200 Posts Later

Published on by LaToya M. Davidson-Perez2 Comments

Can you believe it? I can barely believe it myself. The last time I made a post was August 2015. It’s been over 5 months! Sure, I could say that it is because I didn’t have anything to say but it was really a number of things that has caused me to stop writing. There have been many times since then that I thought that I’d even forgotten how to write. For months, I hemmed and hawed about what I was going to do with my blog. I pay for hosting and thought about moving my blog once my yearly WordPress.com subscription ended. The hope was to expand my writing and use plugins that I could not use through WordPress.com. However, I allowed myself to talk myself into circles and, as a result, stopped writing. I just kept putting it off. You know, tomorrow being another day and all. Even my writing for the newspaper fell off. At the moment, I’m not sure whether or not that’s something that I will be able to continue. But like most things, I’m just going to take it one day at a time.

Last night I spoke to a client of mine who has in many ways become a bit of an accountability partner. We check out daily and run down a list of things that we’d like to be held accountable for. They range from being productive to exercising. We’d gone over a month (maybe two) without doing our checkouts. During that time, we both started to regress. Like a muscle needing exercise, we’d started to slip back into old habits that did little to inspire us to be our better selves. I didn’t realize just how much I needed that. And so, here I am. Again. I’ve paid for my WordPress subscription so that I can have some much-needed aesthetic control of my blog, and I’m writing again. Last week I wrote two new poems which I’ll post at a later time. It’s an accomplishment that I feared would not happen. Referring back to a muscle needing exercise, certain parts of my brain have been off for some time. I couldn’t tell you the last book that I’ve read and as is evident by the lack of frequency in my blog posts, I’ve not been nourishing my mind through writing. Continue reading “200 Posts Later” →

Gravity

Published on by LaToya M. Davidson-Perez2 Comments

It’s been over two months since my last confession and the gravity of what has now become of my life has started to set in. I should’ve languished more in the afterglow of what was a truly remarkable end of June and the entirety of July because August has brought with it the parts of life that can make one struggle to wonder about why we must suffer the dysfunction and deficiencies of the human condition. “All I want is a room somewhere, far away from the cold night air…”

I got home today and cried. My home, not my own, my surroundings old and still new. How much I have fallen. How much I feel defeated. I mentioned this to my mother, who was busy in her own concerns and projects. I said this, day two of having now moved in with my parents. How the mighty have fallen. My home office, a sitting room with no doors, an anguish that has had over a year to build up. The most educated, the most accomplished, reduced to having no place to call my own, no privacy, no peace. A constant stab to the heart, the breaking a part of my mental stability and health. Continue reading “Gravity” →

Win or Lose, There’s Always CiCi’s

Published on by LaToya M. Davidson-Perez3 Comments

How ridiculous it now seems, my thinking that the dead shell of a ladybug that had perched on my nightstand would somehow give me luck. I allowed myself to feel excited for a time. There had been hope. And now all that seems to have been dashed. I told my husband that I felt that this would be the week of my breakthrough, that by Friday I’d have secured a new job and things would start to look up. I was terribly wrong. Yes, Friday is not yet here and with its entry there is still the possibility that I’ll be surprised, but I’m not holding my breath.

Forgive me if I seem jaded. In fact, I very much am. In this moment and much of today, jaded was my name. Since my last post I’d had interviews with three different companies and while I thought that two went well, I bombed the interview I had with the third today. My chance to work in my home county and for a very decent wage was dashed in a mere fifteen minutes. I wore my unlucky lucky outfit (lucky because the first interview I wore it on, I got the job, unlucky because it was the job that I had for all of one day). I was not meant to repeat a day similar to today that occurred almost 15 years ago. In front of a panel of community leaders of Rockdale County I was interviewed and selected as Miss Tempus Fugit (a contest tradition at Rockdale County High School where every organization and class at RCHS is given representation and for whom the students are “academically sound and involved in various activities in and out of school.” A male and female are then selected to reflect being the most well-rounded among their esteemed peers). To think about it, how pathetic is it that such a memory would have any relevance in a life that has accomplished considerably more since then?! Regardless, there was no repeat. In its stead I experienced the shortest interview I’ve ever had while being on the applicant side of the table. I knew I bombed it. The warmth of the chair I sat in in front of the firing squad, er, interview panel was still warm from the prior candidate who’d held it considerably longer than I had. I did nothing to extend that warmth. Continue reading “Win or Lose, There’s Always CiCi’s” →