...Plain Upon Tablets

We know her. On the outside, she is a woman that most men want and most women envy. She's the "everything's great, but..." woman. You know. She's beautiful. She has a great job. She has great friends. She has a great family. She has a great home. She has a great car. Her future is so blindingly bright your retinas can sear just trying to imagine what her future looks like. And when she smiles that toothpaste-commercial smile, it makes her whole universe that much brighter. But the smile is fake. A woman like this can't afford to let everyone know what's really going on in her world. Because everything's great, but... ...she's not happy. And she's usually not happy because of some man. Sometimes, she has everything BUT the man, and she goes home to all her wonderful things and feels empty and lonely. And sometimes, she has everything AND the man, and when the two are together, people are that much more jealous of her because she appears to have ...

One thing kept me fairly sane throughout the month of April - a month where crunch time is in full effect and plenty of major projects are coming due: working on my script for Script Frenzy [ LINK ]. Although I'm nowhere near DONE with the script [and much cutting is in my future with it], I did manage to cross the 100-page mark needed to win Script Frenzy! I'm really proud of myself because it's the first time I've written creatively since November with NaNoWriMo [ LINK ], and it's the first time in about 9 months in which I've written something that I actually want to go back to and edit and revise and submit. Below is an excerpt for the screenplay, the screenplay of NO NAME. LOL It will have a title some day, but the one I originally had, Hell's Angel , doesn't really fit the story or character any more. Remember, this is a VERY ROUGH, haven't looked at it at ALL draft of the script. LOL Judge accordingly if you must judge. Here's a quick syn...

Yes. It's been awhile. I've been beyond swamped with the 50-11 things I give myself to do: school, editing, writing, and many more things I'm just too tired to even bring up. I've wanted to write, really. It's been very cathartic to sit here every Monday and let words rush out of me that reveal my heart and my feelings instead of something that's purely academic. But when you write so much and spend so much time working on other projects, the thought of sitting before the laptop to write one more thing can be the breaking point. I didn't want to break. Well, I'm about three weeks away from completing my first year of doctoral work--more on that in later posts. Haven't really taken the time to sit, to reflect, to pat self on back for a job well done yet. Besides, got GRADES still to receive for this semester! Like I said above, I've been busy--with stuff. Last night at church, the pastor preached a message that struck me right in the center of m...

It’s been about a year since I’ve been in a classroom as a teacher. With the heavy course load I have my first year of doctoral work, I can’t say I’m overly sad to not be a teacher. But today, I miss it. Why? I miss the students like me that I saw walking into the classroom. Every semester there was a handful, and while teaching underprepared and underrepresented students through the Louisiana Academy for Innovative Teaching and Learning (LAITL) program at McNeese State University, I saw many students just. like. me. I was a first-generation student, which meant I had no one in my family to help me through the process of applying to schools, of applying for financial aid, of starting school, and most importantly, of staying in school. I was fairly smart in high school; I had a lot going for me besides book smarts, such as singing (initially, going into undergrad, I wanted to major in music, become an opera singer, and then a music teacher) and sports (loved softball, soccer, and lax)...

I do love Chrisette Michele's song, "Epiphany," but I use a line of her song as title because yesterday, something came to me suddenly: an epiphany. For just a split second, I was sitting at my laptop, having full-blown angst over trying to get my mind, my energy to focus on something, anything, when I got quiet. It was no longer than a minute. But I didn't hear the TV. I wasn't thinking. It was full, complete silence. And in that one-minute of silence, I heard one sentence: Nothing inspires me . And I tilted my head to the side, thought about the sentence and said, "That's it." Since the new year, there has been a change in me. I would argue the "change" started months before this, but I felt its presence strongly after the new year. But I didn't see it as me being uninspired. I saw it as issues with me. I was very depressed in January, and I spent a great deal of time being mad at myself for feeling the way I did. I struggled with tho...

Last week, I talked about the Forward March . This "movement" is a bit different. This one is about the movement that keeps your body at its optimal level, that keeps your feeling good, that keeps your healthier. Before I came to Lubbock in August '09, I was on the road to better movement. I exercised three, four times a week. I drank less coffee. I drank less soda. I drank more water. I cut a lot of fast food, fried foods from my diet. And it showed. Not only was my cholesterol levels getting back to normal, but I was also losing weight. Was even able to purchase jeans two sizes smaller than the ones I had worn in what felt like forever. And then I moved. Have you ever heard of the Freshman 10? Freshman 15 (probably now the Freshman 20!)? It's the theory (very loose theory) that when a freshman goes off to college, he or she (usually she) will probably gain about 10, 15 pounds. Well, I'm here to tell you that not only is this theory true (for me anyway), but it a...

I have a good author-friend named Fon James whose latest novel is titled Forward March . I remember doing editorial work on the novel for Fon last year, and when I read the title, I smiled. Each word in that title illustrates a movement, and every time I read the words, I think about my life and where it's going or not going and how, at the end of the day, it's about the Forward March. Even when insanity brews in your life, you have to forward march . Yes, there is time to stand still, to deal with the insanity, to listen to God and have him aid you in your movement, but the result is always about the forward march . It's funny how the mind works. I wasn't sure what I would mention here today. I wasn't sure I would mention anything. My life over the past week has been pretty uneventful, and to be honest, I've been having a fluctuating mood--moving from pure happiness or abysmal sadness in the matter of minutes, and I wasn't really in the mood to talk about i...