My Search for a Purpose

Hello and welcome to a new blog post by yours truly. I'm sorry this blog post is 2 weeks late, but I promise there is a reason for that that I will address for most of this blog post. First- A Life Update: My residents have been fine, but haven't really been coming to my events so y'know RA life isn't too terrible ;)  UPB is going well! I love my position and I love the people that I work with so much. I'm so glad they're all in my life and I can't wait to get to know them better as the year goes on  Retreat made me so happy and so excited  The UPBeans of Color hangout made me very happy and excited as well  I went home last weekend and honestly it was the best thing that I needed for my mental health. I got to get ahead on homework, I got to spend time with some good friends, and I got to enjoy lots of time with my little cousins, which I'm appreciating more and more as I, and they, get older. I'm happy to be developing serious relation...

Greetings and Welcome to the first blogpost of my Senior Year. Sorry it's a few days late, but y'know life. Thank you to those who have been keeping up with me and my blog so far, and thank you to possibly some new readers as I've met quite a few people this past month! Here's an update on my life: At the beginning of this month I worked my last day at Abbott's and was pretty happy about that. Along with that I journeyed back up to UVM to start RA Training! I've met so many fantastic people on the WDW/MSH staff and feel so lucky and blessed to be as close as I am to as many people as I am on the staff. I hope this year continues to grant blessings like these and I can't wait to develop stronger relationships with not only my staff, but my residents (who seem very nice and respectful), my family, my chosen family & friends here at UVM, and the people on UPB! Unfortunately, I had to drop out of one of my commitments for this school year, Peer Advis...

Hello and welcome to another blog post! Thank you for keeping up with me and my blog and for reading and for surviving the humid July days in order to read yet another post! I've added even MORE images for your reading pleasure!! First, as usual now, an update on my life: I'm still working at Abbott's, but tomorrow is my last day and I'm excited to spend my last few days in CT hanging out with friends and not worrying about doing anything else besides packing  I leave for VT on Saturday for RA Training, and then Peer Advisor Training, and a little bit of UPB Exec Training, and then my last year at UVM!! I'm very excited to begin the year, do all the activities I'm doing, and see my friends in Burly again! I don't come home until October 5th for Nicki Minaj's concert and Indigenous People's Day Weekend so this is going to be THE longest stretch I've ever taken away from home. I'm excited to be fully immersed in my school environment, bu...

Hi and welcome to another blog post written by Jamal Davis Neal, Jr.!!! Thank you for following my blog thus far and making it through these warm summer months to read another one! ;) This one is a little late because life is hectic and I'll give you an update on that in a second, but I also found this really cool feature that lets me keep the dates I really wanted these to be posted on!! SO let's just pretend that it's 7:00 PM on June 30th haha So anyway, an update on my life: I'm working at Abbott's a bunch and it's... ...alright.... I'm hanging out with friends a little less than I'd like and that's sorta not okay... The warmth is getting to me and I'm sweating all the time and that's fine :) this is fine I deleted my problematic finsta account for a VARIETY of reasons, some of which are touched upon in the first post on my new Secondary Instagram account @thepositive_jdneal. I'm really proud and happy about my Secondary Ins...

Hello and welcome to yet another blogpost written by yours truly!! Thank you so much for those who are following this blog closely and I hope everyone who is out of school (like myself) are having a safe, fun, and productive summer vacation! Per usual, I'm going to start this post with the LEMONADE track that inspires it. "6 Inch" is the track that I probably least resonate with. It's good, hot, and sensual, and describes Beyoncè's need and want to keep on her grind and make money. I suppose I least resonate with it because I have not arrived to a financial state that I'm comfortable with, and my current grind(s) (school and misc. jobs at home and at school) aren't necessarily the most rewarding grind for right now. The theme of this track, and part of the visual album is Emptiness . Yet another feeling I don't necessarily resonate with- I'm full of passion and love and have never felt truly empty. There are times, like with apathy, I have wi...

Thank you to those who have been keeping up with this series of blogposts. I'm sorry that this one is three days late; I've been a little busy with getting ready for #finalszn and everything. And also I'm so not productive right now and it's becoming a problem and I can't wait until I'm home in 6 days. Anyway, please feel free to comment or talk to me about my post if you feel so called. If not, that's okay too! On with my April post... As usual, I'm going to begin with the LEMONADE track that inspires this post. Genius describes "Sorry" as "a defiant breakup song, a middle-fingered clap-back anthem about having strength and confidence in the midst of an otherwise serious and emotionally tugging breakup." While I've never gone through any romantic break-up of any sort, I have been through plenty  of friend breakups; extremely messy ones, I might add. In addition to this, the Apathy  chapter supports the lyrics of "Sor...

Thank you for keeping up with my blogposts if you have! If you haven't, please feel free to look at my past ones. They're totally available and I would say still relevant to read. Also- I still have a super comprehensive "Follow" button for the web version of my blog. Please hit the follow button so that you can get notifications for my posts. I'm still super open and craving comments and questions from my posts. I love talking to people about them. Anyway... welcome to my March Post! This post is going to be pretty short because I'm currently hanging out with my family at home and I don't feel as inspired to talk about this topic as much as I have been about other topics. As usual, I'm going to talk about the Beyoncé LEMONADE song that inspires this post and provides symbolism first. "Don't Hurt Yourself" is the third song on the LEMONADE album and is part of the chapter on Anger . Throughout the song, Beyoncé expresses to Jay...

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 ...