Bienvenue, 2019.

For what it’s worth... it’s never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The kisses have been kissed, the champagne has been drunk, the hangovers have been nursed, the black eyed peas have been eaten, and now we’re all setting into the new year. Bienvenue, 2019.

2018 was an odd year for me, and I’m not sure how I feel about it - even though I’ve attempted to reflect on it multiple times over the past six weeks. 2018 was full of deep spiritual lessons, massive upheaval and uncertainty… But, because the unbearable pain of previous years full of change and uncertainty wasn’t present I still have this feeling that 2018 was good…even if it was bad. I took my first expensive international vacation, I spent countless hours with friends, I took two road trips, I met new people, did new things, did a lot of freelance writing, hosted my first live streams, sprained my wrist, returned to the stage… But, I also feel like I was stagnant and didn’t do anything. I think not setting goals at the beginning of 2018 bit me in the end - I had nothing to look back on and measure against. 2018 allowed me to lay a strong foundation for the things that are to come, and in 2019 I am going to begin building.

Going into 2019 I’ve seen a lot of people lambasting a “New Year, New Me” mindset. While it’s true that you can choose to change and start over at any time, and that the calendar doesn’t wait for anyone - there’s also something lovely and refreshing to me to look at the beginning of the calendar year as a reset. I love a little self-reflection. I love seeing where I was, where I am, and where I want to go. I regularly reflect and set goals and assess. Why wouldn’t I want to start my year with that energy? It’s unfortunate to me that so many people see it as a cliche now and discount the efforts of others, or their own potential for change. Something about taking a deep breath in the midst of winter, when the world is quiet, and deciding who you want to be in the Spring when the world is new is - beautiful. I’ve decided that this year for me is about creation, manifestation and self-expression… And I will be setting goals for 2019.

I decided mid-way through December that in 2019 I wanted to be specific about what I want, be present, have complete confidence, finish what I start, and take action immediately in the upcoming year. But, it still didn’t feel like enough - it was a foundation that needed to be built on…the theme of 2018. I wanted to establish new habits (or renew old ones that have fallen by the wayside), and I wanted to passionately focus on health and self-compassion (not just love or care). By January 2nd, two different goal achieving plans fell into my lap. My friends Diana, Yvette, and I (along with others I’m sure), will be embarking on the Whole Life Challenge starting January 19th. Focusing on 8 daily habits; nutrition, exercise, mobility, sleep, hydration, well-being, reflection, and reading - we are challenging ourselves to build and sustain new habits for six weeks. I’m very excited.

While I was looking into Whole Life Challenge, my friend Zakk turned me onto Level 10 Life. I know nothing about the blog I pulled this info from, and I didn't read the book that this stems from - but, after a quick scan of this webpage (one of the first Google results for 'Level 10 Life'), I fell in with the idea of it.

“If we’re measuring our levels of success/satisfaction in any area of our lives, we all want to be living our best lives at a ‘Level 10’ in each area; Family & Friends, Personal Development, Spirituality, Finances, Career & Business, Significant Other/Romance, Fun & Recreation, Giving & Contribution, Physical Environment, Health & Fitness.”

I want to live my Level 10 Life. Who doesn’t? How often do we joke about living our best lives? I was in. Creating your ‘Level 10 Life’ begins with creating an honest assessment of where you are. Utilizing the 'Wheel of Life Assessment’, a circle graph that is divided into 10 sections — one for each major area of focus in your life, you take a ‘gut feeling’ assessment of how satisfied you are in each of your 10 areas of focus. This gives you a glimpse at your life satisfaction overall. It is also a great starting point to figure out what areas you need to improve first to start living your Level 10 Life.

With a combo of my laptop and my planner, I started my journey. While I’m genuinely happy, I ‘m not where I’d like to be. Not in any area. The darker lines are to mark where I started and see my progress as I work towards my Level 10 Life. I wrote out ten goals for all ten areas; 100 goals total. I condensed the essence of each goal into one sentence and wrote that in my planner. I want to be clear - these aren't 100 resolutions/goals for 2019. While I believe I could complete 100 goals in one year - I am focused on building and renewing good habits for my whole life. Progress, not perfection.

