No Money

Pretty decent track off of a pretty decent Kings of Leon album. Listening to Come Around Sundown after a crappy day makes the day a little less crappy.

So as a person that continually has little money due to not having a job, the thought of coming into a nice stipend from school is pretty exciting. I’m taking some of that nice stipend to go to Florida and visit family. Y’all know how I feel about my natural family, so this is kind of a big deal. Plan A is to go to Miami and see my favorite Uncle. Plan B is to go to Jacksonville and see my favorite brother and his parentals. (A very large part of me is counting down the days until I have my own place and I bring him up to see me, but I digress.)

Jacksonville seemed like a nice little Plan B, so I can work on restoring relationships and mending fences and all that jazz. Because try as I might, that never really works out as I plan. So today, just because, I emailed my stepmom to check in and say hi. I debated with sending her that email for two days. Our communication line is severely frayed, and sometimes I wonder why it isn’t severed completely, and then my dad and my brother pop into my mind.  But I sucked it up and I put on a happy face and emailed her. Who knows, maybe this time it’d be different?

It wasn’t.

Her response, was as follows (edited for brevity):

Sometimes I wish that you would have given yourself the opportunity to explore your horizons on this end. But it’s your decision now and only you know what direction you want for your life.  … You are given opportunities that when missed, don’t come around again. So start thinking about that and let us know how you plan to move forward.

From the outside looking in, this sounds like a well meaning directive issued from a loving parent to a slacker child. But considering I hear this speech everytime  I talk to her (with the speech getting more and more condescending each time) all I hear is this:

You are a big disappointment. Why are you wasting your life being jobless in Tennessee when you could at least be doing something here in Jacksonville? 

Give me something I can believe in,
Give me something then walk me away,
I’m a waste of time,
And all in all waste of a living.
Waste of a living.

I don’t know how to adequately express that my life isn’t so bad, and that I don’t need to rate myself against her measurements of success. I thought I did before, but I guess it doesn’t matter. So I stared at the email and tried to think of a nice response. And I could come up with was this:

No, I didn’t actually put that in the email, but I’m now considering it. I mean REALLY? How can someone who makes no attempt to get to know me or find out what I’m doing with my life here in Tennessee actually be qualified to tell me what I should be doing with my life? No matter how well-intentioned she means to be, it still bothers me to no end. But the even better question is this:

Why do I care so much to feel like I have to validate my choices to her, or to anyone for that matter? I don’t have an answer to either question, unfortunately.  Until I learn the lesson in all of this, I guess the lines of communication will continue to fray.

 

Come Children

Seriously, what ever happened to Christafari? I had their albums and loved them! “Best Friend” was that jam.

So when I was younger, I had always said that I would adopt children. I usually said this as a joke as I found adoption very much preferential to to thought of childbirth. But I can say that I have always felt the importance of adoption and that I would play a role in that somehow. (Interesting Fact: If just one family out of every 4 churches in the US adopted, there’d be no orphans here. via Kay Warren) Fast forward to this week. Just a few days ago, I was researching the adoption process here in Tennessee. Out of the blue. As in, I was playing on facebook and literally changed the page to google and typed in “adoption in tennessee”. I spent a solid 90 minutes researching the cost and the process and looking at the different types of adoptions. Pretty solid work.

Solid work that would be great if I was married, employed, and working on my family life. But I am, of course, none of these things. At first, I was pretty sure this was God demonstrating His sense of humor with me. I’m already struggling with being single and then I start thinking about adopting kids? Really. But God gave me a confirmation about 30 minutes ago that this is an option He wants me to pursue. And I’m weirdly excited about that. I was thinking about adoptions in the Bible and it blew my mind. Two of my favorite Biblical people were adopted: Moses and Esther. To think that God is calling me to adopt children who can be a modern day Moses and Esther is both amazing and humbling at the same time. Of course this is totally putting the cart before the horse. I will definitely be putting in the time and effort to thoroughly research this, and be fully ready to pursue this once the time comes.

Now if God could be this clear on my relationship struggles, that would be even more copacetic. Maybe He is, and I’m clouding the issues with my own insecurity. But that’s another blog for another day.

 

Sooner or Later

As I tweeted yesterday, I really heart Pharrell (and his sleeves). I love how he is totally convinced that he can sing and just goes for it. It’s atrocious at times, but I love his passion. A for effort! Sooner or Later is actually one of his better vocal endeavors.

I’m beginning to enter this new phase and I’m not quite sure how to handle it. Things are starting to fall in place for trvl clothing and I’m uber excited, but sometimes it seems that things are falling a little too fast and I’m scrambling to keep up. I really can’t complain, but it’s just one of many emotions I’m trying to balance, and not with too much success.  And at the same time, I’d really just like to hurry up and be back on my feet already. I’m entering month 8 of unemployment and it is not the business. AT ALL. I can say though that for an unemployed person I’m crazy busy and it’s great, but it’d be greater if I was getting paid.  I don’t want money for crazy reasons (anymore…thank goodness). I’d just like to actually put Tithes and Offering in the basket one day, and have my cell phone on for longer than a month. I’m trying really hard not to be too torn up over it, but sometimes it’s not so easy.

Like (Pastor) John Mayer says in “Something’s Missing” I can’t be sure that this state of mind is not of my own design.  I’m just so ready for this process to be complete that I can’t help but wonder if I’m hindering it in some way.  I’m tired of not having a job, tired of not being able to provide for myself, not being able to help others out like I used to.  I know this whole…thing isn’t truly complete because as soon as I finish this process I’m going head first into another one (yay…) but can it be done already? Toya told me that she really believes that 2009 is just the setup for 2010. I can (begrudingly) cosign on this but really? REALLY? I’m so completely over 2009.  Things always do come around sooner or later, but sooner doesn’t look to be happening so I would gladly like to hit the snooze button until later comes around.

 

Funhouse

Yay for P!nk. They used to play this song all the time at Lady Foot Locker on the Pop Style station and I loved it. And now it’s officially a single…woot!

So there is about to be a monumental paradigm shift. I’ve been feeling this pulling for awhile and everything in the last couple of weeks have confirmed it. I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but I know that it’s gonna be something game-changing and I better get ready. I’m not there yet but I’m on my way. In the midst of trying to be ready, I’ve had to cut back or cut off some people and I’ve noticed a personality shift taking place. I’m a very emotional, very verbose, very nurturing person. I will help and help and help someone even if it leads to my detriment. But this past week I’ve been feeling less empathetic to some people and their situations. I don’t know if it’s my health being out of whack, or this London-esque weather, or if it’s indeed a personality shift, but I’ve just been viewing people and situations differently. I’m more quiet and methodical in my conversations and I’m evaluating things with more scrutiny.  I don’t like it for certain yet because I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not. I just realized how much time I spent focusing on people and their situations that I’ve neglected myself. I’m not trying to hit the other extreme and be selfish, but I’m not certain where the happy  medium is.  Indeed, this used to be a funhouse, but no so much anymore. Well, we’ll see where it goes.

 

whoops…

So it’s been a long time since I’ve posted something. Not for a lack of content, but for a lack of…everything else. Time, organization, clarity. Such is the life of an new entrepreneur.

Random aside, I love twitter. Just the fact that I can engage in a great banter with Playdough, (who I just love as a lyricist… not so much as a person, just cuz he’s from Texas lol j/k) while listening to him on iTunes is the junk.

Will post something of substance soon. Distractions are too much.