A Party, an Academy, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree (okay, not really).

Hope you had a wonderful holiday. My Saturday and Sunday were delightful. I thought I'd share-- I'll try to be brief...


...So on Saturday, my family threw a party-- yep, the day after Christmas. We've been doing this for three years now-- I'm finally coming to terms with this new tradition and I'm beginning to see it as something that doesn't have to be uncomfortable. This year, it wasn't.

See... I'm not a party person.

Not at all.

In fact, I rather dislike parties, whether I'm throwing them or not. I'll elaborate later, I could post a whole entry on this subject alone.

In the past, it's been in celebration of primarily two things: my niece's birthday (Dec. 28th) and sort of a post-or-pre Christmahannukwanzukah holiday catch-all shindig. This year it was more of the latter. My mom didn't mention any birthdays, but somehow everyone remembered that my niece would be three soon, and brought gifts accordingly.

The house was filled, but not to the point of discomfort (about 25 people total, comprised four different families other than my own). Around seven, some of us younger adults (i.e., "the grown kids") took most of the older kids out to a movie while our parents (and theirs) stayed at home.  Because the ages were so diverse (and because there were actually two coincidentally synchronous movie-plannings in motion-- long story), I and two other older folk (teens) saw "It's Complicated", and my younger cousins and some friends saw "The Princess and the Frog".

We'd tried to see "Avatar", but despite having arrived twenty minutes before previews started, we couldn't find three seats together, so we exchanged our tickets. "It's Complicated" was pretty good-- a few laugh out loud moments even. Some parts lagged a little, and at times the dialogue or a character's response to a situation left me with a cynical brow raised in disbelief, but I'd still recommend it. For a more complete review that parallels with my own feelings, I'd read this one from Slate. I guess I'll save both "Avatar" and "The Princess and the Frog" for other outings.

Today, we took my eight- and five-year-old cousins, as well as my nearly three-year-old niece, to the California Academy of Sciences! Man, I hadn't been there in years! Let's see, how long's it been... I'm thinking it's been at least eleven years. Maybe twelve. Since the recent remodeling, though, it's not the same museum anymore-- everything is different, new, rearranged... and to a certain degree, I feel it's lost its charm.

I know the changes had to happen-- the old buildings weren't built to modern code and were damaged in the '89 Loma Prieta quake. I know it was necessary, and a good thing. Seismic retrofits are always a good thing. But I miss a lot about the old museum.

I miss the weathered, historical feeling of the old building. I miss feeling the age of the exhibits, feeling the blackness and blue hue of the Steinhart Aquarium... the long, long hallway of animal dioramas in the African Hall (it's much shorter now)... glass tanks, white tile... the highest ceilings I'd ever encountered as a child... the earthquake simulation... I miss how much easier it was to find your way around (everything felt really cluttered in the new building), and being free to see any exhibit without necessarily having to pay for another separate ticket (as far as I know, anyway. The show presented in the Morrison Planetarium, while definitely a beautiful experience, required another fee, another pass).

In other words, I feel like a part of my childhood's kind of gone.

But listen to me, being this huge downer-- go to the museum! Whatever museum you have nearby! It's educational. It's worth it. Go expose a kid, or yourself, to all that wonder.

I was also going to post about my writing (since that's kind of supposed to be one of my most important topics... ha) but I'll save that for New Year's Eve. See you Thursday...

Christmas Eve/Mission Statement

It's Christmas Eve. No matter what you celebrate (or don't celebrate), I hope everyone's warm and snuggly with family, and anxiously anticipating tomorrow. 


On to something else that might be fitting for this particular time of year: 

I wrote this for one of my television production classes, but my dad recommended that upon restarting my blog, I should post it here as sort of a way of letting people know more about who I am and where I’m trying to go. So here you go. It’s written in the form of NPR’s “This I Believe” segments.

I believe in late nights serenaded by the whirr of an aging desktop computer, basking in the glow of the monitor, and crying until my head throbs. Or I guess in other terms, I believe in writing.

In fact, words are probably the one thing I am surest of.  I must be, if I can spend years staring at blank Word documents, depriving myself of sleep and overall satisfaction with myself until I feel like smashing my head through a plate glass window. But still, I return to the chair, knowing that somewhere amidst all the frustration and self-doubt will come those precious few hours when all of a sudden the prose spills forth from me almost as profusely as the swear words had just a few minutes earlier.