• Family & Friends

  • Spend more time with Cloak friends outside of Cloak

  • Hang out with Phoenix, Blake, and Sami at least once a month

  • Make and keep dinner plans with friends I've drifted apart from or haven't seen in a while

  • Keep in touch when physical presence is an issue (Email, Phone, Text - social media isn’t enough)

  • Travel to visit friends and family more often

  • Go on a trip with my Mom

  • Spend more time with Heaven

  • Host a family dinner

  • Take more photos with friends and family

  • Be open to making new friends

• Personal Development

  • Get more tattoos

  • Read 100 books

  • Journal every week

  • Set monthly goals

  • Improve my body language

  • Spend less time online

  • Go to three cities in America that I've never been to (Austin, TX; Portland, OR; Maui, HI)

  • Go to a country I've never been to (Morocco)

  • Practice my French

  • Start playing guitar again

• Spirituality

  • Maintain a daily meditation practice

  • Write in my prayer/manifestation journal daily

  • Clearly define what my spirituality means to me

  • Clearly define and stick to a spiritual practice

  • Assess my state of mind nightly and re-align with my goals

  • Read 3 books about spirituality

  • Meditate outdoors once a month

  • Practice gratitude daily

  • Practice moderation

  • Practice with like-minded people

• Finances

  • Save money

  • Pay off my credit card debt

  • Buy a new car

  • Figure out a better plan for my student debt

  • Stop getting paper bills in the mail

  • Spend less money monthly

  • Eat out fewer times a month

  • Raise my 401K contribution

  • Stop getting parking tickets

  • Start another side hustle

• Career & Business

  • Transition into my new role at work

  • Embrace and thrive in my new role at work

  • Take a walk every working day (as long as weather permits)

  • Nurture a work/life balance

  • Make blogging a priority without falling into the 'blogging business' trap

  • Start podcasting again

  • Write more fiction

  • Collaborate with friends on their art

  • Network with more independent artists

  • Be a panelist at a Comic/Fandom Convention

• Significant Other/Romance

  • Continue to embrace being single

  • Continue to work on myself

  • Let a friend set me up on a date

  • Refuse to settle

  • Waste no more time on abusive men

  • Be firm in my boundaries when dating

  • Go out more often

  • Stop using Bumble for 3-6 months

  • Visualize my ideal relationship

  • Research egg freezing

• Fun & Recreation

  • Spend more time outdoors

  • Take a solo international trip

  • Take myself on a solo date once per month

  • Go to a big festival (Coachella, Burning Man, Wasteland Weekend)

  • Take a random weekend road trip

  • Start playing video games again/more often

  • Go to Disneyland once a month

  • Go to Universal Studios once a month

  • Go to a concert every other month

  • Go to a city I've already been to again (Seattle, WA; New York, NY)

• Giving & Contribution

  • Support more small businesses

  • Do more thrifting

  • Research charities and pick THE one that I want to donate to

  • Volunteer in my local community

  • Do a charitable walk or fun-run

  • Give more money to Sigma Kappa

  • Find someone to mentor

  • Donate for my birthday

  • Do more giving directly to people and not organizations

  • Lower my carbon footprint

• Physical Environment

  • Move to a new city that meets my commuting/social needs

  • Decorate my place in a way that aesthetically pleasing and healing

  • Get rid of things that I no longer need/want

  • Frame and hang art

  • Buy plants and flowers

  • Develop and stick to a cleaning schedule

  • Organize my make-up

  • Hold a clothing swap/donation event for my girlfriends

  • Make sure my home is energy efficient

  • Read Marie Kondo & Justina Blakeney's books

• Health & Fitness

  • Complete the Whole Life Challenge

  • Take Moxi Skate classes

  • Start Circus/Aerial training again

  • Do more yoga & stretching

  • Continue to nurture my mental health

  • Go to an ENT

  • Attend a yoga/health retreat.

  • Eat less meat

  • Do a yoga inversion

  • Land a back-tuck

While I'm sure some of these may not make sense to you, this is a list of 100 and adding commentary to all of them would become completely unruly. If you’re really curious, you're more than welcome to ask me a few questions in the comments section (wink, wink). However, I am mostly posting this for personal, public accountability.

There’s more than enough time to set goals for 2019. I hope that you all know that in your heart. At any moment, you can choose to leave your past behind you and walk into a bright and bold future - even right now.

