Changing My Mind About Leadership

I'll preface this post by saying that I am suffering an acute crisis of confidence in almost all forms of leadership, including my own ability to lead. The world is shifting so quickly these days that even the most nimble and disruption-loving of leaders seem ill-equipped to move in the way that the world is demanding of us all. 

People this is a textbook definition of hard.

I try to suspend judgment but I was raised in a judgmental household. So judging people is a way of life that I have labored tirelessly to change. Sometimes I make good ground. Other times, I fall deep into old habits. Lately, I have been judging the hell out of those in leadership positions. Lately I have been extremely hard on myself. There is a magic to leadership; a subtle art of communicating in way that inspires and teases out the best in people. This art usually hinges on one's ability to see the world differently -- to see in prismatic brilliance what others see in a flat static 2 dimensional fashion. This "artist of vision" - if I may - can see the other side of any situation. No. Its more than that. They can feel the electricity of possibilities, and through their feeling they the share vibrant visions. Lately, I haven't seen this leadership in nearly anyone. From one side of the spectrum to the other, I am afraid, we are all out of that magical mojo. The juju that once held this human fabric together, seems to be fading. 

I was scrolling through 11 years of Twitter posts, and I came across a photo of my ideas notebook sprawled open. My scribbles, neat and orderly but meandering like a flowchart, and beneath it the hashtag: "IKeepANoteBook". I still keep a notebook but its mostly notes from meetings. Nothing inspirational or bursting with newness. Its all old; all trite. Its all indicative of my own personal resignation. I find it hard these days to do anything beyond stay afloat. At least as it pertains to leading people. I've been leading my colleagues through a training on Nonviolent Communication, and in a twist of sardonic irony, I find my own way of communicating growing more belligerent by the day. No I am not hurling curse words at folks, but I am judging them mercilessly with my silence. I torture them with my very obvious disinterested tone. Lately my mantra has been more "do what thy whilst" than "love thy will be done". I am a monster in the making. I am struggling to feel the feel of what's possible. Dare I say I am struggling to care?

Good leaders care. I simply do not feel like caring lately.

Apathy is a dangerous thing for people who wield any sort of formal power. Its as vile as caring about something in the singular, as is the case with the current presidential administration. He only cares for maintaining power for white wealthy men, and does so at the cost of any semblance of democracy. Not that we actually ever had a democracy, but for sake of this example, let's just go with it. Apathy causes one to walk along the edges life's precarious cliff, blindfolded, daring fate to tip you over the edge because you have nothing more to lose. I find it funny that there is a word for feeling others emotions - empathy - and a word for blocked emotion - apathy - and ones for hate and pity - antipathy and sympathy but there doesn't seem to be a word for the pathology of holding emotions for self. I wonder if there were, would we as leaders feel a stronger sense of accountability to ourselves? I think about this because, I have a moral sense of wrongness about my own apathy. To not care goes against all that I believe in, and yet, here I am as apathetic about many things, as the day is long, and no one holds me responsible for this. Not even I.

Conversely, I find myself existing under organizational leadership that is unbearably sympathetic. Emotions drive everything, in particularly, the irrational emotion of fear. In my professional sphere, the fear of being disliked, misunderstood, judged all drive people to their most base instincts. Decisions that are made, lack logic, but feel safe and dare I say "good". Its a swirly, hazy landscape that is as nonsensical as Alice on the other side of the looking glass. I struggle with the idea of leaders not understanding that your role is to make the best decisions possible in any given situation,any given moment, and those are often the hardest decisions. People undoubtedly will not like you at times. Life goes on. I hold a specific disdain for people driven by their emotions. Its not enough for you to go on a roller coaster ride, but by virtue of my position as a follower, I am reluctantly taken for a ride too. There's no consistency, just the need to be prepared for whatever curve ball comes hurling your way. Lately, I have been getting smacked relentlessly with spherical projectiles of emotion. I haven't the real energy to care beyond that of worrying about my own sanity in the midst of it all. I grew up the child of a narcissist mother and an overly emotional father. I've been on enough roller coaster rides to last me a lifetime. I think that I am overdue for some therapeutic stillness.  Feet planted squarely on mental terra firma, if such exists. My work life does not provide this. It leaves my apathy toeing the line of antipathy.

Where I no longer seem to care at work, I do find myself ensconced in empathy in my home life. At home, I am the alpha female of a pack of furry beasts -- dominating little miniature schnauzers. To say that they are the loves and loathing of my life would be accurate. Before this pandemic, I didn't spend as much time in their company. So all time spent together was good time. We remained a sort of novelty- they happy to have my attention and copious pity treats, and I happy to be with living creature who know instinctively the virtues of unconditional love. Now we are together almost 24/7, and in this extended and undeliberate bonding time, I am noticing that I have failed them as a pack leader. I yell, get impatient, and on a few occasions, have shut myself off from them only to hear  their breath at the door awaiting my return. I have not been very empathetic. I once read somewhere that dogs can smell the, past, present, and even the future. Their lives are neither long nor linear but they are profoundly complex. Humans aren't nearly as interesting or labyrinthine. Sometimes I watch my dear Charlie wander through my small apartment, intent on finding the perfect napping spot. Most times he settles in some corner of my bedroom, isolated from Theo and me. I suppose that in  my bedroom, I am usually at my calmest and the hormones that I release are the least stressful. Maybe he senses that? Recognizing his comfort there, I do not disturb him, although I find myself curious about what's going on in his head. My older bearded friend, Theo, never leaves my side. I often feel the need to reassure him of my love an loyalty, especially after I have not been on my best human behavior. Its a strange dance between the 3 of us, but of all of the dances, its the one that I find most satisfying. I am forced to attempt my best waltz with them, and with them I am learning to be a better leader. I fail often. I fail miserably. And yet, I keep trying. For them, I care.

I studied power and leadership in my graduate program and there are many ways for it to show up. Contrary to the American hegemonic ideal, leadership isn't always loud or charismatic. It wont always show up as authoritarian or at the head of the pack leading the charge. No, sometimes its quiet, mindful, deliberate, and doesn't need a commanding title. I think that I much prefer this deceptively powerful form of leadership. I prefer puissance to charisma. The former take more finesse; whereas the latter suck energy. A waste if you ask me. However, quiet coercion - sophisticated Jedi mind trickery, as I like to call it - can easily lend itself to resentment and resentment to apathy, which brings us here. My increasingly apathetic approach to leadership. I resent that other people are slow to get it. The cant seem to catch the rhythm, and its making me lose hope. What is a leader devoid of hope if not a despot oppressing others with my own pessimism? 

