I imagine the afterlife for wonderful people as an eternity of doing what they loved doing while alive. For Brian, I picture lots of stunt driving, gourmet cooking, playing loud music, even louder laughing, snapping fingers at poignant statements and eating lots of pussy.

Is it just me, but didn’t he talk about cunnilingus a lot? As if it were part of a healthy heterosexual man’s nutritious diet. Couldn’t you just imagine THAT being one of the PSAs he did as a voice actor?

Poignant, humorous and entertainingly vulgar, Brian was the only other poet who said the word “fuck” more than I do.

I first met Brian several years ago during an open mic at Kickbutt Coffee one faithful evening. He was in his usual state–mind-altered, that is. After hearing him read, I invited him to perform at my show.

The very next day, Monday, January 18th, 2016, Brian sent me the following email:

Hi, Teresa – It’s Brian from Kick Butt Sundays. Interested in hearing about the journal you talked to me about. I’d also be interested in participating in one of your 2nd Sundays. So, clue a brother in on the details. Cheers, B

I replied:

Brian, Sounds like you’ve meshed two women together!  I’m the producer of the Austin Writers Roulette, a monthly, theme-inspired, adult storytelling and spoken word show and Janet is the editor in chief of an online magazine.  Anyway, here’s the link to find out more info about AWR: austinwritersroulette.com.  Hope you can make it one 2nd Sunday.  I’d love to have your unique storytelling voice join in with ours! Cheers, Teresa

He replied:

Yes, I did. My apologies. When you wake up after three hours of sleep and there’s a stack of business cards in your pocket – you kick yourself for not writing down on them because it makes one look like an ass (as I’ve just done to myself). Provided that I’m not working as a private chef on the 14th of Feb, I’d love to read at the roulette. I will see if I can submit shortly.

Well, Brian did follow through and you can view his first of many Roulette performances here at time stamp 3:35. And you can see all of his roulette performances after his February 14th, 2016 debut here.

RIP

Conventional wisdom states that practicing a difficult task more often will make that task easier. Well, I’ve discovered a variation on that theme through yoga.

I practice 5 times a week, but recently, I started taking a much more difficult type of yoga, ashtanga. Before ashtanga, the most difficult class I’d taken was intermediate Bikram class. After a few ashtanga classes, intermediate Bikram seemed comparatively easier.

The same was true for Inferno Hot Pilates. All those bridges and side planks were so killer until I joined Orange Theory. Since then, every pilates exercise became that much easier to do.

So, where I’m going with this is: how do I apply those lessons to other aspects in my life? I’m not merely looking to complicate things. I want an improvement in the quality of life through growing myself as a person.

The only reason those exercise classes that I started out with seem easier now is because I’ve improved my overall physical fitness through cross-training. I want to do that with both my art and financial situation.

Is the answer multiple revenue streams? How about leveraging? I already know that the more skills I have under my belt, the better off I should be in order to roll with the changing market.

My brief experience with working several meh jobs is that usually, with my fluctuating luck, they tend to hiccup at the same time, so I’m left scrambling. One thing that I’ve only recently embraced is to continually look for another job.

Over the past 6 years, I’ve read several books about starting a small business. In some way or other, they always talk about leverage. It’s not always about money. Whatever I don’t already know, I hire someone else who does in order to leverage their knowledge. Whatever I can’t do, I leverage someone else’s skills. And what I don’t have time to do, I leverage someone else’s time.

About the only thing I’m uncomfortable with is leveraging someone else’s money. Perhaps once I’m able to go through that door, I’ll start on a different journey altogether.

A few weeks ago, I hit the wall professionally as two technical glitches prevented me from making money for a week. I did a mad scramble job search, found something I liked, but the training for it was more than I bargained for.

In the meantime, all of my creative outlets have suffered in an effort to prepare for one lucrative opportunity while taking advantage of another less lucrative, but daily-pay opportunity.

Yet, I’m so pulled to be creative. Breaks my heart to put the creative things on the back burner because I have to be an adult. What I do know, from spending nearly 5 decades on this rock, there will never be the perfect time to do something great. I got to somehow squeeze all that in between doing other shit to survive.

Fortunately, I’ve surrounded myself with creative friends. At least when I take a pause from the rat race, I feel rejuvenated. Even though everything in this world is temporary, misery appears everlasting when amid the grind.

