Uninspired Ramblings of Pure Inspiration

Recently, I was discussing Lil Wayne with a couple of people and I said that I didn’t care for him much as a rapper. I was asked why and I replied that his rhymes struck me as infinitely stupid. One of the people I was talking to quoted a Lil Wayne lyric to me and asked me if it was dope. I said no. Then the other person said I wouldn’t understand why Lil Wayne was dope because I’m not a hip hop head. This statement annoyed me for several reasons. One reason was because it represents the kind of hip hop elitism that I’ve encountered time and time again as I’ve worked in various aspects of entertainment industry. However, this annoyance was short lived because it is what it is from that perspective. Every type of music has it’s...

Happy New Year! I hope you enjoyed your entry into 2011. I had a very laid back evening with friends drinking wine and watching the various New Year’s Eve shows in television. It was lovely! I wanted to take a moment and share something with you that I learned by way of the infinite wisdom of Naomi Dunford of Ittybiz. I receive her email newsletter and she occasionally sends out assignments. One of the more recent ones caused me to really think about my entrepreneurial/professional aspirations. She told us to think of the top 5 moments in 2010 and then consider what common thread existed in them. I wrote mine down and discovered that the common thread in my top 5 moments of 2010 was this: I was instrumental in helping to create something. This was a major...

Recently, I went to an event where there were vendor tables set up. As I browsed the different vendors, I picked up some of their cards. When I looked at the different cards, I noticed a trend. Many people have multiple services that they provide and they listed all of them on their business cards in a similar format. The cards would look like this: Sally Simmons Author|Model|Song writer|Producer|Personal Chef 555-0989 Now, many people who are entrepreneurs are becoming aware of the importance of diversifying your assets and not focusing solely on one field. Plus, many creative entrepreneurs typically have several things they enjoy doing. That’s wonderful. However, I think it takes away from a person’s professionalism if they list multiple things on...

I haven’t written in this blog in over a year. In that time, things have definitely changed for me. I am no longer actively pursuing a career as a public relations consultant full time. I did some soul searching and realized that writing and production (TV/Film/Multimedia) was more where my passions were. So in the last year, I made a much more concerted effort to focus on my writing career and production career. I also decided to write more blog posts about my professional development journey. The decision to make this change wasn’t easy. Although I didn’t truly enjoy what I was doing and it wasn’t really advancing my career, I had been doing it since 2003 and I didn’t want all of that hard work to go to waste. However, the hard work...

As one of the millions (billions?) of Michael Jackson fans, I was very saddened by his passing on June 25, 2009. I grew up listening to his music and experiencing his videos. I have very vivid memories of being 6 years old and seeing the Thriller video for the first time. It scared the crap out of me but I wanted to see it. People were so excited about it, I had to know why. While it was scary, it was also awesome. Unfortunately, I woke up that night screaming for my mom because it gave me nightmares. My mom had to take down my Michael Jackson poster because I was traumatized. It’s a really cool thing to think back on. I wanted to do my own little tribute to the man that revolutionized pop music and music videos. So I’m going to post my top...

Over the past weekend, I was on the go. I had the opportunity to see some improv comedy, which was VERY cool. I also helped with an event called She Remembers. It was an event held in honor of Women’s History Month (March) dedicated to HIV/AIDS awareness. The event consisted of a prayer vigil and panel discussion about the effect of HIV/AIDS is having on the black community. Ever since I was in high school, I have been an advocate for educating people about HIV/AIDS. It started when I was a volunteer with the A.S.K. U.S. program at AID Atlanta. A.S.K. U.S. is the youth based education and outreach program. A.S.K. U.S. stands for Adolescents Seeking Knowledge Understanding Safer Sex. As a junior/senior in high school, I was very active in the A.S.K....