What's it like to be close friends with a genius? Answered by Kyle Phoenix

What's it like to be close friends with a genius?

Kyle Phoenix, Writer and student & Instructor at Columbia University

Updated just now

I've had two friends, one dead at 34, who are both startlingly smart in my estimation. He, Michael studied and completed his 2nd Masters in Environmental Science. She has no formal degrees bit has an equivalent of a PhD in telephony systems and networking and works for an international firm. They both read prodigiously and were of the few people besides teachers I felt mentally paced and challenged by.

They both thought , moved fast in conception. Both witty and willing to point out questions and deeply investigate ideas. Their contrariness was always to greater understanding and not condescension or derision. But they patiently masked their suffering of fools.

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Suicide and Sexuality, Part 1 by Kyle Phoenix

Recently brainstorming with my small team of friends and students on book topics we circled back to when I'd done several YouTube videos on depression.  There have been times in my life when I have been depressed, mostly out of frustration for some life situation I was in or at my family or at a failed relationship but never directly at my sexuality.  Insanely enough my sexuality is something I've never felt doubt about or allowed it to be trod upon.  Conversely there have been other areas of my life where I can't say I was always so bold.  

To some degree being very intelligent can be depressing because I'm also brown and this world projects a lot onto that physical state that I really had no say in.  That coupled with sexuality have often times put me out of sync with the greater numbers in my family, with classmates, with friends and even with lovers.  I had to learn how to manage my intelligence and not suppress it and I think I'm closing in within the next handful of years with having a grasp on "using it" properly.  By that I mean I've made some funky choices in friends and lovers and knowing that I was much smarter than the choices or even the friends./lovers has driven me to depression.  And inevitably depression suggests itself to varying modes of suicide.

In my teens there was the high school love affair break up that sent me spiraling in silence---because I wasn't out to anyone and the most melodramatic almost-suicide attempt with multiple credit cards, every sleep medication I could buy, a sojourn through Prospect park in Brooklyn and then as soon as I felt the effects of the pills---I ran to the hospital in Park Slope, delightfully next to my high school.  I wanted to die because I wanted Sean to love me and be a whole lot smarter and surer than he ever was capable of being as a teenager.  I wanted peace and rest from my own self, from my own thinking, from my life.  For about ten years after that my mantra was that "I don't want to die".

If I was job hunting and it got tough.

I don't want to die.

If I was in an argument.

I don't want to die.

If I was lonely.

I don't want to die.

If I had to pay a bill.

I don't want to die.

I lived a decade focused on not wanting to die as an overcompensation to at some point considering dying.  But that too, ala The Secret was calling in the impulse, the desire to die by considering death through not dying.  Every time I brought up to myself not wanting to die I was emotionally eroding myself, my inner strength so that when I stopped chanting it to myself I was left with the alternative of dying.  

Then I died.

To be fair, I was in the hospital and they gave me the wrong medication and the meds flipped my gourd out and I literally started to feel myself dying.  My body slowed down, my thoughts became sludge-like, my life didn't so much flash before my eyes as it went through an organized check list but I just kept getting sicker and sicker until one day I lay on the bed and accepted death....and closed my eyes.

Then much like my Lana Turner twist in Prospect park a decade earlier, I woke up.  It wasn't some sort of---"I want to live!" movie scream (good movie by the way) but it was more of----oh, I'm not done here yet.  Again. 

I try to take one day a week to just rest, to sleep, to get 12 to 17 hours of sleep---to rest this mind, this heart, this spirit.  I have found that I no longer have to be everything to everyone. I regularly give myself permission to curse people the fuck out and to walk away from any person, place or thing.  That was one of the big engines of my death revelry---I had a terminal case of the Disease to Please.  I caught this disease from exposure to sexual abuse, parents with multiple addictions and my own prodigious intelligence.  My knowing gave me so much insight early on that it flooded my brain with too much information and not enough emotional maturity to handle it.

Yet I was never conflicted about how I define my sexuality including men and women, and I guess transsexuals (there was that one time.....) but not animals nor children, as omnisexual.  I sit with a lot of men, some women too and they tell me of their angst at whichever way their sexuality wind blows---ohmigod, they lament it, they sail on the pain, they crucify themselves on their feelings, on their confusion.  People tell me lots of stuff because I am non-judgmental---that doesn't mean I don't have morals or some beliefs, it means that I'm extremely flexible in what I see in people, what I expect.  Rarely am I finger wagging as much as asking---"Was that your best thought?"   I simply can't imagine being so upset by it but I have considered killing myself over break ups that now I realize I was reallllllllly lowering myself to even try and attempt to love such a person.  That I was in truth, finding ways to abuse myself and here's what makes me a motherfucker---when I connect to the bottom line truth of what I'm doing---I shift immediately.  In order for the phoenix to rise, first it must burn.

