What pandemic isolation is making me wonder about myself and how I want to change.
As I remain in isolation thanks to this pandemic and my local covidiots, I find myself reflecting, wondering about who and what I am.
I wonder how much of what I do and how I act are affectations. How much of what I do is just me acting in a way that I am expected to? Who is it I really want to be?
I like to think I am genuine, that I am always nothing but me, but the more I’m forced to self reflect the more I think certain things are just affectations, that the me I’ve built is just trying to fulfill expectations and validate an identity that I am not.
Namely, the pompous front I put on of being some kind of intellectual. I don’t think I’m the smug academic I keep trying to be.
I’m a pot smoking, tobacco loving, coffee and alcohol fueled simpleton, who just happens to be a Marxist and a big fan of meditation. I like the real me tbh.
I like to think of myself as intelligent, but I’m not the public intellectual this world needs. I am just a guy with a loud voice, so I’ll use it as much as I can. And I am still all for academia and education, I also firmly believe that this world needs more public intellectuals and less pundits. I just think that I need to stop trying to write like the next Karl Marx and more like the 1st James J Jackson.
So, who is the 1st James J Jackson?
Well if you want to get technical, it’s my father, my full name is actually James J Jackson, Jr. But that’s besides the point…
I have opinions, and I’ll bellow them into the bowels of the internet like a good leftist whenever I can find the words, especially on my weekly Patreon posts, but remember damnit, I’m a poet, not a pundit.
You want political expertise and discourse? Then you should peruse twitter for Cornel West and Bernie’s old staffers, but if you want swooning dispositions about the modern working class and poems about the side of society we all like to ignore, come to me.
______________
James J Jackson 