I do think that there is room to shift yet again. In the life cycles of nonprofit organizations there is a middle ground that dances from maturity to decline to turnaround. I am indeed a seasoned leader, mature in my analysis of how a leader should be, but for the better portion of the last 5 years, I've been beleaguered by this inability to give a damn. I am very much on the decline. I am too young to be on such a precipitously downward path. For heaven's sake I am only mid-career. Fate be not tempted, I still have another 25-30 working years left in me. I can only guess that a "turnaround" is afoot. A second wind in which I will find that spark once again. Maybe I will be a ways smarter about how I use my new found energy. In my 20s and early 30s I was burning through it like humans are burning through natural resources. I think I threw myself into an early ice age from which I will soon hopefully thaw. I don't like this phase of simply not caring. It feels like time wasted, as I search for something worth caring about in this life. 

I don't quiet know what to make of it all.

Changing My Mind About Connection

Last week I started Isabel Wilkerson's Caste. Last night while sitting on the rooftop, I made the decision to stop reading it. At least for now. I am fan of Wilkerson's writing. It is so in part because she is a great wordsmith, but also because we share a surname. For the first 18 years of my life, the state of Alabama had assigned me my mother's maiden name, despite the fact that the US Air Force legally handed me my family name of Washington. Its odd. For years I carried a name that even my mom no longer carried. The world can be weird like this. The weirdness bleeds over into the reasons why I decide to put down Caste. There is a passage in which she describes a lynching in Omaha, NE, where I got my most recent and final degree. I recall walking through the streets of Omaha, feeling curiously enchanted. I'd considered taking a teaching job there. It felt neutral. Wilkerson's recounting of the brutal murder of a Black man made Omaha anything but neutral. As a matter of fact, none of the grounds we stroll daily are neutral. As I sat surveying the Hudson, with eye's blurry from the impending tears, I wondered how many atrocities occurred in place I now call home? In Alabama, my birth home, the markers of the past horrors were still visible; in some area venerated. It is not lost on me that the very place that I used to go to cash my check was also the site of a slave market. There is a placard there to remind the world - but only if you pay attention to it. I wasn't paying attention to the markers in Omaha. I'd decidely, whether consciously or unconsciously, turned a blind eye to the past. We'd laid a veneer atop the misery of the past, and suddenly its stating to wear thin, and show. 

The book became heavy in a way that I wasn't ready for. 

Prior to opening Caste, I'd just finished "The Yellow House" by Sarah Broom; a book recommended via a tweet by Kiese Laymon, whose writing is wildly Black and wildly Southerner. I didn't expect much but its by far the most honest telling of a person's life I've read in a while. I fell in love with the book and the writer herself. I felt like we'd been friends for forever. This is due in part to her simple mastery of language, but also because we are born one day apart. End of year 1979. I am a day older. There is that weirdness again. What I came to appreciate about this book is that the author wasn't just sharing information - useful subject matter, a recollection of history, an idea - she was was sharing herself. 

Alone of the rooftop, looking at the Hudson, now with a full fledged tear sliding down my face, I had to admit that I miss connecting with people. The last hug I received was from a friend, leaving NYC to move to Alabama. We knew that hugging went against all social distancing logic, but it felt both satisfying and sad to hug my friend who now I would only get to see on a limited basis. As an introvert, the idea of missing people seems off. Its almost as if I am admitting a weakness, that yes, I too need people. I am, too, human. Maybe it was this longing for human connection that made Caste unappetizing right now. I didn't need to hear about the one of many ways we aren't doing our best a humans. I needed to feel someone's writing; to let their words be an offering of their rawest self. 

I've found that I have been longing to overshare lately. I shared the elevator with one of my neighbors, a British transplant. We speak in passing, mostly him commenting on my dogs, and reassuring me that their barking is threatening. He's always smiling. Charming even. On this evening, he shares that he's not ready for the winter. Drastic weather patterns aren't familiar to him. I tell him, that they aren't to me either but the door opens before I have a chance to explain that I am from the Deep South and that I could empathize. I hesitated to end our conversation but it would've felt strange holding him up. For the rest of the evening I regretted not holding him up. I wanted to know more about what brought him here,why he stays even when the U.S.'s response to the pandemic has been deadly, or more simply, his name. See that's the thing about life before this pandemic. We've all lived in this building with no urge to commune. Lately we've all been a bit more friendly and garrulous. Maybe we are all trying to fill an emotional crack in our foundation?

Yesterday on my walk, a cleared the sidewalk to let an elderly lady pass. She spoke to me with exaggerated movements, but here words I couldn't hear over the music blaring in my ears. I wanted to hear her, her smile so wide and he energy so bright. I removed me earbuds and she repeated "Some of us are short of memory, but thank you for wearing your mask." She made me smile. I felt as if I had a much needed moment of connection. Lately, I smile, wave, and verbally greet most people that I pass on my walks. People are no longer a nuisance. They feel necessary. The weirdness of feeling something other than my usual introverted inward pull.

Today I am reading Zadie Smith's Intimations. I am hoping that she shares more than her mastery of words. I am hoping that in some weird way, she'll share parts of herself, and I can fill in some of the cracks that now exist.

Changing My Mind About Time

 I am a fan of string theory. At least what I think I know about it. I recall watching a PBS documentary on the subject and thinking to myself that this explains everything. The idea that we exist on multiple plains at the same time enacting variants of our choices that lead to different outcome and thus different realities was a pleasant ordering of surrealism that resonated. I figured that for all the vastness of possibilities that exist in the universe, surely our lives - both physical and spiritual- could not be reduced the linearity that we have adopted. That made less sense than a million of me existing at the same time moving about life. I am thinking that maybe I should stop referring to myself as "I" or "me", but rather "us" and "we", as a proclamation of my vastness? At the bare minimum, knowing that in some parallel universe, I am getting various parts of my life right puts me at ease. 

