A Job Ain't Nothing But Work

Have you ever told a lie so many times that you started believing it?  For a long time I claimed I wanted to be a lawyer and because I said it so much I kinda started believing it.  A tell-tell sign that wasn't something I was really interested in was when I didn't apply to one single law school my senior year (or at any point). The same is true for me becoming a teacher; I said it so much that I believed it-- I looked into a few programs that would work for me but I never got serious about it.  After college, instead of going to law school or grad school I focused on finding a job and moving out of my Mom's house.  I flip flopped between jobs, and for a while I worked for a financial services firm, then I was an Administrative Assistant for a IT staffing agency, then I was unemployed for seven looooong months, and now I'm here; working for a small telecommunications company (not exactly the career path you think a former English major would have).  But because the focus changed from career to paying rent once I moved out of my Mom's house, I never really figured out what I actually wanted to be "when I grew up."

Damn near four years removed from my undergraduate commencement and a career, financial stability and passion for my work are still things I'm chasing.  I've wasted so much time because for years I told myself to go after the things that looked good on paper: a lawyer, a teacher, blah blah blah.  I made myself believe these were things I wanted to do, and maybe a small part of me wanted to be either a lawyer or a teacher but I'm not sure that a person who doesn't really like kids should be responsible for educating them (shout out to a certain 6'6 basketball player for reminding me of that minor detail).  And just because I like being right, proving people wrong and making them look stupid when I do it doesn't mean I should be a lawyer either (that actually just makes me kind of a jerk but whateves).  So what do I do now-- now that I know what I don't want do?  Don't get me wrong, I like my job and the people I work with but I'm not challenged; not to say I need to be working on a HIV vaccine, but frankly speaking I'd be easily replaced.  I mean the office wouldn't be filled with laughter and joy if I wasn't here but the work would be done in just the same matter!  The same is true for so many of my peers and for generations before mine (shit, it's true for my Mother).  There are so many people working at jobs that simply pay the bills, but no one is actually doing what they love!   I guess it's been my reality because I was never really sure about what I wanted to do and when I did figure it out (just recently) I thought something like that could never work for me.  Everyone has heard the corny sayings, "choose a job that you love and you'll never have to work," or career seminars entitled "How to do what you love & love what you do," or some crap along those lines; and that's exactly what I thought it was--crap!  How could I do something that comes naturally to me and make a living doing it?  It just didn't seem realistic; of course a baseball or basketball player could make that a reality, but that couldn't be true for the everyday Jane Doe, right?

I think what it boils down to is the fear of failure.  The potential to fail when you're relying on your own talents, on your own abilities is so great that most people don't even attempt to explore them.  Fuck up at work and maybe you'll be on the shit list with your boss for a bit, maybe you'll even get written up but at the end of the week that money'll still be deposited into your account.  Fuck up when YOU are your business, and that can be the difference between making it and not making it.  And now that I've finally figured it out, now that I'm no longer concerned with what people think, how it looks on paper or the fear of failure (ok, I'm still scared of failing but...) I'm ready to give my dream a shot.  I'm looking into some schools to "hone my craft" as Big Booty Judy would say, and I'm really excited about the possibility of actually "doing what I love and loving what I do."

So what about you, are you loving the work you do?  Is where you are in life the place you saw yourself being at this point? Have you tried to make your dream a reality and failed? Have you tried to make your dream a reality and succeed? I'm scared, but I'm ready to at least try.  What do you think?

Later folk...

How Many Hail Mary's?

I was kinda hesitant, writing about sex so early on in my blog, but I'm throwing caution to the wind because it's what's been on my mind.  I've been thinking about a comment someone made for a while now so I figured why not blog about it!
Ok so, one of my asshole friends that we'll call Tracey was talking to this weirdly religious dude, we'll call him Jesus Jawn or JJ for short.  So JJ had all these rules & regulations about premarital sex and blah blah blah mean while back on the ranch dude has a whole kid that he conceived out of "wedlock" (do people still use that term in the 21st century?). Moving on, what got me to thinking were his thoughts on masturbation.  Tracey told me that this guy JJ won't even masturbate because he say's it's a sin. Word!  Masturbating is a sin?  Now, there are many things about Christianity that confuse me and this is one of those things.  Being a single woman, this just so happens to be a part of my life; shit even when I wasn't single it never hurt to work it out solo from time to time.
So here's my gripe, I know I don't live a perfect sin free life (like all of you) but I do consider myself a Christian & I know sex before marriage is wrong but why would masturbating be considered a sin?  My list of sinful activities is long enough without having to add this to it.  I can understand it being frowned upon maybe but not a flat out sin.
The purpose of having sex, from a religious standpoint, is to procreate and that's the reason behind the no premarital sex thing but what's the rational behind the no maturating rule?  What if you're doing it in place of having sex with someone you aren't married to?  Shouldn't you be rewarded for opting for the lesser of two "evils?"  I'd need to see it written, someone please educate me on exactly where it says solo sex is a sin-- I'm talking book, chapter & verse.  And since Christianity  parallels with so many other religions I'm curious to know if any other holy book outlines the do's and don'ts of self pleasuring.  Am I alone when I say the best orgasms I've had I've given to myself?  How could something so great ever be wrong (ok, I know plenty of things that feel good aren't right but just go with it)?  I don't want anyone getting the wrong ideas like this is how I spend all of my free time but we're all adults here-- it's something we all do (everyone except for JJ).  And as I've been taught, a sin is sin none greater or lesser-- so would I have to pray as hard a the guy that just murdered someone just because I was bored on a Saturday night?

