ADSS Presents: Genesis
A Serialized Memoir
Intro
ADSS Presents: Genesis is a literary memoir exploring identity, race, education, addiction, and creative awakening.
Over 15 weeks (December 2025 - March 2026), I released selected chapters from the manuscript as a public serialized work. Each installment was shared on Substack, with weekly posts on LinkedIn and Instagram introducing the chapters.
This series documents the experiences that shaped my creative identity, the founding of ADSS, and the early development of Experiential Language Architecture (ELA).
Series Overview
Project: ADSS Presents: Genesis
Format: 15-week serialized release of selected chapters from a complete memoir manuscript
Full manuscript: ~55,000 words (subject to revision)
Release: December 2025 - March 2026
Author: Armstead Dickerson
Core Themes
Identity and self-definition
Race and socialization
Education and institutional culture
Addiction and self-reflection
Creative awakening
The development of Experiential Language Architecture (ELA)
Genesis Series Index
Week 1
In the summer of 2024, I sat down at my computer to begin writing something. I wasn’t sure what it would be. It was the first time, maybe in my life, I felt the energy and urge to write some type of sustained narrative.
What I wrote became my memoir, which I’ve titled: ADSS Presents Genesis.
The story is told non-linearly. It covers my life as a student and teacher, as a Black kid and adult, navigating a world that wasn’t built for me. I tell stories about everything from family and school systems to mental health and addiction, and ultimately, how that journey led to creating ADSS.
It’s a story unlike any you’ve ever read. It combines storytelling, systemic analysis, poetry, and vulnerability into an experiential memoir.
Beginning this week, I’m ready to share pieces of my story with you. Over the next 15 weeks, I’ll share 15 select chapters from Genesis on my new Substack. The Substack will be a chance for me to share my writing, unfiltered and raw, away from corporate respectability and the platforms that reward performance over depth. Over time, the Substack will be a place where I explore other types of writing: poetry, essays, and reflections on ELA and beyond.
The first chapter begins with me in South Philly, thinking about the invisible boundaries that shape the community around me, and beginning to break through them.
Read the first chapter of ADSS Presents Genesis: Moving here:
Week 2
When I was 21, I was pulled over for a DUI.
I sat in the back of a cop car, in cuffs, and asked myself the question:
Am I scared?
While at the station, I would talk about Michael Vick and the Eagles with the arresting officer. By the time I took the breathalyzer, I was 0.001 under the legal limit. Sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than right.
Years later, I was stopped again for the same reason. Despite my glassy eyes, the officer let me go. I remember feeling my life was over. The guilt, the panic.
Being a Black male in America means my existence is inextricably linked to the justice system. My mother used to tell me, 1 in 3 Black men end up in prison. Don’t become a statistic.
If it wasn’t for the Eagles, I would have gotten that DUI conviction.
It’s moments like these that made me consider the coin flip decisions that can alter a life. And why discernment is better than luck.
For week 2 of my memoir release of ADSS Presents Genesis, I tell the story of how I ended up in cuffs, how Vick helped me stay out of larger trouble, and what I learned about myself.
Go Birds.
Read Chapter 8 of ADSS Presents Genesis, MVP (Most Valuable Payer) here:
Week 3
There was a terror that lived inside me for years.
I remember the night it exposed itself, I was high on edibles. After the episode, I realized that despite my attempts to numb reality, I would always have to confront the truth of myself.
Most folks would lay off the weed after an intense experience like that. Maybe for good.
I chose a night to get high again. To understand the fear. To finally face what I was running from.
Peace and I used to be estranged.
In a multitude of ways, throughout my twenties, I’d taught myself to disconnect to survive. Eluding the pain of living on my own in Chicago, without having a strong support system or what I felt like was direction in my life. Disconnection removed the hard edges of my reality.
These days, they got apps for that. But back then?
I had weed. And a couple of medications from my psychiatrist.
I became a chemist of concoctions for chaos.