Yesterday I spoke with my baby sister, as we always do, about random life stuff. Usually work, purpose, and the feeling that this cant be it. I mentioned string theory and how I am starting to think differently about time and existence. Unlike her, I do believe that once the energy that is you is spun into motion, you will never stop spinning. How you show up and when is a matter of choosing. Today I am Simone. Yesterday I might have been a spider. Tomorrow I might just decide it makes the most sense to just float in the ether. The way that I see it is existing is like musical chairs or speed dating. We keep moving about in search of that thing. I still haven't figure out what that thing is. Interconnectedness? Elucidation? Presence? I don't know. Lately I keep hearing a whisper that says get out of your head and rest in your body. This same voice suggests that there is no future and the past fades melts away like a cheese curl on your hot tongue. Stay in my body in this moment because this is all there is. That voice kinda challenges the idea of infinite being in some ways. If I am resting in this body in this moment, then are the other versions of me doing the same? Is that the point?

This is why I love string theory but try not to sit with it too long. I don't have the answers and the dots don't always connect. Its dizzying. A maze that can consume.

An entire year of living in New York slipped past me undetected. Its odd because I am constantly marking time; running to a finish line at which I am sure there is no prize awaiting me. Just another race to be ran. I don't know if I have been swallowed whole  by the strange nature of this pandemic, where time feels irrelevant, or if finally, I have landed somewhere that doesn't feel existentially threatening. I simply stop keeping time. Maybe its the pang of finality? While 40 is still spry, its not youth. I am not young and the changes in my body have become a sort of alarm clock. Yes time is ticking but I am no longer interested watching the hour long and second hands move about. It doesn't really mean much. At some point I'll spin out of this form into another. Its inevitable and to keep watch of it feels torturous. I suppose that we use time as a whip or flog to spur us into action; hence the sayings "time isn't on your side" or "time is of the essence". But is it really? If I fail to do something on this plain, according to string theory, I did in fact do that thing in the time given... or at some point. This again comforts me. We never really miss out on anything in life... if we are part of a vast network of self.

Somewhere in this universe, Simone has already left New York. Simone is leaving New York. Simone never made it to New York. In this one, I do not lament my decision to stay. Maybe this is the reality where I do not count the days but instead I live them.

Since the advent of this pandemic, gentle nudges have commingled with unnerving jolts of mortality. At the height of this pandemic, NY witnessed 900 plus COVID-related deaths a day, and this is what they could account for. For some reason this number, though high, was never alarming enough to break me. I thought about all of the people who transition on any given day and reemerge anew the next (if we are holding on to my machinations about string theory). It brought to mind the refrain of "(s)he left before their time". If we are recycling and existing in multiple possibilities, then, again, they haven't gone anywhere. This might sound callous or flippant of me. I lost my 43 year old cousin 2 years ago, and I am convinced that he still exists...somehow, somewhere... and maybe he is better in this way. Maybe Montrell is part of the ether, or maybe he is split neatly among his two great nephews and niece that were born shortly after his transition. He's here, and that's all I can know for certain. That truth is buried deep in my gut.

[I pause to cry]

My tears remind me that I am trying to rationalize and give reason to something that is beyond my comprehension. I just know that we never really leave. We just keep spinning, and spinning, and spinning, like Whirling Dervishes. Keeping the motion gives us meaning. It gives us life.

By the way centrifugal motion of spinning out is key to string theory: In string theory, spin is understood by the rotation of the string; For example, a photon with well-defined spin components (i.e. in circular polarization) looks like a tiny straight line revolving around its center.

When we spin well, it all looks like a long straight line with a start and end... this life. But in fact its not. Nothing is ever linear. Its the lie we tell ourselves to make sense of the world. Life and everything about it, including time, is generative. One motion begets another. One possibility spins out a million others.

[I pause to think]

I imagine that life might make more sense if we stopped believing that there is a stop and start to everything, and started to believe that we exist on an infinite continuum. Maybe we wouldn't rush. Maybe we would value pausing because there is no rush. Maybe I wouldn't need the constant internal reminders to be still and be in my body in this moment. I'd intuitively know that being here is enough - just focus on the force of my spin and the vastness it creates.

I don't have the words to make this make sense and I do not yet know how to convey intuition and inner knowing in a way that feels tangible; something that minds can grip. I don't feel that its my job to convince you, the reader, of this illogical logic. I just wanted to plant a seed that causes us to question these social contracts we have entered into. I feel like we all know this in one way or another, and I've just decided to not turn a blind eye to it anymore. Time and space as we know them are ruinous and fatalistic. Life is too glorious to be ruined by a chosen shortsightedness. I'm trying to settle in my vastness.

