight, we'll start with a piece from one of our favorite Pisces Fishes of all times: Rihanna.

When me and my roommate moved into our new high-rise apartment in Hell’s Kitchen we played “Same Ol’ Mistakes” by Rihanna incessantly, obsessively, over and over again. The song is a cover, not an original, and while beautiful and ominous, the song is about Saturn returning.

Astronomically speaking Saturn takes 29.5 years to complete a full orbit around the Sun. In Astrology, Saturn is the planet representing responsibility, hard work, and determination, all traits associated with Capricorn. This particular part of the zodiac is affiliated with competence, knowledge, and power.

Saturn as a planet in Astrology has a lot to do with learning lessons about life. Many believe that Saturn's return is connected to our past life. It is said that one must overcome and learn some big lesson, usually through the accumulation of long hard work, determination, and discipline, in order to ascend into the higher levels of consciousness. There’s a debt that’s owed somewhere cosmically speaking. Can you recognize what it is? Do you know what to do and how to pay it? Are you strong enough to pay it?

This hefty lesson will continue to repeat itself throughout your life until you learn the lesson you're supposed to. Once you pay your karmic debt, change your ways moving forward, your soul is settled and can finally rest in peace. If I'm totally honest, most people never overcome their Saturn return. Why? Because it is just too darn difficult and they usually lack discipline.

The first verse of this masterpiece is about being faced with a conflict where you know what the right choice is, but you just can’t help but consistently make the wrong decision: “I can just hear them now, ‘how could they let us down?’”

This could be for a myriad or reasons with a long list of excuses. This is where we all need to exercise a little more Cap/Sat (Capricorn/Saturn) energy and get a little more self-control.

Saturn's return happens when you realize that you find yourself in the situation that keeps repeating itself over and over again. And it keeps repeating itself because you’re too lazy to exercise discipline.

For instance: a person complains that they can't lose weight but can't find the willpower to make healthier lifestyle choices. They might be overwhelmed from life and this is their coping strategy. The problem escalates to become a health problem.

Deep down this person knows what the solution is (diet and exercise) but the immature and undeveloped part of them just wants to eat pizza and watch TV. The person doesn't want to go to the gym or make healthier nutritional decisions because it requires too much responsibility, hard work, and determination (Cap/Sat traits).

It's way easier to just be lazy and eat pizza, so what do you think they're going to do? We already know what they're going to do. They already know what they're going to do. Shiiiiiiiiit, Rihanna already knows what's going to happen bc the final lyric of the first verse is sung with a resigned sigh: "going with what I always longed for."

Then the chorus presents itself with 2 conflicting voices battling for dominance. The immature child has the lead vocals, starting off with a jovial burst, probably from the short-lived thrill of eating another slice of pizza: "FEEL LIKE A BRAND NEW PERSON!" And the Cap/Sat energy is blended into the background, harmonizing with the lead, almost as an afterthought: "but you make the same mistakes," they sing all echo-y in the background.

Immature brat hears this and responds with: "WELL I DON'T CARE I'M IN LOVE!" Meanwhile, the background vocals become a whisper, constantly repeating and reminding the protagonist that they make the same mistakes, that they need to stop before it’s too late, and that they don’t have what it takes.

The first post-chorus is gorgeous when Rihanna sings: "AND I STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING! I STILL DON'T KNOW!" - because that's what most people are like with their Saturn Return: they’re ignorant of their own poor decision making.

They find themselves overweight and depressed after pizza because they’re still chasing the thrill of a short-lived high. The second verse is more or less the same as the first. The songwriter is being told several different things from those around them and they’re still finding ways to justify the wrong decision. This verse is a little more confrontational and argumentative. The final couplet finishes with Rihanna already knowing that she’s going to make the wrong choice, again.

The bridge is my favorite part. The bridge is hypnotic and puts me into a dream-like state where time feels it has slowed. And you can't just skip to the bridge either. You have to go on the journey and build your way there. They don’t call it a bridge for nothing, kiddo!

You could fast-forward to it, but it’s just not the same without the lead-in verses. Think about that: the journey of the song makes any bridge in a song more fulfilling, which in and of itself is a poetic play on instant vs. delayed gratification that the song centers around thematically. Once the bridge is over, it slingshots us straight back into the song with the final chorus.

And what a beautiful final round of choruses where the childish voice gets louder while the background vocals are virtually an aural after-thought. Rih obtains a sense of finality in the closing lyrics: “STOP THINKING YOU'RE THE ONLY OPTION!”

And so we listen to this masterpiece. Over and over again. While looking out our windows at the Manhattan View. Contemplating all the hard work, determination, and discipline it took to get here. Feeling blessed and highly favored. I ache to share it with you as I patiently await Saturn’s return..

This song is neither happy nor sad, the song simply just is:

Spiritual Sunday: Reddit Edition

I saw this picture on Reddit and it made me think about life as a gay man. Check it out:

As a reformed Instathot, I’m trying to do better…

But seriously, this exact sentiment times one million. I’ve definitely been a contributor to this problem. I’m not great at social media, and what I mean by that is that I just lost a thousand followers (20.3K to 20.2K) on Instagram alone the past month. My last 2 photos got barely 100 likes, but then my photo of mee in a Speedo get close to 1,000 and it just makes me feel like… Sad! IDK.

This project is me trying to pivot and create a new lane for myself, one less Instathotty and rooted in substance. I’d like to be remembered for being innovative and interesting than be just an Instathot. Please, for the love of God, save me from this weird place and space where I feel I need to take my clothes off to be deemed worthy of license to a voice.

I juuuuuuuuust made the cut-off for today's post by a literally minute.

But I'm very okay with losing all my followers if it means I'm creating something different and unique. I'm leaning into using my brain and my intelligence to try and get people to think about what they're doing and why they're doing it.

I want to encourage people to look after themselves. The whole gay experience is so heavy on the party party party, and there has to be space for those of us who simply aren't interested in living this way. There has to be credence given to different experiences.

So this blog is for all the homebodies. All the ones of us who aren't rioting and raging on the dancefloor, but getting excited over trying a new recipe to cook for friends coming over and growing plants.

I feel the change coming. I feel the metamorphosis. I'm switching up values. It's all a process.

How My Cool Art Kid Phase Helped Me Be A Better Coach

The past 3 weekends I’ve been working so I haven’t had a weekend home in almost a month. That's fine with me because I love making money. I’ve said it once on this blog and I’ll say it again: summer 2021 was all about labor and hard work. I enjoy working hard to help kids become better swimmers. I find it both stimulating and fulfilling.

Coaching requires a lot of yelling. Well, at least my type of coaching does! It's less the angry kind of yelling, and more the commanding kind of yelling. At first it was tough screaming for 6 hours straight, but then after my drama classes in New York City, I learned how to engage my diaphragm and project without straining my voice. Look! The skills I learned during my cool art kid phase serve me in job today, how funny is that? This isn't the first time my newfound drama skills would come in handy with coaching swimming.

So much of coaching is theater and not because you're projecting your voice lol. I aim to be engaging and entertaining while also being educational. They’re there to learn new things after all.

This isn’t always easy to do, especially if you can see that the kid really doesn’t want to be there, you know? I've had kids at swim clinics cry because they didn't want to be there. When this happens, my instinct is to talk to them. Ask them what's wrong.

You’d be surprise at how hard it is for some kids to communicate emotions. Are they hungry? Are they tired? Are they scared? Are they cold? Sometimes they'll stare at me blankly. Other times they'll answer. Most of the time they're scared of the water, which is a normal and natural human response. I tell them that it's my job to teach them how to be comfortable in the water and that if I do my job correctly, they'll leave the lessons loving the water!

