The last time I redesigned my portfolio, I was in my mid-20s with long dreadlocks, and the only responsibility I had was raising my puppy, Sonic. As my life has come full circle, I sit back and reflect on how different things are this time around. My desk now is much bigger than it was, large enough to support my PC and monitors like before, but now holds a MacBook and an iPad, a keyboard that’s wireless, and a mouse with two scroll wheels and four extra buttons. I still think of how my hair used to fall down past my shoulders every time I feel the warm skin of my bald head. Though he still looks it, my puppy is no longer a puppy, but a mature dog stuck in the old ways from when it was just me and him against the world. My studio apartment in North Jersey expanded to a two-bedroom townhouse in Arizona, and my usual quiet environment now gets regularly interrupted by a wailing newborn that looks just like me.
Reflecting on my life, I’ve noticed how many things in my world have shifted to become almost unrecognizable from what they once were, but some underlying lessons, instincts, and values remain constant. I’ve gathered everything I’ve learned the past few years here as a reminder to myself just how strange and beautiful life can be.
Grief & Regret
Growing up, I was the second youngest of five siblings. When my parents met, my mom had a daughter and my dad a son, and together they had three more kids close in age, with me being the middle child from that set of three. My oldest siblings were already close to adulthood in my earliest memories, and growing up, they would return home to visit us and our parents. Balil was the quiet and aloof older brother who would visit regularly, and though we had little in common, he would always make an effort to connect with me. Our lives were innately different, but that never affected the love and bond we shared. Opportunities I was privileged to receive were opportunities he never had, and he took every chance he had to remind us that we were blessed to be in the positions we were in, that he loved us unconditionally, and that he would always be there to support us in life. He was not a rose that grew between the concrete. He was a tree whose roots buckled the sidewalk, and in an environment that did everything it could to hold him down, he grew stronger and taller than anyone thought possible. I loved my big brother.
One night I went to sleep whole and woke up to discover a piece of me was gone forever.
Three years ago, Balil was taken from us. One night I went to sleep whole and woke up to discover a piece of me was gone forever. But my own grief took a back seat once I realized how much his death destroyed our father. I always knew my father loved all his children with everything in him. That was the first time in my life I saw my father defeated. The life drained out of him. I’ve been taller than my father since 10th grade, but I still saw him as a mountain soaring over me. Balil’s death took everything out of my father. He suddenly aged decades right before my eyes, and as the mountain crumbled, it revealed a man in his mid-60s, and I was reminded of my own mortality and how delicate life truly is.
About a year and a half later, I opened Facebook to procrastinate from cleaning my apartment, and I was hit with news that brought me back to the night I got the call about Balil. My best friend’s father had passed. I called, hoping what I saw on my timeline was a misunderstanding. Initially I was relieved when Moises answered my call in his usual calm, monotone manner, but I asked him about Charlie, and he confirmed he had passed away. Though it was a surprise to the world when Charlie passed, Moises informed me Charlie had known his time was coming, and they were fortunate enough to prepare for that inevitability as a family. I was speechless. The person I was speaking to on the phone sounded like my best friend, but he and I both knew he was more than that. He’s the head of his family now, and Charlie’s wisdom and authority flowed through him as he accepted that responsibility.
Going to Charlie’s funeral was difficult. He and I weren’t close, but Moises and I had known each other our whole lives. My aunts, uncles, and cousins were present at his funeral. Because Charlie was best friends with my uncle, Moises and I believed we were first cousins most of our lives. I remember walking into a large convention hall at Rider University, Charlie’s alma mater, to see the seats filled with people whose lives were touched by Charlie’s long career in education, involvements in the community, or his jolly, personable demeanor. I was a little late to the ceremony, and I remember finding my seat among the crowd of strangers just in time to see one of Charlie’s childhood best friends take the stage in front of a huge projected slideshow of pictures from Charlie’s life. His childhood friend, choked up with emotion, went on to exclaim loudly that Charlie was a kind soul who was always smiling and laughing. He challenged us, the audience, to remember a time when Charlie wasn’t smiling. It was impossible, he had said, unaware that at that exact moment the slideshow transitioned from a photo of Charlie on a deep-sea fishing boat holding a massive catch to a photo of Charlie with his face twisted into a mock frown. The irony almost made me burst out laughing, because it was the exact type of humor that Charlie would have loved to see, and though I’m not a very spiritual person, I couldn’t help but wonder if Charlie’s spirit interfered in the ceremony as one final laugh to us all.
