CREATE YOUR HAPPINESS

The Yahweh God-given talent that I possess that also brings me happiness would have to be my creativity of writing. As long as I can remember I've been writing creatively and I have always gotten accolades for my skill. I can recall being in the fourth grade and having a weekly assignment of composing an original story that had to be read aloud in class. Well, everyone in the class had to write a story and read it, but I seemed to steal the show. Along with the Yahweh-given talent, of which I was not aware of at the time, my mother had given me a Childcraft encyclopedia set, as well as buying me books and comic books often. So as an only child that was just mischief enough to get punished by being restricted to my bedroom, I had ample time to do a lot of reading and creating. At that time in the early eighties, rap music was making it's way into circulation and every young boy, including me, thought that he'd be the next big thing. So using the talent I didn't even realized I had, I wrote rap song after rap song in my adolescent hopes of being the next LL Cool J. Noticing I was able to write raps, my mother decided that she would attempt to manage me and two of my friends. I was excited, at first, but the thrill didn't last long. I felt as if she began pushing me too hard and that took all the fun out of being the next rap star, so I threw in the towel. That didn't deter me from continuously jotting down verses in my notebooks and pretending however.

Realizing I was able to write raps, when the class assignment required developing a poem, that would be a piece of cake. With rap, you have to perform to music, but poetry was acapella. Basically, a rap with no beat. I wrote birthday poems, Christmas poems, and just everyday poems. It was easy and I enjoyed it and to top it all off, I was real good at it.

Looking back at my fourth grade creative writing assignments, I had a unique style of creativity that granted me the ability to be capable of incorporating fellow classmates and even our teacher in some of my stories. The other kids in the class would look at it as just some more grueling class work that had to be completed,but it was totally different for me. This was actually something I loved doing. So while the majority of the students scribbled down a half of a notebook page or three quarters of it at the most, my personalized tales would consist of nothing less than two pages, front and back. After a few weeks of these practices, the other students as well as the teacher began to show great interest in my fictionalized anecdotes. So much so even that I was unanimously petitioned to recite my juvenile masterpieces last. I was being praised for my potential and I was loving it at the same time. A little African American boy being raised by a single mother in an all black community that was beginning to initiate gangs, I had many friends that were rough and tough delinquents. Assuming they looked at my writing as corny, I never included any of them in any of my stories. Then one day during recess three or four of my friends from my neighborhood pushed up on me asking me, with angry expressions on their faces, why I never had them in any of my stories. I glanced back at the small entourage, observed their displeasure and explained myself. " Maaan, we like your stories, everybody does. We just wanted to know why we were never in any of them. You put everybody else, including the teacher in them, but not us. And we supposed to be ya homeboys." One of the guys from the group protested. Now I was staring at these up and coming gang members and thinking to myself, WOW, I'M REALLY GOOD AT THIS. So from then on I also established my homeboys in some of my stories and the looks on their faces were priceless. Yet, I still didn't understand that I had a Yahweh-given gift.

Over the years that followed, I perfected my skills remarkably as my creativity developed concepts in my writings that were o a professional sense. I had written countless poems, greetings, love letters, resumes, business letters, rap lyrics, song lyrics; even though I can't sing one bit, short stories, novels, movie and television scripts, and everything in between. And all of this just for the love of it as i'm still at forty-seven years old attempting to be discovered in order to make a lucrative career of my Yahweh God-given talent.

So before I close, I must input a pair of scissors in my curriculum. well, seeing that writing creatively is what brings me happiness, scissors are not a necessary tool in my trade. However, being blessed with the ability to scribe creatively, I should be able to come up with something. For instance, while paper shredders or balling up and traashing material that is unsatisfactory is common in writing, scissors can be utilized to knit designs on a greeting card that I may fashion for someone. Possibly even to cut pages at the precise length to organize a pamphlet I have written and plan to distribute. Scissors could also be a metaphoric object to symbolize my need to write with perfection and expertise so those in power can CUT THE CHECK!