I believe in the importance of sticking to what you are interested in, and achieving your goals while pursuing your interests.
People often say that you can do anything you put your mind to. Under most circumstances, this is actually true. There are certain factors in place for different people from different backgrounds, but for the most part, anything you’ve been imagining can become real. According to Matsumoto and Tanaka in the Current Opinion in Neurobiology, achieving goals in changing environments requires the course of action to be selected on the basis of goal expectation and memory of action–outcome contingency.
Music has always been my first interest. When I was 11 years old, I saw the movie about the late Notorious B.I.G. who is also known as “Biggie Smalls.” He was very popular in the 90’s. My mother and father had me in their teenage years, and ironically enough the same year he was murdered. That being said, I grew up on that era of rap and hip-hop as well.
Fast forwarding to age 15, my family was going through a lot of struggle. I found joy in live shows, and anything pertaining to entertainment and the hiphop industry. I didn’t have much supervision, so I’d save my money, travel to NYC for concerts, BET’s 106 & Park, and more almost every other week or two.
This made me take an interest in live music, specifically performed by upcoming artists. Since then, I have been supporting the talented upcoming artists that just simply need encouragement. Once I found my niche, I even built a website based around their work so they can be provided opportunities to get some sort of exposure via press.
Pursuing this website was very stressful at first. I had no motivation, because I felt like I had little to no support. I didn’t know what direction I wanted to head in, and my mind was everywhere. But then I began writing my ideas and goals out to let them manifest on paper.
From sitting down and actually sorting out my ideas and goals, I was able to campaign, plan and host a rap cypher, that provided the winner with free studio time. I was able to cover Beyonce and Jay Z, as well as Wiz Khalifa this summer on a professional press level. And lastly, I was able to help several upcoming artists gain basic press credentials by featuring them on the website.
I personally value achieving solid goals. I believe in the importance of sticking to what you are interested in.