Resilience

Been thinking a lot about this quality lately and what it really means. It's everywhere I look, hiding around every corner, breaking into my thoughts at unexpected times, even woven into the fabric of my manuscript.

Maybe, just maybe, that's what this year has been all about. As anyone that knows me knows, this year has been a train wreck for me, especially on paper. I never managed to find a job, I have less money than perhaps ever and more bills! I am 28, single, unmarried, and about as likely to do anything adult (buy a home, have good credit, date, marry, have sex, kids, etc) as your average 6th grader. Chances of that changing anytime soon? Slim to none. I've managed to finish out the year having re-gained the weight I lost, quit the job I got hired for after a month, attended 3 funerals in another month, traveled to Atlanta 4 times for my grammy, and unwillingly cut off all my hair.

But that's not how I actually feel. And that's the amazing part. Astoundingly there is happiness and joy in my life. Most importantly there is peace. God told me that I would lay aside every weight in 2008 sometime in December of 2007:

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us...
Hebrews 12:1

I thought it was a joke, a word game, and I prayed that if it wasn't He was talking about weight loss. (Yeah, no.) I was short-sighted and simplistic. (Big surprise.) In lieu of pounds, I've lain aside huge portions of:
1) pride
2) false sense of control
3) dependence on anything but God to provide for me
4) apathy about the political process and my ability to affect change in the world
5) blocks and obstacles to my creativity and motivation for writing
6) materialism, consumer culture, and the technical imperative

Those are some pretty big weights! I still have more things to set down before I can run completely unfettered, but I am happy with this, because with each stone I set down, I get lighter and lighter, and can run faster and faster, fly higher and higher. This direction takes me so much closer to God.

The end of the year finds me still @ a crossroads in life-- that's the running with patience part-- and I am possessed of resilience, joy, peace, and a more unshakeable faith than 12 months ago. It occurs to me that these priceless lessons are taught by the experience of living. There is no class, no preparation for these tests. The test just goes on and on until you pass it. That's about as exciting as a lifelong pop bar exam, but it worketh resilience in me. Maybe this really has been the best year ever. And to God I say: "thank you.

Blog Neglect...

If it were a crime, I'd be tried, convicted and under the jail by now. My only excuse: it's for a worthy cause.

First, I'd dedicated it all for the Obama/Biden '08 campaign, and you see how worthy that was -- yes we can! I refuse to apologize.

Second, I'm competing in Nanowrimo this year -- just the immense production (complete with 120K+ participants, websites, forums, prizes, jokes, and cheering support) that I need to get me launched into the massive noveling and screenplay career that I've been dreaming of for a few years now. I mean, what was holding me back? Shit all, to be honest. I was stagnating in ridiculous dead-end, soul-sucking, and under-earning jobs. I have been ever since I started working, with few notable exceptions. The only solution for me? Never working for a boss again, breaking the yoke of stale routines, becoming an independent and self-supported businessperson, selling my word art and living by the pen (which is mightier than the sword, though I probably don't need to remind anyone of this).

My role model: Barack Obama. I've come to realize that the man is many things, one of them a fantastic writer. Most of his income up to this point has come from book sales. He even has a Grammy from one of his books on tape! This revelation has galvanized me. I shouldn't be surprised. The man is a consummate overachiever, an ivy-league egghead and his own worst critic, certain that with enough hard work he can save the world, or as much of the world that will cooperate. In way too many ways, the Obamas are like looking into an enchanted mirror for me. They're self-actualized (and thin!) in a way that I hope and pray to be when I get to that age.

But enough hero worship from a woman old enough to know better. This was about guilt and confessions, and so we come full circle. I've been guilty of blog neglect. But maybe this is the end of the trend (no bailout necessary)?

Before I go, an update on the noveling: I'm about 23K wds in, slightly behind goal, but confident I'll murder the 50K finish line by the end of next week at the current rate I'm writing (about 3500 wds/day). I've been hanging out @ Bankhouse Coffee in downtown Long Beach. I've been taking a page out of Oprah's magazine and doing my best to live my best life, riding my mom's old beach comber bike the 3 miles or so and back everyday. Camping out in the corner, enjoying the perfect weather, the breeze, the sunshine, and the custom playlists on my ipod. I'm poor as a church mouse, but feeling more in control of my life and fulfilled than I've felt in years and years. There's really nowhere else to go but up and nothing to lean on other than God who goes before me as a banner of victory. My faith these days really is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of which is (currently) unseen. My heart is also filled with joy which is His gift of strength to me while I navigate this labyrinth.

