Hi, to my old and new followers!

“In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.”
― Junot Díaz

What a journey I have had since 2011. I left my tenure track job. Got married. Soon divorced. Returned to teach as an adjunct for 5 years and finally landed a new tenure-track position.

It’s near the end of my first semester at University at Albany! My students (100+), department and campus colleagues, and the many staff and administrators I’ve met have all made me feel quite welcome here. I live downtown right near Washington Park. Take the bus, no ready to buy a car because I want a home. And all is well by most accounts, especially the fact that I am no longer adjuncting. Power to the people who still do!!

Around this time of the semester, I try to take my self on — no waiting for the new year to adjust my habits to meet my fitness aims in body, work, and career! From the Thanksgiving break to the last day of classes, it’s normal for students as well as faculty to feel the drag of the semester. We are often slug through to the end of the semester without hope or any lightness. For the last three years, I have deliberately taken a different approach and tried to inspire others to join me. “When the going gets tough, the tough get going!” as the old saying goes.

I invite my students to consider that feeling tired and overwhelmed is a choice! While everyone else complains, why not get on with life. Be the change that makes you feel a little lighter, a bit prouder right now — no delay!

Younger Next Year, Environmentally Fit

After starting to read Younger Next Year* For Women (Live Like You’re 50 – Strong, Fit, Sexy – Until You’re 80 and Beyond), I learned a great deal about getting your heart-rate up to burn calories and avoiding bone loss with weight lifting after 50. So, I joined Orange Fitness Theory two weeks ago.

Orange Fitness Theory is a group-oriented, heart-rate monitored fitness block. An hour of rowing machines, weight lifting and treadmills that if you meet a certain measure will burn calories for 36 hours after. I need group workouts and I love the workout! No time to think about things once you start. Plus, I realize I am much more reliable collaborating on fitness rather than going solo. And I don’t lose my momentum when I travel to Brooklyn or my hometown in Maryland. OTF has interval fitness centers everywhere! I’ve already begun losing weight and intend to keep up this level of fitness until I can’t do it anymore. I want to be younger next year like the book title says and intend to do that!

The upside of this intense plan is feeling charged up all day after the morning workouts. I don’t have as much, if any, brain fog I was experiencing after moving to Albany. Surely some of this was due to the stress of “new culture” shock — moving someplace new gets me every time.

The other upside is feeling mentally inspired and creative. I’ve been writing alot…as well as singing and performing a bit more. As my scholarship/research agenda blossoms in my new position, I realized I left my blog here unattended.   Since I also have a blog on Medium, I decided it’s time to retire one and focus on the other.  Bye, bye WordPress!

My new posts will be on Medium

Past blog posts will remain live. I’ll return to retrieve things, but if you want to continue to follow my writing, follow my Medium blog where you can re-read my Lemonade blog post that got a little attention and will soon become a chapter in an edited volume.

Follow me to Medium! It also is connected to my TEDFellows blogging (sometimes one and the same).  I’ll be writing about music, race and gender, technology as well as the unintended consequences of these intersections and resulting oppressions as they affect marginalized groups like tween and teen black girls.

I hope my writing, my voice, and my contributions inspire you enough to follow me from WordPress to Medium into 2018.

WordPress was kind to me: I have had almost 6 different blogs here including my Success with the Opposite Blog from way back. This blog music and the bottomlines of race, gender and technology alone ends with 190 posts, 136 comments, 112 followers, and 41,464 hits!

Check out a some of my most popular or favorite posts from the past again (not necessarily in any particular order):

• To Own or Not to Own…My Body
  “Today’s word to explore through ideas and quotes is “own” — as in “I own my body” which seems fitting since … October 17th is National Love Your Body Day. I began to examine the definitions of ownership — the act, state or right of possessing something — in this case, over or around one’s body.”
• Will Black Girls Make it Rain, too? #ContentCreation #YouTube
  “We know from developmental cognitive psychology that young boys and girls, once they know what their gender is, are very motivated to be the best example of their gender. And if the examples of femininity around you are a sort of tarted up, pornographied sexuality, then that’s what you’re psyched to be.”
• “How Can I Have 1.9 Million Followers and Feel…This Alone?”
  “A fellow black feminist scholar pointed this video of by a so-called professional twerker who appears to be “white,” and claims to the the “most famous booty shaker.” Why? Because she earns 6-figures making videos on Vine.”
• 30 Pages Deep: The End of YouTube’s Archive
  “This morning, I went to search for a few videos to download as evidence of local black girls’ presence twerking on YouTube immediately after Hurricane Katrina–YouTube’s launch and Hurricane Katrina both happened in 2005. What I found startled me … it was impossible to replicate the search we did in June of 2014.”
• BROADCAST!: Are Black Girls’ Voices Out-of-Print…Like Our Books?
• Useful YouTube Tips…Disable Suggested/Related Videos Grid

If you read any of these, leave a comment or share! Also let me know how you’re doing, what you’re doing, and perhaps how we might collaborate to build on things we both care about.

So long!

So long! Hope to hear from you on Medium. Here’s to the next phase of sharing my writing online!  I offer a parting quote — I love quotes and dictionaries — for the upcoming new year.

To 2018 and being younger or more fit and wiser and more evolved!! xoxo, Kyra