TMI?

Sometimes after publishing a post, I wonder if I’ve shared too much. You know, given a little “TMI” (too much information). While I don’t say anything disrespectful or controversial or extremist in nature, I openly admit to my character flaws, writing struggles, fears, sugar addiction, loneliness, and carnal desires, among other personal things. I’m not ashamed of myself, I am who I am—a wonderfully imperfect human who examines herself critically and honestly and feels as though sharing those findings with the world unburdens her soul. I’m aware that some would argue I’m merely an online narcissist, one of the millions who think the world cares about their profound reflections. Well, do you?

Should I be doing this? This whole spill my guts thing? Aren’t people supposed to keep their thoughts about themselves to themselves? Sure it’s okay to talk about other people’s lives, but to turn the microscope on yourself and proclaim to the world Look at me! With my self-deprecating sense of humor, somewhat deviant thoughts, questionable fashion sense, goofy dances, aversion to technological advances, weakness for romance and happy endings, and hairy legs.

Who’s reading this thing anyway? Aside from the very special person who reads faithfully (sending her a big >hug<). I know plenty of things about people who don’t even know my last name (thanks to my good pal, Google). Could someone who I see all the time, whose last (or even first) name I don’t know, have plenty of info on me because they read my musings? The thought intrigues me. The man I’m currently infatuated with, are you reading this? I’ll never know, will I? And neither will you. My best friend during high school, I still think of you and wish things hadn’t changed. Are you reading this? Chris, who would have made me the happiest girl on campus by saying “yes” to my movie invite, are you reading this? I could sit here all night pondering who visits me. How interesting, online anonymity protects the audience, but offers little to the entertainer.

I like that I have private thoughts and memories and feelings. Things that can’t be hacked or compromised. Things unknown to any other being. I suppose I just answered my own question. It’s okay if I share parts of me with the world, and, no, it’s not too much. For I don’t share my all, my everything, and that’s the important part. I have a secret place where the rest of me is housed. There’s some good stuff in there, stuff that fuels my every thought and action. But don’t feel slighted; the stuff you read is pretty good too. In fact, and this is between me and you, the dividing line between what I post and what I keep in my secret place is sometimes indistinguishable.

JS

In Case I Hurt Your Feelings, I'm Sorry

So I'm sitting here listening to music, pondering how to end my night. Yes, at 8:37 on a Friday night, I'm nearing the end. No nightclub; no date; no meeting girlfriends anywhere; no movies; no nice restaurant; no cuddling on the couch with a member of the opposite sex; no kissing; no yanking off my clothes in a fit of passion; no getting ready in front of the mirror to go to a party; and no "baby, I'm outside."

Tonight, my options are: 1) marinate the pork chops pictured here; 2) dance to music; 3) watch tv; 4) continue to sit here at the computer; 5) lie to myself that I'll do something fun next weekend to make up for this one; 6) buy a bus ticket for NYC for a day or two to escape what I've created here at home; 5) go to sleep early; 6) get on my exercise bike to alleviate my guilt from not walking this evening; or 7) browse Craigslist 'Missed Connections' ads to see if someone is looking for me. Oh who am I kidding, as usual, I'll do most of these things. So in a way, I guess my Fridays are pretty eventful, now that I've written out my itinerary.

But moving on. I didn't start this post to spill the details of my exciting existence. I want to apologize for some mean things I did as a kid. I was sitting here feeling emotional and suffering from cramps and bloating, when I started to feel sad for the bully I used to be in elementary school. That phase of my life didn't last long, and I wasn't a violent bully, but a more mischievous one. And besides, I got it all back ten-fold in middle and high school when I became a shy and awkward loser and a social outcast. Still, I wanted to put it out there in the rare chance that my "victims" remember my name, and Google me to see if misfortune has befallen me, and if so, to laugh. Though I'm happy to report that life has been pretty good to me.

I apologize to the following individuals:

• The girl whose shirt I blew my nose on, while she was still wearing it.
  

• The girl who I would walk closely behind just so I could step on her heels.

• The girl whose candy I stole out of her booksack during recess.

• The boy whose school supplies I stole, brought home to destroy with my mother's makeup and a pair of scissors, then brought back to school for him to "find."
  

• All the kids whose belongings I would take off their desks to place in different areas of the classroom, just to create confusion. And to laugh.