Lastly, a prayer for the soul and memory of my friend, the late Nju Njoroge, a classmate of mine from Stanford. His memory is real, and so is the grief, and his presence will surely be missed. He was such a beautiful soul, a vital presence, that for many the sun is obscured today and in the foreseeable future. May God send a massive outpouring of peace, ministering comfort, and love to every single person that needs it, and bless us all to lean on each other, and keep each other lifted and moving forward while the sadness is debilitating, and until we can be reunited on the other side. Amen.

PS: Post Theme: Home by Bilal

Feeling the Hand of God

My grammy is amazing.

"Our mother is so happy for having voted. She is proud to know that her vote went in and when the tallys are counted that hers is there. I talked with her today and she talked almost 30 minutes about how happy she was and she just thanked everybody that had any part in making it happen. Thank you for being serious enough to follow through. It is the only way that the elderly can vote and maintain some dignity about their life at that age. Mom is a blessed women at 88 to have seen all the major events of the 20th Century and then to vote for someone of color. She feels as though she has felt the Hand of God!"

When I saw this email that my mother sent to the family to thank them about being so vigilant in fighting to keep my grandmother's name from being purged after being displaced by Katrina, and getting her ballot shipped so that she could vote absentee, I cried. I've read the moving human interest pieces about elderly black people across America getting to the polls for this election, but this brings the story home for me.

My grandmother was born in New Orleans in 1920. She was so poor that she spent time in an orphanage even though her parents were alive, so poor that she wore two left shoes-- mens size 10, orange-- that her family bought at a rummage sale to school. Her story is the story of many, the story of a frontliner to the life I of privilege that I lead today. She didn't finish high school, but she's finishing first in life. After raising 12 kids, some of whom (like my mom) were PRE Brown vs. the Board of the Education grade school de-segregators, and some of whom (my mom's 4 older siblings) fled the Jim Crow South never to return.

What a life! I can't imagine it, and that was precisely her goal. That a granddaughter such as I would have a different life, one protected from such experiences, where such abject poverty and oppression would exist only in my imagination. As I place myself in her shoes -- her two left shoes -- I am moved by the long race she's run with such a handicap. I am moved to feel the full gale force of this revolution in a way that I never could without her example. After such a life as she has lived, the things that she has seen, the things that she has felt, this bone fide wise woman has cast her vote, and feels the very hand of God on it. Who am I to argue with that? Go grammy! I bless God for the gift of you.

I am transformed!

I am transformed! I got an offer yesterday, and I'm grabbing it with both hands! This blogger is now GAINFULLY EMPLOYED! Ain't God a wonder? Right on time.

This means:
1) I am moving to New Orleans. This once seemed unattainable.

2) I am working in entertainment and publishing. I get to start a magazine! Did I mention this is my dream job??

3)I will receive a regular paycheck. 'Gasp'! This means that I can pay my bills! I can buy a house soon, maybe even this year! It's times like this when one thing changes my entire world that I am convinced that I live in a snow globe, occasionally given a good shake by a Divine Hand. Miraculous!

4) I can help rebuild New Orleans. This has become my passion. I don't have to give it up!

5) I was right. This is my year! It will be the best ever. This is proof.

6) Everyone else was right. All of those who encouraged me, supported me, listened to me whine and cry, gave me advice in my time of need, believed in me and were vocal about it -- each and every one of you is and was an angel sent to me in my time of need. I appreciate you more than I can express. I can only promise to reciprocate and to pay it forward.

That's it for now. I have a major move to execute this weekend, a lot of goodbyes to say, plans to make, and a busy week ahead at my new job!!

Lovely! Will post more later. I'm so excited I can barely type. My brain is doing cartwheels!

Post Theme: Hallelujah! by A Soulful Celebration

Read this DEEP poem I found in Oprah Magazine!

________________________________________
Prayer
by Marie Howe

Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important
calls for my attention--the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage

I need to buy for the trip.
Even now I can hardly sit here

among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outside
already screeching and banging.

The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.
Why do I flee from you?

My days and nights pour through me like complaints
and become a story that I forgot to tell.

Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.
____________________________________________________________________

Deep, huh?

March on...

Today I am deeply disappointed. I had the ominous feeling that I had been presumptive in my joy, and loosed-tongued in my overconfidence, and yesterday, I fear, I was proven correct. I would have loved to be wrong in this!