Both Balil and Charlie changed my life in ways I don’t think they ever fully knew. They were great people who continue to inspire and motivate me to this day, but most importantly, their passing taught me how important it is to give flowers to the ones you love at every opportunity. One of my regrets in life is not spending more time with my brother. I assumed he would always be there like he always had been, and it saddens me to know that my son will never get the chance to meet his uncle. After Balil passed, and later Charlie passed, I managed my grief the best way I knew how. I painted portraits of each of them, one to give to my dad and one to give to the Williams family. The portraits started as a gift of remembrance to the people who were affected the most by their passing. But painting takes a lot of time and effort, and during those sessions I had the beautiful opportunity to see Balil and Charlie in a new way. I stared at their faces, and they stared back at me. In every wrinkle, blemish, or scar were the experiences in their lives that gave them those attributes. In Balil’s portrait, I saw the very same features I painted in my own self-portraits in the past. I was forced to notice the physical traits shared in our DNA, to see not only my face in his but also our father’s. In Charlie’s portrait, I saw my best friend aged up. I saw the smile lines etched into his face, and thought about all of the photos from the ceremony outlining Charlie’s life, the moments and memories behind the face I was painting. In painting those portraits, I unknowingly created the time and space I needed to reflect on what they meant to me, and through all the tears I was able to sit back and not only admire my work, but admire the people who made me who I am.
Identity & Redirection
When I was a kid, my dad had one of those fade haircuts with short dreadlocks on top that was quite popular for black men in the 90s. Sometime in the early 2000s, I remember my siblings and I eating dinner in the kitchen when my dad got home from work a little later than usual. He walked into the kitchen with a bald head as if nothing about that was strange or different. We gawked at his clean-shaven scalp, and his only real response was that he had decided it was time to cut it off. Not until my late teens did I discover why the time had come for my father when it did. The evidence was right there above my forehead when I realized in my teen years that one day I, too, would go bald. Knowing that inevitability would come someday, I decided to grow my hair as long as it could grow and savor having a head of hair until it was time to say goodbye. I cut my hair for my high school graduation photos in 2013 and didn’t cut it again for almost a decade.
For nine years my hair became a staple of my identity. I loved my dreadlocks. In my early 20s, they gave me confidence and assurance at a time when I needed it most, navigating university and the professional world. Strangers would compliment my hair, and kids would stop and point and sometimes whisper to their mothers, “He has such pretty hair!” I loved my dreadlocks, and it felt like the world loved them too. The years came and went, and toward the end of that Golden Age I found myself looking in the mirror more than I ever had in my life, poking and prodding at my hair to try and cover the receding hairline. A few times I had broken down and asked loved ones if my balding was noticeable, and time after time I was assured by those closest to me that my receding hairline was a figment of my imagination, but I couldn’t see what they were seeing. After ordering hair growth vitamins, oils, and even Rogaine, I decided enough was enough. I got in my car with my dog and drove an hour south to my childhood home and asked my parents to help cut my dreadlocks. My mom took scissors and chopped them all off, and then my dad took the clippers he used to use on us when we were kids to shave what was left down to the scalp. Going upstairs from the basement where dad cut my hair, I remember holding back tears, fearing my dog might not recognize me without my hair. Oh, how I loved my dreadlocks. I opened the door to find my dog excited to see me, not the silhouette of a human with long hair, but me, the person who feeds him, bathes him, sleeps with him. In that moment I realized my hair never meant anything in his world. He loved me for me, not because of how I looked, and he gave me the courage to start this new life as a new man.
I was forced to let go of something I believed represented all of me, only to realize that it was the least important thing about me.
To lose something that feels so intrinsically tied to your identity is a tough transition to make as an individual, but in hindsight, changing one’s identity, one’s brand, was something I was uniquely prepared for. At university, the skills to operate design tools like Photoshop were almost secondary to instilling design and marketing fundamentals. Brand and identity aren’t skills you learn by doing so much as skills you refine through observation and analysis. As designers, we’re taught to have our own self-branding, a visual identity to represent us and our work. We were shown examples from companies like Apple to see how their branding has changed over the years and how those changes reflected intentional shifts in styles, trends, and vibes that all worked together to reinforce the same identity they’ve always had. Losing my hair felt like losing my identity for a while, but it showed me that my hair was no more than a minor aspect of my identity, a trend that came and went, that never defined me at my core. Over time I got more comfortable with the look and accepted that this is who I’ve always been and who I’ve always been meant to be.
