Why Sharing Your Journey Matters: A Call to Action

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Sharing your story holds the power to inspire and connect with others. This episode emphasizes the importance of documenting personal narratives in our digital age while challenging listeners to reflect and embrace their journeys.

• The value of personal narratives 
• Relating and connecting through shared experiences 
• Balancing social media usage to foster storytelling 

It’s time to take action! Next time you post on social media, ask yourself, "Have I told my story?" Share your journey and leave a record for those who come after you. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
What's good, everybody.
It's J Floyd.
It's another episode of OnEverything, and this one I'm
going to go right into it, man,because I've been feeling pretty
strongly about this.
We need to tell our stories,you need to tell your story.
And I was just man.
I woke up today and I haven'tfelt this strongly about

(00:24):
something in a long time.
Man, so many of us, man, we'reon social media.
I don't care whether you're onFacebook, the Gram X, formerly
known as Twitter, linkedin, Idon't care whether you're on
Reddit.
All of this stuff, man, we havethese, these, this stuff, man,

(00:46):
like, we have these.
These are tools, man, like.
Imagine I'm an 80s baby man, soI think back to like 1981 as a
kindergartner.
If you would have told me, ifyou would have described to me
the kind of reach you would havearound the world through social

(01:07):
media, it'd be unbelievable.
So my challenge to all of usright now, man, is how are you
using it to tell your story?
And I'm talking, I'm speakingright now to my folks, right?
I think my people know who theyare.
My people are people who canrelate to the struggle.

(01:29):
You tune into this podcastbecause you feel that pain deep
down underneath my encouragement.
You can tell what I've beenthrough, but you can also feel
that I'm persevering through it.
You can feel that I'm striving,and you probably get a little
bit of strength from that too.
So I'm talking to y'all rightnow.

(01:50):
We need to tell our stories.
Tell your story, man.
Tell your story.
Don't spend all your time onFacebook, and I keep seeing
people sharing theseridiculously long soliloquies
about what Trump did today, whatElon Musk did yesterday, and I

(02:16):
mean you know, I get it.
We all have strong feelings andopinions on that.
But listen, the thing I've beentalking about so much recently
and I know you might hear thisand be like Jay man, get off it.
This needs to be done.
Listen, what I'm talking aboutis balance, and I'm trying to
give you a reframed perspective.

(02:37):
So many times we get so caughtup oh man, I'm right.
I know I'm right, I gotta right.
I know I'm right.
I gotta let the world know I'mright.
You don't, though.
You know what you do have to do.
You got to tell your story.

(02:58):
There's a lot of people outthere like me.
If you listen to this podcasthistorically, throughout all of
the rebrandings and names it'shad, you might know my story.
I'm born in Cleveland, ohio,split up.

(03:22):
Immediately after I was born Ihad an older brother three and a
half years older than me.
We went to my mom.
We lived with my mom.
It was the 80s when couples gotdivorced.
The mother took the children.
There were no questions asked.
We became poor, destitute.
My mother was not thebreadwinner of our home and she
was not a great financialsteward.

(03:42):
We were destitute.
We were broke.
We were homeless.
Quite a few times we gotevicted.
More times than I can evenremember.
We moved so many times.
I missed so many days of school.
It's probably some kind ofrecord If you were able to track
all of the data you would haveto.

(04:03):
To get the data you'd have togo to so many different schools,
though I went to a lot ofdifferent schools and a lot of
different school systems.
But if you could track thatdata and you know I am a data
engineering manager, I could youknow I could do that.
If you were to track that, I'dprobably set some kind of record
for the most days missed.
Most days missed.

(04:24):
That's a lot of trauma.
My grandmother passed, my unclepassed and then the big one
when I was 16, my brother wasmurdered, then my mother passed,
then my dad passed.
That's all of them, y'all.
If you're counting, that's allof them.

(04:44):
I try my best to tell my storybecause guess what, throughout
all of that, that boy who wassix years old sleeping on his
cousin's floor living on 89th,and Buckeye in Cleveland living
on 79th and Superior inCleveland look where he made it

(05:08):
to Look how far he made it thatstory needs to be told.
There's a lot of people outthere with the same story, those
same types of stories.
Look at what we made it over,look at how far we made it.
I think about some of thepeople that I came up around.

(05:29):
It's so creative man.
I think, between all of thepeople that I came up around,
it's so creative man.
I think, between all of thepeople that I know.
We're probably talking about100 or 200 albums music, hip hop
, spoken word, r&b.
You're talking about moviestarting.
I've been in movies.
I've been in three moviesmyself, but I'm talking about so

(05:50):
many movies of people that Iknow that people have been in my
boy, blitz Bazzuale.
He directed the Color Purpleand Beyonce's Blackest King.
I mean, I could literally go tomy Facebook friend list right
now and scroll it and the amountof life stories in there.

(06:13):
It would be like scrollingthrough Netflix.
So many stories, what weovercome, where we are now.
So much hurt, so much pain, somuch divorce, so much trauma, so
much abuse.
We made it, y'all.
We made it, y'all, we made it.

(06:36):
I just something was on my hearttoday to tell me you know, back
, you talk about, like, oldercultures, right, like for me.
If you talk about, historically, what did our ancestors do?
Right, in Africa, they gavespoken word, word of mouth,
stories passed down fromgeneration to generation.

(06:58):
I just feel like right now,social media provides a good
opportunity.
I'm not saying that's all weshould do, right, you can
balance it out.
You can talk about some otherstuff.
You can trash Trump.
You can do what you want to doon there.
Right, you can balance it out.
You can talk about some otherstuff.
You can trash trump, you can dowhat you want to do on there.
But why not also use it to showas a record for your kids, your

(07:22):
nieces, your nephews, yourcousins, the next generation,
anybody looking up to you to seewhat you've been through?
We can leverage it in that way.
Go in there and tell them whoyou are.
Be transparent, post about it,post about it y'all.

(07:45):
That's my challenge for y'all.
Today, I'm going to put a callto action in this episode.
So for my, I don't care whetherit's 11 or 1100 or 11,000
people that listen to thisepisode.
My challenge for you is thisweek no, I'm not even going to
say week, you know, becausesometimes, in order to track
accountability, you have toshrink the window that you're

(08:06):
examining.
Let's just start today,whatever day, this is for you,
that you're listening to this.
Let's just start today,whatever day, this is for you
that you're listening to this.
The next time you grab yourphone, scroll or post, I want
you to ask yourself have I toldmy story?
Have I left a record?
If I die today, will my kidsunderstand who I am outside of

(08:32):
my political affiliations?
In this moment, ball is in yourcourt.
I love y'all.