I also remind the kids that Rome wasn't built in a day and that I'm not expecting them to be professionals after the first lesson. Like everything in life swimming is a skill. It can be worked at, honed in, and perfected. All you’ve got to do is put in the time and effort.

I try and establish a "growth mindset" within the child early. A growth mindset is fostered through allowing a child to feel safe enough in an environment to make honest attempts without feeling the threat of being made fun of, ridiculed, laughed at, or made to feel bad about themselves. This is another component I picked up from drama classes, where actors must feel safe enough in front of their peers to get very vulnerable, experiment, get weird, all without the burden of self-consciousness in classes.

Sports and Acting y’all, sports and acting go hand in hand y’all I’m telling y’all! Yes I used y’all three times in that sentence, fight me on it. The two are more alike in process than you might think.

Anyway, back to the kids. I don't want to make anybody feel bad about themselves, ever. You have to be very careful with the words you say to a child at that age because it has the potential to really stay with them for life. You have to ask yourself: do I want to destroy a child’s self-esteem or do I want to build it? Either choice has lifelong consequences. My coaching style is centered around building self-esteem and confidence.

UGH! I'm one of those nerds that talks about their job even on their weekend off lol. Anyway, today I plan to clean the apartment as my roommate's Mom is visiting tomorrow! And then I'm probably going to get myself organized for the week ahead.

I'm not feeling very social because my job and work are very social, so when I get home I crave introverted activities. Tonight’s act of solitude will include going for a midnight bike ride in Central Park with my headphones in while listening to Music. I hope to find a good spot to see the full moon.

Food Friday: An Introductory Recipe

I’m making a blog post every Friday about food. This is because I love food. I also love to cook food! So I wanted to share with everybody some of my favorite recipes.

I wasn’t always fond of cooking. Funnily enough, it wasn’t until I started dating an Italian that I started taking the culinary craft seriously. My ex’s father was a chef, so food was incredibly important to their family growing up, as with most traditional Italian families. There was a funny conversation we had that led me to decide that I wanted to sharpen my cooking skills.

We got into some type of kerfuffle about dinner one night. I think he wanted to cook and I felt lazy and wanted to dine in. I'll never forget what he said to me: "Have you ever thought of cooking a meal as a sign love?"

Lol. Huh?

"Have you ever thought of cooking a meal for someone as a sign of showing them love?" He repeated the question but changed the phrasing because he could see that I was shooketh. My neurons were now making connections that they had not made before. I immediately thought of one of our first dates where he cooked boeuf bourguignon and we sipped Veuve Rose champagne. Did I even thank him for cooking that meal? I don’t know if I even acknowledged how special that was. My face turned pink with embarrassment.

Then, it got worse! I thought about my Mother. And how great her cooking is. And all the meals she made for us growing up! And how every birthday she tried to cook our favorite meal for our special day. I think I actually teared up when I thought about Mum roasting lamb every December to celebrate my birthday growing up. Roast lamb was my favorite. An added bonus was making roast lamb sandwiches with mustard the next day!

This was when I made the decision to become better at cooking! I view everything in life as a skill and as an opportunity to learn and grow. When I'm coaching youngsters and giving them drills, I always say to them: "Don't worry if you can't execute it perfectly the first time, everything takes practice."

Some people won't even try new things for fear that they'll be bad at them. The only thing sadder than doing something poorly the first time is not even trying. Why is this sad to me? Because it shows one is more concerned with how they look than with what they're learn. Who cares what you look like??? The human experience is rooted in ignorance and foolishness, just give it a go already! YEESH.

And give it a go I did. I jumped into the deep end and cooked boeuf bourguignon for my ex one random Friday night and I did a pretty good job. Boeuf bourguignon is an extremely advanced recipe so I wouldn’t recommend anybody start with that. However, the fact that I nailed it on my first go showed that I was certainly capable. So when I went home to NZ in 2015 to renew my visa, I told Mum to teach me everything she knew about cooking. And that she did:

The most important thing my Mum taught me was how to create flavor at the beginning of the meal. Glazing onions is an art. Adding ginger next to the hot oil and onions is something I do typically with Asian-infused cuisine, otherwise you can skip the ginger step and go straight to adding garlic for 1 minute. Garlic cooks fast, so to retain the flavor it becomes a skill as to when to add the garlic, and how long to cook garlic for. I try to time it for when the onions are 98.7% glazed, and I’ll add the garlic. The less time you cook the garlic for, the more pronounced the flavor.

Learning what onions to use for which recipes was also fun. Red onions are easier for our bodies to digest but they add a sweet component to the recipe. Yellow onions are the most flavorful and used in almost all Italian recipes. White onions are great for French recipes, IDK why but they just are.

Learning about how fresh spices are always going to be more potent than the dried kind. Learning how different oils burn at different temperatures, and how certain ingredients work better with certain oils than others. Did you know olive oil burns at a much lower temperature than, say, coconut oil? Cutting vegetables and marinating meat was also an important skill I learned.

I learned you want to hear the pan sizzle when you first cook a steak. Well cooked meat is all about sealing it on the outside to create that browning exterior, and then baking it in the oven to make sure the center is brought to temperature and cooked properly.

My Mum learned how to make curries from her Indian next door neighbor in England. So she taught me how to make a curry the way her Indian next door neighbor would growing up. Gotta love multi-culturalism! I also love curry so much, I cooked it for my 30th Birthday. I know! What a nerd. But it was a cold wintry night and I think it was a hit! I got compliments from an Iranian friend.

Cooking adds a whole new dimension to travel too. When traveling the world, pay attention to food! As you experience different cultures, ask questions about their meals. I love asking questions to my waiters and waitresses at restaurants, trying to get the inside scoop on what makes their food so yummy: “Is this soup made with bone broth or stock?” Or “What spices are used in this dish?” There is almost always something new to learn at every dining experience.

SO ANYWAY! The very first "Food Friday" post is going to be about a very nutritious and easy Chinese soup called “Red Bean Barley Soup.”

This soup is incredibly nutritious and perfect for the fall/winter. It is designed to remove "damp heat" from the body. People who understand Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) know what I'm talking about. This recipe calls for a very specific kind of red bean called "vigna umbellata," which holds a lot of medicinal properties. You can find these beans at any Asian foods store or order them on Amazon for safe measure. I've linked it below.

The recipe is easy but time-consuming however the health benefits totally make it worth the time.

Equipment

• rice cooker or crockpot

Ingredients

• 1/2 Cup of vigna umbellata (red beans in traditional Chinese medicine)

• 2/3 Cup of barley (also called semen coicis)

Red Bean Barley Soup

Instructions

• Wash red beans and then immerse in distilled water at least 5 hours or overnight.

• Wash barley and then immerse in distilled water for at least 5 hours or overnight.

• If we want to clear the “cold thing” from the barley, we should fry barley WITHOUT oil.

• Pour the soaked red beans and barley into the rice cooker, then add 2000 ml water into the cooker. Cooking for at least 2 hours.

This soup is rich in fiber, vitamin E, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, selenium and other active ingredients that can help clear heat and detox from our body! It is also said to be great for skin. The soup is also said to promote intestinal peristalsis, which is a fancy word for the series of wave-like muscle contractions that move food through the digestive tract. I definitely feel my stomach loving this soup and I hope you do too!

This soup is great to have as a snack on its own or sometimes I’ll whip up a quick salad and make it a meal. Great as an appetizer before your main meal also.

