Tic Toc...

Dedicated to my late grandfather, Bobby M. Brown, Sr. (April 20, 1942 – December 1, 2008)

Wow, it’s December already. Man, how a year flies by. It just seems like yesterday when I was awaken at 7am with the news. And with it, time seemed to pause for a moment.

Death has a way of forcing us to look at our lives under a microscope, especially when the one you lost is a part of who you are. Up until when my grandfather passed on this day last year, I had managed twenty years living without experiencing an immediate loss in my family. And truth be told, the dominoes couldn’t have fallen at a better time. I was going through a motion-led part of my life, one year removed from my academic fallout. Conceding an Ivy League education to work retail was not part of the plan, yet I was going along with it, each day an underachievement in the minds of my family and myself. My grandfather was really gone, yet mentally, I was just as dead – a living zombie taking for granted the purpose and life God created this body for.

So now, a year later, I pause again. As the rain trickles down my window, I can say that my shine in 2009 was shaded a bit by clouds I put there. Having made some moves in the right direction but not seeing them completely through. I have a love/hate relationship with my job. While I’m grateful to have one, let it be known that when I am able to quit, I won’t ever return to retail again. My paycheck being at the mercy of store sales is the worst feeling. Can’t say the same for all my co-workers, but I don’t have to be stuck there the rest of my life. It all depends on me though. I just gotta make it.

The junior college I started taking classes at in January was as beneath me as the grades I got there that semester. LOL that’s not the best mindset to have when trying to progress. My thoughts were the exact opposite as a Yale student. Second-guessing whether or not I fit with such elite company, even though my admission there proved I belonged. Year one didn’t come as easily as it had before I got there. So I psyched myself out of believing that I was capable of succeeding—stopped going to a lot of my classes during my sophomore year, and shortly thereafter, stopped going to school there altogether (by force, of course). I had failed for the first time in a long time. Truth be told, it hurts to let an opportunity like that slip, but to downgrade what I expect from myself because of it would be worse. I see that now. I will be back at my junior college taking classes in January 2010, just trying to make something happen. Not going down without a fight.

So this woosah, this Selah, this pause of mine was necessary. Looking back, I see that used my time wisely in spots, and wasted it in others this year. Looking forward, I’m gonna make the effort not to let my miscues stop my movement, especially since they don’t stop the time. Despite the strings God pulls during the day-to-day, the seconds continue to tick. We must do the same thing. End the pause and press play! Be ble$$ed.