Before I started my almost daily journaling habit this month, I had thought about taking a few writings, cleaning them up and repurposing as a post or two for my other site.

Well, I quickly realized that the power of “I” on the more personal side is very difficult to adapt for public consumption.

It’s not my forté and therefore it will be a hard pass for me.

I’m pretty good at quietly slipping true to life experiences into my fiction storytelling – the kind of experiences that make people wonder if they truly happened to me or someone in my circles.

So yeah, I’ll stick with that. 🙂

As an alternative, I will use the other site to “riff” on different topics, share the writings of others who are talented in using the power of “I” and other interesting items I have stumbled across that resonate with me.

If you are interested in the other site, Blackberries Are Sweeter, there is a link under the Menu on the right-side of this page.

Wishing you a happy Wednesday.

M

Whenever I watch the news, I have so many questions that roll around my head like:

What would non-mask wearing/Covid-19 non-believers do if they were asked to sign a legal waiver forfeiting their right to life-saving care, especially now that our hospitals are over-capacity?

How quick would stricter gun control laws be implemented if masses of law abiding Brown and Black people intentionally decided to avail themselves in open carry states like other groups do?

Would people’s biases, negative attitudes and behaviors change if karma was a guaranteed consequence?

The thing is that I already have the answers to all these questions so why do they keep boggling my mind?

Maybe I just need to stop watching the news for now. 🙂

M

Yeah, I’m sick and tired of the shenanigans.

I’m professionally trained to assess multiple sides of any situation. And because of my experience, I also know that most of the time, there is usually only “one” truth after all the facts of a given situation are gathered.

I said facts.

Not fake news, fake facts or what you think is true.

Facts that reflect truth.

The truth is that when you are a Black, Indigenous, a person of color or not from an affluent background, you often find yourself being treated differently by those who don’t want to lose the power and privilege over you – power and privilege oftentimes acquired by standing on the heads (and sometimes necks) of those who are often factored out of important equations.

And the truth is that yesterday’s incident was a sterling example of the fact that justice is not always equal and that double standards exist.

Deux poids deux mesures.

I’m not going to repeat what I said in this post .

If you are new to my space, just know that with me, any conversation that includes a sentence like, “I don’t support him but…” will be shut down hard before the “b” in “but” can be uttered.

Then, I will tell you why and cut you loose – it’s that simple.

Yeah, sorry, not sorry.

Rant over. Time to get back to more positive fiction writing things…:)

Your thoughts?

Chasing my writing goals and aspirations requires burning a few old ways of doing (or not doing) things.

So with that in mind, I’m getting myself re-organized and starting fresh.

It was the perfect snowy-and-stay-at-home-because-of-the-pandemic kind of day and I have managed to transcribe over a hundred Post-Its with scene ideas and dialogue into neatly assigned Moleskines.

But I can easily see that my folders of research, character sketches, and semi-abandoned drafts will take an entire weekend to sort through.

I feel good about getting this step done because it’s given me a chance to reacquaint myself with my characters.

I’ll also be in a better position to decide with whom and what story to focus on as a novella.

While I’m doing all that, I’ll be leaving you with some fiction I’ve previously posted here over the next few weeks.

For those who are new to this space, you can consider the fiction I’ll be reposting as samples of what I love to write.

Stay well, stay safe.

M

P.S. If you are interested in following me on my other blog space, you can click here.

It’s on a day like today, January 1, that you’ll see lots of posts online about picking a word or words to focus on as a mantra for the new year.

I’ve decided that my words for 2021 will be “harmony” and “stealth”.

“Harmony” because my desire is to make all the different parts of my life coexist better together as opposed to competing with each other.

“Stealth” because sometimes the less others know about your self-development projects, the less chance of being derailed by those who prefer the status quo.

Have you chosen power words for 2021? If so, what are they?

P.S. Like I said in a previous post, I’ll be posting less here. If you are interested in following me on my other blog space, you can click here.

Stay well, stay safe.

M

I always love reading everyone’s “end of year” blog posts.

You know, like what they learned during the year, what they are looking forward to and how they will do things differently after the clock strikes midnight.

It’s obvious that we are all HAPPY to put 2020 behind us and though it was (and still is) a bitter pill to swallow, even I (a realist) am finding myself oddly optimistic in these last days of 2020.

We’ve had a universal experience.

We’ve all been touched by some level of division, stress, heartbreak, loneliness and loss.

We learned new things about ourselves, those in our inner circles and outer circles and about other citizens in the world – things we may never have noticed or acknowledged if we hadn’t been forced to slow down during this sh*t show of a year.

Some of us discarded what was no longer useful or important in our lives. Whether it be physical crap in our living spaces or people who revealed their true selves, we’ve trimmed some of the fat from our lives.

Some of us are simply happy that words like “marginalized”, “privileged” and “systemic racism” are finally in day-to-day vocabulary and that those who want to retain their privilege are clearly revealing themselves through their own words and actions.

So yeah, 2020 was a b*tch all around but it did serve a few helpings of knowledge and a bunch of piping hot lessons.

We got through 2020 so whatever awaits us in 2021, we’ll get through it too.

Stay safe, stay well and happy new year!

With hospitals nearing maximum capacity and the lockdown starting at midnight, I’ll be doing my part (as I always have since this mess started), which is sticking to my “bubble” family and venturing out only for “essentials”.

I’ll choose “Covid fatigue” any day over being:

• a burnt out medical professional who hasn’t hugged their kids in months and is being forced to work even longer overtime hours;
• helpless, unable to visit a loved one suffering in the hospital and dealing with irregular updates by staff members who are sometimes nice and sometimes not-so-nice over the phone; or
• the unlucky one to navigate planning a “virtual” funeral/memorial.

Like someone said on television the other day (and I’ll paraphrase): “If you insist on attending holiday parties now, you’ll be forced to attend funerals in the new year.”

Sobering thought, isn’t it?

On that serious note, I wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Stay safe and make the most of your quarantine bubble.

And if you are doing the holidays solo, indulge in lots of self-care and maybe a little extra rum in your eggnog.