11.2.23 - The grass is a shade greener on this here side
There’s a fluorescent tint to it actually.
Three weeks ago, I cut off all my hair and dyed it blonde. Two weeks before that, I got two new tattoos. I told my husband Nate the night before the tattoos: “I feel like I’m changing but also becoming more like myself…”
Not gonna lie, there was a dark period there where I kinda fully lost myself. Between running a nonprofit with my husband and building a podcast business with my best friend, my life belonged to my three chief executives: Gmail, Slack, and iCal. From minute zero of being awake, my brain would be at 100 mph, masterminding how to accomplish 24 hours worth of tasks in an eight-hour work day. No productivity tool — not the Pomodoro technique, not the OHIO method, not the Eisenhower matrix — helped me face the honest truth that I’d actually burnt out way back in 2020 and had been operating on fumes since. So for a few years, I simply lived with a tightness in my chest — anxiety they call it. I’d try to meditate it away but would spend the entire meditation trying to remember if I emailed the accountant. I tried to let Jesus take the wheel but my backseat driving had us fighting for control of the GPS. I looked in the mirror — my Afro was dry and stiff, I’d gained maybe 30 pounds and I could no longer blame COVID. My weekends were spent catching up on what didn’t get done during the week. My Sundays ruined by Sunday scaries.
A friend recently joked that trying to schedule a meetup with me during this period went something like this:
Me: I can pencil you in for May 2nd at 1:42pm. Oh wait, that just got booked. Ok, how does the week of the 26th look for you?
So my friends didn’t feel neglected, I made efforts to keep up with the happy hours and Facetimes. My parents were celebrating a birthday, I’d hop on the train home to be there. One of our students at the non-profit need something? I’d drop everything to figure out a solution. A fellow podcast want to record a collab? I’d finagle my schedule to make it happen. I was here, there, and everywhere; showing up, showing out, and doing all the things; grinding, being a girl boss, a hustlin’ ass bad bitch. Nevermind I felt like a shadow of the person I once was.
And this is life without kids? I was in my therapist’s chair saying “I know my life is rich and beautiful and I feel loved and appreciated and blessed, but I can’t keep up with the abundance and I’m drowning.” Superwoman, they’d call me. Michelle Obama, my brother joked. I resented it all. I just wanted to sit on the couch and watch a good movie.
For years, I’d been talking about writing again. Talking. It’s actually been over six years since my last blog. My husband doesn’t even know me as a writer — just as someone who talks about missing it. How dreadful. While drowning, I’d often reach for the life raft, but could never quite grasp it — a journal entry here and there, a lil scribble in my Notes app there and here. Writing felt like work. And for so long, I just wanted to sink into the couch and be numb.
Well.
I’m back on shore folks.
I’ve been playing in the grass which is in fact a shade greener on this here side, there’s a fluorescent tint to it actually. A combination of cutting things out of my life and good ol’ fashioned therapy got me here. I’ve arrived back at myself after what felt like a long windy detour to learn some lessons and do some growing. Usually when a woman cuts her hair, people think she’s in crisis. Crisis behind me, these lil blonde curls mark my Renaissance. Let the rebuild begin.