If you have any leftovers, it’s super easy to store in a Tupperware container to freeze. Then you just thaw and bring to heat on a stove top whenever you feel like it!

The website I got this recipe from is here.

How To Avoid Post-Olympic Depression

It was great seeing so many prolific athletes using their platform to raise awareness surrounding mental health at the Olympics this year. From Simone Biles to Michael Phelps, the topic was front and center. Destigmatizing mental health struggles is long overdue in sports, and I'm glad we're finally having this conversation. Raising awareness is great but I also think that practical solutions are also important.

Life after the Olympics - especially your first - can be quite tough. The 2 best pieces of advice I can give to anyone going through this is:

1) Set brand new goals and anticipate ways to stay busy and engaged after the Olympics is over.

2) Try and do all the things you couldn't do while making sacrifices for your sport.

I worked insanely hard to get to London 2012 and once it was done, I didn’t have any new goals to move onto after the Olympics were over. I really think this hurt me. My first games coincided with finishing out my NCAA eligibility, so I wasn’t a part of the college swim team anymore. Because I derived such a big a part of my identity from my sport, without it I suffered a big identity crisis.

This is not new for most athletes and is incredibly common. Not knowing who you are when only one part of your life is missing isn’t normal, and it taught me how important the act of diversifying your identity really is.

Because I had another year of college before graduating, it didn't help that the environment I was in was also heavily tied to my swimming career. The whole reason why I was there in College Station Texas in the first place was for swimming! I struggled to find a sense of belonging and purpose without my sport in my life.

In retrospect, perhaps if I'd move straight after London to a brand new city and stayed busy, then maybe I wouldn't have slipped into such a difficult place. I learned my lesson because after my next 2 Olympics I changed my living environments quite drastically to allow myself to create a new routine. After Rio 2016, I moved to Tonga, which was a drastic change from where I'd been doing my training, which was in San Mateo, California. This time round after Tokyo 2020 (I finally know what to call it!) We moved apartments from Chelsea to Hell's Kitchen. This environmental shift also made the transition to normalcy much easier.

Then came what I call: “The Floating Years” (2012 - 2015) those were really hard. This is the part of the story where I moved to NYC after college, determined to establish an identity away from being an athlete and a swimmer. I made a decision back then to use this time of my life as an opportunity to begin a self-investment project. I invested time in things I missed out on pursuing because I was training for the Olympics.

It was an incredibly difficult yet rewarding time of my life where I learned a lot about myself!

I did it all baby. I wasn't too concerned with NYC partying and nightlife, I just wanted to explore being a weird art kid while trying to find myself for a bit. I took acting classes for fun at Upright Citizens Brigade and tried my hand at Improv Theater. I was told I was good but I didn't think I was very good lol.

My biggest regret and remorse from my childhood is not having enough time to do both sports and art at the same time. I took drama all 5 years of High School (in NZ, H.S. is 5 years) and I could never do the school plays because the rehearsal times always clashed with practice. I'd audition for fun, get the part I wanted, and then have to turn it down because it didn't fit in with my practice schedule.

The plays at my High School were competitive. Extremely so for the girls at least. I remember our drama class having 5 girls all with their sun in Aries, and boy did they create drama alright! Battling it out tooth and nail for the lead roles. Can you imagine?

I remember during my Junior year of High School I was a lead in the SmokeFree Stage Challenge Dance competition alongside my 2 besties Mihi and Tessa! It was a contemporary dance competition and I really loved the process of putting on a show together. We even made it to the finals!

It's a real shame that if you're an athlete in this world, you can't be taken seriously as an artist. I feel the two paths share a lot of parallels in their process alone. From staging and blocking, to rehearsing and perfecting, to technical rehearsals, costume and design, final dress rehearsals, matinee performances, and then finally: showtime baby! The process is very similar to that of putting together the perfect race they just slightly differ in terms of craftsmanship..

When I moved to NYC in 2013, I exposed myself to as much art as possible, in all shapes and forms. I went to comedy shows in the lower east side that my best friend Tommy and Gloria would host. I went to as many Broadway shows as I possibly could. Exposing myself to this kind of art changed me. I still remember the numbness I felt on the train ride home after watching Zachary Quinto in "The Glass Menagerie." Tennesse Williams moved me to tears on the subway ride home. All from the grave no less! Impressive.

I remember the first art show I went to in Chelsea. My High School BFF Shanta took me to her friend Rohan's art show, amongst many other art shows over the years because she’s good like that. I didn't really understand the art. It always made me feel stupid. As if there was a certain level of intelligence necessary to be obtained before understanding what good art is. This was all until Shanta said: "there's not really anything to understand, it's just what you think is cool or not cool." Typical Taurus to the core: keep it simple. This has always stuck with me whenever I look at paintings, artwork, or sculptures. I find myself asking myself: "is this cool or not?"

So as I preoccupied myself with art and trying to develop a sense of identity away from the pool, I slowly began to feel like myself again. Engagement is what was missing from my life. What better way to engage thyself than to self-explore and self-discover? One should never feel ashamed nor bad for investing time into one’s own identity.

Long story long: the best way to avoid a post-Olympics slump and identity crisis is to have things to do to keep yourself busy once you're done with competing. It isn't wise to invest all of yourself into your sport alone, find ways to stay well-rounded.

Yes, it might seem that in order to be successful at your sport you must put in the time, but it is healthy and normal to view yourself as many more things other than just an athlete who does a sport. Doing so will pay off dividends to good mental health in the future.

If you find yourself busy and it still is tough to move on from the Olympics, try changing your environment. Rewire your brain. Stay busy. Write down new goals. Commit to something new, like maybe a 30 day writing challenge that will push you to become a better!

Take it day by day and if it doesn’t get any better, talk to someone. Whether it is a friend, family member, or paid professional, sometimes venting about what you’re going through helps. Maybe they’ll have helpful solutions, maybe they won’t. The point is: the year is 2021 and nobody should be struggling with mental health in silence anymore. We are all in positions to practice empathy and compassion everyday, why not use them to make the world a better place for us all?

In any endeavor, you get the idea. Invest in other skills and work on different parts of yourself that have been neglected because of your sport and you'll experience both fulfillment and engagement that will serve in your best interests long-term. Mental health is important so look after yourself out there kittens.

30 Days of Writing Challenge

I’m going to try and write something everyday for the next 30 days. It could be something big, it could be something small. It could be insightful, incredible, and contribute amazing things to this world! Or, it could be word vomit. In any endeavor, after the Olympics I’ve decided to find new ways to challenge myself with staying busy in New York City.

I’ve always felt creative. Because I’m an Olympian and sporty, people think you can’t be both athletic and creative but I beg to differ. I hope that the creativity surrounding this project can maybe change some minds surrounding that. At the very least, you’ll learn a little Tongan magic from a big booty Tongan magician.

It is a week after Labor Day, which is the weekend that typically marks the end of summer in America. Technically the fall equinox is closer to September 20, but we can already start to feel the beginnings of a chill here in the city.

Anyway, what a summer we’ve all had! I wish I could say it was relaxing. I suppose there were some relaxing moments, I guess? But for the most part it was a summer of self-discipline and determination. I went for, and achieved, swimming at my 3rd Olympics.

How’d it go? Well, not quite according to plan lmao. I got disqualified! However, I also made history in the process: Tokyo 2020 was the first swimming competition FINA introduced video refereeing and I was the first swimmer to experience the new protest procedure with video refereeing. What an honor. More on that later.

