Sometimes You Gotta Be 'Selfish'

Hi. How are you doing? I'm great. Which means I'm not; not really. I know I shouldn't be complaining about a little menstrual bullshit but for one thing, it ain't little and for another, hell yeah I should be complaining about it.
Why not?
Is my pain not valid?
Of course, it is.
Every time I use the word 'shouldn't' in reference to myself I get annoyed. When I was learning to be a counsellor so long ago, and thus also healing my own trauma, we were told to always eliminate the word, "should" from our mindset.
It's the cause of all our problems.
"I should have sold a million books by now."
"I'm thirty, I should be married by now."
"You should leave him. he's no good for you..."

Okay, maybe that last one is valid.
Anyway, my point is my pain matters just as much as all those afflicted by COVID-19 or any other disease, or injury. And so does yours.
So if you're feeling hard done by and feel guilty about expressing it in the wake of the apocalypse, I am here to give you permission. I give you permission to cry over missing your birthday celebration that you'd planned on having on an island in the Caribbean. I give you permission to cry if you were meant to be the principal speaker at a conference for furries, and now it was cancelled. Whatever pain you're feeling, let it out.
Once you've cried, listen to my podcast. I've embedded it here for your convenience. It might make you laugh a little or it might not. Either way, it's there.

May I Read Your Palm?

Yes yes, where have I been, blah blah? I get it. I have been AWOL. Life is sometimes a bitch.
And then you die.

However, I didn't die so here I am, bringing you some new, exciting, scintillating, amusing, educational, inspirational content.
Or am I?
We'll see. How about we get started?
So, yesterday on Twitter, there was this post doing the rounds about how men describe women in literature. That led to another writer asking people to describe themselves as a character in their stories. The answers to that post made me write a mini post about it on Tumblr because wow.
I don't know if you guys know that the narratives that you tell yourselves about yourselves are projected outward for the world to see.
So if you tell me that for example: "She's thirty-five years old, is quite pretty with makeup and doesn't give a fuck' what I hear is, she's self-conscious about getting older and insecure about her looks. She also tries to protect herself from criticism by pretending she doesn't care.
You give a fuck honey.
People who have no fucks to give also have no time to tell you about the fucks they don't have to give. It's simply apparent by how unmoved they are by your attacks/trolling/opinions. See: Chrissy Teigen.
Besides the whole "IDGAF" thing is very 2012. Rihanna moved on and so should you.

Much worse than that, there were some women who COULD NOT describe themselves because of "societal mores". I don't know what that means. What I do know is that how you view YOURSELF should be a very personal thing coming from your own inner sense of self. Let other people think that you're TOO fat, or TOO dark or TOO skinny or TOO ugly. That's their business and their perspective. You should have yours. You should know who you are and what you like about yourself. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, drop everything you're doing and find out because this is the single most important thing you will ever do. If you don't know who you are, you basically don't know anything. You can't have an opinion if you don't know who you are, you can't get to know somebody because you rely on other people's perceptions to tell you what you should think. You've basically erased yourself.                                                                                                                                            I don't know how one grows up without any knowledge of who they are, so I don't know how you fix it. I suspect it comes down to paying attention to yourself, finding out what you like, and what you don't. Trusting your gut. And loving yourself. I think. I'm no expert on emotional intelligence. 

It saddens me that so many people don't know how to love themselves. Like if I had time I would probably sit here angsting about it for a bit. But I can't because I have a test page to write for a new client and a fanfic to begin for a Big Bang.                                                                                                        

   On the book front, it's been a pretty demoralizing March. Amazon continues to be the douche bag we all know and love, making it difficult for authors to price books, making it difficult for those books to be found, making it difficult to know if they even tell you about every sale. So my new thing is promoting my author page where there are other vendors that books can be bought from. It's also a place where you can compare prices and get my free books for free. You might have noticed, or maybe not, that my free books are not free on Amazon. That's their shit, not mine. Every other vendor has them priced for free. So that's one advantage. Another is that I'm gonna host a giveaway for my mailing list. Whoever buys a book from a vendor OTHER THAN Amazon can post me the link to their email and I will reward them with another book of their choosing. Isn't that A-MAZ-ING? Of course, it is and you're excited. I can tell.

  Other than that, I'd like to give you a bit of homework in the comments. Please describe yourself as you would your heroine in a novel. Give me 100 words. Nothing negative.

