Are you ok?

Old post I felt like publishing. I think this is from 4 -ish years ago, maybe longer than that...

So, I feel that I am getting better. Stabler . . . that I'm pretty sure is not a word, at least not the word for my purposes.

I am feeling better, stronger. That's what I mean. Perhaps it's the impending move along with the peace of mind that comes from knowing I'm getting the f*ck out of here. For good. Yes, I mean that. And maybe there will be more on that later.

Part of what makes me realize I'm getting better (or maybe that I wasn't as bad as I thought?) is that when I experience wacky behavior and/or reactions of other folks to innocuous interactions, I get confused and go through a list of whys and wherefores before I remember that

1) I actually don't care that much so none of it matters

and

2) Its not me it's them

It's been such a long road and being here has been awful. I don't yet see the good in it. I didn't get what I thought I wanted but didn't get stuck forever with all that I didn't.

I have a close friend. Perhaps my best friend, who is an astoundingly bad judge of character. She seems unable to judge people's true motivations in a majority of cases.

The reason I find this worth mentioning and fairly interesting, is that she is a mental health counselor. Time after time, she has made declarations about situations and people that in the end, turn out to be patently, well, jacked up, for lack of a better descriptive. Always the details and issues on which she focuses, which she assumes are important qualities of said situations or people, I immediately reject as implausible or naive. This has happened in work situations and in personal situations because after all she is my girl and often we give each other advice on various issues in our lives, be they personal or professional.

What I've always found perplexing is that she is always wrong about outcomes and motivations (and by the way, I am usually right). It seems that a counselor, an individual charged with helping others find their way would have a keen sense of these sorts of things.

Upon recent reflexion, however--I have lots of time on my hands lately, what can I say?--what I've determined is that as a counselor, her job is not to determine motivations but rather to help her patient figure them out for themselves. So, being somewhat unattuned to human behavior would be less of an issue.

It still doesn't make sense to me but maybe?

Yes. I have too much time on my hands...

You can go home again.

I miss this blog. I've been thinking about it for about a week. It's been so long...there's been so much. I don't even know how to catch up. But, this blog feels like home, honestly, this one and another I'd started, that I actually thought had been integrated with this. This is me. They are me. Someday I may even reactivate the other one, who knows.

I feel like I need this space. So I think that, I'm going to keep coming back here and the details of what has been will spill over time. I will get the re-acclimate to this space. I will invite some friends I've met along the way and think that I will grow to love over time. I think that's a good plan. It's a good plan to have no plan.

This blog feels like home. So, now I think that maybe you really can go home again.

See you soon.

God.  It's been an eternity since I've stopped through.  The struggles never end in these parts.

I have been writing, thinking, all the rest and it soothes my soul, but goddamnit, it's not enough to pay the bills.  The creatin', the formulatin' is not enough to make it all happen for real, for real. So...so...so I have decided to seek a full time job in order to make things so.

I'm OK with that.  Now I just have to make that ish happen.  I want something in writing or food, which most likely means entry-level, but that's cool.  I'm a hustla, sometimes a reluctant one, but a hustla nonetheless.

In other news, I am in the mix yet again.  Feels funny to have so much after K.  I thought there would be nothing, could be nothing, no one, after K.  But then there was Hurricane Ike and now this one.  I don't know what to say about it.  It feels like nothing but just when it's nothing, it starts to feel like something, not quite everything, but something.  Something that has the capacity to be everything if I would let it.  I don't know if I will let it.  

I'm poor.

Things are moving.  This is good.  I think, this time, that I am moving at the same speed.  I still feel that three-steps-forward-two-steps-back vibe lingering.  But I've got it under control.  

I have been in my house cleaning (kind of), lounging (lots of), and reflecting since. New Year's Day.  The phone hasn't rung...

That's not really different from before but I feel different.  I feel like, well, I don't know, but I feel a little like I did back in Paris when I never knew what was going to happen next.  It's just a little less extreme.  

I am working on my new blog now, wanting to start it off with a review of a couple of books. I am also realizing that I'm probably going to have to come up with my own design for the site that will be home to another project I'm working on, because things don't feel right with the current arrangement.  I don't want to end up in a similar situation to one that thrust the new project entirely on my shoulders in the first place.

I have three articles on tap with two completed holdovers from 2008 that should be published in the coming weeks.  I'm hoping to get at least one pitch out the door every other week or so and get creative about work.

It's good to be motivated and focused on the inside again now I just have to channel it to the keyboard of my trusty MacBook.  

The World Is Mine In 2009...

Yesterday a local disc jockey declared that each time he played a new song and urged each caller on the line to repeat it each time he happened to be on the phone.

I say amen to that bruva!  

2008 was a bitch.  It really never let up, at least not for me.  I learned a lot and noticed after all that I made a lot fewer mistakes than I have in the past although there was something of a doozy along the way.  But otherwise, I can hold my head up.  Once again no regrets...it's the third year running that I can say that.  Last year I lived to my own beat and wasn't ashamed or confused at the end of it all.  I moved on through.

There was the brush with (and adjustment to) poverty, readjusting to the majority and the work-a-day world (part-time at least), the Tempest Ikechukwu, and realizing my own power and ability to stand up for myself.  

I learned that the strength and power of art is mine if I care to harness it.  I was captivated unlike never before, by the possibility of Black Love and reminded how sweet it can be and how much it can sting, courtesy of a man with smooth dark skin the color of molasses and a voice so deep that, oooh, let me stop....  

Anyway, I have plans for 2009.  The world is mine, well, always, but in 2009, I'm going to get back to living like I mean it.