Sometimes we forget that we are a part of society. We sometimes feel like a grain of sand in a beach, too small to make a difference. We’ll cite the media, government, but you know who else comprises of society? You, me and the neighbors; together we make up society. Instead of feeling like we are too small and can’t make a difference we should owe up to the power we do have.

We aren’t the ones in charge of the new fall programming at MTV or BET, true, but we are not as powerless as we think. We can tell our daughters, nieces, and nephews how beautiful they are and know that our words have just as much effect, if not more, than the girls on the videos.

Image from Wikipedia

Allen Gregory is a new show that premiered on the Fox Network two weeks ago. It features the voice talents of Jonah Hill as the self titled protagonist and one of my favorite 90′s sitcoms “3rd Rock from the Sun” French Stewart as his gay father, Richard Delongpre. (I would go into the other characters-the father’s life partner, Jeremy and their daughter, Allen’s sister, but they’re only there as props to the narcissistic father and son.)

The crux in which the cartoon is based on- an overly sophisticated seven year old is was way too weird and not funny at all in this context.

There’s comedy in alienation, but it’s hard not to flinch at the sheer awkwardness of the title character. Usually the greater the awkwardness the greater the release when the punchline comes rolling around. But, alas there’s never a punchline great enough to justify or erase the tensions leading up to it in “Allen Gregory”.

The father was downright repugnant. (Does he even like his children?) The way in which he treats his partner was verbal abuse. Getting a laugh out of a repugnant character requires something special. Abuse on shows like “Family Guy” are quick and cruel and quickly glossed over with a cut to another scene. Characters who are bleeding to death and presumably dead in one scene are completely whole again in the next- no harm, no foul. Richard’s abuse is prolonged with no end in sight. Again no punchline on this show has as of yet alleviated the bad mojo of listening to a man berate his life partner.

The crush on the principal was way too extreme although providing fodder for the funniest joke the night. At the end of a daydream sequence he and the object of his affection are about to do the mattress mambo. Half naked he asks her the state of her affairs down there to which she replied “I’m going to level with you it’s Hurricane Katrina down there.” My roommate couldn’t stop laughing and repeated it several times- a hallmark of a good joke is when you want to hear it again and again. It was the only time I even felt like cracking a smile because the narcissistic father ruined everything for me.

While juxtaposition of different and altogether opposite elements (the overly pretentiousness seven year old Allen Gregory having a crush on a wizened principal) is a comedy staple the writer’s forgot finesse and applied it to too haphazardly and with a heavy hand.

A show that does it right.

As a fan of the burgeoning genre of adult, smart witted, but crude, and politically incorrect cartoons such as “Family Guy” and FX’s most recent gem “Archer” “Allen Gregory” means to keep up, but so far is lagging behind it’s predecessors.

Note: This was originally posted on Google Plus. You can add me as well while you’re on there.

With these two websites I know that Content is King because it’s much easier for me to write on my personal website where the brand is clear. Truly a person’s brand is the roadmap to everything else from what you’re going to write about, how the blog will look and how you’ll market yourself. With both blogs lacking one of the absolutes my marketing efforts have been less than robust. Cue face palm for a communications specialist such as I.

How Do I Solve This Issue?

Easy. Find the words that I as a communications professional would describe myself. I’ve been putting this off because honestly I confused brand with talking about myself when in actuality nobody’s brand is really about themselves but why others need them.  My brand isn’t based on me but, but what I can do to help companies find their voice and a piece of the pie in this information age.

For my personal website I will have to exploit all of my resources to execute a unique design that communicates my message for free. This includes asking my roommate who’s a photographer to whip me up a header from the random test shots we’ve done in the past. This will include me taking pictures with my point and shoot camera and using that as a background. It’s not important that you spend a lot of money or make it perfect. What’s important is that the words and the images convey your brand. You can communicate your message with any budget. 

Honestly, readers don’t realize the money that goes into a website. We know because we’re in the business, but all the average reader knows is whether the button looks pretty, and if it works when they press it. That’s it. For those two things to happen a website owner can spend anywhere from nothing to thousands of dollars.

A super sleek and functional website is the dream, but for now a functional website and a moderately good looking one will suffice for newbies such as myself.

Inadvertently I’ve been killing my perfectionism slowly: As opposed to tweaking something forever and never actually doing anything I know no matter what I’m pressing that Publish button. Surveying finished work is a lot easier to do than track changes in a draft. By shipping before everything is perfect it makes it easier to make it better the next go around. Seth Godin is a genius.

I have been serving a purpose and in that purpose I have come to realize that my brand is making connections using new media, like Twitter and inbound marketing, among the creatively inclined in this wonderful borough of Brooklyn.

I have an affinity for Jamaican men. I have an affinity for Haitian men. I have an affinity for West Indian men.

