Whyte Noise: The Sound Of Silence

Loud silence
Fleeting solidarity
We can take no more
12:00 a.m. a new day 

Back to your regularly scheduled program
Post your lattes
Your DIYs
And your kids
Another generation unable to speak
Seasoned with a pic of a vibrant sunrise
While cropping out the burning streets below
Your privilege allowing you to lift your veil
While we are still shrouded in darkness
Yet your laziness expects me to be your guiding light
Silence
Ah, I love the sound of white silence in the morning
Your sudden screams of deflection
"Omg look at the thugs looting"
Followed by our tired sighs
"Omg look at the white guys in disguise
Who break and destroy

Only to run away when the heat starts to rise"
Silence
We'll be right back to your regularly scheduled program of tone deafness
Ill timed quotes
MLK with a side of Gandhi and a dash of John Lennon
A little James Baldwin if you nasty
You're so woke
Then your loud and proud "buts"
Drowning out the voices of the unheard

"Stop! I'm being oppressed"

"That black man wants me to follow the rules"

Oh, the humanity

Clutch of the pearls
You master of oppression, you
Silence
Silence while you steal black culture and loot black lives
You praise the style and moves Justin Timberlake
As if Usher didn't do it back in '98
Pay the copycat
And when the people whose culture you stole asks you to have their back
Just do the minimum

Give yourself a pat on the back

Then turn the sound down 

And bring the silence back (Yeah!)
Appropriators don't know how to act
Change the channel
Another murder porn is on

A world premiere

Then you begin to sing your favorite songs
"Well He Must've Done Something Wrong"

"We Don't Have the Full Story"

And the #1 smash hit
"He Didn't Comply"
Outage ensues
Another moment of silence
Followed by a rerun of the tone deaf chronicles
#AllLivesMatter 20/20 special edition
Meanwhile mere objects are more valuable than mine 
Did you say that TV was $599 and designer handbags worth hundreds?
That sounds pretty steep when compared to the price black life
Target becomes your importance
Over the target on my back
Proof all lives do not matter
If my value is less than that of a coat rack
You kneel not in solidarity
But instead on the neck of our existence
Suffocating
Mother's without sons
Father's bury daughters
We can take no more
But I'm sorry
Did we interrupt your baseball game with a revolution?
There it is again
The deafening silence

I'll let you get back to your regularly scheduled program

-Asia Aneka Anderson, "Whyte Noise: The Sound of Silence" 2020(c)

A Look Inside My Creative Mind: Grieving the Unknown

         **LATE POST** I uploaded my latest video to my channel a week ago, or more. It took me a while because with the new layout of blogger it would never populate my video even if I searched it with the link. I had to go back to the old style of Blogger to do so (That would've been helpful if I had known that a week ago).
          In my latest video (which I've labeled with a **trigger warning**) I'm discussing a loss that I've written about several times before. I recorded this video the day after what would've been my baby's first birthday. I'm discussing my grieve process from that moment of miscarriage to even now as I still try to navigate my way through life after expecting it to change in such a great monumental way.

The Ramblings Inside My Creative Mind: It's All Part of the Plan

        So I'm sitting here in quarantine and the creativity still ain't hitting me like I want it to. I'm working from home and business is slow. Maybe watch Netflix? Meh. Can't really focus on it. Maybe read a book? Meh. Once I start to get into it I get a call and in the end figure it' not worth it unless I can curl up, get cozy, and dive in completely. 

        One day after getting off the phone I scroll through Instagram and come across a horror account that I follow that posted a short clip of a horror video game. I got a little curious and headed to the comments to see if anyone mentioned the title of the game. A few had and I went to Google to search away. Down the rabbit hole I went. I came across a YouTuber that I will admit I quickly became obsessed with, and that's Corey Kenshin. 

        I've been glued to Corey's channel for a good month now and let me tell you that he's actually got me inspired again. Seeing his work makes me want to create. It makes me want to keep pushing. I know that sounds odd. He's a gamer that makes videos of himself playing mostly horror games or posting his #SpookyScarySunday of scary videos and I'm out here trying to be a writer and with my channel content being much more personal, intimate, and maybe, at some times, gloomy. I get that the content doesn't match, but I'm mesmerized at the growth. He's been humble, creative, and totally himself the entire time he's had his channel. He hasn't had to put on a fake persona or make some kind of gimmick to get people to like and follow him. I dig that. And although what we are doing is total opposite the goal is the same. He's reaching people by being himself and doing what he loves and that's what I hope to accomplish with mine.

        You can see that I've been trying to be more active. There is a small drawback to that. When it comes to the topics that I talk about they are much deeper and close to my heart. So when it comes to my channel there may not be an everyday upload or even every week, as sometimes these topics do take a lot out of me. 

        I do aspire to be that, at least, once a week person. That being said I'm taking my time learning how to edit, create thumbnails, add music, and all that good stuff. I'm starting that with a new video I recorded a few days ago. This video is a lot more personal than the few videos I have up now. With this topic being so close to my heart I'm taking my time with it. I want it to be right for right now. My channel will grow with my ability, but as of right now I want this to be the best to my ability as it is today.

        As my channel grows, I hope to incorporate better edits. For instance animated intros and things like that. I plan to do things like that for videos I may do when I talk about my writing or any projects that I have that are writing related. When it comes to my videos that are more me speaking to you about my life and experiences I hope to keeps those more subtle. I've actually made a few intro and outro edits for this new video I'm editing. Those will be at the bottom of this post. As time goes on I don't see myself like a Corey Kenshin with 6M subs. I just don't think I talk about the sort of things that 6M people would want to hear... and honestly nor would I want to. Just the thought of it makes me nervous to have 100 people hear me bear my soul let alone 6M. But here I go on this journey. Baring my soul for all of you to see whether it be through me or my characters. Either way it is a piece of me. 

