My New Year

It's my brithday week and this week I reflect on the past year and explore what the future my lead me.  Tap In!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey, yo, what is up, everybody? What's going on? It's your girl Jay, and welcome back to another edition of the Just Jay Pod. I hope everyone is doing well today. Um, me and myself, I'm doing all right. Um at the time of this recording, shout out to Kyle, I am on a vacation from work, so I'm just in a relaxed mode and just trying to walk the line between being productive and relaxing. And that's the thing that I struggle with with vacations. It's like you can leave, like if you leave and go somewhere, it's like you go there, you do whatever you do for your vacation, whether it's like some you know massive trip or whatever it is, but then you come back and you you have to like take a break from your vacation. Like before you have to go back to work, you feel like I need a rest for my vacation because I've been moving so much, moving around so much. Or if it's like a staycation like me, like I I um had to um I had plans to like work on some stuff around my house, some like um, I don't know what you want to call it, like house projects, painting, maybe um organizing my closet, like trying to figure out some stuff there, um wanted to do all that. And when vacation hit, I'm like, nah, I'm just gonna, I don't feel like doing it. Like, I'm gonna do it. I wanna do it. And then I sit on the couch and I watch TV and I'm like, well, that's what that's what I feel like doing today. I don't have to work, that's what I want to do. And then one day turns into three days into whatever days. So we are here in the middle of my vacation. I haven't done anything that I said I was gonna do, but I still have one, two, three, four more days technically before I have to go back to work. So we'll see if I get any of that done. But that's not why we are here today. Um, we are here because um the topic of this podcast is my new year. So um every year on my birthday, I pretty much treat it like a new year. So I don't do New Year's resolutions during, you know, December going into January and stuff like that. I always look at it as a new year when I turn another, when I get a year older. Like I like to reflect on the year before and then see, you know, what I what goals and things I have set for uh the upcoming year. So this year, so so at the time of this recording again, shout out to Kyle. I always say that. Um, my birthday was on Monday. It is Wednesday. So my birthday was on Monday, June 28th. And um, you know, I had a pretty good time. Like I um plan to try to get my hair done because I get my hair braided. I tried to try to get it done before my birthday. I was trying to get the 26th, which was on a Friday. The lady who does my hair was like, I don't have any availability. You know, you have to stick to Monday because I made an appointment, then I texted her, I was like, hey, if you get any earlier appointments, let me know. And she was like, no, we're just gonna stick to this date. Pretty much like I can't get you in early, which is fine. So um I started vacation that Friday. So that Friday, the Saturday, I I had still had braids in, which I should have taken them out a long time ago, but I just didn't feel like it. Um, I ended up taking those two days to take my hair down and like wash and condition and all that other stuff, let my hair breathe a little bit. And then Sunday was my birthday. So did I say Monday? Sunday was my birthday. Y'all, I'm it's a lot happening over in my in my life, as you'll you'll discover as I keep talking. My birthday was on a Sunday, June 28th was a Sunday. Um, so Sunday, I wasn't gonna do anything really for my birthday. I just wanted to be kind of low-key. Um, I originally had plans to um go to Chicago to see uh Las Vegas Aces versus Chicago Sky, but um I just didn't have the money to do that at the time. And then a bunch of like family stuff started happening, so I wasn't even thinking about that. And to be honest, with everything that has gone on in my life, I kind of forgot about my birthday. Not necessarily that I knew it was coming up, but it was like I wasn't really in the mood or trying to plan anything, right? So if you don't know, um I lost my dad in March, um, March 26th, I believe, which was a Thursday. And then I lost my my dog, my uh best friend. I had him for 17 years, Rebel. I lost him. Um was it in June? I forget, I know it was on a Monday, but I get the days mixed up. It was it was actually June 1st. June 1st was when it went down. Um, so it's been uh it's been a little crazy over here for me, um, having to just you know, just dealing with loss and grief and all that other stuff. And you know, I really don't deal with loss very well, or I haven't had to deal with it. Um, the last big thing that happened to me, like dealing with loss, was my grandparents, but I was 14 and 18 at the time. And um even then it it I'm I'm very slow to react. You know, everybody has their own ways of dealing with things. But I'm just very I don't know, I can't explain why, and I don't know if it's like a defense mechanism with me that I do, but it's just I just I did not I didn't process my grandma's um passing very well or even like I just put it away. I you know, I felt sad, but it was like I didn't really deal with those feelings for a very long time. It wasn't until I went to therapy. This is 2012. My grandma died uh what year was that when I was 14, whatever year that was, um, which was not no nowhere near the 2000s, it was in the 90s. Um but it took me going to therapy to kind of deal with that. My grandfather, I