If anybody wants to read my statement to the press about my disqualification, you can do so here. You’ll need to pay a Tongan newspaper’s subscription fee to take down the paywall, but your curiosity will be quenched. If there’s a way I can convert your inquisitive nosiness about my life into support towards a local Tongan business, I’ll surely find a way to do it! #GirlBoss

We all know how much I love to plug a local Tongan business.

Apologies to all the publications that reached out for a media interviews that I didn’t respond to. If it was interpreted as being rude, I’m sorry, I just really wanted to stay true to the commitment I had of not causing any scenes at these Olympics. I think it’s dope to do media when you have projects and interesting things to talk about.

I’ve done a lot of interesting things since Rio. Yes, being Gay at the Olympics is newsworthy, but if there’s anything Madonna has taught me it’s that one must always reinvent themselves in order to stay relevant. They don’t call M the Mother of Reinvention for nothing, kittens!

Reinventing myself as an entrepreneur proved too difficult for certain media to wrap their head’s around. Or perhaps they didn’t find that angle very interesting. Capitalism is so gauche these days. Regardless, when they pushed back and told me they specifically wanted to discuss being a gay athlete from Tonga, without any mention of what I’d been up to subsequently since Rio, I declined the media interview.

I only want to work with people who respect my process as a human being to evolve. I’m many other things outside of being a gay swimmer and I hope to show the world this through 30 days of writing!

Full disclosure: I talk a lot about my body, nutrition, and working out. Unlike most people, I love my body, and I have a good relationship with it. I think it’s important that we all find ways to develop a good relationship between our mind and body. Perhaps once we start learning to love our body for what it is, instead of loathing it for what it is not, then maybe the idea of bodily maintenance doesn’t become such a difficult task.

I derive great joy from bodily maintenance. I enjoy the process of looking after my body. I’ve taught myself to eat food for sustenance and brain power. Throughout the process of eating healthier, I’ve developed a palette for nutritious meals. I can taste when something is going to do well by me. I have green juice everyday with a tablespoon of spirulina. I love exercising. I love movement. I love a weight room and gym. It wasn’t always this way though.

I didn’t always have it easy. It took me a full year of lifting weights to finally feel comfortable in a gym and weight room. Those environments can be quite intimidating and I was intimidated for a long time before I finally learned to let go. The gym is a judgmental zone and when you don’t know what you’re doing or feeling uncomfortable, it shows and people notice. That was me for a full year before I finally decided to stop giving a damn of what anybody else thought of me, and this commitment to fitness is a contract between myself and the exercise machine I’m using, that’s it. All other opinions are irrelevant and I’ve learned to zone out of all that territorial machismo bullshit that comes with the gym. It’s just me and the squat rack. Or bench press. Or whatever. Anyway, maybe that’s an interesting blog subject to explore: how to get comfortable at the gym!!??

I’ll always round out my blog with a song alongside my favorite lyrics. Today I was lazy and didn’t give it too much thought. I just hit shuffle on Spotify and decided to go with whatever came up. So here it is. My fav part are the lyrics of the final 2 quatrains of the second verse:

“Don't even think about what's right or wrong, or wrong or right
'Cause in the end it's only you and me
And no one else is going to be around
To answer all the questions left behind
And you and I are meant to be
So even if the world falls down today
You've still got me to hold you up, up
And I will never let you down, down”

I’ll try to not let you down…

Tokyo Olympics: Why I'm Doing It Different This Time

Is it the Tokyo 2020 Olympics? Or is it Tokyo 2021? I’ve seen the Olympic social media handles write “Tokyo 2020+1,” which looks confusing. It’s as if they already produced a ton of merchandise with “Tokyo 2020” on it, and just want to write a “+1” on the end so they don’t have to remake it all over again…

This is the unintentional theme of the current XXXII Olympiad: confusion. Apparently, 80% of the Japanese population want to cancel the Olympics, which makes canceling the Olympics a very relevant topic of conversation for Japanese politicians looking to gain a few extra brownie points for their respective political parties. Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee has distribution contracts signed with media conglomerates around the world for broadcasting rights, which is by far the biggest money-making part of the Olympic Games.

Comcast, whom owns NBCUniversal, the media company responsible for distributing the Olympics inside the US, is going to push for the Games to continue. Why? Because the advertising dollars from huge corporations weren’t collected last year, and they must crucially be recouped this year in order to keep business profitable. This is why Comcast, and all their media subsidiaries, which include more than just their television networks, will be firing all cylinders to ensure that these Olympics happen.

Who wants the Olympics canceled? Well, all of Comcast’s telecommunication rivals of course. Disney, whom owns ABC, will do their best to thwart these Olympics in the hopes that it’ll dilute Comcast’s ever-growing influence in the global media space. This isn’t limited to Disney’s ownership of television stations either, it extends out to newspapers their companies are affiliated with. For example: Disney purchased Fox from Newscorp in 2019. This means that Disney is now indirectly affiliated with Newscorp.

Have you noticed that Newscrop’s newspaper, The WSJ, is publishing media stories heavily skewed to have the Olympics canceled? This is because a canceled Games helps Disney/ABC/Fox to maintain their number one position as the biggest media conglomerate. All these media companies directly and indirectly influence one another, and how they choose to report news affects their place of standing in the media marketplace.

The same thing is happening with Viacom, who owns CBS, whom was the last company to own the distribution rights to the Olympics before Comcast/NBC won the rights in 1992. Viacom, and all her media subsidiaries, will do everything possible to can the Olympics so they can leap-frog over Comcast and claim their spot as the 2nd biggest media conglomerate in the US.

The general theme of the Olympics in the current age is all about money, bottom-line profits, money, advertising dollars, distribution rights, more money, and the newest shadow Olympic event that has emerged in the past 30 years: sparring between media conglomerates, all with the intention of trying to gain a leg-up on their rivals and steal away advertising dollars.

So, there’s plenty of incentive for at least 2 media conglomerates and their affiliates to cancel the Olympics. It highlights the shift from the Olympics being an event that draws the world together once every quadrennial, to a big fat money-making machine benefiting only those few involved. This is being highlighted against the backdrop of a global pandemic, which is a public relations nightmare.

The Olympics are supposed to be about finding more common ground among the human race in a time where countries are deeply divided, now more than ever. The Olympiads of yesteryear centered around athletes, fierce competition, good sportsmanship, interesting stories, triumphs of the human spirit, and bringing the world together through the mechanism of sport. Nowadays there is a strong driving economic incentive from Comcast’s rivals to keep people divided over the event. As an athlete who has been to 2 Olympics in my career, I couldn’t help but wonder: with so much profit to be gained from dividing the entire world and keeping people at odds with one another, is there any financial value in bringing the world together?

In Rio 2016, I found myself in headlines with a lot of attention and causing all kinds of a ruckus on social media. While it was necessary for me to speak my mind at one finite moment in time, I over-stepped boundaries and started calling out countries that I thought were acting horribly inside the Olympic Village. While the former was necessary, the latter wasn’t. It is simply unnecessary for me to take it upon myself to call out privilege, and call out all the inequalities one experiences at the Olympics representing a smaller nation. These were the very early days of “call-out culture” and performative activism. Now let’s get one thing clear: I am an activist, albeit, the silent kind, that does more with actions than I do words on the internet. Its less ugly this way.

If I do attend my 3rd Olympics, which is highly likely, I want people to see that I can be quiet and that I can play along with the shenanigans. I’ll stay silent, fade into the background, and I won’t make a sound. I don’t need, desire, nor want, any kind of attention at all. For me personally, I see what’s going on with the wider picture of this whole thing and I’m keeping a low-profile.

