I Be Bloggin…Again
Here I am again, talking about how I neglect this place. Can you believe I used to blog several times a week if not daily back in the day?
Do people even have personal blogs like this anymore or have we all moved on to microblogging on Twitter and Youtube and Facebook and nem?
What kind of life do we live these days?!?!
Well here’s where I’m at if you still subscribe to this blog and am seeing it rise from the dead….this might be long.
Work is Work
In an interesting place workwise. Last year, from about Feb – October, I was on a super high priority and extremely fast paced project. As you know, we had a Pappadeaux’s last year and are still mostly in it. My client had a high priority/highly political need and as usual, they threw me on it to bring some organization and run it.
Now I am blessed in that this is my knack. I thrive in chaos and love the challenge of figuring out how to get people to work together to produce a product that everyone can use. The problem was, though I had a team supporting me on the technical side (my stars I prefer to work with as developers and QA), I did not have a team to support the business side…so I ended up being Technical Project Manager, Scrum Master, UI Developer, UX Analyst, Business Analyst, Trainer, Help Desk, and SME for both the customer and my tech resources.
Do you know how hard it is to work like 60-70 hour work weeks for 7 months straight? You can’t go on vacation because it’s all in your head and they need you to answer questions. You don’t have time to write it down outside of technical requirements because you’re facilitating meetings 9-5 with stakeholders. At 5 you’re making sure all the day’s conversations are translated into things the devs can act on….
I lost a lot of weight (I’m already like 86 pounds on a good day), migraines went crazy, my anxiety through the roof. Every phone call, email notification, instant message made my heart drop with someone asking me questions or asking for me to do something…
Add in everyone suddenly caring about Black folks being killed for no reason and marching everywhere…
Add in bad news about my father’s health…
Add in my company deciding they want to be on the right side of history and scheduling meetings with me to “accelerate my growth” to check their diversity leadership checkbox...
My Prince stuff fell off because I just didn’t have time to do it.
By October, I was a waif of a person…when I had a check in with a VP to talk about my “growth” I ranted and probably cried a bit about what was going on…that I appreciate that people trust me so much (from both the firm and the customer side…our customer always asks for me because of how I can handle stuff like this) but I felt abandoned with no support…and I was literally going crazy. Like no lie crazy anxiety dreams every night…every time my phone made a sound my heart dropped…and I literally did not want to be around or speak to ANYONE because I used all of my energy working.
I didn’t have anything left.
Letting him know set off some help finally. He had me pulled from the project within a week. I left them with a plan for what it takes to run a program like that and wished them well. I guess leadership had meetings about me because they’ve left me alone for a few months now and are now just discussing how to get me into positions that aren’t fires as they realize that’s where they keep putting me until I literally burn out. (Even though they asked me to go back to that project…I said no).
So now I’m in more of an advisory role across a few projects, but I’m sure that won’t last for long. Meeting with some other folks to see where I’ll fit next….
But work…for real y’all. Almost ended me last year. It’s been 4 months now and my heart still skips when Outlook chimes…I’ve turned off all notifications on my phone too…still…
Prince Stuff
So we’re about 5 years out from the duckout now. Again because last year was such a trying time work wise, I haven’t been as active on that front despite my mostly moderate presence on Twitter. Where before I’d do a thread every Friday on some topic, or have several podcasts done, I think I maybe did like 3 threads vs like 40 and only 3 or 4 podcasts vs 12 or so?
Have still managed to do some cool things though. I was invited to be on an official podcast for my favorite era that was featured on his social media accounts. (On the 4th of July no less!)
The video clips we filmed at celebration in 2019 came out April last year…
Got to meet with the Executive Director of Paisley Park last fall and talk through some things/connect him to some other folks. (Didn’t really talk about that on the Prince side, there’s no benefit for people knowing that and feels braggy).
On that though, I will say nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Where before Prince could do whatever he wanted because he owned it all and was essentially paying himself when he wanted to do things, that is not the case now post duckout. Right hand literally has to get permission from and pay the left hand now. Madness, but “this is a business”.
In addition to all the work stuff happening last year, I was also all over the place everywhere with Prince as well. Some days I’d be completely into him and his legacy, other days I was completely indifferent. Kind of like the folks who were content creators while he was here and have kind of lost the spark now since that was their way of communicating with him as he was looking at everything, I realized what I do post duckout is the same. I don’t do it for clicks or popularity….I share what interests me. If people pick up on it cool. If people don’t cool….because for me. I do it for me…and for Ghost P.
The “indifferent” part comes in when my ego gets checked. I have a block on dude stuff, romance, intimacy…not to say I date Ghost Prince or anything, but there’s something about connecting to him that activates my ego/insecurity :
- Why am I doing this for some man who didn’t know I existed?
- Why do I care so much about this dude?
- The romancey songs are corny. *skips Somewhere Here on Earth*
- Why does Ripopgodazippa make me upset when I hear it?
- Why am I so possessive of this guy during his One Nite Alone era in particular to where I literally get a flare of…something…when I see other people post about him?
- Why is my favorite Prince song the one where he’s insensitive about breaking someone’s heart?
(Luckily I’m past caring about his ex’s/muses/etc….same script different cast there for the most part, lol)
But it’s been really interesting to study my projections on Prince…what am I making up in my head, why am I so bothered by him, why am I so interested in him, and why I haven’t spent much time in the room I made with his face everywhere in the last year….(still working through that).
It’s also interesting to consider those questions when I talk to people who DID know him personally….and when they volunteer their thoughts about what he’d think about me.
For me, again as I’ve spoken about here over the years, I’ve learned A LOT about myself in studying his legacy since he’s ducked out. Not in a “he stood up for artists rights and I should do the same for myself” way, but more taking note of my knee jerk reactions to things that happen as they relate to him.
I don’t feel a way when people say they don’t like him anymore. Thanks for that info, has nothing to do with me.
I don’t feel a way when an associate sells stuff or does a tell all. Their prerogative.
I’m not interested in “reviews”/other people’s opinions of his work.
I don’t feel a way when fan drama happens. Literally don’t care and it’s likely some sort of projection of some personal thing that’s just manifested through Prince anyway…
I used to care about all of that, now, I don’t.
I’d rather just enjoy the work he left behind, share what I like, and surface some of the things that personally impacted ME to where it’s helped me evolve the way I think about things.
If that means people find me boring whatever, cool. Again, I do it for me….and for P (on days when I’m not like “YOU AREN’T ALL THAT” because I’m annoyed at myself for caring about him so much, lol…)
Purple Outcome : Femininity
One of the outcomes from the Prince stuff like I alluded to in the last section was “intimacy”. Intimacy of all sorts, emotional and physical has always been a struggle for me. Some songs he has and feelings that come up regarding him pointed out some issues I need to work on so…starting to gather some things to work on that.
More to come…waiting for some things in the mail…but def want to document that progress here!
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K this is long enough. That’s my update of life! Will be back soon!
