Anxious & May or May Not Be Disappointing My Younger Self | Journal Entries - Thurs.,17 October 2019

I've been thinking about lately on how my baby-self would be looking at my present-self now. Would she be in awe or disappointed? Confused? Yeah, confused would be best be the feeling. But in like a good way.

Firstly, let's acknowledge how fucking cute I am in that photo graduating from pre-school. On the contrary though please understand that I was a fucking brat then and am most likely a brat still now. Looked like an angel, but had the intentions of the devil. Enough persistence and manipulation to launch a thousand ships to do her bidding, whether they liked it or not. And such obedience or complicit behavior only fueled this baby devil's fire. "Do. Not. Trust. Her.," said Regina George. Spoiled to the core. Would accept nothing lesser than greatness. Well would accept nothing lesser than greatness until I realized what I considered great wasn't all that great. Such acknowledgement of ignorance or child's naïveté grew as self and social realization also did along with flat out education, being a never ending thing.

All enough to initiate change in life goals--as I assume everyone also goes through. Difference is that I was just a bitch and brat as a kid and probably still am, but maybe lesser of such now or maybe different forms of such at least. Okay, let's jump right into discussing my childhood dreams and how I've failed them lol, or at least tweaked them.

Okay, by the time I hit kindergarten, I was in agreement with myself that I'd become a full fledged "artist" when I grew up. I meant painter; an artist today covers so many other cool realms I could never imagine in my small five year old brain. But I digress. I loved painting; my mom really got me into it. I loved copying how my sister drew. I'd fill up sketch pads by week's end. Just loved it. But fucking classmate Sabrina at recess just had to break it to me that being an artist meant spending years in school, "seven" to be exact, and still wind up not making any money. I remember this convo precisely, really soured a mood. So, then painting became a kindergarten into high school hobby. I was always known as the "artsy kid." Aside from the artsy kid, it was also fashion-y kid. "Fashion makes money, right?" was what my stupid ass child self thought and validated. It surely costs money, my dear sweet idiot girl. Was I a fashion icon? Obviously no, but I was the one that was like "out there" style wise in school enough to win the title. My mom got me into that too.

Every other year, we'd go to New York City to shop and see Broadway, a first grader's dream. She got me accustomed to subways, sales, and NYC life before I even moved here for college. Mother knew what she was doing. She was investing; she knew I could do the shopping for her and ship it back to her in the long run. Bless her.

At that point, I knew I wanted to go into fashion, just didn't know what in particular. This was the time the Devil Wears Prada book came out (and before the black community was really represented in editing/influencing roles in fashion, or at least before today). There's Naomi Campbell, Iman, Beverly Johnson (met her once, dope), Pat Cleveland, Diana Ross, Pat McGrath, Donyale Luna, Alek Wek (we took a selfie together once lol), Tyra Banks, and Miss J (; they were all I knew when it came to fashion icons/impact-ers who looked like me, black. Now this seems like already a lot of folks, with of course more, paving the way literally in this time. However, being the token in many schools of my youth military brat timeline, it was hard not to compare assemblies and assemblies of icons making their mark in an industry to just a hand full of black trail blazers, literal trail blazers, literally going 2,000% to scratch the surface of success. Not at all downgrading these amazing people, just acknowledging different groups are running different races here.

Today, I've seen so many more people from the black community, rising and shining and making a name for themselves, which if it wasn't for these folks and more mentioned prior, it would be a thing. To name a few, Lindsay Peoples Wagner (met her once, tongue tied), Chrissy Ford, CaSandra Diggs (fangirl whenever I see her), Tahirah Hairston, Christopher John Rogers, Aurora James (interned for her, fun times), Aissata and Mariama Camara (queens), Kerby, Elaine, and many many many more. And of course tons of friends who are entrepreneur bad-asses, inspiring the shit out of me. What metaphor can I describe this as? So, like imagine praying for rain for flowers to grow, but you don't know how much rain you can get, let alone what downpour looks like. Or there is rain out there, but it doesn't have the opportunity to pour, lmao. Then hitting college and now, you're literally walking in rain and watching the flowers blossom like all the time because the first drops came and led to fucking needing Noah's Ark.

Word vomit there, but you get what I feel and mean now. Representation, representation is the rain. Thankful and looking forward to being submerged and dancing in the continued growth of rain/representation. Young me is overjoyed. I wanted to be in fashion, just didn't know I'd be riding the sustainability route. Okay, so I first majored in Fashion Merchandising in college, wanting to take on the fashion publishing route. I love to edit things more than I like to write but here we are 3-5 times week with journal entries, **wink. But after one month of my fashion merchandising class, discussing supply chain and the lack of accountability in such, I had to switch my concentration from publishing to Responsible Business Practices. Then a year later, I switched from Fashion Merchandising completely to International Business..and still managed to graduate on time. For those who know, you know was a race.

But I gained a huge interest in international relations, policy, and global studies as my college career went on. Something my younger self couldn't have full understanding of. But cliché as it is, there's huge intersectionality with these worldly topics and fashion. For some, I'm preaching to the choir, which is why I'm feeling corny in saying this. For some, it maybe new; so, hey **wink. And yet I feel there is barely representation or acknowledgement for either community of either community, at least on the mainstream of things. I hope I'm making sense here. Like, there's legitimate sustainable fashion and then there's those who say they are. Legitimately sustainable as in continuously becoming better environmentally and or socially. Not 100%, no one is 100%. There are entities who support the fashion industry as true forces of change and then there are entities who present sustainable fashion, but to the extent of it being only an accessory and not an actual business stakeholder that it is whether it be environmentally and or socially. Maybe on the small scale, but not yet on the mainstream; I hope that makes sense and is not seen as condescending nor naive to say. But like, we're still transitioning of course. But like, in order to fully transform or bridge, one needs to be submersed in full education of such and not just the ribbons and surface.

That's just appropriation right there. Younger self wouldn't even know what appropriation means. Younger self didn't know shit.

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