Category Archives: Feelings

Feelings

It Has Been Quite A Week

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It’s been a rough couple days for me. I need melatonin to sleep and even then cannot sleep through the night. Work has been exhausting when I normally am indifferent toward it. Memories from my childhood have now crept into my daily thoughts. I’m honestly struggling right now. Today is my first day off since last Wednesday and all I will be doing today is listening to music and taking naps. I don’t have the mental energy to do much else. I’m really not with the bullshit today. To keep myself from completely losing it, I have to write these feelings out. It’s the only way I can process it. I am trying to understand what keeps people going. What the fuck about this shitstorm of a world makes people want to stay? What is it, because I’m having a hard time figuring this out? I’ve had these feelings before, but it feels different now. When I felt this way before, it didn’t help that I was also in an abusive environment at home and at work. I am not in either of those environments now and up until recently, I’ve been feeling pretty content. I don’t really know what happened. It’s like when you see a balloon deflate but cannot figure out where the hole is.

Frankly, the only thing keeping me sane is listening to music and writing, so here I am. I am so used to bottling up my emotions and hiding my feelings that writing has really been the only way I can express myself. I sometimes feel like I cannot trust anyone thanks to people betraying my trust in the past. I hate that shit. I fucking hate it. I feel very lonely. It sucks because sometimes all I want is to connect with someone, but I always have to keep my guard up because I don’t know when they will turn on me. I think I have one person who I can be honest with and she is going through her own shit right now so, yeah. I love being able to write out my feelings, but I do wish I had someone to talk to.

I hope I start feeling better soon.

Feelings

Odds and Ends: An Update

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I finished a book I was reading today. it was Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi. I’m not sure if I will start my next book later this week or on the 1st of October.

I’ve been very anxious lately, questioning my life and trying to figure out what I want. I thought I was content, dare I say, complacent, with where I am at, but lately, I’ve been feeling restless. I don’t know what is up. I’ve discussed some things with close family members, but I know, whatever I decide is completely up to me.

On the hobbies front, I’m still coding in Python. I even set up a Github page.

Feelings

Short Update

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I lamented about my lack of reading in one of my most recent posts, which can be read here. Since that post, I have read 1 book and am currently reading another. I also went on a book shopping spree at my local Barnes and Noble. I read “Where the Line Bleeds” by Jesymn Ward. I put a short review of the book on my Goodreads account, which can be accessed here. I am currently reading “Dear Edward” by Ann Napolitano. I am halfway through it, it is really good. I’ll probably post a review up here when I finish. I bought six books during my shopping spree. 1 memoir and 5 fiction books. I chose books from my Goodreads TBR. Currently, my TBR has 20 books on it.

Books Purchased

  • Transcendent Kingdom – Yaa Gyasi
  • Red at the Bone – Jacqueline Woodson
  • Long Division – Kiese Laymon
  • Felix Ever After – Kacen Callender
  • The Ugly Cry – Danielle Henderson
  • After the Shot Drops – Randy Ribay

I hope I can read most of these by the end of this year. I’m glad I was able to get back into reading so seamlessly.

Feelings

Being Woke and Identity Politics

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Being woke has been a thing for a while. I’d say since 2013/2014 or so. It picked up heavily in 2016 with all that was going on that year. By the end of 2016 everyone was woke, including me. It really spread like a wildfire. For a time between 2017 and last year, it seemed as if everyone wanted to out-woke, one another. Person A was woke, but Person B was woke-er. Celebrities and media personalities started getting into wokeness, and then shit really hit the fan. Twitter was a wild site for a minute. I remember some of the fights that happened between liberal/woke celebrities and regular folks and conservative celebrities. It was funny and obnoxious. People were really fighting hard.

Liberal celebs vs everyone

I grew tired of woke-ness when the pandemic hit in the midst of what would end up being one of the most embarrassing and absurd election cycles in recent history. Don’t get me wrong, the 2016 election cycle was bad, but last year’s cycle was even worse. People really were losing their shit last year. Woke-ness really was at an all time smug high. Everything became a test of who was woke. It got really annoying, really fast. During all this, identity politics had picked up speed as well. Before 2016, identity politics was a thing, but not so blunt in everyone’s face. From 2016 to last year, and even to today, identity politics permeates everything. Like woke-ness, identity politics is another barometer test. How many identities can you check off of a box. Person A is a cis-gender lesbian Black American, but Person B is a non-binary pansexual neuro-divergent Native American. You see the issue here. Everyone wants/needs a label if you are following the identity politics scheme.