What am I talking about? Well, I had a great interview this week, was positive that I was moving on the last and final round of interviews, was certain that I would receive an offer, allotted less than a week for salary negotiation, and started planning my end of the month move to New updating my financial goals, mapping out a budget, and looking at homes for sale on craigslist! Whether this is a case of healthy success visualization and claiming God's promise, or gun-jumping at its finest, I do not know.

Not to mention all the people I told... people that are going to want to know what happened with the job and when do I start. People who will attempt to encourage me or comfort me when I tell them that I am back to square one. So heaped onto a crushing sense of disappointment and weariness in being disappointed is a sense of shame. No good news to report guys, nothing to see here. Let's all just get some sleep... Isn't that what the police say when they're shooing away the gawkers at the scene of the train wreck? Why yes it is... how apt.

I received an email telling me that the position that I was certain that I would be offered is "on hold for a month or so". I don't even know what that means, and it can mean so many things. What happened to the strong sense of rapport that I built with my interviewer. I thought for sure that I could have depended on her for more of an explanation than that, no matter what the outcome. A terse, two-sentenced brush off what outside of the realm of my expectations.

Of course, not all hope it lost. I have to keep on trucking, keep on looking... I mean, what else is there? It might even turn out that I will eventually be handed what looks right now to be impossible: this job on a silver platter. There's really no excuse for me giving up now, particularly with the amazing support system that I have in family and friends that are behind me, with the number of people offering themselves: money, time, favors. I appreciate you all more than I can say.

I just can't help but wonder how much longer I will have to wait. The bible says be ye not weary in well-doing, but the negative emotions and thoughts, bruised feelings, and tough circumstances weigh down on me like baggage, and it's baggage that I can ill afford. Today, with a sigh and a tired smile, I soldier on.

Post Theme: Bag lady by Erykah Badu

I'm So Excited!

Break out the 80's music! I am so excited and full of energy that I hardly slept last night or the night before! I mean I'm really soaring...it's some combination of nervous energy, excitement, and endorphins (since I went walking this morning at 5:45 am). It's the kind of thing where you jump on the bed, or run out into a hard rain yelling Shazam! The feeling of invincibility is a welcome change, believe you me!

I've been laying low because I didn't want to over think it any more than I usually do, and therefore jinx it, but I had my first face to face interview in 6 months yesterday, and it went swimmingly. No details here, but I am moving on in the interview process and think that I just may have found something even better than I job I can tolerate -- I THINK THAT I'VE FOUND MY DREAM JOB, IN MY HOMETOWN!!

Do you know what this means?!? It means an end to my crisis of faith, an end to placing fear-inspired limitations on God or myself. It also means an end to the unending, foggy valley that was my mid-20's. Talk about your quarter-life crisis! I can live EXACTLY where I want to, how I want to. In other words, I am perilously close to getting my heart's desire. Hosanna!

In other news...I volunteered for the Obama campaign and he won MS last night! Another reason for shouting out (it's moments like this that I miss my giant trampoline)! You da man, B!

Also, I am hysterical with ironic, maniacal laughter at this whole NY governor situation. Methinks it was a case where he doth protest too much against hookers! The guy is the main prosecutor of prostitution rings and then leaves a neon-glowing money trail back to himself! And then the main pimp daddy running the whole biz is an IRS official! So that's why he never thought he'd get caught...it never fails to amaze me. I also can't help noticing that this scandal broke in NY, where HRC is "from".... where there's smoke there's fire. *rude snicker* It's about as much to go on as they have on Obama, and I think turnabout is fair play. I can see the mudslinging posters now: pix of Hillary shaking hands with Gov. Spitzer while Bill Clinton slides his hand up some intern's skirt in the background. The slogan at the bottom reads... "WTF?!?!" Then she can spend lots of valuable campaigning time explaining away the behavior of unfortunate acquaintances in an attempt to dispel the ludicrous and vague aura of guilt and scandal that she finds herself surrounded in. I can see the email chain letters now: don't vote for Hillary, she hangs with philanderers and whore mongers. And she's got a black person somewhere in her family tree; she will have to be sworn in singing Lift Every Voice and Sing instead of The Star Spangled Banner. People would totally believe it, too.

Post Theme: Neutron Dance by the Pointer Sisters

Access Denied

Today was a resounding chorus of ACCESS DENIED in so many ways. How did I get locked on the outside of the bubble?

