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The ABC’s of being a POS: Intro
(Edited 08/09/2024)
Note: This upcoming series is for entertainment and educational purposes only. If you wish to learn more about mental health, abusive behaviors, and support, please talk to your primary physician’s office, or a licensed professional.
For emergencies, please call 911, or call 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Life is full of a healthy balance of people that deserve hugs or suplexes.
Sometimes both.
There’s a long list of examples of these people in both the past and present, public or private figures, and all types of relationships.
No matter what, the world has its shares of people that deserve attention as much as the others need to be starved from it.
This is dedicated to the second half.
By now you’ve assumed that the POS in the title does NOT mean “point of sale.” It means the other thing.
The one that made you think of a person or people who could understand physical actions more than a sentence about their behavior.
And even though one word or phrase will sometimes be used for each letter, they are not limited to them.
Consider each one a gateway into others that, like the ones chosen here, are tied to each other, and will be mentioned and even repeated within most of them.
So, if you or someone you know is a POS, and you’re looking for how to increase your villain potential, you’ve come to the wrong place.
After all, what better way to talk about the tricks and tips in ways that match your actions towards your targets/marks?
No matter what, remember this quote as this journey begins:
“If it hurts you, it’s about you.”
-Kingston Priest
P.S. – It is understood that there are those with undiagnosed or misdiagnosed mental conditions which will have similar behaviors mentioned here. This is in no way meant to offend them, or their related parties. This project is dedicated to those who choose to behave certain ways that deserve to be spoken about.
First: Animosity
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The Good Friend: A Word About Empathy
Originally written (9/11/2025)
I’d like to talk about a friend of mine named Empathy (they/them).
Empathy is immortal.
They have been in the hearts and minds of people throughout history. Without them being around, certain freedoms would not exist.
The freedom to choose, to marry who you want, the freedom to learn and educate ourselves and others about the horrors of our nation’s past.
Due to the changes within social and federal climates, Empathy has been working double shifts for the last few years. They work in every industry you can think of, while working the stresses of being unemployed and/or unhoused.
Within all of that, they’ve also been the target of people who refuse to acknowledge Empathy’s existence.
Not just in general, but in themselves. Claims of them being weak or a new age concept are felt and rightfully criticized by those who feel the opposite for our friend.
So when something bad happens to those that discredit Empathy’s importance, we, the friends of them, have options.
We can talk about or show receipts of them dismissing Empathy’s right to live, the same way their enemies have done about us.
We can declare how their enemies meant so little to us that we’re indifferent about the inevitable, even karmic events that those people face.
Some of us will take any of those announcements to the extreme. And that’s okay.
Because we live in a world that was built to make people believe they’ve won in life by cutting Empathy off. While the rest of us feel differently, and are proof that Empathy will always have a plate at every function they show up at.
So be nice to our friend. Your friend, even.
They will survive after us, but we can take comfort knowing that our declaration of their existence will be alongside them.
– Kingston Priest
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Changing Lanes: Knowing Where You Belong and Staying There
Anyone who wants to keep you in the left lane because they see your fastlane potential knows they’ll be left behind once you switch it up.
The longer you act on the beliefs that you deserve a better life because of your healing, the harder those who do not share your beliefs will come for you.
They will do and say anything to keep you close and in control. They’ll demand you “stay in your lane,” not only when you make them uncomfortable, but stop you from conspiring with your future self who has long since left them in the dust.
That’s your reoccurring cue that you are doing the right things, and better people and places will replace them.
Deep inside, they know that. Even if and when some will move on and act like your absence doesn’t affect them, some will remind you in their ways that it does.
That’s their fault and their fight for funbling you. They will hate you because you did the right thing for YOU, not for them.
So as you break the speed limit in your overall growth, remind yourself to slow down only when you need to, and not in hopes that they catch up to apologize and celebrate your wins.
You never needed them to gas you up. Besides, the chances of backhanded statements in them will be like water in gasoline, and we know how that treats actual vehicles.