Identity politics is obnoxious too. Instead of focusing on what qualities someone has, it focuses on small details of that person. Yes, your race, gender, sexuality is part of who you are, but it is not ALL that you are. Yet, this culture war wants everyone to believe that their race, gender, and sexuality is the most important thing ever. It isn’t. I understand the human need to be apart of something, but identity politics isn’t the way to go in my opinion. I don’t believe that identity politics is helpful. It causes more division than anything. I’m tired of division. It’s exhausting to be honest.

There has to be a better way to exist. The culture wars are annoying. The woke-ness is annoying. I’m Black yes, but that is not the end all be all to my identity. I want there to be a time in our lives where our race/gender/sexual orientation isn’t that big of a deal. We are like a pie, our race/gender/sexual orientation, are pieces of our pie. We are all humans first, and if we don’t come together, we will always be at war. When are we going to get tired of fighting one another?

Feelings

Dealing with Writing Insecurity

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So, I have had this blog for 8 years. There have been times where I felt more comfortable posting my opinions on here versus anywhere else. I have talked about politics, music, television, mental health, and so much more. Yet, for some reason, I’m starting to feel insecure with what I write. I’ve always been a quiet person, and writing has allowed me to express myself especially during times where I couldn’t in real life. This blog and my personal journal have been a saving grace when I needed it. I have dealt with writer’s block in the past and I wasn’t active on this blog for some time because life got in the way as well. As I come back to the blogging world, I’m feeling a bit insecure. I’m feeling like my opinion does not matter. Not so much matter like change the world with my words, but matter in the sense that I have a right to have an opinion at all. Before I started my blog, the only time i would share my opinion on anything was when I was writing in my personal journal. I did not grow up in a household where speaking my mind was allowed. I poured all my emotions into my journal because that was the only place I had where I could truly express myself.

I grew up during the start of social media. I remember when I first made my Myspace page. I enjoyed Myspace even though my parents made sure they had access to my page. When Facebook started popping off, I got on there too, but the same caveat, my parents monitored my page. When I say monitored, I mean, they made sure they were on my friends list, so anytime i would post something, they could see it. So again, even though I was on social media, I still couldn’t truly express myself. Then Twitter came along. I joined Twitter in 2011 at 19. My parents couldn’t oversee my Twitter because I had the app, not the desktop version. It was on my phone, which I did not allow them access to. At that time, my phone was the only material item I had complete control over. I’ll admit, I was pretty wild on Twitter in my early days. As I have mentioned numerous times, I started this blog in 2013, so I was on Twitter for a good 2 years before I came to the blogging world. I’m still on Twitter now. Twitter was where I could really let loose. Nobody knew me, so I could say what I wanted without fear or worry. I could finally speak my mind. Twitter became my safe space. I then started my blog and that opened up more of a space for me to speak my mind. Many of my earlier posts on here are simple musings of how I felt at time with other posts mixed in. The purpose of my blog has always been to share my view of the world with a bunch of strangers since the people in my real life didn’t give two fucks about what I felt or had to say. So, I had Twitter, this blog, and my personal journal to express all my feelings.

Twitter, this blog, and my personal journal really gave me the space I needed to express how I felt as I was going through such difficult times. I still love Twitter. I still love this blog. I still write in my journal. However, I feel like I shouldn’t be writing. I don’t know how to describe this feeling. It’s like imposter syndrome mixed with writer’s block mixed with depression?? Lately, when I try to sit down and write a post, it feels daunting. For example, I wanted to do a political post where I update everyone on my political stance and share some other insightful things, but when I sat down to start typing, I stopped. I just couldn’t type anything. I started thinking about whether I should even be writing about that even though I have written political posts before. I thought about how so much has changed in my personal political views and how I didn’t want to offend anyone, but also that I couldn’t hold my feelings in either. I was caught between a rock and a hard place in a way. I want to be free to express myself and all that I learn, which has always been the purpose of my blog, but I also have the innate need to be liked. I don’t want to piss anyone off, but then again I don’t want to care so much about how others view me. I don’t know.

Most likely, I will eventually write that post. I will probably be writing a lot of posts that shine a light on how I’ve changed over the last few years. The feelings I have right now, I am just going to feel them. Its valid, I know. It’s strange. Absolutely. I’m going to keep trucking. Writing this actually helped. I think reiterating why I started this blog and going back over my time as a sheltered, controlled teen, who couldn’t express myself, is helping me see how import my writing is, not to others, but to myself. As I mentioned earlier, when I could not express myself in real life, I went to my blog, my personal journal, and Twitter. I didn’t care who read it. I didn’t worry about offending anyone, I just wrote. I need to get that feeling back, but I don’t know how. How do I get back to writing and not caring how its perceived?? How do i get back to writing freely without mincing words? I don’t have answers for these questions right now. I hope I can regain that spark. We will just have to see, I guess.