"did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there?"--Train
Old folks and Bible-thumpers will tell you when something is "off" in your world, it's a Spirit. There are some doubters and naysayers, of course, who think that's hogwash. One might argue that with the loss of my beloved grandfather, a few run-ins with some major exes, a ton of travel, and a career shift, a mild loss of equilibrium is natural. But being an old soul and having done my personal fair share of Bible-thumping, I'm inclined to agree with the senior citizens. This said, I'll let you know there's currently a mixed-cocktail of a spirit wafting around my bedroom. I think that my cleaning frenzy yesterday, in which I shockingly decided to organize and put away the three piles of clothes and pillows that have been posted up around my room since June, gave the spirit nowhere left to hide. Ingredients include: mental and emotional fatigue, wistfulness, confusion, and a dash of regret--which is normally indigestable and staunchly not a part of my vocabulary. But I taste it ever-so-slightly in this concoction. And I think I have a bit of a hangover.
These late 20's are interesting, because you wake up daily with a heavy sense of purpose. It's just that you don't always know what that purpose is. It can seem like one thing when you put your head on the pillow at night and another thing entirely when you lift it in the morning. I'm personally in that phase where you wish you really had nine lives, nine opportunities to live completely different existences. Where you feel like choosing just one thing might take away the possibility of something else, or that you might run out of time before something important you needed to do gets done. That phase where you're doing everything under the sun, but nothing well. Or maybe it's not a phase, maybe it's just me--I haven't ruled out that possibility. I can't even choose a nail color for Pete's sakes (so I wear three) and that only lasts a week.
Anyhow, it's one of those days I feel not just like a writer who delivers tongue-in-cheek crazy, but someone that's truly crazy. It's one of those weeks I can't decide how I like my hair, my eggs, or my love life. One of those months I'm itching to do twenty different things and not doing any one of them solidly. It's one of those days I've sent five emails, searched twelve sites, sent four tweets but haven't answered one call or gotten out of bed, because I haven't figured out why I should. These days don't come often, but when they do, they make you feel like your life is in a tailspin.
The past couple of months have been ridiculously full--I've loved, I've lost, I've been confronted with that I've loved and lost--or loved and left. And so today, I'm in bed listening to Nancy Wilson and John Coltrane and plotting my next step, just me and Lola (my pink Dell). In the midst of this, I'm mentally running through the overdose of information, pontifications, and personal thoughts I've been bombarded with lately. Among them, my best friend's father's wisdom from last week, when he offered at dinner that our generation is like an old O'Jay's tune from the '70s that sang something about "where are you going", that our generation has no purpose and no idea how to discern purpose. The basic principle of life, he said, is that you discover your purpose and how it's going to serve others, find a partner to ride with you, and God will supply absolutely everything you need to do what you need to do. He said that our generation misses out on the partner and the purpose. We treat life like it's supposed to cater to us and our egos, and since we don't treasure the gifts of life, we miss the importance of picking the partner congruent with our life's work.
Of course, this got me thinking. I think a lot of women instinctively know and embrace this need for a partner, but our cultural climate has led us, over time, to act outside of character-- which fuels men doing the same thing. When Mr. Evans--whom I've known for 25 years and I know wants the best for me and wouldn't give me wooden advice--tells me something, I listen. So his conversation left me wondering what I've missed trying to feed my ego needs. I'm not a snob, but I am picky. Chemistry is very delicate, in all areas of life. And passion is penultimate in my life. If I'm not absolutely crazy about it, I won't care. Be it a career, a man, a friend, a song...it has to strike the absolute perfect chord inside of me, or I can't commit to it. This leaves me with few options. But the right thing feels so amazing, that I can't bear the off-key notes of the wrong things.
And this takes me back to the club (how many times in life will you hear that transition?). The kissing, the laughing, the acting out, the good times...they're great. And life should be made up of moments like that, in places like that, with people like that. But those moments can and should never define your life. I know they won't define mine. And so I'm left looking for the center of life, the core, the meat and who will eat it with me. Where I'm going.
Life is too intricate a science to be able to get it all right off the bat; it's trial and error for sure. But how many errors can you make before they're no longer trials but a way of being? This question is looming in my mind with the other million tooling around in my brain about tomorrow. And yet the fact remains. This day, I'm a semi-grown woman that's still in her bed at 4PM, typing away to ears she's not sure hear, including her own. >>read more
2. After sacrificing reputation playing The Office Ho in a '70's sitcom and sacrificing public perception playing The Idiot in an '80's sitcom, wouldn't hitting your prime and becoming a comic A-lister and sex symbol in your late 80's be priceless? [
7. From a spectator's POV doesn't it seem like Dancing With the Stars Cheryl Burke pulled a producer aside and demanded every hot Black dude that comes on the show be partnered with her?
8. Wasn't KFC's chicken already disgusting enough without them debuting a sandwich composed entirely of it?
9. Isn't "promiscuous dressing" in Iran probably showing an ankle or something? [
10. Instead of "it's a great time to be an actress", didn't Jennifer Lopez mean to say "it's a bad time to be a terrible singer coming back with a single about $600 shoes in a recession"? [
11. It's said often, but don't we wish Lauryn Hill could suspend the eternal search for her soul long enough to drop a new album? [
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17. Does JJ Walker think he's repenting for his Good Times coonery by red carpet-ing with Ann "Hateful Skank" Coulter? [
3. Don't we want to tell Beyonce that, in regards to her purported "six-month break", she needs far more people?
4. While many of us are still waiting to begin our families, doesn't it look like raising children is becoming exponentially more difficult?
5. Taking into account the current climate of the children-of-celebrities culture and her obvious love of attention, aren't we slightly terrified of how Willow Smith might turn out?
6. Isn't something wrong with a woman who doesn't see Nancy Pelosi as a personal hero?
7. Did you know some gynecologists in NYC have begun selling top-of-the-line, European vibrators? 7b. Will this mean they can write prescriptions for this? 7c. Doesn't insurance need to cover this?
8. Don't you want an iPad?
9. Isn't Classic BIC Erykah Badu amazing?
10. Couldn't Mo'Nique have kept the "you can have whatever you like" lowdown on her marriage to herself?
11. Although it was believed to be a fad upon inception, doesn't it look like reality television is here to stay?
12. Shouldn't Stephen A. Smith propose to me? (Can't really explain the years-long crush, it's just still there)
13. With the announcement of Rihanna's Summer tour featuring Nicki Minaj & Ke$ha, wouldn't we not be surprised if a publicity-starved lesbian (or "bisexual") relationship was born of the tour?
14. Don't we need Sarah Palin to go far, far away?
15. Since yet another California woman has given birth to eight babies, doesn't the fertility industry need to be government-regulated before another Octomom or Jon&Kate pops on the scene?
16. Speaking of which, shouldn't we go back to "celebrity" being constituted by talent?
17. With the mild upswing of the economy, are Wall Street bankers getting dates again?
18. Don't we need a separate planet for celebrity mistresses that overshare?
19. Aren't there currently too many celebrity mistresses oversharing?
20. Isn't She's Out of My League one of the most female-friendly (and cutest!) romantic comedies made in a very long time?
21. While much was made of their explosive chemistry when they were first elected, and although they still seem pretty close, don't you have the sneaking suspicion President & First Lady O haven't had sex since, like, last Independence Day? Sad face.
22. Hasn't the whole White supermodel-babydaddy thing worked out pretty well for Halle?
23. Isn't a Middle Eastern female suicide bomber a bit redundant?
And one to grow on: In the women-disempowering culture of the Middle East, aren't these newsmaking female suicide bombers just the new come-up for male extremists? Chew on that.
