i'm a lifer. what about you?
my sistah graduating from kindergarten. couldn't find my photo, but we looked the same @ that age, so it's all good. lol!
there really is no other explanation for it.
i've been sitting here trying to make sense of it and however much it surprises me, i just gotta face facts.
i am a lifelong student. at least, i need to be to progress to the next level.
alright, if this were a screenplay, that would be the opening voice over for the story of my life as an artist. then, it would flash back to 1977 when i graduated from kindergarten. my first time wearing a cap and gown with my parents and grand parents and granny snapping polaroids, i just knew I had really achieved something. life surely couldn't get any better than this, right?
cue montage. me completing the fifth grade and graduating from clara barton elementary school. me breezing through 8th grade and graduating from st. cecilia catholic school. me surviving the math, science and applied technology program, a strenuous a.p curriculum at martin luther king, jr. senior high school, and graduating from the 12th grade with honors. me, thanks to a full tuition and book scholarship, excelling at wayne state university's journalism institute for minorities and graduating with three newspaper job offers.
anyone with sense would have signed up for one of those print gigs and became the next brenda starr, right? (to find out who she is, young bloods, click the link. lol!) but no, what did i do? i packed up my car (actually my momma's 1991 plymouth acclaim, which i still own) and drove to graduate film school. chicago columbia college to be exact. then four long years later, i packed up momma's car again and trekked to the land of angels without even crossing the stage to receive my m.f.a. diploma.
you see, fam, by this point, i had experienced five graduations in my short lifetime. having not taken a break from education since preschool, i was sooo done with pomp and circumstance, i swore that if i ever had to learn anything again in a classroom, i wasn't going to learn it. lol!
smash cut to me, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, gawking up at the hollywood sign. lawdamercy….
folks say the school of hard knocks is the best teacher, right? well, i can testify, because i received a hell of a post-graduate education. so much so that five years later, i found myself sitting behind tavis smiley's desk as his executive assistant. sure, i had won the showtime black filmmakers grant and produced two award-winning for the network. and yes, despite my resistance to enter another classroom – i had completed the cosby program and had even taken a few meetings here and there for my screenplays.
anybody from the outside looking in — especially my momma and dem in detroit — could see i was making moves. but was i making progress? not so much.
i fo sho had plenty of folks to blame. the executives who didn't buy my scripts. my boss for being so taxing. my husband for trapping me in contented marital bliss.
they were all the culprits of my stagnation!
no doubt, it felt good holding someone else responsible for the quicksand i had stopped struggling against six years ago. but here lately, now that i have published my first novel and am writing stories for the screen again, i have come to a startling realization.
i'm responsible for all of it — my successes. my failures — are directly linked to one thing – my growth as an artist.
and i don't know about you, but the only way i grow is by learning and studying. like that six-year-old girl who first graduated from kindergarten, i have to continue to challenge myself.
if that means going to yet another seminar to listen to a panel, because i might learn something or connect with someone new…or starting a writer's group with two of my cosby program alums, so that we can help push each other to the next level..or subscribing to blogs, twitter streams and writing magazines – which i haven't done in years – and reading articles about or written by folks who have chosen the same path that i have…
whatsomeever i gotta do to continue to study and improve in my craft, fam? i'm doing it.
i'm a lifer. in for the long haul. and i refuse to let grass grow under my feet again.
what about you?
living by my pen,
monice.
p.s. now that i've stepped down from my soap box and got that off my chest, in my next blog, i'll share some of the new stuff i've learned in a new for maker believers post. keep writing!