It wasn’t always this way.  I knew that I wanted to write since I was eight years old. When you’re eight years old you can do anything, but time and teenage angst can beat the confidence out of you like some punk with a baseball bat. I would like to say that I’m beyond feeling that way, that at some point during my teen years my fear of being incapable was proven unfounded. Not really. I am in a state of perpetual uncertainty. A chapter that I think is excellent one night is crap the next morning. To be honest, there is only one very specific moment in time when I know that what I’m doing, what I love, is right for me. It’s at three am, when I can’t pull myself to bed not because I’ve spent the last several hours skimming blog posts on Oh No They Didn’t! whilst slowly damaging my hearing beneath the blare of my headphones. I can’t sleep because finally, I can’t bear to leave my protagonist hanging there in mid-action on the page, as if dangling off a cliff, waiting for me to rescue him. I go to bed that night feeling like I climbed—no, leapt over—Mount Everest. That’s when I know I can make something of this.

And so I guess I really believe in dreams. Which actually leads me to my father. I have an incredible mother and sister as well, but my relationship with my father is different, because I am more like him than I could describe to you. He’s a writer too. He also knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end of that bat. But on top of that, he knows what it’s like to aspire for big, big things. I’m a first generation American, one of two children of Nigerian immigrants who arrived in San Francisco on an uncharacteristically clear and sunny day in 1984. Dad had made a career of his words in Nigeria. He’d worked in both print journalism and radio as an entertainment critic and a playwright, respectively. When he got to the states, all this changed. Doctors and schoolteachers in one country find themselves holding jobs and not careers out here. His writing had no outlet, nowhere to go except into a folder on the family computer.

My mom recently helped me see this in a new way. She and I and my sister and niece were coming home from long trip to our native Nigeria. I have never been fond of the exhausting side of travel—the luggage hauling and the long layovers and the constant takeoffs and landings. At that particular moment in time, I was glued to the seat as the plane ascended at 500 miles per hour, one hand clutching the armrest and the other squeezing my mother’s. Mom looked down at me with a sympathetic smirk. “You don’t have to be scared,” she said with her usual calmness. The plane shuddered and trembled, and I practically cut off her circulation, but she just smiled at me, like Mom’s supposed to.  “Nothing’s going to happen.” I tried to tell her that she had no way of knowing this, no real reason to believe that. She just looked at me and said, “You still have so much to do with yourself. Look at you. Do you really think you would even have the opportunity to go back and forth between Nigeria and California if you weren’t meant to do something with it?” That’s when I thought to myself, Now that’s believing in someone. I’ve always been ambivalent about the idea of fate, but who’s to say that one might not receive an occasional cosmic nudge in the right direction?

So because of this, I believe in dreams. I certainly believe in my own, but I hope that someday I can be selfless enough to be passionate about someone else’s. My parents’ primary interests have always been my sister’s and my dreams. They would never have left their careers, families, or home, if they weren’t. She and I were their big, big aspirations. In my father, I could not have asked for a more supportive, encouraging human being to share my ambitions with. He has always made me feel like nothing short a worthy protégée, and for that I am immensely grateful. I guess it’s because of Mom, Dad, and Sis that I believe in family as well.

I spent days and days agonizing about how to get all this onto paper. I didn’t know what I believe. Or how to translate what I believe. Or whether or not I really wanted anyone to know anything about what I might believe. But what do you know, it’s done. I guess I’m doing something right. 

Topics of Interest

I mentioned in my first post that this blog would cover my long-term goals, my interests and hobbies, my thoughts, dreams, and other things. I figured that I should be more specific. To be included in the aforementioned topics:

Writing! I am a writer. At least, this is what I tell myself. At the top of my Writing-Related Things To Do List is, of course, to finish my contribution to the legend of the Great American Novel, (which I always thought was both funny and appropriate because I’m Nigerian American, and what’s more American than our nation’s whole “melting pot” identity, and the idea of a person from humble or foreign (or both) roots attaining her or his goals through hard work?). I’ve been trying to finish the same novel since I was seventeen, but trust me, you’ll hear enough of that story later on. In addition to my novel, I also write fanfiction and tv and movie screenplays (I’m a mass communications major, and writing for tv is my career goal). I’m also planning a documentary (the subject of which I will divulge at a later time).

