Monday, July 1, 2019

Shot Clock

Guess who's getting married? This guy right here... a couple weeks back I proposed to my live-in girlfriend of the past 5 years & she accepted! So now we'll be spending the better part of the next year planning various events to celebrate our pending nuptials. My fiancé & I are both water signs, so we'd really like to have a ceremony on the water... hopefully, that'll still be a reality once we begin to crunch some of the numbers. I've got a buddy who will soon jump the broom in a couple a months, so I've been bouncing a bunch of ideas off of him in recent weeks.

The engagement ring I selected is rose-gold, with a blue-ish aquamarine primary stone surrounded by white diamonds. I really wanted her ring to stand-out from other traditional platinum or white gold rings with that same-ol' solitary diamond setting. I'd actually been contemplating marriage since the beginning of the year & special ordered the bridal set about a month prior to popping the big question. Waiting for that perfect moment to make it happen was absolutely agonizing! I constantly asked myself things like... "Will she like the ring? Will we have to re-size it? Hell, will she even say yes???" Granted, I wasn't truly worried about that last one, but hey - nothing in life's a sure thing, right? As it turned-out, she loved my selection. My super-secret detective work paid-off too, because I sized the ring down to the perfect fit!

As far as the wedding... I, myself, would prefer a small, low-key ceremony (truth-be-told I would have settled for a trip to the justice of the peace just to get it all over with)... but the lady has plans far grander in scale than anything I'd ever imagined, so we'll just have to see how far down the rabbit hole I get pulled over this next year of planning. Trying to rein her in will certainly be a challenge, plus she & her planning committee are already hard at work, guess I might as well get used to the idea of some sort of a fancy-smancy affair.

Thursday, April 19, 2018

#BankBlack

Over the past few years, or so, I feel like I’ve really gotten away from patronizing black-owned business... for various reasons running the gamut from sheer convenience & lower price points to extreme angst over poorly run business operations & customer service practices. 

But earlier this week, I decided to simply get over myself & do something about it. I opened new accounts with 3 black-owned & operated banks in an attempt to #bankblack & keep it trill in whatever small way I can. Sure, there are certainly banking options outside of my community with branches on every corner, account opening bonuses, higher interest rate yields, so on & so fourth… but to me, it’s an important time for my people to circle the wagons. 

How could I ever successfully impress upon others, things I think they should be doing, if I myself am not an avid practitioner of those very same strategies. With that in mind - I’ve decided to move my money from their house to our house, in hopes that my people will likewise, consider the same.

I choose now to actively seek-out black-owned businesses offering similar services & products that I buy regularly, with a reinvigorated mindset… simply put, I help my own community so much more with each & every dollar spent there instead, moving foreward I intend to do just that. 

Thursday, March 22, 2018

My Break-Up with FB

Recent revelations regarding Facebook’s complicit role in unauthorized sharing (selling) of it’s users data with 3rd party companies as well as the enormous propaganda machine the social media giant turned a blind eye to during the 2016 presidential campaign have caused me to take serious issue with the social media platform. 

To be fair, Facebook & I had already been sharing an estranged, on & off again relationship over the past 10 years or so - I guess I’d long since fallen out of love with many things people chose to share & perhaps more importantly, my (admittedly) presumed reasoning for their doing so. What once seemed like an excellent way to keep in touch with (or tabs on) friends, now very much feels like a never-ending competition among co-workers, peers & family members alike.

I hate having to witness the brazen insensitivity of folk when it comes to relationship issues, death announcements & other handle-with-care posts of the like. None of the rude comments, jealous reactions, or First 48 theories do anything to enhance my quality of life, so I’m simply choosing not to partake.

But it was really the weaponization of Facebook in recent years, by both foreign & domestic players alike, to further sew decent, hate & bigotry into the very fabric of our democracy that pissed me off. On top of that, its just hurtful to know there are so many among us who absolutely refuse to see any issue from a perspective different than their own.   

It’s recently been estimated that about 50% of Americans get their news from Facebook. Yes, an unregulated, ad driven, unverified news saturated & highly politicized social media website is now responsible for how roughly half of US citizens obtain news content - just think about that

In some ways, I guess its all a not so friendly reminder of the work we have left to do in this country. Still, the general lack of accountability that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has shown before, during & since the past presidential campaign when paired with recent trends of cyber-bullying, suicide posts & racial stand-offs have all left a bad taste in my mouth.

Moving forward, I anticipate using Facebook as more of an emergency telephone book of sort… if absolutely necessary, I can always reactivate my account with the sole intention of retrieving pertinent information regarding friends & deactivate immediately afterward. Otherwise, I really don’t expect to miss it much, if at all.