We're gonna have a good April. I can feel it.                                                                                            

Do You Experience God?

I'm sick again. Same illness, different month.
It is going to be okay though because this time I haven't spent so much as a day ignoring it. I'm broke as fuck what with holidaying, Christmas, the New Year and Chris going back to school all in a span of like two weeks...
It's hectic, it's expensive.

So I am on hand to mouth budget when I wake up with that tickling in my throat, that stabbing in my chest.
Reality Check me said, "Oh no, Annemarie. You're sick again."
Shock Absorber me speaks up and sez, "It's prolly just a  cold. Throat infection; something you can ignore."
But...
Those stabbing pains in my chest said, "Ignore me at your peril."
Meanwhile, Perpetually Persecuted me is going like, "Why why why why!! Is it because I wouldn't be admitted to hospital last time? Did I bring this on myself? Hell, I still can't afford to be admitted to hospital (see above). Also still not sure it's necessary."

Anyway, so I had my breakfast and counted my coins, crossed my fingers that I had enough and took myself to the local dispensary. The doctor confirmed to me that yes indeed, your pneumonia is back. He didn't recommend for me to be admitted though, just gave me a whole bunch of drugs.
I couldn't afford entire doses so I took half and promised to be back for the other half 'real soon'.
p.s. I had no clue where I was going to get this other money in time but I just figured I'd manage.
So I barely get home, turn on my computer and purport to prepare myself to do some work when my cousin calls. He asks me how I am and I tell him exactly how I am. Sick as a dog.
Now I know intellectually that pneumonia is serious. But when it's in your body and you're managing it and you're not debilitated, it doesn't feel so life-threatening. But my cousin reacted like I'd told him I was dying.
(Yes yes, I know, pneumonia can kill you).

Anyway, he asks me if I'm taking medicine and I say yes I am and he asks me if I have everything I need and I say well..no. I am actually a bit short so I do not have full doses of everything. And he just says 'How much do you need?"
And that people is how I experience God.
He comes to me when I'm backed into a corner with no clue how to proceed. He sends an angel disguised as a friend, acquaintance or stranger to say, "Hey, did you need some help?"
Well, I'm trying not to tax myself so Imma stop here. Did I tell you January is free book month? I know y'all are broke too.

DON'T Play Through the Pain

I've been pushing myself to work harder, to finish my work sooner, to take in more work...because I've been without work and now that I have it I want to do it all. Prove to myself and my mother probably that I can make it. I can do anything.
Well, I can't.
I can't miraculously heal myself from illness and I can't write more than I can write.
I'm only human.
What a stunning revelation.
I had a story all laid out for you, a great example of pushing yourself too hard while kidding yourself that you're not and it's horrible consequences. But I can't remember it. It could be the painkillers I'm taking. Or maybe I just can't remember.

I'm learning to just truly not sweat the small stuff.
Let it go like the blonde lady who makes ice sez.
So in my invalid state - and I mean it both ways; does that mean pun intended? - I'm just gonna leave you with an Instagram post I wrote about the vagaries of not taking care of yourself.
Can we take a vow not to work so hard in the new year? To take time for literally smelling the roses and baking cookies and whatnot?
And reading books of course.

 Life is about living.

#DeanWinchester has this philosophy. Play through the pain. And I too had unconsciously adopted this policy probably right from childhood. Yeah I have been feeling achy and unwell for a good long while but I always said, "I'll go to the hospital after..." After I finish this next assignment. After this batch of work is done... Just... after. Yesterday morning I knew I couldn't put it off any longer. I hurt too much. I was still shocked when the doctor said, "you have to be admitted." What? Me? I've only ever been admitted to hospital twice. One to remove my son and two to remove my appendix. I don't do hospitals. Luckily, or stubbornly I convinced the doctor to let me be treated from home. I talk about self care a lot. But I guess I haven't been following that philosophy myself too well. Shame on me right? Feels so good to be able to do nothing without guilt though. I love my stories, you know. But it's necessary to also love myself a bit more. I bet someone can relate huh?

A post shared by Author Annemarie Musawale (@authorannemarie) on Dec 15, 2017 at 2:04pm PST

Karma is a Bitch

"How people treat you is their karma. 

How you respond to it, is yours."