don't know, I guess we kind of saw him deteriorate, so it wasn't as bad. My grandma was sudden and it wasn't something that we expected. So I haven't had to deal with, I've I've lost my grand other grandparents since then, but I don't know. My my mom's parents were very were the ones that kind of helped raise me and I live with them and all this other stuff, so it's a different connection than the others, but it just I don't know. I just don't deal with it. Um, I don't know, in a way that maybe people feel is normal. You know what I'm saying? Everybody, like I said, deals with things differently. So the passing of my dad and then my dog has been very difficult to deal with. And it's almost like I it was, I want to say more hurtful. It was harder to deal with the passing of my dog. And I know it sounds crazy, but it was more painful to me to deal with that than it was my dad, because I think I still haven't processed the whole thing with my dad yet. And my dog is like I literally had to be there as he took his last breath, and it was not, it was not great. So I tried to have an episode just about the whole lost thing, but I couldn't get through it, and it was very hard for me to talk about. So I'm surprised I'm able to talk about it now and I'm good. But I mean, there's uh much more to those stories than I want to talk about today. But uh, just so you know, in the headspace that I was in, it's just I wasn't, I don't know, I wasn't thinking about my birthday. So I had never, I didn't really have plans to do anything, maybe go eat, maybe, and then just relax at the house and wasn't, I really wasn't in the mood to do anything. So um one of my co-workers, I was talking to her. What day were we talking? Oh, we had a meeting at work. So the Wednesday before I went on vacation on that Friday. Um, we had a meeting and she was like, Oh, what are you gonna do on your on your vacation? I was like, Oh, well, my birthday is Sunday, so I'm just gonna relax. I'm not gonna do anything. Oh, well, you should you should do something for your birthday. Why don't you want to celebrate your birthday? And I was like, uh, you know, with everything going on, I just didn't feel like it. She was like, Oh, you deserve though. You deserve to be celebrating and, you know, have people around you and stuff like that. So she was like, You need to make an announcement in front of everybody. We were we were having lunch with all the people that are in my district or whatever. And she's like, You need to get up and say something because one of the other guys was like, his birthday is July 21st or something, and he's gonna have this big party. He wanted everybody to come. And so she was just staring at me, like, get up, get up, say something. So I'm like, all right, hey guys, my birthday is on Sunday. If anybody wants to hang out, let me know. I'm still working out plans, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. So, um, of course, nobody, some people said they would come or come hang out, but only she was the only one that ended up coming out. So um, she was like, Well, what do you want to do? So I was like, Well, maybe we'll go to the activate place and and go play games and then eat or something after that. So she was like, Okay. So that was with the plans that I just made up like a few days before my actual actual birthday, because I wasn't gonna plan to do anything. So um took my hair down Friday, Saturday, Sunday was my birthday, meet up with my best friend Jeremy, and then her, and we went to this activate place. I don't know if you guys have been there before. The activate, it's called act, I think it's called Activate Games, and they have them all over the place. But it's like a big room, a big warehouse. Not a warehouse, but just like it's big place. It has, I think the lady said 12 rooms or 13 rooms or something like that. And each room you can play different interactive games, and each, like there's different levels to the games. There's like four, four to seven different games in each room, and then they all have different levels and stuff like that, and you can play together as a group, or you can play against each other. It was a whole thing, and so I I've done it before. I had a good time. It's a nice, a nice time to run around and act like a kid or whatever. So we did that, that was fun. They have like the little light up floor where um kind of looks like a disco, a disco floor, or whatever is different lights and they're all different colors, it's all these different tiles. And say, for instance, one of the games is you have a you're in a you're assigned a color. And so you your job is to get to your color the fastest, but also get to your color before everybody has to hit their color before the time goes out. And so you just keep doing that. So if I was red, I have to go find my red tile, they'll count it down, go to my next tile, go to my next tile, all this other stuff. So stuff like that is they have these little basketball hoops that you play, and you can either play like shot clock, you can play trivia, you can play Simon Says. They have this one where you throw this ball at the at the screen. Um, we only play one game on that, which is asteroids, so you gotta throw your ball to at the screen to hit the asteroids. And if, you know, if you don't, obviously you lose the asteroids blow up and all this other stuff. Um, there's a laser room where you're kind of like mission impossible, and you have to like go through this like laser maze. Um, they also have like um on the other side of that room, it's little laser guns that you shoot, and you can play little shooting games. That uh what else