You do not always have to be doing something. You were born worthy.
On Tuesday, May 26, 2026, I turned 39.
And unlike previous years, I didn’t post much about it.
Aside from my stories, I didn’t post the usual cute pic.
It wasn’t because I was sad or ungrateful. I just didn’t feel like it this year.
Where I am usually super excited and bubbly, my mood on my birthday this year was that of Proverbs 27:2, “Let another man praise you, and not your own mouth–a stranger and not your own lips.”
This year, I didn’t feel like broadcasting the day of my birth. As much as I want people to remember me, I also want to let go of the need to control it.
If I were to be remembered, I want it to be a natural, organic occurrence, not a social media notification.
Strangely, I’ve had people say, “I didn’t get a notification.”
I thought it was weird their need to tell me they didn’t know because Facebook didn’t remind them. Just say you forgot, lol.
This further solidified for me why I was not motivated to post about it.
I like surprises and random acts of kindness I didn’t see coming. I don’t want to have to keep repeating the basics.
It reminded me of the quote floating around somewhere that says, “let people do what they want to do, so you can see what they’d rather do,” or some variation.
I prolly butchered that, but the overall point is to let people be themselves and allow their actions, not just their words, to reveal their true character.
I chose to let go of the need to control people’s remembering me, without holding it against those who did not.
In whatever circumstance, I have learned to be content.
These are the thoughts I am still mulling over, praying over, and meditating on in this final year of my 30s.
My key takeaway during these musings was to remember that whether I hosted a grand gesture or sat home in my pajamas eating my favorite snacks (and did), I am worthy regardless.
And so are you.
We do not have to be doing something to earn the title. We have inherit value and inherit dignity.
The 30s have been especially challenging, but I look forward to seeing what this year has to offer as I prepare for my ascension into the next phase of my life.
There comes a time when fear doesn’t just paralyze, but acts as its own form of superiority. How dare we grace the world with our brilliance? Someone might come and take what is ours. How dare we venture to use our words to save a soul? Isn’t healing ourselves enough? Why, then, must we risk pouring poetry onto the concrete for the world to see? Wouldn’t someone come and take it? Won’t it get soaked into the soil? Won’t the birds eat it? What will happen to our brilliance once it’s exposed? Will it wither up and die like Langston’s dream deferred? We are much too wise to let these words go out into the world.
This is not enlightenment. We shrink to keep from shining, so we avoid the light. We avoid the truth: Fear is not growth, and hiding behind the superiority of the pen is not salvation.
It’s been a minute since I’ve talked about publishing on this blog. Mostly, I was just tired of giving advice. Still am.
Most of the work is doing the thing. Failing at it. Succeeding at it, and failing again until you find your groove.
Buttttt… our latest viral sensations have brought me out of hiding.
Enter AI and Dr. Cheyenne Bryant
These seem like unrelated, separate topics, but stay with me.
Lately, I’ve been noticing tons of creators with social media captions that use the same “It’s not x, it’s y” ChatGPT cadence, including authors.
Why are people who write books using AI to write their social captions? Isn’t being creative like, our literal job?
The “it’s not x, it’s y” cadence sounds like: “It’s not just a meal, it’s an experience.”
The words are also structured a certain way, and it is noticeable for those who know what to look for.
For me, it’s mostly noticeable when someone drastically changes how they write. Since I’m a poet, I compare it to suddenly sounding like a poetic professor. You’ve once been an emperor of typos, and now the words flow neatly on top of one another.
The phrases are very well-written, too well-written for a person who has never written in such a way.
It seems to mimic how professional writers write, except now everyone is doing it.
Suddenly, everyone’s Insta captions and Facebook posts are grammatically correct, inspirational, and profoundly poetic.
It is also profoundly fake.
While it might read pretty, it waters down the writer’s authentic voice.
I’d be remiss not to mention that this is not everyone. There are some fantastic, extraordinary writers out there, and for the record, AI is mimicking the genius of the real brain.
The most tell-tale sign is whether I can sense your personality in your writing, or if instead you just sound like an English teacher when you are not one.
The twist in all of this is that typos will become the new normal. They will signal that the person who wrote the piece is a human who makes mistakes and uses their own mind.
You Sound Just Like Everybody Else
What should be most disturbing is that using chat to write will have you sounding like everyone else in the same way that all those AI flyers look the same.
These flyers are always way too cluttered. There is too much information on them, and they end up drawing attention away from the core message, which is drowned out by so many colors and images.
This leads me to question if people are even trying to make changes to the prompts, templates, or whatever they are using.
