06 Personal Writing Examples
What does it mean to really listen? It sounds basic, I know. But here I am, at 27, and I’m only now starting to understand it, to get how much I’ve missed by not truly listening. It feels like we’re wired to react fast, to jump into conversations armed with our own agendas, ready to defend ourselves. When someone calls us out—maybe on a mistake, something we did that hurt them—our first instinct is to say, “No, that’s not on me. You got it wrong.” We hear the words, but we’re not listening. There’s a difference, and it’s a big one.
I’ve hurt people. We all have; it’s part of being human. Sometimes I think back on past relationships, on friendships or even work situations, and I feel that weight of, man, I could’ve done better. But it’s too late to change what happened. What I can change, though, is how I respond now, how I show up for those conversations where someone says, “Isaiah, you did this, and it hurt.” My instinct used, or probably more accurately honestly still is, to be defensive, to rush to protect myself from blame.
Listening isn’t about agreeing or even responding; it’s about allowing space for someone’s feelings to exist without interference. It’s about accepting that, to them, the hurt is real, valid, and deserving of respect. When we attempt to diminish their perspective, we’re essentially closing off the conversation and, by extension, our own opportunity to grow.
Here’s the paradox of listening: the very act that requires us to abandon our defenses also fortifies our resilience. Listening demands that we pause, stay present, and make ourselves vulnerable. We are naturally uncomfortable with vulnerability, with acknowledging that we are flawed, that we can be wrong. But within that discomfort lies the potential for profound change.
Think about the last time you felt truly heard. It was probably a moment when someone listened to you with full attention, without interruptions or rebuttals. It’s in those moments we feel validated, seen. When we listen this way, we’re giving that same gift to others. It’s an act of grace, allowing someone to feel understood. And perhaps, in turn, we come to understand ourselves a bit better, too.
We live in a world obsessed with self-projection, where each of us plays the main character, creating an identity or persona that others will recognize and hopefully appreciate. Yet, ironically, it is in the quiet humility of listening—of suspending judgment and embracing discomfort—that we begin to forge our strongest, most authentic connections. Listening, then, isn’t just merely absorbing information; it’s about building a bridge. And if we learn to listen, if we can make a habit of it, we open ourselves up to a deeper, more expansive version of ourselves.
And maybe…MAYBE we can change the way we move through the world, one conversation at a time.
Did you get all that?
The Lives We Dream
I’ve been thinking a lot about this feeling of being lost—the way it sneaks up, like rain on a clear day. It’s not just about lacking direction or wandering aimlessly; it’s something deeper and more complex. It feels like floating between versions of myself, each pulled by a hundred different dreams that don’t quite align. One day, I’m the journalist I’ve always envisioned, breaking stories with an edge that cuts through the noise. The next day, I’m somewhere else, designing clothes that carry the rhythm of Hawai‘i, mixing streetwear with the beat of the islands. And then, on another day, I’m at a cluttered desk with friends, creating comics, designing album covers—making something small, tangible, real.
Each version feels true, close enough to reach out and touch. And yet, here I am, suspended somewhere between them, trying to hold on to all these lives without letting any slip away. If I had to choose one, how could I? And if I can’t, does that make me lost? The world likes things clean-cut and defined. It wants labels, titles, and one-word answers that tell everyone exactly who we are. It praises the story of someone with a single vision, a clear path to success, the person who knew at five what they wanted to be and became exactly that. There’s this myth that being lost is a failure of character—that if you’re not moving in one direction, you’re wasting time. But maybe feeling lost isn’t a flaw. Perhaps it’s just a side effect of being human, of being complex in a world that loves simplicity. Think about it—people are layered, nuanced, filled with ambitions and contradictions that pull them in every direction. How could anyone like that not feel lost sometimes?
The world doesn’t make room for people who want to live many lives and want to be more than just one thing. But maybe we’re the ones who see things clearly. Perhaps we’re the ones who know there’s more than one path worth walking. There’s something freeing, even radical, in accepting that we might never have it all figured out. No one teaches us how to be okay with not knowing, how to embrace the version of ourselves that’s still unfolding. We’re so afraid of feeling unfinished that we miss the beauty of becoming. But what if it’s okay to be a work in progress? What if it’s okay to be a little messy, a little unresolved? What if that’s EXACTLY what makes us HUMAN?
Being lost, I think, is just a way of holding onto these dreams, of letting ourselves be pulled in every direction—even if it means not landing anywhere permanently. Maybe the most important thing isn’t arriving at some polished, final version of ourselves but learning to live with that unfinished feeling and seeing it as a GIFT. Because who says we need to arrive? Who says we need to have it all figured out? What if the only thing we really need to do is keep moving, growing, and exploring every part of ourselves that feels real, even if it’s only for a moment? Imagine the freedom in that—in letting yourself be the journalist and the artist, the designer and the coach, the teacher and the student. Imagine letting go of the pressure to choose, to settle down into one tidy life. It’s okay to want everything and more, even if it means feeling a little lost sometimes.
