On Corrosive Convenience

/ a girl named rob / 2 Comments

Over the summer, I wandered into my local library, though I suppose “wander” is a misnomer. I planned the trip, a literal five minute drive from my house, with the intention of wandering the stacks. Familiarity with the Dewy Decimal System led me to the 800 aisle in the non-fiction section where I perused books about writing.

Despite my best efforts, I was in a slump. A miserable, grasping, “dumb words about nothing” spiral that made me question my entire identity. I needed a fresh perspective. A new approach. To be jarred out of monkey mind and get back to the business of prose. Several Short Sentences About Writing was not the key to Endless Well-Crafted Creativity I sought in the stacks that day. It changed my life all the same.

Read more at Can I Kick It? on Substack.

Real Name. No Gimmick.

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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.

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Notes to Self on My 39th Birthday

/ a girl named rob / 4 Comments

You know all those “poor Millennials who never got the world they were promised” memes you post as a coping mechanism? That entire idea loses its charm when met with “Okay, but you’re 40.” Nobody cares, ma’am. Figure it out.

Yes, there is more to life than working, putting a roof over your head, and paying bills. But you love to let these practical matters go to ruin while diving headlong into existential nonsense.  Focusing on the tangible >>>> crafting the perfect life narrative.

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Today? I’ve Got Nothin’

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Back in the day, before everything was terrible, I wrote about politics. Often. If the 2008 iteration of The Skinny Black Girl still existed, you’d see my gushing Millennial love letters to Barack Obama and the world he wanted to build. He caught me at just the right time. Twenty-five. The granddaughter of a Selma, Alabama native who moved to Cleveland in the 1940s for a better life. A recent graduate of one of the oldest HBCUs in the nation, raised on A Different World and The Fresh Prince,[1] with a full-throated belief in Black Excellence. I’d seen Roots. Watched hours of PBS’s Eyes on the Prize in freshman lit class (taught by a real life Freedom Rider). Sat stunned and wrecked in the weeks following Hurricane Katrina as the U.S. government abandoned people who looked like me.

But on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, I thought America was done breaking my heart.

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On the Third Anniversary

/ a girl named rob / 3 Comments

It’s been three years since I had my fallopian tubes removed (a.k.a. elective tubal saplingectomy surgery). 

Other than the initial consultation with my doctor (she trusted me to make decisions about my body without question — shocking behavior), the process was unremarkable: a few hours in a hospital on the really good drugs, a few days of rest and taking it slow, and tiny twin incisions on my lower abdomen that, three years later, are almost gone. ¡Voila! A vision made real: no bebes, ever. 

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Are You Afraid of the Dark?

/ a girl named rob / 4 Comments
The cost of quiet is loneliness.
Part of the bed I made, so I can’t shy away from lying in it. The silence that usually feels like freedom occasionally threatens to suffocate me.
It shows up as a voice in my head screaming for something. I scroll my phone — click through streaming, podcast, and audiobook apps — searching for stimulus to shut out the nagging. Until I check my Digital Wellness app, see eight hours spent on my device, and realize that elusive thing I’ve sought all day is connection.

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