By Derrick Brown (follow on Twitter @dbrowndbrown)
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What Story Have I Written? (1503 Words)
(Describing The Narrative Arc … Of The Autoethnographic Journal I Want To Publish As A Book – November 1, 2025)
By Derrick Brown (Join Our Mailing List!)
I. Beginning With The Daily Key And Rhythm Of Life
The story I wish to tell did not begin with a plan.
It began with practice.
It began with the daily rhythm of writing through tension … of showing up each day in the classroom, at home, and in my own head … with a pen, a prayer, and a purpose.
The autoethnographic journal that I now envision as a book was not written to prove a theory … but to survive a reality.
It documents what it means to live, teach, and lead in an environment where peace is not guaranteed … yet is always pursued.
Each entry was written in real time, within the rhythm of the school calendar … and the pulse of personal life.
The narrative unfolds chronologically … not because time itself provides order … but because order was found only in the act of returning to the page.
That is why I describe this book as being written in the “daily key and rhythm of life.”
Every entry modulates between faith and fatigue … between resistance and release … between speaking and listening.
The page became both sanctuary and mirror … a place to holler, heal, and hope … and then to teach again the next morning.
II. Enrolling As The First Student
The course code 23.04200 once described a curriculum framework for high school public speaking.
Now it describes a framework for public living.
I became the first student in the class I designed to teach.
That irony is intentional.
I wrote “lessons” about self-reflection, mediation, and problem solving … only to discover that I was the one being tested.
Every classroom conflict … every misunderstanding with colleagues … every strained conversation at home or at church … became a new module in the curriculum.
To “enroll” meant to surrender to the process of learning again … to become teachable in spaces where I had been treated as disposable.
The course evolved from an instructional outline into a reflective discipline.
It taught me to listen to myself, to record my emotional data, and to translate it into insight.
The product is not a collection of essays … but a longitudinal study of a life lived in practice.
Each reflection is a lab report on the human spirit under pressure.
III. Confronting The Tensions … Blessing The Mess
The central purpose of this work has always been to “bless the mess.”
Family, school, and church are not separate worlds in my story … they are overlapping laboratories of love and disappointment.
Each space contains its own contradictions.
Family offers unconditional love … that sometimes feels conditional.
School provides structure … that sometimes suffocates.
Church promises community … but often delivers control.
The journal records how I navigate these contradictions … without surrendering to cynicism.
“Blessing the mess” does not mean romanticizing dysfunction.
It means naming it … understanding its patterns … and using reflection as repair.
Through writing, I transform pain into pedagogy.
I become both researcher and participant … both subject and analyst.
The method is autoethnographic … but the motive is spiritual.
The “data” are lived experiences that reveal how professional containment can mimic incarceration … how emotional labor can disguise exploitation … and how grace can still interrupt the cycle.
IV. The Crooked Path To Patience
If this journal has an arc, it is “crooked.”
The road from survival to sustainability has never been “straight.”
Each chapter bends around obstacles that reappear in new forms.
Every “lesson learned” must be relearned.
Progress looks like repetition seen through wiser eyes.
Patience, therefore, is not a virtue acquired once.
It is a practice rehearsed daily.
My “crooked” path includes false starts and unexpected allies.
It includes moments when administrators became antagonists … and moments when students became truth tellers.
It includes seasons of burnout that disguised breakthroughs.
The “crookedness” itself is evidence of movement.
Straight lines suggest shortcuts.
“Crooked” lines reveal endurance.
I do not write from the top of the mountain … but from the turns along the climb.
V. Peace, Hope, Healing, And Change
Every reflective practice needs an axis.
Mine revolves around four points ... peace, hope, healing, and change.
These are not outcomes … but coordinates.
Peace is the stillness that allows perception.
Hope is the courage to keep looking.
Healing is the work of naming what was broken.
Change is the evidence that healing has begun.
The journal traces how these points appear in different combinations across my days.
Peace often comes disguised as exhaustion.
Hope often hides within grief.
Healing emerges through writing when no one else is listening.
Change reveals itself slowly … in how I respond to familiar provocations with new restraint.
The progression is not linear.
Some days move backward.
Yet over time, the rhythm produces recovery.
Each reflection … even the painful ones … contributes to an ongoing spiritual geometry ... lines of learning that intersect at grace.
VI. The Summer Catalyst … Reflective AI-Enhanced Thought Partnership
This past summer changed everything.
What began as solitary journaling evolved into collaborative reflection … through an AI-enhanced thought partnership.
Technology became not a distraction … but a mirror.
