The Return

Have a leisurely day off today.  THANK GOD.  And so I thought I’d spend a little time detailing the last 2 years.

Having a run in with my regular lack of attention to bills that don’t readily power things that I need to live (water, gas, electricity, food… etc)  I lapsed on the payment to the host that I’d been using for ThoughtsDaughter since the beginning.   And when I say lapsed… they must have given me the 90 days because when I realized what was happening and I called the support desk, the incredulity pouring through the phone at me thinking that they should help me was undeniable.  They had wiped everything.  11 years of blogs.   I was DEVASTATED.  Like… never wanting to put pen to paper (or finger to key) ever again for fear of losing it.  For 2 years loosely, I would scour what’s left of my portable drives, active laptops and desktop duplicates for some kind of trace of the backups I never made.  I just danced through the experience of having my blog thinking that I’d be fine – it’s the interwebs… there’s a copy of it somewhere.   I was somewhat right.  I turned to Archive.org to show me snapshots it took of my site over time.  And it had some.  And there was heavy manual reinsertion, but I was going to do it.  But there was no trace of 2008 – 2015.   Seven years. Seven years of open space.  Seven years of blankness.  Seven years of my most life changing transformations. And it was no where to be found.   I would try to type in verses I remembered I wrote into google and see if it may have saved me.   Saved my words.   Saved my sentiments.   Nothing.

On a down day at work I gave it one last try.   I went into wordpress.com where you usually have to sign up for when setting up a Jetpack account.  There had to be SOME VERSION of accountability there.  Anything…  I searched through multiple sections there.  Then finally… an “unclaimed” blog surfaced… named Thought’s Daughter. And there – in it’s most completed version (minus the images because links were broken) my words gazed back at me.   Every emotion restored.  I took to manually transcribing again.   Every post is now hosted here in my new host and is being heavily and actively backed up.  Something like 945 posts over the course of 18 years.   I be slackin.  Should have been more.

Quite the roller coaster of emotions.  Some mainstays that I keep going back to.   Some strength that I was surprised to witness.  But on a whole – I recognize the girl.   I haven’t changed THAT much, with the exception of some upgrades needed to survive in this climate.  The heart is still the same.   Still trying to figure it all out.   Still trying to gain some semblance of sure footing in who I know to be me.

So.  THE RECAP:

After Emmis swallowed WBLS up and turned my most powerful and exciting career experience into a dungeon of despair (again), the “powers that be” decided to do a round of layoffs.  I caught wind of it coming.  So I was able to pack the office up the night before so that when they came to deal the final blow, I’d just have a folder or two to take with me and walk away forever.   As I was carrying the numerous bags of shit I’d accumulated over the last 5 years up the block to my house, JT called.   “I have it on good authority that you’re name is on the list tomorrow.”   “Yep,” I said to him.  “I’m hip.  Thanks homie.”  Reported the next day and they came to me to deal the killing blow.   I wore wonderful flowy shit.  I smelled great.  I styled my hair to the nines and beat my face to the gawds.   I smiled the whole time.  I comforted THEM.  They told me that my “break in service” of 4 years when I went over to WBLS is NOT being considered and they handed me a severance based on 15 years.   Not. Fucking. Bad.   I hugged a few folks as they escorted me out.  Loaded the last of my bags into my car and drove myself directly to NY Methodist.   I’d been experiencing a horrible burning pain right above my right ovary for a week now.   Time to get it checked out now that I had time.   Spent the rest of the afternoon in the emergency room only to be sent home having found nothing conclusive.   Great.  Waste of time.

For the next year and a half, I ran Victoria Enterprises from my home office.  Not a real name.  Just basically this kid freelancing her design and digital skills to the highest bidder.   And thinking back on it I liken it to being at the edge of a vast chasm and hearing God’s voice saying, “Take a step”.  There’s no bridge.  The wind is whistling.   You will surely, by the evidence of your eyes, fall to your death.   You squeeze tight to your belief in God and you take that first step and just as you would fall – a plank comes flying out of no where and supports your step.   God flew them planks in with an agility that only He could have.   I? NEVER MISSED A STEP.  AMEN.   All the way through to this BET experience.  I mean – he lined it up so beautifully.  I had money to take care of business.  Money to go traveling. Richmond. Chicago. Los Angeles. Las Vegas. Turks & Caicos. Mexico. France. England.  Money to upgrade things.  Not once did I go without or feel like I was struggling in a way that crippled me.  I’m trying to keep reminding myself of that and maintain a spirit of gratefulness everything I fix my mouth to complain of things that are part of the short game.

The final plank (or perceived final) was when I approached E about the completion of our family.  In my silliness at work one day, Koren brought in a renowned psychic who wanted to work with the company and provide spiritual inspiration and guidance on a blog hosted by the station.   For a chance to do this, she gave me a free reading.  There were a number of things that she knew that she probably shouldn’t have.   And I admit that I probably lent information that helped her build her story.  And of course on somethings she was just flat out wrong.  In the bigger scheme of things, you can probably massage what she said INTO the occurrences that actually took place in my life.  But I’ve always been averse to forcing stars and planets into alignment.   If it doesn’t readily make sense or apply, then you’re not really a psychic to me homie.   One thing she did say that I clung to is that there were two spirits waiting to be my children in the ether.   One is here now.  The boy is waiting.   Maybe I wanted to hear it.   I was ready for him.  I started to petition E about it because we’ve only held off so that we can give him the opportunity to feel like that’s a good decision considering what we went through.  I believe I’d been patient enough, done all I could to reestablish the trust, and I don’t have the luxury of waiting.  I can feel my body becoming different.   Things aren’t running the way they did.  If I don’t do it soon – I’ll spend the rest of my life resenting him for making me waste my time.

“Making…”  I suppose at the end, I’ve wasted my own time.  No one can make me do anything.  I’d have to be in some sort of compliance.

He explained to me that if we did indeed want to have another child, we’d have to consider our finances.  Athena does A LOT OF STUFF:  Swim, Soccer, Dance, Piano, Educational Programs galore… it costs.   If we want to afford our son the same kind of stuff, it would require a 2nd full income.   Unless we wanted to take away from Athena to give to the son.   And I cringed at the idea of that.  So I started to pepper the world with my resume.   BET responded.  I took that final step and just like He’d always done, I landed on sure footing.   It’s not exactly what I normally do.  I’ve garnered an intense amount of new skills.   Not without cost.   I’ve had to make major adjustments for this culture.  There was a breaking of my spirit involved in being assimilated.   But I believe I’m at the end of that.  The callouses are in place and are plenty thick now.   Now my despair is more at the having to drag myself out of my warm bed to deal with the cold business than it is trying to understand where the team “feel” is.  Where the “family” is.  Where the camaraderie is.  There isn’t any.  There’s just work.

Luckily I’ve managed to reignite the camaraderie that I need from Marco Polo groups with Francoise and with the stepteam at large.  The void… the silence that was swallowing me whole and slowly has now been abated for a while.  We all talk all day, several times a day.  It’s been an amazing supplement to my life.   Just being able to connect with someone else besides my immediate nuclear.   It’s made living bearable… maybe even – dare I say it – enjoyable.

There’s still so much to be supplemented.  But I have begun to trust that if I phrase it right, I might be able to get the right prayer up and God will fulfill.  I’m grateful more than I am wanting.

The spirit has moved around me to write again.  And I’m getting specific direction to write a certain something.   Maybe 2018 will take me in a whole other direction all together.

Here’s to change, catching up again and reconnecting.

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