Frank Ocean and Knowing Yourself

People already forgot about Frank Ocean. They may not quite have forgotten about the two albums he gave us just a few weeks ago, but no longer are people clamoring for a glimpse of the man with the same fervor. We got what we wanted. I admire Frank possibly more than anyone right now because he has shown me the ideal way to create. You live your own life, you don’t pay attention to the noise, and then when you have something for the people you give it to them, and continue on your merry way. There’s no drama, there’s nobody pulling or prying. The work speaks for itself. My dedication to social media has been moronic, but I’m following in the footsteps of literally everyone I know. Also, I suffer from FOMO of the first degree. I don’t want to miss anything. Ever. For any reason. And that’s been a good thing in a sense. But now I think I want to miss out on more. So many of my experiences are new and exciting, but so many others are repetitive and uninspiring. The new and exciting experiences often come in moments of solitude or exploration, and unfortunately I have less and less of those due to mistakenly buying in to an identity that’s not me at the moment. College is a change from high school, but some similar dynamics remain. Popularity still exists, and elitism still very much exists, but normally on a different plane. The small college experience is a seperate narrative all together but I’d say it exists on the same plane as the high school experience in many ways. People discuss the mundane, because everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who knows that guy. Usually, there are one or two degrees of seperation at most. Word spreads like wildfire of what she did at that party or who he was walking upstairs with. And like in high school, the total absurdity of it never occurs to some people. The difference is that at a small college, the maturity of being on your own comes with an ability to mask that absurdity and rationalize it to yourself in some way. Everybody needs something to talk about, and people tend to talk about people wherever you go. What blows my mind is the denial that most people live in, and the direct hypocrisy of the entire system. The social scene is dominated by either clubs, greek life, or athletic teams. Small groups of people built around similar values and/or interests. The social scene has accompanying chatter about happenings at events or whose dating who. There are also stories spread based purely off speculation or have malicious intent. These rumors and stories are all similar in that they will not matter at the time they exist or after to anyone involved because they are either false or inconsequential to the average life. Sometimes these rumors or stories, maybe malicious, are taken as truth without verification and people’s lives are thrown by the wayside. But it’s the nature of the beast. It’s like a washing machine when you’re in the mix, and the door falls open and spits you out when it’s done with you. This is all going on in a developmental stage when people are figuratively supposed to be figuring out who they are. The end result can be people leaving the college experience still feeling lost in some way. Maybe it’s because the image they built of themself over for years, an evolution from their high school self, no longer matters because it’s wrapped up in the temporary. College is and should be focused on the future, the rest of your life. How many people actually cultivate this mindset? This is all conjecture and food for thought, but isn’t it sad when somebody cries over spilled milk? Most of what was said above was an example of spilled milk. I can’t contribute anymore. That’s easier said than done but my mission here is not to be tossed around in that washing machine. Few come out clean. There are discussions here about what really matters but rarely action, and the system is built to sustain that. Too much time is spent being a cog for the wrong machine, with too little time spent on the self. Frank Ocean got it. The machine of the music industry chews people up and spits them out. There is always a path other than the norm, and the best course of action tends to be finding the path that you feel like you could walk every day.