I got a rejection email from a company that I didn't even want to work for, and yet I am still a bit wounded. Is this how low I've sunk, that I want to be wanted, regardless of whom is doing the wanting? I could be a heroine on Lifetime. Cue montage of attitude change and resultant success please, because I am tiring of this uphill battle. I would be so pleased if the weeks flew by to the tune of some insanely upbeat music, snapshots of me working hard, working out, losing weight, changing my image, getting a makeover, and relocating would sail past my nodding head and snapping fingers bump-free, only to arrive at me, a completely different person. A successful, confident person. Not the disaster I am today. Right now, that is my fondest wish, to be in a fairy tale. What does that say?!?! I need a break.

My wishes are very simple, actually. A renovated double shotgun in New Orleans, and an uncorked writer's brain to write my stories and sell 'em to whoever wants to read 'em. How did trying to get there come to involve rewriting my resume fifteen times and searching ardently for jobs in Atlanta or Washington DC? I feel like I'm in the center of a tornado, all turned around and holding on for dear life. What happened to true North? Is that why this isn't working? I'm so blown off course... was it heeding the pushy chorus of helpful voices, or my deafness to them? It occurs to me that there is only one voice that I need to heed, and it is not the voice of the crowd. It's a still, quiet voice that speaks to the broken, listening heart.

I wish that listening and waiting were as easy as typing these words, but there is the small matter of what I might hear when I finally do hear something. Hearing a no might break my heart, and would certainly hurt my feelings -- another access denied. Courage is scarce today, and faith locked away in a mustard seed, but tomorrow brings the dawn and joy cometh in the morning.

Post Theme: Open Up My Heart by Yolanda Adams

A Good Hair Day

I'm no longer feeling trapped. I guess a new day brought me some empowerment, and a sense of hope. I've been mulling over my job situation and I came to the conclusion that I can't do anything at this point but continue to push forward and having done all I can do, stand. Whatever happens, happens. It's in God's hands now, and I am not trying to take that particular burden back. Good riddance.

I've got new hair! I braved the worse fog I've ever seen anywhere on earth this morning to drive to the salon, and boy am I glad that I did, because I look fabulous!

Post Theme: There's Hope by India.arie

I Feel Trapped

After my telephone interview today, I'm feeling trapped. Now before I get into this, I do realize that I may be overreacting and that next week I may feel foolish about writing this, but I gotta be me.

It's not that I didn't do well. In fact, I think that I did very well, certainly well enough to be called in for a face to face interview. Fact is, after finding out more about the job, my suspicions are confirmed. It's a sales job going back into an industry that I don't care for and that I gratefully escaped when Hurricane Katrina gave me the opportunity. The prospect of being forced to take it by my financial circumstance and sheer pragmatism (I mean it's not like I'm getting offers or even calls from anywhere else) fills me with impotence and frustration. My hands feel tied, and the irony of my situation does not escape me. After determining to revamp my resume, my angle, and my career direction in an effort to avoid being unfulfilled, I stumble onto a job just like the ones I couldn't get last fall when I was actually trying!! What does it all mean? What am I supposed to do?

The feeling of being herded in down a chute, like a doomed heifer at a meat packing plant, is achingly familiar. A feeling of doom is rising within me like the tide, and I didn't realize that I was cycling back around. You see, each time I've started over it's been like this. Forced to take a position that I didn't actively decide to take. It's like this: if I had come to the conclusion that this was my best option, then no regrets, but if I fall into this by default, then all my struggling has been for naught, because it has been a struggle for control, for power, for the chance to choose my adventure like one of those damn comic books in middle school. I didn't realize then that the ability to choose would be stripped from me at a later point in life, or I would have read those books more. Whatever happens now is a choice that I must stay committed to; to change positions in any less than three years would be career suicide, and to leave the industry a second time would consign me to being labeled "unfocused", and you can't trust an unfocused person in management. "Unfocused" people don't get promoted. So whatever my new direction, it is a weighty decision of some permanence.

As I stated before, however, these are reflections of my thoughts at this point in time. In another week, the present snow globe may have been jostled by the Divine Hand, and I will be looking at a completely different landscape. That is to say that I have concluded (wisely, if I do say so myself) to put this away, to wait and see, to stand and believe. Every step I take is ordered, and each action takes me closer. Selah.

Post Theme: Closer by Goapele