My new boyfriend (in my head)!!

Today is seriously slow moving! I have things to do but all I want to do is finish off my Rozelle Artists Guild sketchbook & go home to cook some bangin' Ramen for lunch. This officially solidifies me as a Monday Fail! I then made the mistake of fumbling onto Twitter leading to more potential failage (new word). One of my fav artists Erykah Badu (@fatbellybella) retweeted a link to some artwork by a fellow E. Bady lover & artist by the name of Rob Gibson (@robartistic). He did two awesome pieces in tribute to Erykah & Corinne Bailey Rae. How random to find a guy that loves two of my favorite artists & then he got down on the canvas with them. Immediately, I pegged him my new boyfriend in my head as Wendy Williams would say! Check out his work:

Lollapalooza 2010

His blog if full of more awesomeness so stop by & check it out! Really, I don't want to be the only person Twitter-stalking him!

Happy Monday!

My week? Let me show you it!

This is the best way that I can describe how my week has been! Long hours, high stress & health issues = WOWZA! I rarely go into details about my job because some days it's just too wacked out to understand. Between backstabbing, gossip, legal woes & other randomness, I think people would much rather hear about the good in the world! Gotta run to another meeting & then I'll be joining the NyQuil Nation! PEACE!

Tell Me Something Good!

Longest day ever & now I have insomnia! Luckily, Soul Train saved the day with this gem!

Confessional is now open!

I don't boast about it but I'm a bit artsy fartsy when left to myself. I don't have a particular medium that I like to work with. I've tried a few different techniques over the year. My job doesn't allow for any creativity so I escape by way of quick pencil sketches. My mind gets so cluttered with random idea that a few years back I started carrying moleskin notebooks in my purse. Fairly quickly, more than half of the pages are littered with random doodles. I never show anyone because they're never anything special. It's my little secret! Once I've finished a book, I throw it into a pile and rarely do I ever go back to look at them. I picked up the drawing bug from my dad. He's the most talented artist that I know. Sadly, it's not a talent that he uses often; if ever. He's a secret doodler like me. In high school, he was granted an Art scholarship but he didn't use it. He was pushed to focus on basketball because of his height. (He's 6'9"!) When the basketball thing didn't get him into college, he just started to work. I remember the first time that I discovered he could draw. I was working on a project and asked for some help drawing a horse. In minutes, he'd sketched out the most perfect masterpiece. I contemplated signing my name on the bottom to turn it in as my own work but he wasn't having it. He took me through the steps on creating my own. And that's when the art bug bit me! I've drawn all kinds of things & recently branched out to photography. I get super excited at the opportunities to get outside to take pictures or lay out & draw. Doesn't happen too much but it's a treat when I get the chance.

I'm sure you're wondering why this qualifies as confession worthy! Well, I've been wanting to discreetly put together a collection of sketches and photos. I've been putting it off & making excuses about time and my lack of professional training. I received a random e-mail from a childhood acquaintance and wrote a super-charged motivational e-mail reply just to realize that I should be taking my own advice. Dawn Okoro's recent blog post pretty much reinforced that little voice that was telling me that I have no more reasons to run from it. I'm entering a local event where random citizens are asked to fill a small sketchpad with their creativity. I should get my book by the weekend. I'll share the final product before I turn it back in at the beginning of September.

Won't Let Nothing Show Through

Today, I had on a serious poker face! I can feel my exhaustion all the way to my bones. Since there is no such thing as time outs in real life, I had to keep pushing through the day's events. I survived my first real day under my new boss and an off-site event. I even dug down deep to muster out a workout, a quick trip to the grocery store and slight housework once I escaped the workhouse. I'm now zonked and heading straight for the Sandman's neighborhood!

♫Listening to Do You Feel Me by Anthony Hamilton♫

Right to the point!

I'm such a fan of Anthony Hamilton & his sound! He's one of the few artists that I can see having REAL music that will be passed down to the next generation. This song was my favorite as soon as I heard it and I can never listen to it just once (or 3 times). It gets put on repeat for hours & never gets old to me! What can I say? It's just that good to me! I have all the love habits listed in this song. Not always the best way to love but I'd much rather love to the fullest than to never get the chance to do it at all. I guess that makes me a love dispenser!?!? Just like extroverts energize by being in their element of large groups, the opportunity to authenticate my love by way of true action refuels me. Not in a way that expects reciprocation but just to let someone know my love is there when they need it. I fully believe that when you give love from a genuine place without expecting anything in return, God will keep it flowing and it's our job to find new vessels to deposit it. He'll do for us just like He did for the widow in 2 Kings 4. I love the line in Eat~Pray~Love when she says that she wants to one day have the capacity to love the whole world. I wonder what that would feel like! Just imagine!

Happy Tuesday!

Another year in the books!

Yesterday I celebrated my 29th birthday & of course, it was a day of mixed emotions for me. I can't begin to tell you how many people called, e-mailed & texted to ask me when and where was my party. I was beginning to think someone was actually planning a party for me without telling me. With each inquiry, I had to respectfully let down the person and let them know that I had no plans. Honestly, the introvert in me wanted nothing more than to find a small island to jet off to celebrate alone. A private island was out of the question but a drive a couple of hours away did the trick. Funny thing was that the friend that I met up with needed the visit more than me! Cocktails, movies, football and much needed down-time was a nice birthday present for me!