I was forced to let go of something I believed represented all of me, only to realize that it was the least important thing about me. I felt I had to change the way I viewed myself and change the way the world perceived me, but in reality I only needed to accept who I am.
Growth & Acceptance
Around the time of my last portfolio rebrand, I suddenly sprouted a green thumb seemingly overnight. I did a bit of research and went out to purchase my first plant, a pothos. I wanted it to grow long, luscious vines across my apartment, and I was heartbroken to discover my overwatering had been slowly suffocating the poor plant for months. Helpless to revive the plant, I learned that I could propagate the remaining healthy leaves, and so I snipped and placed them in water as my life continued to move forward. At the end of my lease, I moved into a new apartment a few towns over, bringing my propagation tubes with me. By then the propagated leaves had sprouted healthy water roots, and it was time to try potting them. Days and weeks turned to months and years. My plant collection slowly grew as my propagated leaves became full-grown plants with leaves of their own for me to snip and propagate. I branched out and tried other types of plants, some successful, some not so much. What started as a hobby slowly became a part of my personality, and people close to me began gifting me plant after plant, one of which was a Peace Lily gifted to my family after Balil’s passing. Time moved on until one day my partner and I were boxing up the last of our Philadelphia apartment when we realized there wasn’t nearly enough space in the car for all our plants. That original pothos plant spawned multiple generations that simply couldn’t make the cross-country drive to our new home in Arizona. It was hard letting go of those plants. Years of care had created a sprawling family of greenery before my eyes, and I took care to make sure they went to family and friends who would give them a loving home.
My partner and I kept a few of our plants, and they all successfully handled the cross-country trip. Moving from a studio apartment to a townhouse meant I’d finally have the yard space needed to live out my outdoor gardening fantasy. I got to work buying power tools, saws, and lumber to build outdoor planters. I took a glass display shelf my partner had kept here in storage and refitted it to be a grow cabinet with ventilation fans and a smart humidifier to keep the moisture levels just right for our humidity-loving jungle plants. All the while, my fourth (or fifth) generation pothos stayed by our side.
I’m honestly not sure when it happened, only that it didn’t happen the way that I expected it to.
While helping me pot some propagations, my partner’s brother asked me how I knew so much about plants, and it finally clicked that my dream of earning a green thumb had come true over the years, and I didn’t even realize it. When had that change happened exactly? When I propagated that pothos all those years ago? When I resuscitated that Peace Lily after my parents had been adding water to it, not knowing its soil was wrapped in plastic and unable to drain a drop of water? When our Philly studio had trailing vines hanging on all four walls? When I built my first raised bed planter to grow my first vegetables and herbs from seeds rather than buying mature plants? I’m honestly not sure when it happened, only that it didn’t happen the way that I expected it to.
In my experience as a gardener, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that growth can happen in strange ways. A few months ago I built a three-tiered planter from leftover 2x4s and some fence pickets. The idea was to fill the planter with herbs for my partner to harvest as she needed for cooking. Peppermint, green onions, and basil flourished for a while until the Arizona summer came and brought the triple-digit temperatures that either killed or stunted the growth of all my vegetables and herbs. I took my first outdoor garden failure in stride and researched plants and vegetables that would better withstand the Arizona climate. So it was a shock when I went out to the patio to water my garden and I recognized a familiar leaf growing between the gravel below my raised garden beds. It looked like a healthy, thriving basil plant. How did it get there? Did I leave a pack of basil seeds outside that blew away in the wind? Is basil native to Arizona? Did a basil plant jump out of the planter and decide the gravel was a better home for it than my expensive outdoor potting soil? I’m still pondering the answer to those questions to this day, but what I know for sure is that there are multiple patches of basil growing between the gravel in my yard, collecting runoff water drained from the planters and absolutely thriving where they want to be rather than where I wanted them to be. The basil I tried so hard to nurture in the planter is still there, barely holding on as it struggles in this heat, yet the wild basil growing in the gravel is thriving. Not only that, but an entirely new species of plant somehow made its home where the green onions used to be. AI models suspected it to be a variation of wild corn native to Arizona, but how it got into a raised planter four feet off the ground remains a mystery.
Growth and change often occur in ways that seem unexplainable to us. Gardening and plants taught me the importance of adapting and continuing to grow in whatever situation life throws at you. Losing my hair forced life into perspective and reinforced my personal identity and self-image. Balil and Charlie taught me that beyond loss and grief lies introspection, serenity, and acceptance.
