COPYWRITE MAGAZINE ISSUE 14: FASHION & STYLE *OFFICIAL DROP*
/Sometimes you just have to drop a magazine like…
DROP!!!!
Check out our long awaited Fashion & Style Issue (Issue 14).
Interviews w/ Vee Adams, Von Alexander, Basia Rose, Spaidez, Chill Sweats, our Ex Fabula Features & more.
/CW
Dirty Thoughts - Balance
/Right before the beginning of this year I remember getting a phone call mid-day from my OG ( who is respectively my grandmother, and arguably my favorite person living) asking me randomly had I purchased a calendar for 2018. Being the millennial that I am, and having grown accustomed to programing my life into my handy-dandy (control system) cell phone, I obliviously replied that I had not. She shuffled me off the phone proclaiming that she didn't want to interrupt me any further knowing that I was at work, with a brief, “Okay. I’m going to send you one. Go ahead and get off the phone Baby, I love you. Assalamu alaikum”. With my reply of, “Okay, Grandma I love you too...Wa alaykum as-salam”, she was gone.
A few weeks later I received a package in the mail from my OG, that held not one, not two, but three calendars in it. When I called to thank her, she assured me that I had several places to put these calendars, like keeping the calendars visible would be critical in the year to come. As I further examined what she had sent me I noticed that two of the calendars were the same. One just a miniature of the other. Where one calendar was of Tinker Bell theme ( my favorite feisty little character), the duplicate one showed a cover where the back of a Buddha statue is looking off into hazed picturesque distance, titled, Zen - A Year of Mindfulness. Fitting into my newer growing and needed practices of good karma, I have placed different representational Buddha statues in every room of my residence, to remind me to find peace in all moments. The calendar was theoretically perfect for my decor (which if you know me, you know is critical), so I took it as a win and another little temporal keepsake to remind me of the Grandmother who I often miss so much.
But what I didn't know is that beyond making me think of her and it looking absolutely gorgeous in my space, what she had sent me was a list of words to reflect upon in a 30 day cycle of life. Each month a new word would appear. As I turned the page it would trigger actions or subjects that I then became conscious of as I would walk past the calendar each day. Words like January’s “Love” or April’s “Focus, June’s “Inspire” and August “Serenity”. I would often find myself mining through my placement in life that month and how those words would appear in my experience. I indeed, became mindful of what those words truly meant to me.
As this months word is “Balance”, I have noticed what a balancing act my life has become. Especially since this month I have introduced a new job into my routine, while carrying on my “Black & Hooded” aspirations, and of course filtering my growing obligations as Editor-in Chief of CopyWrite. The balance has become a critical part of staying afloat, where scales tipping too far in either direction creates chaos, not only for me, but for all the other things, that by default, depend on me. . . But even deeper than that, it becomes survival in every way that the word is expressed.
It is this word, more, than all the other words that have appeared on the calendar this year, that is the most striking to me. Often when people inquire about my goals in life I always follow through with a statement that includes balance and/or stability. Where it is something I am continuously searching for, I am always one pebble (or five) short of true symmetry, making me in the past doubt if it will ever be a goal accomplished.
I write this to say it is in this month, as conscious as I am to it’s meaning then ever before, that I have stopped trying to search for balance but actually have been letting balance find me. With that, opportunities have been knocking. I am more satisfied with my journey and all those things that have thrown me off my game are solving themselves because I have no time to toil with unnecessary situations, confrontations, or other negative things that I can not control. As my focus has shifted to be more proactive than reactive, even in my lowest days I smile because I see that the fulcrum that is my life, shall pivot in the direction that ensures I never truly fall but become more flexible to my own needs, no matter what outside gravity pulls at me.
I am here, I am “woke” and I am now very certain that my grandmother ALWAYS knows exactly what I need.
Some gifts are priceless.
/Dirty
