One giant step for introverts everywhere ...

I just finished reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. I am an introvert ... I know it doesn't read like that sometimes, but I am.

And although I accepted that about myself a long time ago, I have always been secretly ashamed of it. If you are also an introvert, you know what I'm talking about. It's a BAD, BAD thing to be introverted. It means that you're anti-social, no fun, nerdy, sad and alone. In my particular case, it also means that you say the wrong thing at the wrong time and are considered bitchy, controlling and arrogant.

I believed these labels, sincerely. I thought that it was just one of those things; stopped trying to be a social butterfly because it was painful to do and to watch and I retreated into my intellect. At least I knew that I was smart and I consoled myself with that ... and being amusingly bitchy sometimes.

Fast forward to now, and this book. It is rare that you read a book and feel liberated, and I am certainly not addicted to the self-help books that peddle that feeling for a living. But this is not a self-help book. It's a book, written by an introvert, that extensively researched why introverts are not pariahs. Introverts rock, actually, according to this book. We have strengths and power that extroverts DON'T have.

While it looks like it's fun to be the life of every party and have a dizzying circle of acquaintances, we introverts can, do and have contributed so much to the world that it's clear that mankind couldn't have survived without us (I'm just saying).

And OMG the FREEDOM I felt after reading this ... I have been carrying around so much guilt about leaving parties early or never going. Or being the only one in group to point out the flaws in the group plan, thereby being cast as the group 'downer'. About feeling like my head was about to explode every time I prepared to do announcements at my former church. Or about dropping friends who just wanted to 'do stuff' and never sit and talk about real issues. A lot of guilt ... and it all rolled off my back as I understood my psychological makeup and saw it as a strength, not as a weakness.

I think all introverts need a book like this. Even extroverts who love introverts (don't have lot of those in my life now) should read it, and get a better understanding of our motivations and your own. I certainly have gotten some valuable insight and much needed self-esteem boost ... plus validation for the days that I REALYYYYYYY don't want to see any of you people (but love you, muah!)

Questions and answers

Interviewer: I know that you've got a lot of experience writing articles and stuff like that, but I want to know if you can write copy for ads.
Answer I gave: It's true that I don't have a lot of experience writing ad copy, but while doing corporate blogging on Facebook, we really had to sell the client's products, services and promotions with creative posts. So I feel sure that it's something I'm capable of and I would be willing to learn more from you.
Answer I should have given: Copy writing is a skill? I'm sorry, I didn't realise that it took brain power to write silly slogans now.

Interviewer: Are you willing to work long hours?
Answer I gave: Of course. I know that this industry is a tough one, and I am cognizant of the brutal hours. I'm willing to do what it takes to get the job done.
Answer I should have given: Until you've worked from morning till midnight on one project, only stopping for bathroom breaks and one meal, eyes burning, fingers cramping, IN YOUR PJS, you have no idea what long hours look like.

Interviewer: So, why do you want to work for this company?
Answer I gave: I really admire the quality of work that you guys do here, and I'd love to be a part of it.
Answer I should have given: I hear allyuh does pay good.

Interviewer: Tell us a little about yourself.
Answer I gave: I've been freelancing for the last couple of years, and I've had the opportunity to work on a variety of different projects that have really developed my skill as a writer/editor and publications manager. But now I'm looking to settle down at a company like this one and really contribute, working with a team on creative projects.
Answer I should have given: Will no longer work for peanuts. Doughnuts are a possibility.

One angry black woman ...

... can either save your life or make it hell. I truly believe that. Am I romanticising the stereotype for my own selfish, short-sighted ends? Possibly. But bear with me.

I recently read an article where Michelle Obama had to defend herself against a malicious book that said that she regularly had tiffs with her husband's staff. Pause for a moment while I roll my eyes, then try to get them unstuck from the back of my head. So, for Hilary Clinton, she's a politician in her own right who is trying to positively affect change. But for Michelle, any interaction and/or disagreement with the President's staff is all about her being an angry black woman, huh? Big long, wet steups. You hear me ... kiss meh teet!

Damn right she should be angry. You look at this calm, beautiful, confident, sophisticated black woman and because she ALLEGEDLY disagreed with some white men, you dismiss her as 'angry' 'black' and female? If I had that racist, sexist, apeshit thinking around me 24/7, I would be angry too. I getting angry just writing about it. She denied all these allegations by the way. She eh angry; she's a better woman than I am.

