Changing Up?/Tallying Up the Score

I was thinking last night, maybe it's time to change the name of my journal. I still think I'm lacking in social wherewithal on some scenarios, but I do think I've dramatically improved. So, maybe the "Soliloquies of the Socially Retarded" title will be replaced with something a bit more fitting. We'll see...

Anyway, I've been tallying things up a bit, and I am realizing that I've gained quite a bit, and I've lost quite a bit. Some things, real talk, I could never get back. Things that if I think about them, it'll take me back to where I don't want to be, so I don't dwell on them. I've lost friend's, too. This is one of the most unsettling aspects, because I don't get in the habit of calling everybody that smiles at me my friend. If you have an open invite to roll through whenever, on some "I was in the neighborhood" type shit, then you're a friend. Not to say that if you don't have that you're not a friend, but it's different for me. I'm not one to just let people come to where I rest and kick it. There has to be a comfort and familiarity, but I digress.

I've also gained a few things...greater insight into self. I feel as though my creative juices are starting to flow a bit more. I'm cool now. There were so many reason why I can say I wasn't, and much of it had little to do with my issues. For a long time, I'd let other peoples issues concern me, bother me, consume me. At some point I had to get the message that it's OK to care, but I can't invest my time and energy in something that ain't mine. I can't make your issues my issues, especially if you ain't handling your issues like you should, dig? So with that, I feel a lot more liberated...and a lot less stressed.

I'm still working on making me a better me everyday, I pray on it every night. Trying to push for my artistic freedom, too. Mainly trying to get myself to let go of being so practical and just take a little more risk...which I don't do without calculating first. But some risk, you can't calculate, and that's the risk I need to take to go where I want to go. Well, I'm rambling, and I need to get focused, which is also something I'm working on...
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Ha, ironically, I just found and read this (dope) article via MSN.com, which kinda speaks on much of what I had to get better at over the past year and talked a bit about in this journal entry. I wish I had learned this so much earlier in life, but I think learning the value of how to and when to bother/or commit to this is just as important. My homegirl Nova is a master at this...like, she could have totally written this: The Help Resisters: Advice Dismissed