Yet Tearyne Is Ambitious…

I lack discipline. This is what has been keeping me from excelling. This post was actually started around the first or second of April; I’ve just been having THAT much of a difficult time getting back to it. Partially, I didn’t write it because I was afraid it might turn up in a search engine and expose my flaws to the world. Part of it has been, admittedly, because I was busy with temp assignments/working in the “real world”. But the thing of it is…

If I don’t get myself together, I’m not going to be able to excel. I want to be a stay at home worker. An artist. A writer. If I can’t keep myself focused on doing a task and executing it from start to finish, I’m never going to be able to achieve this. I don’t have to be told it twice and upside down to recognize that reality. I found in the last three to five years that there were no immediate consequences to dropping things (i.e., I wasn’t going to burst into flames). So I dropped a commitment here, dropped a commitment there….

When I started listening to Dave Ramsey, I started dropping commitments altogether. Hey, I had to buy groceries and pay the rent, so screw the credit card bill! (Note: Dave Ramsey’s approach only works for people in desolate situations. In all other situations, it will totally wreck your credit and a lot of other prospects, like your relationships with people and businesses.) This obviously wound me up in a lot of trouble, and along with taking care of a full-time boyfriend, I dropped my commitment to being a full-time student.

I could always make up the classes later, right?

Not so much.

Right now I am having to pay for classes out of pocket, meaning that I might end up taking 12 course hours at the local community college this summer so that I can get back to being eligible for things. I’m supposed to be an independent student this next school year, which means more student aid, but I have wound myself up yet AGAIN on academic probation, due to my habit of not finishing things ever. Yeah. It bites. I have a bunch of incomplete grades that need to be completed, and to be honest, considering how many fail grades I have now in art history, I am really thinking about forgetting this “University Studies” major option, going back to Art History, and cleaning up my mess.

I switched out of Art History, if you’ll remember (which most of you won’t) because I wanted to go into health and fitness. Gag.

Anyway. I need to repair those Incomplete/Fail grades on my transcript. I know it will at least partially bring my GPA back up. I’d love to get back into the studio art program, but I received a rejection for my first portfolio review. This wasn’t really my fault; it was due to the fact that all of a sudden now, BA students have to submit to the portfolio review, and I did not know this. I switched from the BFA to the BA so that I could avoid this hitch, because I quite frankly didn’t have any of my work with me when I moved here.

(Biggest mistake ever, by the way: if you are an artist, your work IS your resume. KEEP IT.)

So I’m going to probably be doing a lot of thinking and then talking to my partner, who really is my pace setter. He’s very successful, and so I’m going to try and match his speed. Please cross your fingers and toes for me. I’ve got an idea about the direction that I want to go (like I said before, I am going to do game design), but I really need to stay on the course. I know that this typically isn’t  a personal-ish blog — well, that wasn’t my intent — but I’ve got to keep track of my journey somehow. Publishing it for other’s eyes seems to help me a ton.

Thanks for reading, if you did.

So after a year of avoiding my calling to what I loved, I am returning to video game design. I think that I was mainly avoiding it because it was so much apart of my last relationship… that, and it dealt with discipline, a blog post that I’ve been working on but haven’t entirely completed. I’m very glad to be going back into game design. I was still always writing, and when I was thinking about the whole fitness modeling thing, I kept regretting that I’d never see a game published with my name on it. That should have been a huge red flag.

It was a very long, tear-filled conversation of regrets that brought me back to this decision, which I believe is the best that I’ve had in a long time. I want to help the world, but I guess I can only do it through donations and supporting those whose aims support the causes I believe in. I have a certain set of strengths, and I need to focus on those.

Photograph by Jen SFO-BCN

Across the African diaspora, you can see the foods adopted and adapted by former slaves and black transplants to foreign nations that have become apart of our modern lives. They are foods that reflect the cultures of the homeland (like watermelons, which were brought to the Americas from southern Africa) or that of our mixed heritages (the paratha in Trinidad and Tobago, resulting from some Trini’s Indian heritage).

Not all of these foods, though, have wound up so healthy for us in the long run. According to The Office of Minority Health, “ African American women have the highest rates of being overweight or obese compared to other groups in the U.S“, “about four out of five African American women are overweight or obese” and “in 2009, African Americans were 1.5 times as likely to be obese as Non- Hispanic Whites”. Call it “thick” if you want, but being overweight and obese isn’t a good look, and it comes with a long string of health complications, including diabetes and heart disease.


Sure, a call into being more physically active is great – I believe in it myself for a number of reasons aside from weight loss - but time and time again, researchers have stated that diet is much more important when it comes to weight loss; exercise is more critical in keeping the weight off and building muscle tone.  I think that by examining our food culture – the past and why it happened, and examining its effects today – we can take a step forward into changing this trend. This is a three part series, so feel take a look at the first part – the history of soul food after the jump.

