Since I was a little girl watching my mama "facilitate and manage," dressed in her shoulder-padded eighties power suits, I've wanted to be a woman on the move, ambitious, making things happen, bring home the bacon, "doing what I gotta do." But mamas don't make babies alone (at least not human ones), so I carry a piece of my dad too, the "under the radar" me who wants to ride the wave under the buffer of management.
These two outlooks working inside of me let me know that while I am driven to accomplish certain things in my life, I also feel "getting there" is not everything--that the decisions you make every day in your process (that may shift your target of "there") are very, very important (like right now--PhD programs are calling me like crack but I am anxious to get out there and work, and continue the learning that happens through life--meeting people, reading books about people I'll never meet, helping people.)
For the past couple months, I've had a series of transformations working in my head. I'm now carving a place amongst people in professional and neighborhood settings who want to make a difference, just as I've always felt was my purpose. Now that that has happened, there is a war inside my head just about every week or so: "It's all too much" and then "I'm so damn cold! I got this!" I am loving this new spot I'm in but there is this self-doubt of what I'm on the brink of: another level of self-actualization--not just professionally but as a person.
I've always, it seems, been a compartmentalizer. I can't put everything into this relationship b/c I got school going on--and you're in the way. Or, I must leave this world of wonderful literature behind because I'm into policy now. Part of this next level is actually expanding my self-awareness of what I'm capable of. Everything doesn't need 100% of my attention at once, and I'm capable of prioritizing enough to tackle what needs tackling.
Those days do exist when I exit the gate slowly--or never remove the cloud of funk (NOTE: Women, bananas are your best friend during a hormonal cloud). And most times I don't want a pep talk, I don't want to journal--I don't even wanna commiserate (though sometimes I just want someone to catch me). I just want a space to be contemplative--and I know I'll get it but in the interim this is a time for doing.
And I can hold on to this because it is true: Like my parents, if I'm breathing, I'm getting out of bed, putting on my shoes, and going at it. I keep going till clarity comes. It. Always. Does. 'Cause I'm a tenacious feminine trooper.
Have good weekends, folks!
P.S. Thinking about this quote and other madness this weekend: "Is it really a nation, or is it merely a space whose boundaries were drawn to define the Niger oil-producing Delta?" --1986 Nobel Prize winner in literature Wole Soyinka on Nigeria (theroot.com)