Don’t let them do that to you.
Race on.
Kingston Priest
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The Apprentice: How a Narcissist Can Teach Their Own
Narcissists by themselves can be a volatile and unpredictable group. With or without suppoeters to aid their habits, they know enough about their targets to pick at the smallest details of their lives to add up to maximum control over them.
There are many statements from experts about how these people are not born but created. How they were either taught or taught themselves to be emotionally parasitic, chaotic, and especially immature.
And the longer they live that life by tormenting themselves while hurling any insecurities on innocent people, there is enough media to gas them up into thinking that the narcissistic path is the way to be in life.
Even with consequences sometimes falling on the deserved few, there will always be those that live long enough to make it seem like life is better this way. Moreso if one can do it under the public or private radar.
Every form of entertainment and politics has those select few that are constantly in view parading and endorsing cruelty. Even if the loyal citizens applauding their actions never meet these public figures, they will go as far as worshiping them as if they were “gods” among “men.”
You still have to watch out for the sneaky ones, though. The ones that may openly be disgusted at the person’s left hand while taking notes on how the right one stays dirty.
Of course, that info would add onto notes that they have that are based on the people they used to or still have control of in some way. And they often tell on themselves whenever anyone, mostly their targets, explain why they’re disgusted about that false idol.
These are the kind of people that can walk into any place and declare even in the smallest way that they are on the right side of history. Anything to deflect the possibility that they are no better if not worse than the public figure that does not have a popular vote in any regard.
It can almost be seen as the student betraying the master. One that didn’t know the student even existed.
But those who know who that student really is behind closed doors are often patient enough to see both the weird idol and their followers go out in an inglorious blaze.
Neither of them will be missed, forgiven, or be in a place of control ever again. But if they are to be thanked for anything, it’s to teach us how to make sure the future leaves them behind while we move forward.
Kingston Priest
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Hello
How would you describe yourself to someone?
“An adult that learned how to comfort the sadness of the inner child, and soothe the rage felt in-between us.”
This was inspired by an event I was at a few years ago, where the host asked the audience to write a pitch trailer about ourselves. It took a bit, but not only did I get it, but later that day I was able to share it with him, and he gave me a huge hug from it. I think of it every time the statement comes to mind, even if the words change up here and there.
I’m sure I can think of stuff that’s more fun to speak on, but this is where my head is at for the moment 🙂
Plus with the new phone that runs a lot better, this is an easy way to get back to posting more frequently, again. Because trust me there is a lot to say!
Kingston Priest
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Back to School: A Deeper Understanding of My Craft
As many people would say, “life be lifing.”
There is a long list of reasons for the unplanned hiatus. One of them being that I started taking a new class about rhetoric and persuasive writing.Now, any long or short-time followers may wonder what I’m doing in a class for that, years after I started this page and improved my talents through it?
One reason is that I was already taking classes related to subjects talked about on here before. Recent events involving universities had me explore, or reexplore ones I couldn’t afford many years ago.
The class has given me a deeper look into the styles of speech and article writing that has me looking at what I’ve written before, realizing that I had been using some of them before knowing their labels.
It reminds me a lot of what’s been implied and confirmed in other fields of work; that it’s one thing to know what you’re doing, but it’s another to define it on a textbook level so you can project confidence in your work.
Another reason I took the class was to strengthen my resume.
The older I get, the more I want to show that I’m more than just the person with a long-running day job that’s not simply asking for an actual career. Wanting better requires being better, and I have chosen to show it again with continued education.
I’m not without awareness that my experiences may not fast track me into a better position, but I would be a fool to not try. Chances are I could get into something new before I finish this class. Time, combined with effort on my end, will tell.
All of this just to let you know that I am still alive, writing, creating, and reminding myself that I do have time to check in on here. Not just with you, but with myself. Because there is much more to write about on personal and global topics. Parts of it are drafted or noted in a shorthanded way.
I’ll be sure to give this page the full versions once they are ready.