I had a friend a few years ago who was self destructive and passive aggressive but I was loyal to this friend because one of the Disease to Please and two because we'd been through so much.  Then one day I found out, ahead of time, that the friend intended to betray me and ruin my work and home stuff with some financial madness.  Suddenly I got it about this person.  Not that I hadn't gotten it years before, not that people hadn't mentioned it, not that the writing wasn't on the wall but I got tired of softening the person's madness.  I got up and silently walked away.  Not a look back, not a dark word, just bounced.

Another time I was in looooooooove.  LUV---Love! and this dude was bouncing back and forth in his madness and I was I willingly participating with him.  We went to dinner and as I was letting him convince me that he was available if and maybe I did such and such  I looked at his teeth.  They were little rat teeth to my eyes.  I got up and walked away.  I yearned for this guy, I cried for him, I pleaded with the Universe to give me this---and suddenly he arrived back as a possibility and I said no.

I realized from the two instances that those were times that I died.  That with each of them I left some deformed piece of myself that was the key, the rope in our relationship.  I killed off some element of myself to free my belief that they were appropriate for me.

Are there days when I still don't' want to die or do want to die?  Yes and no.  Oddly once I popped back from the whole hospital stuff---the death urge was gone because I was alive.  I let go of that mantra because to my own knowledge at the time, closed my eyes in what was to be death.  Circle completed.  I wish I could tell you that as an only child, the healthiest member of my family, and I'm eating kale and every other green veggie to drop a few pounds and avoid diabetes and heart disease and cancer that have buzz sawed through my family, that I don't see death on the horizon directly and passively.  I see it in the horrendous things my family have done to their bodies, I see it in the amputations and the cancers and the high sugar levels and I know that I'm going to outlive them all.  On one hand---yay, I live! but on the other hand, I'll be alone probably within a decade or so---all of my original family will be gone.  Don't get me wrong---I don't like all of them and a few of them hopefully there will be some pain in their deaths---but I will have my other family, the family I've created but not those people.  

Another "me" will have died.  No one but me will hold childhood memories, secrets, knowledge of who's in various photographs.  And not being "known" but still existing I expect will be immensely freeing and terribly lonely too.  I discovered at my mother's birthday party a few weeks ago that a cousin remembered the walls of our apartment when I was what---3 or 4 years old and when he mentioned it---I had the blurry picture.  But only a couple of people remember that.

One of the roads my sexuality offers is a sort of spiritual/physical suicide of hope of self through fear and a rapacious predatory sexuality towards men---terming them meat or trade, debasing the homosexual with sexuality.  I teach a workshop where we work on dismantling fear of men, anger at men and once I prick the skin of that beast it all comes out.  I often stand a midst anguish and pain and I have to not identify with it but see it, comfort it, reshape it maybe even bring some closure to it.  Then I go home, both energized and drained and I contemplate my own selves, all the dead ones and if there are more within me, ready to die.  And how will I know when I lose a parent or a child or a lover, if the "me"that's dying isn't just a piece of useless char but one day, the real me, the totality of me?  

Thank you for reading and if you liked this check out the other blogs or one my books on Amazon.com
Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@gmail.com
Website: http://kylephoenix.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/
Amazon.com: simply type in Kyle Phoenix for over 25 paperback and digital books!
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter!
Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast

I Know Where You're Going To by Kyle Phoenix

For quite a few years I used to get up every morning, do my morning ministrations, dress in suits, shirts and ties and pack onto crowded NYC subways with thousands of others to go to some gleaming tower in Manhattan, sit at my cubicle and push a mental, financial, legal pebble uphill.  Don't get me wrong from my description of this special level of Dante's Inferno, I learned a lot.  I enjoyed being out and about in the world, trying new things for lunch and dinner and well, affecting a professional appearance in the big city.  Then something happened...a spiritual awakening, intensifying, enlightenment if you will and I shifted out of being a corporate cog about 12 years ago. I'm surprised---it's really been about 12 years that I got off of that path and I've embarked onto this one.