As a reminder, Canva still exists and has some great free and paid templates from real graphic artists. For my poetry contest, I hired someone on Fiverr to handle the initial design, then paid for the source file. The source file allows me to go in and edit it into as many versions as I want without paying for them. So far, I have turned two graphics into seven to promote my sponsors and judges. It was the best $20 I’d ever spent.
Ya’ll are watering down your voice and image.
I’ve also been seeing a ton of new self-published books with AI/ChatGPT-generated book covers. I cannot emphasize how strongly I recommend not doing this.
You are likely damaging your author brand and marketing strategy before they even begin.
And this isn’t just my opinion. It’s what readers are saying.
Additionally, I have been monitoring the bookish community on Threads, and many readers say they don’t trust books with AI-generated covers.
If your book cover is AI-generated, it’s hard not to wonder if your book was written by ChatGPT, Gemini, or any other artificial intelligence software.
It’s hard not to wonder if you’ve put the hard work in to write or if the computer has done the writing for you.
Consequently, even if you did write the book, it’s challenging for readers to see you as an authentic voice.
The book cover is your first impression. Lose readers there, and they are not reading your book.
Speaking of authenticity, enter Dr. Cheyenne Bryant, the woman currently under fire for the legitimacy of her doctorate and the location of her dissertation.
Dr. Bryant also just published a book that people are saying sounds like it was written by AI.
With twelve 1-2-star Amazon reviews, it is littered with claims of fraud stemming from her latest allegations that she is not a real therapist or psychologist.
We are living in an era where Black history is being erased every day, so I understand the excitement over discovering all the amazing things our people have done.
However, while I love me a good fun fact, I cannot help but notice that many of the Black history memes floating around social media are often grossly inaccurate or lacking context.
And some are flat-out wrong altogether.
And I am not talking about small pages either. Many of your favorite Black history accounts with millions of followers put out false information every day in the name of Black history.
Yes, this includes those on Substack… not really sure why ya’ll think this isn’t also a social media platform.
With a culture so rich and expansive as ours, we really do not need to embellish what we’ve done. The work is already powerful on its own.
Here are just a few things I wish we would explain more deeply. I am starting with this one because someone told me to “Shut up” on Instagram for pointing it out.
Mary Beatrice Kenner invented the maxi pad.
Context:
What Kenner invented was called the sanitary belt and moisture-resistant pocket, which is not exactly the same as our modern disposable menstrual pad.
Kenner’s patent eventually expired, leading people to take credit for her invention. A company also expressed interest but pulled back after learning she was Black.1
If Kenner had not been rejected, it is highly likely that she would have also invented the disposable pad, likely based on her original idea. However, what she invented was not the same as today’s adhesive pad, as many of these posts insinuate without proper context.
1880s–1890s: Early disposable pads were made of cotton and gauze, often marketed to women traveling by land or sea.
1896: Johnson & Johnson marketed “Lister’s Towels: Sanitary Towels for Ladies,” which were a notable early commercial attempt but failed due to social stigma.
1918–1921: Nurses in WWI used high-absorbency wood-pulp bandages, leading to the creation of Kotex, the first successfully marketed disposable pad.
1926: Johnson & Johnson introduced Modess Sanitary Napkins.
1956/1957: Mary Kenner patented an improved adjustable sanitary belt with a moisture-resistant pocket.
What I would change on this timeline, though, is that Kenner’s invention was in the 1920s, but because of racism, the sanitary belt did not come out until the late 1950s.
This is what I mean by adding context or looking deeper into what we read.
Let’s look at another one.
Claudette Colvin was the first to give up her seat before Rosa Parks.
There was also Aurelia S. Browder, who did it in April 1955, almost eight months before Rosa Parks’s arrest and a month after Claudette Colvin’s.
History is not the linear event we think it is. There is so much that happened, and so many people it happened to, we might never know about.
What Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks represent is the culmination of many years of work and sacrifice by many different Black women.
And one more.
Lewis Howard Latimer invented the light bulb.
Context:
What Lewis Howard Latimer invented was an improved process for manufacturing carbon filaments for electric light bulbs.
In simpler terms, his invention made using light bulbs in homes and businesses more practical. His filaments could be heated to high temperatures without breaking, resulting in longer-lasting, more efficient, and affordable light bulbs.
These are a few easy ones I thought of because I see them a lot, but there are many more.
Before you sit in the Amen corner of anybody’s Black history post (including mine), make sure the information they are sharing is correct. Google (and Google Scholar) is right there.
Sluby, Patricia C. “BLACK WOMEN AND INVENTIONS.” Women’s History Network News, no. 37, 1993, pp. 4.. ↩︎
Lang, Martin. “Irene Morgan and her Impact on Freedom Riders.” ↩︎
Orr, Nicole. Famous Women in History: Ida B. Wells: Crusader for Justice. Curious Fox Books, 2025. ↩︎
People knew his father and what he had contributed to the movement. They still spoke Joseph’s name with a kind of reverence, as though saying it might conjure the courage of another time. His photograph—creased at the corners, and yellowed with time, hung in barbershops and church foyers, beside posters for fish fries and gospel concerts.
