About THE CURLY GURL

It all started wITH...

"You should be a writer!" 

For as long as I can remember, every Facebook friend I have (and I have hundreds) has asked me, begged me, to start a blog.  They post these requests on my wall.  They inbox me.  They bring them up #IRL (which is when you know shit is real...).  They say:  You’re an amazing writer.  Your posts give me life.  You had me snorting on the bus.  You MUST DO THIS.  And, after mulling it over for months and months (years and years?), I finally said to myself:  Okay... Yeah...  I’m funny.  I can conjugate a verb like no one’s business.  I’m going to do it.  I’m going to start a blog.

And then I sat down to write, and nothing.

NO. THING.

NO. THING. AF.

I’m not talking a block; I’m talking a drought.  A Sub-Saharan-sized drought.  The opposite of Noah’s-Ark-and-all-them-animals type drought.  Suddenly, I'm staring at a blank screen with no insight and nothing to say.  And beyond that page are the head-shakes and side-eyes of one-thousand suns.

It all seemed so simple.

As all the saliva in my mouth dissipates, and I fight back against the dramatic, single-tear-cry, I start to succumb to the voices in my head.  You know those voices.  They’re female.  Like a gospel choir, but with fewer members and way more tone-deaf.  Lyrical geniuses they are, they seize on all your fears and turn them into sing-songy rap verses.  Kind of like Drake.  In fact, just like Drake - if he were female and on a continuous loop.  So, now I’ve committed to this damn blog, and all I can hear is:  “Come on and see me for once… come and see meeeee for once… cause you know you can’t wriiiiiiiiiiiite.”      

Because, let’s be real.  I'm not a writer.  Any more than I'm the President (but, then again, his ass was a washed up game show host, soooooo…).  No.  I'm just a chick who writes, which is waaaay different than being a writer, right?  I mean, it’s like being a runner.  There are runners, and then there are… the hundreds of thousands of people who run...  Okay.  Not what I meant.  It’s like those funny T-shirts say:  “I may run slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter, but I run.”  Okay... so that didn’t quite work either.  Alright.  Maybe you are a runner, but you for damn sure ain’t no Kenyan runner.  I mean, you can be a Kentucky runner.  Or a Kansas City runner.  Or a Guatemalan runner (I don’t even know if Guatemalans run, but you get my drift).  But you’ll never, ever be a Kenyan runner.  Feel me?  There’s that ONE DUDE who will cross that finish line waaaaaay ahead of everyone else, and only HE can yell out, “I’M KENYAN, BITCHES!”  But you?  No, ma’am.  You - are - no - Kenyan (unless you are, in which case, let's just pretend you're not for the purposes of this piece).  So, maybe I can be a writer, but I can’t be Shakespeare.  Or Socrates (Did he write?  Now I’m confusing my damn self).  No.  I’d just be a writer.  And is that what I want?  To just be “a” writer?  Oh wait – that is what I want, isn't it?  To just… write.  To just write, and to have people read what I write, and to have those people who read what I write chuckle a little bit... maybe even snort once in a while.  That’s it.  So, I'm actually not even trying to be Kenyan.  Like, I don't even need to be from the Continent (shout out to the Motherland).   Just being a random writer in the good ol’ U.S. of A. would suit me just fine.

So why we having this conversation again?     

Welcome to The Curly Gurl Chronicles.  Thanks for coming.  Sit back.  Put your feet up.  And enjoy the slightly neurotic, brazenly introspective, always entertaining ride.