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     As much as it pains me to pull the needle back once again into the groove of this old broken record I’ve placed on the turntable, I must admit, the record is skipping again. We are nearing the end of Mental Health Awareness Week. I knew there was such a thing, but I had no clue when I started this blog, that I was literally doing so in the middle of a week that is set aside to bring awareness to the very thing that I am advocating, shame on me.      The refrain is once again admitting that a more accurate title for my blog would have probably been ‘The Ignorance of Bradley Blake’ As someone who has a family history of mental illness, and who has struggled with their own mental well-being for many years now, I should have known. I suppose that I can forgive myself for not knowing before this month, but at the very least, I should have been aware of such a key piece of information before diving into a blog that is largely fueled by advocacy for mental health struggles.      I must r
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Finding the Beauty in Your Sky

     The tone of this entry is likely to be a little different, but ultimately, we will see where the words on the page take me. Writing for me, it’s a journey. Not to sound too poetic here, but I guess you could say that each line is like a road, and sometimes those roads are smooth, but other times I’m wondering where all the tax money went to fix the potholes, so I guess we’ll see how many I hit between now and the end of this post.             Have you ever caught yourself starring off in the distance? Maybe even looking up into the sky? Picture your sky in whatever fashion comes easily to you. It could be pitch black or scattered with stars; maybe the only light you see is the faint shade of yellow coming from a nearby streetlight. Perhaps your sky is troubled by a brewing storm, cloudy, gray, out of focus with a thick layer of fog. I don’t know what sky you’re picturing right now, but in the moment this imagery came to mind for me, I pictured a clear blue sky, the kind you see
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Call Me Rocky Balboa

       If there’s one thing you’ll learn about me through this blog, it’s that my mind is constantly going in one-hundred different directions. As such, if you visit this blog with the expectation of some sort of continuity, you’re in the wrong place, hoss. I would call myself a bit of an enigma (Googles to make sure that word means what he thinks it means…okay, we’re good…) I feel like that is a fitting term to describe me at this stage in my life. Quite frankly, I’m hard to understand even for myself on most days. Focus is a real struggle for me, especially in the last year, and a blog with this sort of subject matter is not something I can take lightly, or just half-ass my way through it, the topic(s) and the people that they represent (Myself included) are far too valuable, and already deal with a severe lack of representation no matter which side of the discussion you land on, for me to just be another voice lost in the noise.             First, there are those of us who deal
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A Day Late and a Dollar Short

     October 6 th is World Cerebral Palsy Day. I was completely unaware of this, as I’m sure many around the world are as well. Cerebral Palsy, as it is with so many disabilities and disorders in our world, is not a common topic of conversation, so for most, the ignorance to the topic, and the significance of October 6 th each year, can be excused, but what is a person with Cerebral Palsy to say in defense of their own ignorance?      My name is Bradley Blake Hargett, I am 37 years old, and was diagnosed with CP at an early age, if memory serves me correct, the diagnosis happened around my 1 st birthday. As my mother tells it, she initially became concerned when she had difficulty straightening out my legs while attempting to dress me. Unfortunately, this is largely where my knowledge of my own backstory becomes hazy. Sure, I know some details surrounding my birth and the cause of my condition, but even those details are foggy at best.      Based on what I can remember, from what
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Location: Booneville, MS 38829, USA
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