I’ve always thought of encountering readers — of having any readers at all — as an unbelievable gift. Giving lectures, signing books, sitting hopefully behind a table at a bookstore in Wichita Falls: these rituals may be humbling, but I’ve never forgotten the fact that thousands of unpublished writers in this country would give anything to be humiliated in exactly this way. Of all the mortifications to be found in an author’s life, probably none hurts as much as the kind you get from not being able to share your work with another soul.

Jennifer Finney Boylan (NYT)

And this year I said yes to the radio. So here you go…

(Pretty Impressive – Top 25 hits of the year in one song with Video.)

Possible Titles: (please choose the one you feel most comfortable with)

Ahhh, Bureaucracy

So my lesson this year (and last) is in Patience and Rejection. Also how to live with no money. Got it.

Are you there God? it’s me, Ain.

How long does it friggin take to hire someone, especially since I worked here before and got awesome feedback, from everyone.

Haiku about how a  no would have been so much better for my budget (and my self-esteem)

WTF?!?!?!?!?…REALLY!!!!??

I push for promise

over and over

May’s yes feels just like a no

It is 3 am. My personal witching hour when sleep alludes and schemes and regrets abound. As the end of my twenties fast approaches I am led to a number of conclusions, some familiar, some new.  All jagged little pills really. And I am hoping that they hurt enough this time for me to remember to be different in this next decade of my life.

The new year, and a new decade, is upon us and in 6 months time I will be thirty years old. It is only now that I am 29 that I realize how I should have spent my twenties.

And that is mostly, by having more fun. With a little bit of relaxing and getting realistic thrown into the bargain. In America the twenties is the period of early adulthood where figuring out your future path is still acceptable. According to commercials, it is also the time when young adults party, shop a lot, drink tons of liquor and have indiscriminate sex which is either lauded or condemned depending on who is paying for the commercial. In short it is another adolescence, without the parents and with a job. I have been on my own, in my own place, paying my own bills since I was 20. For a good three years I even lived quite literally in the heart of the Atlanta Midtown club district. Before the emasculated remnant it has now become, when the music and laughter and general debauchery was in full swing. In my effort to lead a good life I can recall three times that I even took advantage of my location, choosing instead to spend quiet nights inside, attempting good nights of sleep in order to be better prepared for work in the morning (retail = mandatory Saturdays).

I am not the girl in the commercials. I will always prefer a quiet dinner, a dim lounge to a packed and scream-worthy loud club. But reminiscing on my 20’s as they draw to a close I am quietly wishing that I had done a little more partying, had had a bit more fun, more laughter and even a few more unnecessary flings.  I was the same way in college; preferring to write papers early and spend ample time re-editing and also planning any number of educational (and ignored) rallies for the edification of the rest of the student body to do anything fun, like just hang on The Strip.  I regret that too, tho it didn’t stop me from treating my 20’s the same way.

The main thing holding me back is the thing that America itself is build upon. Meritocracy, in all its promising and shining WASPy-ness (as if I ever had reason to believe).  I, who has never truly believed in America or who has had very little trouble looking past its overexaggerated posturing, has always had a profound belief in the American Dream. No one is more surprised than I am to discover this fact about myself. But it is true, I have spent my entire adult life believing that good things happen to good people who work hard. I swallowed that first smooth pill and believed the promise that merit (and education) is what propels a person into the life they want to lead.

I really believed that paying my bills early, and with a little extra inside, was what good people did and that my fiscal responsibility (401K, IRA @ 21) would lead to something resembling security (see current recession and you can guess where that led.) I thought that hard-work, “come early-leave late-make 175% of my goal work” would lead to better positions. But I never much got anywhere even after 6 years on the job, (29 yr old self to 22yr old self–Play the Game Stupid!) I was just as wide eyed and bushy tailed as you could imagine and believed that my work, and natural leadership ability, would undoubtedly lead to something better.  Surely opportunity would follow exceeded expectations.  In short, I thought that by denying myself that which is designed to bring pleasure; ie. fun, partying, relaxation, would bring me what I personally count as pleasure; ie. a little disposable income for traveling and voice lessons (I gave up my dreams of being filthy rich long ago.)  I actually thought that right actions and a certain seriousness about life would lead me to a life I could seriously enjoy.