On one of the worst mornings since getting back on my financial feet, the two things that kept me going was my usual midday yoga class, then much later at night, hanging out with some poet/musician/tango friends.

The host for the evening started us out with music, featuring himself on oboe and guitar, and another musician on guitar. Those two, who love doing an impromptu collaborations, were absolutely fabulous. I wished someone was recording, but apparently all of us wanted to stay in the moment.

I originally was invited to read spoken word poetry. Instead, as soon as I walked in the door, I started handing out scripts for a short screenplay I’d written. I knew exactly who I wanted to cast and ended up reading one of the lead roles myself because I didn’t know many of the women who were there. As a matter of fact, the only other woman casted was another spoken word poet. All the other women were there to dance tango.

I could tell the host was nervous about us performing my screenplay. He did a couple of songs, followed by some other poets, then music again. Finally, almost reluctantly, we set up to read the screenplay.

There were only two mics for the 6 of us. The narrator and the bad guy both went without a mic, but were seasoned performers and projected without any problem.

This was the first time my screenplay was performed with an audience. Nonetheless, everyone, from the narrator to the 3-line actor, knocked it out of the ballpark. With the changes I’d made after the first table read, I only noticed minor changes that I wanted to make, thanks to the performance.

Since I knew I wouldn’t have time to rehearse with the actors prior to the performance, I did everyone the favor of having their lines highlighted, which everyone I handed a script to thanked me for doing. Once again, Virgo organization saves the day!

I’m so happy that the two biggest laughs came toward the end. As a matter of fact, I blew kisses at the audience for one of the big laughs. And without realizing it, I’d written a crowd-pleasing cheer at the very end, which all the actors did and the audience even joined in on. That spontaneity made me so happy. Even the host beamed at the big finish and he enjoyed playing the bad guy.

At this point, my game plan is to eventually work my schedule doing more wonderful interactions like that than working jobs I’m passionless about. After one more edit, I’m going to submit this screenplay to contests. Beyond that, I’m going to write another one. For my next project, I’ll do myself the favor and make it a series.

Freedom has a cost. The trajectory of my professional life has gone from being a secondary math and science teacher to an independent contractor who writes, edits and sales insurance on her own schedule from home. Along the way, some companies I’ve worked for have tried their best to recreate sweat-shop conditions in my home. For other companies, they’ve become less lucrative over time.

The latest variation of this theme originally sounded positive: Be patient.

Normally, if a situation has caused me to panic or be impatient, telling me to “be patient” wouldn’t be magical words that would suddenly alleviate my concern. Yet, I realized this latest technology glitch would eventually be resolved. And then it was announced that it was fixed, but I still experienced the same problem. Then another glitch compounded the problem.

The territory manager told me to be patient. Take some down time.

The only problem with that is that other people were still making money. I even asked which other money-making opportunities I could do within the company until the glitches were resolved.

Be patient.

I took matters into my own hands. I called my former supervisor in the department I’d just left to switch me back, which he did about 30 minutes later. It was all a matter of switching my automatic dialer from one job to another.

All the while, I’d been job searching for weeks, beginning with a copyediting job I saw in one of my favorite weekly publications. At that point, I had to do something I hadn’t done in a few years: update my resume.

Oh the anguish! I’d said I’d never do that bullshit again, which was precisely why I had to do it again. When will I ever learn not to tempt the devil?

To ease the pain of the process, which included typing up a cover letter, I sipped some Malbec. In the end, I dialed a lifeline and read my cover letter to a friend just to make sure it wasn’t just the wine talking.

To get more mileage, I applied to other writing/editing jobs. A few weeks later when the glitches hit, I looked into other telecommuting insurance jobs.

I was in damn near panic mode when, after a week of hardly making any money, the glitches still had not been addressed. Fortunately, when I returned to my former position, some things had improved.

I worked a few hours on a Saturday just to play catch up. I’d just paid the IRS and then spent a week barely making in money with the sage advice to just to be patient.

Ain’t that some shit? The person who told me to be patient would probably have had a much greater reaction than I if his ass went a week without making hardly any money. Yet, his pay wasn’t affected at all by the glitches. Plus, his “be patient” reply wasn’t truly something to comfort me or provide a solution. It was one of those trite comments people say when they’re not actually going to anything.