Do you agree?
I was thinking about this while I read an article interviewing author Jodi Picoult. She was reflecting on her own racism and telling a few stories of how black Americans seek to make the environment 'comfortable' for their white countrymen. One lady apparently carried a bottle of Voss water on the train to indicate to her fellow travelers that it was okay to sit next to her.

Frankly if it was me and no one wanted to sit next to me because of my very dark skin color, I would take it as a chance to spread myself out, put my bag on the bench next to me, extract a book, make myself comfortable, maybe put my feet up, and read for the rest of the journey. Because you know what? You not wanting to sit next to me is absolutely not my problem. And to make it my problem is to add stress to my life that I don't need.
Then she told this story about a black nurse. Some nazi wannabe had a baby born at the hospital where she works and when he saw the nurse working in the NICU he complained to the hospital admin that he did not want a black nurse touching his baby. Apparently, the hospital just made a note of it in his file...NO BLACK NURSE SHOULD TOUCH SO AND SO'S CHILD.

Question; does that mean that they had to take a look at their rotation to make sure there was always a white nurse on staff? Or were there times when that child was left unattended because there was no white nurse currently working? What about black doctors? Were they also exempt? What if the only pediatrician was a person of color? Would the hospital have hired a new one to cater to the skinhead's kid? Just how far would everyone bend over backward to accommodate this racism? Americans really blow my mind sometimes. Not to say that there is no bias or racism anywhere else on earth, but America is the only place where it is a semi-official policy. Where segregation is still very much publicly tolerated. Like if that happened here, everyone would look at you like you like you just lost your damned mind and go about their business as if you hadn't said anything.
It must be stressful to live in that kind of environment. All the more reason not to make other people's actions your problem. That nurse should look at being banned from touching that future nazi like a break from work.
"Oh, the time I would have spent looking after this child, let's see, I could apply for a Ph.D. program with the money I'm going to get from the discrimination lawsuit imma file. Get out of this bullshit ward and go work for Johns Hopkins or something. The CDC."
Because you can wallow in the unfairness of life or you can take that lemon and make lemonade like nobody's business.

Speaking of lemons, dude! Have you heard +Rihanna rap on the new N.E.R.D song? Straight fire. Is there nothing my president can't do? I am further inspired. Now if I can turn that inspiration to focus, I would be on fire myself. My cousin posted an excerpt from a self-development seminar she was attending stating that focus was about feelings.That hit me right in my solar plexus because I've had difficulty finding focus for my ghostwriting work. I realized it is because I've been bored by it. Ambivalent. And if my feelings don't change, my work will definitely suffer. I think with nostalgia how much I used to enjoy putting pen to paper...okay fingers to keyboard; and I wonder where I lost it. I still have it with my own work, but for other people, not so much. I probably need to get that back; like yesterday.
Knowing the problem is half the solution right?
My problems are not entertaining, are they?

Tyrese's are though. I used to follow him on Instagram long ago, but I stopped because he's an idiot. No seriously, I'm not trying to insult him. He's a legit idiot. An idiot with lots of talent but not much sense. Kind of an idiot savant. But this last week or three he's managed to get himself in all the blogs with his Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson/Baby Mama feud. I kind of felt like, second-hand embarrassment for him because chile...You have to have some sort of chill. Some self-awareness. Otherwise, it gets real painful outchea in these streets. I suspect that secondhand embarrassment is what made the Smiths (Will and Jada) raid their petty cash and send him 5million to stay off the gram. Because seriously...ouch.
I think back to all the franchises Tyrese has been in, and I wonder at him saying he's broke. I remember that he fucked up the joint album he was supposed to do with Ginuwine and Tank because he wanted more money than them. And ended up making no money. Meanwhile, he's broke, or so he says.
Make good decisions people.
Same thing with Mary J. Like thirty years of hits and she's on negative eleven million.
What the fuck?

Meanwhile, my president lost almost all her money when she was just barely out of her teens, worked hard to make it back tenfold, and successfully sued her management to get her original eleven million back. What does she have that they don't? Good management? An education? what? And can they possibly get it? Is it too late?
It's nice to see that other people's lives are a mess right? It makes you think that you're not doing so bad. I rather look at people like Rihanna and feel inspired to do better than look at Tyrese and wonder what went wrong. A man has talent, he has opportunity, what does he do with it?
I'd rather ask that question of myself.
What I am trying to do with it, is edutain y'all with stories.
This month, November is horror month.
Don't question it, just go with it.
Have you read In the Shadow of the Styx yet?