*Let me know what you think of these edits I have for my next video** For whatever reason I cannot add the outro gif here. Check it out on my IG*

A Look Inside My Creative Mind: Does Trauma Cause Memory Loss?

     I finally got around to uploading another video. Recently I've been thinking back on a chaotic part of my life and how that, now, I have trouble recalling some of the things that brought me some sort of calm during that time period. I'm a big pop culture buff and a lot of the things I enjoyed around the time period of 2008-2015 have somehow slipped my mind, with the exception of movies, bands, etc that were HUGE then. I made this video to discuss how this has effected me. 

The Ramblings Inside My Creative Mind: Adapt, Adopt, and Improve

                         I started this blog in 2014. I got inspired to start on Blogger from seeing my best friend post her amazing artwork projects and vegan recipes among other things. I had so much of my work that I had back logged laying around in tons of journals and folders. Starting this blog offered me an outlet to share all of this work I had created. It offered me some inspiration that I had been lacking at that point in my life. Finding this space gave me the inspiration to branch out and create new and funny ways to tell my stories like my "Tragic Tales" or more recently "The Ramblings Inside My Creative Mind". It gave me the opportunity to talk about topics that are important to me in ways that I hope others can relate to. I bare my soul in these topics instead of disguising myself in my characters. With my increasing need to bare my soul I got inspired to start an YouTube channel in connection with my blog. I'm still in my baby stage when it comes to my channel, but this blog gave me the confidence and motivation to take that next step. 

      I say all this because, slowly but surely, I've made progress with this blog. I may not have always known which direction I was going with it but I knew I was at least going forward. There came the Facebook page, the IG page, the YT channel, and now, my most recent step, as of last week, was buying my domain. I started with AsiaAnekaWrites.blogspot.com way back in 2014 and now I'm announcing that my domain is InsideMyCreativeMind.com. This is mine. This is my baby. I will continue to nurture her and watch her grow into something beautiful. For the people out there who take the time to read my work and watch me rant. Thank you. I appreciate your input and your warmth. Here's to a productive quarantine. I'm currently working on beefing up a poetry book to publish as well as possibly publishing my first short story. The on to much bigger and better things beyond that.

Thank you so so much for your support. 

       SCHOOL. IS. OVER.  Let us rejoice in the fact that I don't have to look at another equation, have to find out a Y axis, or find out what x is when I'm still confused as to why x moved over to math in the first place. I will say that I wish I had pay more attention to my last biology course so that maybe I could understand more of this virus business, but at the same time, by that last semester my brain was super fried. It is also worth mentioning that I started out the year with a new full time job where I DON'T have to work weekends and I DON'T have to work nights. A win-win.
     I say all of this to say that now I feel like I have the time to write more. Now I will say that with this pandemic going on my anxiety is all over the place. That means that my inspiration for new ideas is kinda shot because my brain is going into overdrive and overthinking about dying. So panic + creativity= mush. That's a mathematic equation that I can understand. Several months ago I submitted to a contest that was looking for poetry books. I didn't win, but I still kept the collection. Lately I've been trying to reach deep down for new material to add to the collection as well as get together some oldies but goodies so that I can test out self publishing. So far I feel like I have I have a good collection together. Right now I'm just taking my time to put it in an order that I like to publish it. Once that's all said and done then I can go back to writing my novels that I've been slowly working on for the past 72 years. 2020 might be the shittiest year of all time, but it may be the year that I can finally get my work out there.

         December of 2019 was my last semester at Sinclair Community College. I received my degree in the mail early March of this year. I spent the beginning of 2020 making plans for graduation weekend. I thought of how I'd find the right dress to wear under my cap and gown, getting my nails done that weekend (even though I am not a girl who is really into those sorts of things), and had a gift certificate already purchased for a massage that I was saving for just this moment. It would be a weekend for me. A weekend to celebrate all that I had worked so hard for, for so many years. All the years of putting school on hold because life got in the way or too complicated had finally come to an end. There was finally an end to that chapter. Then, as we all know, 2020 is the year that the world decided to fall apart. Without hesitation my school cancelled graduation before any lock down orders, self quarantines, or peaking U.S. death tolls.
            A week before graduation I made my bi weekly trip to Walmart for groceries decked out in gloves and a mask. Walking among people dressed the same. A scene out of a Twilight Zone. I came across this plaque for 2020 on a display for graduates that looked sparse. That was due to either 2020 grads buying these things in order to hold on to some small celebratory moment of this graduation season that will never happen or perhaps there wasn't much to begin with for fear that, with all ceremonies cancelled, that it wouldn't sell. I stared at it contemplating if it was worth it to buy until I finally made the decision that there was still something to celebrate. There was still an accomplishment that was made that should be honored.
         Although on May 3rd I didn't get to walk across any stage or get to hear my family and friends cheer for me I still want to hold this moment high. It deserves as such. Perhaps 2020 will make a turn for the better to where I am able to come together with family and friends to mark this moment. I'll look forward to it. For now my graduation weekend will consist of me doing my own mani pedi, baking a cake, and lounged in front of Netflix with some fancy face mask on while I sip from a fruity drink. It is not ideal by any means, but this is how you make due in the chaotic world dealing with a pandemic.
   For all the grads of 2020 whether it be high school, university, grad school, etc do not let the state of the world damper your moment. You made it. We made it. This is one chapter in our story. Did the chapter end how we wanted to go? No, but really good stories hardly ever go the way you want them to. One thing is for sure this will be a graduation we will never forget.

Graduates, I toast to you!