Diatribes by Joah

Interests that never go away

It's important to continue pursuing your life's true calling. Your purpose. Your passion.

It's equally important, I believe, to continue pursuing your life's true interests. Your wants. Your likes.

If you like collecting baseball cards as a 14-year-old, why stop when you're 24? If you liked creative writing classes as a student, why stop when you're working a 9-to-5? If you dreamed of one day becoming a famous actor or model, why not try out L.A. or New York?

Instead, more and more, we scale back. We quit collecting or writing or acting. We quit taking dance classes or going to baseball games or traveling the world.

The moment we stop pursuing our interest is the moment we stop thinking big.

Because we're encouraged, subtle but noticeably by the world we live in (parents, bosses, peers), to limit our perspective, our goals, our focus. We're told to concentrate on that 9-to-5 and stop wasting time with those childhood hobbies and goals and pursuits.

Pursuit isn't something we talk about enough. People are too caught up in performance. My stance is that my performance is closely linked to my pursuit. The more I pursue, the better my performance.

The more interesting my life is outside of my 9-to-5, the more interesting my 9-to-5 becomes because I'm maximizing my work time by not spending it thinking about the things that I wish I could be doing instead.

The more I write these blogs, the better my client memos become. The better my life product, the better my work product.

So just because I love writing these diatribes and I'm consumed with excitement about my pending books and I'm always talking sports or music or something else, it doesn't mean I'm not loving my job enough to put my all into it when needed.

Because when you're pursuing your life's true interests and searching for your life's true purpose, you realize something very important:

That 9-to-5 is without-a-doubt an extremely important piece in life's puzzle.

In case you were wondering.

***

On that note, please visit http://realrolemodel.blogspot.com/ the official site of my second book, tentatively titled Real Role Models (formerly Untold & Overlooked).

Passion over Performance

I'm sure you've all seen and heard that statistic about college graduates making a million dollars more in their professional lives than if they'd ended their educations after high school.

But I have a more specific, yet equally important, question for you? How much more money is your chosen career field going to make you than another career.

For example, Kevin Garnett is one of the most famous people from my second hometown - Greenville, South Carolina. He's also a future NBA Hall-of-Famer and considered one of the most passionate players to ever set foot on the hardcourt. Oh, and he makes over $20 million-per-year.

Thankfully, KG's sub-700 SAT score didn't hinder his NBA Draft status and the Minnesota Timberwolves, being more concerned with his points and rebounds, selected him with their first pick.

Unlike KG though, most of us aren't 6-foot-11-inch athletic spectacles who can handle the ball like a guard and defend like a center. Most of us have to choose a career based on factors like: education required, likelihood of success, and pay levels (nowhere near $20 million a year either).

So while most of us chose to attend college because it was the next step in life. And a degree pushes us toward a career making more money than we would have without it, I'm sure there are some who are in the midst of starting careers in various fields simply because they are more lucrative than doing theater and dance or whatever other field they're truly interested in.

Honestly, it's pretty damn unfortunate. So many of us have to defer our true interests or childhood dreams because it just makes sense to go to law school or graduate school or take that accounting job. (Some just wait for that husband to come around, but that's a whole different topic.)

Regardless, it's sad to see so many of our generation making a difference in their bank accounts without actually making a difference in people's lives because they have no true passion for their work. They have already settled.

Careers based on promotions instead of promise. Lives based on paychecks instead of passion.

But to you, my friends, I ask you to hold out.

Keep pressing toward your true ambition by spending hours of otherwise free time studying nature's secrets or starting your own nonprofit organization for kids instead of going to grad school because you can make more money as a principal or superintendent.

Don't pursue a successful career. Pursue a successful life.

Hopefully, your passion will come to fruition in the form of a positive impact on others.

At least that's my stance. After all, I calculated I've made around $60,000 simply because I have a passion for (and am pretty good at) writing. Articles, leadership bios, and now books.

So when I got a check in the mail for a few thousand dollars simply for an idea I was interested in writing about, it made me smile. Not because I'm on pace toward that million dollars.

But because I didn't have to sell my true passions in the process.

'We' Need to See More Shows

Why don't black people go to rock concerts?

Last night, I couldn't help but wonder as I watched fresh new blues-folk artist Brett Dennen sing in that Tracy Chapman-esque tone. {Sidebar: The cool thing about Brett, though, is that he's a he and he's like a 6'6", 200+ pound man. Seriously, he's one of the best things to happen in an increasingly-stagnant music scene in the last year. And that's before I get into the opening acts, Lucas Reynolds - who wants you to check him out at www.myspace.com/lucasreynolds - and ALO.}

But it wasn't just Brett's fun-loving tunes (like "She's Mine") that got me thinking about whether or not black people have good taste in music. It was the lone dread-locked 30-somethings guy that was bobbing his head and clapping his hands an arm's length from the State Theatre stage.