Changing My Mind About Home

According to the counting app on my phone, I am now 165 days into pandemic induced exile, and I am feeling the weight of it in ways that I haven't previously experienced it. I have been restless in my tiny little apartment. Cooking is no longer soothing; it has been reduced to a grey-tinted chore. Afternoon naps that I once relished have given way to lying in my bed scrolling the internet, remembering to buy things that I had no prior memory of needing. My dogs now look at me as if I am getting on their last nerve. The monotony of it all is a brick wall that I have crashed into in slow motion. Amidst this wreckage, I have been pondering life choices, which upon closer reflection, might be too heavy for this moment, although the abundance of languishing time yields itself quite nicely to this kind of torture. Friends close and near always ask of me "How is NYC treating you?". A closer confidant asked me "How am I feeling about being in New York right now?" This is a more befitting question, as it causes me to be honest. And as if I am wearing a cloak woven by Veritas herself, I am able to say "I miss the city and wandering through it, but I don't know what this place actually is without that. And as such, I don't know my purpose in being here." Yes, I could easily get in my car and head south on I-87, wandering through the Bronx to the Isle of Manhattan, but as a recent transplant, I'd only jut begun to adapt to NY in its pre-COVID existence. That in an of itself took a lot. I don't know that I have the energy to learn it anew. If I stay, I know that this is now part of the syllabus. A master course in flexibility. I tire just thinking about it. I suppose that I am lucky in that if I decide to leave, there is always home, or the place that carries the moniker. The South is the devil that I know best. The one that creeps into my thoughts and my speech when I am deep into an emotion, good or bad. Recently, when I got a call that suddenly my mom had to have a kidney removed, I seriously considered waltzing with that demon once again. There is a subtle joy and agony in thinking about being home. The Brazilians call this saudade. The emotion of an unexpected health crisis coupled with missing the idea of a thing had me ready to pack it all up and figure out how to get back home. In the time since that phone call, I've talked to my family and they seem to be well in spite of my physical absence. What would I be rushing back to other than the mental machinations of being tethered to home and falsely believing that I am needed? While I am loved and will always have a place there, there is a clear reason why I left. I am not needed there. To realize this is sobering, but you would think after nearly 4 years away, it wouldn't knock the wind out of me the way that it does. Moving to New York was always meant to allow me to sit in the idea of needing myself and giving her all of the love, care, and attention she required to be whole and full. Stripped of distractions, I now realize that what I am needing is a place to belong. One of my favorite quotes, and ironically, the one I butcher most often, is "the place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it". When he uttered this words, James Baldwin found him self deep inside a phases of incessant wandering, looking to escape American tyranny and the angst created a world that never seemed to open up enough to accommodate someone like him. I've not wandered globally for extended periods of time, but like Baldwin, I have found it hard to stay put in any one place for very long and not be met with the feeling of being out of place. I am reading a book and in it the author, far away from home, finds herself in Burundi, uncomfortable, but unwilling to relent. She says something that is reminiscent of what my former trainer used to say about completing repetitions: "...the moment you want to leave is probably when you should try hard to stay." Like her, I stay because I don't know where else I'd go at this moment. Unlike her, I don't think that I have given myself permission to continue the process of personal exploration. The process of making. The process of unfurling. I still don't know who I am if I am not crumpled tightly. I don't know the terrain of my edges and ending well enough to ascertain fit. Even in my attempts to open up, I am still wrinkled and worn by the creasing of my need for safety, stability.... predictability. Things that I can control. Being in New York was always meant to thrown me into things I cant control; things that pull me apart so that I could discard what no longer worked and reconfigured the bits and pieces that do work, while leaving room for new things to take hold. I don't know that I am doing such a good job of that in the midst of this pandemic. I find myself wanting to recoil, and in many ways I have. I don't venture out much, and I use this pandemic as a fitting excuse not to. Its all a lie though; pretext at its worst. I am ready to run again; not knowing where I am running to or how long before I come up with another excuse to run again. Hearkening to the whispers of Baldwin's quote, I feel like maybe I have given up trying to make a home. I spend too much time entertaining the "what ifs" that I don't know the true nature of "what is". I fancy myself on notions that home is on the other side of another move. Again, its a lie that I have told myself so many times before. I've moved a lot and I still evade doing the work of creating a sense of belonging. I reasoned that maybe I am not at home in my own body, having real experiences, interacting with places and things in real time. Place becomes a convenient scapegoat for avoiding hard things... I often wondered what would have become of me if I stayed in places that I fled? Who would I be now if I just dug my heels in and resolved to stay beyond the moment I felt like leaving? I don't linger in this thought process long because it wont change my current situation. So yeah, living in New York during a pandemic is not what I'd imagined it would be, but that doesn't mean that I cant continue to deconstruct a tightly-wound me such that I can finally touch the raw edges. Feel what I need and figure out a way to make me home no matter where I might find myself. There is no need to flee New York, I tell myself. Its not the thing that is making this hard. It's me and I'm running out of energy trying to escape her. I have to make peace with this home I call self.

Changing My Mind About Fear: Life in the Age of CoVID19

I don't really have a strong inclination to write today other than I just visited the websites of two of my favorite writers and homegirls in my head - dream hampton and Rebecca Walker - but I felt that I did need to write something seeing as I haven't written much this new year. I also felt compelled to share a little about this Coronavirus bullshit that has everyone on edge. I am reluctant to brush it off as anything less than serious, but serious doesn't mean core-shaking; yet here we are shaking at the very core of our collective being. Maybe I have reconciled myself with the reality that we will all get sick at some point and we will all surely die eventually, but I have a bit of fearlessness roiling in my bones. "Wash your hands and be mindful of of your actions", I remind myself. "Don't stare mercilessly at people who cough on the train; you've seen worse", I admonish when tempted to join in on the useless act of non-physical social distancing. I am human and part of that experience is being compassionate. There but for the grace of God go I... coughing and sniffling. A month ago that was me on the train. Pitiful. But virus free. Yet my human reality makes me Lysol my surrounding profusely, and my hands... my hands are rough like cheap toilet paper. Single-ply, greyish white. Truth be told, I am over this panic and yet I am drawn to the news outlets just to get the latest toll and death count. The morbidity should affect me and yet it doesn't. At least not in the way that it does my colleagues. They are in reactionary mode, but come to think of it, when are they not? Goddamnit! The fear of it all angers me and baffles me at the same time. You can only ward off the inevitable for so long and yet humans waste life times doing just that. We don't want to age, face fears, or swallow risks whole, and yet we want the reward of a full and brave life. I think of the meme of the little girl carelessly licking a handrail, as if to say "fuck you!" to any bodily dangers. It amazes me that kids are oblivious to danger and death but fear the imaginary specter hiding in a dark closet. Adults no longer fear the dark spaces in our line of sight, but rather those that lurk in the recesses of our knowledge. We know that we were born dying, but we are so far removed from life outside the physical that we can't remember what it feels like to be pure energy. Funny how we hold tightly to things that were never meant to be ours for the long haul. Again, I don't take the threat of a pandemic lightly, but I refuse to cloak myself in the darkness of worry. It's all an illusion anyway.

This morning I dreamed that I lost my luggage and passport at an airport hotel. The hotel was awash with people and had the faux lux feel of a Mississippi casino presidential suite replete with an unlimited crab leg buffet. I felt physically frantic about losing these things and working through throngs of uninterested bystanders. People in my way... obscuring my view...slowing me down. Despite my very real heart palpitations and uneasiness, at some point during this dream, I said to myself  "This is a dream. None of what you are experiencing is real"...yet I kept looking for this luggage, convinced that someone had plotted to trap me there. I'd no clue where I was headed but I just knew that in this moment, in this place, I felt fear. Fear that was both real and unreal.

I suppose we are simply looking for our luggage. The thing that makes us feel safe and in control even when we aren't.

I've gotten a lot of questions about my plans to travel during this time of heightened awareness, and people oddly seem to get it when I tell them that I am going forward with my travel plans. What I don't say and what is possibly understood is that no person knows the day or the time; so why would I sit around waiting on it? Life is so full of wonder and amazement, and I feel compelled by a sense of divine purpose to go out and roll around in it all. It is my duty to live. Sometimes that means leaving the lost luggage and forging ahead without it.