Until next time. xo

Should Old Acquaintance be forgot,
and never thought upon;
The flames of Love extinguished,
and fully past and gone:
Is thy sweet Heart now grown so cold,
that loving Breast of thine;
That thou canst never once reflect
On old long syne.

don't call it a comeback.

Hey. It's been a while. Nearly a whole year. Whoops. 2018 was a wild ride. It felt like it lasted forever, and it still somehow got completely away from me. I let the blog go dark, and while I'm not proud of it, I understand my own reasoning behind it.

At the beginning of the year I had a serious bout of imposter syndrome. I remember being out at a party and a good and old friend asked me what I had been working on & I didn't have an answer. I felt like the blog didn't count and I needed to be working on a "big" project - a book, a zine, a YouTube series - something "big" and "serious" that would get me noticed and end in fame and me having "made it". If I wasn't doing that, then I must be a fake. And I'm a fake and a nobody, then why do I need a blog?

So, to combat this, I started doing a lot of freelance writing. And guess what? Writing for other people meant I didn't have a lot of time to write for myself. While I'm proud of putting myself out there and doing something else - in the last few months I've realized it's not really where my heart is. The internet is full of people who wanna be the next Chris Hardwick and are begging you to like to subscribe because they're HUNGRY, they're STARVING for it - and I'm just...not. Don't get me wrong; I'm passionate about writing and fandom and curating a lifestyle and sharing that with people - but my endgame isn't to have to most like photo on Instagram. Which leads me to my next point...

The business of blogging is stressful and irritating - especially if you're buying into the "competition" and trying to be the most "liked". It takes time and money - to go to the newest places, eat the newest foods, create the best optics for the best photo. Without the money and the time I'm not able to produce content that I can be wholly proud of or that will be 'gram worthy, so I end up creating nothing, and impostor syndrome sets in again. Organic growth is nearly impossible - the algorithm has fucked up everything and who even checks their feed anymore when there are Stories? It is crazy hard trying to turn a profit, especially if you don't want to turn yourself into a product or shill someone else's product. Thousands of clicks and at the end of my best month, I still only made $20. It's dishonest - just google 'Instagram fake travel' or 'Instagram fake sponsorship' - even Bow Wow fell into the trap, remember the Bow Wow challenge? It's insidious. Everyone is trying to flex on every one else all for the likes. Half of the time, I was feeling like I was in a contest that I didn't enter myself in & didn't want to participate in - I don't need to be the most "liked". I don't need to seek that kind of validation, especially when I'm part of a family and friend communities that let me know that I'm actually loved.

I was reading a blog post by Rainier from Love Life of an Asian Guy, and it hit me hard. "You start to see each conversation not as an opportunity to truly bridge a connection with others, but as an opportunity to keep your audience stimulated, entertained, and happy. This isn’t to say that my opinions on these topics are fake. But they are just a snippet of how I feel and they lack the nuance and depth that I believe comes off smoother when I talk in person or during a livestream." Rainier just wants to blog, and so do I. I want to write & sometimes post nice photos without it being a big ordeal. I don't want to create content that is bite-sized or simple for people. I am not bite-sized or simple. I don't want to be an "influencer". I've said it before, and I stand behind it - swaying people's opinions & feelings isn't a joke, & I want to be accountable & only stand behind things I truly believe in.

The most impactful thing I did in 2018, the one that was most important to me, was participate in This is My Brave: Los Angeles. This Is My Brave, Inc. is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization is the leading platform for individuals to share their stories of living successful lives despite a diagnosis of a mental health disorder through artistic expression (spoken word poetry, original music and essay readings) on stage in front of a live audience. We're opening up the conversation about mental health disorders in communities all across the country and beyond via our YouTube channel. Writing about and publicly talking about my mental health was... freeing. Impactful. Important. Moving. It reminded of who I am and why I am. The response from friends and family who went to the show or watch it on YouTube was overwhelmingly positive. Just a few minutes of vulnerability and bravery, but they were the best minutes I had in 2018. And it was something that I did for me.

I am going to keep blogging. This isn't the first post like this I've written. I've stepped away and come back before; I've hit this spiral before. But, this time I am consciously disrupting the cycle. From this point forward, I blog for me. And I hope you stick around, and if you don't - that's cool too.

