My Search for a Purpose

Thank you to those of you who read my last blogpost and those of you who obviously seem to want more and have returned! I've added a super comprehensive "Follow" button to the web version of my blog- so if you're reading from a laptop or desktop then please, hit that button to get notifications of when I have blog posts so you can keep reading my thoughts! Also, I love other people's thoughts so please, please leave comments! A few people reached out to me by talking to me personally and I really appreciated that, but if you're not afraid to share your thoughts with other people by leaving a comment, then please do so! I would love to create and facilitate a discussion from these posts and I appreciate any feedback as well. So... on with my February Post. First I'm going to talk about the Beyoncé LEMONADE song that both inspires this blogpost and provides some symbolism to where my headspace is at right now. "Hold Up" is the second son...

Oh my goodness! What? Yeah. It's me again- back on this blog! I had a lot of hopes for this blog in 2015 and 2016 and it seems as if school and my life got in the way of that, which I think was for the best. I kept trying to set a goal of writing once a week and then twice a week, never really making a feasible and reasonable goal for myself and the ideas I like to share with people. It sort of died and I focused on other things I wanted to do, like getting caught up with my photo posting on Facebook and actively hanging out with friends and stuff like that.  Plus, 2016 wasn't a great year for me in terms of friendships. Something I discussed in my last blog post in late 2016:  Love Yourself 2.0 . (In which, at the end, I said "hopefully the next wait won't be this long"- I missed that by about a year.) 2017 ended up being a great year for me and I really do think I made strides to get myself that much closer to My Purpose in life. I added a minor, R...

Alright. So it's almost the end of 2016 and I'm almost 19 years old. Wow. Both of those things kinda freak me out, because not only does it feel like the year went by so fast, but also, in the slow moments, it seemed like 2016 was the worst. Of course this post is going to heavily rely on having lost a best friend recently, but sort of not recently, y'know. This is something that I really feel like sharing because I just feel like it's extremely important to talk about. But first, I'd like to say sorry for really slacking on this blog, but honestly, I feel like this blog is really going to drift in and out of my life more often than it's going to be consistent. And that'll be okay, because that means I'm focusing much more on quality  over quantity, and I know that I would much rather appreciate that over anything else. Here we are. 2016. Sophomore Year of College. Love Yourself 2.0. So seriously. Love yourself, please. Like I can't stress ...

I realized that this post was going to be unhealthy, unnecessary, and very triggering. So I decided not to do it...

Happy Saturday!... not really Also... Happy President's Day Weekend! So this post might be a pretty obvious post at first, but I still hope that you'll get a message out of it anyway. Now I know this message is late and that's mainly because I can never get my shit together in time for past Jamal to be happy with present Jamal. But, you know what? That's okay. This blog is meant to be a comfortable environment for me; a place where I can escape when all the stresses of the world are weighing down on my shoulders. And sometimes that's 2:30 in the morning after you already missed your personal deadline for a post. Yeah... that's my life right now. Just warning you that the style near the end of this post is symbolic. Anyway. Needs vs. Wants. What exactly does that  mean? The first time I thought of writing this post, I was actually in a Skype call with one of my anchors... my person, actually, that went from about 4 to 7 in the morning on a Saturda...

Happy Saturday! Okay, so I know that I've been super lazy lately with the blog stuff, but I assure you that I was spending my time wisely studying and then hanging out with friends and family over vacation. It's been such a long while... I'm very sorry for that, but hey! It's 2016, a new year, and with that (after two weeks into the new year and over a month of hiatus) a new post! Yay! I wrote this like two weeks ago omg I'm so sorry that I suck. I know I'm the worst.  I also suck because I wanted to make this post about 10 weeks ago. Whoops. I know I reeeeaaaallllly suck.  But let's get relevant and begin this post, shall we? 'Ohana & Anchors. What does that mean? Well I mean the first part of that is probably really obvious... y'know the Hawaiian term made popular by the  2002 Disney Movie Lilo & Stitch:  "'Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind... or forgotten." (Did that date placement make ...

Happy Saturday! SO! Like I told you: a retrospective commentary on my third sermon from a perspective of 3.5 years in the future. Basically I'll be quoting large sections of my blog and replying to them in bold and underlined  lettering. I hope you enjoy! I know this is a really fluffy blog post, but y'know finals. And I know that's a bad excuse, but it's not as if this is my last blog post ever. Okay? Okay. Here we go: “Nobody’s Perfect” (But You’re Enough) The third Sermon of Jamal Davis Neal, Jr.  " Jane did a fantastic job with her sermon “You’re Enough” Don’t you think? And she’s only in 7th grade! It takes so much courage to stand up here and share a story, especially your own. I think she deserves a round of applause." It was actually such a coincidence that Jane and I did this; it was crazy! I texted her the idea that I had had and she told me that she has the same idea and told our assistant minister that morning! I'm gl...

Hey! Sorry for not successfully posting these past two weeks... also sorry for lying three weeks ago when I said the next post would be "Ohana & Anchors." Things got a little hectic when going home from school two weeks ago and last week and things are still a little hectic now... So here's a blast from the past... A Sermon that I wrote in freshman year. A lot of it is addressed to my church congregation, but I'm certain that it still contains a powerful message. “Nobody’s Perfect” (But You’re Enough) The third Sermon of Jamal Davis Neal, Jr.  Jane did a fantastic job with her sermon “You’re Enough” Don’t you think? And she’s only in 7th grade! It takes so much courage to stand up here and share a story, especially your own. I think she deserves a round of applause. So. Let’s switch gears now. This is the third sermon I’ve written. My first was in 6th grade and I shared it with the Youth Group. It was about bullying and how I dealt with bullies back...

Happy Saturday! Let's make a disclaimer before we start this blog post: This post isn't pointing any fingers at anyone. This post isn't centered around subtweeting anyone or mentioning any person in particular... yes, there may be references to some of my failed friendships in the past, but it doesn't extend anywhere beyond that.  And I no longer feel the need to waste time hating any of the people referenced in this post either, so don't think this is out of spite or anything like that.  Anyway.  Abandonment.  This is something that a lot of teenagers around my age understand extremely well... I would say that they know this topic much more than the one they should know better... loving themselves. So what am I going to talk about in this? I'm definitely going to share with you my experiences and such and also attempt to provide advice on how to deal with abandonment. And, for the record, this is going to mostly focus on friendship abandon...

Happy Saturday! For many of you who know me, you should have assumed that this was going to be my first post! This is the first time I'm going to talk about this, and it definitely won't be the last time that I'm going to talk about this, because this is probably the most important message that anyone needs to hear and know at all times. LOVE YOURSELF . It's that simple right? I should be done right there! It's only two words; only three syllables. So why does it take people so long to fall in love with themselves? Let's explore this deeper, together. Let me just warn you, though. Getting deeper may be too harsh for some readers and I apologize if you're offended by my words.  Now for many people that know me, they'll also know that I'm not the biggest fan of high school relationships. Before we start pointing fingers and suggesting that the reason for that is because I  myself didn't have too much luck in finding "love"...