i’m still trying to figure out what i really want to do with brokengentleman.com.  it’s more or less a clearinghouse of my more verbose ideas, that relate to communication theory.

it’s more formal than tumblr, and i feel like i need a tumblr-type space where i can ramble and talk about my personal life (vaguely), and only screen myself to a certain extent.  but i recognize that leeches some of the personality out of my writing there.

i guess i just need to put together something that is more or less a business plan for broken gentleman, and how it fits into my other endeavours.

at the same time, i’m going to be culling my personal belongings (probably ebaying some comics, clothes, etc), clearing out my computer, basically trying to get more focused.  i’ve been wondering if it’s possible to live as a digital native in a minimalist fashion.

jamaica was one of the formative experiences of my life.

i’ve never before been to a place where well into 90% of the faces i saw were black, where i felt like a minority due to being part white, not the other way around, where a culture was both familiar and foreign to me, where rich and poor were so far apart, so close together, and so harshly, clearly different.

i saw where my mother grew up, i drank coconut milk fresh from the machete hacked fruit, i was surrounded by the deeply, blindly religious and didn’t disregard them for it in the least.

i saw where i’m from.  it’s beautiful, and corrupt, and broken, and prideful in a way that isn’t at all negative.

i bonded with people over my family history, over my ability to understand but not speak patois, over the fact that anywhere in the world, you can find a jamaican who recognizes the separation of the culture from it’s birthplace.

i came back in awe of how far my family has come in two generations.  how far my mother has come in the 50 years since she left for canada.

i came back promising that i wouldn’t squander the opportunities this has provided for me.  i came back sad that i had never really understood how poor, poor was.

i feel like this is the beginning of a new phase.  part one over, time to move forward.