Tag: blogging

Everyday People

Group of business people standing in huddle, smilingI see you breathing and believing and filled with emotion and background and circumstances. I see you angry and frustrated and happy. I see you succeed and fail, fall and stand up. I see you in need of inspiration and encouragement and it encourages me to provide that serenity as best I can on this blog, as an individual. I also appreciate the encouragement many of you give on your blogs. For the most part I’m that person nodding my head in agreement (or shaking my head) and walking away. If I like your post its not because I’m a robot programmed to do so. It means I really liked your post! Some of you are awkward though. I see you coming into class with tilted glasses and pocket protectors. Some of you are loud and outspoken, others are quiet and reserved. Some of you are wild and passionate about that wildness. That’s your business. Some of you are super smart and can’t really hold a decent conversation without going over someone’s head. Some of you take off people’s heads. Some of you are a lot simpler. You walk into the door ready to listen and engage. Some of you come in popping bubble gum and rolling your eyes. You don’t really wanna hear what this woman is talking about again but you can’t stop showing up either.

I didn’t intend on writing much today. But I came across a very interesting post by my girl Linda G. Hill: Your WordPress Audience. In this post, Linda posed an exciting question: How do you see your WordPress followers? Are they friends? Are they followers? Are they individuals? What if you could get your followers into one room and stand before them and write your post for them? That post inspired this one. For Linda’s post, Click Here.

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I think it’s about personifying your post, about making sure that you insert your personality into your writing; finding that balance between personal and too personal. Never sacrificing your stand but just being real with people. I think this is important so that we can better connect with others. Linda’s post made me think about that, and why I see my subscribers as everyday people like me. This is why I wanted to express my thoughts about the post on this blog in front of all of you. I think it’s a very good topic of discussion and it’s a great way to look at your blog. I know a lot of us would see things differently if we were in front of each other than behind a keyboard. Makes you ponder the question: Who’s being real?

Group-Recovery-You-Are-Not-AloneWe are bloggers, people who have decided that a particular blog was interesting enough to subscribe to. (As a quick side note, I say subscribe and not follow because everyone “following” your blog is not necessarily following your blog. Instead, I like to think of it as people who decide to subscribe to receive your post in their emails or in their readers. And although I do have something called “Audience participation” I see each of you more as individuals) For those of us who have trusted that blog enough to take off our shoes (please don’t leave footprints on the carpet, thanks) and sit down and leave a comment at the table, or to like once or twice, it is obviously easier to get to know those people, and they become much more than just a subscriber we never hear from. But they become associates. And maybe even friends. I say friends slowly and loosely. Everyone is not your friend, that’s just real and it’s an important thing to know when interacting online.

But in any event, how do I see you?

highres_444803Well, like I said, I see you breathing and believing and filled with emotion and background and circumstances like every day people. I wouldn’t say that I am standing before podiums and stages. I stand instead before you a woman. You walk into my place and we pull up chairs and gather together close like a writing group. I offer you beverages and snacks because I love to eat and I’m sure you do too. And depending on the atmosphere, we may even have a little wine. I only require that everyone has their writing brains turned on and their utensils ready to begin. Together, we nestle ourselves shoulder to shoulder, pencil, pad, smartphone or laptop in hand and we share. Our blogs collaborate and we are not just bloggers anymore but this is brick and mortar. Somewhere someone has built a time machine that takes you to this place as instantly as an email and together we meet eye to eye and I face you with my thoughts. There is a moment of silence as you listen and you read and decide how you would perceive the information. Some of you decide to get up and leave and never come back. Some of you scribble little notes on pieces of paper and place them into a drop box. Some of you speak, openly and candidly, you match your experience with mine. Some of you nod your head, and it is my hope that we can build. I picture us laughing and joking and learning and who knows where we’ll end up. Someone somewhere will get so upset that they storm out of the room. Some of you will cry because you can. Some of you will engage me in thought provoking and in depth conversation and who knows how long we’ll sit there.

And at the end we all give our goodbye greetings and there’s a sign-up sheet. Will your name be among those who will return? I wonder.

On the other hand, how about you? How do you see yourself as a blogger if you had to sit face to face with your subscribers? Would things be different? Would you be more or less nervous? Would you be the same person offline as you are online?

