THE SEARCH CONTINUES

Comfort zones are funny. They feel like home until they don’t. That was Jersey for me. The same streets, same faces, same outcomes. Something in me started to itch. I needed out.

So I made the leap—South Florida was calling. Sunshine. Space. Something else. I scoured the internet, dodged fake listings, and hunted down something “affordable”. Got my own apartment for the first time, booked a one-way on the auto-train with my Honda Crosstour packed to the brim, and drove from VA to Orlando, then down to Miami.

life doesn’t wait for clean transitions. 

Once I finally landed in Miami, I felt good. The holidays hit and Art Basel came alive. I floated through art shows and ran into Harmonia Rosales—someone I truly respect. Seeing her Black Madonna made me think of the Black Jesus portraits my grandmother kept at home. It hit different. It meant something.

But then the call came. My company was downsizing.

Unemployed. Again.

Still, the hustle didn’t stop. I teamed up with my guy Tyler K who curated a Halloween production at Fontainebleau with performances by Travis Scott and Snoop. New Year’s Eve in Destin, Florida. A short high before the long fall.

After a few Leads my time in SoFlo was up it was time to pack it up and go back to Jersey, things got grim. Slow season. No bookings. Sold my furniture. Broke up with my girl. Left my boxing gym. Everything I built in Florida—wrapped.

I took the train back up. One last eighteen hour ride to Lorton, VA

Then, 10 minutes from home, I got pulled over by New Brunswick Police for a registration issue. A dumb mistake—changed my auto credentials too early. Cops towed everything I owned. Everything. They left me standing on the side of the road with just my laptop, camera, and backpack.

That was rock bottom. The real one.

But the beautiful thing about hitting the bottom is there’s nowhere left to fall. After a week of sulking, I did what I always do—I picked up myself and got back to work.

It’s strange watching yourself live. Like really watching—projected large in front of you in a theater with no one else inside. That was me. Sitting alone, watching pieces of my life stitched together like a film I didn’t audition for, but somehow starred in anyway.

This chapter of The Search Continues starts with a garage gym, a camera, and Coach Sharaim—someone who helped me train my body during a time the world told us to stay inside. We shot a gritty commercial for Beast Factory Gym during the pandemic. Nothing fancy, just honest. Just necessary.

2020 felt like a glitch in the system. Loss everywhere—lives, jobs, momentum. But also space. Space to rethink how we lived and worked. I kept filming, kept learning, kept moving.

Isolation cracked open something real. 

I didn’t want to live in my parents’ home anymore, not because I didn’t love them—but because I needed to grow. 

Independence wasn’t just a want, it was a next step. Around that time, I landed a remote video editor job, and suddenly I was on the road—camera in hand, no permanent zip code.

All those miles, all those faces. All those questions.

Lockdown had us all on pause. The world slowed down, but the noise inside? Deafening.

Post-grad life launched with promise, then slammed into the wall that was COVID. What followed was a blur—Zoom fatigue, masked grocery runs, socially distant hangouts that felt more awkward than intimate. We all got real good at pretending things were fine. They weren’t.

Wearing masks during allergy season, though? Still a win.

Somewhere in the middle of that collective stall, the world cracked open. The names—Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery—weren’t just headlines. They were fuel. And for once, nobody could look away. America got a long, unfiltered look at itself. Ugly, overdue, and loud.

While the country was coming to terms with its reflection, I was wrestling with my own. Creatively stagnant, undervalued, restless. I needed out. I pulled together a visual campaign in upstate New York with a crew of fearless artists who didn’t care about rules—just results. We shot. We argued. We made magic in the cold. And then it ended, and I knew it wasn’t enough.

So I flew to LA.

There’s something about that city. The way it lets you disappear and reinvent at the same time. I hit all the predictable beats—Hollywood sign hikes, rooftop drinks, reunions with college friends. It felt good. But it wasn’t what I was looking for.

Then came Joshua Tree.

Out there, with nothing but sand, rocks, and stillness, everything clicked. The chaos melted. There was no pressure to perform, no need to explain. Just space. Space to think, to breathe, to listen. That kind of quiet gets you out of you head.

When I came back to Jersey, I didn’t land—I launched. Music videos, location scouting, late-night edits that turned into something real. The grind picked back up, but this time, it had purpose.

t’s been a minute.

Life’s been hitting like a jazz solo—offbeat, chaotic, sometimes beautiful—but the search? Still very much alive.

