Secrets, Solace, Sanity...

Just so you know I am purposely going to ignore the fact that I went from blogging everyday to not blogging in almost two months and I am going to write this one as if I never stopped...No grandiose apologies or promises...just a fresh start with a consistent follow through..okay, here goes--
 

I was watching a random episode of Criminal Minds a couple of nights ago and at the end one of the team members recited the following quote (don't judge me)..

"If we knew each others secrets, what comforts we should find." -  John Churton Collins

It struck a chord with me and it has seemingly removed the severe case of blogger's block that I totally tried not to mention in the first few sentences of this very post.  Now back to the qoute--it did not spark my interest because I have a ton of secrets.  There are things in my life that I hold dear and are too precious for me to make known to the masses.  There are also some things that I promised either myself, the Lord, or a close friend that I would take to the grave (and please believe that sworn promise has not changed)! But outside of those few things I tend to be a very full disclosure type person.  If you have ever read any of my blogs, I am very in tune with my emotions and I have no problem articulating how I feel about any number of things so I believe that it is safe to say that secrets are not one of my vices. 


What caused me to rewind the DVR and take notice of the saying was the latter end. What if we all were ready to share those things that make us unique.  What if we were able to call one person and share those things that keep us up at nights, those things that cause the tears to flow in the late night hours.  What would happen if you knew that no matter what you shared of yourself, there would be no judgment and no backlash.  Well, according to the quote, there would be comfort.  Not a "I know all your business" comfort. nor is it a "I am better than you" comfort; it's a comfort that comes from knowing that you are human and it is okay to be vulnerable and not know what to do. A comfort that you find when you have that special person or circle of people that you can be who you are without pretense and know that no matter what happens they will be there with either a kleenex to wipe away the tears or a weapon to hurt who caused them.

After pondering the quote for a few days,  I realized that I am so lucky to have an icebox to keep my secrets in.  When things get especially difficult or hard to bear, comfort is a phone call away, and there is nothing more valuable to me than that.  When it is all said and done, I hope that I have been/am that person for someone else. Having a secret is not nearly as important as being able to keep one and providing someone an opportunity to vent and share their heart can not be measured.  


Sidenote: I think I am free from my severe case of blogger's block...it feels good to let my heart bleed on to these keys...I'm off to bed now, thanks for hanging in there with me...patience is a virtue I admire and I appreciate all that have shown it...


Sidenote 2: I randomly have the urge to hear Alicia Keys - Diary,  one day I will feel an emotion or think a thought and I won't have a corresponding song...one day (maybe)!

Having an EMO moment...

Hey there...I know I know, all my empty promises to do better and blog faithfully, religiously and consistently have been an epic fail...I wish I could apologize but I am afraid that it would be empty and I do not want to keep apologizing and not change so we shall see...I love my blog so I will try to treat it as such..

There are so many things that I could write about.  I have made so many awesome connections.  Increased my make-up kit exponentially, had an awesome client but for some reason I am not feeling that.  One thing about me is that I am not a faker.  All those things are great and I will get to them in due time but tonight my heart is not in those things...tonight my heart is a mess...(lol--but not really)

I am a firm believer in growth through brokenness.  I know for a fact that there are times where I have not changed because I have refused to identify and change the aspects of the issues that are soley mine.  Tonight I feel the weight of that. How is it that I have so many friends yet I feel more alone now than I have ever felt. There are so many things that are going right, but something in my heart feels so wrong. I do not know what it is and I cannot blame anyone else for the feeling.  It is just there.

There are some things that I do know. I am not perfect, I am a fallible human being that tends to get things wrong sometimes but I try to make it work.  Sometimes I think the issue is, I am always trying to be a hero.  It is always my heart to be so strong, to keep it together..to handle my handle.  I am willing to admit right now that I cannot always do that, not successfully.   I know that another part of the feeling is that "tonight I want to be somebody's somebody" (Prince), I love..love..it's who I am..I think that somewhere on the inside of me there is a switch that regardless of the circumstance is stuck in 'heart on sleeve' mode.  Don't get me wrong, I am not upset about that, it is who I am but sometimes I do wish that I could cover it up.  Sometimes I wish that you couldn't see me sweat.  Sometimes I wish I knew how to build walls, barriers a dag on Tee-Pee to protect myself..But no matter how much I wish it were so, it is not..so here goes my sleeve..attached is my heart and that's that...sometimes broken and bruised, battered and bashed but always beating nonetheless. When it is all said and done, here's who I am...

#end pity party

Transition Tuesday...