The drawing above is by the talented Brianna McCarthy! I'm a fan of her work & get super giddy whenever she updates her blog with new work. This piece is called Bella - The Colours of Hope, Faith and New Beginnings. We both agreed that she looks a bit like me. What do you think?

If you don't know, now YOU KNOW!

My week just got exponentially better! I just got home from a funeral and decided to relax by poking around on the interwebz. Guess what I just discovered! The talented Dawn Okoro is relaunching her site. I don't remember when I was introduced to her work but I've had some links to her work bookmarked. Whenever I'm looking for a little bit of inspiration, I make one of the pictures my screensaver. So imagine how elated I am to see that there will be more of her goodies for me to obsess over!(Sorry, if that sounds creepy but I'm a serious fan of art!)

Just to share a few, here are my favorites:

I would love to have this mounted above my bed! I feel like the symbolism of this one is beyond amazing. I have no idea of the original concept but to me it represents the strength to keep getting up after life's bumps & bruises! Powerful!

This is my screensaver right now! It goes well with my sassiness lately!

If you've never seen the work of this genius, get your booty over to www.dawnokoro.com right now! She's got tons of work up and you're guaranteed to find something that catches your eye.

4:15p - 4:30p Self-Implosion/Crying fit #2

Seriously, am I the only person in the world that wishes that you could just schedule to deal with your emotions so that you could move on with your life? That is definitely where I have been for the last few days. Let me just give you a brief run-down of all that's happened since my last post...lost my great aunt, gained a new cousin, my apartment was broken into (luckily I was in the shower & didn't come face-to-face with the intruder), survived local elections (our local government is pretty corrupt), started paying on another set of student loans, kicking off a new school year with my youth ministry, my dad's birthday, my upcoming birthday and the relentless climate of change at my job. Now, do you see why it would just be easier to pencil in a time to let out one of this Old Testament sobs? When I woke up last Monday, I had no idea what I was up for. Honestly, had I known I would have been ready & waiting with a bat for the asshat that kicked in my front door. But hindsight in 20/20, they say!

So where do I go from here? I can't sit around and mope about the bad hand I was dealt last week. I'm sure there are plenty of others that had it much worse than me. I have to move on to get things done so that I can continue to live. No matter how I feel about it all, there is something deep inside that won't allow me to be a victim for long. So I did what any other self-respecting firecracker would do...I bought some new jeans from the Gap & got a glass of wine with my friend on Friday night. No, surely that's not the answer but for a moment it was a quick escape so that I could clear my mind of the not-so-great things that happen in life. This week, I'm working to get myself back on track. Thanks to a lot of talk time with the BIG GUY UPSTAIRS and some alone time, I'm going to be fine and back to regular posting! Until I can get some others edited & pushed out, please accept this collection of pictures of Chris Brown crying at the BET Awards with my sincerest apology for leaving you hanging!

Sign of the [Good] Times

For the last month, I've been hearing a weird rattling whenever I'm driving. Like the typical women, I didn't poke around to see what it was. I just figured that I'd mention it to my boyfriend* at the dealership when it was time to get my oil changed. After weeks of this noise, I reached in that little knick-knack nook under the radio and pulled out the source of this clamor. It was the remnants of my once-favorite vintage belt! Poor thing met an untimely & premature death while I was...ummm...carousing downtown during the July 4th weekend. Literally, I watched a chunk of it plummet to the sidewalk. More than likely, I yelled out in despair! Complete details on that night will forever stay under wraps! *hangs head in shame* All I have to show for it is my shattered buckle & even more randomness on my BB memory card. And to that, I say..C'est la vie! Small price to pay for good memories!

*I use the term boyfriend very loosely! The serviceman assigned to me when I bought my car is a doll & takes very good care of me so I return the favor in random snacks or lunch during my maintenance visits. Plus, it doesn't hurt that he's Reggie Bush FINE!!!

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Premeditated slackage alert:

My birthday is in 10 days! Depending on the trouble that I can find to get into, it could either result in complete adventure win or epic blogging fail. Whatever the case, be patient as my posts could get even more sporadic than they are now. Can you believe that?? ♥

Separation Anxiety

Destructive vs. Constructive? Fulfilling vs. Draining? Positive vs. Negative? No matter how we choose to rid our lives of the bad things, we end up running that thing past one (if not all) of these questions. It seems like a no-brainer but we still have to check to see where it falls. Whether it's a major relationship or a simple habit, the true gut check begins and ends with these questions. Funny enough, I've been standing in this same same grocery aisle of questions for some time looking at all the cans wondering which I'm going to put in my basket & which I'd leave behind for someone else to pick up. As simple of a choice as it should be, I'm not sure that I'm ready to leave some behind. My mind races between these questions constantly tagging back and forth:

• What will I do with the time that deserting this will leave me?
• What will people say once I've walked away?
• How will I explain my decision?
• Do I really need to let go of it?

Truth be told I know the answers to all of these and already know what I'm going to do. My biggest concern is what happens in the meantime. How do you tackle the emotions that come along with the choice? All of those emotions are a direct derivative of fear; sometimes minor and other times paralyzing. Whichever the case, I challenge you (and myself) to grab that fear by the horns and wrestle it to the ground. Sure, there will be a few bruises as a result but a small cost to achieve the happiness we all seek. Whatever it is that you're trying to separate yourself from, do it now! Don't worry about the frivolous questions that float through your mind. Those are just self-inflicted tricks to keep us from what we really desire. The anxiety will soon subside and you will triumph!