Disconnection allows us to maintain a story about ourselves so we don’t have to change. But choosing to confront my fears that night shattered illusions about who I needed to be for my own happiness.
The release allowed me to begin the long road of coming home, to myself.
For week 3 of the serial release of my memoir, ADSS Presents Genesis, I take you into that drug-induced, life-altering lesson.
Read Chapter 6: A Marijuana Movie.
Week 4
Around the age of 24, I remember going out to a bar with some friends I hadn’t seen in a few years. We were at that Buffalo Billiards place in Old City. It was dimly lit, like it always is. I had a cold glass of beer in my hands. I had finished playing a game of darts when, during a conversation with a friend there, they said something that stuck with me for a while.
“You haven’t grown since we last saw each other.”
I was taken aback. I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I laughed it off. I was processing what she saw, or didn’t see from me. I knew she was kind of right, but I couldn’t name why.
Why hadn’t I grown? How does one grow?
Seven years later, during the pandemic, I was getting high every day after work. Partly to escape the chaos of the world. Partly to escape my own. In the madness of it all, I returned to those questions, and in a brief consultation call while looking for a therapist, I was told I was “self-medicating”.
It was like my habits had finally been translated into a language I understood. Without even knowing the exact definition of the term, I resonated with the pattern she described.
By August, I stopped smoking and drinking. I cried every day that month.
I was blindsided by my own predictability. The habits and fragile relationships I relied on were supporting a false self. I took inventory and decided that it was time to build my own foundation.
For Week 4 of my memoir release, ADSS Presents Genesis, read Chapter 5: A Sip of Sobriety.
Week 5
I played a lot of sports as a kid.
Basketball - I knew I sucked when I airballed two free throws. At two different games.
I’m from Bricksburg.
Football - During games, when the team would huddle up, I would be on the other end of the sideline. Always having conversation with one other teammate. One other, always. Those conversations would be good, until they were interrupted by the nonsense of the team.
I put the “i” in sport.
Golf - My dad made me do some golf lessons as a kid. My brother and I were entered into a local tournament after a while. We both finished in last place for our respective age groups. On my first swing, on the first hole, I swung and missed.
I held my follow-through.
Shotput - I’ve never been told my 7th grade record for distance has been broken, so I’m assuming, and living life as one would with such a title.
My childhood bedroom still holds many trophies. I played with the heart of a champion.
Lost a bunch though.
For week 5, read this interlude, and the first 4 chapters released of my memoir, ADSS Presents Genesis, here:
Week 6
I grew up with protective parents. In my younger years, I resented it. I was a fan of foolishness like any other teenager. It took me years to understand the fear they likely felt. Their son. A black body. Traversing the world without knowing all its unspoken rules.
Naivety is a quiet killer.
While I wasn’t aware of all that I was encountering as a child, there was an early signal: a nickname, Army.
At no older than 6, my mother called me for dinner one night, playfully calling out a list of words starting with ‘A’. Armadillo! Armageddon! Army! Army stuck out. The next day, that’s what I introduced myself as.
Unbeknownst to me, it became a signal of safety. And for a while, I never questioned it.
As I grew older and deeper in the school system, presenting safety subconsciously became a sorting mechanism for black students like me. Students who were viewed as “too black” were often dismissed, though respected within the community. Those who were “too white” gained favor but lost respect.
Those that landed in the middle?
Well, whose side are they on anyway?
Army became a symbol. A temporary shield from the deeply ingrained biases people held. Externally, I bounced between drastically different social groups to maintain identities; internally, the fluctuations kept me off-center. Unsure of who I was, versus who I pretended to be for others. Some kids called me an “oreo”.
Inside a structure designed to maintain power, those who have learned to question themselves are bound to break.
I broke.
I go by Armstead now.
Week 6 of ADSS Presents Genesis. Read how a younger version of me ended up in a headband, Jessie Armstead jersey, and Syracuse basketball shorts, in an attempt to fit in.