Until next time. xo.

Well, here we are.

I had every intention of writing an end of the year post the last week of 2017, as per the usual here, but that week just blew right by me. Then it was January. And it was January. And it was still January. This January lasted forever and it just felt so...dull. Like the whole world was in an unwanted hibernation. Which, it sort of is.

January is for processing - winter is a time of grounding, incubation, hibernation. I think most of us want to wake up on January 1st a whole new person, with new goals, ready to attack the world. All I woke up with on January 1st was a slight headache from all the vodka and gin I had drunk the night before, and a sore arm where my best friend's pit bull had fallen asleep on top of me. Change takes time. January and the early months of the year are about letting the the seeds of our intentions bed in and begin to grown in our minds and our hearts. We calm down from the frantic excited energy at the end of the year and let our thoughts and dreams for the coming year really cement. And that doesn't always require action. If actions come, wonderful! But, there's a whole year ahead of  for manifesting your dreams, and I think sitting quietly with them for a while was an important part of my process.

We're now at the end of what was a beautiful, if not taxing, February and I feel a little surer of what I want 2018 to feel like, and ready to take the whole year getting there. I'm giving myself space to grow, and as I turn 30, space to celebrate what I've already done. As I look over my ideas, and outline loose plans, I find it best to remind myself of a few things - affirmations to remind me of who I am, lest I get discouraged.

I am strong and ready.

I have already accomplished great and difficult things.

I am more powerful than I can imagine.

Good things are wanted for me.

I am supported and loved.

What have you been up to this cold and slow winter? What goals are you setting and working on? How have you affirmed yourself?

Until next time.

xo

Black Panther Feels

I remember the first time I knew I was black - I was five years old and a group of kids in my kindergarten class were going to play Power Rangers. I called Pink Ranger and another little girl looked me in the face and said I couldn't be Pink Ranger, because Kimberly was white and I was black. The next year I couldn't go spend the night at my best friend's house, because her father didn't want a black person in his home. I had a complicated relationship with my blackness for years. I spent years not understanding or accepting my blackness because I wasn’t sure where it left me in the world.I wasn’t black enough to be black and I wasn’t white enough to be white. For years, I identified with white culture, and I wanted to fit in with whiteness - I was a baby goth and a complete nerd, things heavily identified with whiteness. I didn’t identify with black culture - I hated church, I didn’t like Tyler Perry movies, and I wasn’t into hip-hop music. However, Black culture is so much deeper than that, andthe media didn't/doesn't want people to know that. Unfortunately that superficial glance was all that was fed through the media for years and, that’s what people saw, that's what I saw. Blackness is bad. Blackness is sad slave movies. Blackness is ghetto and loud and harsh and less than. I thought I could not succeed and be the person I wanted to be and be black. No skinny ass emo goth boy would ever date me, love me, because of my blackness. I was always told that I was smart for a black girl, pretty for a black girl, talented for a black girl...and that clearly meant my intelligence, beauty, and talent would never measure up. But then I got older and I read books by Zora Neale Hurston and bell hooks. I took Sociology and Black Studies and Theater classes with professors who understood blackness. I listened to A Tribe Called Quest and watched films with Sidney Poitier, and really listened to, not just heard Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. I voted for Barack Obama. I began to de-colonize myself. I reclaimed my blackness. I am the great-grandaughter of a man who was born a slave and died the owner of the largest farm in Louisinana. I am the grandaughter of a man who only had an eighth grade education, the man who laid the blueprint that Century City Mall still sits in, the man who was awarded five metals in World War II. I am the grandaughter of one of the Rosie the Riveter's and COGIC royalty. I am the daughter of Acquanetta - top of her class in law scool, an ordained minister (who was ordained when women just didn't do that) and biblical scholar, mother to three brilliant successful children. I am black. We are in a golden age of black media - positive and deverse portrayals of black people abound. And when I walked out of the theater after seeing Black Panther the first time - my god, how I cried. I didn't just cry for me - I cried for the little girls who get to go to kindergarten this year and get to be Nakia, Okoye, or Shuri on the playground and no one gets to say a damned thing to them about who they can be and what they can do. Wakanda Forever!