Every February, Joseph’s face reappeared on classroom walls, a reminder of marches and megaphones, of a generation that refused to bow. For the community, Joseph was history come to life.
For Michael, he was just Dad.
Michael and his friends walked past the bulletin board in the school hallway. There it was again: his father’s face, eyes sharp, mouth set like a promise. Michael paused, thinking about his first days at Lindbloom.
“Ey, Mike! Mike!” a classmate had called. “Yo man, so how is it being famous? What was it like?”
Today, he would tell the person to go to hell, but back then, he just shook his head, a small, polite refusal that spoke louder than words.
Michael kept walking, shoulders tight, mind elsewhere, like the chess match he had lost last night. If he had not been hungover, his opponent would not have stood a chance. He didn’t particularly enjoy the taste of liquor, but it got his mind off thinking about walking in a legend’s shadow.
Tanya carried the legacy easily, quoting speeches and smiling at cameras as if born for the stage. But Michael kept to the edges. He wanted to be noticed for his own quiet triumphs—for the way his mind worked over a chessboard, or how the basketball arced perfectly from his fingertips.
Instead, people only ever asked about “The Movement,” their eyes expectant, as if he held some sacred story he refused to tell.
His father’s name was everywhere, in every conversation, every display, every “remember when” retold by people who seemed to think history lived only in him. Not in Michael. Not in the quiet hours he spent imagining, planning, thinking. They acted like he was Martin Luther King’s son.
So what, his father took part in the Freedom Rides? What did that have to do with him? Michael didn’t care about no Barack Obama either. He wasn’t his Savior. He was just another politician. He swallowed hard, tasting the bitterness of being overlooked for the wrong reasons.
History had chosen him without asking, which is why he couldn’t admit to his friends or himself that he had a crush on a white girl.
Tanya McNair, dressed in her favorite navy-blue blouse, which bore a faint trace of glitter from the campaign rally a month ago, moved from group to group of the crowded apartment. Her living room was alive with chatter, laughter, and the occasional burst of applause from friends and neighbors whenever a commentator announced another state leaning toward Obama. Tanya looked fondly at the old TV set sitting on the floor beneath the big, flat-screen they were all watching.
The floor model television belonged to her grandmother, Sidney McNair—Mama Sidney to everyone who knew her. Uncle Eddy had bought it after great-grandma Judith passed, back when he and his sisters decided to remain in Chicago a while longer. That was also around the time her father, Joseph, disappeared into what he later called a revolution of self-discovery, also known as abandoning the family until he found himself.
The television had been there through it all.
It was the same set where great-grandma Judith—daughter of the great Solomon, son of the first Stella—watched the Black Panthers march down the street in their berets and rifles, demanding the freedom of Huey Newton.
The same screen that flickered quietly in the corner the day Aunt Karen’s boyfriend, Noah, stormed into their lives. Years later, she would name their first and only son after him.
For Tanya, it wasn’t just a piece of furniture but a sacred repository for memories, a portal to her family’s history.
Tanya frowned at the stacks of books on top of it, wondering if she was disrespecting her grandmother by using her TV as a table.
A cheer erupted from the room as the phone rang. Tanya’s heart raced as she ran to answer it without taking her eyes off the flatscreen. So far, Obama was winning.
“Sisss,” sang her little brother.
Tanya raised her eyebrows, “Are you drunk already, Mike?”
“Nah. I’m good. What’s the word?”
Tanya sighed, “Michael, you are not good. I can smell the Hennessy through the phone.”
Mike burst into laughter, and Tanya pulled the phone from her ear. That boy was gonna make her go deaf. “Where are you anyway?”
“I’m handling some business. Why, what’s good?”
“The business you were supposed to be handling is here. What happened to you helping me with the party?”
“The election party? You know I don’t get into alla that,” he said, slurring his words.
“Well, you need to get into it. History is being made. Have you talked with Dad?”
“History? Yea okay. Nah. I ain’t spoke to him today.”
“He was supposed to be coming over.”
“Coming over where?”
“Over here, to the apartment.”
“Not today, he ain’t. He told me he was working on the Malibu.”
“That beat-up old thing?” Tanya sighed. “And I thought you ain’t talk to him?”
“Look, pops don’t wanna hurt yo feelings, but you know the old man don’t vote.”
It didn’t make sense to her. Joseph McNair was born in 1945 and grew up in the ’60s at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. He had heard Dr. King speak, fought segregation with his friends through protest, and was even beaten for trying to integrate at a bus station during the Freedom Rides.
