Growth through hardship; a summary of a transformative year!

2025 is coming to a close and I thought a @caffetto freewrite would be the best closure to end this year. I’m sitting here reflecting on how I came to Hive through @mada; a typical uptown Minneapolis day in 2016, now trying to process that 2026 will be a decade on this platform. I can’t believe that! What a journey. There’ll be a day when I just sit back, old as fuck, reading a journal of the most consequential years of my life and that’s no joke. A lot of Hive was about being incentivized to post but a byproduct of post rewards was documenting my career, my friendships and relationships, successes and defeats. Lately I’ve been thinking about breaking ground on a Henry Miller/Hunter S. Thompson-esque memoir of my life because much of it is straight out of a movie and I’ll be drawing on much of that Hive archive for that endeavor.

Apparently, I haven’t made a post since late July. A lot has happened. If you go back through my blog, I eluded to some of the worst years of my life. I mean, complete identity collapse in the truest sense of the word. I don’t recognize myself from 2022. If you saw me now, I’d look the same but internally, there was a complete death and rebirth cycle. It took me a ton of work, therapy and coming to Islam but I’m on my feet again and I’m feeling hopeful of the future for the first time in a long time. I’ve written at length about how personally the genocide in Gaza has affected me. I lost so many friends after October 7th — after losing so many friends during COVID, it’s cathartic to have found a new community and family. I’ve always had a belief in God but wouldn’t consider myself religious most of my life. I certainly didn’t believe in the power of prayer, but after such a crushing low point in my life, I was humbled. After losing so many people I cared about, I prayed for good friends. I have so much gratitude to have them in my life now.

One of my closest is my friend Christine. She’s a queer Palestinian Christian and we’ve worked on the most meaningful projects of my life together. She’s such a force of nature with her talent and ambition. In addition to being a musician, poet and actor, she just completed her residency and is a medical doctor. The chemistry we have creativity is rare. We did a project called Rise that we released one year from the beginning of the genocide in Gaza. Our second project was a second issue of a zine called Intifada. This was very healing for me. The content and production was a big step up from the first issue. I was really proud of the artwork. @girlofgaza even contributed a journal to this issue, God bless her, living on the ground throughout this entire genocide. One of the Minnesota nonprofits contributed to our printing efforts and we’ve been able to send over 7,000 issues around the world!

Christine and I recently finished a short film that was released on Black Friday inspired by a dream I had about a devil aggressively trying to sell someone the evils of society. It was meant to be a critique on capitalism and the greed and excess of the world, especially the west. This was new territory for me because although I’ve done a lot of videography and documentation of protests over the years, this was the closest I’ve come to actual film making. I was really happy with the gaffing for this. I took @guthrie to see Frankenstein in theaters during its limited release and I remember thinking, “I’m going to steal that lighting!”. I felt like I stayed true to my signature lighting from the dark pinup years of my career. Christine had never acted in this capacity and she killed it! Both Rise and Intifada took us over six months each and we managed to pull this together in six weeks.

I have so much more to say, I’m going to make this a two parter. @caffetto is about to close so I need to pack up my stuff. Look forward to my journey back in to 3D sculpting since ZBrush is now available on the iPad, new photography for a Palestine/El Salvadorian cafe that just opened in the Twin Cities, a car accident […we’re okay] and adventures in sourdough bread. I really love being back here and I wish it wasn’t so difficult to stick to a routine of posting on Hive. I’m going to make a commitment to a more regular blogging schedule in the New Year, especially considering this is my Tin anniversary on Hive. As always, thank you for reading and for the years of continued support and friendship.