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.