Hellooooooo...I keep taking these extended breaks and when I come back and blog it feels that I have been away forever..

There have been so many things that have taken place over the last week..First off I had to move and that was nothing short of a hot mess...The movers took 4 hours longer then what was scheduled and even had to come back the next day to finish.  In the midst of all of that I had to prepare for my Church's annual picnic--which was Awesome--and it was hot as SIN outside.  And to top it all off, all week long I have been out-processing the  military!!

I am now a civilian, straight up and down! I feel like I have escaped from my very own personal prison! I am trading my steel toe boots in for stilettos and my pony tail holder in for an afro pick! So if you notice an increase in my blog activity it is because I have some free time now to do what I enjoy!

*sneek peak - tomorrow I will be blogging about my consult with renowned makeup artist Jennifer James :) *

Remember love is life and life is living!! Enjoy it all!

And it Begins...My Journey into Make-up Artistry

I realized something today, the best blogs are like old friends.  Even when you don't talk to them everyday when you finally catch up with them its like no time has passed at all.  Now I know that I should update everyday sometimes multiple times a day but it is good to know that I have some faithful readers that always pick up right where I left off...

These last few days have been so busy but I am excited.  My vision of becoming a make-up artist (MUA) is in full effect..The other day I shared that I was blessed with some finances and it was just in time for something very special.  Well here goes the great news!!

Earlier this week I was on my part time job (Twitter-hahaha) and I noticed a very interesting tweet by a seasoned MUA, with an impressive and diverse portfolio, in my timeline.  @JenniferJamesBeauty was offering 1 on 1 personal beauty sessions for a small fee (let me say that there is no price that can be put on her energy, her professionalism and her sweet spirit..she is truly a blessing).  Needless to say, I signed up immediately and once Jennifer James called me to talk more about my consultation, I could have fainted. I mean, I do tend to believe that everything I want I can have if I extend my faith and its in the will of God, but this was too much. I shared with her the items that I already had in my flygirl inventory, she made some awesome recommendations and sent me out into the world to begin filling holes in my personal stash. Now I don't know about you but when I have a dream and it begins to come into fruition, I get excited.  I sorta kept my cool on the phone and then went to call my entire flirty, fabulous and free fam and tell them that I had met the catalyst for my future endeavors.

It is amazing to me how one conversation, one person, one phone call can help solidify something that you believe in.  I knew that within my life plan, I would someday be a MUA and I knew that in order to do that, some things would have to come to pass, I just did not know that it would be now.  Jennifer has been awesome and so has some of the other MUA's in my Twitter family.  I even got a response from @samfinebeauty to a question about his latest DVD. Later on this week, I will begin to introduce some of these wonderful people and share some of the awesome tips that I have been getting all weekend.

I cannot wait to do a M A C haul blog and to tell you all about my skype session later in this week..until then the #1 beauty tip that I can give is get your rest...beauty sleep is not a myth it is a necessity!  

*click on the links to visit the pages of anyone mentioned in the blog!*

C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)

Sidebar: Looka here, if one more person sends me a threatening message about me not posting everyday we are going to fight...I am trying..well not hard enough, but I will endeavor to do better.  One of lovely new Tweeps Misha or @TheFabChick as she is known in the twitter world, offered me some lovely advice (Click on her name or her Twitter Link to experience sheer fabulousness, I love her tweets and her blog is a great read for any fashionista out there). 

I posted a tweet that said:


"I'm such a fair-weather blogger. I write a good one and wonder how I will ever top it...I need to be more committed."

Her response was hilarious and true:

  

@cocoanaturale gotta marry it! put a ring on it and say till death do you part with it... lol

I realize that she is right, I have always known that I needed to develop some type of sticktoitiveness to be a blogger and I am up for the challenge.  I love to write and surely with the random things that take place in my life, I wouldn't believe half of it if I did not put it here for the world to see!

Now to the regular scheduled programming....In my last blog, I shared that something crazy happened to me yesterday (as usual) so I guess what better time then now to tell it.  The story starts back in November when I dropped out of school, allegedly because I was heart broken and love sick -- truth is, I was being lazy and I did not feel like pressing through personal issues and handling my business.  Anyway, I left school and chilled for a few months thinking I could not go back until I payed for the classes that I dropped. Fast forward to last week...I received an email from my old academic counselor encouraging me to come back so I called her and told her my situation and she signed me up for classes for the next semester which starts next week pending a talk with financial aid.  To make a long story short, financial aid cleared me for re-entry, stated that I did not indeed owe a balance and that I could start school as planned.  I was so excited, I love school.  I am a straight A student and I enjoy every bit of the process so I logged right into my student portal to look at my degree progress and snoop around.  In the midst of my record review, I happened upon a section that listed all of the financial transactions on my account and I noticed a transaction listed that said stipend from back in Februay.