I watch a lot of TV. For starters, for a living, I watch TV — primarily reality dating shows — and talk about them with one of my besties. The dream. At any given moment with my husband, we’re watching 1-2 shows — usually a scripted series (we just finished Breaking Bad) and an unscripted (he loves a good Temptation Island social experiment). On my own, I usually crush another 2-3 other reality shows each week — something to keep up with the culture (Selling Sunset), something to bring me pure joy (Drag Race), something to roast the brain cells a wee bit (Love Island). And then, on my nite owl flow after Nate’s long asleep, I’ll breeze through a random limited series for kicks (currently: Everything Now, previously Daisy Jones and the Six). I watch more TV than the average person. And yet, I don’t watch nearly as much as I used to (shoutout to my lonely girl days in my early 20s in my basement studio apartment surviving cuffing season with me, myself, and my TV) or as much as I’d like to (I’ve completely missed Abbott Elementary and The Bear because who has time for all this content). And then, to top this all off, in this golden age of television where everything’s a mf series and there’s an OVERabundance of content to choose from, what I actually lowkey miss are movies…
I’m a little bit of a movie nerd. My dad raised me on Beckett, 12 Angry Men, Rear Window, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Growing up, we would hit up the Loews Theatre every Friday night as a family of five to watch the latest blockbuster and then sneak into two other movies that same night — you know, we had to get our money’s worth on our $7 movie tickets. What a time! I’ve always found comfort in sitting in a dark room, sunk into a cushy seat, chomping on a salty snack, and completely relinquishing control to the light rays and sound waves taking me away into another world, another time, on a ride of emotions and thoughts, allowing me to escape from my own. Walking out of the theatre, I still live for the walk and talk to the car, dissecting the movie scene by scene in the ride home, getting home and staying up late in bed watching behind-the-scenes clips, listening to the soundtrack, researching the director’s and writer’s filmography, watching press interviews with the actors. Real nerd shit. In college, I minored in film studies and summer interned at film production companies, meaning my dad was sure I’d never get a job. I spent my Ivy League education in dark classrooms watching movies like Citizen Kane and Bonnie and Clyde, discussing film theory and film history, dissecting musical scores and actors performances, learning camera movements and reading screenplays. I learned to appreciate film as an art form and to critique it for its artistic excellence and impact, not just for its entertainment.
I self-care by going to the movies solo dolo. An activity started in college to quench my lack of friendship, to this day I will purchase Tribeca Film Festival tickets, saunter past the red carpet paparazzi and fans, and slip into a cozy seat next to an 83-year-old Upper West Side grandpa to watch some independent French documentary about the life of an artist, all by my lonesome. Watching a good movie is just one of the most soul-serving comfort activities. Let it be the 50th time you’ve seen said movie? It’s like a warm hug from your oldest friend. There was a period of my life where I used to put on Notes On a Scandal to fall asleep. I’m not sure why the Cate Blanchett drama about a teacher having an illicit affair with her 15-year-old student brought me such comfort in my early 20s, but I would promptly knock the fuck out every night.
I’m on a quest to reconnect with my movie nerd identity. I’m dying to replace Instagram doomscrolling and cheap dopamine hits with something that actually serves my soul. In my rebuild era, I’m crawling back to the things that brought me joy and comfort before my world turned upside down. Slowly chipping away at my must-watch list feels like just the thing…
So, what’s my taste in movies like, you ask? Eclectic. Adventurous. Liberal. Maybe not discerning enough. If the two-sentence logline sounds decent, I’ll give it a whirl! What if I fall? Oh but my darling, what if you fly? I have a slight bias toward horror movies, movies about the demise of a marriage, coming of age stories, LGBTQ love stories, indie movies, French movies, musicals, psychological thrillers, anything A24 produces, period pieces (18th century Europe is my jam) — ya know, the usual. I love film auteurs David Fincher, Luca Guadagnino, and Paul Thomas Anderson. Maybe controversial, but I high-key love Woody Allen and Quentin Tarantino films. I know Save the Last Dance, Center Stage, and Love and Basketball by heart. I’ll watch There Will Be Blood, American Beauty, Get Out, or The Wizard of Oz any time any place.
Movies are one of my first loves. Staying up late and being a creature of the night is a close second. In my family, if you text the group chat at 2am, someone is bound to respond to you because more likely than not, they’re up watching a movie. My hope for The Nite Owl is one-part public diary and personal musings dissecting my lived experience as a 33-year-old black, married entrepreneurial, creative woman fresh-out of therapy, navigating the impending doom miracle of motherhood and trying not to take life too seriously; one-part movie reviews, thoughts, analyses and recommendations for your inevitable Netflix doomscroll; one-part curated digest of the gems I come across during my late night Internet deep dives.
At a time when my peers are worrying about their cholesterol levels, freezing their eggs, and tracking mortgage interest rates, here I am committing to more late nights on the couch way past my bedtime clocking more screen time, surely while eating a sugary snack. And folks, I’ve never felt more motivated and healthier than ever.
Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think, what you want me to write about, what you want me to watch. Or just drop me a line and say hey!
If this edition of The Nite Owl spoke to you, feel free to pass it along to others :)
Love this! Can't wait to read along with you and watch along when I can. I love that you're moving back into a space where you feel most like yourself. I find that encouraging for myself too as I'm hitting my mid-30's ☺️
Congrats on your first blog post in 6 years! 🥳🥳🥳🍾🍾🍾