Wisdom from Toronto

Happy Tuesday! If you're a normal person, you're almost halfway through the week, if you're me, or anyone with an abnormal schedule that is the same as mine (lol) today is your Thursday which gives Wednesday/Hump Day even MORE joy because it's my Friday.

I'm dancing in my seat.

Anyway, a couple years ago, I made my way to Toronto for one of my most memorable summer experiences yet, Caribana. While the memories there were spectacular (it seriously is something I must do again) it also brought a couple unexpected ah-ha moments in the form of an art display…and also in just the city itself.

The display was prints and quotes from Andrew Zuckerman's book, Wisdom. I don't remember where I was in Toronto at the time, but I am eternally grateful that I made the decision to walk into wherever I was and take in what was there for me to see. I have a few favorites (of course) but I had to share my top two with you.

I don't think there's anything more meaningful (aside from Scripture) to my life than these two things. The admission that the heart is what matters most of all (actually something that coincides with faith) and the idea that there are only two stages in life, growth or decay. Both of these things are applicable no matter where you are in life, the state of your heart will change everything in your life, what you value, what you care for, what you chase after, be it money or righteousness. The idea that standing still is decay is something that some people don't always want to recognize: becoming complacent, being absolutely satisfied with exactly where you are is almost the same as giving up - because there's always something more, whether it's getting better at your tasks or simply giving more of yourself to it or to others. There's always room for growth and the desire to see that happen in our lives separates those that achieve greatness in their life from those that will settle into their comfort zone.

As a final note: Toronto, you have my heart. I will have to come back, because any place that puts ads like this one on the walls is a place that I want to be. 

It's my hope that words of inspiration will soon be plastered all over the place. Words that encourage people to love one another, to give to one another, to care for their fellow man not expecting anything in return…to truly make man kind.

Have a happy day you guys - SMILE AT SOMEONE! 

An ode to my first home.

Humble beginnings, man I tell ya.

For me, moving into my first "home" or at least my first apartment was a big step. I've spent my entire life surrounded by people at basically all parts of my life and now, for a little over a year, I've been alone.

This weekend was one of the most stressful and emotional times I've experienced while living here. Who knew being alone could be so painful and lonely? Not me.

I've lived the majority of my life moving around, making new friends, and for some reason, I thought this move would be just like all the rest, a standard, pick up and go. I understood at my core that I wouldn't know anyone in the area, that it would basically be college all over again, but this was different than college all over again, because in college we're all alone, we're all starting somewhere new and while some of us came in with friends, many of us didn't know that many and we were all wide open for new people to invade our most private and precious spaces.

It's different now.

This home will be one of the hardest things to leave once it's time to go. Sure, it's a tiny one bedroom apartment, but it's my first place where I had to struggle with some inconvenient truths, like the fact that there is a whole lot of month when you're in your first job. That sometimes, the best thing you can do is sit on a couch and cry. That painting can be very therapeutic…and so can cooking when it comes out right.

In this apartment, I got a full grasp of the kindness of others. At least 2/3 of the things that are in my apartment were given to me and while the walls may be bare, the love that fills this place does so much more. In this apartment, I've had people come, pour out their hearts and grow close to one another, it's here that I truly learned compassion, it's here that I truly experienced transparency.

It was here that I cried out to God, screamed about life, fought with Him about what I believed and why I was here. Tried to uncover what I truly cared about and what I thought was right. It was here that He met me and taught me so much more about love and acceptance, mercy and faith. It was here that I recommitted, here that I sat and read my Bible and journaled. It was here that I changed.

This small tender space has seen me grow in ways that others couldn't. It's watched me learn how to organize my bills, clean, play guitar, and learn to live without…and to be content in that.

Home sweet home.

In my short 23 years of life, I've been unsure of many things. I wasn't positive that I would be able to do this, but I knew that I didn't have a choice and that when it came down to it, I would have to buck up and face the situations given to me. Moving to Panama City Beach with a laptop, a suitcase full of clothes, and an air mattress was one of the boldest moves of my life. It had one guarantee: an opportunity to follow my dream, but nothing else. It did not promise me friends that would be like family, it didn't promise me happiness, it didn't promise me fulfillment, it promised a chance…so I took it.

