joyful joyful

i am making a concerted effort to be more joyful. to see the brightside. to take more deep breaths. to enjoy the sun rays.

precious few of us are joyful all the time for seemingly no reason. many of us have gotten so wrapped up in certain details of life that we need to prioritize having the experience of joy.

i realized in the past few weeks that i'd gotten off track. life really is what you make it in many ways. i've had so much on my mind. i haven't made the effort to live in the moment. i'm trying to do that now. i am so very, very blessed. i am trying to walk in that blessing.

thanks to a friend of mine who gave me a little wake up call, the Content Black Woman who is being more mindful of how destructive complaining can be, my desire to be a better partner for my beloved, and a nostalgia for the woman i remember i was before i got off track, i am being more mindful of the choices i make. i'm paying more attention to the thoughts that i choose to express and why. i'm taking my time waking up and starting the day because i find that my day goes better when i don't bombard myself with life's demands all at once. i'm attempting to eat better because my conscience is eased when i do so. i'm working on keeping up those connections with family and old friends, because those kinds of relationships make life sweet. i'm paying more attention to the health of my plants. i'm trying to live my life more abundantly.

God and i have a lot of talking to do.

a lot of misc thoughts

If some white person said they wanted to castrate Obama wouldn't we be wiling like how people were wiling when Imus called those sisters nappy headed hos? No, seriously - isn't castration what was often done to brothers by lynch mobs? Just eww, Jesse. Just. Eww.

I think that no matter what Obama does at this point, people who are voting against McCain are going to vote for Obama anyway. So he can approve a revised FISA bill. He can talk about men not raising their children in a black church on Father's Day. Short of cheating on Michelle with a white girl, there pretty much isn't anything that he could do to irrevocably piss off black folks. And no other liberal or reasonable moderate is going to vote for McCain. Most Democrats won't vote for McCain. Shoot, a bunch of Republicans are gonna vote for Obama. So it is what it is.

If he was playing Mother May I, I don't think Obama is taking a big giant step over to the center. We could call what he's been up to a regular or teeny weeny step. Read his policies. Really actually read them. He was never the uber-liberal that Hillary and the Republicans made him out to be. I guess if someone only took their word for it maybe Obama is surprising them, but he ain't surprising me.

I'm 'bout to go to the Harlem Book Fair. (I think.) Maybe I can find Ta-Nehisi Coates' book there for a good price. I see Tananarive Due has a new one, and so does Diane McKinney Whetstone. Look people, at $25 a pop for hardback books, I'ma need y'all to schedule your book releases accordingly. I liked it better when I was oblivious to book releases, 'cause it made it easier to buy things in paperback without having to wait and wait and wait. It seems like it took forever for Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali to go paperback. I did pick up Stephen L. Carter's Palace Council, which just came out. Can't wait to eat it up. I like his stuff, and I like that for my $25, I get over 500 pages of pageturning.

I keep hearing a lot about this Lil' Wayne person... I'm just not attracted to that sound, though. I'm thinking that no matter how creative he is, I probably won't enjoy what he has to say. Oh well. Maybe I should give him a chance, but he too shall pass. Now when is Erykah's next joint going to drop?

Michael Eric Dyson. Dude, I got no deal-breaking problems with you, per se, but for real? You are oversaturated in the media. Must you be everywhere? With that reaching-arse vocabulary? Could you take a month long vacation like once a quarter maybe? You're like that kid who knows all the answers and raises your hand on every question but the teacher doesn't call on you 'cause she wants to hear from someone else.

Bill O'Reilly. You might have said some nice things about Malia Obama, but you still get nowhere with me. Believe me. A pox on your network. Seriously, I hope y'all antennas just mysteriously stop working.

Oh yeah, and flip-flop is overused, both by political pundits and by women this summer. Of course politicians are going to change their minds, both for political expediency and because they think their new position actually is better than their first. It's older than this country, it's how politics works, and people sound stupid when they level it as an accusation to discredit political candidates. Be more creative. And sisters, there are other types of sandals. And I don't mean leather flip flops as opposed to rubber ones. Besides, Hannibal says they're bad for your feet, and I believe whatever he says. LOL! Be more creative.

Leave Madonna alone. Not because she doesn't deserve how she's being called a whore/homewrecker/slut again but because you should really have something better to do with your time. And besides - you don't know the truth and you never will.

But I'm telling you right now if Will is a Scientologist, I might just cry. Really. No, really.

Hell no I'm not helping Hillary with her campaign debt. Let those PUMA bitches do it. I'm just sayin'.

Changing your diet is hard.

Is the news tired of talking about Zimbabwe or something? I haven't heard much lately. How's Tsvangirai doing, still hanging in there? Or are we not supposed to care anymore?

Oh, and, stank as his comment may have been, Jesse Jackson is not irrelevant or played. He does more on his feet for the black community that I (and many other black folk do on our asses), which is sit around jawjacking. That said, his style is, let's say, version 4.0. Right about now, we need like version 8.0 on the forefront. I'm not saying that that's Barack Obama, 'cause it ain't. Community organizer though he may have been, he's still not a civil-rights race man in the vein of a MLK. He is not the "leader of the Negroes," and he never will be (see, that's v.8.0 thinking right there, 'cause there isn't a leader of the Negroes slot to fill) and he doesn't want that role. You can't be president AND leader of the Negroes. It's a conflict of interest. Anyway, there's still room for computers that run on XP instead of Vista. As long as Jesse does good for others, I say good for him and thank you, veteran, for still putting in work. Just play your position - you are not the voice of the dark monolith, yet you keep on letting the media shove that damn mic in your face for that particular purpose. Why? Stop that. That's how you find yourself in trouble, running all over the country having to apologize for bringing back alley language to everybody's doorstep. Got those crackers feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.

And I know that's his problem with Obama, and others' problem too. People keep trying to figure out if Obama is reaching for white acceptance by dissing Black people with all this faith and values and personal responsibility talk. I am insulted by that. Whether or not people mean it this way it sounds like they mean that it is "white" acting to talk about values with black people. It's like "personal responsibility" have become buzz words for racism against black people. Do I think the Fathers Day speech was 100% OK? Honestly, no, I think the timing was inappropriate. But I don't find anything wrong with what he said. And now people want him to go on tour and talk about values to white folks and Filipinos and Guatemalans too, to - wait, exactly what would that accomplish? Does he have to prove he's not racist or Tomming now, even though every black person over 50 that I know has been saying the same exact stuff about values for as long as I can remember? Dude is not Uncle Ruckus and we should be more concerned about FISA and the economy and education and jobs than whether or not he told the truth and shamed the devil on Father's Day.