I've heard people say that black women have a right to be angry, and we do. But we also have a right to be HAPPY: smart and confident, healthy and proud of it, in love with a loving, ambitious, smart and dedicated husband and father of our children, a caring mother ... WE HAVE A RIGHT TO BE ALL THAT AND A BAG OF CHIPS!. And anybody who sees that happiness and goes looking for discord just to make a book sell is unhappy and will remain so until they get a clue:

"I've just gotten in the habit of not reading other people's impressions of people. There will always be people who don't like me. You don’t worry about the people who don’t like you." - Michelle Obama. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2085106/Michelle-Obama-tired-painted-angry-black-woman.html#ixzz1l5z0Jy8f

It is well

I've been really unfocused over these last few weeks. De Chile and I are sick, and have been for three weeks. Apart from the cough, stuffy/runny nose, headaches, body aches and general malaise, I can't seem to concentrate on anything. My attention span has never been super long, but now it's like non-existent. I have certain writing projects due, but I've just been busy trying to prepare for my new job (starts in January, more on that later), keep the house and myself together, rest. De Chile has been going to daycare for nearly one month now. She's comfortable, she greets her caretakers with joy in the morning, she seems happy and contented. So that is settled.

But I still feel weird. It's almost like I feel like I've been cut off. It's a good thing in that I'm free, weightless. I feel like no negativity or drama can stick to me. I recently met up with someone who I really cared for as a friend and who blew me off because we had a difference of opinion. She felt I'd betrayed her; I felt that she was ruining her life. She acted like she didn't see me. The old Des would have been angry, hurt. This Des confronted her with a calm and pleasant greeting, enjoyed her meal and left happy. I even forgot to say goodbye. The old self-consciousness that has plagued me for much of my life is falling away n I'm more sure of who I am and what I want/like/need. And I'm no longer shy about asking for that.

But feeling cut off is also bad in that I feel adrift; so many things have changed in the last two years that I'm not sure that my emotions have been able to keep up. I have made friends, lost friends. My life goals have had to change. My priorities have shifted big time. I've been walking around with no money in my purse for a week and a half and not panicking at all. If you knew me at all you would know how huge a change that is for me.

I know that when I start my 9 to 5, I will probably fall to earth with a bump and get caught up in the hustle and bustle of daily life. But being 'cut off' also means that I really enjoy my daughter's uninhibited smile; I appreciate what a great husband I have. I pray for my parents. I spend some time with my siblings like we haven't done since we all were children. I'm looking at life in HD (I apologise for the cliche). And I thank God because it is good.

Miss Miles: refocused

I once took one of Tony Hall's short drama courses on the Jouvay Popular Theatre Process. I never finished writing my own play, didn't even go to the final classes. But I was and still am fascinated and inspired by his assertion that we artists all are connected to Carnival archetypal figures and must learn to find, embrace and embody them to find our true creative power.

In his new play Miss Miles: Woman of the World, Gene Miles (Cecilia Salazar) is resurrected onstage to tell her story, taking charge of her own legend. The angle is just like what Hall has done with other disenfranchised women we've seen only through the eyes of a patriarchal lens; for example, his Jean and Dinah play. Miles outgrows her strict Roman Catholic upbringing to embody shades of several Carnival 'characters': the chantuelle, the bad behaviour sailor and something of the fancy sailor in her ever-stylish dresses, killer heels and beehive hairdos.

"Cecilia Salazar was magnificent," a client told me while we discussed the play. It took me another month to go see the play myself, but I must say that I disagree. Woman of the world Gene Miles was the magnificent one; Salazar was just her vessel. Of course I'm just being dramatic: Salazar WAS magnificent as Miles. It is a rare actress/actor who can make you forget that this is a play and they are acting. But Salazar wore Mile's skin like her own, from precocious ingenue to vivacious socialite to broken woman. It's a one-woman play, which is an exhausting task I'd never want to take on, but Salazar made it look easy, switching between Miles and impersonating other 'characters' like Justice Keith Lecock: "Let justice be done, whatever the cost."

As a playwright, I think Hall's use of music is rib-ticklingly spot on (I know that's not a word); there are Gregorian chants for Miles' early religious seriousness, Nina Simone's haunting, cracked vocals for the awkwardness of youth and frustrated suffering of her later life. Miles keeps interspersing her soliloquies with snippets of 40s, 50 and 60s calypso and begins the play in a sparkling red dress, belting out Calypso Rose's Fire In Me Wire. This musical thread snakes its way throughout the play, a foreshadowing of Mile's tragic life:

"It always struck me that that song is a kind of a warning ... to help your neighbour out the fire," she mused thoughtfully. "But sometimes it might be best to let the fire burn."

In an odd twist of fate, Miles happens upon documents that indicate a deliberate squeezing out of small gas dealers to create a monopoly on gas by a powerful syndicate, just like her accountant father exposed misappropriation of funds in the 'Caura Dam Racket' in the 1940s. She becomes critical of the very political party that she campaigned for and was so proud of when it ushered in an independent T&T in 1962. By that time Miles was a woman grown, but perhaps still possessing some of the naivete of her youth when she decided to testify about what she knows. But her honesty and her gender are used to destroy her.