And for that Panama City Beach will always have a piece of my heart.

The beauty of muchness

Happy, happy Friday. What a week it has been, full of calm moments and a couple incredibly exciting ones that I hope to be able to write about later, but as it stands, the timing simply isn't right! However there are some things that simply cannot be held under wraps forever…one of them being the most charming of mentors that I've gained while living in Panama City Beach: Ms. Eugenia - henceforth and forever more known as Mama E.

Last night over homemade tortilla soup garnished with Cooler Ranch Doritos and shredded cheese we talked about any and everything before I had a miniature revelation about my nature.

I have an adorable amount of muchness in my 5'7" frame. The term, muchness made popular by Alice in Wonderland has been defined officially by another blogger as this:

The innocence and imagination that appears in the hearts of young children. As the children grow older, they become more mature and gain responsibilities.

 

What exactly does it mean to lose your muchness? Is it simply growing older and losing who you were as a child? Is it coming to terms that reality isn't as great as we thought it would be when we originally said we couldn't wait to be grown-ups? I don't know what expectations I had as a child, I knew I wanted to be great, I knew I wanted to have a distinct effect on the world, but most importantly, I never wanted to lose my heart. I never wanted to lose my compassion for people, because even at a young age, I knew of the importance of giving to others and loving them with all you had.

As I've said multiple times (I'm pretty sure I mentioned it yesterday now that I think about it) my job has given me the opportunity of a lifetime: to spend my days meeting people, traveling, writing, and, most importantly, learning. For that reason - truthfully just that last one is enough - I have maintained my muchness, kept it at a distinct level of childlike wonder because there is always so much more to learn.

When Alice went back down the rabbit hole a second time, the Mad Hatter makes it very clear that she is not as she once was, she has changed and in that change she has lost the ability to fulfill her purpose. Every now and then, I wonder if I've dialed back my muchness, if I've lost important qualities that made me who I was a child. I believe that a big part of my muchness growing up was found in hope and being an adult has stripped away some of my naive beliefs about the world, the things I learn many times has caused me to lose faith in the goodness of people. Thankfully, over the past year, I've met a number of individuals that have shown me despite the uglies in the world, there is still many desirable things that breed positivity in this world.

Honestly, it's a scary thought, growing older and losing the very essence of who you were, or who you are. So, I've decided on my days off to explore my muchness…to go on adventures, to explore and be as childlike as possible because, if I were to lose all my muchness, I would lose a ginormous part of me…and it's a part that I don't think I ever want to be without!

Life comes at you fast

This is me in a state of bliss. No, seriously. I love my job.

You know what insanity is? Realizing that in 5 days, you'll officially be two years out of college, in your dream job, living on the beach. Honestly, it's the best kind of insanity there is out there and every day I sit back and thank God for the blessing of being where I am in life.

I know I talk about how thankful I am for the opportunities I have, how grateful I am for a chance to learn every day at my job, to not be stuck behind a desk 8 hours of the day, but sometimes I really have to let it truly sink in that I have the best job on the planet for me.

However, like I've said in that past, there are some definite downsides to this and one of those downsides came up in the struggle of covering the Boston Marathon bombings.

Breaking news is a big deal in so many ways to people who watch the news but even more so for those that "make" the news. The world we live in is so different than it ever was and I'm still waiting for television news to figure out it's place with the scope of what viewers expect changing so much.

The other day I had a gchat conversation with a friend of mine who said he didn't understand why reporters from CNN didn't get any closer to where police were. Earlier last week, I had another friend comment on how slow television stations were at reporting the facts and how he get most of his information from blogs and Reddit on the tragic situation. Then another friend made her own statements about how the news is potentially putting our police officers in danger for reporting things they're hearing over the scanners and whatnot.

Okay.

First, reporting things heard over the scanners is just a huge no. There's that. There's no if's, and's, or but's about that. Period.

Now that that's out the way, I feel like it's important for my industry to take a step back and look at everything that happened wrong in our coverage. I've learned that as much as I want to be first on a story, it's 1 MILLION TIMES more important to be accurate…but how do we reconcile that in a time when many of our viewers think they're entitled to information?