Chapter 15: Wuder:
Week 7
School and family were the first two systems I ever knew. And like within any system, I learned how to survive.
At home, my family was led by my father, the patriarch. For most of my life, I felt he could only express himself through anger.
I grew up on a healthy diet of eggshells.
At school, I learned a different type of survival. One where the stakes were life and death for a black boy. And my parents treated school as such.
If there’s one thing I picked up on early in my education, it was to never be viewed as dumb and black.
That’s a death sentence.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, good grades and achievement equated into something else I didn’t desire: conformity.
Why would I work hard to fit into a system that doesn’t allow my full humanity?
I’ve been foolish but never fooled.
Schools never measured my intelligence. They measured my worth. Numbers became mirrors for my self-esteem. Translating my life into bubbled answers never seemed to get me far.
Systems come with rules. The unspoken teachers.
Week 7 of the serialized release of my memoir, ADSS Presents Genesis. In Chapter 9, I reflect on family and school systems and theorize the ways schools impact a person’s self-image.
Chapter 9, Systems.edu:
Week 8
I’ve never had a mentor, but failure has always been my most reliable teacher.
I was first introduced to it in my sophomore year of high school. Algebra 2 Honors. At a school counselor’s suggestion, which turned into a mandate from my parents, I had moved from Geometry my freshman year to the honors track in an attempt to make myself more competitive for colleges.
I was the only black student in a class of juniors. By the second semester, and the introduction to the quadratic formula, I was out of my depth. The class moved on. I was stuck in time.
The classroom didn’t have any windows.
A decade later, I was training in an alternative teacher certification program in Boston. I had told myself that math would be easier to teach because it was more straightforward, though, deep down, I viewed math as my fatal flaw. An incomplete part of me that needed correcting.
Teaching felt like my chance to patch myself anew.
I needed a score of 250 to pass the Massachusetts middle school math teacher certification test. On my first attempt, I scored a 248.
People in the program pretended all was normal. But you notice the distance people take. The cautious engagement. I kept to myself more often.
I remembered what it felt like to feel stuck, and chose the only other option.
Trying again.
It’s week 8 of my memoir, ADSS Presents Genesis. I reflect on my two-year journey into the classroom, and the test that almost stopped my teaching career before it even began.
In Chapter 16, Below Standard:
Week 9
During my junior year of high school, I was approached by my school’s theater director to be the lead in the next play. I was in one of his theater classes, and he thought I performed well in a one-act our class put on at the end of the semester.
I declined. I didn’t like acting, though I was well-versed in it.
Just not on stage.
To keep myself safe at home, I learned to mute myself. I determined constant volatility wasn’t a wise long-term survival strategy, so resentful obedience it was.
In school, I had a bit more room to breathe, but the expectations still lingered.
When I was young, a bad report from my teachers meant punishment. I chose compliance.
That math was simple.
As I got older, a teacher’s good graces became more about access. In high school, their approval granted entry to certain classes; they wrote your recommendations for college.
Staying in honors required teacher approval each year. Each spring, I would strategize on when to ask them. It was always a relief when other students went first.
I love a group project.
Pleasing for safety discreetly morphed into pleasing for opportunity.
Power loves a performance.
It wouldn’t be until I was an adult that I learned about the concept of people-pleasing.
By then, I was already an expert.
For week 9 of ADSS Presents Genesis, I reflect on the ways I performed likability and what it cost me.
In Chapter 11, Pretty Please:
Week 10
For week 10 of the serialized release of my memoir, ADSS Presents Genesis, an interlude: The Glories of a Nail Salon.
You can find the interlude, and the previous nine chapters released on my Substack:
Week 11
By the time I reached the classroom, I knew little about the world, and even less about myself.
After a year as a tutor, and another at an alternative teacher certification program, I landed in Chicago as a first year teacher.
Eager to make a difference, while oblivious to what change would truly require.