Responsibilities

Yecheilyah-72dpi-1500x2000-e-bookI know I know it’s been a scarce week (or two) here on The PBS Blog. Truth is I began a number of projects years ago that are starting to show signs of fruit. I am completing my first short story series. In fact, Stella Book #1 Releases Next Week which will be promptly followed by additional parts taking me well into the summer and just in time to begin work on Pearls Before Swine Vol. #2 in the fall. Needless to say I expect to have a busy year (yaaasss). But the biggest project, the one I am super siked to be on the finishing end of is the audio for my Third Poetry Book Collection “Womanhood Don’t Begin in Menstrual Cycles”, which releases next month (March). But while I set out to organize my life offline, it led me to today’s post: Responsibilities.

This has nothing to do with projects or books, but life. As we go about our daily routines and the accomplishments of our goals there is a lot missing from the accountability end of this whirlwind of events and circumstances. We must keep in mind that we are responsible for everything we say, everything we do and everything that we write. There’s a quote that says ” We are what we write”, and what a profound truth. I speak and you listen and as a result of my speaking you in turn perceive. You may either accept or reject and that’s your business. I cannot be responsible for the way in which your eyes see, but I can be responsible for influencing what you see. In other words, our personal lives would be so much better if as individuals we took responsibility for who we are and what we are and those things that we influence, good or bad.

A young man dies on the street corner. He is 17 years old. By age 5 he can quote the rap lyric to every rap song known to man. His routine consists of school, TV, food and back again. Homework has been lost in-between. At age 10 he came into the house at whatever hour his youthful activities would warrant. By age 13 he was buying his own clothing and paying his mothers bills. By the age of 16 he was paying her rent altogether. At 17 years old a young man is gunned down on the street corner. The aftermath presents a distraught mother who cannot fathom the animal who would gun down her son. “He was a good boy”, she says. And while I would not doubt he just may have been a nice guy, what was he doing on the corner in the first place? What kind of activities led him there? And at what point does this mother take responsibility for the kind of behavior she approved the moment she accepted what she knew to be drug money? Or perhaps I trip over a rock and scar my face in the process. Oh and I was texting by the way so I wasn’t exactly looking up. I was not paying attention and as such I could not see what was in front of me. This is the kind of accountability in which I speak.

Healing can only come from personal accountability. I can never fix what is wrong with me if I cannot acknowledge my own imperfections. It is important to ask ourselves: “What is it about me that led to this? What is it about my heart that chose this?” Because only until we come fully into the understanding of our personal selves can we begin to make changes. Until then we will never progress in our lives. But once the process of personal accountability has begun, then we will begin to improve on those struggles we once thought were immovable. A bad situation is always a bad situation, but growth is optional. We choose to accept who we are and who we have become. We decide what aspects of our lives will change and which will remain based on our level of responsibility. When we are at fault we choose to accept or deny that fault. And when we have made a mistake we choose how that mistake will change us.

Special Places

150208_0001I find you in diverse places: coffee shops, libraries, community centers, parks, even out on the front lawn! Writer’s sprinkled miscellaneously about the earth: polished glasses, warm tea or iced coffee (depending on the weather), Mac books, PC’s and a 3 1/2 pound miracle between their ears. Is there a special place you go to write? You can’t see it, but it’s there; the invisible surge of energy that powers creativity. Electricity is all around us–the power of technology beating through our cell phones, lights, computers, and dishwashers. Yet technology has not its hold on electricity, for it exists beyond the tangibility of anything we can explain. We have not precisely deciphered its definition or explained the beauty of lightening. Energy, it pulses its way through nature, and slithers its way through our fingers.

The table circles its way around my small dining room, with four chairs to keep it company. One of these chairs props itself against the wall and faces forward. From here I can see the landscape of everything from the living room, to the kitchen and peer out the window at the same time. The swimming pool is naked of bodies and is in need of attention from maintenance. It’s a nice day in Shreve City; right now the community is as quite as it often is on Sundays except for the elderly woman walking her puppies. There is nothing special about this view, yet it is where I go to charge when I have not the solitude of being away at the office. It is an unusual place, yet being here is incentive enough to write. Here I may fulfill the need of written expression the moment I sit my bottom in this wallflower of a chair, revitalized by the invisible power that charges our anxious need to build.