Soul Food: Our History

Photo by James Emery

In North America, our variety of culturally black food is mainly what is known as “soul food”; I know that the majority of my readers know EXACTLY what I’m talking about. Collard greens. Cornbread. Macaroni and cheese. And of course, fried chicken. These foods from the black American past were usually the result of the fact that the finer cuts of meat were not available to the field hands; we got the leftovers. Southern plantation owners fed their slaves as cheaply as possible. Ironically, it turned out that some of these foods were better for us – the brown sweet potatoes that slaves typically ate that turned into our candied yams are actually more beneficial, health wise, than starchy white potatoes, for example. Greens were obviously a boon, rich in their vitamin and anti-oxidant value.

Photograph by Gveret Tered

One of the biggest adaptations to this condition was the use of various parts of the pig that slave owners didn’t want in African-American slave culinary practices. Pig ears, feet, intestines, and lard were re-purposed into things like chitterlings. Back fat, neck bones, and bacon were added to greens; pigs feet were boiled and eaten as an accompaniment to the greens. In order to survive, the slaves adapted; when you are a slave and prone to someone else’s whims, you don’t really have much of a choice in what you can eat. Sometimes slaves were afforded plots of land on which they could grow their own little field gardens, but this wasn’t always the case. What master said was good enough for you to eat, you ate, and you made do with what there was.

The biggest thing to understand is that the majority of these foods were high in both fat and calories. If you have ever done hard labor outside, then you know how much energy it requires and takes out of you. A slave was lucky to get in a meal in the morning and one at night, but between those two required periods of rest, it was work, work, working in the hot southern sun from sun up to sun down. This need for a high caloric intake wasn’t just with African and black Americans in slavery, but followed after the emancipation to the times of sharecropping. We were still doing the hard work from dusk until dawn… just under more of “our” terms. Eventually, too, blacks moved North, transitioning into the into the industrial workforce and labor zones. These jobs were also very intensive in nature as far as the energy need was concerned.

But what about in today’s world? Be honest – we live in a much more sedentary, sitting-on-our-behinds world than our ancestors did. The slaves, sharecroppers, and industrial workers of the Black American past didn’t work in an office from 9 to 5. (I’m not even going to mention the sector of us that just plain don’t work at all — and that goes for people of all ethnicities.)  In the next part of this post, we’ll look at how our old school soul food diet is hurting Black Americans today.

Right now, though, let me know: what’s your favorite soul food? How often do you eat any of it – only on Sundays, or a bit here and there throughout your week? How has it impacted your weight loss goals, and has your love of it made it hard for you to “start a new diet”?

I was doing research at the beginning of March into starting your own social media consulting agency/firm/business. I feel like I have a good understanding of what people like, what they want, and some knowledge about social media as an emerging platform in marketing today. I wanted to dabble in marketing at one point, and I’d really like to be into something innovative, where I can be my own boss. I’ve been finding a lot lately that I’ve been having very strange, odd personality clashes with certain kinds of people, and that I’d really probably rather be my own boss at this point. I don’t know what it is that causes this, usually. I tend to think it’s because people don’t understand me and my intentions, or they just don’t respect the way my mind works.

I was reading this article, and it was saying more or less why those with narcissistic personality disorders thrive on the internet and, in particularly, in social media. I tend to joke around a lot and accept that I am, in fact, a bit of a narcissist. I think it’s great to be into yourself, because it feeds into your self-esteem. If you’re not your biggest fan, then who else will be? Curiously, I read through a lot of the symptoms, and it bothered me a lot to realize that me claiming to be a narcissist is likely a lot more than a joke: I think I have this personality disorder. I tend to do things for myself without thinking about others (though this is not the reason for the personality clashes; more on that in another post.) – not usually out of a desire to be selfish, but because I just plain don’t actively think about other people, their needs, and their obligations.

Continue reading “(My) Narcissistic Personality Disorder” »

Yesterday I got all cute and dolled up, and to humor myself, I dragged my boyfriend to the mall, trying to find the skimpiest one piece I could find to try it on. There was a discovery of several things, one of which makes me wish I had taken pictures so that I could better visually share my findings with you… Click the break to read my findings!

