femi lives: my life, on internet paper: 2010

one.hundred.sixty

well, i guess i don't have anything to say.

or rather, i guess the internet is not where i like to speak these days.

no twitter, facebook, or myspace in my life. and although this blog is sitting here, i don't use it. even writing this entry feels strange. who am i talking to? i feel a tad crazy.

i've had some amazing things happen to me since i stopped posting my thoughts and feelings online. i've had great days, and evenings, with friends; i've started some new hobbies; my health has improved significantly; i've received hand-made gifts from friends overseas; i've read some incredible books; i've reclaimed lost memories; i've reclaimed lost art; i've met someone...someone very special.

and yet i haven't posted about any of it. i haven't wanted to. i haven't even thought to. if the brilliant things that i've experienced haven't resulted in a blog post, then i have to accept that nothing will. when i shut my social networking pages down i wondered why this blog survived, and what i would do with it, but i haven't really done anything. [again, who am i talking to? this feels so narcissistic and weird.]

ah well, public internet expression served me for 6 1/2 years. it started with black planet [i know], and it ends here.

time to take a bow.

exit stage left.

say goodbye to whoever i'm talking to.

buh-bye.

one.hundred.fifty.nine

oh, hello blog.

how have you been?

it's been so long.

do you still wear your hair the same way?

do you still love views and comments?

do you still have something to say?

i guess we'll see.

one.hundred.fifty.eight

am i supposed to pretend that whitney's still got it?

am i not allowed to say that she looks a mess?

am i not allowed to point out that she sounds like

she is smuggling gravel in her throat?

oh. i didn't get that memo.

she can't blame this on bobby.

one.hundred.fifty.seven

as the years pass, and everything continues to change, i am becoming more opposed to defining my life in terms of what i do. i have been many things in my 28 years [cashier, receptionist, administrator, management information assistant, service development officer, manager, publicist, journalist...], and i have wanted to be many more things.

that's life. it moves, it breathes, things are born and they die, be they professions or dreams. and so this question, "what do you do?", is outdated to me. it doesn't necessarily tell us anything about someone that points to who they are, or who they will be in the future. i know that i'm a writer, and that i'd like to be able to feed myself from my talent, but when i'm asked what i want to do with my life i don't see myself in front of a computer, or with pen and pad in hand. i see myself in the sunshine, running on a beach, laughing with friends, and lots of other hedonistic things.

i'm know i'm over-thinking this. i know that when people ask "what do you do?" they are not asking you to sum up your existence for all eternity, but still, the romantic in me wishes the only valid answer to this question was "live."

one.hundred.fifty.six

you know a song is special when you've had it in your itunes for two weeks and it is already #10 on your most played list.

allow me to share it with you. eternal thanks to the friend who shared it with me.

one.hundred.fifty.five

rapture

one.hundred.fifty.four

you know what's worse than not having a valentine? having an unwanted valentine.

you know what's worse than having an unwanted valentine? having more than one unwanted valentine.

yeah.

*insert violin playing here*

one.hundred.fifty.three

this is very random, and most likely immature,

but these smileys really make me lol.

^ do it with him for maximum effect.

^ it's a banana!

and i think this is officially known as the paula-abdul-american-idol clap.

one.hundred.fifty.two

www.thisdidnthappen.com

free fiction you'll surely love, or your money back.

one.hundred.fifty.one

there's a saying that goes something like: "show me your friends and i'll tell you who you are."

if that saying is true then i must be quite wonderful. i have some amazing friends, wonderful, fantastic friends. the best part is that they are friends that know how very flawed i am. friends that ask "how are you?" and get the reply "i feel like shit." i do not have any friends with whom i am politely perfect. so understand that when i say i have great friends i mean i have at least ten people in my life with whom i can be 'naked'. who love me when i'm not so loveable. whose kindness makes me feel somewhat guilty and wholly overwhelmed.

there are times when i don't feel like god's fortune is smiling on me. i had one of those moments today. but as i sat there and thought about all the people i could call, and all the shoulders i could lean on, i had to accept that i am constantly surrounded by a divine energy [no boho].

i guess this is one of those posts that doesn't do much for the reader; but i wanted to record this thought and this feeling, if only for myself in those not so blissful moments.

---

"What is a Friend? I’ll tell you. It is a person with whom you dare to be yourself. Your soul can go naked with him. He seems to ask you to put on nothing, only to be what you really are.

When you are with him, you do not have to be on your guard. You can say what you think, so long as it is genuinely you.

He understands those contradictions in your nature that cause others to misjudge you. With him you breathe freely – you can avow your little vanities and envies and absurdities, and in opening them up to him they are dissolved on the white ocean of his loyalty.

He understands. – You can weep with him, laugh with him, pray with him – through and underneath it all he sees, knows and loves you."

- Anonymous

one.hundred.fifty

i'm always so humbled when anyone sends me a message or e-mail full of positive energy. i have my moments where i feel like i'm the shit [as we all should], but if anybody ever tells me that they feel i'm good at what i do then it knocks the silence into my mouth at once.

so imagine how speechless and unworthy i felt this morning when i received this link from the lovely rebekah, telling me that i am the first person to feature in her 'isn't she fly' series on her blog. and as if being featured wasn't enough, she wrote these words about me:

"...She was definitely one of the first bloggers that inspired me to create my own...I was moving which caused me to lose most of my pens and throw away most of my paper. I stopped writing for such a long time where I didn't have much inspiration. I lost the drive, based on change of location I pretty much forgot about writing. I was focused on so many other things I could care less about writing anything down. But when I discovered Femi's blog I was in awe with everything she had to say, I fell in love with her words and anything that had to do with her thoughts..."

