time of ownership

 I consider myself an historian.

Understand the past, you can guide the future.

But America and Americans forget.

Collectively our greatest strength is also our great weakness. We are individualistic and opportunistic.

But in an ecosystem built on cohabitation and balance, the juxtaposition of our American beliefs don't mesh. 

If the self always comes first, and you are meant to take that first opportunity, when and where do you have the time and space to attend to the choices before you?

I am uncertain of our future but I know that those who study history will at least been prepared for what's next.

There is no historian  better than a black woman. She knows in her Bones the history of humanity. 

And we've done all but smack y'all upside your head.

We are very clear on what you need to do. 

Vote for your safety. 

Vote for your parents health. 

Vote for the rights and equity of women 

Vote to have a legal system for the people not the corporations. 

Vote because your ancestors warned you,  

Vote because your grandparents bled for you to suffer the microagressions rather than die by the mob. 

Vote because we are. not . done. seeking justice. 

 

covid-19 and the coming depression

It's something I didn't believe was going to happen to my generation, but it has. My grandparents were children during the depression, and both sets were used to the hardship of lean times.

I'm not.

This is strange and terrifyingly real.

And I am not sure that you and I are going to be the same when it's done.

I don't have the luxury of beliefs, or a deep sense of entitlement. This is going to be hard, and painful. And it's going to ask more if us in an individual level than I think I or most of us are really prepared for.

facing the inevitable

mortality is something that most of us ignore. wholeheartedly. if we didn't the sheer size and weight of it would crush us. so instead we daily go about our lives recognizing that yes we are mortal, but that ultimately it's not as pressing as "that" email or "this" phone call.

we have to.

until we don't.

I got some news. something concerning someone for whom i have complex relations with. I will admit that my first feeling was unexpected. I was frustrated. Not sad or angry, just frustrated at being asked to participate in something that I really do not want any part of. I very passively made a choice several years ago, for my own sanity, to ignore that part of my life.

I thought I would just be able to ignore it for the rest of my life. But I can't. It is still very much around, and now there is the possiblity that it could linger or be extinguished very quickly.

I'm not sure if I have lingering feelings or even if I understand what I should do. Only that I now have to face what I knew I would have to, but never wanted to.

party aint a party...

I can say without a doubt the world I inhabit now is less bright, less cheery and less of a place I long to be a part of.

Kevin Cotter was a friend, a mentor, a storyteller, a jester and so much more. I hate myself for never acknowledging that to his face, but I know him well enough to understand that he in fact already knew that. I never needed to tell him because his intuition was stronger than most.

I was blessed to spend more time with him as a youngster than as an adult. I honestly I cherish that more for no other reason than the fact that Kevin always had a youthful soul and spirit. As an awkward teen I identified with him more than I believe I ever could as a dour and tired adult. Thankfully that painful discussion of death and finality never happened, and I believe in my soul that it wasn't ever supposed to. He was too joyous of a man to ever let that conversation take place.

Truthfully I knew him casually, but I adored him like family. Kevin Cotter is a special kind of wonderful that only a few people get to know.

You left too early.  I adored you, and always hoped one day to be worthy of your praise as a writer. You had an unusual gift of storytelling and I am eternally jealous and grateful that you always cheered me on. If I am even a quarter of the writer you were, I would be honored. 

You knew even when I was young, that you had my heart in your hands. And you were so careful and so delicate. You never once, not ever, led me to believe that you didn't love me too. As a young, lonely, and awkward pre-teen, too long of leg and clumsy to feel comfortable, you made me feel like a princess more times than I can count. You made me feel radiant and brilliant and special. Every time.

You knew, without my ever needing to tell you, what means to have your first crush acknowledge you. To love you back in the best way possible.  I am forever grateful for never actually needing to tell you this. I don't know if you understand how much I cherished that time together. Then and now, it was always a treat. I am forever your happy lapdog, or nuzzling kitten, or other wonderfully playful but innocent metaphor of unrequited love. You will always be my first superman. My Hero.

