MIDNIGHT MEDITATION No. 26
ENTRY 5
A lot has happened in one month. A lot. This year has been one for the books. When the year first started, I was wildly optimistic and even on social media, people were mentioning “2024 is feeling like another 2016”. I was excited because 2016 was a fantastic year for me, at least the very first half. 2024 started off promising, but then it kept going places I just did not expect or couldn’t predict. This year was a year for character development because I am not the same person that I was even two months ago. When the time is right, I will document this time through an artistic lens because when I do decide to share the stories, I want a bit of distance for better perspective.
MIDNIGHT MEDITATION No. 25
ENTRY 4
So, for a while now, more than five years at this point, I’ve been living on my own. Living on my own in the sense that I haven’t had any proper friendships or relationships. I see people daily, converse daily, but the conversations stop at a point. It’s not that I don’t want to make any friendships or relationships, I just don’t feel like I found my people as of yet. I believe myself to be an extrovert, though sometimes shy, people energize me. I used to have a lot of friends, but I had to stop being friends with them because they weren’t seeing me how I wanted to be seeing, this goes for family as well. In the past posts where I advocate, I speak a lot about how other people’s perceptions can become your own if you’re not careful enough and this is exactly why I decided to go at it alone for however long. If I had kept my “friends” or listened to my family, I do not believe I would come this far in my work, confidence, and abilities. Five years ago, I decided to teach myself how to sing, my whole family tried to convince me to stop when I would post my singing on the internet, even distant friends tried to tell me subliminally to stop, but I expected it, so I brushed it off. If I had listened to them, my singing voice would not have improved the way it has, my ideas would not be as potent, and I would be less confident.
I’m thankful I did fashion photography so young because when I first started in high school, a lot of people would say “I don’t know why he keeps posting those pictures, he’s not even that good.” I didn’t listen then, but it did hurt. I feel like going through that experience initially prepared me for when I would decide to teach myself other things and I’d have to suck in the beginning. But anyway, for a long time, I thought it was normal for friends / family to not necessarily support you, I tried to convince myself that my career and art are something separate from my personal life, which it can be, but I’m learning that the people in my life should be able to support me in the thing I dedicate my life to.
MIDNIGHT MEDITATION No. 24
ENTRY 3
So, this is not how I planned the seasons to go. What is the saying? “Man plans and God laughs”, that has been a reality that I’ve been experiencing a lot this year. From season 1, we were supposed to have comic strips, comics, avatar inductees, interviews, music, all of these things and they are still planned and currently being worked on, but they were supposed to be released through the seasons by now.
Last year my Instagram got deleted because it was reported for violating their guidelines with nudity and such, I took it as best as I could, pretty much a decade of building that Instagram down the drain. Even though I am experiencing drawbacks from losing majority of my following, throughout that, “MURLIN TV” officially was fully realized. Around the same time, I figured out the formatting that I want to use, the aesthetics I want to grow into, etc. Everything fully came together and it surprised me because even though I had an “idea” of what I was going to do, building the website and seeing the actual possibility of it happening was and is life-changing.
But now we’re here. We are in season 3 and I am currently still creating mainly series, I’m creating more series because the more I do them, the more I learn and discover and it is also currently my only option. I also produce a lot of series back-to-back because I want to prove to myself that I will be able to sustain creating seasonal comic books / comic strips. I want MURLIN TV to be a brand that has mass production appeal whilst maintaining high quality.
Again, I cannot wait to actually get this going. I will continue planning because it’s all I have, but once the doors are open for us to go… it’s definitely going to be a show to watch.
MIDNIGHT MEDITATION No. 23
ENTRY 2
So, I’m going to do these diary entries more often than once a week because I do want this to be as authentic as possible. As an artist, especially in today’s age, it’s important to connect with your audience and I’ve been thinking about ways to do it, especially going on Tik Tok and talking to the camera, but I don’t have it in me to do that, maybe it will come to me in the future, but now I’m comfortable with diary entries and curated content. That being said, I think Tik Tok is a fantastic social media site, I was one of the people that labeled it “Childish” when it first came on the scene, but man has it evolved into one of the best social media sites. I think the best thing about Tik Tok is it gives a platform to people who usually would not have the resources to showcase their talents and it platforms them. Of course there are negatives to the site, but which social media site doesn’t?
For connection, I like the diary entries. Back in my teenager years, I built a following from ranting on Tumblr, I would just complain about my day to day in high school and it would entertain people. I absolutely still have the same angst in me and I could easily revert to that, but my primary intentions are to inspire, connect, and provide new perspectives, I am saving that angst for the characters and the comics I’m writing which I CANNOT WAIT to produce.
MIDNIGHT MEDITATION No. 22
ENTRY 1
I haven’t written in about two months because life got overwhelming and in these diary entries, I aim to inspire and I was going through and still going through some unusual experiences that I could only write about in hindsight because when you go through certain experiences, you have to live through them and fully immerse yourself and not try to create a story around it, you have to just let it play out without emotional or written interference.