But like I said, freedom has a cost. To be free means to work the smartest hustle I can without even a thought of there being some knight in shining armor to rescue me. Honestly, I’d probably give him a hard time anyway.

One of my saving graces is being an academic. I’m nothing if not studious, so no matter how many times I have to reinvent myself or learn a new trick (or update my damn resume), it’s all in pursuit of remaining on the right side of evolution.

I’d never suffered from allergies until moving to Austin, TX. The first time I experienced severe allergies, I thought I had the flu. A friend gave me a clue about cedar fever. Using a combination of hot toddies and a neti pot, I recovered my voice and sinuses.

A year later, I started going to Bikram yoga. That hot yoga sweated out most toxins, including allergens, which kept everything in check.

Fast forward several years. My allergies flared up as if it was Year One in Austin. I discovered a few days later that an invasive species, zebra mussels, had infiltrated our water supply. I credited those creatures with my newest allergy symptom–a clogged left ear.

Periodically, my left ear opened and closed like a bivalve. Drops of hydrogen peroxide into the ear canal initially opened it. Then, I used my neti pot for my sinuses to attack the problem from the other side. Once the water problem cleared up, so did my ear.

Months later, strong winds turned up the air. All allergy suffers got anchored. Turns out, a clogged left ear was a new normal. I did my usual: Bikram, hydrogen peroxide, neti pot. Those things relived other symptoms, but not my ear. This time around, I broke down and got a new allergen weapon: garlic oil drops.

Originally, I thought I’d be cheap and make it myself, but when I looked at how to press my own oil and then buy an ear dropper especially for that purpose or a small container with a nozzle top for that use, hell, it was much easier to pay less than $10 for it already made and compounded with other good shit.

As I periodically coughed and blew my nose throughout the day, I saved the garlic drops for nighttime since there was a bit of a ritual involved. I had to lie sideways on my sofa, watching TV as a distraction since I couldn’t multitask while the drops were in my ear. Not really in my nature to merely watch TV. I usually eat or paint or sew or do anything other than allow the TV to entrance me.

So the drops relieved the pain, but did not unclog the ear. Apparently it’s an inside job. Like many other sinister things in life.

In my attempt to humor this on-going situation, I fancy that my left ear is the political one. Refusing to completely reopen due to all the bullshit swirling around the political arena. Perhaps that’s what it’s trying to do.

Somehow I got it in my head that 2019 would be the year I moved out of my long-time apartment with its ever-rising rent and buy a place of my own. Despite the fact that I’ve been underemployed since exiting the classroom. Teaching had grown into an experience where I’d felt trapped. My hair thinned out and my teeth gnashed at night. I knew merely remaining in the classroom because I cared about my students was not enough.

Yet, once a teacher, always a teacher. I saw every other job through an academic lens. Flitting from one company to the next, the first thing I realized was to learn as much as I could, then bounce. Another learned lesson in the gig economy: having one job was not enough.

Thanks to most major bills due monthly, I wrote out the numbers and concentrated on paying them. At one point, I had a $30/wk grocery budget. Nonetheless I managed to self-publish my second novel with the help of three part-time jobs, one of which became full-time. Somehow I’d scraped together the money to pay all the bills at the end of every month even though I still felt there was not enough.

At times, especially when I earned both an hourly salary and commission, I had some disposable income. During those rare times, I dared to dream. I’d publish a third book. Take another trip outside the States. I’d finally move out of my apartment, especially since I didn’t like the way the new leasing office staff ran things. I’d had enough.

Like clockwork, seasonal expenses came through: a flight home for Christmas, Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, 6-month car insurance bill twice a year, car inspection, yearly rent increase…I somehow managed. No matter how hard I applied myself at any new job, my lucrative moneymaking skills were not enough.

I read books in between calls as both a call center agent then as an independent health and life insurance agent. I wrote and painted whenever I found the time. Secretly embarrassed and ashamed of chronic underemployment, given how educated I was. Life was supposed to get better as you aged and matured and made more of the right choices. Somehow, despite all that I was doing, it was not enough.

