Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Still Alive: Announcement

I've hit a bit of a lull in blogging because life has taken off. I now have three part-time jobs (retail, substitute teacher, and yalitchat). For the summer, I accepted a position in Colorado as a camp counselor. I'm supposed to be writing for the examiner as a Girl's Night Out representative too.

In my free time, I'm attending events and conferences in my fields of interests to network. I'm applying and interviewing for a full-time job any chance I get. On nights and weekends, I'm doing volunteer work for Young Professionals of Red Cross and the Disaster Action Team.

In my down time, I've joined a new writer's group. I'm really focused on getting my manuscript polished for querying. I'm also taking an Acting class for as a way to learn about screenplays, and just to release energy.

I promise to pick it back up, if not in April than by May. In the meantime, check out doamk.blogspot.com where I'm reviewing the old anthology Mixed.

Neela Vaswani: Stability of One Thing

"In my youth, I longed to have what I mistakenly perceived as the stability of being 'one thing,'" wrote Neela Vaswani in her comments at the end her short story, which appeared in Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience.

One thing. As a mixed kid growing up in a suburban neighborhood, I had wished for it too. I wanted to fit in somewhere, in one area. I wanted to be white like my friends so that I wouldn't be the darkest one, the oddball, in every picture.

At my elementary school before a concert. I never could figure out how to arrange my face on command.
My parents always said my gift was that I could cross the boundary lines, but that gift many times left me straddling two worlds than belonging to either. Should I hang out with the black kids or the white kids? And if I act out of race lines, will they make fun of me for it? (Sometimes yes)

I've grown up now. While I still straddle the lines of race, I've decided to embrace those differences rather than try to hide them or awkwardly smash those pieces of me together. I don't kowtow to racial lines anymore.

I'm in a stage of exploration and exhibition. I'm being me, all of me. And I don't care who sees it.