I once dated a man whose Jamaican accent was so thick I couldn’t understand what he was saying if we hadn’t talked in a while. In these men, in their patois I feel closer to my people.

I’m West Indian.  Well…. not completely. My father’s parents hail from the smaller of the sister islands of Antigua and Barbuda which I always confused for Bermuda when I was younger. They came here a long time ago, as in the beginning of the last century.

I grew up in many areas of Brooklyn, always surrounded by West Indians whether it be Bed-Stuy, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, or Brownsville. Whether they had an accent or not it was more likely than not that if they didn’t their parents did. In my own self induced only child lonely child haze I  didn’t realize this then. I know it now.

I heard the music, the pride in their voices and I felt a ways not always knowing what they said or why they said it.

In that void I’ve become a wannabe. As in I wanna be closer to my heritage. I want to be in touch with my people. I wanna know what it was like for my grandmother as she set foot in New York by way of Canada.

I wanna know what it was like in Barbuda the year before she came to the US.

I wanna know if she grabbed the only other light skinned person on an island full of brown and browner faces.

I wanna know if she danced in the dancehalls. (Did they call them dancehalls then?) I wonder if she liked to dance like me, or if she liked to stay at home, like me.

I wanna know why she didn’t teach her own son not to throw out the fish head, it’s the best part of the fish.

I wanna know more about West Indian cooking than to not throw out the fish head. Once I chop it off I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

I wanna know what it feels like to know that they are proud of me.

I’m not afraid to say I’m a huge wannabe.

I was intrigued. With all this dating we do, premarital sex, however frowned upon it might be by bible thumpers, is pretty common place. Not only that, but we’re waiting longer and longer to get married. For those of us who want to get married what could our future husbands do that hasn’t already been done by a man who was once in his shoes? We have sex, cook, go to the movies, go on vacations together, and meet the parents of our significant others but we don’t have a ring on it.

Days later I got new glasses that finally had some style to them. Feeling myself I wore a favorite camisole from H&M past. Too fancy to wear for everyday occasions I can count the number of times I’ve worn it on my fingers despite having owned it for five plus years. But this was a special day one where I wanted to look extra cute.

As I left my apartment I felt fine, but as I got further to my destination a peculiar feeling crept up on me- I felt naked. The camisole had spaghetti straps, and my semi short skirt, between my knees and thighs was not making things better. It was probably because my tattoo was exposed for the first time in a long time.

Somehow over the years I developed an affinity to covering it up. I revel in my standard book nerd appearance. The tattoo, of Egyptian imagery, makes me feel not so standard like there’s more to my bookish look than meets the eye. The beauty of it is that few people see it.

Me keeping my tattoo hidden for the most part is a way of keeping a part of myself from others.

These are the days of overexposure, any celebrity with nude pics or a sex tape or embarrassed YouTube sensation can tell you that. So now more than ever I understand where my former roommate, now one of my best friends can wear the hajib and not feel trapped as many a modern women in her daisy dukes come back to life and chiffon shirt over a bra might think.

It’s a way of keeping something sacred in an overexposed world.

And for the past few months I’ve been committing to blogging once a week here.

And then I wrote my life list. And then I started evaluating my life according to the list to make sure I was on track to  actually accomplishing it.

And I realized I’m just one motherfreaking person and I can’t be blogging here even if it is just once a week. Once a week may not seem like a lot of time, but the bloggers old and new, know this shit is hard.

You have to come up with the idea, write the idea, edit the idea, slap some fancy ass pictures so that people understand even better your idea. Now you have to market the shit out of the idea that is now a blog post. Facebook it, Twitter it, but you can’t just Twitter it once, you should really Twitter the same post three or four times the day it was published. This shit is serious.  It’s a lot of work to devote to something that is not quite on my life list.

And that’s the beauty of writing a life list. You all of a sudden know what’s worth putting effort into and what’s not. All of a sudden my life has a laser focus it didn’t have before. And as a freelance writer, boy oh boy do you need laser focus. With no kind of boss to give you structure freelancers need to instill structure themselves. And that’s what my life list is doing for me.

Everything I do now is all for accomplishing my goals. Written down my dreams are no longer dreams anymore, but goals. Concrete, not as in “I wish, I wish,” but “someday, someday soon.”

All this to say I hereby relinquish myself from writing on this blog once a week. The new commitment to myself is to get my writing career off the ground running. So while I won’t be here pouring my heart out here like I used to, I will be update here from time to time with my shenanigans so that it’ll be more of a repository of my online activity, a portfolio of my writing, an archive of my career.

If you read this I’ll give you something I don’t give just anybody. A picture of me that I haven’t posted anywhere. (Updated: I lied- I posted this picture on Twitter a while back.) I usually hate how I look in pictures. So while it may not be much, it is something I consider near and dear to my heart. 

(I’ve gots to learn how to smile in my pictures without looking like a dope.)

Here’s to my next post being a link to my latest published piece.

