Last year, someone suggested in a tweet that I share my essay, “On Being Black.” My excuse, then, was that the timing was bad. I was in the middle of a major writing project. In an already ‘busy’ life, I didn’t have time to scour through file folders to find it and then retype it (the only copy I had was a scanned PDF version). But procrastinating one day, I searched it out and, after reading through it, thought, Share this? Absolutely not.
The essay stirred up a lot of emotion, and a feeling I’d, then, rather deny than acknowledge: that I’m still searching for my way home, trying to find my place in the world.
The world is changing, yet it’s also staying the same. And this essay — seventeen years after it first appeared — begs the question: have I changed or have I, too, stayed the same?
My first literary credit, “On Being Black” was published in the 2003 Winter Edition of Other Voices: Journal of the Literary and Visual Arts. I present here, having only corrected an obvious spelling mistake, the original published version.
On Being Black
From Being Black there is being. Being is, here, in the text of the formula derived long ago: existence precedes essence. Being is what is proper to man, dwelling in this world where the total of all actions undertaken by man are understood by man as being before itself and before others — actions that substantiate the whole of man in being, that do not call into question said whole, and, in addition, allow man, in being, to be with and without being. And being, then, within Being Black, is to re-veal itself as the motivating guide[-ance] beyond the passage in the course of Being Black. Black is not something that you define. Black is not something that you learn to be. Black is not something that you decide to be. Black is. Being Black just is. [Read more…] about On Being Black
Holed up in my London hotel room at the beginning of the month, I reviewed my goals for February — what I had completed and what I hadn’t. And I got mad. Mad! At myself. I was a hot mess because, when I was honest with myself, I wasn’t acting with intention. In fact, and despite what I wanted to believe, I’d been operating on autopilot mode. How many hours had I wasted watching reruns of Anger Management and The Shield? Too embarrassed to admit. How often had I thought about cleaning up my desk (it’s a perpetual disaster zone), but never took action? Hint: it still looks like it’s been hit by an atom bomb. How many times, twenty or thirty minutes into a writing session, had I been distracted by the clothes piled high in the laundry hamper or forgetting to turn on the dishwasher, and stopped writing to tackle them? Honestly, let’s not go there.
As the year draws to a close, something about my accomplishments feels hollow. Don’t get me wrong… Running a marathon and 
I’m so excited because on November 21, 2019 — in just eight days — my next 
As a writer, it’s hard not to compare myself to others … even when I know I shouldn’t. But I want to be successful and productive. That always has me looking to others to see how they work and if there’s something in their routine and habits that may help me. What if I were like Somerset Maugham, who set a daily requirement of 1,000-1,500 words?[note] Mason Curry, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2018, p. 105[/note] What if I could be like Igor Stravinsky and work without a break from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm? [note] Mason Curry, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2018, p. 92[/note]