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Feb. 14, 2023

It's been exactly a year..

It's been exactly a year..

.. since I wrote my last blog post. 2022 was a great year podcasting wise. I set out to do this 90's series and I think I did it well. Now we are approaching season 5 and I'm ready to get back to it. Truth is though, this break off didn't go at all as planned. I really intended to get more work done as far as prep for the new season and brainstorming new ideas goes. Not only did I want to brainstorm, I wanted to execute. Life takes unexpected twists and turns and most times it's just out of our control, so what do you do? I think it's important to understand that you can only do what YOU CAN DO. Everything is not in your control so when something unexpected occurs try to see why it happened or what you can learn from that experience. As soon as I began my break, my grandmother started to live with us. Talk about family drama? It was something we were not prepared for but we had to make it work. She suffers from dementia and does require a lot of supervision as she can't be left alone for too long. This experience was definitely an emotional rollercoaster to say the least. I spent my week working from home at my dining room table, normally I work at my desk in my room, looking after her while she sat on the living room couch laughing at the show The Parkers. I found out she really enjoys coloring. I was amazed how some days, well most days, she could color for hours. She loved showing me how pretty her coloring work would come out. Her living with us did get frustrating at times because I don't think she had fully accepted or maybe didn't even completely understand what was going on with her. It was like sometimes she understood and she would be so grateful to me for giving her her medication and meals. Not to go into too much detail, this was just a difficult time for me to really do any recording or research for the pod. So the break ended up being more necessary than I initially thought it was. My grandma is now in assisted living and things have gotten back to normal. But to be honest, not really because it's always something else you know? Something always will come up that you may feel is preventing you from doing what it is you want to be doing. I knew my grandmother’s stay with us was going to be hard even though it was temporary. I decided to look at it as an opportunity to just spend more time with her. So that's what I did for a month. I would wake up head, to the dining room table to start working and hope she wouldn't wake up before 8am. Most days she did though. She never would sleep in. I had to get my son off to school, give her AM pills to her and prepare her breakfast which some days was eggs, turkey bacon and toast or just a bowl of cereal.  Before she ate I would check her blood sugar and give her the appropriate amount of insulin. That's how our mornings would begin. I said I wasn't going to go into too much detail but here I am still going into details about this. Obviously, I needed to write about it so I'm just letting my fingers sing. I would turn on The Parkers for her because it was a funny and wholesome show that she enjoyed. My grandmother didn't like hearing cuss words so to not upset her, I would find shows that didn't have too much cussing. I was thankful for the days she didn't have an episode and try to leave the house. She would have these episodes where she would demand I take her "home". She didn't understand, in that moment, that she was home. The days that went by without her having an episode I grew so thankful for. So this was life for me for about a month. It seemed a little longer than that actually. She is doing well in her new home. It was a big adjustment for her though. I remember the day I took her along with her belongings to her new home. She looked at me with tears in her eyes and thanked me. She let me know she appreciated me and that she just needed to adjust to her new home. I understood her tears. That was a sad day for more than one reason. So long story long this break of mine started out a little hectic. It was hard to focus much on the podcast and it's future but as I type this I feel excited because I have been getting prepared for the season premiere on February 28th 2023. Coming in to the new year I was extremely emotional. On New Years day I took a drive with no destination. I just drove while listening to old Drake songs. Pretty much the whole Care Package project he dropped a few years back. It was a chilly and gloomy day. It had been raining all morning and I just randomly decided to take a drive and hoped that maybe it would help me get to a point where I could stop crying. It kind of helped but the crying continued. Less and less tears were falling out my eyes as the day went on. I knew why I was crying I just wanted it to stop completely. Whenever I get too emotional and cry a lot in one setting, I give myself a pep talk. I tell myself "ok bitch this enough crying. Gon head and get it out your system and stop that shit." It usually works for me. I allow myself to just feel the emotions and cry it out. But I always make sure to let myself know this too shall pass. So gon head and cry it out but after this moment no more crying. Soon after the new year I celebrated a birthday with my family at my birthday dinner. I turned 32 and I didn’t feel like doing too much. I decided after my 30th birthday I would no longer succumb to the pressures of having the “littest” birthday. Turning up is less needed these days. I do love me a good time though. I decided to have a photoshoot and I was very pleased with the pictures that came from that. I really had a good time setting up for this DIY photoshoot that I did in my garage. I can't wait to do it again and creatively get better at my concepts behind it all. Fast forward to today, Valentines day. I am Valentine-less, the day was a regular day for me because of this. I received some beautiful flowers from my son and brother. I got some chocolate from a coworker while at work. So it's not like I'm ending this day of love empty handed. If I really wanted a Valentine I could've had one. Would he had made the best Valentine though? That's to be debated. I keep going back and forth between being ready for love vs. the opposite of that. I can honestly say I don't think I'm ready. I'm in this peaceful, self love phase in life. I’m just not willing to give up that peace. The peace in not having to accommodate another person to fit them in my daily life. The peace I get from being antisocial at times and not being bothered. I've just found it to be so peaceful that as soon as someone begins to affect that, I'm running in the other direction. Kind of like the Julie Roberts in Runaway Bride only I'm not running away from a wedding, I'm running away from dating. I don't feel like I'm running though, it's more like a light jog in the other direction. I want to date. I want to be in love and build that companionship. I'm simply not ready and seeing that there is no room for any of this hesitancy in the dating world, I choose to exit stage left. It's probably unhealthy but I have to accept the fact that I still have tons of healing to do and maybe healing while dating works out well for others. It just may not work out well for me. So dating has to take a backseat which I'm not completely miserable about since this peace means so much to me. I wouldn't and couldn't trade it for the world. But maybe one day I'll be a little more healed, meet the right guy and live happily ever after. Maybe I’ll become more willing to trust someone again. Maybe I’ll meet someone who will undeniably be meant for me. Maybe won't none of that shit happen and I just stay single forever. Who really ever knows? 

- Sharmanique