Improvement isn’t optional, it’s tradition. For Black people, excellence has never been a luxury. It has always been a necessity. We’ve had to go further, work harder, and refine more deeply just to be considered for a fraction of the opportunities. It taught us how to evolve, how to adapt, how to keep becoming. Children of the Urf is built on the understanding that “always getting better” isn’t pressure, it’s inheritance. And “know what’s good for you” is both advice and reminder: to trust your instincts, honor your craft, and move with intention. These aren’t just slogans; they’re ways of living, ways of working, ways of seeing ourselves clearly.

Joy is not always loud. Sometimes it arrives like sunlight, quiet, ordinary, and somehow enough to soften the sharp edges of a hard day. I used to think joy was something you found after you earned it, after the checklist, after the milestone, after the next accomplishment. Over time, I have learned something simpler and far more freeing, joy is something we can practice, and we can build spaces that help it find us. When life has felt heaviest for me, I have returned to what is still available. Not the grand plan, not the perfect timing, just what is true in the moment. There was a season when I stopped asking, “What am I missing?” and started asking, “What do I have?” And my answer was the same every morning, I had the sun. The sun made me smile every single day. It reminded me that even in the darkest moments, light returns. That is not poetry to me, it is a pathway back to myself.

It was the brightest time of my life. The temperature was always 72 degrees, the sun was always out, the sunglasses were always on, the commute to the ocean was one and a half songs. Everything around was yellow and blue, white and green, modern and not very sophisticated. As you might have guessed, I lived in California. Back in 2016 I lived in San Diego, hated it with all my existence: freshly arrived immigrant with lost self-identification and deep creative crisis, that's what I was at the moment Aunt Caroline entered my misery and without asking permission claimed herself as my Californian fairytale godmother. Maybe because she liked me at once, maybe because she was lonely too, or maybe because I had a Persian name.

Now that I’m well into my thirties, I’ve realized there are two versions of me. There’s Fall Me, the one who walks through Prospect Park listening to The Cranberries, writes haikus about the strangers and beautiful leaves he encounters, and feels deeply grateful to be alive. Luckily I can usually stretch this version of myself through the holidays by swapping The Cranberries out for Wrapped in Red, and my lumberjack flannels for my Christmas Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing sweater and a steady rotation of holiday brooches. But then there’s Deep-Winter Me, the one who is irritated by the sound of people simply existing indoors, feels personally attacked by a delayed train, and is one sad song away from calling it a day at 4:48 p.m. Enter: Seasonal Affective Disorder.