I have found that more than anything this "scare"is making me reconsider the more important things in my life, like spending more time loving my aging dogs. They are here but a moment and my love means the world to them. I want to focus on that. Also as a person with underlying health challenges, I have been more purposeful about eating well. Not just healthy but well. Food is an experience. A joy. A form of love. I am loving myself a bit more. And to be honest I feel like that is why I am not panicking in this age of worry. I am choosing love. My self preservation doesn't make room for panic. Just a conscious decision to practice love in a very real way. I am not alone in this. The ways in which people are considering the health of others shows glimmers of hope that love can prevail even against this plague of presumption. I can't imagine sending my loved one's away from my presence because I myself was contagious. The kind of interpersonal love that I have experienced makes me crave the communion, and yet love is being alone in this case. But at any rate, maybe it makes the person pull closer to themselves... again love. Seems trivial but I remember during a heated discussion many years ago, I boldly declared that it was not nor has it ever been naive to believe that love is the cure for everything. It is; it just shows up in many different ways. So many that we can't really make sense of it. Maybe we shouldn't try to rationalize the irrational.

Irrational.

In many ways, I feel on a visceral level that all of this is irrational... inexpressible in the ordinary. These are not ordinary times and yet we keep looking for ordinary ways forward. Ordinary not in the sense of being unremarkable, but trite. There is a trite quality to panic and reacting with fear. What if we were bold and brave? What if I just washed my hands a little more or broke a few arbitrary rules to create more... more space in the conclave of social decorum? Instead of telling people how to be, allow them to be their best selves appropriate for this very moment. Now I am getting philosophical, but I hope that you follow.  At any rate, viruses are serious business but I've never known panic to be the cure for anything, let alone upper respiratory infections that we know very little about. It didn't help me to find that luggage and it wont help us move forward in this emerging new normal.

Calm down
Breathe intenion
Love
and wash your nasty ass hands!

Changing My Mind About Dating

A friend who married later in life once told me, "Simone, you have to approach dating like you handle your job. You set goals, objectives, benchmarks etc. and work towards them. Set a goal to have a love life." I shrugged then just as I am shrugging now. I don't buy the idea that women should have to work so damn hard at love. That's too much work for so little in return, and yet, like a fool, late last year, I took her advice and tried my hand at online dating. I was forewarned that dating in NY is hard and that you only really do it to shake off the rust, presuming that there is rust. Granted my coworker met her husband on one of these sites, but even she admits that it was kismet. So I thought that I was going into this with eye wide open. I'd lowered my expectations of what would come of setting up dating profiles and I kept an open mind about the kinds of men with whom I would be willing to interact because this is the one area in my life where I truly do not know what is best for me. I am more particular about toilet paper than I am about men, and to be honest I think that is because I've never really been one of those women who truly needed a man. I need accessories. I need wine. I need coffee. A boyfriend, and certainly a husband, have always been optional, not necessary. The men in my life and around me always seemed to have a sense of entitlement and predilection for a certain kind of woman, usually someone totally unlike myself. I am not thin or classically pretty. I don't suffer fools lightly, and although I am all woman in every sense of the word, I have a very powerful and dominant energy that is usually synonymous with masculinity. I've been known to make men cry. No seriously. I have. I rarely cut people slack, especially if they walk around swinging a dick. Now let me be clear; I don't hate men. Quite the opposite. I like sizing up builds, beards, and bulges. I am the woman who will look a man up and down, make eye contact and show no shame. I admire the granite-like nature of the male aesthetic, but I struggle with the delicate constitutions of their ego. Blame it on upbringing or the constant enabling by other women who do in fact need a man; whatever, the cause, I am not gentle enough to be the glue that holds a man together. I am a supporter and protector by nature, but I am less of a consort and more of a co-regent. Come already put together, ready to withstand life's blows, or stand aside and let me handle this on my own; in my own way. For a while, I thought Breon, maybe you are being too hard. Soften up girl. So I tried the softer approach, and to be quite frank, that doesn't work for me. I am not a background player. While I admire him, I am not cut out to be the Hurts to your Tagovailoa. Either we both shine or he needs to be secure enough to not ask me to dim mine. At any rate, we need to find some common ground that allows us to both be franchise players. I know. I am asking for a sort of unicorn, but I know that they exist... they do.

And that brings us to now...

After 3 months of online dating, I am taking a page out of Tracee Ellis Ross's playbook and learning to be happy just being my own fabulous self. I'd rather take amazing selfies on a vacation that I paid for myself than sit across from a guy who believes that the Netflix Kevin Hart docuseries was - and I quote- "triumphant". That says to me that you too are emotionally stunted, and a disappointment waiting to happen.  I have found a lot of emotionally and conversationally stunted men in these virtual New York streets that cant seem to get past a "good morning beautiful" text. I've met some freaks that I had to calmly remind that nothing on my profile says that I am into polyamory or fetishes. Thanks but no thanks; I don't want to finish my drink. I just want to leave.  There have been the baby mama bashers, the "I like having sex with women but women are the problem" types, and my favorite "I have a girlfriend but she aint ackin' right, but hold on; this is her texting me" characters. There are the posers who have a polished introductory routine but once you spend time getting to know them, you realize that they can barely form a coherent sentence. Then there are the "oh you are a lawyer, so you ballin' right" guys, for whom, everything you do is an exhibition of your spending power. My dude, Navient gets most of my check. If I would've known that you were this kind of date, I would've save my time and money (because he didnt pay) and drank the free wine I have at home. I did meet a nice school teacher, but he has a rain cloud over his head that just wont let up. No, I cant stand the rain, and I have given up trying. Dating was supposed to be fun, but its work, and as I have already established, work is ghetto.

So where does this leave me?

I still communicate with the school teacher, but when I imagine my life a few years from now, I don't see him in it. John Mayer has a line - one of a zillion- that I love: "...and I can't remember life before her name." Life before him and the others was calm. It was something that I could balance and keep stable, and while I am fond of him, his name I can remember... his face is growing fuzzy. The thing that sticks with me the most is during a moment of loss, him in the dark, bending down to rest his head on my shoulder and me briefly holding both of our weight. Although I care for him, I am not the glue that will hold him together. If anything he has shown me that it takes all that I have to simply hold me together. My singleness makes more sense now than it ever did before.

Dating in and of itself, made me realize that people pair off for a few reasons, love not always, if ever, being chief among them. You find someone who adds to you what you have yet to grow in yourself. You find someone who is on a similar journey and needs a traveling companion. You have so much to give that not having someone to shower it upon is a sin against God's nature. For someone like me, I am hyper self aware and everyday I learn something new and invaluable about myself such that I find myself still falling in love with newly found pieces of me. And while we are communal creatures, I have found great joy living life in my head, content to walk alone for as far as I can just to see if I can do it. My, how many miles I have walked alone, and amazed the hell out of myself. But yet through all of this I am still learning what it means to love myself as fervently as I have loved others. Right now, I can't be anyone's glue but my own. It's hard to type this but its also liberating to know this.

