Endings, Beginnings, and Procrastination
I can't be the only one who struggles with this. 868 words | 3 mins 28 secs read time
This week my brain has been preoccupied with four things—writing my book, endings, beginnings, and procrastination, the Republican primary debate, and baby poop.
Let’s talk about baby poop first. I mean, who doesn’t love a good poop story.
The hidden world of baby poop
When you have a baby, people joke about how intimately you will come to know the ins and outs of your baby’s defecation. It’s absolutely true. I am keenly attuned to what goes in and what comes out of my baby girl.
However, what’s left out of the conversation is how difficult pooping becomes for babies once food is introduced. It’s gut-wrenching to watch (pun intended).
I’ve never felt more sorry for Anisa than when she is in agony because her GI system is just starting to adjust to what her body needs to do to extract the nutrients from food and get rid of the rest. For the most part, I hold her helplessly as her system takes over in what seems to be the most uncomfortable way.
This has led me down a Google spiral. So much so that now the ads being offered up to me are pretty much focused on one thing. Where we have landed to ease things is prune juice, prune puree, and lots of hydration. But if you have any other suggestions, I’m all ears—anything to help my baby girl.
Endings, beginnings, and procrastination
I’m not much of a procrastinator. I like to get things done except when what I have to do makes me anxious. The anxiety of the task makes me avoid doing the task, and that avoidance looks like procrastination. I say this because I’ve been avoiding something big for a while now.
Woke Up Worthy is my coaching brand for women of color. It feels like all the work I’ve done in the past has led to this business. I want to go all in. But to do so, I need to let go of Legally Bold. My baby. My first coaching biz.
Through Legally Bold, I’ve been helping lawyers find better-fit jobs through career coaching since 2018. Today, it’s at a place where it feels good, and my signature coaching process consistently delivers results.
At the same time, I’m more than a coach for lawyers. I have clients whose work has absolutely nothing to do with the legal field. And through Woke Up Worthy, I can expand my reach and work to serve professional women of color in all sectors. This requires focus, and while Legally Bold has served me well, I know it’s time to let go.
My anxiety around this topic will end soon. I’ll let you know when I’ve let go officially. I can’t share the date I have in my head yet because…well…I’m anxious. But you’ll know soon enough.
The Republican primary debate
If you want to see a masterclass on gaslighting a country, watch the first Republican primary debate for the 2024 election. The retelling of history and outright refusal to answer the actual question felt next-level and scary. I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing or hearing.
My feelings about it all can be summed up with a few social posts:
My Book
I’ve mentioned a few times that I am in the process of writing a book. That process has led me down some pretty interesting research paths, and I came across this bit in Ebonyjanice’s All Black Girls Are Activists.
It’s from a 1918 article in the Greenville News, a newspaper in Greenville, South Carolina. The article discusses a city ordinance designed to force black women to work even if they don’t need to or want to. The article states:
A number of complaints have come to members of Council of negro women who are not at work and who refuse employment when it is offered them, the result being that it is exceedingly difficult for [white] families who need cooks and laundresses to get them. Wives of colored soldiers, getting a monthly allowance from the Government, have…declined work on the ground that they can get along without working…Others have flatly refused without giving a reason whatsoever… The proposed ordinance will require them all to carry a labor identification card showing that they are regularly and usefully employed, and the labor inspectors and police will be charged with duty of rigidly enforcing the law.
In other words, it’s okay for white women in South Carolina to stay at home and take care of their homes and families with help, but black women don’t have that right. Even if they can afford to solely do the hard work of caretaking for their own homes, who will do the work white families don’t want to do if we don’t force black women to do it?
Given the codification of the abuse and misuse of black women’s labor, Tricia Hersey’s Rest as Resistance movement feels that much more important.
So let this remind you, my dear women of color, that you have done more than enough. You deserve rest. Take it.
In power and solidarity,
Toya
P.S. If you’d like to work with me via Legally Bold before time runs out, here’s the link to schedule a free coaching session.