below average

perhaps it is because i have been bred to achieve. i have been trained to not just attend class but to have perfect attendance and not to just win the game but to shut the other opponent out. perhaps it is because for most of my early life being outstanding was the norm... well flash forward to now. i won a fellowship to go to brazil at 20, was teaching at 21, and was closing on a home by 23 and at 24 i am feeling very very below outstanding. thus by way of the aforementioned logic, i feel somewhat below average. i am applying to graduate school. trying to estimate which schools are too lofty to waste the application fee and which schools might actually let me in. i pull out my year and a half old GRE scores (another one of the lovely products by the Evil Testing Service) and i notice that most of my scores are around 70%.

now i am from the school of thought that a C is the gentleman's F. (shout out to my AP Physics C teacher) so when i look at these scores i think man i failed. but for instance on the writing i got a 5.0 and its only out of 5.5 and i see that if i were to divide 5/5.5 i would have a 91% and that would be an A. hooray!!!

yes i am anal. yes i do over react. yes i do think to hard and maybe i am still above average!

beyonce and my self hate

its been a long time and i'm not gonna waste precious space reminiscing about blogging. i'm just gonna blog like i never left.

i bought the first beyonce album, dangerously in love. i am a shapely light skinned girl myself so of course i think she is beautiful but, i have never felt ubiquity. call me old fashioned but i want artists to be concerned with the ART more than the money. the artsyness is important to me and beyonce is a brand. so, i became pretty close to a beyonce hater.

its logical. i hate ubiquity. beyonce is ubiquitous. i hate beyonce. however, i am here to apologize because i was wrong.

its hard as hell to be a woman in front of my full length mirror. i imagine that it's a bajillion times harder to be a woman in front of the world. i have never been impressed with mrs. carter's seemingly blank expressions during interviews, but i saw this episode of tyra and i am confessing for all of my transgressions.

beyonce you are fierce and you are all about womanism in your own way. you just want women to feel important and powerful and sexy and how can i hate on any woman trying to pass that message along. you are working in your ministry. although we may not always agree on the means, you and i are definitely in sync on the ends.

i can't love bell hooks and hate you. i have got to love you and cheer for you and get excited about your success as a woman making strides for future women. on top of that, i need to feel sexy, and special, and empowered and you are giving me a soundtrack to which i can become what i desire.

hating you is hating me. what kind of woman hates women... won't be me!

determination

for those who know me, ya'll know i suffer with some serious anxiety. as brilliant and as wonderful as i am, i live in a constant state of fear. i have a meltdown pretty regularly off of the everyday normal stuff, so you can imagine how i've been acting while trying to buy a condo. i have been LOOSE...do u hear me (read me, lol). i really have been out there, but i think i got myself together now. there is a lot going on in my life. essentially, i live with my ex-boyfriend, which is a bad look, just a horrible look. we were roomates...then we messed around and caught feelings... and because we know its best we are calling it quits at least for the moment. it sounds crazy and it only sounds crazy because it IS! but anyway, like i was saying, i am getting this life of mine together: ENTER BUDDHISM stage right. i am buddhist. and because i live in fear (check the beginning of this post) i don't tell everybody because i fear the possible reactions. see i ain't no DUMMY, people in the South especially love their JESUS and i am not trying to defend myself or my practice to the closedminded with good intentions. i understand that people are really trying to save my soul from what they believe is eternal damnation but christianity just ain't for me...but back to the point so....

Buddhism is a wonderful and powereful tool. i periodically go in and out of practice (this is bad) but i always know that when i am feeling my most looney, Buddhism will allow me to take some control over my life. we, Buddhists, believe that through our practice we have the ability to change our lives. and as i chanted today i felt the most amazing feeling come over my body. i felt my life changing. i felt my perspective changing and instead of thinking about all of the problems i think i have like the house and the roomate ex boyfriend and many many more, i started thinking about the root.

the root, my good friends is that nasty fear monster. so often, too often i let that fear make me its $2.00 whore and have its way with me, but today for the first time i felt that fear leaving me. fear is such a paralyzing thing. but its me that gives it power. anywho. its nice to have a new determination, a new lease on life, if u will :)

in love...i think

well according to these last posts i should be about ready to commit to the guy in R.I. right? wrong!!! instead of doing what i thought i would be, i am interested in the guy i thought i hated. the guy i called a vagina, the guy i moved in with because i wasn't sexually attracted to him. this guy has my heart!

a life without regret

i have the habit of acting quite impulsively when it comes to matters of the heart (or pants). up until my trip to the developing world, i thought that this was a pretty cool habit. MAN, have sights of poverty, hardship, and Brasil changed that perspective! before coming here i had already decided that i needed to be celibate for a year. the weeks before graduation were filled with more drama than i will ever say in this blog. i was reckless and dumb and i have been having nightmares about some of the HORRIBLE choices I made during undergrad. I think i've had sex at most 10 times...at most. Of these ten times I didn't get off not once, and I didn't even like the guy I had most of the sex with. UGH! Its even hard to type these facts. Shame, shame, shame, wtf was i thinking about. ahhh then it hit me.

i came to school a virgin and graduated with 2 and a possible (this isn't spades, but i'm not counting the possible) sexual partners (not including dome). how did this travesty happen? i was trying to make my life more interesting by getting involved with men. and to think i refer to myself as a blackgirlgenius...UGH! anyway, 2 and a p, some embarassing sexual experiences, and 4 years later i feel like sending an apology letter to the boys i messed with. they probably don't give two shits about what happened, but i do. it is literally haunting me what i did with some of these young men. using people for dome or sex or attention is sooooo not cool. i don't know why i thought it was interesting to toy with people in that way, but before i start the blogging equivalent of johnny gill/keith sweat begging for forgiveness; i'm sorry. i am 98% sure these men don't read my rants anyway so i will have to get my scary behind together enough to apologize in person...UGH!

open your eyes, see who adores you

sometimes it takes me years to figure out what was really working for me because i was so distracted by all the things that weren't. i can pull up countless examples from academia to boys to style...ah so much wasted time on trying to be what it wasn't in the cards for me to be. the blessing is that i'm still breathing and i have at the very least this moment to change this pattern

dear life..please slow down..thanks..moko

damn. life is on coke right now. okay maybe that was a bad analogy, but life is really on the move. all my favorite tv shows have been cancelled for years. my favorite songs are almost a decade old if not more. people i went to school with are mommas and poppas. its all too much. it's got me feeling a little lonely. my parents told me that life would challenge my friendships, but who really listens to them. i surely wasn't trying to hear that. i knew it all until i moved out. ever since then, i've been clear that i don't know anything! it's quite a relief to know that you don't know. you are relinquished from being disappointed at wrong choices and bad moves. anyways back to the point...a bunch of my homies didn't go to college. now four years later from the time where i thought that none of that mattered i see how it might matter. i am not the girl that left my mom's house. i don't talk like that girl. i don't dress like her. i don't have her style. i don't even do what she did. we might listen to the same music, but i ain't her. but people from back home that never left home are a lot like they were four years ago. not saying that's always bad, if it ain't broke don't fix it, but it makes me look like a stranger to them. i don't know where i am going with this blog. life is on the move i guess i just have to catch up.