Son of A Bitch

Like most, my family is complicated-- we're structured like two feuding high school cliques.  We come together during class (funerals, weddings, graduations, etc) but as soon as the clock strikes 12 and its time for lunch the dividing begins and the cliques reassemble.  For the purpose of not pissing people off we'll call my maternal side the Nerds and my paternal side the Jocks.  Let me also state the obvious and say that my parents were never married, but don't think any less of my father-- he did attempt to make an honest woman of my mother.  He proposed marriage right after he was caught cheating, he explained to my mother that as a Muslim man (which he had been for a whole day) was allowed to have up to five wives and he wasn't in fact cheating but courting his second wife.  Thankfully my mother didn't fall for his shit, so after she trashed the house and I packed my Barbies, we moved in with my Grandmother.

My parents split when I was five, I was the only child between the two of them but I have plenty of siblings; as the song goes "Papa was a rolling stone, and whichever woman let him in he made his hoe."  To my present knowledge, I have two brothers and four sisters on the Jock side; the latest is my sister whose name escapes me-- she's two (I think).  My youngest brother (on the Jock side) is five and I don't know his name either and although it's very sad I stopped letting my fathers indiscretions bother me a long time ago.  I remember being upset and embarrassed when I tried to explain how my brother (we'll call him Bob) was also kinda my cousin too.  For this portion of the story you may want to grab a pen and pad.  I'll start off by saying the neighborhood my parents grew up in was very small and they were young and horny teenagers.  My mother will be called Stephanie and my father, we’ll call him Tony.  So, Stephanie and Tony got together when they were very young and they made me, Tony’s wandering eye got the best of him and he started sleeping with Sonya.  Tony and Sonya had my brother Bob, Sonya had a sister named Karen who was dating a guy named James; Karen and James had a baby girl a few years later and named her Chloe. When my mother finally got fed up with Tony’s "courting" they broke up and she found comfort in the arms of the newly single James (Karen’s ex boyfriend).  My mother and James got together, had a few kids of their own and got married, thus making Chloe my sister/cousin and Bob my brother/cousin.  Did you catch all that?  I hardly have a good handle on it myself.  To recap, that makes six half siblings from Tony, two half brothers as well as two step siblings from Stephanie creating a grand total of 10 half/step brothers and sisters.  I think it’s important to say that I don’t think of any of my siblings as half or step, even the ones that I don’t really know. 

Because of how things went with my parents: my father’s cheating, and my mom fighting some of the women he cheated with, things were tense; the relationships between my siblings suffered —at least to me they did.  I wish my sisters and I had memories of Saturday mornings spent watching TV and eating cereal together but, the only thing we seem to share is our last name.  Things with my brother Bob were different, because of the whole tangled web of our parent’s relationships and the fact that my step sister, Chloe, was Bob’s cousin all three of us got to spend a lot of time together.

 I love and care for all of my siblings but there always seems to be this false sense of togetherness during “class,” and we’re all just waiting for lunch so we can return back to our opposing corners.  I’m sure I’m not the only one out there with family messiness, but I haven’t met one person who has topped this one.  So hit me with your best shot people.  I use to blame my father for not having a closer relationship with my other siblings but is it my fault now, should I have tried harder, reached out more?  Or, do I just keep on blaming Tony?

Me 101

So, I've sat here trying to come up with a good title for my first posting, something that'll draw readers in, demand their attention and blah blah blah, and all I could come up with was "Me 101."  Hope that's not a foreshadowing of how things'll go, try not to hold it against me-- I'm nervous.

Ok, so here's the synopsis: I'm a 25 year old Black woman who lives in "Philadelphia," I'm well educated (and I even act like it sometimes), I have a very interesting family, and for the most part they all love me,  there are a  few assholes I call friends that I'd be lost without.  I work full time, party some weekends, and  I go to church on Sunday's and beg for forgiveness.  I love talking to my Mom, traveling & having sex (don't judge me)!  So I guess you can expect me to talk about topics that stem from the things I just told you about myself: relationships, partying, sex, career paths, education, and I'll even sprinkle in some religion for good measure.

So are you interested?  I'm not sure I'd be after reading this, but give me some time to get into the flow of things, I promise it'll get better.

Later Folks