– Kingston Priest
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Future Shock: Writing to My Past Self, Again.
When I saw this, I couldn’t help but think of the first entries I made that started this page back in 2022.
It was me addressing myself 10 years prior to that point. A nine-part series that became years worth of sharing, revealing, and advising, with a few warnings woven into all of it.
Though I did not answer this specific post because I knew I’d be taking advantage of the caption inviting more than two words, I’m sure I could shorthand it as if I had only a couple of seconds.
So here it goes:
“39 is a long way to go for you, but that’s when your real education begins. It’ll validate what you always knew in your spirit, and guide you to a future that compliments the art that you used to not only understand and escape reality, but stay in it. I’m proof that you did.”
The first couple of words were only a piece of what I drafted before deciding to make it a post. Maybe I’ll go back to the page and copy that whole thing, after all.
But I like it here, too.
Kingston Priest
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Am I Black Enough For Ya’ (Long Rant)
Before I start, this was an entry I started back in December 2024, and when I found it again, I had to finish it with what I was first ready to make into a fresh entry.
This is also going to be heavily themed towards the black community. Especially the blerds (“black nerd”), to which if a previous entry wasn’t a clue, I am one.
It takes a lot for many of us to stop believing in the voices that tell us to keep your head low, and not be so different from others in our community.
Memories of being told that I “speak so well,” being called an Oreo or “the whitest black person” someone has ever known, or even being told by someone that they couldn’t tell that I never saw jail time, come to mind about that.
So much of it can be blamed on someone’s upbringing to think that it is the way we should be seen and talked to. Not just by others, but to ourselves even after the people planting mental seeds like that are gone.
And it’s even worse when it comes from older black folk that may have or had an equally unhealed community to lean on. This includes their family experiences that could have them do the same discarding behavior to the younger generation without any care.
Because of this, the goal post about “being Black” keeps being altered depending on who you sit with, and who wants to sit with you, whether you choose to defy the social order, or do your best to hide who you are to fit with people that may not even like themselves, and they keep you around to be an insecurity dump.
If you don’t do things like play spades, can’t recite a cipher, don’t care much if at all about sports, or you have reservations about even saying the “N-word,” you’re cut off from a division of the collective.
You’re not “Black enough” to matter to them.
This isn’t the time for divisions based on the ones mentioned.
Because no matter where we go, someone’s bound to see our lives as a stain to their own existence, and choose to “cleanse” the stain, if they can’t control how it presents itself.
And this is a case where, while I have reasons to know this activity isn’t entirely exclusive to Black people, it’s a way to state that we’ve been in pain, no matter how we mask it, and it deserves to be shared in every way we can.
It is also a chance to say that even the similarities of pain with other races can be the bridge to relate and react in the name of unity for ourselves, and run offense and defense to our opponents.
That includes our own who’d rather tap dance for massa’, thinking they have a chance to come up next to them that doesn’t involve rope and a tree.
I can speak to that because I’ve been there. On the clock, in art collaborations, hangout sessions where I’ve been the spot in a cup of milk.
That experience is rich with patterns that had to be broken in myself before saying anything about it publicly.
For every few it repels, it’s attracted those in and outside of my race who have also given fingers to the person behind the curtain, the monster behind the mask, and especially the ones in the “high castle.”
There are many solutions to this that I can speak on, but right now it’s about releasing frustrations, and this isn’t even all of them.
It is enough, though, to let anyone that even read this far know that anything I say about things on a universal or exclusive case like this post is, will be based on lived experience while absorbing other perspectives.
I can’t say that I started sharing my thoughts as long as I have just to cement myself into echo chambers. But how I am received in what I share has also given me education and proof that the world can be better with my review of it.
And if not the physical world, then the one inside of me has benefited greatly from it, most of all.
Kingston Priest
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Connection: Taking Time to Rediscover Yourself
There’s something special about discovering how much better you are away from those that may not take in your presence with care.
