Ripe for Reinvention pt. 6

allow me to reintroduce myself

Jun 19, 2024

Thank you for checking out the 4th Edition of The Ultimate Anti-Resolution Guide. You can still download this year’s PDF and set your 2024 intentions with me today.

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A Reintroduction

I realized a few weeks ago that people who recently joined this list might not be 100% sure of who I am, where I came from, and what this is.

Even if you’re already familiar, it’s me who needs the reminder right now.

I happen to be at the precipice of a transition.

Most of the last decade has seen me parsing through the disparate aspects of my image, my self-worth, and my identity. The act of sharing this experience has always been a part of the process, whether it be through music or writing. This time is no different.

Processing in front of others requires clarity. Clarity helps me understand myself more fully. And understanding myself more fully upgrades my connection to the world around me.

So allow me to reintroduce myself.

My name is Jarell. I’m a recording artist of a certain age (37, Sagittarius) who has also spent most of his adult life working corporate jobs. Jobs in advertising, jobs in media, jobs in tech, jobs in middle management. I had a season of free-spirited freelance work between 2016 and 2019 and those were some of the best years of my life.

After that, I returned to the corporate grind. I had been in survival mode for a little too long and needed a clear path out of credit card debt. Fueled by a growing and predictable paycheck, this renewed commitment to a 9-to-5 lifestyle extinguished whatever motivation I had left to keep making music. I just didn’t have the stamina to moonlight the way I did when I was younger. So in 2020, with the pandemic and widespread social protest as implicit permission, I quietly stepped back.

I had been songwriting and singing since before 2009, the year I left UCLA with a liberal arts degree. I had built a small community by making and releasing songs from my bedroom, on the internet, between work and school hours. That seems unremarkable now, but back then it felt revolutionary.

I was also getting on stage as much as possible, from open mics in tiny dive bars to pay-to-play showcases on the Sunset Strip. Pursuing a career in music was an unwavering way of life for me all throughout my twenties.

Occasionally I would find myself in major label studio sessions, contracted (for free) to write potential hit songs for signed artists. Here I met many talented people who were on a path similar to mine. I learned more about the business. My music got noticeably better. And my viability as a successful recording artist improved.

I kept working. And by 2015, I can humbly admit I was reaching a peak. Alternative R&B had risen in popularity thanks to Frank Ocean and The Weeknd’s debut albums, and my music bore close enough resemblance to ride the wave.

I signed to a booking agent and toured the U.S. as a supporting act. One of my songs was placed in a film trailer that ran in commercial spots all over the country. I began taking industry meetings with people I had only read about in magazines.

My years of hard work seemed to be finally paying off. I was driven. But I was also dying inside. I felt increasing pressure to embody a persona that matched my audience’s expectations. And the “real me,” whoever that was, couldn’t keep up.

Now comes the part of the story I usually leave out.

I was 28 at the time, and completely unsettled about my sexuality. It was paralyzing. There was the shame of hiding and denying at such a big age, mixed with the fear of disappointing the community that raised me. Encompassing it all was a deep desire to discover, and to belong, and to be seen without judgment.

Every interaction confirmed my greatest fear. If people caught a glimpse of how confused and insecure I really was, the spell would be broken. My one shot at mainstream success, the one that so many dream of, would be lost.

Isolated and unwittingly depressed, I started self-medicating with alcohol. It was getting in the way of my productivity and sabotaging a lot of opportunities, so I started seeking healthier coping methods, releasing toxic relationships, and giving into my curiosity.

Before I knew it, I was knee deep in self-help books and podcasts and needed an outlet to express everything I was processing. After talking about it with close friends in the creative scene, I started writing this blog to validate the deeper questions I had been keeping to myself. Still Mind was born.

I’m self-conscious about the fact that the person writing to people now is different from the person people met back in 2015 or earlier. No longer active in the pursuit of a music career, no longer personifying creative entrepreneurship, and no longer meditating daily about it.

I’m simply a Black queer man in his late thirties having a slightly evolved version of the identity crisis that initiated all this public writing to begin with. I’m still unfinished.

It’s 2024 and my corporate job of the past five years has ended. After coming out to myself at 28 and to my family at 32, I still carry the shame of not doing it sooner and the shame of not yet feeling completely free.

But not everything is as unsettled as it once was. I’ve got a track record of tangible impact in the corporate world. I’m in a committed relationship of nearly six years. And I’m still here online documenting my life in bits and pieces. I may even return to music, one day.

I’ve spent a lot of time this week rewriting my story, hoping to inspire direction for my next chapter.

What about you?

Prompt: If you were to rewrite the story of your life today, what would be different from the way you’d have written it 5 years ago, 6 months ago, or 3 weeks ago? Which parts would you add and which parts would you take away?