I look up old lovers.  Why?  Because Facebook, superior technical and investigative training from my corporate days, and several powerful computers in my home allow me to do so.  Sometimes I look up old crushes.  Once or twice a nemesis or two.  I was expecting....fame, fortune, perhaps even hoping for ruin.  No, what I was really looking for was the path that they were excited about when I knew them---whether that had manifested.  I was comparing not my life exactly to theirs but their lives to their former projections---if that makes any sense.

I seem to have slept with, befriended and nemesis-ed a fucked up lot.  They ain't done much.

Let me rewind to my year of this online Colombo game I've been playing.  I'd published articles and short stories for almost two decades since I was a teen but had held off from publishing a book.  A full book.  Fiction, I expected them all to be.  There are literally a dozen manuscripts in print and on my pc waiting---have been waiting off and on for years.  Some have been to publishers and editors back and forth with recommended tweaks.  But I just never got around to pulling the trigger.  It would be dishonest to say I was frightened or some dark childhood secret....meh.  I was busy trying other things out and learning about business.  And in this paragraph some of my neurosis about being prodigious, creative and having generated massive amounts of creative work are apparent between the lines.


I've always been smart, since I was a child.  Let me re-codify that---I've been testing at a 12th grade level since about the third or fourth grade.  I was able to actually sit out the 6th grade after my parent's divorce and a sojourn to North Carolina for 6 months, walk into the last few weeks of the 6th grade and test right into the 7th.  My mother didn't want me to skip grades, as many as I could've for fear of social alienation.  I'm still on the fence about whether I agree with that or not.  I can see all sides.  Also that's a pun on how my intelligence works---I can see all sides.  I see all possibilities.

Like a holographic probability machine if you say "Let's steal a car." my mind instantly absorbs, assesses, calculates, re-calculates, checks the wind speed, considers your ankle injury, looks at my present hunger, notices the two potential witnesses at the corner---and then I have maybe three or four outcomes to our action or inaction.  Sounds cool but really I've had to develop belief systems and a level of confidence in order to make choices---because I see ALL of the choices, at once.  Seeing so many choices can create crippling doubt.  At the same time I generally see the outcome of a situation, pretty much when I first meet you.  I have a mental notation of how long our relationship will last and how and why it will end---because I'm integrating all of the info between us in such a short period of time and calculating.  I've even said to friend or two one of the outcome possibilities, they generally don't hear or believe me....but it always comes to pass.  Foolish, hurt feelings, death, betrayal, all of it I see like little Post It note possibilities on a  blackboard and slowly as time goes on, the ones least likely to occur fall away leaving more and more of what will occur.  But from that, from you, I can also extrapolate your possibilities, where you're going, what will and won't become of you.

I know, spooky, right?

(Ironically, it's a talent--forecasting, arbitrage, strategic thinking and planning that made me useful in the corporate world.)

Back to my look ups of folk.  There were moments as their lover, as their friend, even as their nemesis when they said they wanted to be a writer or a dancer or a CEO or a business owner or a Rolling Stone magazine journalist when my "superpower" looked at them, into them and considered it---calculated the probabilities and saw it as possible or not possible.  I think because my work, manuscripts, a dozen spinning into publication now and a hundred more published, it's BIG....bigger than I have a concept of how to articulate but I see it's effects on others---I'm considering so many I've known.  Also a lot of my published writing now includes multiple timeframes in my life.  Some short stories are all the way back from 1992 to manuscripts created in 2013.  It's like I'm traveling through time, in my own lifetime (Quantum Leap!) as my work comes out.  Maybe the work itself is a solidification of that timeframe now.  Like a book as a time-brick to 1992, 1997, 2001, 2013...?


I know sometimes I speak or write in multiple frames of referencing reality to abstract to concrete.  It's how I think.  Indulge me, that's partially why I created this blog---to have a space besides private journals where I sort of shared without the usual social "clean up" I do to hide, clarify or make my intelligence, my thinking, palatable to others.

That's what it feels like for me being smart.  And further, the stuff I said I'd do, I've accomplished.  When they look me up on LinkedIn and Amazon and Facebook---it was an odd path but I've arrived at being an author, a filmmaker, an entrepreneur.  Most of them took my place in those little cubicles in Dante's Inferno---varying titles they all have, but cubicles they are.  But only one young lady, Jennifer Karmin became the writer, poetess, published, world traveler that she aspired to be.  It's funny because she was so committed but not overly ambitious, much like myself, I think in retrospect.  We did the work, focused, we're a bit obsessed and oddballs compared to all the "cool kids" and all the cool kids?---Dante's Inferno cubicles.