As I creep toward 30 I am starting to see my beliefs for what they were. Bullshit. Opportunity happens because of who you know, not what you know. There is nothing about merit that leads to the kind of opportunities that make life worth living and mornings worth being excited about. And (Newsflash!) hard work has nothing to do with it.

And so as 2010 rolls in I am putting down my overachiever mentality. I am no longer manic about paying my bills (not having a job or money helps with that.)  I no longer think that being the best wherever I am has any relationship to my future. Although the natural competitor in me will ensure that I am the best wherever I am, no matter my paradigm shift. I will focus instead on who I know, and though the list of people I know who are willing to help is dismally small it is something that I can work on in the coming decade, surrounding myself with people who believe and who will put action behind their beliefs. We do all know that you pretty much only get jobs through people you know, right? Almost completely in my experience.

But right now I am here, in a sort of waiting room for life.  After 8 years and two degrees, I am in virtually the same position I would have been in if all I had was a GED. In fact, other than falling into the burden of single motherhood, I could have probably spent my 20’s as an alcoholic or a crackhead and I would still be right here in this same position right now. There is something violently disturbing about that (hence my recurring insomnia), but also something strangely comforting about it.

I can pretty much fall no further. I have never made enough money to buy truly nice things and so if I have to give it all away to Goodwill, I don’t care. (as long as I have my pup, my iPhone and my laptop I will be okay). I have already asked my mother if I can move back home and the truth is that move will hardly be putting a crimp in my very benign social/dating life.  And though I count this last decade as a wash and I am entering the new decade without money, savings or a job, but with the debt that I managed to avoid my entire 20’s until this sumer, I find that I am armed with any number of valuable lessons for the future. I, who once had serious pride has at this point trotted my woes far and wide, literally to China, humbling myself in a way I never imagined to ask for help. I have learned to separate money from my emotional state (hence low-level depression vs. full mental break.)  I have lived with a medical mystery for almost 2 years now and have yet to freak out about the unknown, or the many invasive tests. These lessons, to me, are worth their weight in gold and so I will approach the new year feeling rich in spirit and feeling prepared for what I hope is to come and all that I don’t as well.

I’m kicking up my heels 2010. And in the meantime, (once I get a job of course and can breath and sleep again) I will laugh more and play more. I will relax and breathe and enjoy life instead of being on my best behavior in an effort to impress life into giving me the things I want.

All I ask is for a little (big) grace and some opportunity to turn all the hard won theory of my 20’s into a life that I actually want.  I promise I will provide all of the hard work necessary.

Struggling artist is a cliche term that has been repeated to the point of emptiness, of having no more meaning at all. In truth, society expects its artists to struggle because it has decided that the arts is not a priority, that only those fields which grease the wheels of capitalism are the true contributors to moving America forward. And so with this mind set it is accepted that the artist must suffer.

The common belief is that the artist’s struggle is an economic one and it is okay because that is a struggle that we can understand.  Americans respect the economic struggle because in one way or another it is a struggle we are all involved in, even those with financial resources must strategize and consider how to spread their wealth for maximum effect. And that is why we are not concerned with the struggle of the artist in particular.

Yet to distill the artist’s struggle into that of pure economics is to make a serious mistake, one with ramifications that extend out into greater society. As previously prefaced America is concerned with the quantifiable and it rewards, from the earliest stages, those who follow directions. Aspiring medical doctors know that they must excel in biology and the sciences in hs and college, they must prepare for and score well on the MCAT’s and get into a medical school, once there they must study voraciously and apply for their rotations, after rotations there are board tests and applications for residency. In short order there will be graduation, residency and then one is a doctor. There are similar paths for lawyers and architects and others of the highly skilled vocational variety. Yet there are no similar paths for the artist, there is no one direction for the artist to follow with the final result being able to be a respected artist. Even if an artist wanted to follow the rules, there are no true rule to follows.  Arguably there are Juilliard’s and dance companies, however they are designed for certain specializations of artists and thus cannot boast a path which will satisfy all artists.

As a writer with the goal of becoming a published author, I of course know that I must create some type of product on which to hinge my dreams. And so I write, a satisfying practice but also a lonely one. And more importantly, not one with a guaranteed end result. Of course every person who starts med school will not finish, but that will be due to a personal lack and not based on the whim of those who would be the gatekeepers to art. I can write a thousand books and if no one wants to publish them, and if I don’t choose to publish them myself, they will be nothing more than something I once did. All of the hours and the outlines, the rewrites and character sketches, plot diagrams and edits will mean nothing because what I produce is not guaranteed an outlet into the world. And so I doubt myself, even when the sentences are flowing out of me like water and the stories seem to be writing themselves, I doubt. There is no charted next step for me, there is however the need for me to be not only artist, but promotor and hype woman and networker and secretary in my effort to get my work into the right hands. It is not enough that I have the skill to write, unlike the skill to heal, but I must also take on the tasks which are standing in between my work meaning something or never even being seen at all. This is the artist’s struggle. The internal desire to produce something which has not been asked for and to share it against society’s desire to respect only those things which they have pre-approved, shared with them by those with full-time jobs.

The swirl of motivation which pushes one to create can be overwhelming, it is an excitement and a relief to produce and then it is in many cases a stagnant thing. Something an artist shares with close friends and family, perhaps they can link up with a tiny gallery, a local theatre, a small printing company. But maybe they can’t and their art will become something they used to do, before they grew up and got serious. For doctors and lawyers, even for the more fuzzy skills of the financial analysts and investment bankers there will be jobs. There will be someplace that respects these skills and it will usually show that respect by offering an above average income in return. The artist will continue on, until the desire for security and comfort combines with the rejection and the constant yearning, and then they will give-in to society’s promise to reward those who follow the rules instead of those who try to create their own.

The artist’s struggle is an internal and emotional one, yet it does not leave the rest of us as unaffected as we might want to believe. Stifled brilliance, or bound creativity is a thing of torture. For society, it limits the ways that we can communicate with and come to know one another. Broadway is but one street in NYC, while financial centers, law firms and their ilk abound in every city. The artists who set their sights on that one Broad way, that one theatre company, that one literature canon, are entering a competition of epic proportion, a contest in which talent is not the sole requirement.  And it is society that misses out, on stories that need to be told, on songs that should have been sung, on melodies that should have moved us and raised goosebumps on our forearms. We are missing out on connection and inspiration and grace. By focusing only on the quantifiable we are missing the things that are everything else; love, compassion, honesty and truth. The artist’s struggle than becomes society’s struggle with art, or the lack thereof.

And in the artist, the suppression of creativity or the silencing of expression, can become a bitter thing. A twisted torment which leads to the other cliche of the tortured artist as the tales of deviance and drug use and liquor commence. Everyone aspires to validation of some sort and the path of an individual artist is most commonly a lonely one, particularly for those who work alone; our writers, our poets, our painters and sculptors, etc. I am too willful to continue to allow myself to spend more time being depressed ( a thing I have struggled with since hs) and too judgmental to allow myself to be addicted to drugs or alcohol.  But I am definitely at risk for each of these things. My mind is a constant race of thoughts and ideas. I ache to write almost constantly and have sketched outlines for 6 books, each in varying stages of completion. I want to sing (and do) and paint (and do) and design (and do) and decorate cakes (and do) and I have an idea for a series of photographs (have been dreaming about for years). And of course all of that sounds schizophrenic, but when I am engaged in each of those things hours are minutes and even food is no longer a priority, but an afterthought. I am free and not watching the minutes tick by on the clock or thinking of ways to break up the monotony of my day. [BTW: I am certain it would not be unreasonable if I said I wanted to copy and scan, write memos and attend meetings, manage and administrate, all activities of the corporate schizophrenia which we have chosen to approve] But I digress. Suffice it to say that I cannot attend to those needs mainly because they are creative, and they are definitely needs and not wants. Why?  Because I must get real, get a “real” job and then once I have one I will work 40+ hours a week in service to it. And then I will have to fit the only things that bring me peace, excitement and happiness too, but mainly and always peace, into the spaces and hours that are left. This is the artist’s struggle, staying true to oneself and honoring one’s passion while maintaining independence; see: eating and rent and such things.

We are all doing ourselves a disservice by reducing the artist’s struggle to an insignificant, throw-away remark. We are devaluing the artist whose contributions we do not respect unless the market respects it, through tickets, book and cd sales, etc. We are reminding them daily that self-expression without a financial outcome is an unwanted, narcissistic waste of time.  And we are also devaluing our society; stifling the voices and the photographs, the painted homages and the books, the costumes and the plays that share with us who we were before we had to abandon our imaginations for reality.  We are ignoring that which remind us of who we are when people, and the culture they create, are celebrated more than money.

Artist/Art

So school is over (for now) and I have decided that this is my year to figure out, decipher, explore and hopefully discover what love means for my life. I am slowly moving into the next phase of things when, I hope, love will become a greater priority. I hope that through contemplation, conversation, advice and ultimately action I can begin to inform the way I interact with emotions, feelings and intimacy.

Please visit My Year of Love page, the link can be found on a tab in the picture above and on the sidebar, and share your thoughts about love and relationships. I would enjoy and appreciate hearing what you think.

This recession has done more than make me wish for a job, a sensation I am infinitely familiar with. But it is the first time ever that I have wished I was white. (Screams of anguish and accusations of playing the race card commence) This is a pretty huge admission for me, because I love being of color. I like the perspective and the strength it gives me. I love my brown skin and that my hair is extra thick and dark. I know that if I died and had to come back I would request to be of color.

Nonetheless as life passes me by, I find myself wishing that things were different. That I had parents or a community that was connected, networked and linked in to interesting people with job opportunities. (I am aware that not all white people have this, but statistically speaking…) That I was on sight qualified and that my resume, just another piece of paper among many, is not all that I have to make a first impression and prove my worth. That I would be considered a fit, based on my alma mater or my affiliations, and not a miss. Most of my educational opportunities have been references from my network, achieved on my own merit and yet now when I want to put my degrees to work it is becoming painfully aware that I am suffering from lack of connections.

I understand that right now the market is depleted and that people of every race are losing jobs at a rate unprecedented. I get it. But I am talking about the reality that underlines the facts we all know, that historically whites are more connected; to each other, to the high-paying and influential jobs, to the American Dream. The jobs will always go first to those who are personally recommended or  to those who have the right pedigree and are seen as being able to better fit in. The truth is these days what one produces is not as important as who one knows or who one is known by. Unfortunately race cards exist for a reason and there is a history, as well as a present that causes their presence although most do not want to admit it. None of which makes it less so. Negative facts, un-PC facts do not negate their own truth. It is fact that the unemployment rate of blacks is twice that of others, a statistic that holds up all the time and not just during a recession. It is fact that blacks are less connected and that corporate and philanthropic America in particular is a huge industry  in whichwe are much less visible than the average basketball court or music awards ceremony. Not that much in middle America has changed

My new desire to transform, temporarily, is not just based on intangibles like stats and vague common-knowledge hearsay. For the past 6 years I have worked for, and more than excelled in (175% of goals, leadership, etc.) my work for a retail cosmetics company, to remain unnamed in case they decide to come to their senses. For at least three of those years I have sent my resume complete with my extensive internal experience, complete with my BA and now with a masters, in an effort to secure a position in the home office  of the company in my hometown of NYC. I am consistent in it. I have even sent special project proposals (resume attached) with strategies for building aspects of the business in an effort to stand out from the stream of willing applicants making their bid.

My persistence has taught me that I am mistaken in thinking that my ample success and variety of positions within the company, combined with my education (rare for the field), would make me a prime candidate for a corporate position. I have met some women who work in corporate and they don’t look like me, (nor does anyone in the top leadership positions) and they also do not have my experience.  More than once they have come from one field and work in something completely unrelated, so I am also not convinced they are hired based on their education. There are details that I do not know. But what I do know for sure is that I don’t have a chance in hell of growing with this company that purports, like many, to “promote talent from within” although I have been a better than model employee for years.

So how will I fare with a company who has never seen hide nor hair of me, who cannot look back in their records for proof of my capabilities?How indeed.

I want to be nepotized into an exciting, demanding, well-paying, (glamourous even) job that will challenge me and give me enough time off to travel the world. I like to work, the more challenging and interesting the better, and all I need is one opportunity. That is what I remind myself: I only need one, although I am not afraid of more.

I think of race as a factor because I cannot imagine that I could be this unwanted on the strength of my character or the work I produce. I am well-read and becoming more well-traveled with every passing year.  I am urbane, versed in a little bit of everything, interested in it all.  I am attractive (though some might say my natural hair makes me less so), witty and cultured. But more importantly I am a hard working and clever employee,(always early-will stay late-would rather actually be working than surfing the net all day) with a string of satisfied bosses and co-workers to prove it. And I cannot get even the twinkling of  interest, certainly not in any job that I am truly interested in.

There is an unspoken economic world of which I am not a member, where jobs are referenced and offered, not posted, where deals are made over wine and salaries are enough to live on instead of just subsist with. I am qualified and yet I am here, hoping for a miracle, just a little help in the right direction so I can fly. And I am sad to say that  I do not think that I am here based on my merit alone.

We are doing our President, Barack Obama, a disservice. The collective energy and spirit of the average citizens who made the  2008 campaign a success which transformed America and elected him has taken a break, gone back to its regular lives, and is content to watch him from afar. Observing and critiquing as he carries our collective hopes and goals forward, alone.

We know that President Obama could not have won the presidency without an inherent change in the American ennui and yet we have returned to that place of disempowerment, where all significant issues are someone else’s and we can’t be bothered to even try, leaving him alone as the beacon of hope. Yet it is now that President Barack Obama truly needs our help.

While a student at Spelman I was heavily involved in activism work, most often leading in the creation of protests, panels, awareness weeks and the like. It was stimulating, sometimes blissfully so, but always tiring, physically and emotionally, and when I graduated it took me a significant amount of time to recover. I can say that was not as involved in the Obama campaigning due to that experience and my disenchantment with the success of grassroots organizing.  That being said, I can understand completely the withdrawal of energy as the robust campaign transitioned into the established Presidency. Our dreams came true and it was easy to return to the way things were and to interact with our government in the way that we most always have, rarely or not at all.

President Obama showed us through his campaign that in order to experience different, we must be different and that is the very lesson we have already  forgotten.

We are allowing President Obama to fail by merely hoping for change. Hope without work, sacrifice,  and energy is nothing. And now President Obama is alone in a place where the Republicans, some of whom have admitted it out loud, are essentially working for his failure. A place where (although no one wants to talk about race), there are others who are expecting his failure due to the color of his skin. We are leaving him alone when we should be recharging our batteries, outlining our strategies and making a concerted effort to remind the politicians around him that they work for us, that We are the People and that we support the President whose existence has restored our credibility in the world, whose presence, among other things, has transformed the way we can think about race, even if we don’t choose to change the way we do think about race.

Now is not the time to return to political voyeurism, but instead to continue to lend our numbers, our voices and our energy to the specific issues; health care, the wars, etc. We can and must do this without the context of an election, without campaign managers outlining where we should stand, who we should talk to and how many signs to bring. Barack Obama has transformed into the President, he has assumed the gravitas of his station and is preoccupied with a different audience, we cannot expect him to lead us in this as he led us before. But he can and should expect us to engage our local community and state representatives and congress people and lead them to the right decisions as we see it. Even as the bumper stickers fade and the postage stamp shirts with his face are pushed to the back of the drawer, he can and should be able to expect our continued support. Even if our support is just in return for showing us that we do have the power to change the course of history.