I can never tell you how horrible it is to know that the essence of who you are was stolen from you in your last years. That your wit, your candor, your ease of conversation wasn't yours due to that damned tumor lodged so deep in your head. But I know that you were always there. 

Kevin, I hope you know, I never felt you were ill. You were just waiting for the next better thing to come along. Your intuition won out. Now you know more than the rest of us.

I was lucky.

He was luckier.

He got to leave before it got boring. He always did have an ineffable sense of timing.

the schizhophrenia of black women

I spend a lot of time worrying about how I am perceived by others. I also spend a good deal more of my time hating the fact that I can't be myself.  The frustrating thing about never knowing or never feeling like you are fully yourself is the fact that you are forever left uncertainty.

So you ask yourself questions, pose scenarios, try to understand others all in an attempt to 'fit-in' or at least to understand how you are perceived. Its exhausting work because ultimately you rarely get the chance to decipher what it means to simply be. The freedom have an emotion, a look, a movement and not dissect it is a luxury that I believe I have never had.

It was made clear to me, very early on, that I was not my own person. That I was going to forever be a representative, and informant, a secret keeper, and an outsider. This is tough stuff for a kid to handle, and I did the best that I could with it. I didn't get any guidance with how to navigate the daily decisions, and what little guidance I got was sometimes naively disingenuous.

So I stuffed it down, pushed it all in and pulled a mask over what I could when I could. I got really good at  performing for others. But I never felt like myself, I never felt safe. I gave up my childhood, my adolescence to the process of being that someone "else." When the pressure became too much I let it out in private ways. In ways that I hoped no one would notice, or if they did would think it attributable to something other than my frustration at simply being. Being a woman and taught that outward expressions of frustrations aren't acceptable I turned inwards, again. Self-destructive behavior is acceptable for a girl, and it became second nature.

I was blessed with a reprieve. A brief time when I got the taste of what it must be like to be someone other than who I am. I got to do things that I was certain I had been denied before because I spent so much of my life busying myself with the concerns of others.  It may sound strange, but for a brief period I did what I wanted, my consequences were my own and I cared very little about what others thought. It was freedom.

Now that I look back on it, I wonder sometimes if this is what its like for most white people in America. You don't have to worry about the little mundane things, like whether or not something you say or write will be received as you meant it or if it will be contorted into some strange amalgam of emotions and perception. That your history is not directly related to your present. That you aren't yolked by a past that had nothing to do with you, and has no daily consequences in how people interact with you. To move about with the freedom of knowing that your actions are your own - and to have it so common to your everyday life that its a subconscious thought. That you don't have to think about the rest of the world, because you are so confident and comfortable in the knowledge knowing that the world already thinks like you. This is a bone deep truth, which is supported and reinforced by the world. This truth is so irrefutable, that you wonder why the rest of the world doesn't get how amazingly lucky they are to be alive today. And you shake your head in confusion at their lack of gratitude.

Now as an adult, I realize that I must cope with this schizophrenic situation. I can never truly be myself, as I don't know who that true self is. I've spent so much of my life deciphering others that I think that I lost myself in the process, maybe. Honestly I'm not even sure Its my problem. I'm starting to think that its yours.

the fact that I've not updated in so long I think has everything to do with the fact that I've been so focused on everything and everyone else other than myself. I'm expecting again, this time a boy, and have begun trudging/walking merrily down the road of adult hood. (whatever that means.)

Having made my "choice" so far so, so good. Its been a grind, and its difficult, but so far my little love is happy and healthy for the attention and interaction than she can get from others. My bigger love on the other hand - he's a superhero for all of the things that I ask of him and he willingly does... for some unforeseen reason. I've taken on more responsibilities (both in work and personal lives) and trying to remind myself what it means to be creative outside of the requirements of my job.

*sigh*

Weighing options for the future

At some point in our lives, you're going to be asked to make a choice. Now I'm not talking about the "tall, grande or venti" choice... I mean a real choice, the tough choice. If you're lucky, it works out. If you're even luckier it doesn't, and you learn something from it, and you can live to see another day.