Well…I have one opinion to the whole thing. Viewers are entitled to one thing and one thing only: facts. As a reporter my job isn't to speculate, it's not to make assumptions about anything, but to investigate and get to the bottom of the issue. There's a reason reporters prefer to get emotional sound bites from people versus facts: we can say the facts, I'm not here to represent my subject's feelings, plain and simple.

You can't compare television news to a blog because, generally speaking, most people spouting things off on the Internet aren't triple checking their sources for accuracy. We aren't one in the same, so - to all my friends asking us to stoop to that level - well, you see how that ends up. To my other friend that suggested we get closer, well…after being told by police for lesser stories to back up from a scene or move further away from a location - for my own safety - I will just say: no.

My job isn't to change my standards for reporting to satisfy the viewer. My job is to get facts from multiple sources...or better yet, get the source saying it on camera to attribute what's being said, that way it doesn't blow up in my face should it be wrong.

If CNN had been right with their exclusive report, everyone would know and everyone would probably move on from it, but because they were wrong, it won't go away so easily; people may not remember who reported it first, but they will remember who reported it wrong.

Choosing your battles

Every day has it's own challenges.

I promise, this is one of the first things that goes through my mind as I type in the code to go into work every single day, that every day has it's separate challenge and they will come in various forms. One day it may be a confrontation with a coworker, the next it could just be a story that doesn't have many visual elements, and other days it's just a lack of motivation…but the most important thing that I have to try and focus on is that each day will have it's own battle so dragging my feelings about former battles rather than picking up the lessons along the way will do nothing to help in the fight.

Breathe in, breathe out.

The beauty of not letting every tiny fight turn into a big one that becomes a burden is simple: you live better. You're happier and have a tendency to be more aware of what's going on around you and what situations to simply avoid.

I have a problem with picking my battles wisely because I have an even more annoying problem with wanting to be right. It's not so much that I want to be right for gloating or to make someone else wrong, but I want to be right because I don't like being in the wrong. I'm almost positive I can find a way to justify any action that I take, and while some days I can be honest and say the action - or lack of action - was because I wasn't didn't do what I should have done, other days, I have a reason…and frankly, my reasons are generally pretty logical, but if there's one thing I've learned from working in news: logic doesn't always win.

Crazy. I know.

Sometimes protocol is more important than anything else and while it may not seem to be the best, it's not the worker bee's call to make. I'm learning more and more every day and it seems that being a worker bee has never been my strong suit, that said I don't think it has to be for me to be successful, I believe being creative is an important asset to have in your back pocket, but when your creativity gets in the way of your productivity, that's never a positive, and then maybe you've got to reevaluate your priorities.

You live and you learn, oh Alanis Morissette, how you do speak the truth on this warm, sunny morning.

P.S. Jagged Little Pill was/is and probably always will be one of my favorite albums and has been since 1995 - let's not talk about a 6 year old singing "All I Really Want" like it's a life anthem.

Catch up!

Ahh, it's been over a week since I last posted. Life has been so intense this past week, a lot of work with everything that happened in Boston, a lot of change, a few revelations that have put me on track for some immense personal growth, a newly clean apartment (if you've ever been inside my apartment you need to come back - no seriously, it's that clean) and a lot of getting my life together - at least getting organized.

So what has the past week been in a nutshell?

Police car rides.
Perks of Being a Wallflower. (#Redbox52 coming on that soon)
Netflix - which means House of Cards.
Cooking.
Motorcycles.
Jazz/Cajun/Parrothead Festival.
Jurassic Park in 3D.
Brunch.
Prayer.

And what have I learned?

The best thing to do with a moment isn't to try and capture it, it's to grow in it, revel in it, embrace it, live it. Too often we get so caught up trying to get something on film for Instagram or Vine or Twitter or Facebook or Tumblr - or here - that we miss out. Obviously it's not just that, I mean, I don't think there's ever been a photo taken that truly captures the joy of a moment unless it's taken at the perfect moment and those moments can be so hard to catch.

That being said, I'm taking a challenge to stay off of Facebook and Twitter for at least a month. Twitter won't be so hard, Facebook is a major time waster and so addictive (I mean, I have to see so-and-so's wedding photos and this couple just had a baby and I love reliving college through my former resident's current adventures!) but sometimes you need to take a step back.

