Tag: 2018 (page 1 of 1)

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January 1, 2019 / 0 Comments

NICE

“What would you do, you knew you couldn’t fail
I have no fear of anything, do everything well
I have no fear of jail, I was born in the trap
I have no fear of death, we all born to do that
It’s just life, I’m just nice, tonight I might raise my price”

— The Carters

I was writing my 2019 plan, but then Shana showed up in my inbox and, well, I’m going to take a detour.

What did you do in 2018 that you’d never done before?

Felt unafraid to stand up for myself and others. I’ve stood up before. It’s the lack of fear that’s new and to do so in ways that remained true to me and how I operate. I didn’t imagine how someone else—someone I imagine as stronger than me—would do a thing, I did it as me. In my voice, in my way, and with the confidence that doing what’s right can be scary but doesn’t mean you gotta be scared.

I also worked with yeast in my baking for the first time, and it was a hit.

And, I had a case of gout. Shout-out to middle-age.

Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions and will you make more for next year?

Mostly. The goal was to do the things that make you feel most connected to the world, and while I’m struggling with how much time Instagram and my iPad are siphoning away from me to close this year, I did find connection in 2018.

The act of gift giving this holiday season was, perhaps, my most explicit confirmation of that as, to a person, I felt like I gave presents that reflected what I knew and understood about them and our relationship, specifically.

Staying present enough to remember most birthdays, anniversaries, and other special moments felt great and is a behavior I definitely want to continue.

I’m inspired at the end of this year, though, by my friends that are committing so heavily to serve our communities. Those actively working to make the world a bit better for those who are most in need and leveling up their own personal development in the process. My 2019 mission will be centered around these broader ideas of generosity.

Did anyone close to you have a child?

Not in the immediate circle but there were babies this year, and I got a chance to babysit, even if only for a few minutes in Disneyland.



Saw a crazy headline today that reminded me that I recently renewed my long lapsed membership in The Babysitters Club.

Did anyone close to you get married?

The only weddings I (virtually) attended were Royal.

Did anyone close to you die?

A great aunt passed, and I can sense that one matters more than maybe some others in recent years. There’s a sadness in my grandmother’s voice that hasn’t gone away now that this sister, in particular, is gone and it breaks my heart every time I hear it in our conversations.

What countries did you visit?

I stayed domestic this year, but there are discussions of trips south of the border for 2019.

What would you like to have in 2019 that you lacked in 2018?

More dancing.

What date from 2018 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

April 29th because, “Yolanda, what the heck?!”

What was your most significant achievement of the year?

The best compliment I got was someone told me that they were not only a better employee but a better person for having worked on my team. I think that’s a reflection of a communication philosophy that I’ve worked on most of my professional life but became second nature in 2018: empathetic candor.

I want people to seek my counsel and know that they are going to get an honest conversation with no ulterior motives, ill will, or bad faith on my part. Kindness, honesty, and generosity of spirit is the vibe I think I most conveyed this year.

What was your biggest failure?

One afternoon, as I rushed to catch a bus I was running late for, I saw a man with a walker moving awfully slowly to cross the street to get to his destination. Maybe he didn’t need or want my help, but I didn’t even offer, choosing my convenience over kindness.

Every time I made that choice this year, I failed.

Did you suffer illness or injury?

Gout sucks. It feels like you’ve broken a toe and I do not recommend flying when you have it. Your foot is already swollen, and air travel will only exacerbate the issue.

I was full of foot ailments this year. I also had to correct plantar fasciitis with therapeutic insoles in nearly all my shoes.

What was the best thing you bought?

Mentioned above, but I really dug the holiday gifts I gave this year. Money well spent. I also like Apple TV and the series 4 Apple Watch is aces (as is the iPad Pro Tiffany gave me).

Whose behavior merited celebration?

My friend Melle has spent this year working so hard to battle food insecurity in Los Angeles through her own personal efforts and in partnership with local groups like Beauty 2 The Streetz. Every time I spend time with her discussing this work that she’s so passionate about, I’m inspired to do more and am reminded that giving time, effort, and energy to things with impact is the best way to live.

Where did most of your money go?

Who even knows? Basketball and bills? We saved more this year. I spent a little more on clothes. Lots of non-profit organizations and political campaigns got checks from.

