And I’m back!

Ya know, sometimes you blink and almost 10 years have passed lol. But I’m back with an update!

While I’m not sure who checks my blog posts, I do want to give you a rundown of what’s been going on since 2017 lol:

2016-2017 – I made it onto my first slam team, Verb Benders. We competed for the first time at Southern Fried Poetry Slam in Louisville, KY and did terrible lol. We got 22nd place out of 32 teams. But it was a great learning experience and it lit a fire!

2018 – I made the Verb Benders Slam Team again! We went to San Antonio for Southern Fried Poetry Slam and improved our ranking! We worked super hard that season an got 7th out of 32 teams! Later that year, our slammaster (fancy word for slam coach) had to leave, so I ended up taking over. This was also the year that the other team I had been apart of since 2010 (Last Tuesdays), retired. We gave a beautiful last show at Jam Cafe and it was a great way to end an era of combining spoken word and music in the 757.

2019 – If you thought I was gonna slow down with slam poetry you would be wrong lol. This would be the year that we almost made finals at Southern Fried Poetry Slam, but due to me losing my voice, we got 6th place. (This haunts me to this DAY!) I am proud to report that I got 2nd at the slammaster’s slam that year. I’m still not proud of compromising my instrument (voice), but it’s okay. It happened, I learned my lesson, and I have been careful ever since.

2020 – This year started off STRONG! I had workshops in the works that was gonna focus on my graphic design/web design career. I had features at Ocean Lakes High School, and other places, but when March 2020 hit? The world shut down, and coronavirus made all events/slams/open mics/workshops virtual. Even though this was a horrible time for the world, I’m glad this sat my ass down. I still got to do a whole lot! I wrote a lot, I cried a lot, I learned a lot too. Southern Fried Poetry Slam did a virtual event of just the side events, and I got 2nd in the slammaster’s slam again! It still felt like a 1st place to me lol. Another thing that happened that year was, I got to assist with the rebuild of southernfriedpoetryslam.com!

2021 – Southern Fried Poetry Slam decided to have a virtual tournament. We tied for 8th out of 24 teams that year. This is also when we started saying we were ranked 8th in the world because that year’s tournament had a team from Ghana, Abu Dhabi, and Canada! 

2022 – The world opened back up. This would be the year that I was let go from InMotion Hosting after 11 years with the company, but I was able to do so much with my career! We ended up as the sacrificial team for final stage at Southern Fried Poetry Slam that year. I also got voted by my fellow slammasters to be on the board of directors for that tournament! This was also a year that I was considering leaving Verb Benders… more on that later.

2023 – I was able to start a new job, I had new money, and new motivations. But also, this would finally be the year we made it to finals at Southern Fried Poetry Slam. We ended up 3rd in the nation and it was one of the best feelings ever. An experience I will never forget.

2024 – Not gonna lie, this was a rocky year. I decided to take a coaching spot instead of a competing spot on the team. We fought as hard as we could, but ended up dropping to 10th at Southern Fried Poetry Slam that year. 

2025 – I decided this would be my last year of Verb Benders. It was a lot running the slam, and coaching the team for 6 out of the 8 years I was apart of it. I’m so happy to say that we ended up 8th at Southern Fried Poetry Slam, and it was easily one of the best and successful seasons we had in a while. I’m so grateful for this team and previous year’s teams. It’s also worth mentioning that earlier that year, I won the Best Spoken Word Video category for Poetry Society of Virginia. 

So that brings us to 2026, but something I didn’t mention for 2025 was that, the first thing I got to do after stepping down from Verb Benders, was record a poem with the now, GRAMMY Award-Winning Recording Artist, Mad Skillz. That deserves it’s own post, so I’ll post about that next lol.

If you read this far, thank you! I’m gonna do my best to keep up with the content, but we shall see! I said that in 2017 and look at what happened lol.