Do Better - Ab-Soul
I’ve recently transitioned into full-time freelance work. It’s the culmination of a lot of battles fought, hours spent in front of the computer until unreasonably late, “hopping on quick calls,” prayer, grace, and more that I can succinctly express. I’d love to say that it’s the product of intentional planning, but the truth is that I was forced into the situation when I got fired from a desk job. I didn’t know what would come next, with an infant at home and a wife whose work has been reduced as we try to balance career and parenthood. I was upset by the circumstances, but it gave me a chance to survey the amount I bring in through content, and I realized that I’ve been blessed enough to cover my family's needs, while working in a space I care about. I went to grab a takeout Chipotle order when a song came on that transported me to a time where I was desperate, hopeless, and praying for the reality I’m blessed to currently occupy.
“I gotta do better, I gotta do better, I gotta do
Everything in my power to try to do what God would do
Ride the tide, don’t fight with the current that guided you
Melt the ice round the furnace burnin’ inside you”
A little less than two years ago, I found myself delivering Amazon packages during the holiday peak season. I spent 10+ hour days listening to Defunctland (VaatiVidya, & VloggingThroughHistory, & too many more) videos, following the final Street Fighter V Capcom Cup during my route, feverishly theorizing the win-loss scenarios that would result in Punk making the top 8, listening to my rap playlist on my commute home. This media digest became one of the only sources of comfort during one of the hardest times of my life. Among all of the different forms of content, one song captured my attention, lulling me to do what I so often do: repeat a song over and over again until I hate it. Except, I didn’t come to hate the song. It, so perfectly, captured the emotional weight of the season I was in: Do Better by Ab-Soul.
“Shades stuck to my face, hoodie glued to my head
Hidin’ from the same world that made me who I am
Depressed, can’t even get out of bed
Too blessed to be so stressed
I do all this s—, just to say, “Get off my d—“
Mixed emotions prohibit my focus”
Now before I dig into what the song means to me, I wanna look at the situation I found myself in. It may not mean much to you that I was doing a manual labor job, but it was so far removed from my previous job. My dream job, the job I thought I’d do for the rest of my life, the job I fought to land, interning from 9 am - 5 pm and working retail from 7 pm - 2 am daily in order to secure. I worked at a church doing ministry full-time. I was a vocational Christian, working at the church that I felt made me a Christian. At the time, it was everything I ever wanted. I worked with my wife and lifelong friends, working on projects that had a tangible and massive impact on individuals and families near and dear to me. Over the course of my time, I began to realize, however, that it wasn’t for me. The minor compromises, the nearly imperceptible lapses in integrity created in me a fomenting anxiety. That anxiety produced my first panic attack. That panic attack caused me to reflect upon the willful decisions I’d made in supporting a culture with which I was becoming opposed.
“This what you wanted, what’s wrong with you? You don’t make sense
Feel like I can flip at any moment
Faces playin’ and it’s f—- with me
Doin’ drugs was just a war with boredom, but it’s sure to get me”, Lord forgive me
Amen, wear a crown of thorns for sport, I’m just waitin’ for a stone to hit me”
To be clear, I thankfully left that job with my faith intact. As a matter of fact, it became grounds to improve, reinforce, and deepen my faith in a way that made my commitment to God look surface-level during the time when my yearly salary came from the organization. But the temperature rose within the organization and I made the impossibly difficult decision to step away. My friends, my family, my sense of self, the place that honed my interests and skills, all pulled from up under, not only myself, but also my wife. We underwent a process of grieving, of searching for meaning, of unlearning the unhealthy behaviors and mindsets we’d adopted. We began to do deep work, putting our motives, our desires, our innermost motivations under an X-Ray and started to surgically remove that which didn’t belong. And what did that process lead to? A guy with an undiagnosed case of ADHD, a latent discontent, and lacking in vision for the future, working 126 stop routes at Amazon.
“Relationship on the rocks, my family all concerned
My homie still on the block, gettin’ it off the curb
I’m stricken by survivor’s guilt, I’m gettin’ it off of words”
I spoke to my wife on the phone almost every day driving back to the station after I finished my route. We spoke through the loadout process, spoke through my post-route car inspection, spoke through my hitting the time clock, spoke the whole commute home. We tried to parse through our feelings, unsure of whether or not we believed what we declared. I’d posted a TikTok about fighting games and got a million views. I'd gotten a job editing videos for one of the biggest content creators in the fighting game space, and I was still unsure whether or not I’d ever shake the feelings of betrayal, uncertainty, and numbness that the circumstances forged in me. I can clearly see now that God was orienting my ship, positioning me to pursue a passion that I’d left undisturbed since my childhood. Do Better would come on when I hit the offramp of the highway, ready to begin my deliveries. I wished for nothing more than to expedite my pain and fast-forward to a time I could appear on a podcast and say that the previous two years were the hardest times of my life.
It didn’t come easy, but things started to improve. I worked another manual labor job, waking up at 4 am to work 5 am - 4 pm on weekdays. I steadily gained commission work and worked through the evenings. I sent cold DMs to hundreds of people I admired. To my surprise, many responded and I had their ear to solicit their wisdom and learn their best practices. I put myself out there, constantly having to overcome the sense of imposter syndrome that still rears its head. I worked for free, committed to learning and iterating and getting feedback and restarting and holding my head low rejection after rejection. I began therapy, getting an adult ADHD diagnosis that rocked me. It helped me understand aspects of my life that were previously so esoteric and led to me feeling misunderstood and mischaracterized. The research that the diagnosis prompted helped me to alleviate the symptoms and structure my life and work in a way that made sense, for the first time in my life. We started going to a new church and reimagining what a vibrant and meaningful relationship with God could look like in a community. We did things different, always diligent in trying to identify whether or not the decisions we made were our own or a projection of the expectations people put on us.
Now, my work is done primarily for creators, tournament and event organizers, and people that push buttons good. I got the privilege of doing a funeral for a couple whose baby passed tragically after labor, coupling my experiences counseling grieving families with my experience going to local fighting game tournaments, fostering community that way. Meaning and purpose resurfaced and now I get to operate in a way that will benefit my wife, my son, my family, and my community. It gets better. But the song whose refrain equipped me to strive for more is part of the reason I’m here. It’s the impulse that produced the life I’m living now, and it’s a declaration I hope to instill in my son and my future kids. I’m grateful for how far I’ve come, but even so, I gotta do better.
“I got to do better
There’s nothing they can do that I can’t do better
Better yet, there’s nothing I can do that I can’t do better
Yeah, I’m better”