The Tokyo Olympics will be special because I get to share these moments with my mother, who has been there every step of the way during the entirety of my swimming career. From waking up at 5 AM to take me to swim practice, to officiating at national swim meets, Mum has been there for it all. I want to go to Tokyo and really be present with her. That’s all I ask. That’s all I want. No drama, no calling out, no social media attention seeking bullshit, just special moments with my Mum.

After not seeing my family for over 2 years due to the global pandemic, I’m deserving of a little nurturing. I deserve my mother’s hug, and I just want to feel like everything is going to be alright. I can’t wait to sit back and enjoy meals together, sharing cups of tea with mum. I can say with full certainty that this will be the highlight of my trip.

The new moon eclipse in Gemini is good for releasing old things. Part of what I’m releasing is my swimming career, which no longer serves its relevance in my life anymore. I’m also releasing the old boy I used to be, and stepping into the new man I’ve become. I’ve decided that these Tokyo Olympics will be my swan song:

Fire Sun & Water Moon Meme

Very Accurate:

Sagittarius Sun & Cancer Moon FTW 🌞/🌔

Venus Williams, Hairstyle Icon

I've been a fan of the Williams Sisters since I was 13. Their story is inspiring for many different reasons. From Compton to Wimbledon, these ladies have seen and done it all!

Something i’ve always, always loved are their colorful outfits and hairstyles on court. I like things that are a different, only when done tastefully without overstepping the mark.

For instance: the blue/green braids Venus has tied up in Princess Leia buns at the Miami Open is honestly so iconic, I can’t stop thinking about it.

Venus looks like a Pokémon Master that you have to beat on Nintendo to proceed to the next level and I, for one, am obsessed:

The Still-Face Experiment

I watched a fascinating YouTube video a couple days ago that made me want to Tweet about how ready I am to be a father. It was about 1 year old babies and their ability to recognize several basic blocks of social interaction. It’s fascinating to see that every single social interaction we have from the moment we are born affects us for the rest of our lives.

Seeing babies and toddlers interact with humans, often speaks volumes about the households they’re growing up in. They have this saying in Hindu culture when I visited New Delhi in 2010: “children are a reflection of their parents.”

This video I’m about to share almost made me cry. I think back and am transported to being a 10 year old and remembering the day my little sister first smiled at us from the pushchair. We were jiggling the pram on Mission Bay beach and out came the most radiant and beaming smile, gums and all! Me and my older sister were booing and cooing at her, smiling, as if we were trying to coax the positive energy out of her. No teeth of course because she was only a few months old. Then out of her body came a noise that can only be described as a joyful scream. I remembered very specifically my older sister gasping: “Oh my God, she’s smiling! Look, Mum! She’s laughing too!” Our little baby Hinemoa was mirroring all our facial expressions back to us.

I used to love sitting in the backseat of our retro 1997 Land Rover Discovery and make all kinds of funny faces at my baby sister. If there was anything I was going to teach her it was: how to be funny, make silly faces, and not to take life too seriously! I played the role of goofy older brother perfectly! Hinemoa would grab my face, almost trying to comprehend and understand if my face was real or not. She’d never seen anybody go cross-eyed before. Then after holding my funny face for 10 seconds, she’d touch my cheek and animatedly change and make a different funny face, usually with a honking nasal noise to match, often to her squealing delight. And bip-boppity-boop, she’s been laughing at my jokes ever since!

It made me realize that although my Mum had to take care of two little rascals running around at 18 months apart (me and my older sister), Mum always engaged with us babies from a very young age. This was her way of showing us that we were loved. Mum still does this with all my cousin’s babies by the way.

Every time a cousin of mine had a baby - and trust me, there are tons of babies in my extended family because I have 60+ first cousins alone - Mum would always talk to their children as if they were already able to communicate. Now I’m realizing after watching this video, the babies that mirrored back her smiles and her interactions were from families where the child was already being socially engaged. Others, and there were some, stared at her blankly, almost confused as to why this white lady was trying to talk to them! Perhaps it was just their personality, but after watching this video I’m realizing that maybe it’s not.

I suppose I’m getting emotional because I’m feeling extreme gratitude for the household I grew up in and for the Mum that I had. I called her just now to tell her that I love her. She was such a lovely mother. Even when we acted out, she never walked away and ignored us. Us 3 children were never withheld love, and you can see it in our sunny disposition to this very day: me and my sisters are abundant with our love and we never withdraw, we just love harder!

I get equally emotional and sad for babies that don’t get the same socialization from a young age. The ones that perhaps don’t get any attention unless it’s negative. According to Bridgett Miller (teacher, parenting consultant, and remedial therapist) there’s a lot going on emotionally for children who repeatedly act out to get a reaction from their parents:

“Any time a young child ups their performance and becomes louder, more dramatic, or repeatedly pushes the limits, they need more attention—not less. This may sound contrary to what you’ve been led to believe, but withholding attention from a child who is acting out to get it will never resolve what’s driving them to act out. When we ignore, shame, or punish a child who is “just looking for attention,” we might succeed in temporarily shutting down their acting out, but we miss out on giving them what they truly need from us: a deeper heartfelt connection.

For a young child who is desperate for a parent’s attention, even negative attention is better than not getting any attention at all. It’s a poor substitute for the warm connection they were trying to attract, but they’ll settle for what they can get. Parents need to know that the young child isn’t going to be the one to break the cycle of acting out in order to get attention, it has to be the parent. We have to be the ones who let go of trying to justify how much time and attention we’re already giving them, and thinking that it should be enough. Only the child knows how much is enough for them. If we’re seeing their behavior escalate, we have to approach their exasperating behavior as an immature plea for more connection, not less, because that’s what it is.

Whenever your child appears to be doing something for attention, it’s because attention is exactly what they need. When you push back or try and ignore their efforts to get your attention, you’re wasting an opportunity to give them the connection they are seeking. By giving them loving attention, you’re not giving in or letting them have their way—you’re conveying that you see them, you hear them, and they matter to you. This provides the necessary context to convey that no matter what their behavior, your connection to them remains strong. Tell yourself this parenting affirmation: “I choose to see my child’s attention-seeking behavior as a plea for more connection.” Use this takeaway to re-frame the way you’re interpreting their behavior.”

This, I’m assuming, and I’m no child psychologist, is the way antagonistic personalities are born with the thought process being: I’m going to get the attention I’m wanting and desiring, regardless of whether it is a positive or negative outcome, I will get the attention nonetheless. Repetition of this behavior with negative outcomes, as clinical psychologist Dr. Ramini Durvasula puts it, shapes a child’s psychological constitution.

I’m grateful to have grown up in a household with positive reinforcement and encouraging affirmation. There was no love placed on restricted access to any of us, the love was always abundant, even when we were acting out! Long story long: children need attention, affection, affirmation, warmth, and above all, abundant signs of engaging love. Withdrawing any of the qualities mentioned in the last sentence stunts emotional growth and only creates emotional complexities in their future.

I know the type of father I’m going to be to my babies. One that is full of attentive love and positive reinforcement, I’ll never be withholding love, ever. I’m going to talk to them babies as if they’re already understanding me because chances are, they already do! Watch the video and see for yourself:

Sleeping Well At Night

There are 3 universal truths about this life: we are born alone, we die alone, and we sleep alone. Sure, there are some exceptions but for the most part this is all true.

Sleep is interesting to me because it functions as a sort of in-between state of death and birth. When we close our eyes and lay still, we descend into deep sleep, REM (rapid eye movement) cycles, and our bodies recover from whatever physical exertion and emotional grievances we’ve had that day.

