CURRENT MISSION

Explore America and the American vernacular. Develop a new form of pros. I call it, New Pros.

ABOUT ME

During the Q&A portion of the very last lecture I attended at Yale college, the guest lecturer, author Caryl Phillips told me that if I wanted to be a writer I could not get a job. If I had to do odd jobs like washing cars or cleaning dishes to stay afloat, that would be fine, but writing, to be done well - or at all - must take the entirety of my spirit.

I found out the hard way that what he said was true.

The corporate world was not for me. For seven months, I dreaded waking up and going to my job as a Media Analyst in Washington DC. I spent my days in front of excel spreadsheets and mundane news reports and soon I began to go about my work with the conscious intention of not trying too hard, in the hope that I might reserve enough energy to write something, anything, when I got home at night. I hardly ever did.

Eventually my lack of effort and focus at work got me fired. Thank God.

Nowadays I have a new lease on life. My mom has leant me her 2008 Camry, and I have nothing but dreams and the open road ahead of me. I hope to never work another 9-5 day in my life. For long term survival, I'm steadily learning and improving at the game of poker - but for right now I'm leaning on my savings and on the generosity of strangers as I explore America, work on my next book and continue to imagine novel ways of re-inventing the sentence.

PHILOSOPHY

Explore the world, distill its beauty.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Share my thoughts, experience, spirit and time with anyone who wants to do to the same. Will do manual labor for housing.

Interests

Fiction, writing and reading. Basketball, playing and watching. Soccer, playing and watching. Talking, listening. Rhyming, beat-boxing (trying to). Scrabble. Poker.

• writing
• books
• beauty
• news
• reading
• tv
• cars
• survival
• poker
• basketball
• boxing
• soccer
• communications

Music, Movies, and Books

(No Order:)

Movies: Paper Moon, The Matrix, 25th hour, Fight Club, The Silence of the Lambs, The Departed, Dave Chapelle's Block Party, Mulan, The King of Comedy (Robert de Niro).

Books: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Ulysses, The Brief and Wondrous life of Oscar Wao, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, On the Road, King James's Bible.

Music: 2pac, Biggie + their disciples, and other stuff (like Ahmad Jamal, Amy Winehouse and the Isley Bros)

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

--Helped the Northside Mustangs win the 2008 Chicago Public School Blue-North Conference for Varsity Basketball.

--Wrote a novel, 'Tupac Was a Man' - based loosely on my college experience and my time studying abroad in Ireland and Brazil. Revised and reworked the book with renowned fantasy writer, John Crowley.

--Interned for Tony Kornheiser on Pardon the Interruption (TV) and The Tony Kornheiser Show (radio)

Countries I’ve Visited

Brazil, Mexico, Netherlands, United Kingdom

Countries I’ve Lived In

Brazil, Ireland, United States