Finding out he really was a mixed Black man and not the white boy he grew up believing himself to be is a history lesson all its own.
And now, as the country waited with bated breath to see if the United States really would elect its first Black President, her father, the revolutionary of the family, didn’t participate in politics?
Joseph McNair was politics!
“Yo T, you there?”
Michael’s voice startled Tanya back to the present, her heart beating a million miles per minute as her guests sat on their hands, quietly waiting on the biggest announcement of their time, the walls echoing with hope.
Title: Chains of Gold: Based on the True Story of Slavery During the California Gold Rush
Author: Ken Robb
Publisher: Word Star Ink
Genre: Historical Fiction, US Historical Fiction
Published: September 22, 2025
Pages: 438 pages
The year is 1852, and Carter is shouting his freedom into the face of the law as deputies close in, threatening to drag him back to Mississippi in chains. From this moment of terror, the story retreats a couple of years back to the Perkins Plantation, where Carter is not free at all but enslaved, under the watch of a brutal overseer. It is here that Charles Perkins returns home from college to witness the abuse of his slaves.
Although Carter and Charles are half-brothers, playing side by side as boys, adulthood exposes the lie of that intimacy. One is granted power by birth; the other is denied ownership of his own body. I was struck by how powerfully the author juxtaposes affection and oppression throughout the story, illustrating how love can coexist with, and be corrupted by, slavery. Carter and Charles’ bond is no match for a system designed to break one man for the comfort of another.
Charles Perkins is the oldest to inherit the plantation. He was gifted land and slaves, and his father wants his sons to learn how to manage a plantation. Despite this, Charles is noticeably different from his brother. Rather than basking in the excitement of running his own plantation, Charles shows more compassion, doesn’t want the enslaved to be mistreated, and has dreams of going to California to find gold.
Carter is an intelligent Black man. He knows how to read despite being enslaved (something he hides), pays attention to details (especially details on slavery), carries his Bible everywhere he goes, and watches Charles’ back. He is more responsible and proves to be his brother’s keeper on more than one occasion.
While Carter yearns for true freedom, Charles is a man of his time. Despite how much grace he extends, he is still a slave master. As Charles reminisces about the beauty of the mansion and the land, recalling his father’s ambition and how hard their ancestors worked to farm and buy the land, Carter reminds him that “more land means more slaves.” He knows it was built with his family’s blood, sweat, and tears. (Robb 2025)
Though looking at the same view, the men see two different worlds. This is reflected throughout the story. While Charles’s love interest, Emmy, gives him a professional photo to remember her by, Carter’s love interest, Peg, gives him a charcoal drawing she made using a mirror.
My AI rendition of Carter and Charles
The narrative eventually follows Carter and Charles westward to California in pursuit of gold, a journey the author renders with careful attention to historical details. Rather than functioning solely as an adventure, the passage underscores the persistence of racial and social hierarchies across geographic space. In California, distance from the plantation does not translate into liberation from inherited roles. Charles’s attempts at fairness are marked by visible moral ambivalence, yet the surrounding society repeatedly reasserts the boundaries between them.
This tension is crystallized in several figures throughout the book, such as Bill, the seasoned miner, whose disapproval when Carter refers to Charles as his “master” exposes the unspoken codes governing race, power, and language. This tension resurfaces in Charles’s exchange with Fritz, who asks whether Carter is paid.
Although Charles views himself as well-intentioned, his decision not to compensate Carter—and his quiet assurance that the money would not matter to him—reveals how deeply he remains anchored in the assumptions of mastery. In this moment, Charles acts not as an equal or a brother, but as a man still shaped by the privileges of ownership.
The author does a good job of highlighting the lesser-known aspects of California’s history that are not widely taught.
Slavery and unfree labor were deeply ingrained during the Gold Rush era, despite California’s 1850 admission as a “free state” prohibiting slavery. Slaveholders brought enslaved Black people to work mines, and state laws like the 1852 Fugitive Slave Law enforced this practice. This resulted in complicated legal disputes, community resistance from free Black Californians, and the persistence of servitude until the Civil War.
The best thing about this book is that it’s based on a true story. Both the characters and the Gold Rush era are also well-researched, including the scene where Charles explains to the men how to transform the gold into banknotes. We often overlook the fact that paper money was once backed by gold, until the gold standard was removed in 1971 when Nixon ended the dollar’s convertibility to gold. This is why a dollar in 1800 had far more buying power than a dollar in 2025.
In 1850, $1 could buy what about $40 buys now.
This is a long book, so it will take some time to read. However, if you are looking for some good historical fiction, this one is well worth the time! I was eager to see what would become of the characters.
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