I haven't thrown in the towel on companionship of the romantic sort. It's just not a goal of mine. Ambivalence is the word that comes to mind when I think of being in a relationship, and angst with regards to dating. I am open to whatever the Most High sends my way, but I am simply not pressed. I deleted all of my online dating accounts and blocked numbers. I feel lighter and more in alignment with myself.

The teacher occasionally reaches out but we keep it light. Its for reassurance, I guess. Its pleasant and not a bother. However, sometimes I don't respond, and we both know why.

Changing My Mind About Working...This is Ghetto

A friend sent me a text from her excursions in Sint Maarten, a place she was not feeling the day before, but now pleasantly resigned to her current situation. Lamenting on the thought of leaving and returning to mundanity of her 9-5, she shared words that have now become a sort of benchmark for quality of living: "working is ghetto". Now as I type this in my dungeon of an office, tucked in a corner at the back of the lowest floor, I too must admit that working is indeed for the less couth. I mean who willingly and eagerly signs away their life to take on tasks and responsibilities that they'd rather not have? The modern human does. That's who! Consider the white collar 9 to 5. You sit at a desk, and if you're lucky, in an office with walls, in front of a screen and silently crumble apart on the inside. I keep flowers on my desk just to remind me that I am yet still among the living flora and fauna of the world. When they die after a week, I find myself envying their escape. For them, at least, there is an end to this senseless torture. They say figure out your passion and work wont feel like work. I call bullshit. Work is work. I am only here because I need a check. Do I like helping people? Yes of course. If I didn't need to pay my student loans would I be helping people? Maybe but not Monday thru Friday from 9 to 5. I don't like people that much, and frankly I think if there weren't a whole entire professional landscape built around helping people, the altruism we so desperately seek in the world would finally have room to manifest. Maybe the government would remember that its supposed to serve people? At any rate, I lie to myself every morning. Its the power of this lie that gets me out of bed in the morning, onto two different trains and through throngs of zombie-like New Yorkers, to my pit of an office, just to "help people". Even when I had the so-called "cool job", I had to lie to myself to get going. For starters anyone who believes that multi-national corporations hocking ice cream can be a force for good is certifiably delusional. Secondly, getting white men to "pay what they owe" to society, in particularly people who look like me, is a Sisyphean task. The lie stopped being so powerful; all of its euphoric sway lost. However, the grander lie that working the way that we work is normal, has a cult-like grip on my logic. Everyday I tell myself that I must work to matter. I must contribute something so that I can add it to a piece of paper proving my value to society. I must work to accumulate validation from others who I hope will say that I am both smart and productive. I get results. But what happens when those markers of success cease to trigger floods of dopamine in the reward center of my brain? What happens when I can no longer ignore the heaviness of fatigue, or the finish line that seems to get farther away with each achievement. The addiction no longer gives me the high, and suddenly I realize that Whitney was right: crack is whack and so is working for a living.

There are days that I wished that I didn't like nice things. That I could value my freedom more than the fleeting joy of finally buying a Chanel bag or even something more practical, calling myself a homeowner. All signs that I am upholding my side of this social bargain. I long for the sense of freedom that would allow me to live day to day and figure it out as I go along, but the fact is, I like my things. Love of things might be the most ghetto of all mindsets. Listen, I'm not saying be a bum. I do value productivity and purpose, but less in a capitalist framework. I think about Coltrane towards the end of his earthly run. His music was not made for sales or to appease the masses. Ole dude, literally became a conduit. A divine experience. We wont all be that exceptional, but I do believe that we have the capacity to do amazing stuff... when we are not consumed with the need for things and a paycheck to acquire things.

Maybe I have worked so hard up until this point that I am literally out of fucks to give about work and the working world. I've always been the model of get it done. If there was anyone who was going to succeed, it was going to be me. There were times that I didn't give my all. Take law school of example. I was literally taking up space, doing the bare assed minimum - believe me it showed -  because I didn't know what else to do. I just knew that I had to work at some point, and law seemed like a lucrative and important avenue for me to venture down. It was like walking down 5th Ave knowing I can't afford anything. I can however admire the windows. I spent three years admiring the concept, never intending to buy into it completely. But there were those times where I gave my all a little too much, and despite getting it done, I didn't get the return I'd hoped for. Those times left me spent and questioning why. I'd do something remarkable and the CEO would barely mention my name, but would revel in my achievement. A colleague, whose sense of self was bigger than mine, would proudly explain my doings as if they were their own, and I, too tired to fight, would convince myself that the only thing that mattered was that it got done. This is not to say that I've just been a victim of my own making. There were some hard fought victories that still drag a smile across my face, but not as much as reading something that I wrote years ago or looking a crisp photo that I took. Lately, I've derived more pleasure from cleaning my closet than completing a policy manual. At least having a clean closet matters to me. My coworkers can run amok and I've just decided that I don't care anymore. As people, most of them are great, and that goes for all of my colleagues past and present. I just don't care about them as coworkers, which is ironic because my current job is all about creating a caring and cohesive team. I gotta laugh at that.

At some point or another, most of us have found ourselves sitting at a dining room table in front of a plate of food that we usually wouldn't touch with a javelin pole. Our host, eagerly looking at us, hoping that we delight in their creation as much as they took pride in creating it. You know deep down inside that this shit is ghetto, toxic even, but you fix your face, adopt a steely resolve, and shovel a mouthful onto your palate. You chew and somehow manage to suppress your sense of smell, all the while slowly dying on the inside. You eat enough to ease the fears of the host and put your fork down without having to explain why. You uphold your end of this social bargain. The reward: you aren't ostracized. The downfall: you'll likely be invited to dinner again.

Every 2 weeks I get a sizable check. Everyday I am expected to show up and keep showing up. This is the arrangement.

