All my life I’ve been a music enthusiast, hell, even my family is as they have always had a certain type of rhythm. My mom and other family members grew up in Panama where music was very prevalent, whether it was Jamaican music, reggae in Espanol, salsa, bachata etc. that early on was instilled into me. That ear for beats and lyrics all came from my people and their habits as well as my environment. Growing up I listened to a lot of hip hop as an inner-city urban kid that went through progressions. Music in a lot of ways was therapeutic to me and helped me get through things and situations that were stressful and prevalent at the time and even gave me a better love and understanding of the things that I listened to. To me, I listen to everything and have because the different genres of music often times match with the feelings I currently hold. If I’m sad or depressed one day I might listen to sad alternative music; if I’m happy the next I might listen to joyous or rowdy hip hop or rock. Music to me is more than just music, it’s a lifestyle and a characteristic that describes me and who I am as an individual. There was a point in time when I was so wrapped up into music that I became a producer for a while, learning how to produce beats and mix & master tracks. Those days are long gone but all in all it caused me to have a deeper connection with music. The music I’ve listened to and continue to listen too also inspired me to pursue photography and arts. It was not the sole reason why I pursued those options but did play a factor on those decisions. I’m a very creative person in general and music and arts like photography and videography go hand in hand so that transition was fairly easy for me in that sense of becoming a content creator.

I started doing photography in 2018 and now if your able to see some of the stuff that I have now, it has a lot of music incorporated in a lot of ways by far. Overall, music is in ways my saving grace and has navigated me through my up and downs through relatability and continues to do so as my life keeps on moving. It keeps me sane when I’m out of it, it keeps me alive when I’m at my highest, it truly is a wonderful thing to have access to within my everyday life, almost like a necessity. Most times my mind can’t live without it which is why you see me with headphones all the time but to me putting those headphones in and listening to artists is like the equivalency of drinking water at this point, its just that effortless. Ever since I was little all the way till now, music has been essential towards every aspect of my life. I can keep going on and on, but I think you all get the memo. Music is music but to me it’s more than just that.

Being a student right now with so much to gain yet so much to sacrifice is very hard right now. Stress plays a big factor when trying to find the right lifestyle balance for me. As a grown adult I am a full-time student yet on the other hand am dependent upon myself to pay my tuitions off and other bills that I have to pay outside of school. Due to my tedious schedule, I only work a certain number of hours and believe I don’t get paid much for what these expenses account for. That stress comes to play when I have all these bills mounted up on me when I haven’t even gotten the chance at parenthood or life outside of academics. At the moment I have another new bill coming at me because now I have to pay for health insurance instead of being under my parents, and as you know now, everything is inflated and has been for a while. I shouldn’t have to be subjected to pay 250-350 dollars a month on my own for an insurance provider that I will only use probably once or maybe twice a year. To me that amount is ridiculous, and we still haven’t even talked about deductibles etc. When you look at other big countries, health care is usually free for everyone because it’s something that is a vital and essential part of your individual well-being, so I don’t get why those same rules can’t apply here. Now that I’m writing this, I’m left wondering how people with disabilities carry the burden of these medical expenses considering the fact that those bills are probably higher than what I even have right now. The best course of action that I can take right now when it comes to health insurance is capped off as well. When I mentioned capped off, I refer it towards my company health care plan, but even so requires a set number of hours that you have to complete in order to even be eligible to apply for such benefits, for which I don’t qualify for at the moment. Right now, I’m only left with private providers that charge me a boat load of money just to be considered at having a health plan, to just say I have a health plan. As it comes to looking towards the future, I’m going to have to ride out whatever plan I can get best for at least a year before I can come back and apply for my company benefits after graduation when I pick up more hours, God willing. With all of this going on, I’m not even a parent so I know the burden must feel even bigger as a parent when even more expenses come into play once other people are dependent upon you. To say the least, its nothing short of amazing how not just regular parents deal with expenses surrounding their children but parents who have to navigate these expenses and other factors of life when they may have children or other siblings with disabilities or abnormalities. As for me, I will keep my head up and see where this whole life thing takes me a year from now or whatever, but its certainly straining and stressful ill tell you that much.