as a writer who writes just to save my own life, i am truly honoured that my words would encourage someone to pick up a pen. rebekah, you have made my day. sending big love your way :)

rebekah

one.hundred.forty.nine

they say ignorance is bliss; i say there's a lot of truth in that.

real ignorance is a lack of knowledge and information. it's not knowing, and not knowing that you don't know. it's the freedom to do wrong, be wrong and love wrong, without knowing that you are doing so.

when you gain knowledge and do what you did before you knew, that is not ignorance, that is stupidity.

this blog is sponsored by my disappointment. by my gaining knowledge about people i respected, and knowing that it would be foolish to continue to do so. this blog is sponsored by my loss of ignorance, and my secretly wishing i was stupid.

but i'm not.

one.hundred.forty.eight

did i mention that my face is on the cover of the latest ep from a race of angels?

when i was asked if my picture could be used as the cover, i did not fully understand what it meant. my big old grill is on amazon, itunes and last.fm.

more important than my face is the music though. so please visit cdbaby, purchase the ep for only $2.99, and support some beautiful music from a beautiful heart, and one of my favourite people on this blue earth.

one.hundred.forty.seven

i have acquired an understanding of addiction over the past few years. through my health problems, which affected my ability to eat, i have grown an incredible amount of compassion for people we label as 'addicts'.

on days when i couldn't eat i could think of nothing else but eating. if i tried to eat and couldn't keep it down then there were days i would get trapped into a cycle of eating and throwing up. some days it was very hard to stop. the worst thing was that it wasn't the food i wanted, it wasn't the food i was determined to eat. it was that the food began to represent my pain. my determination was really a desire to conquer my health problem, and at that time i was trying to achieve that through food, because that was how my health issues had manifested. somebody suggested i was bulimic. i wasn't. but i appreciated how thin the line was, no pun intended.

last year i read an incredible article by adam phillips entitled insatiable creatures.

"...our excessive behaviour shows us how obscure we are to ourselves or how we obscure ourselves; how our frustrations, odd as this may seem, are excessively difficult to locate, to formulate. Wherever and whenever we are excessive in our lives it is the sign of an as yet unknown deprivation. Our excesses are the best clue we have to our own poverty, and our best way of concealing it from ourselves."

whether through a bottle, a pill, a needle, sex, food or cutting; those who display excessive behaviour are in search of something. it is something these things can never satisfy. they are trying to catch a ride to freedom in a vehicle that can not take them there. i feel nothing but compassion for people battling addiction. we all display addictive behaviour and traits to some extent. we are no different to 'addicts', we are just resting in a different place on the continuum.

do you remember city high?

toby, claudette & robby

a couple of days ago, robby was featured on the a&e television series intervention. he has been an alcoholic for 10 years. he is a man with a big heart, that has suffered some big breaks. by the end of the show i was crying like a baby. this was such powerful television. i highly recommend you set 40 mins aside to watch it. if you are in the US then you can watch the full episode on the a&e website. if not, then you can watch it here.

i felt so thankful after watching this. the universe somehow managed to keep me on the right side of love. tonight i'll be saying a prayer for those one step away from that line and much less fortunate than me.

one.hundred.forty.six

it's a real shame when two people love each other, but can't function happily in the same space.

one.hundred.forty.five

a friend of mine asked me a question yesterday that i am still carrying in my pocket:

"do you trust your emotions?"

the three second silence which preceded my response said more than the answer i gave. the answer can only be no. i haven't always been happy with what i do with my emotions, but it seems that making positive steps to change how i react to, express and demonstrate my emotions has caused me to dissect and subsequently doubt the emotions themselves. this defeats the purpose of my pursuit. not good. especially not good because passion can not share a house with doubt.

i have always been a passionate person. i have often kept it silenced in a corner, and perhaps that is why i have nearly always exploded into romantic relationships [where passion is required] with pent-up fervor not always belonging to the man i attached it to. well something has to give, because the only person i'm loving right now is me; and i deserve all the heat and light the fire in my belly has to offer.

how do you rehabilitate a passionate person living with an addiction to reflexivity that once helped and is now harming?

i know how, and here is what i'm going to do.

i'm going to don my 'fuck it' cape.

i'm gonna feel every dirty scrap of emotion that i collect from the streets of my life experiences, and if they make me want to scream then i'm going to holler at the highest frequency my voicebox will allow. life is a messy, overlapped, colour outside the lines, bleed through the page to the page underneath kind of game. i want to play for real.

so seriously: fuck it.

not because i don't care.

but because i really do.

one.hundred.forty.four

to be your woman

i’d run on glass

barefoot and proud

i’d eat fire

laced with chillies picked from my garden

where the flowers grow wild

in homage to the freedom love provides

i’d destroy brick walls

with only my will

to demonstrate my staying power

then build them ten storeys higher than they stood

to demonstrate my commitment

to being better

to be your woman

i’d cry all the tears you gave me

save them in a glass jar

blown by an old man in china

that has been around the world as many times as i have dreamt

how your lips must taste

and keep that jar in a safe

under your side of the bed you do not sleep in

but will once you discover

that i have made a space

in my everything

for you to call home

and placed the key

on the soft side of the moon

for you to collect

in exchange for your fear and caution

as soon as you can

please run through our front door

rest your cheek on my breast

carry me to our garden

lay me down on the wild flowers

as your woman

and provide the freedom

i know

is found

only

your love

one.hundred.forty.three

i've started writing so many blogs and have then deleted them for one of, or a combination of, the following reasons:

a. it'll take too long to write
b. it would sound better if you heard it, as opposed to read it
c. i don't think anyone will care about the content
d. it's too private to share

what kind of blogger does that make me? yes. a crap one.

perhaps my blogging days are behind me :-/

nah.

i gotta figure this shit out!