I made a lifelong commitment to seeing one concert per month and I'm going on six years now and I've seen hundreds of artists and bands, dating back to Green Day when they hit the scene in 1994 with "Dookie" to fellow Grammy-winner Beck at Madison Square Garden last November. And those are just the more popular artists I've seen; there are others like Badly Drawn Boy, MuteMath, and Jamie Cullum that put on equally great shows.

Regardless of the artists or band or year or venue or ticket price, there are two constants: 1) 90 percent of the attendees are white and 2) Besides myself, "that guy" with the dreadlocks is the only black person there. Did I miss the memo about having to grow dreads to see an indie or alternative rock show?

Actually, the problem is bigger than indie and alternative rock. It's bigger than Dave Matthews Band, which has three black members, and Robert Randolph and the Family Band, The Dears and Sevendust, all of which feature black lead singers. The problem is spreading rapidly.

Case in point, if you've been to any hip-hop shows in the current decade - The Roots, Common, Outkast - you've probably already noticed this alarming phenomenon as well. Not that I'm saying hip-hop is for black people only, but I'm am saying rock music isn't for white people only either. Hell, black people invented and mastered it!

In fact, guys like Roy Brown, Fats Domino and Big Joe Turner crafted songs years before Elvis Presley recorded "That's All Right" in 1954. And Presley himself has credited originals like Little Richard as an inspiration. {Of course Rolling Stones magazine has an interest in maintaining Pressley as the music's creator}. Yes, I took History of Rock and Roll in college.

Thankfully, that same magazine isn't dumb enough to credit anyone other than the legend Jimi Hendrix with being the greatest guitarist of all-time; B.B. King is third (ahead of Eric Clapton), and Chuck Berry is sixth (ahead of Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and Keith Richards of Rollings Stones).

Of course, you'll get some black historians to say one of two things, 1) black people always favored R&B over rock and 2) black people stopped liking rock music when white people stole it.

For that first note, I agree. Even while Little Richard and Chuck Berry were doing their thing, blacks congregated toward the R&B sounds of artists like Sam Cooke and Ray Charles. And today, black teens and young adults are much more likely to buy the new Chris Brown or Beyonce album than the new Killers or White Stripes album.

As for the second note, though, I'm not 100 percent convinced. Look at jazz music, where Duke Ellington is being followed by Wynton Marsalis. Do you think black people ran away from jazz when Dave Brubeck and Dave Grusin started making tunes? Not at all, in fact, jazz bars are one of the few places in D.C. that are highly-integrated on average nights.

So that leads me to major concerns with hip-hop. Black people are losing hip-hop everyday and it's our own fault because of one simple reason: we don't go to concerts.

It started in the early '90s when "gangsta-rap" acts like N.W.A. and misogynist acts like 2 Live Crew started making it difficult for venue managers and concert promoters to make major tours feasible and tickets cheap. N.W.A.-inspired acts induced more violence during and after shows, and sexually-explicit artists like 2 Live Crew encouraged mistreatment of women at rap shows.

The result: black people aren't encouraged to go to concerts unless a) it's safe and b) it's cheap. And any concert promoter will tell you rap concerts aren't cheap because venues have to pay inflated insurance costs to protect from the likely fights (and gunshots) that may ensue.

As violence at rap shows increased, it became impossible for multiple rock acts to tour together the way Def Jam used to do in the '80s with Run-DMC, LL Cool J and others. Then we were left with the once-in-a-blue-moon mega-shows like the Hard Knock Life Tour featuring Jay-Z and DMX, or the Up In Smoke Tour with Snoop, Dr. Dre and Eminem. Even the recent Anger Management Tour which co-headlined Em and 50 Cent didn't break the bank the way some expected.

The result of less black people attending rap shows is music labels being more fearful of signing and supporting hip-hop acts like Lupe Fiasco and Little Brother who would otherwise depend on a full tour schedule to support their less-catchy albums (that don't entail songs called "Snap Yo Fingaz" and "This is Why I'm Hot"). Subsequently, hip-hop show prices are more expensive, which explains the 90 percent white audience, which explains why hip-hop acts play places like The University of Texas at Austin (black population 5 percent) and the Austin City-Limits Festival - and why go to a music festival that doesn't entail mostly "black people music". {No festival management company could afford the insurance to host 80,000+ black people in a city for three days...ask Atlanta what happened to Freaknik.)