Then just like that, we wake up and it feels like we are reborn into a new life with a new body and everything is revitalized. Nothing is more necessary to our bodies than a good night’s sleep. Waking up after a solid night of rest is totally rejuvenating.

Some people have difficulty falling asleep and it can be for a myriad of reasons. Sometimes it is stress related; worry will keep anybody up at night. Other times it is chemically related. It is a known fact that when people quit drinking they have intense sleep problems that can last for many, many months. This is because the latency period of the onset of sleep is much shorter after drinking alcohol; meaning, people who drink before bed fall asleep much faster; however, the body spends more time in deep sleep and this disrupts REM cycles.

REM cycles are important because they’re the moments in our sleep that help us dream. I was told by a doctor once that alcohol can disrupt not 1, but 2 REM cycles. This means that after a night of heavy drinking, it’ll take not 1, but 2 night’s sleep before you finally experience dreams again. Sleeping is one thing, but dreaming is quite another. Everything recovers during sleep, including our subconscious mind, all achieved through the art of dreaming. Dreams can reveal so much about all of our inherent wants, needs, desires, all of which are buried deep inside our subconscious mind.

Long story short, if you want to have stable sleep patterns, which will eventually lead to stable living patterns, you can read more about how to achieve that here.

Sleeping well at night, to me, is a spiritual thing. If I sleep well at night then I know that all is well in my world and that everything within my own spirit is settled. Every night I ask myself: am I contributing good things to this world? Should we continue down this current path, or steer myself in a different direction? These are imperative questions we should ask ourselves every night before bed.

I don’t shy away from this reflection because I know that deep down I am a good person, whom is only trying their best everyday to do right by others. I do my best to live and uplift people because that’s the type of person I am. Toxic positivity? Perhaps. But life is much easier to move through as an eternal optimist and I wouldn’t want to have it any other way. Happiness is contagious. I’m not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I do try my best to outwardly project goodness into this world.

I cherish the moment of laying in bed before drifting off to sleep, thinking and reflecting on the day I’ve had and all the things I’m blessed to have in my life. I think about all the things I’m grateful for. I think about my family and friends, and I ask the Universe to protect them. I express gratitude for the job I get to do that brings me so much joy, and about how it doesn’t even feel like a job when I’m doing it. And finally, I practice astral projection when thinking about all the things I’m hoping to achieve in this life: all my wants, desires, hopes and dreams.

This moment of introspection before bed ensures that I’m in a good place, and when I feel in a good place, I fall quickly off to sleep without problems.

To me, I think self-reflection before bed is difficult for some people. Sometimes sitting with one’s conscience is difficult, especially if you aren’t happy within your heart and your soul. This doesn’t mean that all people with sleep disturbances are bad people, but I do think there are layers of truth behind the loaded question: “Do you sleep well at night?” Meaning, do you feel good enough within yourself to sleep well at night?

To me personally, a good heart, well-nourished soul, and wholesome spirit will always sleep well at night. I think there is no better remedy for insomnia other than a good conscience.

Beyoncé sums it all up perfectly in the closing lyrics of her song “Pretty Hurts”:

When you're alone all by yourself,
When you're lying in your bed,
Reflection stares right into you,
Are you happy with yourself?

Stripped away the masquerade,
The illusion has been shed,
Are you happy with yourself?
Are you happy with yourself?

We are all birthed into this world alone, we all leave this physical plane alone, and we all sleep alone. So, the next time you’re having difficulty sleeping, think of me, B, and the esoteric question: are you happy with yourself?

I Really Like Russell Brand

Every year my Mum gets each one of her children a book for Christmas, and the last time I was home for she bought me Russell Brand’s book “Revolution.” It was actually a really good book. I highly recommend it.

I never thought much of him as a person until I saw him participating at the Occupy Wall Street protests in September 2011. I thought that was very brave of him. I kind of fell in love with him when he gave a fabulous speech at the 2013 GQ Awards, which they obviously tried to scrub from the internet, but thankfully this Norwegian YouTube channel has saved it for all our viewing pleasure here.

A lot of people say we look alike, which makes me laugh. A few people have also joked that he looked like the late Amy Winehouse, another artist whom I really admire. Do I look like Amy too? Gosh I hope so. Let me grab my eyeliner real quick and I’ll find out!

All jokes aside, what I really wish people would say about me is that I sound half as smart and eloquent as this very intelligent and engaging man. If you can get beyond the Jesus looking exterior, then what you’d see is that there’s a lot more beneath the surface.

You can see that this is a man who has lived through some things and come out the other end very enlightened. For a long time Russell Brand suffered through addiction, mental health struggles, and all sorts of self-destructive behavior. But he pulled through and now possess insight I find very admirable.

I think Mr. Brand has some really interesting things to say about the current state of the world. He sees all the moving parts. When he sees a lack of justice, he uses his platform to advocate change. I can only pray to have half as much impact one day.

This latest video he made about mental health during the pandemic is very good. We should all watch and think about it here:

Learning To Be Vulnerable

I’ve never found it particularly interesting to be vulnerable. Nor have I ever, not once in my life, striven to be relatable. It just isn’t something I find particularly interesting. I’m forever trying to come across as competent and in control. I’m unsure where this part of my personality comes from. Perhaps it is my Capricorn rising? Maybe there’s some childhood trauma I haven’t quite unpacked yet. It could also just be a defective part of my personality requiring work.

I’m learning that the biggest reason why I won’t allow myself to be vulnerable is that I’m probably way too paranoid. I don’t believe that people have inherently good intentions wanting to hear about my own personal struggles. People find ways to weaponize trauma. When I’ve opened up to people, about the difficult times I’ve endured in my life, it has often been used against me. These conversations are rarely had with good intent, rather, a mechanism to manipulate and maneuver at a later date. I just don’t want to give people ammunition.

As stated earlier, ruminating in trauma isn’t something I find interesting. I prefer to learn very quickly and move on, refusing to make the same mistakes twice. However, I’m learning that helping people deal with their struggles, because I’ve lived through some of the same struggles, is somewhat significant. I read on my cousin Loma’s Instagram page the following quote:

So I sat there and thought about success. I’d say I’ve had a pretty successful decade in my 20’s in many different ways. One year removed from the decade I suppose I can critically analyze everything. Sure, I could have more money in my bank account, and of course I made many mistakes along the way, but I do also understand that success is a subjective term that we all interpret differently.

There are the basic societal markers of success: big house, big car, big family, big wallet, high paying job, etc. So if I were to use societal markers of success, I wouldn’t be very successful at all; however, we all possess the inherent ability to define success on our own terms.

Because we are entitled to our own interpretations of what “success” is, I knew that striving to obtain societal success wasn’t going to be the main goals of my 20’s. What I did do instead was work on myself very hard, introspectively, to do all the things that I knew would be imperative to setting myself up for lifelong fulfillment. In many ways I’m in a state of great privilege because I’ve always had the luxury of time to define success on my own terms.

Success to me in my 20’s were the following accomplishments:

1. Graduating from a Tier I University and getting a robust education, debt-free.

2. Using my tertiary education to build a hotel with my family so that my parents could live less stressful lives. Success was also helping my father phase out of his law career, so he can be around long enough to meet his grandchildren.

3. Unpacking deep childhood trauma and dealing with some pretty ugly demons. Success of this was made through confronting my parents, my father in particular, on the difficult times I had growing up that made me feel invalidated. This was particularly difficult if you knew the Tongan cultural background we were raised where children are “seen but not heard.”