I keep hearing Diana Ross's "Do You Know Where You're Going To?  Do You Like The Things That life Is Showing You...........do you know? playing in my head as I write this.  But I'm pretty clear on mine.  I think maybe I'm looking at all those folks I've known, lovers, friends, even family and their disintegration into a sort of banal life.  I'm watching other people's dreams die.  Maybe that's the reverse scribble on the backs of the mental Post It Notes I had as the possibility for them.

Their dreams die.  They die unfulfilled.

Can one be sad for people in the past, now in the future?

Thank you for reading and if you liked this check out the other blogs or one my books on Amazon.com,

Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@gmail.com
Website: http://kylephoenix.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/
Amazon.com: simply type in Kyle Phoenix for over 25 paperback and digital books!
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter!
Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast

10 Choices You will Regret in 10 Years

This article was taken from via

“One decision can develop into a habit, and the habits you form create your reality. Here are 10 choices that carry significant weight. Learn to be conscious of the decisions you make so you can do your best to live like a champion:”

1. Wearing a mask to impress others.

If the face you always show the world is a mask, someday there will be nothing beneath it. Because when you spend too much time concentrating on everyone else’s perception of you, or who everyone else wants you to be, you eventually forget who you really are. So don’t fear the judgments of others; you know in your heart who you are and what’s true to you. You don’t have to be perfect to impress and inspire people. Let them be impressed and inspired by how you deal with your imperfections.

2. Letting someone else create your dreams for you.

The greatest challenge in life is discovering who you are; the second greatest is being happy with what you find. A big part of this is your decision to stay true to your own goals and dreams. Do you have people who disagree with you? Good. It means you’re standing your ground and walking your own path. Sometimes you’ll do things considered crazy by others, but when you catch yourself excitedly losing track of time, that’s when you’ll know you’re doing the right thing. Read The 4-Hour Workweek.

3. Keeping negative company.

Don’t let someone who has a bad attitude give it to you. Don’t let them get to you. They can’t pull the trigger if you don’t hand them the gun. When you remember that keeping the company of negative people is a choice, instead of an obligation, you free yourself to keep the company of compassion instead of anger, generosity instead of greed, and patience instead of anxiety.

4. Being selfish and egotistical.

A life filled with loving deeds and good character is the best tombstone. Those who you inspired and shared your love with will remember how you made them feel long after your time has expired. So carve your name on hearts, not stone. What you have done for yourself alone dies with you; what you have done for others and the world remains.

5. Avoiding change and growth.

If you want to know your past look into your present conditions. If you want to know your future look into your present actions. You must let go of the old to make way for the new; the old way is gone, never to come back. If you acknowledge this right now and take steps to address it, you will position yourself for lasting success. See the book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.

6. Giving up when the going gets tough.

There are no failures, just results. Even if things don’t unfold the way you had expected, don’t be disheartened or give up. Learn what you can and move on. The one who continues to advance one step at a time will win in the end. Because the battle is always won far away and long before the final victory. It’s a process that occurs with small steps, decisions, and actions that gradually build upon each other and eventually lead to that glorious moment of triumph.

7. Trying to micromanage every little thing.

Life should be touched, not strangled. Sometimes you’ve got to relax and let life happen without incessant worry and micromanagement. Learn to let go a little before you squeeze too tight. Take a deep breath. When the dust settles and you can once again see the forest for the trees, take the next step forward. You don’t have to know exactly where you’re going to be headed somewhere great. Everything in life is in perfect order whether you understand it yet or not. It just takes some time to connect all the dots.

8. Settling for less than you deserve.

Be strong enough to let go and wise enough to wait for what you deserve. Sometimes you have to get knocked down lower than you have ever been to stand up taller than you ever were before. Sometimes your eyes need to be washed by your tears so you can see the possibilities in front of you with a clearer vision again. Don’t settle.

9. Endlessly waiting until tomorrow.

The trouble is, you always think you have more time than you do. But one day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to work on the things you’ve always wanted to do. And at that point you either will have achieved the goals you set for yourself, or you will have a list of excuses for why you haven’t. Read Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture.

10. Being lazy and wishy-washy.

The world doesn’t owe you anything, you owe the world something. So stop daydreaming and start DOING. Develop a backbone, not a wishbone. Take full responsibility for your life – take control. You are important and you are needed. It’s too late to sit around and wait for somebody to do something someday. Someday is now; the somebody the world needs is YOU.

Thank you for reading,

Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@gmail.com
Website: http://kylephoenix.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/
Amazon.com: simply type in Kyle Phoenix for over 25 paperback and digital books!
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter!
Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast