The next chapter

This post will be long and all over the place. Please deal anyway. I started to save it for one of my Sunday Stories but I heard Spirit ask me what was wrong with today and who said any of us had until Sunday anyway? A lot of times on Sundays I don't know what I'm going to post. The posts are freestyle, meaning I just start typing here on Facebook and end up where I end up. Don't try this at home. Today I know what I want to say but the thoughts are scrambled all in my head.

Some of you already know that in addition to being a writer I am also a visual artist and I sell my work on this platform. I've been doing it for a long time. I paint and post new work almost daily. On Mondays I post all of my available work. That turns out to be a little over a hundred pieces. I've been doing it for a long time and it kind of works for me because Mondays and Tuesdays are the days I sell the most work.

Last night I got in my gray haired feelings about a post I read by a Facebook friend that may or may not have had anything to do with me but like a hit dog, I hollered. The post said something like, during these hard times the last thing people need right now is your book. (Note here, I also sell my books on Facebook. Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg.) His amen corner chimed in and in the comments he said something like he was annoyed at how people were obnoxiously pushing their products. Now, this person and I are only friends on social media but I still let his post and comment affect me. (Affect? Effect? Fuck it.) I started feeling like, oh wow, maybe that's how everybody feels about me. I will confess here that in my tailspin, I started thinking damn, how else can I sell my work, especially now, during COVID? I then did what I do and blocked the guy, you know, so he wouldn't have to be bothered with MY timeline on Mondays, or any other day. Maybe his block button was broken. What do I know about people's phones? Then I posted something vague like Imma keep pushin' and doin' me. But it did get to me a little. I know I'm a big Black woman and a loud mouth poet and shit don't be gettin' to us, but lean in real close right now. Shit do. And it be the shit you don't think would. And what? Then I put my phone down and took a quick nap. When I woke up two of my paintings had sold. Heeeeyyy! I let go of my earlier feelings and went about my night.

That experience made me think of times back in the late 90's, early 2000's when I was performing a lot of my poetry. At that time poets were getting booked in clubs. It was a hard school to come through because if you can picture a rockin' club and people having a good time and then the DJ stops. FOR. YOUR. POEM. Can you even imagine the level of Bitch, you betta bring it that we were under? Thankfully there were usually people in the front willing to listen. But the mistake that I and other poets have made was instead of addressing the people in the front waiting to hear us, we would perform for the people way in the back at the bar who couldn't give more a fuck about a poem than they could a can of peaches in the back of they grandmama garage. But that's what I did last night. Perform for the bar. Now, every time I post art I get likes (insert pop collar face here). I also get enough sales to have me continue to do this. Just a couple weeks ago my sister poet and friend Jessica posted that she loved seeing all of my work on her IG page. The paint isn't even dry before Linda clicks like and sometimes selects one for her personal collection. Alfreda is one of my favorite artists. She also owns several of my paintings. Baby, the way I grin when she hits my dm with my painting and a message that says "beautifully, beautiful." Queen Sheba just bought my work to use as her second book cover. My art was also used as her first book cover. So, it ain't like my front seats ain't filled. But no, I gotta dance a jig for the dude at the bar (or in Canada or wherever) who ain't never sent nary a penny for a poem or painting. Please understand, this ain't no fuck that dude and his whole muthafuckin' family post. It ain't. This is about me being so easily swayed off my game. And this ain't the time for me to be getting swayed.

As an artist I was hit hella hard by this isolation. HEL. LA. My paintings that were selling for $100, $150, $300 dropped to $25 faster than (think of something that happens really, really fast and put it here. Be clever.) Also, I work as a caregiver and couldn't see any of my clients at the beginning of the isolation. So all I had were these books and paintings to push. And I pushed. Way I figured, if I sold four paintings a day at $25 each, I could still finish the month at $3,000. Might sound simple, but here's the thing. You know how many paintings you gotta post to sell four? A ganga! And then I gotta sell four more the next day. Thank God for other gifts. So to keep that $100 a day goal crackin' I switch it up. Some days I sell my latest poetry book. Some days I sell the electronic collections I created. Now let me break those collections down for you. Each collection has one hundred poems and stories. Different poems in each collection. I sell them joints for only $10 each. That's a dime a poem. Where they do that at? Right here in Inglewood from my bed/office/Zoom studio. And since we there, I'll share this.

