You're Supposed To Write This

Around this time a few days ago, I would be scrambling around my house with my tripod and camera in hand, searching for an unphotographed nook and a little inspiration to produce what manifested itself as #30DaysofSELF. Why the heck did I embark on such a journey, force-feeding my face to timelines for the entire month of April? To be honest, when I first started it, I literally had no idea. It was March 31 and the idea just came to me. Well, the name rather. It sounded like a dope hashtag, a great challenge like all the other writing ones of yesteryear I'd attempted and failed. But I didn't want to write for 30 days. I looked over to Gavin Desmond (yes, I named my camera) perched on my dresser, catching dust since I last used it to archive my trip to New Orleans at the top of March. Hmm, this can be a self-portrait challenge , I  thought to myself.   I've never done one before, so let's just give it a go and see what happens . And that was that.  Day 4 ...

"This doesn't really mean anything does it." I kept cutting at my steak. Without breaking my concentration, I pulled a medium-well cube of meat from the tip of the fork with my teeth. It was a question I knew wouldn't end well.  "You've asked that question before," I said, glancing up at him. He fidgeted uncomfortably across the dinner table, swirling whatever was left of his Riesling in his glass. He'd been doing that for the past ten minutes.  "The fact that I still feel the need to even ask it is what's bothering me..."  I felt bad. Chey was a nice guy. A great guy, actually. I met him at an internship luncheon two years ago and we clicked immediately, making sure to exchange business cards at the end. We kept in loose contact for about a year and a half, updating each other via texts and emails about our day jobs and occasionally grabbing coffee during our off days. He was a senior account executive at some hotshot adver...

I don't believe in suicide, and that makes things a little tricky. It's extreme. I don't want to kill me. But a small part of me, yes, I do. Her name is Shy, and I want her dead.  Shy -- and all the other traits she brings with her (second guessing, waiting, missing opportunities because I simply don't take them) -- is nagging and annoying. She's smothering like a pastor is to his teenage daughter, or like a significant other fishing for some Instagram-worthy PDA.  When I want to be let alone to just do my thing, here Shy comes, hovering over my shoulder like cartoon depictions of Satan. Whispering what-if's into my ear without giving the angel a chance to land on the other side of my mind and tell me go for it. You can do it. What have you got to lose? Go say hi to him. Go ask for a promotion. Start your own passion project. Ask and you shall receive. All that inner encouragement drowned out by the white noise of self-apprehension. Senseless fear and fuz...

Nine times out of ten, the consumer reaction upon seeing Kanye West and Kim Kardashian cuddled in bridal wear on the cover of Vogue (aside from awww, eye rolls or sucking of teeth) was, "FINALLY!" For a steady couple years, one of the ongoing jokes of the internet was when the stoic Anna Wintour would honor Kanye's request to put the mother of his child on the cover of American Vogue . It was the stuff of comedy because nobody expected that day to come. No one expected the revered Artistic Director of one of the biggest media companies to honor the seemingly trivial request. To "cave." But she did, and for the month of April we will be staring KimYe in the face every time we run to our local CVS for a toiletry run. The tweets collected under the cumbersome #WorldsMostTalkedAboutCouple hashtag have echoed everything from disappointment in Ms. Wintour to utter shock to shaming the publication for pandering to social media gimmicks. Can't decide what...

MY FIRST TIME ON AMTRAK was more or less painless. I'd done some train travel from NY to Connecticut before, but nothing like this. Nothing like 30 hours across cityscapes, woods and open pastures en route from the heart of Manhattan to New Orleans, Louisiana. To most, the very idea of being train-bound for more than a couple hours is the stuff of nightmares (my friends are still questioning my sanity for doing it), but to me, it was a well-deserved dose of uninterrupted serenity. Observance. A clear mind. Engagement of all the senses. I hear the tinkering of loose gears and panels of the overhead luggage compartments. The crinkling of an aluminum snack bag giving way to a hungry set of hands. The blaring of the vessel's horns piercing the quiet of midnight and dispensing itself across the outskirts of Virginia. The stale and loaded coughs of the woman in the next row with the overly active polyphonic ringtone. Her voice is husky and weary with age. "I'm trying to get...

I hate Stans, I truly do. If you know me or of me, you know that I tend to retreat from all social media platforms whenever Beyonce so much as breathes publicly because the hive is in full swarm. Obsessing over people never really made any sense to me. The last person I can vividly remember feening for with posters, merch and memorized birthdays was Shad Gregory Moss, BKA Lil Bow Wow. I was 11 when "Take Ya Home" came out and 13 years later, I can still run it line for line, Harlem Shake and all. See how nuts that sounds? Anyway, you can imagine how off kilter I felt when my appreciation for rap's quietly dominating super crew crept into super-fan territory. Today, if you ask me who my favorite artist is, I'll probably say matter-of-factly, "TDE." Yes, I'm well aware that this isn't a singular person, but the solid group as a whole contributes to a superb listening experience balled into one creative entity. Top Dawg knew what he was doing.  ...

I never understood why people underestimated "the girlfriends." No, I'm not referring to the ladies lovingly slinked over chiseled biceps, consistently posting flicks of her #MCM and with his name saved as a set of the heart eyed emojis in her phone. I'm talking about the girl-franssss, which nobody wants to proudly claim anymore for some reason.  Last month, I went to two sleepovers. For the first one, my friend had planned for it to be this big thing with facials, manis and pedis, movies and life planning. There ended up only being 6 of us: her, me, her best friend, her co-worker, and her two overly affectionate tabby cats, Vera and Irve (yes, like the designers). I only really knew her well, but I didn't leave feeling that way. We spent hours watching (and then suffering from soured moods from) Winnie Mandela , starting on Sarafina before pausing the movie midway to vent about ain't-shit men and opening up and closing off and how men really fe...