Category: Guest Feature

Promo Flyer to Share – Guest Bloggers

Here’s a Promo Flyer for those who would like to assist me in promoting to fulfill this need. I need bloggers / writers interested in helping me to fill in on the weekends. All you would do is send me your posts via email and I will schedule it for the weekend if approved. I welcome everyone but would admonish new bloggers or bloggers looking to increase traffic in general, to apply. You have my permission to share this on your Facebook Pages, and Twitter. Please just link back to this post so people know how to apply.

Click Here if you would like to respond to this flyer. Serious writers/ bloggers only.

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Living vs. Existing

Live this moment. It will soon be just a memory.

Whit Izz's avatarWrite, Live and Love

I heard this question in a movie once:

“Are you living, or are you existing?”

To this day, I find it to be one of the most thought provoking questions I’ve heard.

It’s good to take moments to evaluate how your life is going. You need to ask yourself constantly if you are truly living or just merely existing. Many people have found themselves more in the category of existing, rather than living, and sometimes, once they realize it, it’s too late to turn back.

I have existed in this world for a long time. I would talk about my dreams and goals and everything I wanted to do with my life and how I wanted it to play out. I had a great life on paper, but when I asked myself what I was doing to actually live that life? Nothing. In order to truly enjoy life, you have…

View original post 154 more words

Guest Feature – Alone

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

– Maya Angelou, Alone

The Crick

Short, sweet, and to the point. Love the message Van. 🙂

vanbytheriver's avatarvanbytheriver

It was the forbidden place. A small creek at the end of our unpaved alley.

Filled with all sorts of dangers, it was our second home. The parents might have known about it, and looked the other way.

There was a primitive tree house, a rope swing, a log bridge over the water. tree-house-rope-swing

There were also small snakes, frogs, biting insects of all kinds, and as we learned a bit too late, poison ivy.

All that aside, it was paradise, our everyday summer destination.

The pictures shown here are very similar, but not the real thing. It did not exist, so how could there be actual photos?

It was not gender-specific, it could never be. There were too many alpha females in the hood.

There were no passwords, no secret handshakes, no rules. If you and your friends got there first, it was yours, at least for an hour or…

View original post 66 more words

When Are You Done Succeeding?

I thought this was a great post by Shayla of Curiouser Editing:

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As an entrepreneur, do you consider yourself successful? Or do you feel like you’re not quite there yet? Do you sometimes say, “I’ll be happy/successful when I get to this point”?

In the business world, we are engrained with the mentality that success is defined by numbers. We are told that it is something measurable. We are not successful until we get more followers, get more clients, get more engagement, get more subscribers, get more money, get a dream house, getgetgetgetget…

And it’s still not enough.

Because we keep going and we keep pushing ourselves to get better and be all of these things that our inner child would think were nuts.

So when is it enough? When do we get to say, “I did it. I’m successful”? When does that happen?

When are you done?

When you get 10,000 Facebook followers? When you make $8,000 a month? When you can hire your first employee? Second? Third? When you land an interview with a multimillionaire exec?

Speaking of interviews, I recently read one with a millionaire shop owner. She said, “We haven’t succeeded yet. We’re not at a point where we’ll all take a deep breath. I don’t know when we’ll ever stop.”

A millionaire said that.

To someone, that kind of dynamic attitude is contagious. It’s always been for me. But then when a friend asked me, “When are you done?” I began to rethink the definition of success.

Success means, “the fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame.”

I believe it’s time to change the definition of success. I believe we are more than the numbers on our Facebook page. I believe we are more than the amount of subscribers who read our blogs. I believe we are more than something that can be measured on Google analytics.

Here’s a thought: We already are successful. We were successful the day we put ourselves out there and hustled for our dreams. We were successful ages ago, but for some reason, we thought it wasn’t enough.

We have already succeeded. No amount of fans, followers, likes, subscribers, clients, or dollar signs can ever change that.

