I was born to do great things
and they are many and varied
I was born to do great things. My mind is creative at its core, and there are times I feel completely overwhelmed by all the ideas I have in my head.
I’m a writer by definition and by trade, yet I often find myself wanting to express my creativity in different ways.
I’m a storyteller. I love taking photographs both of myself and of the things I see and experience in the world. I love making videos. I love finding my creative people and enjoy curating content so other people discover them as well. I’m a spoken word artist.
As a journalist, I love helping people to be informed. As a nerd, I love sharing things people may not know or may not have heard of yet. I have a friend who is a human encyclopedia, and every time she teaches me something new, I want to go out into the world and teach it to other people.
I like to share.
As a music lover, I want people to know what I’m listening to. As a book lover, I want to do deep dives into the art of fiction — specifically Black fiction in all its forms.
I want to explore the various forms my personal story can take depending on how I decide to tell it. Is it biomythography? Is it memoir? Is it autofiction?
My brain moves faster than a speeding bullet, and sometimes I feel like I am gong to spill over with all the things I want to share and the many ways in which I want to share them.
My life is a braided narrative. It’s a love story. It is a coming of age story. It’s a story about resilience. It’s a story about reinventing myself over and over again.
My life is erotica. It’s drama. It’s urban romance. Sometimes it’s a tragedy. It’s a one-woman stage show. It’s a play with so many acts, you have to come back day after day to see them all.
How am I supposed to fit all of that in one little box?
The labels we wear
Labels are a thing.
Are you Black? Are you a woman? Are you a writer? Are you a storyteller? Are you a blogger? Are you a journalist? Are you an amateur photographer? Are you an influencer? Are you a creator?
With labels come stigmas, and nothing in current culture has become more stigmatized than the idea of being an “influencer” or a “creator.”
People look down on these things and treat those who affirm themselves with these labels as if there is something wrong with them.
My friends have told me I am an “influencer,” and for the longest, I hated that word as a descriptor for myself because of the stigma attached to it.
One day, my friend Liz told me she thought of me as an influencer. She took it a step further and told me that I am “the influencers influencer.”
“You tell people what to talk about, what to think about, and what to write about,” she said.
Something in what she said clicked for me, but I still wasn’t sure.
I walked away from Mickalene Thomas’s “All About Love” exhibit very sure.
I felt moved to action, and in the moment, I wasn’t sure what the action was, but after sitting with it all this time, I think I’ve figured it out.
There is nothing wrong with being a creator or creative
“My writing isn’t necessarily about the things I know,”
wrote. “It’s about the things I notice.”My writing is about the things that I know. It’s about the things that I notice. It’s about the things I want other people to notice. It’s about the things that I feel. It’s about the people I love. It’s about the experiences I’ve had.
I write for me, but I write for you too.
I write because I love writing. I always have. It is the strongest means I have of expressing myself aside from talking out loud.
I write because there are infinite stories moving around inside my head, and I want to tell them all.
I am a multi-passionate creative just like
.I’ve tried sticking to one thing like people say you should, but my brain doesn’t work like that, and I’m no longer going to be in the business of holding myself back from all my many forms of creative expression.
There are no timelines or deadlines except for the ones I set for myself. I’ve reinvented myself enough times to know that each fresh start always leads me to something greater.
I’m going to answer the calls my brain makes me to every single day, and it’s likely to spill over into this space.
You’ve been warned, babies.