By now, everybody and they step daddy know that my son and I were homeless most of 2019. We were living in hotels, motels (never Holiday Inns.) The rent EV. E. RY. MU. THE. FUCK. ING. MORN. ING. was $100 by 11am. Really 10:30 if we didn't want that knock. We relocated from the IE back to L.A. so my son spent his days looking for work. Which he found. Praise God. He was also my peace and handled the hotel managers. I went into hustle overdrive. I covered rent err day by selling five books at $20 each. Also I have a mentor who would slide me c notes when she could. Note here, it costs me $100 to order 10 books and sometimes as much as $5 to ship to customers. But it was easier to unload the books for a dub than it was adding on that nickle. Because I didn't want people to just go to Amazon and get it cheaper. Note here, I only get $5 from my books purchased on Amazon. And I only get that like once every three months. Shout out to all the math teachers who made me show my work.

I don't know if you can imagine living like this but I promise you, it was hard thanna mug. So you might wonder here if I had over $3,000 a month to spend on rent and food why didn't I just GETAPLACE? ('Cause that's how y'all say it. Like the shit is fast and easy.) Well, to start, my credit was fucked up. Plus, if I'm spending over $3,000 on rent, gas, food, books, postal fees, art supplies, fuck I'm gon get additional scrilla for first month's rent and security deposit in high ass L.A. County? Shout out here to the woman who told me that I didn't need to be living in Los Angeles and that I should uproot my whole gotdamn life and come to (hot ass) Texas.

But don't God always got a ram in the bush? A blessing came through in December. A sister agreed to rent us a space. Forever peace and prosperity to her. We were out of the hotels and were no longer paying that high ass rent. What I did though, was increase my hustle and put all my extra money into old bills that went into collections. Hey Navient! I posted a couple Sundays ago about mission raise my credit. The place where we landed was comfortable enough but it wasn't home. But it was home for right now. We made it cute and cozy and figured we would be here for a couple years. Time enough for me to get my credit together and find a place that felt like home. Honestly, home was only a place I knew in my head. I have never had a place I felt like was my H.O.M.E. The closest place was Geogia. But even there, my mom and I went in on that place together (mostly her), and while we love each other we don't have the same decorating tastes. So we had to do a lot of compromising (mostly me).

I know y'all getting tired but we here now so please stay with me. Back in November, a designer purchased my art to be used in the model homes for a brand new apartment complex in Los Angeles. The place was going to be beautiful. I got thirstier and thirstier the more she described it. (Everybody say it together, GENTRIFICATION!) The place she described was even better than what I saw in my dreams. I thought if I could get a place almost as good as that, I could ride that out. I'm so tired of moving. But I also won't settle. We parted ways with her telling me that I should "get one of those places." I didn't have heart to break my math all the way down for her so I took my money and Roger Rabbited the fuck on out. Well, I Googled the place and clicked the want to hear more about us? link. Fast forward months later the place is completely built. Not only that but my credit has gone up. Plus, praise God for all the months in the hotels because it's only because my rent was sky high that I was making so much money so my bank statements looked pretty good and plus plus plus my son now has a good job. I got an email from the company saying that I should fill out an application and come look at the place. I prayed about it. I wasn't looking because I was going to chill more time where I am and I was so used to being told no that I didn't want to deal with another rejection. Also I didn't want a bunch of companies running my credit causing it to go down. I couldn't let it go though. There was something in my gut. At the end of April I sent in an application. The next day my son and I saw the place. I don't have words to describe how home we felt. The manager showed us a few units. We told him the one we liked the best. We then went downstairs and he opened his computer. He said, "So you like unit XXX?" My son and I said yes. Then he pulled out a stack of like thirty papers and said "Ok, well I need you to both sign and initial all of these pages." My son and I looked at each other like, wait...what?

"Wait...is this a lease?" Way my voice squeaked at lease though.

"Um...yes. You said you wanted unit XXX, right?"

"So we got it?!!!"

"Yeah. I got your application and ran your credit and that looks ok and you meet the financial requirements so..."

So we got the place and we move into our home June 1, 2020. The next day was May 1 we gave thirty days notice at the spot in Inglewood. I look back on all of times we were told no and how disappointed I was. Also how determined I was. How even more determined I am now to do even better. To have my art and words flourish. I have ended my work agreements with my clients and am putting energy into my books, classes and art. And to think, after the way God has shown up for me, that I went all tizzy over some dude's post. Thank y'all for hanging with me. Note here, I will be posting even more art on Mondays. If you don't like it but also don't want to block me, then you can contact Jada Pinkett Smith or somebody else you know who likes art and also has pockets and ask them to buy it all up from me. While I'm still selling art at COVID prices, she gets the same deal. Who knows, maybe I'll get a seat on Red Table Talk and shout out your name. Possibilities are endless.

Love yourselves.