Welcome?

Yes. That feels like a good place to start.

We’re undergoing some surgical enhancements around these parts. Some nips and tucks here, a few injections on the backend there (about those multiple emails to subscribers while I beefed up my archives—my bad), and a brand new face.

Speaking of said face, let’s start with the name.

Straight to the point. No explanations required. Shouts to My Third House Life for carrying me out of the Skinny Black Girl era—your service is appreciated—but going forward under a version of my given name feels good. Especially considering that my first-ever post, “A Funky Introduction” on Confessions of a Skinny Black Chick at Blogspot dot com in 2007, was a nod to an A Tribe Called Quest lyric.

Now, the content.

A few months ago, I tacked an index card with the words “Slow. Deliberate. Creative.” on my bulletin board. This space will reflect that ethos. No more photography, astrology tutorials, style theories, or meandering hodgepodge posts about subjects that lose their relevance the second I hit “publish. I’ve reintroduced myself to the handwritten journal, so I’m thought-vomiting less these days, and I can feed the content abyss elsewhere *cough* Tumblr *cough*.

I want this blog to feel like an essay collection. A showcase of thoughtful, evocative prose. In keeping with the surgery theme, I trimmed the site of all its fat, narrowing down to well-crafted pieces and those that felt especially relevant to their time (for example, the early days of COVID-19). You can now browse by topic (via tag cloud) or by year (via category list). Some posts from the last year may be re-written and re-posted; they have good ideas, but need some work. And I’ll still share the occasional personal update, but they will be few and far between.

This means you’ll see less of me as I practice sitting with and developing my thoughts offline. But I hope this more intentional approach adds some gravitas to my updates. I’ll only show up in your feed when I have something to say. Quality over quantity and all that jazz.

And so begins the next era…