To limit ourselves to a single path seems… reductive. I reject that. We are, each of us, the sum of all our dreams—the way we show up for each one, the way we let ourselves be pulled in a hundred different directions and still, somehow, find our way. Being lost, in the end, isn’t a problem to solve. It’s proof that we’re alive, that we’re growing, that we’re willing to keep searching for the versions of ourselves that feel true.
And if we can make peace with that—if we can SEE being lost not as a failure but as a gift—then maybe, just maybe, we’ll find that being lost is enough.
Funny, how I kind of like being lost now.
We’ve been fed a dream. Not just any dream—a grand, glittering lie that success is something out there, waiting for you to chase it down like some kind of holy grail. That you’ll earn it if you just sweat hard enough, bleed long enough, play the game right. But that’s the catch, isn’t it? The game is rigged, and the dream is just a myth dangled by hands you’ll never shake. And the truth? Well, the truth isn’t dressed up in gold medals or standing ovations.
I don’t say this lightly, nor to make you comfortable. If you are comfortable in the pursuit of your art, then you are not truly pursuing it. You are standing still, hoping the world will declare, “You’ve made it.” But the world owes you nothing. You owe the world your work. That is the price of being alive and having the audacity to call yourself an artist, creator, or dreamer. The work is the price, and the work is the reward.
As an artist—whether you write, paint, sing, dance, or act—you are taught to measure yourself by the world’s yardstick. Did you get the book deal? Did you sell the script? Did you make it to Broadway? These questions eat away at you, turning quiet moments into battlegrounds of doubt and insecurity. You may begin to wonder, “If I haven’t achieved these things, what am I worth? What is my art worth?” But this too is a lie. The value of your art, and yourself, can never be measured by the fleeting approval of others.
[At some point, every artist faces a reckoning: the day you realize you might never be seen the way you hoped. The world might never crown you with laurels, might never call you brilliant, might never even care. And when that moment comes, you’ve got a choice to make. Do you keep going, or do you give up?]
We live in a world that defines success and failure in binary terms—cruel and reductive. But most of life, and most of art, happens in the spaces between. It is in the moments when you are neither winning nor losing, but simply being. In those moments, when the world is not watching, you will find your true purpose, your REAL calling. And if you can find peace in the act of creation, without the need for external validation, then you have succeeded in the only way that matters.
Think about the artist’s journey: You spend your days alone, wrestling with thoughts, doubts, and hopes. You struggle to bring something into the world that wasn’t there before. Sometimes it feels like pulling teeth; other times, it feels like flying. And yet, for all your effort, the world might never see, understand, or care about your work. But does that make your work any less valuable? Does that make you any less of an artist?
It is easy to get caught up in the idea that success is achieved when you finally “make it”—when you sell the book, the script, or the song. But that is a shallow definition of success, one that will leave you empty.
So, let us redefine success.
Success is not something you chase or catch. It’s something you become. It’s the quiet, often unrecognized act of showing up, doing the work, day after day, whether the world cares or not. That is where real success lives—in the heart of the artist who knows the work is enough. Because in the end, it is. It always has been.
Chapter One:
The rain had finally stopped, not that it made much of a difference. The air still stung, thick with whatever toxins were floating around today—probably the usual mix of chemical runoff, acidic residue, and who knows what else. Breathing through the mask helped, sure, but the constant hiss it made was starting to get on Dante’s nerves. Every inhale felt like it was reminding him: Hey, you’re alive… for now. That was the problem with tech these days—everything was scavenged, patched together from bits that weren’t designed to last. But that was Kotus. Nothing here was made to last.
Kotus was the city they left behind when the world moved on. The rich folks—those shiny, powerful people with their plans for a new world—had packed up their lives and blasted off, leaving the rest of the planet to rot. Now Kotus was all broken-down buildings and streets piled high with debris. A city that once had a purpose, but now? It was a husk. And here Dante was, walking through it all like he was looking for something he’d lost. He wasn’t, though. He was looking for Echoes.
Echoes weren’t hard to find. They were what happened to the people who couldn’t keep up. Born before the Fall, their bodies couldn’t adjust to the new world’s toxins and acid rain. Mutated, twisted, constantly in pain. They were still human, technically, but only in the way a wilted flower is still technically alive. Echoes were everywhere, and no one paid them any mind—except Dante.