Post-grad, I kicked things off with a long-overdue family trip. Thirty Jamaicans on a Carnival cruise ship. Chaos in paradise. It wasn’t Royal Caribbean—Carnival’s the off-brand cousin that plays too much soca too early in the morning—but we made it work. The route: Fort Lauderdale to Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Grand Turk. Solid lineup. Still, halfway through, I kept thinking, This would hit different with friends. Family cruising has a ceiling. Drinks were flowing, laughs were loud, but I was ready for land.

And land delivered.

Back in the States, I linked with a heritage brand looking to shoot a visual campaign for a winter capsule. The location? A boutique hotel in Manhattan. The vibe? Classic Americana. I knew exactly who to call—Vinny Seda, the kind of face that sells nostalgia in high def. We hit Lexington Ave just as the city turned gray and miserable. Right before I rolled, Vinny looked up and said, “You know it’s supposed to snow tonight, right?”

He wasn’t wrong.

Snow started falling like it was directed. Perfect timing. We caught it all—cold breath, wet shoulders, streetlights glowing like halos. One of my favorite film moments to date. The campaign wrapped. The client was thrilled. And I was already gone.

Next stop: Austin.

It was spring—festival season. SXSW in full swing. I landed, grabbed a Whataburger, and met up with the homies Henny Retro and Prince. Austin during SXSW is its own universe—afterparties in parking lots, secret shows that feel like prophecies. I was only in town for three days, but we packed it in. Somewhere in that chaos, I remembered a promise I made years ago.

Back when I first visited, a friend and I broke down on the side of the road. While we waited for roadside help, she led me to a nearby creek—untouched, surreal. I said I’d come back. So I did. This time, with a camera and a vision. We shot “Hate or Shine” for Retroi$awesome, and the spot looked like it belonged in National Geographic. Wild, beautiful, unexpected. We followed that up with a clean cut for Henny Blanco. Three days, two videos, zero sleep. Worth every frame.

Before heading back to Jersey, I made one more detour.

Toronto.

A friend had invited me up, and I hadn’t been to Canada in four years. I landed in Ontario, shook off the jetlag, and hit the city. Ripley’s Aquarium. The Rec Room. All tourist stuff, yeah, but done right—with someone who actually knew the streets. The highlight? Dinner at the CN Tower. That rotating restaurant is something else. You walk in and everything’s spinning—slow, surreal, like the room’s deciding who you are before you sit down. I kept looking at the floor to make sure I wasn’t losing my balance.

Back in Jersey, I wrapped up my North American loop with a final hit: Brooklyn Museum, for an album experience by Yasiin Bey (Mos Def). No phones. No distractions. Just the music, the art, and the people. One room. One listen. One time. The project, Negus, could only be heard in the space. A baby cried once and nobody flinched. In the center of the room was a massive mural of Nipsey Hussle, immortalized in paint and prayer. When the final track faded, it left a silence thick enough to feel. You walked out carrying the album in your memory, not your playlist. That’s art. That’s a moment.

5 out of 5 stars. No skips.

I saved Graduation for graduation.

Not the ceremony. The moment after. The part nobody sees. Just me, alone, breathing it all in. I hit play on Everything I Am, and suddenly it all made sense. The sleepless nights, the half-eaten meals, the last-minute edits, the imposter syndrome, the wins no one clapped for. All of it built to this.

I didn’t have a perfect plan. No job offer lined up. No neat little map pointing to “next.” But for once, that didn’t matter. I exhaled and said it out loud: “You did good, kid.”

Mason Gross wasn’t just school—it was an initiation. A pressure cooker. A proving ground. A beautiful mess of creatives figuring out who the hell they were. We learned fast, failed often, and showed up anyway. The classrooms were just the backdrop. The real education was in the people.

We filmed in courthouses and crashed campus parties. We shared rides, gear, and dreams that felt too big for the room. The late homie Adrian was always somewhere in the mix—another light gone too soon but never forgotten.

Then came the finale: The Hardyboyz of Cinema. Me, Paul, and Sunny. One last ride.

We pulled together a short film for Campus MovieFest—our fourth attempt. Script? Overcomplicated. Timeframe? Impossible. Vision? Bigger than our budget. But we did what we always did—shot wild, cut fast, and reached for something beyond the frame. It was Matrix meets Inception, filtered through caffeine and chaos. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

To the cast and crew that rode with me—thank you. To the friends who helped me light scenes with iPhones or sprinted across campus for one last take—thank you. To everyone who ever showed up, shared a link, or said, “Yo, this was dope”—thank you.

You were part of this season. Every frame. Every line. Every memory.

This isn’t the end. It’s just the curtain call on Act One. The next chapter is already loading. And if you’re still down to ride—stick around.