Cheers!!

With that I’m going to let you in on some goals I’m currently working on because if anything creative people have a bajillion ideas and are juggling even more projects.

My Three Four Three Most Important Tasks at the Moment Are:

1. Freaking finish this pitch for Clutch Magazine
2. Turn in this application to this job I’ve been eyeing for a while.
3. Take a picture I can be really proud of. As a sistren of the big forehead club pictures of myself that I like are rare. I hope to be the proud owner of a few self portraits that won’t make me cringe.

And when I say next most important, I mean I will feel like an utter, and complete failure if these 4 t 3 things aren’t crossed off by this weekend.

Well there it is for everybody to see. I’ll let you know next week if I deserve a public flogging or guiltless Cold Stone Founder’s Favorite.

Remember people we’re trying to bust down motherfreaking doors up in this piece.

You are not a writer if you…

• Are not writing at least once a week.
• If you’re not improving the basics through workshops, conferences, and classes. With the craft there always has to be the striving for better. Any artist who’s not ain’t worth shit. Tough but true.
• Are not making any effort to get published. Not only are you striving to be better, but you’re breaking your neck to get your stuff out there.
• If you have a whole bunch of first drafts. Writing includes just as much editing as writing.
• Don’t have any finished/polished works. Constantly starting new projects and not finishing them? (I’m looking at you fellow Aries.)

The best indicator that you’re an artist is banging down the motherfreaking door.

• You’re getting paid real money to do what you do.
• You’re getting recognized, in some shape or form, for your work, because when you are doing your real purpose others listen.

These are not absolute. You can have many artists who are doing many, but not all, but the best artists are doing it all. You either go hard or go home.

I’m hella guilty of perpetuating all this crap. But you can’t call yourself a real anything if you’ve only got your toe in the water. You go to work for whole shifts, not come in every two hours and call it a day. These crafts we’ve decided to take on as our own, they need to be nurtured just as much as our day jobs.

I’m all for lulls, as being creative and productive after putting in hours at your other job is a doozy. But lulls shouldn’t be happening for let’s say 5 years at a time; not sharing your work publicly is okay, but not even practicing? Hell’s no. 

Basically I’ve become fed up. (Can you tell? lol) I’ve become fed up with being mediocre when I know I can be fantastic. You’re damn well sure that I’ll be doing every damn thing on this list to bang on the motherfreaking door ‘cause one thing’s for sure I ain’t mediocre and neither are you.

What about you? Can you call yourself a writer or artist the way you’ve been going about things lately? If not, when do you expect to jump back on the damned thing? I wanna know. 

Coming soon: a page of Resources for Day Jobbing, Multiple Endeavored, Entrepreneurial Creatives in Brooklyn.

It was nippy outside and I was getting aggravated. I was not going to be out there freezing my tuckus off so I banged louder than I had ever banged before, window be damned. The manager came running.

So I ask you, fellow artists, and scribes are you banging the door hard enough?

Photo from SidewalkSundays and familymwr of Flickr

I don’t know how a mere thank you from a stranger about a rather plain looking sweater should be received, but apparently she thought I was stank with it. And I knew it had nothing to do with what I said, but how I looked- I’m light skinned. And with being light skinned you are automatically pegged a couple of things-Stank, bourgeoisie, bitch just to name a few. 

Not only am I light-skinned but I wear glasses, I give off a nerdy, sometimes bookish vibe and can be terse and short to the point. I know I don’t radiate warmth, and friendliness on first impressions and all these things she put together about me she interpreted as stank. It upset  me because I’ve encountered this my whole life. I ain’t hood, and I’ve been getting flack for not being hood all my life. 

I’m kinda tired of getting called bourgeoisie just ’cause I’m light skinned. Just ’cause I don’t play dice on the corner I don’t think I’m better than you. I don’t live my life on the streets because I want more of myself. I’m not better than you, but I do think my life purpose is not to be in the streets.

If you catch me shaking my head it’s not because I think you’re low by nature. I shake my head because you keep yourself low when you could be more. We can be so much more, yet we chose to fight for trinkets and call them treasures. And that is the difference. MY conviction in myself is not YOUR condemnation.

I may be light skinned, mixed looking, talk properly, but I know what roaches look like, I know what gunshots sound like, but that doesn’t mean I won’t amount to nothing. And just because I’ll make it out the ghettos I ain’t going to do it because I’m light skinned.
I’m not beautiful because I’m light skinned.
I’m not smart because I’m light skinned.
I’m smart, and beautiful because I am.

I’m convinced that it’s not about me, but them.
One too many person told them they weren’t good enough because they were dark skinned.
One too many people told them they were nothing unless they had a man.
One too many told them they weren’t beautiful unless they were skinny.
One too many people told them they weren’t worthy of love unless they were beautiful.

Let me be one of the many people who say that you are enough as you are. And with that you could be so much more.