So when I walked into the bank to handle a variety of tasks, one of which was to discover how big of a mortgage loan I could secure for a condo, I knew the answer already. I’d internalized the life lessons. The mortgage expert had complimented me on being out of debt and paying off everything at the end of every month. Yet, as he kept flipping through the last three tax returns (where 2016 didn’t actually count), I saw the calculations through his eyes. Not enough.

Whatever else I do in life, I’m always learning to be more comfortable in my own skin. Unapologetically comfortable in my own skin such that on the day when I’m too Black for some people and on the next day not Black enough, I’m OK on both days. 

In an ironic twist, all Black women are the perfect degree of Blackness to be put in the “Angry Black Woman” box. All you have to do is react indignantly to being disrespected and BOOM, you’re in! And trust me, if you’re a Black woman, disrespect is right around the corner. If it’s not touching your hair without your permission because they find it beautiful, then it’s saying you’re not beautiful based on Eurocentric standards; to not being heard when in professional or academic settings, to being praised for your articulation when they actually do hear you even though you’re educated; to being regarded as a hardworking mule because you’re Black and female, to being paid less for doing the same job and having the same credentials because you’re Black and female; to working twice as hard just to get half as far, to being dismissed as an opinionated know-it-all. No matter what we do, there’s always an insulting filter to view us through. 

Oh, and have you heard? The brown paper bag test is back! Except this time, you’re unacceptable if you’re lighterthan a brown paper bag. Now, they may not literally reference a brown paper bag, but they’ll still sneak it in when talking about whether politicians like Kamala Harris or Cory Booker are Black enough. And before you say, “But they’re not talking about skin color. They’re talking about how much privilege those politicians have.” Just let me say this: when Obama first ran for president, the opposition consistently showed pictures of him with his skin darker than he was in reality.  Now, Black people may say “the darker the berry, the sweeter the juice,” but unfortunately, that’s not a national sentiment felt across all demographics. 

But let’s return to privilege and the ancient battle between the haves and the have nots. Even if you’re the most peace-loving individual, you’re still a participant in the battle whether you want to be or not. If you’re a successful Black person, there are some demographics that absolutely hate you. And you don’t have to be Oprah or Obama successful to trigger the “uppity negro” reaction. Or the “you’re one of the White Black people” reaction. Just be perceived as having more success than the demographic that hates you believes you should have. 

What do you know about the struggles of real Black people? You were raised middle class, in the suburbs, and your nerdy, bougie ass has a Master’s degree. You don’t know the latest Black dances, Black slang and you’re bad at sports. (Yes, I’m talking about myself here.) 

From the very first time I was given the insulting compliment of not talking like a Black person as a freshman in college, I’ve been aware of the battle. I didn’t know what it was at the time. Like any complex situation, the boundaries are fluid. Like an ameba. You never know an ameba’s exact shape because it’s always moving. Or if you know its exact shape because you took a picture of it, then you don’t know where it is at the moment. Oh yes, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle can be used in more situations than electrons. 

So, when I remember the shape of a situation, it’s frozen there in the past like a picture in a memory book. When I speak of it, it’s from that snapshot, but in reality, that situation has moved along and undergone many shape shifts. And when I recollect to speak my truth, for which things shall I apologize?

Where do I draw the line? The line is as fluid as an ameba’s ectoplasm. In these transformative times where everyone is checking everyone else’s privilege, I can’t even look to political leaders as a guide. 

My gut-check tells me this: I won’t apologize for authenticity. If shown a better way to say or do something, then I’ll adjust, but an apology isn’t the end of the conversation if it’s not the end of the conflict. I’m at the point in my life, that I value conflict resolution more than any crowd-pleasing, Band-Aid apology. Nor will I offer one. And these days people demand apologies not for reconciliations or empathy, but to destroy the person who’s being asked to apologize as if every error or lack of judgment or difference of opinion can be equaled to committing a crime.

For criminal wrongdoing, apply the consequences of the law. For all other things, it’s negotiable, but often times, the demanded apology is a manipulation tactic. I should apologize for speaking too loudly or harshly or at all. Or I should apologize for not having the demeanor of the preconceived, “appropriately” Black woman for whichever person who’s judging me at the moment. 

I’ve got another idea: I’m going to start thanking people for the opportunity to help them manage their expectations when it comes to interacting with me. Of course, I won’t use those exact words, but that’s going to be my new mindset because I for damn sure won’t be apologizing!  (You’re welcome.)