NEW: Explore The PBS Blog’s Archives

I have been brainstorming on a way in which to re-introduce everyone to some of my older posts. I have entertained the idea of re-posting or re-spinning but I am not sure if I want to do that just yet. Then I happened upon “Blogging 201: Make the most of your archives” and all of my questions were answered. I have decided to take advantage of this piece of advice and introduce a new feature into The PBS Blog to make it easier for you to find older posts by implementing an Archive Page. Just click the “Archives” page to find some of my older post of which many of you have never read. I will rotate this list over time to exchange the material so that it is constantly loaded with past material.

My goal is to make your reading experience as smooth and as easy as possible, so I hope this new feature is of greater assistance to your navigation of The PBS Blog, and that you find something that you enjoy. Have a great night (or morning depending on where you are) 🙂 .

Excitement

unnamedThis picture is so me right now! The excitement of writing a book. The point where you can think of nothing else but it. Way before the technicalities, the editing, the book cover design, formatting, marketing, promotion and all of the important stuff you will eventually get to. But not now. Now is the most important time, the moment of taking this energy by the reins and using it fully. Don’t wait until the thrill is gone and floating somewhere in outer space, do it now. Yes, now, write. Always write when you feel the urge to, it means something powerful is about to emerge. So it is at this moment that I fill my heart with the excitement of finishing the sequel to Stella, a short story that is not yet available even though the continuation is in my head yearning to jump from my frontal lobe and onto the page. I can hardly keep still these days, my mind too cluttered by the chit chatter of people in my head. The not yet visible personalities of characters hoping to acquire personalities before the next stage of their existence. Even though many of them are miserable because I do after all control their world. It is for me to speak their flesh into existence and fill their mind with lives they have never lived. To give them careers they have only dreamed of. But I will not leave them desolate. Instead I breathe intellect into the nostrils of characters so that they are not merely walking stick men, but they are people too. They live in places made of brick and mortar, smell the scent of cheese pizza while walking down a Chicago street, and intersect their toes into the Mississippi dirt. Their experiences then are not make-believe; their choices have actually been made before in some distant biography of people I do not know. And their faces are inscribed from my memory bank. I’ve seen this nose before and that attitude is as close as a High School friend. These people do not know it yet, but their shoes are lined with the imprint of humanity already. If I could, I may just foresee the manifestation of their existence in a mother, in a stranger, or some place outside of my world. Have my pen to cough up people with British accents and women who speak with a Somali tongue. Who knows, I may find them on television, catch them waiting for the bus, or greet the main character in the check-out line of the grocery store.

False Leaders & Mentors

Speaking of Black History Month, there’s a desperate need for fresh leadership within our community. A lot of people look to figures like Al Sharpton and Benjamin Crump as leaders but the truth is that men like this are leading a lot of you astray. These men do nothing for black people except manipulate situations and line their pockets. While it is true that young black men are murdered, the aftermath of these kinds of events is sadder. Not only are black men murdered, but afterward your leaders come in and the objective of the situation is altered. Trayvon Martins parents are rich from their son’s death. Al Sharpton took them under his wing and collected garbage cans filled with money and Mike Brown’s parents are well on their way. There is nothing fake or conspiracy theory about the deaths of these men this is conspiracy fact, but it is the aftermath that is manipulated. For what reason does a mother need a lawyer when her son is murdered? She needs a lawyer only when she is told to sue for civil rights transgressions. Meanwhile, your human rights are continually violated and your leaders do nothing about it. The saddest thing about the deaths that continue to pile alongside the streets of black communities is oddly not the deaths themselves. The saddest thing about it is the can of whitewash the leaders of these people hold in their pockets, prepared to spill deception at the first sight of blood. How long will we continue to give birth to death still lying on the bed of Sharpton’s dream?

The Premio Dardos Blog Award #2

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The PBS Blog has been nominated for another Award, our second Premio Dardos Blog Award *and the crowd goes wild* :). I happily accept this Award and just wanted to give a huge thanks to Colleen of Silver Threading for this wonderful nomination.

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It’s so funny because I really like this Award most of all so its super cool that I get two (*Yay me*). As a reminder: Premio Dardos is Spanish for Prize Darts, and is given in recognition of Cultural, Ethical, Literary, and Personal Values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing.