Category Archives: atlanta

One Week In, One Week Removed From New York

Found copy of Iyanla Vanzant's #actsofaith that I got Christmas 1994.

I found up my old dog-eared copy of Acts of Faith by Iyanla Vanzant.  I am reading it along with Douglas Rushkoff’s Present Shock.

Today’s Meditation:  Identification with an organization or a cause is no substitute for self-realization.

It took me leaving New York City to realized how much I had incorporated being a New Yorker as a big part of my identity. Now that I am not there, I can take note of who I am wherever I be.

I am a woman.

I am Black.

I am a Southerner.

I am a blogger.

I love cupcakes.

I am the oldest of three girls.

My elevator pitch is too long.

My place has changed, but I am the same. Being present is nice.  The future is open but not as wide as it was in the past.

Nuance, Nostalgia, New Chapter

Shorter blog post: I left Brooklyn because I couldn’t afford it. I was afraid that I would be a bag lady. That fear and high likelihood it could happen was stressing me the fuck out.

Longer Blog Post:
I don’t navel-gaze. It may be good for self reflection or my core but I probably have lint in my belly button so that’s kinda gross.

People are so not naive to think that the world is black and white, but they act that as if it were because nuance fucks them up.
Similarly, I can’t decide if I more left-brained or right-brained. The lack of nuance seems to have made my career all topsy turvy.
I have been writing creatively since I was a kid. I wrote poems and stories since I was about ten years old. However, I was also good at math and science. I like baking. I like physics. I tend to recite one of Newton’s laws as it applies to everyday life. A body in motion will remain in motion…

I have been in constant motion living here in New York for over a decade. It’s been fun and inspiring. It has been heartbreaking and frustrating. Being always on the precipice of an arbitrary measure of success has kept my stomach in knots.

Although I took psychology in college, I didn’t fully understand cognitive dissonance until I read “The Souls Of Black Folks” by DuBois while living here in New York. My goal became to manage the dissonance. I also read Florence Scovel Shinn’s “The Game Of Life and How To Play It ” and I took to repeating the affirmation, “I have elegant and perfect timing. I am at exactly the right place at exactly the right time.” Sometimes that helped me to be patient and present.

I am going to get all “LCD Soundsystem” for a moment and say I was there for Deep Dish Cabaret in a dance studio,Gothamist happy hours at The Magician and Jinx Debates at Nolita Bar. I miss WYSIWYG, Chicks and Giggles and Tainted Lady Lounge. The good old days were not always great, but had perfect timing.

One of the tag lines of my old blog was this: “Nichelle hopes for Oprah-like scratch but she is already wealthy with an abundance of friends.” I will miss my awe-inspiring friends when I leave even more than I will miss Brooklyn. Brooklyn is full of artisans, divas, evangelists, ninjas and rockstars. I am pretty sure Brooklyn is the ONLY place on the earth where a stranger would come up to me to gush that I am “twitter famous”.

I am moving to Atlanta. Am I writing a new chapter or conducting an experiment? I don’t know. I hope to carve out a niche of prosperity and creativity.

Niche List: In The Flesh, Shelley Nicole and Score!

I will be down in Atlanta this weekend, so I will be missing some stuff.  Hope you have a wonderful pre-Thanksgiving weekend.

Thursday, November 19. Rachel Kramer Bussel’s erotica reading series, “In The Flesh” is celebrating its fourth anniversary with a star-studded reading including Abiola Adams, Lily Burana and Isobella Jade.

Friday, November 20. Shelley Nicole whose song, “Blak Girls” in the free BoldAsLove compilation is celebrating the release her EP with a show at Littlefield. $10adv $20 door

Saturday, November 21.  Score! Clothing swap at 3rd Ward.

Shrimp Burger and Sisters

shrimp burger

For my sister’s birthday, we went to Parish, a New Orleans restaurant and market located in Atlanta’s Inman Park neighborhood. I had the catfish, my middle sister had trout and the birthday girl had the shrimp burger pictured above.

Today, I visited Sweet Pockets, a cupcake bakery. I had a Olympis cupcake. Monday, I had a caramel cupcake at A Piece of Cake. (More on that on later when I blog it on CTTC).