Here’s my new definition of success:

The act of waking up each day and being in love with what you do and who you are as a person.

It took me longer than I want to admit to realize what success truly means. It is not a number. It is being happy with who we are and who we strive to be every day.

So are you successful?

A photographer on the Baltimore Protests

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Just thought I’d share this article as a current events type deal before heading out for today. Though I don’t really get photography as an art far as all the technicalities are concerned (I mean, there are good pictures and then there are…good pictures), I do love the camera myself and I do think photography plays an important role in the unfolding of historical events. Had it not been for photographers, we would not have the opportunity to relive some of the most profound moments in history with such intimacy. As for my thoughts on the specific events rocking the country, I will have to come back with another post when I have more time, however I am led, we will see. Till then stay in tune:

Devin Allen is a self-taught photographer and Baltimore native. His images from the protests following the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody have received thousands of likes and shares on social media. As the situation continued to unfold in his hometown, Fusion caught up with Allen to learn more about his work and the gaps in the narratives being reported on the news versus those being experienced on the ground.

Fusion: So how old are you and how long have you been doing photography?

Devin Allen: Well, I’m 26, and I started photography [about] 3 years ago, in 2013.

Fusion: What got you started?

Devin Allen: Basically, hanging in the city, we don’t have a lot to do…one of my friends actually got me into doing poetry, so I had my own poetry night. But I suck. I can write poetry but I cannot perform. So I had to find a way to give people that poetry feel, but visually, so I started making T-shirts. From there I got into photography. I would take pictures and put them on T-shirts and eventually, I fell in love with it and that became my major outlet since then.

Fusion: How long have you been in Baltimore?

Devin Allen: All my life.

Fusion: Your whole life, so you’re local?

Devin Allen: Yes.

Fusion: What stands out to you about Baltimore when you are taking pictures? What makes Baltimore so interesting to you?

Devin Allen: It’s just real. Baltimore is a real city. It don’t cut no corners. You know, when you get around certain people or certain places it don’t feel real? You know, like everything seems perfect? Baltimore is not that. It’s a beautiful place, it’s like a rose in concrete to me. It’s a beautiful place, but most people don’t see it like I see it. I was born and raised here, so I see the negative, I see the positive. I see the good and the bad. I’ve been on both sides of the fence – both the good side and the bad side. So that’s what it is for me – it’s a beautiful place, and it’s real.

Fusion: When you say you’ve been on the bad side, what do you mean? What is the bad Baltimore that you know and what is the good Baltimore that you know?

Devin Allen: Well, growing up here is very stressful. You can get caught up in a lot of things if you don’t have a strong environment [around you]. Growing up, I got caught up in a lot of foolishness because of friends, where I hung at, and umm…I was raised by my mother and her family, I was raised good, but I just had affection for the streets. I had a lot of friends in the hood who’d run the streets all day, I hung with a lot of people. I lost a lot of friends. I buried both my best friends back in 2013. Both of them were murdered. I lost both my best friends, so they’re like my inspiration. I was just doing whatever, you know, to get the day passed. I tried the school thing, didn’t work. Got a job, but you know it’s hard to stay the narrow with so much stress and negativity. Drugs everywhere, crack-infested, heroin-infested. It’s very difficult, but [an] easy city to get caught up in. As far as being on the bad side, I hung with drug dealers and I ran the streets with some bad people, you know?

Photography actually got me away from that because both my best friends were both murdered; one was murdered on a Friday, and my other best friend was murdered on a Saturday. The only reason I was not with them was because I had photo shoots both days. And that kind of bridged the gap between the streets and my art, and I chose my art over the streets.

Fusion: What would you say about your interactions with the police growing up in Baltimore?

Devin Allen: (Exhales.) Well, I have been subjected to racial profiling. You know, I have had friends beaten by police. I have had police plant drugs on me because they’ve been mad that they didn’t find any.

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