I was off for 10 days. I came back to work for 3 got frustrated, and left for another 5. Most of those days, I sat on my couch questioning work and my career. I picked apart my life choices: 

I work because I must support myself and my habit. What's life without a constant stream of things to sedate me? I could get married and be a housewife, but I like control. Being a housewife doesn't give me that, unless I start stashing money in secret accounts or convince him to let me manage the finances. Shit. That's work too. I don't have any wealthy benevolent elderly relatives who will write me into their wills or set up a trust in my name. I'm clever but I have a bullishly strong sense of fairness in my blood. So I cant foresee me coming up with a Theranos equivalent. I'm too practical to invent something like the fidget spinner and dupe people into buying such nonsense. I'd be a poor salesperson for my own product. So around 5pm on Sunday, I told myself "Self... you are going to work tomorrow and you will tell yourself the same lie that you've been telling yourself for years. Tomorrow you will believe it even when you don't. Why? Because we have bills to pay. Adulting to do. You've had 15 days to figure out a solution, and you didn't. So you don't get to whine. You take what you have been given and go get it done."

...This shit is still ghetto though.

Changing My Mind About Social Media

I'm giving up Facebook at the start of my 40th year. I have been on the site on and off for nearly a decade and a half. I am not sure that this was the best use of my energy even when it was lighting up the reward centers of my brain. This constant surge of like-driven dopamine has made my love of words and reading dull. My passion for music, a simple movement through motions. Great conversation an echo of what was already posted as a status. At the worst, its robbed and continues to rob me of time. I feel like I broke myself. As I barrel towards my fourth decade, time is now the most important thing to me. How, where, and with whom I spend it. What is the return on investment? Ideally, the long term, mid term, and short term outcomes would be joy, joy, and joy, in that order.  Right now, I get bursts of joy but I've come to accept that...

Facebook does not elicit joy. Instagram does not evoke joy. Twitter does not create joy.

I don't care how many likes I get, how many I give, what kind of kindhearted comments are stacked below my photo, or what meme keeps me giggling during a boring workday; all of it pales in comparison to having an actual full-bodied experience with people. The tingle of not only hearing a person laugh in real time but also feeling their laughter reverberate through a room or shake the sofa you are both sharing, wakes up parts of me that bring joy. Looking someone in the eyes when they compliment you connects you to that person in ways that a heart emoji can't.  Hugging someone opens you up in ways that "*huggs*" simply cannot. There is nothing vulnerable about this parallel existence we have in the social media universe. Yes we can and often do overshare but that is in an attempt to capture what this digital world simply cant give us. We waste time seeking an idealized form of what the real world already offers us- intimacy. If I am okay with this Utopian ideal of intimacy by proxy that social media offers me, its not time wasted, I guess. However, I have reached a point where its not enough. It doesn't work for me. It is time wasted in a life that suddenly has no more time to waste.

I am going analog in a digital world. Kinda.

I want to recommit to living a life that shows by means of action rather simply displays. I came of age in the 80s and early 90s. A world of emergent technology- CD players and digital watches. Not only was owning these items seen as the cool thing to do, it also represented a movement toward instant rewards versus putting in effort to get the chosen effect. I no longer had to wait for my song to be played by a DJ or to have it come up in the cue on a cassette tape. I could now select the number and jump straight to it. The joy of listening to a DJ's rotation or creating space to enjoy an artist's entire 16-song offering started to dissipate. We became our own DJs. We curated our own 16-song sets. The joy of the exchange was being lost. Telling time the old fashion way is now something that a lot of kids and adults struggle with; they need the display. Because they cannot process time, the instrument that displays controls them. Not unlike how social media controls us. Its a display of emotion, intimacy, vulnerability rather than the process of truly engaging in it.

And its not just social media. Its the cellphones, the personal portable screens, Inspector Gadget- level watches, doorbells, refrigerators. Its a world of display... a virtual reality usurping our concrete one, completely erasing our incorporeal one. Our gears and pulleys now electrical particles and keystrokes. Our spirits, netherworld ghosts. I know that we've hit an event horizon because when we can't access this virtual existence, we have withdrawals that render us useless. Its another way to escape the fact that we are spirits choosing to move through a physical world, and that these two states of being don't often sync up in a way that makes us comfortable. We hope that by creating a 3rd existence, we can do what God failed to do. For this, we are paying dearly.

I didn't realize how important the ability to feel was to me until I found myself hearing that my cousin had passed and I couldn't feel enough to cry. I knew that I was hurting, but because I'd spent the better half of my adult years displaying emotion rather than wading through it, I couldn't process it. There's been a lot that I have opted not to process and social media has allowed me to skip this very real human experience. When I have faced rejection, I post a picture that I know will get quick likes. When I've been dejected, I have posted funny memes so that I could pull from a universe of laughing emojis. I looked for the world to display instant goodness; the kind that soothed me in the moment, but did not teach me how to like myself or laugh in spite of. It did not sharpen my mind's eye enough to see that goodness is ever present; it just takes some work.

I no longer want to see NeNe Leakes' exaggerated laughter. I want to experience and feel yours in real time.

I get it, we live in a global world that allows me to trade quips with a like-minded individual in Southeast Asia. But not unlike my sight, this connection is spotty and my brain is filling in the spaces. This connection is more of an assumption than it is fact. Sometimes I assume correctly. Many times, I don't, but its easier to lean into this presumptive reality than working to understand and build in one based in fact. I've lost friendships because people preferred this alternate existence in an echo chamber to the messy conflict that comes with real life interactions. I mourn those losses but as with most things as of late, I let it go with grace. Their departures have made space for people who are willing to get messy with me. I even tried online dating only to find that when the veneer of the display was removed that most of the men I met lacked the skills and emotional acuity needed to build and sustain a relationship. I didn't give expected instant gratification. I gave complexity. That's not what we seek any longer.

But that is what I want... complex, rich, interactions.

And for that reason, I am cutting some of the wires that have found their way into my mind and heart. I struggle with disconnecting from Facebook because that means I will literally lose connection with many folks, but to be honest, I question the soundness of these connections if a virtual platform is all that held them together in the first place. I question our commitment to the relationship if we cant make the effort to connect in real life. The hallmark of any kind of relationship is making the choice to keep engaging. To keep trying. To keep showing up. Sometimes I believe that we are more committed to choosing the platform than the people on it. We live for the temporary thrill more so the reward of something more sustainable

I'm not willing to make that trade off any longer. At least not on Facebook. Its been my digital watch, and I need to relearn the art of telling time. I need to let the DJ lean into his art form and share his gift with me. I want to listen to the entire album of life, not just play those tunes that I like because in doing so, I am missing out on magic. Sidenote: all the magic happens on the B-side. Great DJs know this, but most folks are rarely curious enough to flip the vinyl. Let them open you up in ways that the listening to lead single on repeat simply cannot.