At this point I am like...hmmm--what is this, so I call the Financial Aid lady back and she stated that I still had some good old fashioned free money (i.e. Pell Grant) money left in my account and they sent a check to me in February.  I almost dropped the phone! I remembered receiving a letter from them but I figured it was an invoice for the class that I dropped so in true Negro fashion I never opened it. (I know, I know--I am on the road to financial freedom and debt free living, it was just a ghetto lapse in judgment) 


I got off the phone with the lady and decided to run home and see if I could find this letter, now almost 4 months old. It was a 50-50 chance and worse case scenerio they would have just issued another check but I just had to look.  I walked in the door, walked over to where I thought it might, could, hopefully, wished and prayed it would be and guess what---I found it.  


You could have pushed me over with your thoughts.  For four months there was a nice chunk of change right under my nose waiting to be discovered and I could have used it on more than one occasion.  At first I was through with myself for not opening the letter when I got it.  That thought went away when I realized that everything happens for a reason and just think, it was like having a bunch of money in a savings account that you do not see/touch.  Either way, I am glad to have it and it came at a perfect time too, just in time for me to----(tell you tomorrow!!)


Fly is not always easy but it sure is Fun--

Later XOXOXOXOXOXOXO

A series of Random Events..

So this weekend proved to be rather eventful and I really did not know if I had the energy to write about it. Okay that is only half true, so much happened I did not feel like writing about it is closer to the truth. But anyway, I am ready now...

This weekend proved to be one of those weekends that change you and how you view your life and where it is headed.  For the last few months, I have been living life a little "willy-nilly", and it all came to a head, so to speak, on Friday night. I won't go into all the random details but I will say this it involved the spiking of my coca-cola (alledgedly--I needed to loosen up a bit), a chemistry-less kiss, an argument that I did not find out the root of until Monday, and the shedding of tears by some new friends. All in all it was a bit much but I learned some valuable lessons that I am ready to share.

Lesson #1 - When in a room full of people in various stages of drunkeness, if you do not plan on drinking, get your OWN bevarage.  No matter how close you are to the individuals--alcohol makes people do crazy things.

Lesson #2 - If you do drink, and you have a taste for Vanilla Coke--3 parts coca-cola and 1 part Crown Royal will meet that need.

Lesson #3 - No matter how old you are peer pressure is a part of life. However (comma) it is not an excuse.  The reality of life is no matter what you may say, everything you do is because you want to.  Excuses only come after you realize "you done" messed it all up.

Lesson #4 - Testing the Lord is not a good idea.  Example - Lord I know that I said that I would not do this thing any more (whatever it is you know you shouldn't do) but I want to see if I am really over it. News flash - I am stupid! Thankfully, the Lord showed some grace and it turned out well, there was no love lost - literally! I kept all my virtue and I am on the mend.

Lesson #5 - Be who you are, do you, stay true to what you believe in..because if you are not, it is a long journey from who you have become back to who you were created to be. I cannot become a bad girl because people do not like squares.  I can not become your dream girl-I have to be what you like when you meet me. Potential is not enough, who I am today is what you see.  I can only be who I am, I like it and I need to walk in it!

Overall, I am glad that it all happened. I have seen some parts of me that need to change and I am a work in progress. Sometimes you do not know where you are until you are shown. And I have truly seen myself this past weekend. I am not upset, I have been fortified and have packed away the lessons for future reference. 

Now wait until you hear what happened to me yesterday! LOL...

Friendship Friday ~ Quick Quote of the Day

“Even though we've changed and we're all finding our own place in the world, we all know that when the tears fall or the smile spreads across our face, we'll come to each other because no matter where this crazy world takes us, nothing will ever change so much to the point where we're not all still friends.”  ~unknown

Today I am grateful for the people that are in my life that make the days more interesting and the evenings bearable.  I was on the phone with a friend that I had since I was in elementary school and he was reading a blog from a few days ago and I made mention to a particular event and he messaged me to tell me he remembered it! How awesome is it in 2010 to have a person that is not related to you share an event with you from 1989.  If you don't know I will tell you--It is awesome.

So today I celebrate friendship! New ones and old ones.  Face to face ones and long distance ones.  Virtual ones and ones that have need to be watered.  I am grateful for all of you and I know that I need you in my life.  It has been said that friends are the family that you get to choose and I am blessed that you all at some point chose me.