I write a lot about positivity, meditation, and keeping strength even when things seem impossible, and I can honestly say I write about these things through experience. When I was in my early 20s, I remember having a significant amount of ideas and being very confident about producing them, but I would always be put in these situations where things get delayed or simply absurdist situations, but a part of me is thankful for these situations because I will now be able to produce my ideas with a bit of earned wisdom. I am almost 30 and the world is trying to convince me that I’m getting old, but I’m just getting started. Everything may not look like how I would like them to look like at the moment, but I am very happy and extremely grateful; I am building an idea that I, myself believed to be far-fetched until the universe showed me a roadmap on how it could possibly be done and even though it’s not an easy, smooth sailing ride, it’s all worth it for me.
I will not be advocating for a while, it’s just going to be plain diary entries.
MIDNIGHT MEDITATION No. 21
THE ADVOCACY FOR SELF-BRAINWASHING
It’s so easy to forget the standard way of living is through narrative and we often feel like those narratives are 100% “reality” when they are mind-made stories that could be changed within seconds, but the momentum it takes because of years of conditioning keep us holding on, not fully believing in the possibilities of letting go.
I am advocating for self-brainwashing because even though the change is sometimes painfully gradual, it’s worth it to keep aiming to change the narrative given to you to your preferred narrative whether its through self-brainwashing or meditation.
MIDNIGHT MEDITATION No. 20
THE ADVOCACY FOR BEING THE BEST
I consider myself an extremist in a lot of ways. I like to take things far, push limits, exceed possibilities, I am truly reaching for the stars. This is a side of me that I’ve had to compromise at times in my life because when people hear you say “I want to be the best”, for some reason, a number of them will perceive it to be a threat. Whenever I have an interest in something, I want to find the person who is doing it the best and that is who I will study from, but when I say “The best”, it can get misconstrued as being “Greater than all else”, but I see it differently. “The best” is personal to me. What I consider to be “The best” could be someone else’s “Worst”, I look at “The best” as not allowing any untapped personal potential go to waste. Personally finding other people you resonate with that is operating at their highest level is a person that could be learned from. So, I advocate for “The Best” to not minimize the self for others comfort and forever exploring the possibilities of being human.
MIDNIGHT MEDITATION No. 19
THE ADVOCACY FOR THE TWERKING PHILOSOPHER
I write a lot of these diary entries with the risk of sounding pretentious. I am the first to criticize anything typically deemed highly intellectual, as I often find such discourse alienating and inaccessible. These intellectual circles are filled with references from long ago, understood only by a select few who have studied the same texts. Because of this shared knowledge, these ideas are considered of “high taste.”
Yet, I am a victim of this mindset myself. Even though I criticize it, I love to study and understand the roots of things. My real frustration lies in the deliberate inaccessibility of this knowledge.
The notion that someone’s dialect or grammar dictates their place in the social hierarchy has never made sense to me. Great ideas can come from anywhere, but it often feels like we must adopt a mask of intellectualism for corporate acceptance, where many resources are concentrated.
I am advocating for the twerking philosopher because I believe it represents the future and reflects an evolving culture.
MIDNIGHT MEDITATION No. 18
THE ADVOCACY FOR NOT HAVING TO HAVE PURPOSE
From a very young age, I’ve always had a feeling that I had to do something, it took a while to discover the thing, but the feeling never wavered; it was only a matter of where I would utilize the energy. And through that journey for discovery, there are and were a lot of periods of deep confusion and uncertainty and those were the moments that I had to detach from that feeling and not allow it to be my primary motivator and understand that the purpose of life is to simply live and everything else is decoration.
We often like to judge ourselves based on our productivity and successes, and it’s tough not to when this is what the collective celebrates, but I think it’s okay to give ourselves the same type of love whether we are doing mindless activities or something worthwhile, to simply be should always be enough.
MIDNIGHT MEDITATION No. 17
THE ADVOCACY FOR THE AWKWARD PHASE
If you ever want to master anything, you have to go through the awkward phase. Even with something as simple as growing your hair, there’s an awkward phase before it fully evolves and blossoms into what you envisioned. The awkward phase has never phased me as much as it could have in regards to outside peer pressure, but everything I do, I have an intense love and passion for so I’m willing to fully immerse myself in the awkward phase.
When I decided to shift my focus from fashion photography to become an artist, the awkward phase was long and extremely painful. It hasn’t ended yet, but it is evolving. The most painful parts is the re-introduction of yourself and the vulnerability of starting something new and publicly failing repeatedly, but if you know what you’re doing is worth it and you truly believe in it, you understand that it’s a process.
People often believe you can only excel in one thing, and if you’re established in one area, most people will try to convince you to “Stop doing that; this one thing is your calling.” which really translates to “I’m only comfortable with the perception I created of you.” So, I am advocating for the awkward phase because its a very quiet and often long phase that others won’t understand from the outside. But once it’s over, you can only be grateful for the technical and intuitive wisdom you gained.