I apologize because I'm not that person anymore, and haven't been since that time. The person I am now is sensitive to the misfortunes of others; understanding; sickeningly kind; protective of others; a pushover if I like you a lot; and overall, a pretty good person and great friend. For every bad thing I did as a youngster, I assure you, I've gotten it back. I hope you all are happy, fulfilled, in love with your lives, have found "the one," have great families, careers you love, and most importantly, have forgotten all about me.

Peace to everyone reading this.

JS

Playing with My Alphabets

All I want to do in life is

Be the best Jennifer I can be

Choosing more right options than wrong

Deliberately treating others the way I wish to be treated

Expressing myself the way I know best

Finishing the projects that I start

Getting out and enjoying life

Hitting the gym or the pavement to exercise

Imagining all the things that make me happy

Joining others in an effort to make the world a better place

Kicking out all the negative thoughts that invade my private time

Learning new things

Making sure the people in my life know how much I love them

Never taking my blessings for granted

Opening my mind to possibilities I haven’t considered

Protecting my spirit from harm

Questioning what I don’t understand, but learning to let go what I cannot change

Resting my mind at night so that my body will follow suit

Sharing my creative interpretations with others

Traveling to the places that bring me comfort

Understanding that time goes on no matter how much I object

Visiting my family often

Wearing clothes that flatter my frame

eXpecting to receive the kind of love and passion that I fantasize of

Yielding returns on my investments

and Zealously enjoying the simple things in life

Bronze Thrills, Black Confessions, and a little Jive

This is a story of my first lesson in the importance of proper proofreading and editing, and how quickly a manuscript can lose credibility when a reader is confronted with easily avoidable errors.

“Moist Caverns” and “Man Tools”

When I was around 13 or 14, I discovered that nestled amongst the magazines on the stand at the Winn-Dixie grocery store, were four black romance/confession magazines—Jive, Black Confessions, Bronze Thrills, and Black Romance. (These publications were, in my words, an “urban imprint” for Sterling/Macfadden, publisher of the mainstream confession titles True Confessions, True Story, and True Romance.) An avid reader who was suffering from a severe case of puberty, I found my little discovery quite intriguing, to say the least. It didn’t take long for me to realize the salaciousness that lay before me.

He plunged his man tool into my moist cavern…

“Ma!!," hurrying excitedly, "can you buy this for me?”

My poor mother, I bugged her for at least several weeks to buy one of the magazines for me. It was the most important item in the world to me at the time. She was a tough nut to crack, as she wasn’t naïve, and knew all too well the type of stories they were. She shared her concerns that the material was inappropriate for me, and we'd go back and forth on how the stories weren't bad at all, and that I was indeed old enough to read them. I begged each Winn-Dixie visit. I still remember the night when she finally relented. I had been following her around the store holding one of the magazines, looking pitiful, of course. Knowing she’d say no, I wasted my breath again by asking if she’d buy it for me. She reviewed the cover for a moment, and then said yes! That, gentle readers, was one of the happiest moments of my teen years. Bronze Thrills was finally coming home with me (I still have this issue by the way, February 1993). Finally, I was going to read stories about girls just a few years older than me who had boyfriends and were having sex with them; girls disobeying their parents to sneak around with neighborhood bad boys; women catching their husbands having affairs; love triangles; domestic violence; workplace infatuation—Yessssss!

And so my journey began. Soon I started a summer job and was able to buy my own magazines, and I continued to do for a number of years afterward. While I always found the material interesting, and usually had a favorite story in each issue, reading these magazines was an exercise in patience. The grammatical and typographical errors were so blatant that, in my opinion, it offended the intelligence of the readers.

"Errors"

Jennifer, are you telling us that a magazine went to press without anyone bothering to make sure it looked okay?

Yes, I am. Where were the editors? I wondered. Did anyone on the payroll bother to even read one of the issues? Pure foolishness. In addition to suffering with misspelled words, missing words, and no spacing between words, imagine these other crimes against literature that faithful readers had to endure:

The "editors" in charge forced us to

· Attempt to understand text where there was either a misplacement or absence of quotation marks that rendered dialogue and the narrator’s inner thoughts indistinguishable.
· Re-read stories, as a story in one issue was sometimes a word-for-word reprint of one from a few issues back.
· Get to know a main character by one name, let's say “Nathan,” only to turn the page and find that his name had changed to “Mike.”
· Skim an issue's Table of Contents in the store, and become excited at a particular story's title and synopsis, only to get it home and discover that said story wasn’t even in the issue. I'm not kidding. Table of Contents should never lie! (This happened to me twice, and I’m still mad about it.)