1. Macy’s nor JC Penney’s has swimsuits that are suited to looking killer sexy. I was able to very obviously determine which stores were not going to have swimsuits that would situate my ample 36 DDD rackage (most of those stores were solely advertising bikinis in their front windows), but going through Macy’s and JCP was pretty disappointing. For one, most of their mainstream shopping demographic is not us. It’s mostly for older ladies. That said, I was able to find a lot of shirred front swimsuits (that one is from Saks Fifth Avenue) and safer two piece halter tops/aforementioned bikinis, but nothing really designed to be a sexy one piece.
2. Most of the urban/hip-hop stores that I saw have nothing to do with swimsuits. There are plenty, PLENTY of stores for our demographic that are selling killer shoes, and sometimes killer clothes, though I have noticed that mostly these stores are now carrying solely or mostly men’s clothing. That said, though, I saw none of the stores with swimsuits being advertised, nor inside the store at all. It was a little downer-ish, in part because I was hoping that at least one of them would be carrying the Baby Phat swimsuit line.
3. I am carrying more weight on my hips and middle than I thought. My weight fluctuated in this last month, due to a few factors like stress (my grandmother passed last month), so I’ve been around 186 to 192 pounds here and there. When I finally did find a decent size 14 swimsuit at Macy’s (black with a teal band at the top – it was very cute), I went to try it on. I wish I had taken a picture. I didn’t get all downer on myself, but it made me say aloud:

   “Where did that extra stuff on my hip come from???”
   (The lady in the stall next to me erupted into giggles.)

   I know that I need to bust in the cardio to reduce my overall fat content, but what I saw shocked me. My tummy is a little more than a cute little pooch right now, and I can forgive that. But there was chubbiness resting on my hips that showed up as a roll on the swimsuit. Definitely not good. My breasts look okay (as always), but I really need to get back to hitting the cardiotrain (as Alicia Marie calls it) soon.

4. If I want a sexy swimsuit, I’m probably going to have to order online. Most of the mall stores seem to either appeal to the mainstream demographic or tweens with no breasts. I want a swimsuit that emphasizes and flaunts what I’ve got, with some urban appeal to it. I loved the Baby Phat line of swimsuits that I saw, and so I’m likely going to peruse their site for awhile and see what they have as far as offerings. That will be another blog post for another time.

Nope! I have not forgotten about this blog. I’ve been getting my house in order, literally and figuratively. I just ordered business cards for the blog to pass out from Vistaprint and got 500 premium cards for 10.00. There’s a link they gave me to share it with other people, so here ya go.

Save up to 80% on custom printed products at Vistaprint. Order today!

I was inspired by a Facebook post made by my friend Ashley L., which made me wonder: what are the things that I want to do before I turn 30? I’m going to work on this list, obviously, but here are a few things.

• GRADUATE FREAKING COLLEGE
• Earn a seven figure salary
• Join an NPHC sorority’s graduate chapter
• Start my own chain of fitness centers for the black community
• Start my own brand of meal supplements, plans, and replacements inspired by soul food staples.
• Get married
• Have at least one kid
• Become a fitness model
• Become a personal trainer with a large, successful portfolio of clientele
• Become a group fitness instructor
• Design several group fitness classes and programs, of a variety that is appealing to the urban scene and also low-cost that can be transferred into the home environment
• Win the IFBB title
• Win a bunch of fitness figure competitions
• Form my own urban-themed fitness figure competition
• Appear on the cover of Oxygen magazine
• Move back to Michigan
• Own a house
• Publish Destined.
• Make at least 2 visual novels

I was looking at my older pictures I had taken of myself, to monitor my progress, when I came to this realization:

My room  entire apartment has been the same disorganized mess as it was when I started dating my boyfriend back in April of 2010.

This is not acceptable. I don’t think that I properly acknowledge the passage of time, and I also think that I am lazy. I’m fixing this. If I were him, I’d probably have broken up with me by now. Or at least, I would heavily not consider taking the relationship to any deeper of a level.

I’m going to fix this. I wish I didn’t have to be up at 5 AM tomorrow morning for work. I’m already freaking out and worrying.

The name of the blog has changed again, to mimic one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite plays. This is my personal life blog now, I guess. I’ll link the other ones on the side. The website I used to use for hair care now has their blogs disabled from being viewed on the front page, so I don’t really life blog there anymore.

Anyway.

I have the next two weeks to myself – I won’t be able to spend any of it with my boyfriend, because I’m working in preparation for the Super Bowl the next two Saturdays. I’m going to have this apartment spotless and everything moved out. I had an interesting situation where a friend moved in, but due to some crazy stuff like soldiers going AWOL and cars breaking down, she moved out to stay with family for awhile.

Yeah.

I also have a dog here whose owners I knew. I found him and took him in until they came back for him. I just found out a few days ago that they moved away. They dumped him and moved away.

Yeah.

Just… yeah. I take on too many problems when I haven’t sorted out my own. No longer.

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Black-Womens-Health-Findings-in-The-Urban-Shopper-1378078.htm