He stepped over a puddle, the acid still eating away at the concrete. It could burn through flesh if you weren’t careful, but Dante had learned to ignore the constant threat of it. The unpredictability of the rain was just part of life here. Some days, it burned fast and hard; others, it just left scars that lingered—like everything else in Kotus. He didn’t give the puddles a second thought anymore. His mind was on the scanner strapped to his wrist. It was a piece of old-world tech that barely worked but still beeped when an Echo was nearby. The thing was beeping now.
Dante turned a corner, following the faint signal. He found the first Echo slumped against a half-collapsed wall. The building he was in had probably been something important once, but now it was a shell. The Echo’s body was a twisted mess, wrapped in filthy rags that couldn’t do much to keep the world out. His arms and legs were bent at wrong angles, bones sticking out in places they shouldn’t. His skin was cracked and peeling, leaking fluids Dante didn’t really want to think about.
This was why Dante was here. He pulled the vial of blue liquid from his coat—Release, they called it. A name that made it sound clean and sterile. In reality, the process was ugly and rough. But it worked. And in Kotus, working was about all you could ask for.
Dante crouched down, opened the Echo’s mouth, and poured the liquid in. The reaction was immediate and violent. The Echo’s body convulsed, seizing as the liquid spread through him, cutting through the mutations, forcing the body to let go. And then came the memories.
They always came. Flickering like an old film reel playing behind the Echo’s eyes. Dante watched like he always did. The memories started with the good stuff—families, kids laughing, streets full of people, hover trams gliding smoothly overhead. The world before the Fall. Dante had never seen it, but he felt like he knew it better than his own reality. These were the fragments the Echoes carried with them, glimpses of a time when things weren’t falling apart.
But the good memories never lasted. The Fall was always waiting. Riots. Fires. The bodies in the streets. The rich blasting off in their ships, leaving everyone else behind to burn. Dante saw it all, again and again, through different eyes but always the same story.
The Echo’s body finally went still, his breathing slowing. Another life ended, another memory stored somewhere in the back of Dante’s mind. Not that he knew what to do with them. The people he worked for believed that if enough Echoes were freed, the memories would form a pattern, a clue to fixing whatever went wrong. Dante wasn’t sure he bought into that. But it wasn’t like he had anything else to do.
The scanner beeped again. Another Echo nearby. Dante followed the signal deeper into the ruins.
The second Echo was in worse shape. He found him huddled inside a makeshift dome—plascrete scraps and bent metal barely holding together. The Echo’s body was a mess of twisted limbs, skin so thin and translucent it looked like it could tear apart with a touch. Dante approached, vial in hand.
He poured the blue liquid into the Echo’s mouth, but this time something felt off. The convulsions came, but the memories hit differently. Sharper. Clearer. Dante saw the streets before the Fall, but this time it felt… real. Not a dream or a faded recollection. And then he saw something that stopped him cold.
He saw himself.
Not a reflection. Not a lookalike. It was him, walking through the streets as the Fall happened, completely untouched by the chaos around him. Dante froze, staring at the memory. How could he be there? This memory was decades old, long before he was born. But there he was, unaged, moving through the destruction like it didn’t affect him at all.
The memory ended abruptly as the Echo’s life faded. Dante stood up, trying to process what he had seen, but the sound of a shuffling step behind him broke his focus. He spun around, his hand gripping the blade at his side.
A girl stood at the alley entrance, no older than ten. Her clothes were patched together from scavenged tech and cloth, and beside her was a dog, its eyes glowing faintly—one of those old-world mods that hadn’t quite worked out as intended.
“You help them,” the girl said. It wasn’t a question.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Dante replied, narrowing his eyes.
“Where else would I be?” she asked, shrugging.
Before Dante could respond, he heard footsteps behind him. Another figure appeared—a man, desperate, clutching a sputtering energy knife that looked like it might die at any second.
“Give me the liquid,” the man growled, his eyes wild.
Dante didn’t move, his hand tightening on his blade. But the girl acted faster. She calmly unclipped the dog’s leash.
“Go,” she said.
The dog lunged forward, teeth bared, its glowing eyes locked on the man. The would-be attacker froze as the dog slammed into him, knocking the knife from his hand. The man stumbled backward, then turned and ran without looking back.
The dog padded back to the girl’s side, calm again. Dante stared at her, trying to figure her out.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” he said, softer this time.
“Nowhere’s safe,” she replied, unbothered.
Dante studied her for a moment. There was something in her eyes, something familiar. Broken, like the Echoes. But still here. Still standing. Maybe that was enough.
“Come with me,” he said finally. “You and the dog.”
The girl nodded, the hint of a smile on her lips. As they walked through the ruins, Dante couldn’t shake the image from the Echo’s memory. Couldn’t shake the feeling that everything he thought he knew was unraveling. But for now, he kept moving. What else could he do?