This morning in my gratitude Zoom, I latched onto the words “unfolding” and “consciousness.” Wrote out some thoughts. Enjoy…
Life is a gift, an entry way to breath
An entry way to touch taste and smell
An invitation to dance with the wild storm of layered happenings
So God may watch our moves
The music of sunlight has begun
Time to move onto the floor where each heart is granted another beat
Joining in the collective story of now
Children are in the best part of life.
Their monsters are pridefully out and about, exuberance of youth about them
Allies guiding the will to clean their teeth
Making space not – out of love.
Imperfect swings are still a swing.
And swings are indicative to living. This is how human beings use the life God has given them.
Getting back in and giving it another shot. I’m in a morning gratitude group at the moment, and we are doing a moment of reflection on Iyala’s beautiful quite.
I decided to paste it to my blog and the copying part copied it imperfectly so I almost did not post it here. But I decided to use the moment as a reflection point too.
Life isn’t about being perfect, or standing still because we can’t show up perfect, but getting in the ring. So here is the quote, and the funny part is… I’ve been thinking about changing my life for a WHILE. Only way I am going to do THAT is by giving changes a swing before cutting myself off at the knees.
Life isn’t forever, so if we want something else. The time is now.
I grew up in a household with brothers who didn’t particularly want to play with or be around me.
And I don’t blame them. In retrospect, they were little boys exploring and embracing what it means to be male, what masculinity was, and here I was – sensitive, high pitch voiced, clingy and ferocious.
I’d feel a resistance to my inclusion in things and feel ignored, pushed out, or dismissed most days.
Luckily my mother was very dedicated to her children. She’d notice my emotions and was committed to letting me know she loved me (regularly). She’d attempt to hug the melancholy away.
However I was steeped in a very masculine environment with brothers, friends of theirs, and my male cousins always over and a father focused on mentoring them. I was privy to conversations about developing young men, and hyper aware that I was the odd one out. Outside whatever was important.
In years a fact creating a personality organized around proving herself worthy. To anyone. Bad bosses, bad boyfriends, activity partners I’d taken to be friends. Family in idea. I strained at everything.
Till… David Deida, Mama Gena, Katherine Woodward Thomas, and Melissa Maya. If you don’t know who they are, find all of them. And my shadow work.
I just looked around one day and thought why am I single? How can I not have any children? After giving it my all in every direction??? What’s wrong with me???
I wanted to get to the bottom of it. So I began digging.
Been doing that work on myself for sometime now. And through it, I found a big open wound making choices for me.
A few more years and I found the person beyond someone’s sister, someone’s daughter, someone’s girlfriend, someone’s friend.
I found me.
Outside of winning.
Inside losing.
Before the race, without the race.
Aside from approval.
I used to say (to myself)…. “Well no one chose me.”
But I had to choose myself.
So I may not be the woman the “world” values.. but I have value. I look back at the person who made decisions from desperation now, her imbalanced connections, transactional friendships, torturous loves and send love.
Someone I haven’t seen in ages, asked me the other day – how’s the dating going?
The question felt so…. alien… I stopped dating once I decided to get to the bottom of me. And I’ve just met that woman.
I responded with a bunch of words because I didn’t know how to squeeze all this into a 2 second blurb.
But this war is enough, for now.
Occasionally, there are associations that putrefy. Systems that rot because of poor structuring, policy, or constitution which YOU will have the responsibility of putting down.
It’s a pretty difficult responsibility when valuable time has been invested in the particular direction. However there are partnerships in life which require dissolution. Ones which you must summon grit and every skillset you have to renege upon, then withdraw from.
Relationships degrade when parties fail to consider everyone involved, but it’s a pretty common affair if you really look. People are…. selfish. Even the ones who pride themselves as givers. Everyone is focused on abstracting ‘the goods’ from their exchanges, and to be honest I think it’s par for the course in the modern world.
The problem comes when people who take poor care of their associations, demand the goods keep flowing regardless of their poor ‘hand.’
In recent years I’ve noticed this everywhere, from friendships to professional agreements. Cue bad behavior in the form of showing up late, executing tasks with a type of lax commitment to excellence, sheer unreliability, my lush communication style faltering.
Looking at this in my big age, I have to ask – what if I am attracting what I am? Wonky friendships, family members who trifle with relatedness, once respectable professional links losing integrity, are all toxically un-serious links.
I mean, companies serious about the bridges they’ve built are not playing footsy with disaster by working mistreatment into policy, family members serious about family are probably not more aloof than connected in exchanges, friendships claiming love and loyalty not leaving friends on the side of the road when the ugly years arrive.
However, I will say it is my responsibility to produce a conversation for completion in these situations.
And I have decided as of late, that it is a version of immaturity to endure gaslighting, passive aggressiveness, disrespectful and dishonorable posturing without analyzing how it should be addressed.
All this time, I’ve prided myself a street smart and worldly wise woman. Someone who has seen some things. And I am, however the inability to face the bad news about investments I’ve made…. is little girl behavior. It reeks of a true inability to take care of one self.
Taking care of and defending one’s body, mind, spirit – well being, is to grow up.
And in that way…. I was left behind.
Maybe, quite of few of us… with our bad company won’t really hurt us postures. Well they do – whether job, friends, family, or communities with questionable values, they eventually harm you.
So if this is you too…. let’s both download a “no” and use it…. by practicing it in the form of withdrawing participation where this exists. It’s past time, for some of us.
Past time for me.
I will be trying my hand at Vertical Drama Series pitching. I have two scripts, started work on a third, and just completed attendance of a Vertical Conference online. It was very informative.
If you’re wondering what a Vertical Drama Series is – I’d recommend:
One of the few articles that details it without a paywall.
These are my storylines I’ll be pitching:
A devout punk media founder, trying to endure an interview with a flamboyant rock star who performs as a demon, is enraged when he recognizes her as his long-lost fallen angel lover, compelling him to win back the woman who asked God to make her forget her identity.
A hippy spiritualist returns to her estranged family to make amends with her dying mother, only to find the family still haunted by the time she tried to poison her mother for stealing the love of her life.
A bored millionaire crashes his high school reunion, to discover the timid girl he once rejected is now a captivating pole dancing celebrity who finds the rich jet setting business man to be a snooze fest. To win her heart he must strip his identity and locate his own heart to romance her, and before she finds true love in another.
Would storyline do you like best?
This trailer was scored by Jonny Greenwood, a British musician and composer. He’s also one of the founding members of Radio Head.
This is what I found out after researching whose music this was.
I found out all the movies he’s scored and going to watch every single one. Curious what the rest of his music on film sounds like; what kinds of experiences he’s created before now.
I can’t wait. It’s so exciting.
This is my *very first* interview as a writer-director, and 😮💨😮💨😮💨….
I really like the writer whose podcast this is, so when she asked me for an interview I jumped to do it. But then, I thought ‘Wait a minute… do I know how to do an interview?”
Well, it’s done now. In the end it was like just talking with a young friend.
Still, maybe I shoulda been more formal.
Archaic Sugar 
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