do they have in there? It's a thing called Portal, where you have this one ball, it's like maybe three, three rows of holes on either side. And um it's different games that you play, but the one we played was the word scramble. So you'll you'll look at the big screen and it it's uh say you have to spell jump. Jump is scrambled. So you figure out what word they want you to spell, and then each of those holes on the walls are a different letter. So it's three of us, so all of us would like have a little section that we're there. We gotta look at the wall and figure out where is J. So whoever has J, you throw the ball to them, and then they put the ball in a hole, it comes out on the other side, so someone has to be there to pick it up. And if that letter, the U is not on your side, then you gotta you're screaming out, hey, who has you? Who has you? And then whoever it does, you throw it to them. And it's like a whole little thing. You're scrambling around, it's pretty fun. Um, the portal, the basketball, the grid, the lasers. Um oh, there's this one where you have to hide from this big eye that's all around the room. Um, and if you move, you you know, you die or whatever. It's it's a it was a bunch of different stuff. So we did that. You know, you can um it's an hour long, but you can pay for longer. But we did that, had a good time, and then we went to one of my favorite places to eat, Gloria's um, Latin cuisine. Went there, had some food and drinks, and then uh we we went home. I was ready to go. I had been tired, I was tired at that point. Um tired myself out, went home. That night was the BET Awards. I didn't watch the BET Awards because um I was gonna watch them later. By the time I got home, there were still some games on. Um, so I watched those games and then I went back and watched The Aces in Chicago, the game that I originally wanted to watch, or I was gonna go to that game in Chicago, watched that, and then uh went to sleep, woke up Monday, went and got my hair braided, um, came home, then I watched uh I watched the Lauren Hill. I didn't watch all of the BET Awards, I watched the Lauren Hill tribute. That was pretty cool. Um, that was cool to watch just because I remember being such a big fan of Lauren Hill. Like, y'all cannot tell me nothing. I was such a big fan of hers. And this was back when she was called L Boogie and she was a part of the Fuji's. And I mean, most I don't know if most of y'all know if I told this story before though, but um I uh I got my name, J Boogie, from Lauren Hill being L Boogie. And it's because I used to rap her lyrics so much that one of my classmates was like, Who do you think you are? Who are you supposed to be? You think you're L Boogie? I'm gonna start calling you J Boogie, and she started calling me that, and it just it stuck. And people caught on to it by the time I got to college, and it's just been with me since high school. Um, but I was a really, really huge fan of Lauren Hill in the Fujiis. And uh course Sister Act 2 was out before I really knew who she was in the Fujiis. At first I thought it was two different people because I'm like, man, this that looks like the girl from Sister Act, but I don't know if that's her or whatever. And then I come to find out it is. But um such a huge fan of Lauren Hill's, and so and then the Miss Education of Lauren Hill coming out. That was such a uh an amazing piece of work that still to this day, 30 dear, 30 years later, is still making an impact and she's still being celebrated for it. Um, it was just good to see that tribute. Now, how the person she is now or whatever, the Miss Lauren Hill, I don't know. I'm not that haven't really you know been following her or you know, following her career or anything since that whole thing has happened. Um, I know she doesn't perform her songs the same due to some legal stuff, I think. Um, but it was good to reminence. It was good to see some of the people. And and I was just happy because I knew all the songs, I knew all the raps, and I was like, oh man, this was like peak, like teenage years here. This is when like uh life was good, you know what I'm saying? So that was a good time. And then yesterday I didn't do anything that I can think of today. I'm doing this. So so far, my vacation has been cool. But you know, as I look over my year, it's been uh the second half of the year, um, started in January. It's just been rough for me to this point, you know what I'm saying? Um and I just think that with all the stuff that's been going on and not just the loss, but also just dealing with some things with my job that you know, you just get stuck in in in things where it's like I've been doing this same job for a very long time. I'm with a new company, I've only been here almost two years, but it's the same stuff. You're working in the same industry, so you do the same things, and so it gets to a point where it's like it's draining, it's not it's not fun anymore. Now, do I make some money? Yeah, I pay my bills, you know, that's great. I got a little bonus I wasn't expecting, and that money's good if I continue to get those type of bonuses, so that kind of feels makes me feel a little bit better, but overall, it's like there's gotta be more out there, you know what I'm saying? And so as I look back on a year, I I'm proud of myself for just existing, just pushing through, just you know, making it every single day, um, dealing with what I've been dealing with, because even before all the loss, I was dealing with the fact that, you know, knowing that the end could be near for, you know, my dad and my dog, which is crazy that, you know, it's crazy how it all happened. But