4. Receiving a sincere apology from my parents, again, mostly my father, which in turn allowed me to heal effectively.

5. Recognizing that I have internalized trauma that affects my subconscious on a deeper level and breaking out of this cycle of mistreatment. I hope this will give me a much higher chance of success in both my interpersonal and intimate loving relationships.

6. Using my brain, skills, and lifelong passion for my sport to survive in New York City. I’ve never, not once, used my physical appearance or “charm” to make it by. Learning to stand on my own two feet without compromising any of my values is important to me. The result? A robust self-esteem and general sense of security that’s centered around knowing everything I’ve ever obtained has been through merit, and merit alone.

7. Overcoming an unhealthy body image and bad attitude towards food. I’ve finally learned how to find balance and like what I see when I look in the mirror.

8. Researching scholarly sources to learn about my own bodily health, and how it is intrinsically linked to my own personal mental health.

9. Overcoming self-destructive thought patterns and behavioral habits that have kept me trapped in the lower-frequency. Success was being able to tap into my higher-level of consciousness through overcoming all the difficulties and struggles in my life.

10. And finally, bringing my childhood coach to the Olympics and sharing that once-in-a-lifetime experience with her. That felt really good.

These are all my versions of success. Noticed how none of them are physical? Not one single thing you can touch! Except maybe the hotel we built as a family. Success to me is all about self-actualization, and taking the time to learn and grow from one’s mistakes.

I’ve had a ton of failure along the way, and of course my goal is to share this with you all in an attempt to make myself more vulnerable and relatable. It is an ongoing journey, learning to take down the veneer, but it is something I’m starting to feel safe doing strictly on my own terms. I’m not going to give out my difficulties and struggles to people haphazardly, I will be selective and deliberate, as any Capricorn rising creature would!

Everything in life is much easier when we approach the world with a “growth orientated” mindset; nobody knows everything and we shouldn’t feel embarrassed by saying the words: “I don’t know.”

My Dad told me growing up that the best Professor he ever met while studying Law at The University of London at Oxford, was a man who stood up in front of the class and said in his very first lecture that some of the smartest people in the world are the first to say “I don’t know.” Because eventually one day you will know, and this is how ignorance is not only fought, but won!

I’ve always chosen to keep the lessons of my past and not dwell on failure itself. I’ve also learned to embrace all my failures as though they’re stepping stones, kicking me toward something bigger and greater. I see myself as a big ol’ gay phoenix, constantly being reborn, rising out of the ashes, and into something stronger, more resilient, and hopefully soon to be of some significance.

I’ve done a lot of growth and now, in lieu of success, I hope to become more significant by adding value to other people’s lives, instead of just my own. At the end of the day, I’m just like Dolly, singing in the song below: “I’m just travellin’ travellin’ travellin’, I’m just travellin’ thru! Woooooooooo!”

And I hope y’all continue travellin’ with me on this road of self-discovery:

How To Be A Real Friend

My upcoming 31st birthday is making reflect on a lot of things in life. One of those things is friendship. After 3 solid decades on this planet, I think I know what it means to be a real friend. After careful deliberation, I’ve decided that these are the 3 rules I live by in order to be considered a real friend.

1) Don’t ‘Go To Bed’ With Your Friends

Personally I believe that in order for friendship to really flourish, the element of sex has to be removed. This makes life much simpler, with clear distinct boundaries.

I’ve taken a leaf out the Greek Philosopher Epicurus’ book and decided that life is much simpler if all the people I call a friend in my life really is just that: a friend. I’ve said that to each of my 4 boyfriends and each of them appreciated my candor because it was reassuring for them. When boundaries are crossed in friendship they’re no longer a friend anymore, they’re a lover, and once feelings get involved, the situation gets messy.

If you’re serious about having a committed loving relationship in the future, don’t make things weird with your friends! It’s that simple. That way, when you have a potential partner come into your life, you can say with full certainty when introducing them to you circle, that every person in your circle really is just a friend.

2) A Real Friend Apologizes For Hurt Feelings

If boundaries are crossed, then address it immediately, apologize regardless of whether you were in the right or wrong, acknowledge the misstep and move on. Everybody has had a drunken night where they’ve made bad decisions, the important part is the recovery. The sooner you address it, nip it in the bud, the higher the likelihood the friendship can be mended. I understand it’s uncomfortable, however, anything ambiguous is only going to lead into more hurt feelings and nobody ever wants to play games with people’s hearts, it is bad karma.

Evil eyes can manifest in many different ways. I believe it’s possible for people to lose their jobs, prosperous careers, even loving committed relationships, all because of an evil eye has been cast on by so-called jealous friends. A real friend would never deliberately go out of their way to do something out of spite. A loving friendship isn’t about hurting, and if the love feels painful then it probably isn’t love.

We need to all collectively stop using a person’s “acting out” and rage as an indicator of strong feelings with love: love isn’t supposed to be painful. Everybody needs to stop conflating love and pain: the depth of a person’s pain is no indicator of their love for you.

How your friends are with apologies is also a good indicator of whether the friendship is real or not. When you confront a friend about a hurtful thing they’ve done, a real friend acknowledges the hurt and pain they’ve caused, and apologizes for causing it.

Do you acknowledge the hurt and pain in your friendships? And if so, are you able to navigate an apology that gives your friend the assurance, understanding, and compassion that they need to have peace? That’s a real friendship. Talking around difficult issues or leaving them unaddressed for a long period of time can turn any relationship toxic.

So often people make their apologies about egos and power-struggles, and if this dynamic seems familiar, it might be time to move on from that friendship. Revisiting pain from the past is like picking at a scab for fun, it is a toxic cycle that doesn’t allow you to heal and move forward. Real friends honor sincere apologies and move on.

Accepting an apology is one thing, but honoring it is quite another. When accepting or receiving an apology, honoring it means leaving the conversation there and moving forward. Don’t revisit it. If they keep revisiting painful moments of the past that you’ve sincerely apologized for, realize that behavior is a toxic cycle and you don’t need that in your life.

Pride and resentment can kill a person, and they very oftentimes do. Emotional toxicity is the fastest way to develop cancer, I have no doubt that shit will kill you. So cut out the emotional toxicity from your life for the good of your own mental, spiritual, emotional, and even physical health. Get it out of your life.

3) A Real Friend Wants You to Win

When a person posts something online to get underneath your skin, or does something deliberately to cause a fight and provoke you, that’s toxic. If you get a thrill out of such interactions, you might have an addiction to toxicity.

If you get a rush from drama then you might be a toxic person, which isn’t the best thing, but admitting that you might be partial to toxic tendencies is the first step in breaking out of the toxic cycles and friendships once and for all.

I avoid all social and emotional toxicity in my life. I’ve lost countless friends over the years because the situations have turned toxic and I needed to walk away. Self-care is so important. It’s really hard, especially when you share so much history, but all because a person has been in your life a very long time doesn’t make them a real friend; you must look at their behavior.

One thing I’ve learned in life is that good energy begets good energy, bad energy begets bad energy. So, I only try to give loving energy to those who make me feel good, and these friendships reciprocate that loving energy right back to me naturally. It should make you feel good to build your friends up! Everybody should be wanting to see one another win.

Lastly, friendships are the few moments of human interaction where we get to be vulnerable and tender. Can you be tender and vulnerable with your friends? Does your friend soothe that vulnerability, minimize your weakness, build up your self-confidence and instill strength in your character? That’s a real friend.

How to Dine in a Communist Country

I’ve been to a fair few Communist countries in my day. I’ve been to both Russia and China, but it was the trip to Cuba with my 3rd ex-boyfriend that was really life changing.

