I Don't Walk On Water...

okay, i had to come blog about this real quick. is it or is it not refreshing to see some creative black kids on MTV like the ones on the new show Taking the Stage?? I'm liking it. This is my type of show and even though it's still reality TV (which I loathe) it's nice to see something different with some young people of color mixed with my favorite thing in the world: EDUCATION!!!!!!!!!

Hours into days,
Days into weeks,
I will still be thinking of you.

I will childishly depend on these
days and weeks and months to
blanket that sharp sting I feel
when I think of you.

But to no avail, I'm sure.

I got it bad, and that ain't good.
Why is this happening?
Why do I dream of you?

Am I forever doomed
to ache and long for
a girl who's constant
center-of-attention lifestyle
makes me sick?

I've never felt simultaneous attraction
and revulsion before.

It's making me miserable.
I wouldn't choose this
if I had a choice.

This fever that quickens my pulse
will break soon.

This longing I have to
kiss you and breathe you and
taste the dizzying scent of
your skin will fade away.

And eventually another hurricane
will roar up and introduce herself and
spin me around and around
and around.

And hopefully when she and I are
sitting in a restaurant and I
am staring at a glass of champagne
for what seems an eternity,
and she asks what I am thinking
and I say nothing…

…hopefully that won't be a lie
like it usually is.

Hopefully I won't want to say,

"Havilland's eyes I am thinking.
Havilland's lips I am thinking.
Havilland's hands I am thinking.
Havilland's legs I am thinking."

Havilland Savage I am thinking…

…I love you.

— Lee Plenty, Hav Plenty

So, today I gave notice at my job of my last day. I've got a little over five weeks to get myself ready for my move to California. Leaving my job really made reality set it and I immediately made a list of everything I need to do before embarking on my new life in Los Angeles.

To Do List:

- Continue to apartment hunt
- Finish and tighten up photography portfolio
- Get comp card made
- Update directing reel
- Get new pictures made of me including headshots
- Re-launch my official website
- Get new business cards made
- Make plenty of DVD copies of all of my films
- Research production companies for internship opportunities
- Continue building a L.A.-based contact list for networking purposes

Hmmm, I know there's more to add to the list, but I'm even more excited now! Finally, I'll soon be L.A.-bound!

I haven't been blogging regularly, I know, but that's honestly because not much is going on, lol. Other than me just working on my various writing projects which is a constant process. I just wanted to blog really quick about how I'm feeling right now.

I had a few conversations with some old friends earlier, you know, just checking in. And, afterwards, I was just feeling like there hasn't been any growth in their personalities or their lives - at least in respect to me. It's frustrating because I feel like I'm making changes in my life, but the people that I used to care about are still on the same shit. Even the way they communicate with me.

Do your friends ever make you feel claustrophobic? Like, knowing them is stifling you. Even when you try to raise the level or maturity of your relationship with them and the effort seems to feel stagnated. It's frustrating because I hate leaving people behind, especially when I've fought to give people the priority in my life that they've asked for. But, I just feel like I'm on a different wavelength.

I need to remember that sometimes growing means growing apart. God, I'm so ready for L.A.............

I'm smiling
I'm open
Where do you wanna go...?
- from "Awaiting the A Train to Nowehere" by lamontpierre

So, I'm talking to my homegirl tonight and we got into a conversation about the Chris Brown/Rihanna situation, which led to us talking about how parents contribute to their kids esteem and whatnot. This led to me revealing that despite all of my negative feelings about my father, as he has done the most harm to my family physically, mentally and emotionally, he is the one person in my family that I still look forward to his approval and validation. Even at 25 years old. His opinion is of the most importance to me.

I have to say that a vast part of my drive in my professional and artistic endeavors comes from wanting to be able to give my father something to be proud of. When I look at my mother, I feel she is proud of me regardless. And I think back to my relationships and friendships with men. I look at the past few years and I realized that I always work so fucking hard to get the males in my personal life to validate me. And I never realized how these ways paralleled my relationship with my father. My relationships with the men in my life mirror my father. My Dad is very emotionally unavailable and I tend to pick friends whom I feel I have to pull feelings out of. I never realized that I did this so consistently. I am the type of person who is always the one willing to put myself out there, in the hopes that the next person is going to do the same - and when that didn't happen, I felt an extreme amount of rejection. This blog is an example of my tendency for openness. Now that I am more self-aware of this, I need to figure out how to feel that I am enough the way that i am; enough for my friends, my significant others, and most importantly, my father.

My friend says I have to find inner peace because I'm looking in all the wrong places (i.e. friendships and relationships) and still feel empty at the end of the day. And that's my problem.

I believe I got halfway there in recent months where I've drastically reduced my network of friends and associates. I'm no longer apart of the college community where I spent the last almost seven years of my life. I've greatly limited people's access to me. This allowed me to devote more time to myself and reduce the temptation to give myself away to so many different people. I appreciate being by myself more. I've always been the type of person that prefers to be alone than hang out with friends. I'm a loner by nature. And now more than ever I am taking care of myself. I work out six times a week. I watch what I eat. (No more fried foods for me...yesterday I broke out like crazy!) Spending three years around nothing but models and actors can make you feel really self-conscious about your appearance. Lol. And I've been really happy and excited lately in my solitude. Often I feel like the philosopher Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). Sometimes I think of him and his cabin in the woods. Now, I just have to go the rest of the journey.

A couple friends of mine have taken up various forms of meditation. Even though I've done it most of my life and been told to do it most of my life, praying, no matter how much I do it, never leaves me feeling as fulfilled as it seems to for others. I believe in God and I always had, but I don't buy into the notion of God as He is presented through Christianity. Call me arrogant, but I just think that I am too smart to buy into the many inconsistencies in Christianity. So, now I'm definitely open to new ideas because I want so much to become stronger in my esteem in myself. Even though, I don't really believe that we as human beings change very much through the course of life, we like to say we do and we very well may change some, I believe that in essence we are who we are, and at our core, we really don't change much if at all.

My homegirl told me that when I get to Los Angeles we're gonna go "channeling". I'm going to look into what that's all about. I'm looking forward to it actually.

So here's to a search for inner peace. I'm looking forward to everyone's thoughts and comments!