"Prisoners"

Before the internet, lonely hearts commonly sought love through classified ads in newspapers and magazines. Black Romance and her sisters were no exception. When I would get a new issue, the first thing I would do is read the "Pen Pals" column in the back. Out of about 25 ads per issue, all but one would be from a prisoner seeking companionship.

"Ebony prince seeks princess for romance and marriage. I'm a writer, musician, and political activist. Will answer all. Roses for you, beautiful lady. Race and weight not important."

(Sidebar: Race and weight never seem to be a problem after all the options have been taken away. Come as you are, my queens. Funny, were they that accepting as free men?)

As an adult, I saw the ad of a guy I think I worked with at McDonalds years before when I was 16. This guy (when I knew him) had gold teeth, a jherri curl, and always wore a cow hide sun visor (of course, I had a crush on him). He had a very unique nickname, and this was the name I saw in the ad. When I saw that this individual was incarcerated in my home state, I was all but assured that he was indeed the same guy who shared fry duty with me and had gone on to make some bad choices. I used to wonder, and still do, how these men found out about these publications; was there some kind of network? I also felt some kind of way about these men possibly attempting to take advantage of lonely women. I'm sure my mother didn't know what to make of me. I was a weird one, I'm sure there were hardly any other teenage girls who found reading inmate personals ads entertaining.

"Conclusion"

Today, Sterling/Macfadden no longer publishes these black love-focused magazines. I think the True magazines are still around though. I wasn’t sad to see them go. Aside from being older and not that into them anymore, I had lost respect for the company for not caring about the quality of this particular brand. It had gotten to the point where I no longer bothered to flip through them anymore. I had spent too many nights becoming engrossed in a story, only to be snatched from the fantasy because of an error that, had anyone cared to proofread it, could have easily been corrected. It's hard to enjoy a story when the journey to get to the end is choppy and misguided. Before abandoning these magazines, I had managed to collect over 30 of them. I have them stashed away here and there. I hope to keep them for a long time because I’m sentimental, but also because I want to pass them on to someone. Most teens/young women today wouldn't find much interest in a nearly 20-year-old romance magazine, but, if one of them is like me, would greatly appreciate the piece of history. Perhaps I'll find someone someday who will treasure them as I have, offensive errors and all.

I've rambled on enough. Now I'm off to go and finish up an earlier post I started in July.

--A nostalgic reader

What Do You Do?

I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting since my last post. About the usual stuff I suppose: Am I living each day to the fullest? Have I made the right choices up to this point? Is my lack of a love life due to something horrible I did in a past life? If I lost 20-30lbs would I then receive the highly coveted Certificate of Desirability, deeming me worthy and eligible to at least enter the dating pool? Is the DC area where I should be? Or should I have tried a little harder to move to NYC where so many others like me reside? Why are all the men who seem perfect for me either a part of the “gold band” club or just not interested? Should I have more to show for myself financially?

Not a day goes by where I don’t ponder most (sometimes all) of these questions. Some have many possible answers, others none. I’m just at that point in my life where I assess myself more thoroughly, and am more aware of how my actions today can make or break the rest of my life. I guess I have too much time on my hands. A wise man or woman might say that if a person is out actually living life, then he or she won’t have time to sit around thinking and worrying about it. Makes sense, doesn’t it? And it’s a good motto to live by too, isn’t it?

Still, I counter with this—what do you do when “living life” just doesn’t feel the way it used to? When you’re missing something and you’re not sure what? When something’s happening and you can’t put a finger on it? When you no longer enjoy doing things by yourself and long for a partner, but feel invisible to those you wish would volunteer?

What do you do?

You take people’s advice. You speak and nod in agreement when people say to put it in the hands of a higher power. You try to change what you think you may be doing wrong. You ponder why, what, how, when, and where?

And during it all, you hope to find an answer. A solution to put your anxious mind at ease. A solution that rejuvenates your spirit. Some type of something to motivate you to do all the things your heart yearns for you to do.

JS