“LBJ promised the members of Congress that they could someday say they’d made history,” (Doris Kearns Goodwin) says. “This Congress has never known the joy of that accomplishment. They haven’t ever been part of an institution that moves collectively to change history for the benefit of the American people.” She also notes that the presidents who have made real change have always done so in the same way: “Each of them had the country pushing the Congress to act, the people and the press both. The pressure has to come from outside.” So if the American people want the president to be more like the Barack Obama they elected, maybe they should start acting more like the voters who elected him, who forcibly and undeniably moved the political establishment to where it didn’t want to go. (Quotes by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Article by Anna Quindlen. Newsweek)

Great change has never come about because it should, because it is the right thing. Martin Luther King and JFK had to die, literally in the streets, before the Civil Rights Bill was signed. Its passing had less to do with morality and more to do with an unsatisfied segment of society and the lengths they were willing to go for equality. It had less to do with justice than publicity of, and blacks willingness to endure; threats, hoses, dogs, lynchings and attacks without justice in an effort to be considered equal. Where is our breaking point? When do we become incensed that we do not have universal healthcare or that we are still involved in two useless wars?? When do we realize that there is a lobby industry that is working relentlessly in support of Big Business and Big Pharma and pushing for decisions which do not support the common man?? When do we become angry that is they who have the politicians ear and not the People to who those ears, during their elected time, are rightfully ours?

The 2008 Obama campaign slogan was Yes We Can. It was not Yes He Can. As we move into 2010, lets count 2009 as the year when we recharged and regrouped. Let us move forward and actively change our relationship, as the People, to the political conversation, to the issues and to the politicians.

Lets make sure that this President, whose very existence means so much, does not fail.

I am here now.

In California, waiting for a start date at my tentative job and wondering how I really feel being on the edge of a new life. This is a waiting area unlike any other I have been in before.

One foot is in my past life, stepping away from the underpaying retail work that I seriously excel at (and yet can’t seem to rise within), but which has also supported me without fail for the past 7 years.  The other foot is waiting to land in an actual decent paying job, probably office, probably 9-5.

The poor economy is reminiscent of 2002, but I am almost to the place where I should have been at my college graduation then. I obtained my (fully-funded-read:free) masters this summer (with honors) at 29 and just saved my twenties from being a complete waste. The American promise is that education increases income and though I am sure that this is not the guarantee it once was,  my mind is still running wild with all the things I will soon be able to afford and have long tried not to think about; world travel, a two bedroom apartment, motorcycle and voice lessons, a real new car, hand-painted dishes and dare I say it… kids (at least saving for them).  My IRA contributions will no longer be a stretch and my vacations can consist of traveling out of the country each year, multiple times a year even, instead of just lingering at home.  But most importantly, I am close to validating my previous efforts (and results) and close to reaping terribly postponed rewards.

Soon I will be able to live instead of just existing.

But close is not the present and so I wait.  Wondering if the job I have been promised will come through. Wondering if it is truly the right job for me. If I will be able to settle here for awhile or if I will have to move again, looking for work and a place to call home. (Three states in 3 years is beginning to wear on me). I am aware that right now any job is the right job and pretty much any decent paying job will provide me with more money than I have ever made before. But still the waiting increases my wondering, its lengthening presence mimicking the static past decade of my life. I hope I make it through this time, to the place where I can begin the new life I have been waiting for.

The edge of transition is often an uncomfortable place. I look forward to my own exhaled breath.

Dalian, China

This clip, introduced to me by my Aunt Bev,  is both artistically amazing and emotionally moving. The artist is telling the story of one of the aerial bombings of Kiev during World War II. You will see one of the famous monuments that stands in Kiev today commemorating those bombings.

* The woman was a contestant on “Ukraine’s Got Talent”. She is standing behind a table which is covered with sand. The table is lit from beneath.