Pragmatic & Pretty

Jazz... Have you ever just paused and listened to jazz? Ever just let yourself follow the notes of the music and the sound as it flows.  Jazz is all about the flow -- the rhythm, the grooves, the melodies, the harmonies, the beats, the pockets, the hums. Every singular sound, often precisely considered, all to make some of the loveliest sounds.  My father taught me how to listen to jazz.  It's all vibrant like the legendary Miles Davis' " Blue In Green" .   My parents gave me this dream of being some worldly writer that loved all parts of life and all of the people inside that life.  At my essence, when that professor asked that question , I have always been curious. Everything is a question in my mind and then an answer is found. Most of my thoughts when I'm considering the world around me are coming from an analytical perspective -- constantly wondering about each person.  What are they doing? Why are they doing it? How are they doing it? Why are the...

"Back to life, back to reality," sang Soul II Soul in their song " Back To Life (However Do You Want Me) ". And it really does feel like that sometimes...  I swear I "wake" up at the most random moments and realize that I'm a Human and I am Doing This and We're Here on this thing called Earth. Sometimes that kind of "back to reality" feeling happens naturally -- that déja vu feeling.  Sometimes it's prompted by a question. I had one question asked to me as a burnt out senior at New York University that reset the course of my life.  It was the first day of an elective class  titled "Classical Mythology"  and our professor asked us the Who/What We Wanted To Be In The Future question.  Again, I was a a senior at this point just trying to wrap up my last required credits before graduation and that elective course almost took me out of reality.  However, it was the most important class of my career at that point as it was the fir...

You know how they tell you to do what you love and you’ll never be unhappy?   Back when the “what do you want to be” or “what do you want to do” question first started popping up when I was like 7, I always told people “as long as I’m writing, I’ll be happy”.   Not true. Not true at all. While my answer never changed and it was the same whether I was  7, 10,  15, 18, 22, 25 or now, I learned through the first leg of life that it was not true that just being a writer is what would make me happy. I spent the last fourteen years writing professionally in different capacities as a journalist/digital media specialist and while I will admit I loved most of it, it was very difficult.   Difficult in the not fun “my mind is being challenged” way, but difficult in the “my values and morals are being compromised” way.   It’s been almost a decade since I really wrote for the sake of loving writing.   I began professionally writing at the age of 16 for a universit...