I’m at a Starbucks. 20 minutes ago, It was blazing hot outside. Muggy too. If you stood outside for 2 minutes you’d look like you were doing yard work in inappropriate clothes. 10 minutes ago, I noticed the suspicious clouds approaching from the west. 5 minutes ago, the smaller trees converted to Islam..they started bowing east. 2 minutes ago potential energy changed to kinetic, the raindrops got too heavy for updrafts to keep them sequestered in the heavens. Now I’m in the middle of a beautiful storm. I watch the people leaving Olive Garden try to brave the storm. They were rewarded with umbrella’s that turned in their pink slips. Ambulances and Firetrucks speed toward the heart of the storm. The World is capricious and much mightier than I am.

Listening to Hillsong United: Aftermath
“But I know – that your with me and I know – your love will light the way.”

Amen.

Fly or Fall.

A couple of months ago, I was at a Hibachi place with some of my fellow graduates. We were all enjoying ourselves..Flush with excitement and bubbly with the enjoyment of each others company. I think we were just a couple hours from the end of our last class before graduation. This particular Hibachi dinner was especially exciting, the Chef was amazing..he threw rice balls for us to catch with our mouths no homo and the each bite of teriyaki shrimp fried chicken marsala egg rolls was made sweeter by the fact that we were close to the end of a four-year goal. Right before we adjourned and headed back to class, we all decided to get our fortune cookies. Everyone opened their cookies and most of us were pleasantly surprised by deep chinese philosophical insights like:
“Your life will be better if you open your heart”
“Your true love may have died in a freak car accident when he was 12”
“Today, smell both the roses..and the fertilizer”
and my personal favorite: “Your lucky numbers are: 05 68 12”
However, when I opened my fortune cookie and glanced down ..I literally felt my heart drop. My fortune went a lil like: “Okenna, Don’t be satisfied with the easier route”. I swore it had my middle name in there as well. Anyway – i felt a little convicted. I had recently made a career choice that pushed me in the direction of work that was much less intellectually stimulating/demanding but paid a very decent wage. And I could not for the life of me figure out why I failed to pursue an opportunity that had been put in front of me.

Anyway, after that letter from God in the heart of a fortune cookie, I realized that I have to make sure that I don’t continue to cheat myself. I need to push myself always. I can’t let opportunities slip by just because they make me uncomfortable. So being me, I made a list of the hardest things for me to do at the moment that would make me uncomfortable. I’m going to try to re-write this list every 2-3 days, and do one HARD thing everyday.
My HARD things aren’t necessarily all career related ..some of them are just working on being honest with my emotions toward certain people. Or not holding my tongue and Making time for a conversation that should have happened. Emailing past business acquaintances that I’ve let slip. Creating space between me and people who aren’t adding to my life. smh.
Its Hard. And I’m sure Ima fail more than I succeed but I’m looking forward to the movement that this will create in my life.
..Here’s to the Harder things in life worth fighting for.

Fly or Fall.

The sun, Family, Free beer.. These are a few of my favorite things. This was my first real weekend in NYC without a parent around. And it was a good one.
So God being God, he worked things out so I got 3 weeks in NYC (Staten Island to be exact) for a “working” vacation. This trip was so perfectly timed. My first weekend was Memorial Day weekend. #3dayweekendsdontsuck. Saturday afternoon I caught the Staten Island ferry (currently one of my favorite things about New York City) to Manhattan.  I met up with my sister, and we walked over to the world financial center. We grabbed some food at Southwest NY in the complex and just chilled and talked as the sun set on the Hudson River. An absolutely gorgeous sunset if I don’t say so..oh..u don’t believe me? Don’t take my word for it.

Anyway after that we caught the train to Brooklyn to her newly rented gorgeous apartment.

We spent the night reading [Her: Voltaire’s Candide & Me: The Alchemist: Paulo Coelho] while Phoenix played.

The next morning we woke up, did a mini-yoga session and grabbed flapjacks (yea I just wanted to be different) and omelets at the Coffee Bar in Union Square with Jessica. The food was cool but the time spent just relaxing was dope.
After breakfast we headed to Governors Island for a brew fest that Jessica told us was going down there. On the way onto the ferry we got the bad news that the brewing festival was SOLD OUT. We were crushed because..
1. It was hot as Hades
2. It was hot as Hell
But we decided to swing by Governors Island neee-ways, mainly because Keeks hadn’t rode the ferry before and neither of us had gotten the chance to visit Governors Island. So we hopped on the terminally-ill-social-security-recipient-driven -slow  ferry which didn’t help the heat. Really, I feel like Jesus could have walked past us if he was out on the river that day. We finally arrived and we were walking around Governors Island enjoying the shade where we could find it and just about to give up and go home because the Sun had obviously decided to relocate to 3 feet away from the earth, when suddenly God intervened.

An angel was walking by, and happened to look up and see us. She must have seen the sweat dripping from our elbows or maybe she just noted that we were beer drinkers by the brewski (yea.. brewski) we were sharing because she stopped us and asked if we were interested in some free drink tickets as she and her fiancé/boyfriend/husband were about to leave.
Interested?
Kiki tackled the lady while I snatched the tickets and we ran for the festival which was thankfully just over a hill and through a clearing.
We arrived at the festival right on time – the final pour was in like 15 minutes. We gave the finger to drink Nazi who was checking for wristbands and we found a way to exchange our drink tickets for liquid gold and found a spot in the shade.

Kiki proceeded to try to down a whole cup of pale ale by herself. Bad decision. Lol. After we finished as much of our beer as we could we bolted to the ferry to try to beat the crowd back…FAIL. lol.
The line was long as Methuselah’s hair.
The line was so long and the sun so enthusiastic that people started pressuring security until they finally buckled and let everybody onto the ferry, at which point the crowd cheered like we had been liberated from a concentration camp by the allied forces.
By this time me and keeks were exhausted from the sun and pleasantly tired from a gallivanting around the island. We decided to call it day.
But what a day it was.