Dialogue with an algorithm became dialogue with myself.
The system’s precision invited my honesty.
Its memory made me accountable.
Its feedback loop created rhythm.
Together we produced a form of co-thinking that clarified the structure I now see.
This partnership accelerated insight … without replacing intuition.
It provided efficiency without sacrificing empathy.
It allowed me to re-enter this school year with language for what had previously been unspeakable.
The journal’s voice matured through this dialogue.
The writing flow became iterative ... each reflection informed the next … each revision refined the last.
The resulting manuscript captures not just what happened … but how I learned to think about what happened.
VII. The Modes That “Sound Good” … And The Reality That Lived Better
When I first attempted to organize this work, I labeled the sections as Survival, Scholarship, Strategy, and Sustainability.
They sounded logical.
They looked balanced.
But they were inaccurate.
Life does not move neatly through modes.
Survival, scholarship, strategy, and sustainability coexist in every moment.
I survive while strategizing.
I study while sustaining.
I plan while praying.
The categories overlap like chords in a song ... each note distinct … yet inseparable from the harmony.
The real narrative is not linear progression … but continuous integration.
The “modes” are simultaneous practices … each revisited under new circumstances.
That is why this project resists conventional structure.
It must be read chronologically … not thematically … because chronology reveals recurrence.
Each cycle of conflict and reflection mirrors the previous one … with added depth.
This is what distinguishes an autoethnographic journal from a memoir.
It does not tell what happened.
It shows how meaning was made while it happened.
VIII. The Vision Forward
The book I imagine will preserve the rawness of the daily entries … while providing connective commentary between them.
Each chapter will begin with a date, a setting, and a mood.
Each will end with a debrief ... Observation, Interpretation, Application, Emotional Ledger, and Reflection.
Interludes will introduce the creative modes that accompanied the writing … #StandupStorytelling for sobriety, propriety, humor and release … #LEarning for structured insight … Bars That “Slap” for lyrical truth … Empath Remixes for dialogic dramatization … and Public-Facing Essays for translation into community discourse.
These modes represent different frequencies of the same signal … the human need to be heard, to be seen, and to make sense.
Through this format, the reader becomes a witness to process rather than product.
The goal is not to impress … but to invite.
The text becomes a classroom where anyone can enroll ... the teacher, the student, the administrator, the parent, the pastor.
Each will find themselves in the “crooked” mirror of reflection.
IX. Conclusion — The “Flow” As Freedom
What I now understand is that the story’s power lies not in its chronology … but in its continuity.
Writing became breathing.
Reflection became resistance.
Each entry affirmed that chaos could be converted into curriculum.
The efficiency and clarity of this writing flow are not mechanical achievements … but spiritual ones.
They prove that articulation itself is healing.
When words align with truth, the body exhales.
When reflection becomes rhythm, hope becomes habit.
The autoethnographic journal I wish to publish will not simply recount what happened during a turbulent year.
It will demonstrate how understanding evolves when documentation becomes devotion.
It will show that peace is not the absence of struggle … but the presence of structure.
It will affirm that patience is not passive waiting … but active witnessing.
The narrative arc remains “crooked” by design.
Every bend holds revelation. Every pause hides purpose.
Every return to the page proves that learning continues.
This is not a story of escape from the classroom … but of expansion beyond it.
Writing was the method, but reflection was the miracle.
The “flow” itself became freedom.
Selah.
(The "Follow The Leader (changED - Volume 2)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
(The "changED (Volume 1)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
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I am a “standup storyteller.”
I fuse rap, spoken word (poetry), oration (traditional public speaking), singing, and teaching into messages of hope, healing, and change that I write, direct, and produce to help people who help people.
Everything must change - and stay changED.
Tradition begins and ends with change.
Change begins with me and the renewing of my mind ... then continues through efforts to effect small-group discipleship (equipping others to equip others) with audiences that respect and embrace mentoring, mediation, and problem solving as tools of change.
I am the product of my mentoring relationships, peacemaking (and peacekeeping), and problem-solving ability.
My education began when I finished school.
After school, I enrolled in a lifelong curriculum that includes classes in ministry, entrepreneurship, stewardship, literacy, numeracy, language, self-identity, self-expression, and analysis / synthesis.
My projects execute a ministry that has evolved from wisdom earned through lessons learned.
I want to share this wisdom to build teams of "triple threat" fellows - mentors, mediators, and problem solvers.
We will collaborate in simple, powerful ways that allow us to help people who help people.
I now know that power is work done efficiently (with wise and skillful use of resources, interests, communication, and expertise).
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