Guitar. I’ve been trying to learn the guitar since I was fourteen. My parents got me one for my fifteenth birthday—it was a total surprise. I fell in love with it-- a little Yamaha beginner’s guitar for $100 at Guitar Center. I still love the little guy, even though at the moment it’s sitting in its case, still waiting for me to learn how to harness its incredible, beautiful powers. I figure talking about learning might actually get me to keep practicing.

Bottle caps. Yeah. Like the little metal ones on the top of glass bottles. I’ve been sort of subconsciously collecting them since I was twelve. This year, I decided to pursue it more seriously again.

Photos. I took a photography class in both high school and the beginning of college, and I’ve always wanted to continue, even though photography is kind of expensive. I bought a fantastic film camera for my college class, but now I want to give digital photography a try. At the very least, I’m interested in taking pictures of my everyday life. I wish I had a better digital camera.

Gardening. I started a container garden last May, for Mother’s Day. After a while it kind of turned into my own personal project, heh, although both of my parents have shown interest in it. Unfortunately, I took a trip out of the country in July and came back in August. It’s amazing how quickly a perfectly healthy container of basil, rosemary, and cilantro can become a brown, weed-ravaged pot of “what the hell?”

Food. Seeing as I eat a lot, and spend a lot of time cooking for myself, there’s no way I won’t talk about what I’m eating or cooking or baking at least a few times. After roughly a couple years of vegetarianism, I became a vegan around the beginning of this year, so food is important to me—it’s a reflection of my lifestyle. Relax, omnis; while I encourage people to consider the impact of any of their actions on other beings and the planet, I’m not one to proselytize. Just sit back and enjoy the food piccies, yeah?

Well, that’s a good enough snippet for now. Until later!

Mindstride: A Primer

Ah. Feels good to be back in the old chair again.

Hi there. I’m T.

“T”, of course, is short for a full name, but maybe I’ll tell you that later. I’m extremely identifiable by my name, and I’ve always appreciated my anonymity.

This blog is a third incarnation of a chronicle of my life—my long-term goals, my interests and hobbies, my thoughts, dreams, and other cliché stuff.

I first started blogging in February 2005, when I was around seventeen, pushing eighteen. I had an old Xanga account—ha. I still have the account, and the blog is still up, but I stopped updating it—I think the last posts are from sometime in 2007. If you want to look at them (and laugh along with me), the address is xanga.com/princessfedora.

Aside from feeling ready to move on from Xanga (at the time, I was just hopping onto the Myspace bandwagon), I fell into a point at my life where I just wasn’t really sure what to say any more. For some reason, I felt stretched for subject matter. To a certain degree, I still feel this way. My Xanga blog was about current events, tangential thoughts, and Michael Jackson. Yes, really. That Michael Jackson. As an ardent fan (to this day), I found that there was actually a fairly active fan community on Xanga, where other young fans found a place to discuss his impact on our lives in a positive, supportive place. I actually met (and still talk to) some of my closest fan friends through Xanga.

After Xanga, I started posting blogs on Myspace. The address is here, if you’d like to see. The funny thing about Myspace though, is that blogging is probably one of the last things people really do on that site. It’s kind of like Groups or the Forums. Utterly useless. Who joins groups on Myspace?

Interestingly, I didn’t have a problem being one of only a few people who ever read my blog. It served as an effective outlet for my thoughts, even though I have a hand-written diary. I guess this was part of the problem, though. After a while, my Myspace posts turned into a pit of self-pity and adolescent angst. I mean, I never cut myself, I never wrote dark lyrics or poetry, I never did any of the things that people associate with angsty blogs. But my posts became tainted with a sort of negative vibe. School was getting to me. My job hunt was getting to me. But the most pressing of my concerns was my self-doubt, my fear that I was not, and could never be, the writer my heart longs to be.

As much as I’d like to say that I’ve gotten past that fear, I will freely admit that I have not.

My return to blogging is sort of my way of working to overcome that, not to mention my way of making up for the time wasted in worrying about writing instead of just writing. Now is the time, maybe more than ever, that I cast my doubts aside and work toward my goals with a renewed sense of ambition. After all, I’m not getting any younger. ;) Please feel free to join me along the way.

One last thing: today is my birthday. I’m twenty-two years old today, and holy crap, the years are actually starting to add up. I mention this because I would like to present myself with a challenge. All I want in life, at this point, is progress. Here’s to hoping that by my next birthday, I’m closer to where I want to be, and that this entry marks the beginning of real efforts—emotional, physical, psychological efforts-- to get there.