Just Water the Plants: This Post Is not About Plants

 

I've always thought of myself as someone with a black thumb, despite my family's farmer roots, I feared I couldn't keep a single plant alive.

This was supported by my various attempts to keep plants in a pot and also when I had an actual garden. I basically employed a gardener so I wouldn't kill everything. 

Now I have a few plants in pots on my balcony and one day, I woke up (after three-fifths of them had died) and resolved that I would do better when it came to tending to them.

I put an alarm on my phone to remember to water my plants.

That was it.

Just water the plants. Regularly.

I didn't always follow through even with an alarm. But I did find that with watering going from zero times to maybe even once a week, I was reversing the rapid decline of my balcony garden. I went to Diani for one week and made my son promise to water them every day.

He did.

And the plants that were left were flourishing.

Let's backtrack a bit.

So life has been hard right? Internally and externally. Shit has just been hitting the fan so much lately. So much so that I've even seen fit to overlook my feud with 'God' and started well...praying. 

Do you experience God?

That's not an original quote from me. It's from Children of God by Maria Doria Russell. Or maybe it's The Sparrow. Father Emilio Sandoz asks his caretaker that question. 

It wasn't a happy thing for him - to experience God. Clair Fraser from Outlander also experienced God. She called it having a moment of Grace. 

I did too. 

For me, it's been different. Usually, I get these...moments of Grace...in times of extreme stress when I don't know how to proceed. They could come in terms of a revelation, or some person telling me something that answers a question I've been pondering. It's all very...existential.

Anyway, it had gone away for a few years but once I started praying well, it came back. I look at it this way, I opened myself up to the possibility of receiving these messages again and the universe resumed talking to me.

So there I was, seeing those seeds sprouting green and healthy and I went huh, all they needed was constant watering.

Maybe I don't have a black thumb. Maybe...I've just been neglectful in the past.

So I'm trying this new/old thing where I'm watering my plants.

Well...I am actually watering my plants and they thriving thank you very much. But it was also a metaphor for many other things in my life.

My son.

He's been having a hard time of it and I was at a loss as to how to help him or even if I should. Think Eagles and their babies - should I drop him out of the nest and just see if he'll fly or...what? And I worried that maybe I took it for granted that he would be okay, that he'd figure it out, that he didn't need me. Then I worried that I was being a helicopter parent and he'd never learn to stand on his own two feet if I was there to solve all his problems for him.

Parenting is super hard guys.

Water the plants.

So I tried to do that. To be present, available if he called upon me, to provide positive reinforcement and trust that he would do the rest. 

It's hard to trust guys. Phew. It's so hard.

But that's where I am with that.

It's a constant battle but we move. 

My health.

Being in my forties, I don't know if my health is deteriorating or if this is just normal wear and tear. Anyway, at the moment, I have very high inflammation in my body and still searching for a cause. I'm also trying to get rid of the excess weight in my belly. 

It's a frustrating journey for lil old inconsistent me. But I'm trying to be consistent in 'watering these plants' which means doing some sort of workout as many days of the week that I can. I use Justin Agustin's site which has very gentle exercises which don't make you feel like literally dying when you think about doing them.

A great side effect is that when my son finds me working out, it motivates him to go to the gym and achieve one of his own goals. Going back to being a parent; the exercises I do are very gentle, but the way he sees it is that I am effortless in doing difficult exercises. I'm just like..." When will that pedestal you put me on sometimes, develop feet of clay?"

It's great guys. It's great. wonderful. 

So I'm taking my meds, seeing the doc when I'm supposed to, and making sure to work out regularly. We await the results. 

Water your plants...consistently. 

I'm failing to do that with my work though. I can't seem to keep a deadline to save my life these days. Twitter is a huge culprit. I spend too much time on there. It's an addiction at this point. But I'm trying to use the Focus app on my laptop and just trying. 

Of course, I know there's more than Twitter to blame here. I might be burnt out. The worry about everything else in my life isn't helping. Neither is the less than optimum health. So I know that once I've gotten those other things nailed, my work output will improve and my bruxism will disappear. 

We hope.

Sometimes even when you water the plants consistently, birds come and eat them, or slugs, or they get a disease...life happens.

So do your part and then leave it all to...God? The Universe? Everything? Whatever higher power you believe in. Just make sure you leave it all on the floor, no regrets.

If the plant still dies, at least you know you did everything that you could.

My Experience with Working With Different Races

 You know I'm perpetually online right?