She was victimised, pushed out of her job in the public service, dismissed as a crazy woman of loose morals (due to her former relationship with one of the kingpins of the syndicate, called 'O'Honey' in the play) and became socially untouchable. In helping to 'out' the fire, Miles was the one who is torched. Her descent into anger and frustration is palpable in Hall's imagery of crucifixion and references to Joan of Arc, another brave, strongly moral and naive woman caught in the intrigues of a vicious old boys club and burnt at the stake. "It's a jumbie jamboree," Miles sings at the start of the second half; an amusing tweak of Harry Belafonte's Zombie Jamboree and chilling comment on the moral 'death' of the government that protects corrupt men and let Miles be crushed out of existence.

I'd just begun reflecting on how similar Miles' T&T looks to our country today when Salazar began dropping sharp little references to more recent political bohbohl: who could miss 'hot spots'? Or the 'Hart' of the matter? States of emergency and Advantage left us snickering, but also a bit chilled by the fact that what happened to Gene Miles could happen again today, woman PM or no. Life imitating art? I'd like to think so.


Photo taken from Miss Miles: Woman of the World Facebook page. Not used with permission but hopefully I will not get sued since I credited them and I gave them a good review :D.

P.S. How could I forget the stage? Stark, mostly black, with white and red higlights. Purity and tragedy on corruption, perhaps? Definitely makes me think that morality, no matter how pure, can be more black than white.

Things I am learning about myself through the interviewing process

1. I carry around too much junk in my purse.
(Hello random ATM receipts and bills! Thanks for fluttering out and making me look like a bag lady while I'm trying to hand a potential boss a pen.)

2. I like being early.
("Yes, I know that it's 10 and the interview isn't until 10:30. I'll just sit here and wait, no problem.")

3. I tend to come across as assertive/slightly pushy.
(NO idea where that came from ... and you should probably not wear that colour again. It makes you look a bit pasty.)

4. I get cranky when my feet hurt.
(What? You want me to walk up two flights of stairs carrying my purse, several samples of my work, plus all the paperwork you aasked me to fill out before I got here? NO PROBLEM!)

5. My arms have doubled in size.
(Bye bye favourite shirt ...)

6. My daughter is more important to me than anything.
(Oh, so it's not a child-friendly environment? I see ...)

7. I need new shoes
(Chef: So do you have gray pumps to go with that skirt? Me: Nope. Gonna wear the same black ones I wore yesterday. Chef: -_-.)

8. Pearls make me feel sexy AND work appropriate!
(Nothing says 'HIRE ME!' like pink pearls and lip gloss.)

9. I prefer shirts and blouses to jackets.
(Sweating your makeup off is SO not cool).

10. I should smile more.
(Interviewer: Are you ok? You look sick. Me: Oh no, I'm fine. Just admiring how that sickly grey paint over your head matches your face ...)

I promise that this will be the last Mommy post for a while ...

I have no intentions of turning into a mommy blogger. Not that there's anything wrong with being a mommy and a blogger. I just don't intend for my entire life to revolve around De Chile.

But I've been reminiscing lately on what a good effect being a mother has had on my discipline. Suddenly I'm getting up early, washing clothes weekly, eating and finishing projects on time. My mother even told me that she's proud of how responsible I am, which is something she NEVER would have said three years ago. I wasn't a slob or a low life or anything. But I guess I just wasn't very disciplined. Why get up before 7 or 8 am if you didn't have to? Especially when you stayed up until 3 am finishing some work/chatting with Chef on the phone/liming at a wine bar with friends. My life really didn't HAVE to have any structure. I could get by with doing things completely differently every day. I tried to implement some, but wasn't always very successful, hence my parents thinking that I was in need of some maturing.

But now that I have De Chile to take care of, I have to be structured. And I've found that it really isn't that bad. I don't mind getting up early most of the time; it helps me to get stuff done without forgetting things or getting flustered just before I have to leave the house. Plus it's so great to walk into her room and sing, 'Good morning!' and get a big grin and hands lifted up to come to Mommy. We have a bath, we put on fresh clothes, have a feed and play before she goes off to daycare. And I love my mornings with her; they're priceless to me.

AND I end up getting plenty things done during the day ... more than when I used to procrastinate and put off until the last possible minute. I can't do that anymore. There is a certain amount of time I have to get things done before she comes home tired and screams for food or attention, so I've got to maximise it. Plus, since I'm going to be working soon, I won't have all day with her anymore. The hours that she's awake and with me should be spent with her, not on a overdue project.

I am not trying to push a baby on you, though, so all you childless folk, don't feel like this is the only way you can structure your life. I'm just saying that it is a very pleasant and unexpected side effect. And I'm grateful that my little girl has already taught me something so valuable.