Hello...It's Me.

Song: Oops I Did It Again x Britney Spears

I think I did it again...

No, I don't think, I did. Sorry for abandoning you all once my summer got crazy. And by "you all," I'm still unaware of who I'm even speaking to. Do I have an audience? Is anyone out there? *echoes back to me*

Anyways, summer 2017 is almost to a close, with Labor Day and the beginning of the semester on the horizon. I may not have classes, but I sure have a lot going on. I have two major projects, thesis, and of course submissions and applications to literary magazines and jobs for when I am appropriately booted out of the educational system.

It's time to learn how to adult. I've been wearing wedges at work for about a month, and the things that a small heel can change (namely my height)!

I told you, I'd talk about the projects eventually, so I'll let y'all in on project #1 because again, I don't know how y'all is, but you might be interested. You might not. I don't really care. Anyways, project #1 was birthed in my non-narrative thought class, in which I struggled to write non-narratively because narrative just makes sense and non-narrative is difficult to read, but even more difficult to write. Each student had to bring in a narrative essay, which we would spend the semester (magically) turning into non-narrative. I chose the first essay I wrote during my program, which was about my Hair Journey and that entire transitioning process.

After switching my non-narrative plans up a billion times, and eventually realizing that I had so much on my plate, I was no longer committing to the project with the same original energy...my professor allowed me an out. They said, bring in a project you're working on and use it in class. But me, being all academic integrity and perfectionist and overachieving, I said no. So what I ended up doing was creating a whole-ass website for my final project (for which, we didn't need to have a completed project, we could have just had an idea). The website was a lexicon about hair and beauty and blackness.

I took that website and pitched it to a nonfiction literary magazine, Fourth Genre, who was having a digital essay submission call. My website was digital. And it was certainly an essay. So I pitched it, on the eve of the last day of class and my vacation, burnt out AF, I somehow scrounged up the energy to write a legitimate proposal for this project and submitted it.

A month later, I had been accepted.

What I wanted of this lexicon was for it to become a platform for black women to talk about hair and beauty and pop culture, and to create a forum of sorts. These sorts of places exist on the internet already, but I wanted my platform to explore the differences and similarities in the ways that black women approach beauty and hair, through personal stories, essays, rants, odes, etc. I reached out to my friends and asked them to contribute to the site, if they wanted to, which several did.

I've been editing and putting together this site/digital essay for about 2 months now, and it's ready to be submitted as a draft for editing. I'm not as terrified as I thought I would be, but I'm stressed. I have a lot of deadlines coming up this weekend/next week and this website draft is one of them.

What else?

Need to finish my syllabus. Need to submit 3 submissions/applications by Friday. School starts after Labor Day and for the second year in a row, I have the privilege of being the face and representation of Columbia College Chicago at 9 a.m. on the first day of school. WELCOME. I made an instagram page for my writing, readings and projects...I also repost horoscopes and artist things and my bitmoji (@kaudonegesti). I moved, but you don't care about that. Excited to start this new adventure of my life, this 2017-2018 academic year, aka my last year of school after 20 years (unless I get my PhD, which I doubt).

ohlesdoit.