Wherever I go - like, I go to elementary schools, I go to middle schools - wherever it is, if it's in Florida, if it's up in New England, I just feel like wherever I am, the kids always go crazy whenever they see me.
We were always told we were one step behind Deep Purple, one step behind Led Zeppelin, one step behind everybody. Our manager didn't want to let us know how popular we were. It's only after we did Ozzfest that people started telling me stuff. I thought they were taking the piss. People would come up to me and go, "Respect."
We have a bunch of American citizens who step up because that's what we do. We'll step up and go across the world to help people out. When it comes to our own backyard, it's always a different conversation.
One of my passions is photography. I always carry a camera in my bag whenever I travel. I always take pictures wherever I go, and some of them end up being really crazy ones.
The photographers are always around. Wherever I go, they start clicking incessantly. I am always like, 'At least give me a heads-up, as, many times, I look so disheveled. What will people think?'
Like, my whole life I've been right here in this zip code, 90059. Regardless of wherever I go I always end up in the same spot.
I was an only child for 16 years. I didn't realize it at the time, but that experience definitely turned me into a people pleaser. I always tried to do what was expected of me, and I constantly sought reassurance from the adults around me that I was doing a good job.
My security comes from my senses, my sensing the direction I should go and suddenly I felt out of tune, out of step with what other people wanted or what other people expected of me.
My entire life, people have told me that I couldn't do certain things. They told me I couldn't go to college. They told me I couldn't go to Yale, Georgetown, couldn't end up doing much on Capitol Hill. Couldn't be party chair. And my response has always been, 'Watch me.'
They tried to put me at tight end once, but I would end up just blocking people when they were actually trying to throw the ball to me. I was probably in middle school. It just didn't stick. Except on running plays.
People have always tried to imitate, but at the end of the day, no one can do me better than I can do me, you know?
I've always been a step ahead. A lot of people haven't experienced the things I've experienced, and made me a stronger person. The life I've been exposed to has let me know what step to take and how not to go back a step. I take life one day at a time, and I prepare myself for each one of those days.
So this was it. You take a wrong step and you end up wearing yesterday's underwear, sitting on the carpet trying to teach yourself how to knit. And even that doesn't work. She never expected it to be so hard. Life.
I travel so much and am always living out of a suitcase, so my favorite saying is 'Wherever you go, there you are'. I love it because it's reassuring to me that you have to live in the moment wherever you happen to be.
i expected demands. he gifted me with tenderness. i expected ego. he let me experiment. i expected disrespect. he called me beautiful. i expected him to expect perfection. he taught me all i needed to know.
But something magical happened to me when I went to Reardan. Overnight I became a good player. I suppose it had something to do with confidence. I mean, I'd always been the lowest Indian on the reservation totem pole - I wasn't expected to be good so I wasn't. But in Reardan, my coach and the other players wanted me to be good. They needed me to be good. They expected me to be good. And so I became good. I wanted to live up to the expectations. I guess that's what it comes down to. The power of expectations. And as they expected more of me, I expected more of myself, and it just grew and grew.