I am leaving room to be present and feel. So if suddenly it appears as if I am not present, its because I am out catching a feeling somewhere. Disconnect and join me.

Changing My Mind About Me: 10 Things That I Learned About Myself in 2019

Ahh 2019. While I have seen others slam you for being brutal, I will be the first to laud you for your transparency and honesty. I am leaving this year a much stronger person than when I started. I'd like to be snarky and say that its because I am no longer in Vermont, but no, not quite. There was more to this year than transitioning out of Maplelandia, and each lesson, each event, each movement builds on the other. It was a year of order. Making sense of my intentions. I am not 100% in order, and I know that I will never be. That is not how this thing called life works. Its a lot of organizing and a lot of being able to function in disorganization. But for all of this philosophizing, I did learn a bit about myself this year. Want a list? Well here it goes:

• I am more of a free-spirit than I give myself room to be. This year I saw myself shake off some of the values that I had as a result of my upbringing. The most profound and the one that I am still trying to make sense of is religion and faith. I might've stepped foot in a church maybe once this year. Part of me feels liberated, but a big part of me feels a void. If I don't have this ritual of church-going then what do I have? If I am no longer digesting the body and blood of Christ, then what is feeding me? I don't have the answers as of yet, and oddly, I am not in a rush to figure it out. I might go to hell. I might reemerge as a new being. I might very well become energy in the universe. I don't know. I keep a belief in a higher power. That's all I got at the moment.

• That brings me to my next point: I am suddenly okay with not knowing a lot of stuff. Will this government collapse? Maybe. Are we being ruled by reptilian overloads? Possibly. Does my mom really like me as a person. Ehhh, who knows. Who cares? My existence and how I am moving through the world now takes up 85% of my mental space. The other 15% is for random stuff. I think that I have spent so much time worrying about the world around me, that I owe it to myself to finally wonder about myself for a while. Notice I said "wonder" and not "worry"

• I stopped worrying this year. Well, not completely but not nearly as much as I used to worry. Look, a lot of shit is out of my control. I accept that. I fix and handle what I can, and the rest, I leave it up to God and the adults who are actually supposed to be handling things. Everything is not mine to fix. Every good work is not my work. I learned personal restraint.

• Women are told that we need men to be whole. I tried the dating thing and it confirms what I already knew about myself: I don't. I like male company, but needing it is a bit of a stretch. And please don't insist that I have yet to meet the right guy. I don't believe that there is a singular Mr. Right. I do believe that I am entitled to make a choice to be with someone who I know will be tragically flawed and will get on my fucking nerves. I make that choice a few times a year, but I don't feel compelled to tether myself to someone nonstop. I lose me in ways that I don't like. I compromise too much. I have to suppress a lot of strong energy when I am with men, and its much too debilitating. At the end of the day, I love me more than I will ever love a man. I will always choose me first.

• I moved this year, and part of the reason was that I wanted to prioritize my personal life over my professional. Put work on autopilot and live. Truth is, I am a workhorse, a taskmaster, a sergeant by design. Getting shit done is in my DNA. I can't turn off work. I don't want to. It makes me happy! Conversely, I also discovered that as long as a I have a steady network of friends, a few dates, and some real travel, I'm good. I don't need to throw myself blindly into social settings for the sake of having a decent life. I have a GREAT life. There is no dichotomy here. Just balance.  

• I learned fear a long time ago. Hard stop. It was taught to me, and became my ethos. I let it go. A lot of the shit that scared me is actually easy and/or harmless. If it scares me, I'm gonna do it. If my spirit says "yo... leave that alone", then I will avoid it. There is a profound difference between being scared and being intuitively aware. I'm getting better at distinguishing the two. 

• If you have been following my life's saga since the start of the year, then you know that I walked away from a good job that was all wrong for me. I discovered that I could not, would not, and should not educate or save white people from themselves. I don't dislike white folks. I do hate that white supremacy somehow makes it seems as if it is my responsibility as a Black woman to fix what I have neither created nor benefited from. These strongholds are not mine to tear down. That's emotional labor that, in the name and honor of Sadie L. Wilkerson, I  refuse to do. Period. Dear white folks, do your own work. I'll see you on the other side.

• Here's the big thing... I earned the right to say "fuck you" to anyone who crosses my boundaries, and be unapologetic about it. As a sat on my coach's couch (say that 5 times really quickly), red and puffy eyed from crying, I realized that at best I have a few more decades in this body. For whom am I living while I am here? For 39 years, I've given a great deal of consideration to others, even when it wasn't given in return. Its made me ambivalent about life in general. This year, I stopped being ambivalent and got intentional about what is mine to own, shape, and create. Its mine, and no one else's. People might no like it, but they'll get over it.

• I used to think that I was cool with playing to the background. That it doesn't matter who gets the shine as long as the greater good is served. Now I know that I have been selling myself short. I want what's mine. I work too hard and share too many great insights just to be behind the scenes. I shouldn't feel bad about stepping up and being out front. I am more than confident in my abilities and ideas because I know from where they originate. Bernice King's last words words to me as an employee of hers were" You are a leader. You know that don't you? You are a leader." Those words stay with me, not because she meant them as a compliment, because she didn't, but rather because it was an acknowledgment that my light was too bright for her shadow. That's not my place.

• Lastly, joy... I learned and am learning what sparks joy in my life. Some of it is simple. A lot of it is unconventional and complex. I don't judge it. I just let it all wash over me. I am intentional about seeking it out, but less inclined to hold onto it and try to control it. That's not how I want to expend my energy. Its like dancing: I don't need a routine to move effortlessly to the rhythm. I just move.

...and that's what I am going to keep doing in 2020. Keep moving.

Changing My Mind About Joy

I made a commitment first and foremost to pursue and cultivate joy at every turn in my life during this next decade. Joy isn't always some major event. Rarely is it something that is driven by others; its a inside job. It can well up from a sensory experience, a memory, a moment. Sound or solitude. Its is up to the person, that vessel of Godly energy to determine what brings them joy. I have been making my own personal list and flowers come to mind. So once a week, I buy my cheese grits and fresh flowers on my way into work. It makes my Mondays a bit brighter. I decided to stop waiting for someone to send me flowers the moment that I discovered that I was that someone. Here's to more joy... more flowers and cheese grits!