Eventually, it's back to another question: what classifies as black people music? And apparently, only myself and the dread-locked guy got the memo about rock no longer classifying as "our music".

I'm worried real hip-hop isn't too far behind. Then all "we'll" have left is a choice between Usher, 50 Cent and Rihanna.

That "Umbrella" song is pretty catchy though.

The First Step is Admission, Right?

I had something else in mind for this week's diatribe, but I just got a gut (reality) check from a very important friend of mine. So, because there's no better space than this and no better time than now, I'm going to answer my friend and some of you by explaining a few things in the hopes of you better understanding why I am the way I am.

The word diatribe means "a bitter, sharply abusive denunciation, attack, or criticism". It was not chance that I selected this as the title of my blog. I understood fully, when I started this, that being this candid and introspective would result in a more widespread criticism and judgment of my character and qualities.

I can handle being analyzed and judged. What I can't handle is losing friends in the process. So I want to apologize if the following information as personally affected my relationship with you and I ask you to please stay with me as I continue working on becoming a better person, not just a more successful one.

*****

As I've said before, I'm far from perfect. However, I realize that - because I choose to write about things that I consider myself a bit of an expert at speaking about - it sometimes comes off that I see myself as this holier-than-thou figure.

That said, I could wait for Pretty Boy Floyd Mayweather, Jr. to give me an uppercut or jab to the head, or I can attempt to rectify some of my flaws here and now.

I'll give it a go in this diatribe because, unlike Oscar De La Hoya, I won't get $25 million for a few head shots.

There's no easy way to say this, but I can be a bit of an asshole if you don't put me in my place on occasion. Thankfully, I have a few great friends who have never let up (or given up) on me when I'm full of myself. I liken these friendships to the one you've probably seen in those T-Mobile commercials with Charles Barkley and Dwayne Wade where young Wade is steadfastly trying to get in Barkley's "five".

Obviously, some of you are closer to me than others, but I'd like to talk a bit about those aforementioned flaws to try and explain myself.

1) I'm full of myself.

There's no real explanation for this that can sufficiently speak to the root cause of my preference for self-flattery. I mean I can attribute some of it to lack of attention and/or praise from a father figure since my dad was never around, but that'd be, at best, a half-truth. My mom and others did a wonderful job filling the gaps.

Then there's the concept of being my own best cheerleader, which I firmly believe is an important part of "finding your purpose" and facing any adversity one may face in pursuit of it. But still, this is only a half-truth because you don't have to be full of yourself to be proud of yourself.

So, honestly, I'm left with the potential explanation being that I just like bragging. And truth be told, I do. Over the years, I've found myself arguing other sports fans on behalf of the likes of Kobe Bryant, Barry Bonds, Terrell Owens, and Deion Sanders. It's a shock I wasn't in Mayweather's corner.

What I've come to realize is that I like braggadachio. I like things like swagger and self-reliance above things like composure and teamwork. I like Allen Iverson more than Steve Nash. And I'll believe the same until I see Steve Nash lead a team with no other All-Stars on it to the NBA Finals.

2) I think I know everything.

Much like #1, I can cite all kinds of things as potential justifications for this flaw, but there's no silver bullet explanation. It's just plain silly to think there is.

Instead, I've begun focusing on when this all started...where was it that I began thinking I knew everything. And I think I found the answer.

I went back through my old records and found my 1st grade report card where my teacher noted to my mother that I answered questions when I wasn't called upon. This was around the same time I was reading encyclopedias for kicks. And not long after I was the only middle schooler that all about college scholarships and later I was the only high schooler that knew about Stephen Covey's 7 Habits.

What started as a desire to be smart and prove my intellect, became a knack for consuming information, being an early-adopter and getting ahead. It also became an obsession.

3) I don't listen.

Now this one is sooooooooo painful to admit. I could put another 20 or 30 "o"s there.

This one will be the death of me. Seriously. Not listening ends marriages and careers and one's success. It's not a possibility, it's a fact...just look at Lyndon B. Johnson's legacy or Paul McCartney's marriage or baseball commissioner Bud Selig's ignorance of steroids in baseball.

I pride myself on being a great friend. My best friends know I am someone they can rely on, trust and call anytime. But I also know that being a great friend depends on being a great listener.

The day I fully stop listening is the day I start being ignorant. And ignorance breeds stagnation and failure and loneliness and close-mindedness and all the other things I never want to be associated with.

*****

I'm full of myself because I think I know everything because I don't listen.

The first step is admission, right?

The next step, if you allow me, will be earning and maintaining my right to be in your "Five".