um, and it's very it's a lot of parallels with them. And then for me, like I said, not being able to not dealing with that very well and like kind of putting it off to the side and and not dealing with it head on, those types of things. Um you know, it was just hard to like deal with the process of all that last year, you know what I'm saying, back in 2025. So it's been a rough year, but I think going into this year, if it's nothing else, I feel like a change is due. You know what I'm saying? Like it's it's time to somewhere, I don't know how or what it is, but something is telling me just to let the past go. Like let, you know, I don't know if it's job, I don't know if it's industry, I don't know if it's living here and where I'm living. I don't know. There's a lot of things that's been coming up, and there's decisions that I have to make, you know what I'm saying? And it's been uh I don't know, I think this year I'm being pushed to be uncomfortable and make and make some changes that I think are going to be good. You know what I'm saying? I'm a person that is always trying not to take a risk because I don't want to go backwards. You know what I'm saying? But um the more I look at like life is you gotta make the best out of things. You know what I'm saying? You cannot continue to no matter how much the money is good, how good the money is or how stable you are, your job's stability. And that's important. I don't wanna make anybody, I don't want y'all to think that it's not that. It is very important to have a stable job and in a career that you know is not, you know, is not gonna go anywhere. Like you're not worried about things going bankrupt where you're gonna lose your job because it's not it's not gonna be there next year. But at some point, you gotta be happy with everything. You know what I'm saying? Like at some point you kinda gotta stop putting you to the side. And I'm talking to myself, you gotta stop putting you to the side just to survive because it's not bringing you happiness, and that's bringing you down because now you're not able to do what makes you happy when you're not at work. You know what I'm saying? Um gotta do some things to shake things up. You gotta do some things in your life to s to shake things up, and I don't really know what all that means yet. That's these are just thoughts that's going through my through my mind. Like I don't I haven't put all the pieces together yet, but I kind of feel like this year, this this new year for me is about change and about finding the real happiness. You know what I'm saying? And I'm not trying to get too deep. I'm just I saying stuff like this reminds me of listening to Tam. Shout out to Tam. Tamra to the break of dawn when she's always like, I'm an external processor, like she has to speak things out and and talk things out in order to process things, and that's how I feel like what I'm doing right now. Cause I don't have all the answers. I don't know. I don't know what I'm gonna be saying a year from now or six months from now, whatever. I do know that I just feel like something has to change. Something has to change um because the the way things are right now, it is not good for me, not good for my health, not good for my happiness, not good for my mental. Um there's gotta be another way. You know what I'm saying? And like I said, without going into all the details, y'all don't really want to, I don't think, or need to really hear every every little thing. But my friends who talk to me um regularly kind of know what what that means and stuff like that. So I don't know. I'm I'm going to take this year with an open mind. I'm going to work on being more deliberate, being um having more motivation for me. And the biggest thing is having discipline. Like I need to definitely work on discipline and using that to get what I want because I deserve it and to take me where I want to go because I deserve it. You know what I'm saying? I've spent a lot I'm, you know, it's my birth, it's been my birthday. I'm deep in my 40s. You know what I'm saying? I spent a lot of time doing what was right or doing what was safe. Not to say I'm gonna do something wrong, but doing doing the things that I felt like I was supposed to do and pay my dues and do this and work hard. And I realize these people don't care. They don't care that I've been doing this for 27, 28 years. They don't care. They care that you've only been with this place for a year and a half and that you need to be putting in more work. Like that's the thing that is getting me. I'm I'm not interested in doing any more extra work. And I know it's hard to say in this economy and in the way capitalism is these days, but dog, I put in a lot of time. I put a lot of miles on this body work-wise. And I'm to the point where it's like enough is enough. You know what I'm saying? Like enough, the mental, the physical, enough is enough, you know what I'm saying? So I don't know. That's where I'm leaning towards. And hopefully, hopefully I'll get there. You know what I'm saying? Um but I also want to like grow my podcast. You know, I started this new podcast and then things started happening, and I wasn't keeping up with this like I thought I would be, or thought I would be able to, and I still don't know if I can keep up with it um right now. For the future, I do want to, but I just don't know. Like two weeks from now or four weeks from now or a month from now. I don't know until I get things like sorted out. But I'm trying. Um, I want to grow, continue to grow my YouTube. I was going, I was going well for a while. Like I was doing well, I had a nice audience, and then like I said, things