01 May Handshake

It’s 1:00am and my stupid brain is nagging me about unfulfilled promises with myself. The picture attached is the day I told myself I would make my first blog post, and here I am the better part of a week later keeping myself up at night because I said I would follow through on this thing. (exhale)

I’m going to keep this short, I’m writing this to document my thoughts/experiences/ideas in a place where I don’t give a fuck about perfection/what anybody thinks about anything. Leave the likes, comments and critiques all you want, I will not read them.

I’ve been grinding… Its been an all out sprint ever since high school, knowing that big dreams tend not to simply manifest and magically fall into people’s laps. With all of my willpower combined, I still barely managed to convince myself to pause the sprint and reflect…. But here we are. My high school self just came up for his first breath of fresh air in years. Look around. Everything you said you wanted to accomplish you have and then some. I’m pretty sure 14 year old Branson would have said something like, I just want to find a way to make art and get paid for it. Atta boy Branold… we fuckin made it.

SO. Here’s where we are at:

Tomorrow is my 26th birthday. Exactly 1 year ago I proposed to Chyna (there will be many future blogs dedicated to her amazing-ness). She’s been my best friend for 6 years. For the past 6 months we have been living in Los Angeles and Colorado, bouncing back and forth every month. The Cali spot is a little 1 bedroom apartment that we are renting. The Colorado house, I am very proud to say, I bought all on my own. I’m 12 months booked out for tattoos in Colorado, and when I’m in town I am tattooing non-stop. I can crank out a months worth of appointments in about 10 days, so I can get back to California ASAP. Although I tattoo in LA as well, that’s not why I’m out there… my band (formerly Shatterproof) is now called NOT A TOY. We signed with my high school dream record label, Fearless Records and now the whole game has changed. We have a manager named David, along with an entire team of booking agents, branding experts, PR companies, graphic designers, marketing managers etc, etc, etc. We are making the big announcement along with dropping some music in one week.

This is about to sound as braggadocios as a NWA song, but I guess that’s the point of this – to put it all on the table.

Over the past 10 years, I got engaged, I bought a house, learned to play guitar, piano and bass, (and vocals I guess), taught myself to produce(the recording side of music), learned to tattoo, opened up a private studio, I paint, graphics design and print my own tee shirts. I did competitive hip hop/breakdance, I can do a kick flip (I’m endlessly obsessed with skate culture), and I even pitched my first tv show to Netflix this year.

I’ve got this feeling in my gut that some amazing shit is about to happen (even if Netflix turns me down). I need to create, and grow, and apparently I need to do it all the time. I can’t help but feeling that if I continue to attack life like this, that I’ll eventually get anything I want. If someone says they want to be a popstar it’s pretty easy to focus on the grim odds. But i like to switch the narrative and say, I have from now until I’m dead (which is hopefully at least another 50 years). If I dedicate every day to that dream there is no way I can’t accomplish it.

This blog is where I’ll reflect on how we got here, write about what I’m working on, and share my frustrations, ideas and dreams. But the main reason I am doing this is because I FUCKING WANT TO.

*mic drop. No, *throws mic across the room