But it also matters that you’re not so reliant on their presence that you aim to get revenge in some childish manner. The kind that can be the opposite to any claim of healing from past behaviors.
When you’re used to frequent communication with people and it slows down or stops for known and unknown reasons, the choice of addressing it, or re-addressing it, can be circumstantial.
It can also be a time to say to yourself “what else can I do with that time?” “How can I distract myself from needing even the smallest validation of existence from them?”
This may be a chance to reconnect with passions that help you get through the day or weeks. Some developmental, artistic way to self-regulate and remind yourself that the world, or even better, someone else’s world does not revolve around you, and the other way around.
I’ve spoken on this before, so I’m considering this being a reminder to others and myself that it’s inevitable that lives take that shift for a time, if not for good.
Yes, sometimes those shifts can be because of bad actions, but the other ones can be signs of needing to grow and heal (again) until it is time to reconnect.
What happens from that reconnection will set the course for any current or future relationship you’re in.
Kingston Priest
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The Analyst: Discovering Patterns in Society
Edited 4/22/2025
Pattern recognition can be a blessing and a curse.
You see things in a sequence that are good, bad, and in-between, and when you try to present your findings to a small or large audience, you either get applause or the finger.
Both fingers, if they’re passionate enough.
It means something to break free of people that would fit the second group; a response that I sometimes received from my own discovery that I will share in the future.
These are people that will discredit your views in favor or their own, especially if your views expose them in some negative way, regardless of if you named or titled them.
I know better. We all know better. If anything, those kinds of responses are part of a pattern, too.
It’s the kind where even people that are close to you are better seen as case studies, but not in a malicious way.
Not in a way how some will tag demeaning labels onto people that aren’t up to speed with the rest of society’s fragile standards and egos.
Thankfully, you’re not alone in this.
People around the world recognize when the numbers, the behaviors, and other details don’t add up. It’s almost like noticing a continuity error in scripted media, only this can become cause for real world celebration and/or condemnation.
Then you have those who are woken up to patterns that their environments, and more deeply, their privileges, cloud or even shield them from.
You might even get surprised by, in presenting your findings, others may agree and add something to it that you never noticed, and compliments your own.
Those patterns mean something to all of us. We’re part of them in every choice and action we make, and every belief we hold dear.
They can help us see the world beyond what we’re told to commit to. What we do with discovering them will determine if they are meant to harm or heal yourself or others.
Much of this reminds me of closing often stated by content creator Raw Cognizance, that I will close with, as well:
“Stay hopeful, trust your your gut, and always know…you’re not crazy.”
Kingston Priest
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Crisis Zone: Managing the Emotional Rollercoasters
There’s been a lot to write about in the last couple of months.
Time needed to be taken to sit down again to do it with a sound mind and spirit, because as I’ve always done, topics still range from personal to international, often comparing multiple worlds to each other.
Admittedly, I’ve become more comfortable being on video with my views on specific matters.
Doesn’t mean I don’t write what I can even in small quotes, but thanks to my series, it made sense to show my face more often. My way of saying that it’s more than a performance piece.
In-between the points of expressing views in a straight or humorous way, therapy and counseling sessions, and sharing thoughts with trusted people, there’s the mental rest stops I must remind myself of.
It’s important to stay informed without the risk of being inflamed.
For all of us, anxiety and all its other emotional threats have a history of causing mental and physical problems. The world’s state is enough to have them sit and fester in any of us.
Even with the best self-regulation tactics, they can slip in without warning based on how deep the matter is for you.
It does not mean to stop your ways of facing those emotional gusts before they become storms.
Without question, I’ve had plenty of emotional storms to face in financial, social, and racial levels, but I love that I’ve continued to make the time to calm them with old and new artwork, media edits, and making myself and others laugh.
That last one matters the most, mostly because of two quotes that have made the rounds more than before. “Joy is contagious,” and “joy is resistance.”
Making the time to write like this, again, I will claim both.
– Kingston Priest
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The Brighter the Picture 