(Excerpt) Manuscript: They Changed the Finish Line

One of the things that I don’t do as much as I should is promote my own work — my own writing. Many know that I’ve written a couple of manuscripts (some of which have been published) and have written both feature-length and pilot-length scripts. However, I never let these things see the light of day, nor do I let them touch beyond the eye-shot of whoever is judging whichever competition I’m applying to that day.

This must change.

I’m a writer, so it remains a fact that I must write, especially if I want to become a better writer. A big part of writing, however, is having a second set of eyes to provide an honest opinion about whether I’m on the right track or completely wasting my talents.

excerpt:

CHAPTER ONE

THE ONLY CONSTANT IN LIFE IS CONSTANT CHANGE.

At a young age I had an understanding of life and how things worked, or at least I thought that I did. I was keenly aware of the work that would be required to “succeed” because I had the simple goal of doing just that. How I determined what “succeed” meant was a completely different conversation that we’ll get to. We must first acknowledge that all that I set out to do was to succeed and that was it.

As someone who was extremely close to my Grandmother, I often consulted with her about my hopes and dreams for the future. Engaging in the consistent check to see if my goals were realistic, however, wasn’t as helpful with someone who believed that I could become anything that I set my mind to. In Geraldine’s eyes, I could do and become anything.

My Grandmother had life all figured out from the moment that I met her to the day that she was laid to rest. Nothing phased her. She was always above every situation, no matter how bad. And, she was able to be all of these great things while maintaining a welcoming smile and having a strong hand for slapping.

I mention her unwavering faith in me and her kindness to say that, I unfortunately learned one my hardest life lessons because of her — that is, the lesson on constant change.

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All things change, I learned, even the rules. Things that we saw as constants began to move and take completely different forms once I was free of the structured confines of high school and had moved on to the big campus of a four year university.

I learned that her honesty and integrity were not common among people who weren’t her like she said they’d be (as a God-fearing African American woman). I learned that her humility, even with all of the hard work that she’d done, was not shared across those who had managed to do way less, but speak way louder. In a nutshell, I learned that nothing and no one was a gentle kind, honest, caring, smart, hard-working, and true as she was, and no one wanted to change to make themselves better.

Imagine my shock when I then ran to my Grandma with each instance of someone being dishonest, or rude, or downright mean, and her response was, “well, babay, you just keep being your good self and you’ll be alright.” Now, I had no idea how being nice to mean people would help me, nor did I understand how promoting truthfulness and honesty with people who were resolved in their lies would help. Again, my Grandma was not phased by the negative ways that the world can treat you. No matter what, she responded with a very sweet, 50’s housewife voice to say something along the lines of, “okay, that’s fine, we’ll try it another way or another day”. That, they don’t teach.

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Navigating college as a bright-eyed and sheltered young lady was difficult. I didn’t know where I’d fit or where I’d belong, and I had no desire of putting myself out there, as I remain a major introvert. But in the solitude I learned that college is much harder if you belong nowhere.

In consulting with my Grandmother to see which social groups she thought that I should join, we were able to narrow our choices down to:

Just attending church more,
Creating a faith-based club of my own,
A sorority that I happened to be interested in, or and possibly to her dismay,
The Black Student Union

I probably ended up doing a combination of going to church more with my Dad and joining the Black Student Union where I met my first college mentor, Andrea. She was a kind, soft soul who was on campus to get her paper and get off of campus, but never saw a problem with helping someone like me who looked completely lost but developed an idea that I could change the way that things were for the better.

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While I had never unmasked the truth of why the rules of life change drastically for some, but not for all, I had fully been forced to realize that I had to change to in order to find a way in this life.

College taught me a lot about myself, but it mostly taught me of the importance of my responses to change. At the beginning of college, I responded in sheer anger asking, “why me and not them?”, “why did this have to happen?”, and “why aren’t things different, better?”. I spent a good chunk of my earlier college days in-between fits of woe-is-me and anger at the world when all that was happening to me was life in a new world order (which there will always be).

By the end of college, however, I started to ask better questions:

“Okay, this happened, but how can I come out on top in spite of it?”

“Sure, I made this mistake, but what lesson am I taking forward so that I never make this mistake again?”

“Yes, that rejection hurt, but what growth will come from the improvements that’ll get a ‘yes’ the next time I apply?”

I took the focus from being purely centered on ‘why things weren’t going my way’ and moved it to, ‘how can I play a more pivotal role in shaping my own future —my own destiny — while becoming or being my best self?’.

Now, I am certainly not proposing that I’ve cracked the code on this because I am still just adrift and hoping to land on a beautiful island where all of my hard work pays off and I can see that. But, some of these lessons along the way, even though the goal post is constantly being moved, have helped me cope with feelings related to landing wherever I land. The biggest lesson being that change is constant and so my response to it needs to take that into consideration and be flexible enough to allow me to maintain my sanity and consistent progress towards my dream of succeeding.

Thank you so much for reading and continuing along on this creative journey with me. I’ve truly appreciated the support along the way and use it as a healthy push forward.