Monday morning. Sitting out on my balcony with my coffee, croissant, and cigarette, listening to New Orleans street jazz and vibing with the rainforest.

Wherever you go, there you are. Here I am right now at my best.

I finally got a chance to watch the new Hurricane Katrina doc on Netflix last night. I find the stories of the survivors to be so inspiring. The leadership that emerged in the face of such a tragedy is such a beautiful thing to me. So many people stayed behind to save others who could not save themselves. When the government and the world turned their back on them, they stepped up to the plate to do what they could to take care of their own.

They could have thought only of themselves in that moment. They could have escaped to the higher ground. Instead, they turned around and went back to rescue whoever they could rescue. They kept filming so the world would know the truth of what took place in the Lower Ninth Ward. They didn’t abandon their families and friends. They risked their lives to find whatever food, water, and medicine they could. They sang songs through the darkness and uplifted people with prayers. They fought, they survived, they shared their stories. And here they are now, two decades later, still telling the world their stories, exposing the corruption for what it is, determined not to allow the world to forget what happened.

That, to me, is so incredibly heroic. They are my heroes. I woke up this morning and the first thought was, “These people are my heroes.”

I’ll never forget the way my Airbnb host in NOLA described her experience as a nurse trapped in the hospital for over a week and what she saw when she was finally able to get out and check on her house.

I’ll never forget the way she said it: “Oh, honey, they abandoned us! We was on our own.”

And yet… she found a way to survive.

Beautiful.

It was just what I needed after three weeks of listening to privileged white people constantly tell me to worry only about myself while they themselves tromped around the rainforest without caring about the fact that they were actively exploiting people and animals for Instagram posts. They don’t care that they’re paying grifters to appropriate the sacred ceremonies of indigenous cultures. They don’t care about the poverty. All they care about is themselves and it shows.

Thank god I don’t have to be around that energy anymore. I’ve really been put off of the whole New Age Spiritual Community after this experience. It’s pretty icky. It just attracts so many unhealthy people who completely lack any kind of self-awareness. I don’t want to be around that anymore.

I was definitely that way when I started out, but now… I’ve evolved beyond it. I don’t need to shell out money to some grifter for a fake “Kundalini Awakening Ceremony” so I can “find my true purpose.” Fuck that shit.

This is my true purpose. This right here. I am not a yoga teacher. I am a writer and a journalist. It’s time to start acting like it.

So today I woke up and decided to go back to work. Here I am now. There’s no one here to distract me or tear me down. It’s time to go back to work now…