During class we talked about the medical attention and care that is not consistent across the board when it comes to the pregnancy process of women of color, specifically black. As a male I cant really relate to that from personal experience outside of the two successful sea sections that my mom went through with my siblings. What I will talk about however is the times of my life where I personally was misdiagnosed with something that was never present. Inconsistency and failure of medical procedures across the board doesn’t only extend to the pregnancy process but other aspects and avenues of medical support with people of color. The amount of times I was falsely diagnosed with Glaucoma is criminal. Throughout my years switching from medical provider to medical provider, the only thing in common that always came up was Glaucoma whenever it came to my eyes, without thorough testing of any sort. Out of all the doctors I have ever visited there was only one that properly was able to find out what was wrong with my eyes. As a backstory, growing up, I’ve always needed glasses ever since the age of 3-4. As time past by my vision and eye sight started to dissipate as I got older to the point where I had to get new prescriptions every time to accommodate. Any person of the field after hearing that is going to automatically diagnose it as Glaucoma but that was never really the case. The one doctor that was able to get it right informed me that it was something biological that I was born with. It turned out to be that I was born with a set of enlarged optical nerves in my eyes which was the cause of my poor eyesight. As a lot of people don’t know, if you have an enlarged optical nerve, it blocks more light coming into the eye which causes eye vision to dissipate. After all these years dealing with this abnormality and still dealing with it today, it also raises concern to me that my problem isn’t necessarily labeled a disability. As we’ve talked in class, depression was one of the topics that we tossed around as being a disability or not. With me, I wonder how blind I have to be for it to be considered one in the sense that whenever I fill a medical waiver or form, everything else shows up except anything eye related. I find it crucial to wonder this because if I fill out a form for some type of medication that might have affects on me and my body, how am I supposed to trust it when the medical form before taking it includes all of the health questions, but anything eye related in terms of what side effects it can cause. To me this just highlights yet another problem that is prevalent within the medical field and how it took one out of a bunch of eye doctors to actually take their actual time to monitor and diagnose the abnormality that I had.

As a child I always had a fear of failure. Coming from a family that didn’t have much early on, I was conditioned to work hard towards my goals because of the expectations set above me. My parents have always been hard working thus the same teachings and conditions were set on me. I like to think of it as a hustler’s mentality. People of color in this country are often more challenged by society as a whole, thus my parents were very much strict and disciplined early on like some if not most foreign households. Their experiences as people of color molded them to be of hard-working class that caused them to pass down those same ethics and beliefs of struggle and success down to me because of societal pressures, borderline phenomenology.  

They held me to high standards that made me feel like failure wasn’t an option. Back then I couldn’t afford bad grades or get in trouble because there would be some clear consequences which at that time made me feel confined in a box because I couldn’t just slack off and what not like other people who were more privileged could, especially with the pressures and constant distractions of society back then. That alongside with personal issues I had going for me at the time, led to a lot of pent-up frustration causing me to look a different way, act a different way (Nonchalant etc.) and think the world was against me because I had too many factors going against my favor (intentionality). Wouldn’t say my story is just like everyone else’s but it is relatable. Furthermore, I was always taught to go hard or go home, so that’s what I did with everything, fights, arguments, school, relationships, jobs etc. In the end as an individual, my experiences (Phenomenology) led by this social structure molded me to have thick skin to the point where nothing really affects me anymore, which is relatable to a lot of men and how they are programmed to physically and mentally endure certain trials and tribulations.

For me it all reverts back to my fear of failure, weather it’s not getting the right grades, having test anxiety, not be an outstanding individual, not being the best that I could be, being ignorant towards a lot of things and other stuff that this society brings and faults that other men might not want to be able to express, which now leads me to strive to be the best that I can be. For me a lot of things have changed during my years, I’m more of an open-minded person now than I was before, less ignorant & more conscious; just better overall as I continue to grow. I sympathize with people going through things now a days to the point where so far, I’ve had like seven people (male & female) tell me personally that I should be a therapist. It puts a smile on my face every time I hear that because who would of thought that someone like me could feel for and be integral in someone else’s struggles. I’ve always been aware of people while having good senses to read people and help guide them through situations as I get satisfaction from motivating and uplifting people.