Here's the thing, it doesn't always present itself like we're told in literature or by popular media. It will and may appear as a mundane/throwaway decision. Sometimes it's does feel ground shaking, and sometimes not. What I've learned is that you'll never know until after the choice was made whether or not it was that choice. The one that will shape you forever after.

So then when you're faced with something that feels big... like I am now... I've learned to not put too much pressure on it. Just let it be a choice. Not a big choice, just a choice. Now whether or not I follow my own advice is another thing altogether. But I have to try and be Zen about it. Its a choice, its not the "butterfly wing-flap" that will send be careening off a cliff, its only going to be a decision. a small one at that...

Being Zen is more difficult than it sounds. Too much pressure to be without pressure.

Returning to work, with baby in daycare.

Its an odd thing to think in this modern day that I am asked to make a choice. Be a "Stay-at-home-mom", or be a "working-mom." Truthfully to me, both seem like ironies. I am a mom. No matter where I am or what I do, I am someone's mother. But I am being asked to align myself with a choice.

I feel the guilt. I know it deep in my bones about leaving my child with a virtual stranger in the hopes that they will care for my young love in the same way that I would. I hurt when she cries in the mornings when I leave her, and I am near breakdown in the evenings if I am minutes late to see her. I cherish the few precious moments that we have before she sleeps at night and I find myself near tears if I don't get to kiss her goodnight. Does that stop me from leaving each day, not yet. The nightmares are there (and I do have them) about what happens when I can't care for my child, but they aren't yet pungent enough to stop me from wanting to be an adult and live in an adult world.

Besides its too early to say if this will even hold. Its only been day 5 of my new job, post baby. I need to let this marinate more before I get too deep in the psychological aspects of being a 'working-mom.'

What its like to be fat in America today

My husband actually sent this link to me. So far it is the one truly clear statement of what it is like to be 'overweight' in modern day America. The most truthful part is the one that cuts deepest:

"When your significant other tells you you're pretty, or beautiful even, you assume he's saying that because he thinks he should and not because he believes it. Not because you're self-deprecating or have low self-esteem or anything else; you can accept all other compliments from him, about being smart or funny or whatever, and you can even smile and say thank you when he says you're pretty, but you don't internalize it the way you do other compliments, you don't really believe it, because how could it be true?"

I realize that it may be hard to understand, but for a lifetime of being told that you aren't worthy of anything because of your size, its difficult to even put into words what you deal with everyday. The awful thing about it is that I am truly fearful, that my daughter will be stuck in a world where the potential for her weight far 'outweighs' her potential in any other venue. I've been overweight my entire life, and although I promise myself that my daughter won't have a 'fat mommy' I can't delude myself into believing that I'll ever be 'thin.'

Genetically I've been blessed with broad shoulders, long muscular legs, a wide-torso (aka big boobs), and these things are truly blessings... but to the rest of the American public they are curses. Although I'm almost 6' tall, it doesn't make up for the rest of the 'heft' that I've inherited from my heritage of peasant farmers, (on both sides.) Ironically I'm better suited to survive almost anything that nature can throw at me due to these blessings, but according to modern day media, I'm a freak because I weigh over 200 lbs.

ugh. this is horrible. There are times when I wish blinders were available in human form.

She was in fine "Zadow" form. Impatient and a little early to the party

So I gave birth.


Yeah it was interesting... more for the fact that it was so damned fast and for the most part textbook. I've never been "textbook" or normal in any other thing in my life, and for this...this amazingly, painful, wonderful, exhilarating, and exhausting thing... I was for the most part textbook (with the exception of the speed of delivery.)

Now I'm a mom. I'm not sure what that means, or how I'm supposed to be. Strangely enough I'm ready to go back to being me pre-baby... almost. I've had my share of breakdowns, my share of nervous moments and a few frenzied nights. Otherwise I vacillates back and forth between freaking out and pure joy.

I know after next week I'll have more insight to this whole strange biological miracle called birth. For now...I'm just over the moon to have had 7 hours sleep last night. (in chunks... but it still counts)

I'm expecting... or am expectant...