kind of fell off. Um, so I kind of lost some of those people. And so I'm I'm having to like build that back up. Um, and and and you know, my YouTube, I mainly talk about sports, and I'm sorry if I'm jumping all over the place, y'all just deal with it. But um my YouTube is mainly about sports. And when I started, there wasn't many people talking about sports, especially not women talking about women's sports. Um, and now it's such uh it's so crazy to see. I started that two almost three years ago now, and it's it's so saturated now. Like that's the hot thing is to talk about women's basketball when we weren't even no one even cared about what was going on. The reason I started talking about women's sports is because I enjoyed it, but because I couldn't find places where I can turn to where someone was breaking down the game or talking about these players or discussing anything. I only had like one or two people that I saw. And so I was like, let me do this. And I started getting an audience because people were also looking for that too. And nowadays, it's like every everybody got a women's basketball channel, you know what I'm saying? Like even some of the, I wouldn't say they're not independent, but some of these uh news stations or channels or whatever, NBC, CBS, they have their own little online presence where they talk about that stuff. And so it's kind of saturated. So if you don't have like net something that's necessarily standing out or your little niche that you do, yeah, you can lose some of your people. And you know, I just I fell off from being consistent um for a while. And so yeah, I lost some of those people, but you know, I'm getting people back um every every time I'm I'm back on. I'm trying to be consistent with that. So my goal for this year is to be more consistent with my YouTube. Um, I feel like my Patreon is going pretty well as far as putting content out. So I I want to grow my Patreon to where I actually have members and I can um, you know, have a lot of paid members. Uh, you know, but I have to work on my content and I have to continue to put that out. Um, I have to promote, which I hate to do. I need to get better at promoting. Um, but it's all grow my overall presence. Just grow my overall presence as far as content creating, whether that's podcasting, my YouTube, or putting videos out on my um Patreon. That's those are things that I enjoy doing. Those are things that make me happy, and I cannot allow other things to keep me from doing that. Because if I don't have an outlet, then that's when things get bad. You know what I'm saying? So I definitely want to work on that um as I'm on my journey to to, you know, uh find my happy spot, you know what I'm saying? Um with with whatever career that's gonna be, or or job, or place to live, or whatever, you know what I'm saying? Um, so you know, me and Onyx are here hanging in there, doing the best that we can do. And yeah, so that's what I'm gonna work towards. And, you know, this episode may not be as fun or funny. Uh I don't want to make anybody feel bad or sad or anything like that. Um, but I have listeners for a reason, and sometimes you just have to, you know, talk it out. And this is what I wanted to talk about today. So um I hope I hope that you guys enjoyed this episode for the most part, understand kind of where I'm coming from. Um, there'll be more music episodes, there'll be more just random episodes as I get time to do these, these, um, as I get time to record. Um, but today was a day I just wanted to reflect on things. And I probably still didn't get everything out that I want to get out, but I'm good right here. I think I'm good right here for the most part. Um and uh it is what it is. So that's all I have for y'all today. Um, do I have a vibe of the week? It's kind of weird to have a uh vibe of the week after all of that, but there is a song. There is a song that I cannot stop listening to. And I don't know if look, it's my it's my new year. I I talked about being happy. This song is is definitely a song that makes me happy. Um by the way, coming soon. Hopefully, by the time you hear that. Hey Papa. Hopefully, by the time you hear this, you will. Um, my video for um that I did with my homie Sheryl, we did a um review, a live reaction review to Chloe's new project. Project she did with Timberland. She released a mixtape. And so um one of the songs on here is something that I have really grown to love. So um, I'm gonna give y'all a vibe of the week, even though um the episode was a little, a little bit, a little bit, right? But who cares, right? This is my show. So we're gonna go ahead and listen to the vibe of the week, which is by Chloe and Timberland, and it's called um World on Fire. Now it's funny because she says she wrote this about Jesus. I don't know, so I guess this is like a gospel, could be a gospel song. I didn't get Jesus from that, but that's what she said. But I love this song, so uh let's check it out. Alright, alright, so hopefully y'all hopefully y'all give that song a stream. It's one of my favorite songs on there. The mixtape is pretty cool too, so check it out if you like to. But um, that's all I have for y'all today. Like I said, you can find me on the Tiki Talk um at J Spot Network. You can find me on YouTube at J Spot Network. Um Twitter is still J's Quick3 Pod. Instagram is J Spot Network. Uh I have content coming, y'all. Let me just get through what I'm getting through and um I'll be releasing it, alright? Just hang out with me, alright? Thank y'all so much. I'll talk to y'all later.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

Peace out, but we're going to be able to do it.