The level of effectiveness of a teacher was measured by the amount of control they could impose upon their students. I was asked to learn from peers; observing classrooms where black and brown students waited for directions on when to move, how to sit, when to speak.
Authority was the first lesson they would learn.
A great teacher could control their bodies.
A failing one let them roam free.
I became complicit in this belief. Confusing maximum control with effective learning. Though my control had limits. I struggled to produce measurable learning gains in most years. Every standardized test reminded me of my own failures. The scores I couldn’t achieve. The intelligence I couldn’t prove.
I carried shame like my students carried their books.
Over time, I noticed that at many low-income schools in the city, when resources dwindled, the arts and extracurriculars were quickly dismissed. A strict focus on math and reading filled in the gaps. Since student test scores determined the survival of the schools, their learning had to be measurable.
This pattern forces intelligence into legible forms, ensuring conformity to an expected path, rather than authorship of their own.
Because if a child’s intelligence cannot be measured, it cannot be controlled.
I never became the teacher I thought I would.
It’s week 11 of my memoir, ADSS Presents Genesis. Read chapter 18, I Taught for America in a Windy City:
Week 12
I’ve always loved writing.
It’s been the one place no one could tell me to shut up.
And it was during the pandemic that I rediscovered why writing mattered to me.
I was in a state of breakdown and recovery. I had finally begun to face myself after deciding to pause on drinking and smoking. I desperately wanted to get out of education and teaching, but it was the only way I knew how to survive.
It was in September of 2020, entering what I suspected would be my last year teaching, I made a promise to myself: to write every day.
I had dabbled with it during my teaching years. A poem here. A creative piece there.
But this commitment was about making time for a passion that taught me long before I knew how to listen.
Growing up, my parents had a strict policy of no TV from 7pm to 9pm. I wasn’t studious, so I would mostly find different ways to pass the time. Sometime during high school, I got my hands on a small composition notebook. No larger than my palm.
I began to write.
My writing was naturally rhythmic. I wrote what I couldn’t express aloud. Anger towards my father. Care for my girlfriend. Sadness. Confusion about my place in the world.
Writing was the first way I learned to be myself.
That September, I promised myself I wouldn’t force creativity.
I was my only audience.
It was ugly at first. Pages upon pages of words. Journals filled with years of unexpressed thoughts.
And at some point, without plan, poems began to come out again.
Inside them was grief.
Father (2020):
Father. I cried out for you.
I gasped, and your hand suppressed my voice.
I cried out, begging, to find faith, the faith I lost,
In life. In the ability to love.
I existed. Underneath. Down an endless spiral staircase of fear I drifted.
To where, I could not see.
I landed. I stopped breathing. I embraced death.
At the end of all, what is loss?
I remembered, but I could not forgive. And I crumbled.
And by hand.
Brick.
By brick.
Alone.
I reconstructed.
I forgave.
And with tears streaming down my chin,
I looked to a brighter day;
To a cloud,
And saw...
It’s week 12 of ADSS Presents Genesis. Read Chapter 22: A Pandemic.
Week 13
After 8 years in Chicago, I left in the summer of 2021.
Chicago wasn’t the only thing I left behind.
Unsure of who I was, but finally ready to begin the process of finding out.
While teaching from home during the pandemic, my desk faced a window. Throughout the winter, I stared at gray skies.
The world felt colorless.
I decided that before I would embark on my journey of self-discovery, I would treat myself to a trip. To get away from the concrete, snow, and steel. A small gift to myself for my years of teaching.
Being on the receiving end of my own generosity was unfamiliar.
I booked a trip to Hawaii.
It felt like being dipped inside a kaleidoscope.
For the week, I let myself rest in it.
I lay underneath lush palm trees and waded in turquoise ocean water. I woke up to orange sunrises and dozed off to purple sunsets.
I ate poke bowls the color of rainbows as I sipped pineapple Hawaiian Sun.
Peace was my only companion.
