Tag Archives: life

Summerset

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I saw a summerset upon a dream that was not met.

An object of possibilities, drenched in ideas I bleed.

I pondered upon a golden ticket, hoping some scheme would set.

But forged in fire I had let, a silver ticket is all I met.

It’s not a tragedy when my dear dreams meet misery.

It’s just how it was meant to be as sad songs from me seem to flee.

Back to the forge to dream, a new dream of possibility.

Or give up on being me and let the darkness in you see.

-OM

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Blogging

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In 2013 I had a lot of time on my hands.

https://aopinionatedman.com/harsh-reality/

I was in a graveyard shift and stuck at a computer for over twelve hours a day in the dead of the night. God wasn’t even up.

I created this blog out of boredom and never had any real plans for it. I just knew I wanted to write and I wanted to form a community. I come from a gaming background where text based forums were the lifeblood of communication. I’ve run forums in the past, mIRC channels when they were still popular, and I became good at making connections felt where the only connection we had was the keyboard at our fingertips.

They said you couldn’t make a popular blog without a theme, selling something, or teaching a skill everyone wanted. I found that to be a lie. You see people are drawn to the brightest lights and if you can create a bonfire people will come in droves to see what everyone is drinking and doing.

I spent twelve hours a day connecting with new bloggers, reading random posts about their lives, and commenting where I saw fit. I shared posts, created a forum for collaboration, and used every trick I knew to make it known there was someone else out there. Someone struggling, someone grinding, someone sharing, and someone writing. It’s what we do as bloggers.

If you met five hundred bloggers a day and did it for five years how many people could you meet? I was determined to find out and this blog is a product of that effort. At the height of this blogs popularity I was getting over five thousand views a day, more comments than I could answer, and a lot more speculation than I expected. You see humans are a cynical creature and we always think someone has an upper hand or a backdoor that is causing their success. Sometimes blood, sweat, and a lot of doubt is all the driving force you need to really succeed.

I call blogging a grind, but in the end it’s all about your personal goals in life. Me, I eventually made the goal of wanting to hit a million views.

What’s your goal for your blog?

-Opinionated Man

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Korean American

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I’ve never viewed myself as a Korean American, even though technically I am one. I was born in Busan and lived there only long enough to know I wasn’t wanted before I was shipped to Mississippi. As a nationalized citizen, I take a lot of pride in being a citizen of this nation. I almost feel like I remember, and maybe it’s from the photos I’ve seen, the day I stood before the judge and became an American and was given a coin. It was one of those memorable moments like when I was baptized.

I’m a pretty white guy and it’s not just the last name of Cushman that makes me feel that way. Growing up we’d order take out from the Oriental restaurant in Memphis, that was until they found squirrels in their freezer. I didn’t have many Asian friends and my school was mostly full of Viets, Cambodians, and Malaysians so I never really fit in with them. This became apparent when they’d go to their ESL class and I stayed in my English class with the rest of the white and black kids. Those are the moments I truly knew I wasn’t Asian.

There were brutal reminders I wasn’t white or black though. The constant jokes and taunts from the other kids. The fights… the many fights I got in as a child that I never started, but I was going to be damned if I was gonna let some kid talk shit to my face. I mean, I was a Cushman and we had a lot of pride in our name. But I was an adopted Cushman and boy did the kids remind me of that fact. I felt that outlier even from my own relatives and this underlying feeling that we were just… different. I’ve never even been invited to a cousin’s wedding and I don’t talk to any distant family members much since all my grandparents are dead. When I lost my college scholarships due to a board suspension my senior year of high school, I learned the hard fact that self defense is not a defense in the face of the greater majority. I was a true minority.

I’m almost 39 years old now and many things have changed in my life. I found my first Asian friends in college, I fell in love with my birth nation… then fell back out of love with it after the rejection of my birth mom. I thought I’d grown used to the incredulous comments when I say my name like “are you sure you are Jason Cushman?” I thought I’d finally grown to know my nation, even after the military.

And then this virus hit. The side glances are normal, I’ve always lived in either white or black neighborhoods where people wonder if I belong there. But fear brings a new factor and new layer to people’s perceptions and I find myself again feeling like I have to prove I belong where I’ve always been. It gets old and I’m getting older.

I’m tired of it.

-Opinionated Man

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