Maybe it's just me, but I have a major perception issue sometimes. I seem to forget that when I'm on a social network, more likely than not, it's because I'm bored…and don't you know, when you're bored at work and all you're seeing are pictures of someone's awesome honeymoon or their late spring break getaway, it's very easy to get disenchanted with whatever it is that you're doing.

So, in order to have a more perfect outlook, I'm catching up on my life by tuning out the chatter of everyone else's.

If I need to know what's going on in someone's life, the best thing to do is probably make a phone call anyway!

Happy Tuesday y'all.

Tackling the "Accidental Racist"

Alright. I'm going to be completely frank when I say this: I enjoy country music. I do. It's a recent thing that happened when I moved to the Panhandle. I'd also like to add that this song is a very good representation of everything this area represents to me - don't let our sandy white beaches fool you! While spring break and summer vacation bring my dearly beloved northerners to this area, the vast majority of the people who live here are alllllll about southern pride.

If you haven't heard the song, you can listen to it here.

Now I can tell you that if Brad Paisley had done this song by himself...it would be a hit. IT WOULD. Country music has a reputation of saying whatever it wants just as brashly as rap or R&B, but they do it in a way that makes their listeners smile. While Miguel might sing "How Many Drinks" in his song, Joe Nichols will put it - jokingly of course - as "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off," you see what I mean? It's all the same, they're just better at making it sound nice and not predatory.

The basic thing to remember with country music is that these musicians get away with a lot. I mean...have you heard Jason Aldean rap? It's painful...but once he starts to sing, I can forgive his completely idiotic decision to even attempt to rap.

So...about this song.

This is not the first song to tackle "southern pride" realistically, if Paisley had set out to just make the contemporary southern white man's anthem, this would be it. You would hear guys in cowboy boots and ten gallon hats telling their black friends that "Paisley gets them," more likely than not. How do I know that? Because while everyone that I'm friends with in the black community is up in arms, I've heard quite a few people that are actually happy to hear it right in Bay County.

Paisley takes an incredibly huge topic and boils it down into a song that, without LL Cool J, would probably just be background music...but then he added LL Cool J to the mix...and that is where the problem started.

Whether it's LL's terrible rapping or his off the cuff "adlibs" and rap lyrics, the song, already destined to make plenty of people cringe, goes on a downward spiral and doesn't stop.

I want you to get paid but be a slave I never could
Feel like a new fangled Django, dodging invisible white hoods 

RIP Robert E. Lee but I've gotta thank Abraham Lincoln for freeing me, know what I mean 

If you don't judge my do-rag, I won't judge your red flag.
If you don't judge my gold chains, I'll forget the iron chains.

There aren't words that I could use to describe just how...I literally, I can't come up with words to describe how I feel about LL Cool J's participation in this. It's a situation where, I'm at the intersection of complete-and-utter-shock and absolute confusion.

WHO TOLD YOU THIS WAS A GOOD MOVE LL?
WHO LIED TO YOU AND HATES YOU SO MUCH?

Whether its just the fact that he's a terrible rapper or the way he took something so big and turned it into...I don't even know what to call it. All I can say is the minute I heard him start talking, I wanted it to end. It being, the song, his career, his participation in music as a whole, his acting career too...I don't understand. To take something this big and trivialize it, make it into a punchline...I'm lost.

Is Paisley to blame? Of course he is...it's his song, but that's country music for you - they're out here telling stories and whatnot and that's just how they work...but this new operation with all this hip-hop coming into play is not working. I'm not sure if it ever will, but if this is a sign of the times to come, I'm not pleased. The thing is, Paisley is speaking how he feels: if I were to tell you how many times I've had the conversation with someone from my church or in the community about the "red flag" and what it represents to them, I'm sure my black friends would recoil in horror, the same way I did when I used to see it plastered to back of pickup trucks in high school.

This is nothing new.

While it represents one thing to me, it represents something very different to them and while we will probably never see eye to eye on this, whatever Paisley and LL were trying to cook up to start the conversation was a bad move.

What do you think of "Accidental Racist" - am I being too critical?