What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Black Panther. I’m still really, really, really excited about that movie, the music, the experience, it’s success and how it wasn’t alone in the popular culture.

What song will always remind you of 2018?

Compared to this time last year, are you:

i. Happier or sadder?

I’m rarely very up or very down, but I lean towards optimism so let’s assume I’m happier.

ii. Thinner or fatter?

I weigh almost exactly the same as the beginning of the year, but I’m leaner.

iii. Richer or poorer?

We made that paper this year.

What do you wish you’d done more of?

Journaling and meditation: my days were always better when I started that way.

Volunteering: I gave money and advice regularly but rarely did I give of my time in 2018.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

Twitter and Instagram scrolling

Stewing in my own juices

How did you spend Christmas?

Here in LA with Tiffany and my family. The weather was gorgeous. The food was great. The gifts were delightful. There was so much basketball. I felt like the Björk song.

What was your favorite TV program?

Killing Eve was the best and most surprising show I watched all year.

Also worth your time:

  • The final season of The Americans

  • American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace

  • Star Trek: Discovery

  • Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

  • The Good Place

  • Better Call Saul

  • The Good Fight

  • CW’s The Flash

  • Homecoming

  • Daredevil

What was the best book you read?

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

I also loved:

  • Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

  • Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

  • Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

  • Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

  • Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

  • Saga, Volumes 8 and 9 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

What was your most significant musical discovery of 2018?

Rosalia. She is a late in the year find courtesy of many a best of list, but her full-length El Mal Querer is incredible and has become my entry point into the wonderful world of Spanish language pop. I’m excited to dig deep in 2019.

The rest of my 2018 music adventures.

What did you want and get?

A promotion.

What did you want and not get?

Enough no votes on Brett Kavanaugh.

What was your favorite film of this year?

Black Panther. That’s my shit.

The rest of my faves:

  • If Beale Street Could Talk

  • Crazy Rich Asians

  • A Star is Born

  • Annihilation

  • Widows

  • A Quiet Place

  • Sorry to Bother You

  • To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

  • Mission: Impossible Fallout

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

43. My birthday wasn’t great.

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

The Sparks going deep into the WNBA Playoffs. Despite knowing this wasn’t their year, the way they went out was disheartening.

What political issue stirred you the most?

Mass shootings and gun violence made me feel sad and helpless (but inspired by the actions of the youth in this country in their aftermath). The nomination of Brett Kavanaugh and the way Christine Blasey Ford was treated by our elected officials, though, pissed me the fuck off.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Ignoring the obvious answer, we really gotta get Stephen Miller out the paint.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2018?

Age and income appropriate. I started using Stitch Fix to upgrade my wardrobe a bit and have found it to work for me pretty well, especially with pants that I wouldn’t seek out for myself and some statement pieces that get compliments every time I break them out.

What kept you sane?

Riding the bus every day reminds me that my daily worries are likely minuscule compared to many others in my community and it teaches me patience. Public Transportation in Los Angeles forces you to slow down and accept that most things in this life you can’t control but we all get where we’re going, eventually.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I thought Cardi B and Ariana Grande were the most exciting celebrities this year and Mona Chalabi’s data journalism and visualization are making her kind of famous, too. I think that’s hella cool.

Who did you miss?

Uncle Mike. Always.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2018.

Emotional intelligence isn’t just a work skill.

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

Go back to the beginning of this post.

What’s one photo that sums up your year?



Just out here being beautiful (📸: @mellemusic)

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December 30, 2018 / 0 Comments

Made for Now

“If you’re livin’ for the moment, don’t stop, and celebrate the feelin’.”

— Janet Jackson

This morning’s yoga practice was a meditation. Adriene asked us to honor the endings. In 2018, my version of “honor” has been to say, “thank you.” To cut through the persistent drumbeat of hard and sad and depressing news and find gratitude. Most Sundays this year, I sat in this chair by this window, the sun shining through, music in my ears, and acknowledged all the many things that are wonderful in my life.

And so, on this last Sunday of the year, let us continue the practice.

Thank you, 2018. Thank you for the new people that entered my life and how they enriched it. Thank you for new traditions and commitments. Thank you for the opportunities: especially those chances to be kind, to be honest, to stand up for what I believe in, to be excellent, and to learn.