Havana Street Sunset

I’m not going to talk about what we did because I’m not basic. What occurs underneath the heat of the hot Havana sun stays there, but let’s just say we had a really good time together.

Cuba is a place where food is still distributed by the government. Running a restaurant is difficult as sourcing food is controlled by the government. In America, if you wanted to obtain beef, you’d have several different vendors to choose from; in Cuba, there is no luxury. You get what you are given, and oftentimes that will depend on your family’s standing with the government.

Of course you can still go to the store and buy more food but the selection is very scarce. Certain foods are subsidized by the government. I remember eggs being subsidized. From memory, there are two different currencies in Cuba. The first one operates as a sort of US dollar (CUC) , while the other are pesos. Pesos are what the locals use, so if you’re trying to be frugal, push to pay for things in pesos.

Havana Capital

When dining in a communist country, consistently going to the same place will prove highly beneficial to your trip. There was one restaurant we went to everyday where the food was charged in pesos. It was called “Las Chifladas,” located on Animas Street between Galiano & San Nicolas. I don’t want to assume anything but the place did feel Queer-friendly if that’s important to you.

Consistency is the backbone of any thriving business regardless of the country’s governmental structure. Even Starbucks, a capitalist powerhouse, even their business depends on having people consistently come back to their store to buy, almost everyday.

Not Las Chifladas but a tasty chickpea soup.

The food at “Las Chifladas” tasted fresh earlier in the week than it did later in the week. This led me to believe the food was probably delivered late Sunday night or early Monday morning. We also noticed that the portion sizes were significantly more generous on day 3 and 4 than they were on day 1 and 2.

The rice also changed when we returned back with consistency. Rather than the regular plain white rice, they’d offer us spicy rice, which was this heavenly, turmeric yellow jambalaya situation with tons of fresh garlic. My favorite were the pork chops. The chop was cooked excellently: perfectly sealed and brown on both sides, with a tender soft center. I can still hear the sizzling on my plate. Holy hell. I salivate at the thought of yellow rice, onions, garlic, beans, infusing the senses with so many delicious flavors, activating every part of the palette. The food was nourishing and soulful and by Day 3, you could taste the love in every bite. And to keep it real with you: the taste of love from a meal inside a harsh communist country hits different.

English Tea in Cuba

I’m fast-forwarding two and a half years and I’m now living in New York City. I’m standing in Gristede’s staring at a can of Goya beans. I’m not concerned with the can itself as much as I am the sticker on top of it. The sticker looks fresh, as if it had been placed there earlier that day.

I recall a conversation I had with an old co-worker of mine at Starbucks in Chelsea, a fellow Barista. They were talking about how food prices always go up around the first of the month in his neighborhood because that’s when everybody collects their food stamps. They advised the best and cheapest time to buy your groceries was mid-month. I stare at the can of beans and realize I’ve never spent $2.49 for a can of black Goya beans at Gristede’s before. I don’t think I’ve even spent over $2 for a can of black Goya beans, well, ever!

This small price increase, to me, represents that ongoing battle between government and business. The game closely resembles that of cat and mouse. Businesses are always trying to extract more money from the government in the form of tax breaks, meanwhile the government is always trying to extract more from businesses in the form of taxation. This very basic game of cat and mouse resulting in small price increases every month has damaging effects. The very people on the welfare system who are dependent on government for their food via food stamp distribution are the ones who end up having to absorb the cost. The ones on welfare are the most affected by this, but it also affects those of us who aren’t on welfare as we end up having to absorb the cost too.

Two little girls watching men roll cigars

I’m extremely privileged to say that I don’t know what a food stamp looks like, but if I did, I’d do my groceries on the 2nd and 3rd week of the month to ensure that I’m maximizing my food yield. But fundamentally, the idea of government controlling food intake makes me incredibly nervous. It’s not quite communist Cuba obviously, but the sentiment of control taken out our hands and placed into another is concerning.

It is only fair to dissect one’s own privilege when confronted with it. In The Kingdom of Tonga, everybody owns the land they live on. If it doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to somebody in your family. It doesn’t belong to a bank, or some landlord that’s taking rent from your pocket and putting it in their own, it belongs to you, debt-free.

You can farm and grow crops and eat them yourself, the way Mother Nature intended, without the worry of a food stamp, or a price increase, or worse yet, a mortgage repayment. The land you live on is yours and the food you eat is earned. Tonga is one of the only countries in the world to have never been colonized. Look it up. The Kingdom of Tonga has never been colonized and that’s a fact, one we are incredibly proud of. When you talk of imperialism and the pitfalls of colonialism, please omit me and my people from the conversation.

On the Tongan coat of arms it says: “Ko e ʻOtua mo Tonga ko hoku Tofiʻa",” which literally translates to: "God and Tonga are my inheritance."

If I ever choose to opt-out of this capitalist society and “live off the grid,” I have the option to do so, and that’s a powerful Ace of Spades to hold in your back pocket. If all of this fails for me, I have farmland and a home waiting for me in the south pacific. These are my roots.

The ability to self-sustain and survive outside of any governmental framework, communist or capitalist, is the new sexy. Owning a farm? So chic.

Now, for the sake of pure fantasy, let’s imagine what I’d look like in Tonga opting out of a capitalist society. I’m imagining multiple sexy farmhand men, and while they’re all working up a sweat and testosterone, feeding the fat of the land, I’m boiling yams in the kitchen using fluoride free rainwater, filtered, and brought to an alkaline state.

I’m wearing a paisley housedress with a problematic head-wrap, and underneath this I’ll have an even more problematic hairstyle of cornrows. I know all my liberal friends are mortified reading this but their disapproving algorithms are but a distant memory. I don’t have to prove anything to anybody here. I get to just be me. Do you even remember what it feels like to just be yourself?

Diana Ross is playing on the radio and I’m channeling RuPaul in Wyoming.

My Favorite MBE is M.I.A. →

M.I.A. has always had a big impact on my life as an artist. I used to terrorize the streets of Auckland City blasting her sophomore album Kala when I was a senior in High School. What can I say? I like speed both in the streets and in the sheets ;-) But this isn’t my favorite M.I.A. album, not by a long shot.

My favorite M.I.A. album dropped over a decade ago, 2010’s Maya (stylised as M/\Y/\). This was the first album for M.I.A. to release after shooting to fame with 2008’s Paper Planes. The song was wildly successful thanks to the hit movie: Pineapple Express, starring James Franco.

I’ve always enjoyed artists that have had something interesting to say. M.I.A. is always trying to communicate something to her fans. This album was her warning to anybody who’d listen about mass surveillance.

Yes, that’s right, M.I.A. was warning her fans about the government spying well before NSA was a part of public consciousness, That’s pretty dope if you ask me. Let us all appreciate Prince William who honored her with an MBE. I see you Crown Prince.

If you want to listen to the album, I suggest listening to it on YouTube just to be ironic. Or perhaps I’m just a troll?

My favorite track is number 5. When I was living in San Mateo with my Cuban ex-boyfriend, we lived across a Mosque. I would play Lovalot at a very loud volume when we would sit on our balcony for our nightly chamomile tea. The opening lyrics to this song seem so ironically relevant to pandemic life in New York City:

They told me this is a free country
And now it feels like a chicken factory
I feel couped up I wanna bust free
Got nothing to lose if you get me

But the lyrics that I’d burst out singing, impromptu, all around the apartment I shared with my Cuban ex across from the Mosque was:

Like a Taliban trucker, eating boiled up Yucca

Yup, Mum def raised a troll.