Like...it's a problem. I'm beginning to suspect I might have ADHD. Not just because of the obsession with Twitter. There are other things too. My sensitivity to noise, the way I get confused if there is too much stimuli...lots of things. Anyway, this isn't about my tendency to self-diagnose...which...

Never mind. We were talking about being online and so that's where I get most of my interactions with strangers. So a few weeks ago, someone said on Twitter that working with Black Americans was basically her worst experience in terms of them wanting discounts and such. 

Of course, that was a generalization but I too have experienced the same thing. But not just with black Americans. Black people of various hues and origins; are always angling for free or near-free work from other black people. 

As I write this, I am speculating as to why that is and my conclusion isn't that it's not that black people are cheap - no. They just don't value the time and work of other black people. Internalized racism jumps out; our minds remain colonized. 

In my experience, and it saddens me to admit this, but of all the various clients I have had, I have worked best with white men followed by Asian women.

You think I like writing this? I don't. But the truth is that so long as you demonstrate your competence, white men (disclaimer: not Americans - have yet to work with an American man) will give you the work, expect you to do it, and then pay you promptly. The two Asian women I've worked with preferred a more collaborative process but let me take the lead as the 'expert'. They seem to take it as two groups just trying to survive white supremacy so let's see if we can get this money. I haven't worked with racist Asians but of course, they would not choose me to work for them anyway.

White women...

Brace yourself for at least one tantrum. They also want to tell you what to do even though they actually do not know anything. Like, nothing. Not even basic English. The number of times I've had to explain things that I thought were common knowledge...

Working with white women has taught me patience and I totally understand why black people were so happy to be working from home during the panini. They STAY looking for shit to blame you for.

White women working under men are conversely, the most polite people I've ever encountered. They're gentle, say please and thank you and is there any way I can help you? This is actually my favorite dynamic.

Black American women will call you "Queen" and ask for edits and re-dos and do everything they can to delay paying you. Black American men will ghost you if you let them, after asking for the work. Africans will ask for as little as they can pay you, ask you who you think you are, and become annoyed if you want to be paid commensurate rates as everyone else.

So there you have it. 

This is just my experience. My disclaimer is that it's not a blanket description of every one of whatever race. 

Do with this what you will.

Book Sale at Smashwords

 

Hello, Readers!

I’m excited to announce that my books, will be available as part of a promotion on Smashwords for the month of July as part of their Annual Summer/Winter Sale! This is a chance to get my book, along with books from many other great authors, at a discount so you can get right to reading.

You will find the promo here starting on July 1, so save the link here.

Please share this promo with friends and family. You can even forward this post to the avid readers in your life!

Thank you for your help and support!

Happy reading!

White People and the Culture of Exclusion

 I saw a tweet yesterday where a white girl posted her pic and said something like, "Twenty-one weeks pregnant. Trannies could never."

I stared at the tweet, and stared some more, trying to decipher what could possibly be the purpose of it. A whole-ass pregnant woman infecting her child with poisonous toxic vibes even before they have a chance to leave the womb. What chance does it have?

But then, it keeps hitting me in the face that this is a trend with the mayonnaise people. A black boy knocks on your door, and you shoot him. Kids are playing in a field NEAR your house, you chase them away and then shoot their mother dead when she comes to collect an iPad you essentially stole from them. Ajike Owens' children are left motherless because the white lady didn't like the black kids playing near her house.

Transphobia.

Like, I'm old enough to remember when the only transphobia I saw was men killing black trans women. It was an epidemic. Everyone agreed it was bad. Suddenly, the tide turned led by white women - trans women were stealing their identities...and stuff. Or something. I don't know. But now its a whole thing. Just another way they have to exclude people.

It's not just racial, this exclusion. Yesterday I saw a tweet where a white mother was complaining that her white kid had been barred from eating cake at a birthday party because the mom of the birthday kid did not count them as 'a friend'. They were playing in the same park. It was this one kid and a birthday party. Naturally, she was playing with the birthday party kids. But god forbid, she eat their cake. She wasn't one of them.

Don't get me wrong, people are within their rights to be mean. To be small-minded. To be all these things. But because they also feel that they are the default, the main character, the only ones who matter, they do try and make lives difficult for anyone else. And that is the problem.

The worst part though, is that the other white people who consider themselves to not be full of hate, do nothing to stop it. In fact, they'll tell you how the bigots just need love and understanding and they'll stop. 

Throw the entire race away.

Now watch this post be taken down or put behind a "sensitive" tag.