Thank you, 2018, for my friends and family and the incredible lives they live and invite me to participate in on occasion. Thank you to my spouse, my partner, who challenges me to be a better and more present person while pushing me to think of our future in more concrete ways than just my faith that we gonna be alright.

Thank you, 2018, for time. While I and many others sometimes complained that this year felt like a decade, it provided me more time for books and workouts and cooking and fellowship. I’ve found time for getting better at Spanish and adding new skills to my professional repertoire. There was time for a few great shows, lots of basketball, and a little travel. There was time for movies and the occasional binge watch. There was time for podcasts. There was time for journaling. There was time to make more biscuits.

Thank you, 2018. The times are no less precarious, but I’m no less hopeful. There are too many things and people in my life who are legit changing my world and the world in small and significant ways that I have no other option but to be grateful, joyful, and to have a little realistic optimism about what is yet to come.

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March 20, 2018 / 0 Comments

Another Day

“I used to scream when a whisper would do.”

— Jamie Lidell


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It’s weird to have your birthday in 2018, the day of significant revelations about Facebook and privacy and bad actors in the 2016 American Presidential Election. We recognize birthdays now with posts on social media. I got a few texts, a voice mail, an audio message, several tweets and IG DMs and a hundred notes on the Facebook.

I received one physical card this year. It didn’t come through the mail.

I’m not complaining; this is just the way we are now.

Okay, maybe I’m complaining.

I’m complicit in this. At the beginning of each year for probably a decade now, I’ve had designs on a physical calendar filled with the birthdays I want to acknowledge. Each month, I would take the first weekend and write cards. I’d adorn a stamp, visit the post office, and do the smallest thing: send a note. Whatever the message, I would intend to convey this idea

“I appreciate that we exist at the same time and know each other.”

Instead, I’ve already had to issue Happy Belateds over text message and probably forgotten a few altogether.

Your birthday is what you make it, though. 43 years of waking in the morning and I can count my most memorable birthdays: London. New Orleans. SXSW. SXSW. The poppies. Circus Circus. I often say and mostly believe that my best birthdays have been in a strange city, by my lonesome, doing something unusual. I don’t want people making a fuss.

Correction: I don’t want people making a big fuss.

Without Facebook, few would have made a note of my existence today.

It would have been any other day.

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With Facebook, it mostly felt like that anyway.

Except with more emojis.

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February 1, 2018 / 2 Comments

January 2018 Mixtape

“Don’t it feel so good to be us?”

Day 21 of Yoga with Adriene’s True 30 Days of Yoga series to start this year is titled Finesse. The session is about moving with grace rather than forcefully putting yourself into positions.

I’m not sure I ever found a flow on the mat over these 30 days. I have one more session tomorrow, so maybe it will come then. Perhaps it won’t. It’s okay either way. What I have found with this practice is a sense of control and awareness of my body that I hadn’t had since college when I was playing basketball four or five days a week.

My shoulders have strengthened a lot during this process. My trainer has noticed and is now regularly increasing how much I lift during our full body workouts. I’m holding much less tension in my neck. My balance is better. My left hip is working hard at loosening. It’s still the tightest area of my body, but it doesn’t want to be.

If you stayed on track for the full month, the journey was supposed to end today on the 31st. Mine continues as I took this most recent Sunday off to give that hard-working hip some recovery time. I’m looking forward to tomorrow morning’s time. And to the next day on the mat.

And the next.

“The first time your name was used, it was beauty, and I knew.”

Come September, Tiffany and I will have been together for a decade. It feels both not that long—she is still a beautiful mystery to me in many ways—and like we have always been this way, comfortable in our connection.

This month, I love her for meals made, and appointments kept. For grocery store runs and shared TV time. After the first of the year, we didn’t leave the house together much but we found time to delight at Grown-ish, guffaw at Desus + Mero and Alone Together, and binge One Day at a Time.

I dipped into her viewings of Disjointed and always enjoyed a weekend day where we both spent time in the home office, the sun beaming through our windows, the neighborhood alive.

My heart still swells at her smile and when her eyes light up with accomplishment. I ask about her day knowing she will get overly technical as I like hearing her talk passionately about the work of solving problems.

I loved her despite her destroying my time in the mini-crossword more days than not. I loved her even though every time I turned on a TV in the house it was tuned to MSNBC.

I loved her.

