08/31/2026
I had to amend last year’s taxes, and in the process I realized something I hadn’t really stopped to appreciate:
I paid more than $3,000 directly to performers and local artists last year.
No grants. No loans. No outside funding.
At the same time, I was paying child support, funding my own creative projects, maintaining a relationship, and helping operate two other businesses.
I didn’t realize I was doing as well as I was.
Now the question is how to build on it.
How do I get some of those payments to artists subsidized through grants, sponsorships, or donations? How do I scale product growth so the businesses don’t simply break even, but actually create savings and capital? How do I develop at least one creative endeavor that becomes consistently strong enough to recoup its investment—and then generate enough of a return to finance the next one?
Maybe the next stage also means bringing in the right investment.
I’m 44. I’m not going to pretend life hasn’t already shown me a lot of its forms.
I’ve been common-law married. I’ve been homeless. I’ve traveled the world. I’ve worked in film and television. I’ve worked alongside freedom foundations. I’ve built businesses, made art, lost things, rebuilt things, and kept moving.
And the more I understand myself, the more I recognize how much of my strength was originally built around endurance—surviving circumstances shaped by generations of racial injustice, from slavery through Jim Crow and the civil-rights struggle, and the realities that followed.
But endurance cannot be the final destination.
My mind, imagination, and abilities are capable of more than survival.
So the next chapter is about turning endurance into infrastructure. Creativity into assets. Work into equity. And the ability to survive into the ability to build something sustainable for myself and the people around me.
I’ve spent enough time learning how to stay above water.
This next year, let’s see how deep the ocean goes.