For those of you who don't know... I am pregnant. This is something that I've been working on (if you can call it work) for some time. It's both for personal and medical reasons that I'm overjoyed with the fact that I can get and am pregnant for the first time in my life.

With that said, here are the details: As of today I am 6 months 3 weeks preggers, with a little girl (we believe) and yes we've already picked out a name. My belly is now the size of a prize pumpkin, and my gas is phenomenally unbelievable. Otherwise I am doing just fine. I am active, healthy and doing pretty much everything that I was doing before I got pregnant, minus the skydiving, flame throwing and rollerskating.

I am, as is my husband, trying to remain as normal as I can be. One of the great things about being pregnant is that it also kind of gives you lee-way to stop and recognize that "normal" is a personal thing that varies from person to person/couple to couple. What I may see as normal, someone else may think of as horribly irresponsible, and yet someone else may see as tame. Truly I have no conception of what I will be like, or what this little alien in my belly will be like, but I've gotta say, its a great impetus to learn how to "let go." This is not as easy as it sounds considering that I am a self-described control freak. As I progress with this process I've learned how truly adaptable the human body and psyche are when faced with change. This is more than just shrugging it off and going "oh well," I mean that when I've given myself the opportunity to take stock of what the hell is going on inside, I'm really amazed.

The human body is pretty darned interesting.

Did you Know 4.0 - for 2009

Going back to the drawing board

Part of the sour part of leaving the working world unintentionally is that you do have to revisit all of your older evidence of work past. The difficult part with that is that it is not always consistently available.

Worst part is that because I work kind of frenetically I have stuff all over the place. Case in point I forgot that I had some stuff published with the eLearning guild, (pg 55) as well as with the ASTD. goes to show that I really don't have my stuff together.

I have to hunt this all down and the collate it again into one spot for an online portfolio again. this is not going to be easy.

The beauty of push-button publishing....

For those of you who care, and even for those of you who don't I've recently taken it upon myself, and my husband to renovate a 1929 Cottage.

It's not one of those namby-pamby renovations... i mean gutted - down to the studs renovation. And not only that, but as an exercise in shared responsibility my husband and I will also be blogging the process. I personally hope that it'll be a good exercise for both mine and my husband's writing and cooperative efforts on this house... and it may have unintended but postive side-effects of helping us log and learn from our mistakes.

I will as ever continue for time-to-time make my 'other' entries here, as I have since 2001.

for those of you who are intersted... the blog is http://oaklandshack.blogspot.com

My friend... the blogger!!

My ex-roommate and friend Jess Hemmerly is taking part of, or could be considered at the bleeding edge of this revolutionary thing called "the interwebs"

She's a part of a select group of people who are delving into the details of what the future will be, and how current structures of both political, social and legal will form what that future means. I should be jealous, but I can't be. I'm proud to know someone who'se navel gasing will help me in the future as I'd rather have good people like her at the helm than others I don't know and couldn't trust to by even my mom a drink.

That doesn't mean though that I've got my own opionins on the matter - as her particular form of study is one that I used to be heavily involved in my previous positions, IP law (specifically trademark and copyright) and fair use.

It's one I don't suggest that you get into, as it, along with any form of communication that involves lawyers always devolves into it's own archaic language that is intended to obfuscate, frustrate, and ultimately eliminate any but the most dedicated individuals. The worst part about it, is that if you are one of those determined "know-it-alls" like myself, you tend to get high-minded once you feel like you've cracked the code of what it all means. The quick and dirty version? "What's mine, should be mine. But if you like it, and you ask my permission I'll let you play with it. " but ultimately whenever money's involved it's never that easy.

it's an interesting discussion... I'd say you could learn something about the future of what media may be.... or at least one corner of this discussion...as it builds uniquely on my ongoing internal discussion of how do (the collective) we manage/understand/filter/find information in todays' world?

I've yet to find my position, but all the same its an increasingly interesting discourse that I'll have with pretty much any person who'll let me.