“I’m a power wrapped inside of my skin.”

 Just a couple weeks ago, I countered “shithole” with Afrobeats.

“We ain’t looking at the time, don’t nobody got a phone.”

That lyric sounds like heaven right now. I’ve been thinking a lot this month about what I’m not doing with my time when I’m spending too much of it with my devices. How lovely it would be to not always feel like I’m fighting for the attention of others with their much more compelling smartphones.

I stopped bringing my laptop and tablet to meetings, and I leave my phone in my pocket unless I need to reference something in service of that meeting.

Once I finish “Bored and Brilliant,” I may swear off reading via the Kindle app on my phone so that I can put it away during my commutes. I ordered a work phone in part for privacy concerns but also because it will allow me not to be available 24/7. To put my phone in my bag at the end of the day and not get any work messages until I check again in the morning?! I don’t even remember what that is like, but I’m looking forward to getting back to that.

“Feelin’ Inspired cuz the tables have turned.”

I do. I feel energized creatively. I wrote more this month. I spoke up more at work. Digital media is in this uncertain place that has many people feeling unsure about the path forward.  Not me.

If you’re smart, you take the opportunity to check in with the purpose of what you do. Give up on quick fixes and hacks and tricks and do what’s right.

Let’s just get back to basics and make good shit every day. Let’s do right by our audiences. Let’s build the audiences we want by giving them real value. Why does our content exist? What do we hope they do with it? What conversations do we want to start and participate? How do we show appreciation for people spending time with us in a cluttered space? Do we think of those clicking our stuff as data points or people?

My favorite quote from a Spike Lee Joint is from Shadow Henderson in Mo’ Better Blues:

“If you play the shit that they like, then the people will come.”

Still true, y’all. Make good shit. Put it in a pretty box. Be grateful. Be humble. Learn something.

Do it again. Better.

That’s the formula. Sorry. Not sorry.

The rest of my January 2018 playlist:

  • A Chamada (Ritmo Muleke) – Sango
  • Always – Fredfades
  • Bass Song – Eryn Allen Kane
  • Be the One – Dua Lipa
  • Black Girl Magic – Che Lingo
  • Red Clay – Charlotte Dos Santos
  • Coco Miyaki (feat. Sunny Moonshine) – Opal

 

 

 

December 24, 2017 / 0 Comments

Thinking about 2018


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“Even though I tried, it was never enough for running in the same damn place.” – Haim, Something to Tell You

I haven’t done formal plan making for the year over the last couple. The beginning of 2016 was a time of transition. The beginning of 2017 was about pushing back against the dread of the unfathomable.

Looking to 2018, though, as I’ve made it through the seemingly never-ending onslaught of these past 12 months, I want to get back to moving with intent. There’s a war going on for attention, and I’m determined to win it.

I went back and looked at my series of posts from 2015 about living wisely. My core values haven’t changed much. I still hold compassion and kindness in the highest regard. I might add something about my admiration for moral defiance and civil disobedience now. The running theme for me that year was “Make good shit. Every day.”

At the end of 2016, I was fond of the John Lewis phrase, “Make good trouble.”

This year, what I want is to make time. 

The 2018 mission

Do the things that make you feel most connected to the world

After taking an audit of how I spend my time (or would like to be using my time), these are the things that are worth it:

  • Meditation
  • Working Out
  • Time with Tiffany
  • Time with Family
  • Time with Friends
  • Exploring my city
  • Exploring the world
  • Listening to music
  • Reading
  • Cooking
  • Learning new things
  • Volunteering
  • Listening to podcasts
  • Writing
  • Basketball

Here are the things that are not:

  • iPad games
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Watching TV
  • Eating Out

Currently, mornings are the best-structured parts of my day and evenings are the worst. Heading into 2018, I intend to better plan my nights filling them with the things I care about and leaving less open space for the time-wasters that take my attention but aren’t adding much meaning to my life.

Now, I’m rarely an absolutist, so this is not to suggest that I won’t still be on social media or watching tv or visiting another delicious restaurant. Of course, they will find their way into my schedule. What I’m hungry for, though, is more purpose and intention with my off hours.

Am I going out to eat with loved ones? Is my social media time deepening my connection with people, communities, or issues important to me?

If not, isn’t that time better spent on other things?

Time’s-a-wastin‘.