On Independence Day, I took a surf lesson. It was hot and sunny. Families owned the beaches. Surfers controlled the waters.
Standing chest deep in the ocean, the instructor said,
“Face the direction you wish to move.”
With a push, I slowly got to my feet, steadily gathered my balance, and rode a wave, guiding the sandy board beneath my feet.
After years of numbing, I let myself feel again.
Week 13 of ADSS Presents Genesis.
Chapter 24, Islands:
Week 14
I used to laugh at people who followed the bible.
Too often I watched faith become a convenient story people told, only to be abandoned when life got challenging enough.
I sensed faith was flimsy.
After my Chicago journey, I moved back in with my parents. A form of contraction after close to a decade of chosen independence.
Who was I when I no longer had “teacher” next to my name?
What did I want out of life versus what had I been doing simply because it was expected of me?
I was building myself from the ground up. And in order to build, you must have faith.
I was introduced to it at a young age. The churches I grew up in were old. While I wasn’t sure if I believed in God or the church’s teachings, there were aspects that I understood at a visceral level.
Shiloh Baptist Church. Trenton, New Jersey. The church of my mother and grandmother.
I usually went to a quiet Methodist church with my father and brother to take advantage of the later starts, but on special occasions, I began my Sundays at Shiloh.
As a kid, I would sit in the pews in quiet amazement.
The choir roared.
The band thumped.
There was foot-stomping.
Hand-clapping.
People singing from their toes, with voices that could lift a room through the skies.
They knew faith.
I spent time attending a church after moving out from my parents’ and living on my own again in Philly. The congregation was my age, but it took me six months to realize that the church was its own system — I had felt the restrictions on my expression before.
I was looking for expansion.
While the stories I heard were soothing, I needed a space where I could express freely.
It didn’t exist yet.
I don’t know the bible, but I know faith.
It’s week 14 of the serialized release of my memoir, ADSS Presents Genesis.
Read Chapter 26: Religion Pt. 2
Week 15
No one told me when to start.
I started once I gave myself permission.
I was in my North Philly apartment.
It was an open space. Slanted ceiling. Large white walls. Bright yellow light.
Several small towers of books stacked on the floor, against the wall, in front of the couch.
I didn’t need too much. Regaining stability while in a new city was oddly satisfying in its simplicity.
My days were slow. I spent evenings on my own.
One summer night, I remember a phrase popped into my head.
I got up and scribbled it down in my planner without thinking much. My connection to my writing and thoughts was deeper — a seed planted during the pandemic.
“All Different Shapes + Sizes”
I usually put an ampersand for “and” when I write, but I decided to change this one to a plus sign. Arithmetic.
“A-D-S-S,” I said to myself.
At the time I was teaching myself how to use design software through a virtual course. I started making digital graphics using the letters of ADSS. I thought maybe I’d turn them into digital stickers.
A few days later, on a night where I was writing in my journal, I wrote a poem.
I call it “Declaration”.
You just have to take the risk.
To break the silence.
I take the risk,
Of being heard,
Loud & proud.
I take the risk,
Of honoring my journey,
Stumblings profound.
I take the risk,
Of forgiveness,
Betrayal knocks at my door
I take the risk
Of writing freely,
Silence me no more.
I paired the poem with a logo.
ADSS was born.
I wasn’t sure what I was creating that night. But looking back, I can see it was the one thing that I had spent so much time avoiding:
Myself.
Week 15. The final week of ADSS Presents Genesis, my serialized memoir release.
Chapter 29: A-D-S-S
Author’s Note
ADSS Presents: Genesis documents the formation of ideas and experiences that would later evolve into ADSS Creative Studio and the framework of Experiential Language Architecture (ELA).
Thank you to everyone who followed the 15-week release.
Next Steps:
Literary representation inquiries
Versescape installations
ADSS Creative Studio development
from love,
towards togetherness,
in forgiveness,
Armstead / ADSS
adss.studio | adssdesigns@gmail.com