Thoughts – Forever Thugnacious

Excess Access

Between numerous social media accounts, cellphones, home-phones, and work phones, it’s practically impossible to be disconnected from anyone. From the time I was 9 years old when I first joined Facebook, AOL Instant Messenger, and received my first cell phone, there was almost never a moment where one could not reach me if they wanted. Over the years I had developed a dependency to these lines of communication which only got worse with every new social media account I created. Not many days went by without me checking or posting on my social media or picking up my phone every few minutes just to see if I had received any messages.

Everything changed in 2016 when I went a few months without a working phone and had to rely on my iPod and WiFi for communication. I went hours without being connected and at first it drove me insane. When I wasn’t wondering about who had reached out to me, I was worried that there could be an emergency at any moment and I wouldn’t know. Over time, I had gotten accustomed to being disconnected and realized it was incredibly freeing. Always being connected to lines of communication comes with a lot of pressure to respond in a timely fashion, and it was something I didn’t notice until I had no control over my response times.

By the time I had gotten a working phone again, I was so used to responding only when I could, that the habit remained even when the pressure to respond crept back. Without my cellphone, I had relearned the art of being present and rediscovered a life that didn’t revolve around a phone screen. I noticed just how much more time I had to myself and just how much more involved I became in every moment whether I was spending time with friends or spending time on my hobbies.

After re-launching my blog, my phone became more of a tool than a communication device which meant I was constantly using it to create content. The problem was I couldn’t open my phone to do anything productive without seeing all of my unread messages and notifications. After months of struggling to focus with a non-stop barrage of notifications forever shifting my attention, I decided that I needed to make a change. These days I live with my phone on “Do Not Disturb”, all push notifications turned off, and all social media apps (including messages) on the second page of my social app folder. This way, I can still dedicate time to the things I find important without any distractions.

We have gotten to a point where we neglect what we’re currently doing and direct our attention to whoever’s post, DM, or text we’re reading. We’ve been living a life of split focus and half presence so that others don’t feel disrespected by having been left on “seen” and we don’t feel like we’ve missed out because we missed a post, text, or call. It doesn’t seem like a big deal to provide everyone with responses in a timely fashion, or catch up on the latest posts so often, until you consider just how much time you are dedicating to other people vs how much time you are dedicating towards yourself and the present moment. Staying connected is important but not at the expense of experiencing the here and now. Everyone deserves time to shut down and disconnect from the world so they can reconnect with themselves, including you.

Be conscious of your phone use, life is too short to spend it scrolling through a gadget. Your phone does not need to govern how you spend your time and being accessible doesn’t need to mean being available. Reclaim your time and attention, if anyone is deserving of your time, it is you.

Linguistic Chameleon: A Code Switching Complex

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The way we speak has a huge influence on how people perceive us. Whether we like it or not, the words we use will help others label us as educated or ignorant, one of us or one of them, from this part of town or that, and so on and so forth.

Growing up, I was surrounded by many different ways of speaking, and as a result I learned not only how to speak them all but when to switch between them. There was Spanish which I learned to speak to my family at home, the proper English I spoke in school, and the “slang” I spoke with my friends in my after school program. In school, I was encouraged to avoid speaking “slang” or New York’s personal brand of African American Vernacular “Spanglish”, but when I spoke proper English around kids at the park I quickly learned “sounding white” was not the best way to go about trying to fit in. Other times, like when my grandparents were around, I was instructed not to speak in English at all. Because I grew up being equally influenced by all three styles of speaking, all three flow very naturally to me and switching between them is as subconscious of a process as blinking is. This process of switching between styles is known as ‘code-switching’ and it is something minority and immigrant people learn to help them assimilate to their various surroundings.

When I learned about code-switching in college it was as if something inside me clicked. I knew I had been doing this all my life but I had no idea there was a name for it, or that it was a topic discussed and researched in academia. I have always felt like I have lived my life switching between vocal masks being a linguistic chameleon and it has deeply affected my sense of self.

Since the way I expressed myself was largely ruled by my environment, I began to wonder which “voice” was really mine and how I truly spoke, social pressures aside. Sometimes I questioned my own authenticity, considering that by switching the way I spoke, whether consciously or not, I was a fraud. On many occasions I’ve found myself anxiously contemplating whether I was using the right “code” at the right time or if people were judging me for the way I spoke and my constant code switching. Deep down, I knew no way of speaking was any less me than the others, just different. To say that my true self speaks only “slang” would be largely inaccurate and to deny that proper English is what makes up most of my conscious speaking would be a farce. While Spanish is no longer as dominant in my life as it once was, it’s hard to deny its essence slips into my conversations unintentionally and unannounced. These days my surroundings do not impose or illicit a specific way of speaking so I find myself using my personal mix of the three.

While I’m still sorting through my different ways of speaking, the mannerisms I’ve attached to each, and the subconscious identity complexes I’ve acquired in my awareness of my code-switching, I am learning to see the silver lining of it all. I may not truly have a grasp of which style of speaking is my native style or if code-switching is just how I communicate, but I do know that I find comfort in my ability to assimilate to my surroundings. Being able to switch between speaking styles has greatly influenced my ability to relate to different types of people and that has enriched my life in many ways.

What is your experience with code-switching? Do you avoid it? Have you noticed it in other people? Please join in on the conversation and leave a comment letting me know what your thoughts are.

For more information on Code Switching check out these links below:

1. https://www.britannica.com/topic/code-switching

2. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/04/13/177126294/five-reasons-why-people-code-switch

3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/whats-up-with-that-white-voice-the-tricky-art-of-linguistic-code-switching/2018/07/06/f083e34e-8044-11e8-bb6b-c1cb691f1402_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.db2460d31122

Road to Self Discovery

Thoughts

About a year ago I set out on a self love journey and immediately found that I had a hard time learning to love myself because I realized I had no real understanding of exactly who I was. Of course I knew the basics like my favorite colors and foods, but when it came down to really figuring out exactly what my personal beliefs and values were, I drew nothing but blanks.

Like most kids I adapted the beliefs and values instilled in me by my parents and whenever I heard something that conflicted with those values I took it with a grain of salt. Doing this became increasingly more difficult as I grew into a young adult and started forming opinions based on my own observations. Whenever I started openly questioning the truths passed down to me by my parents, I was always met with some sort of resistance and in order to keep the peace I began to keep my thoughts and ideas to myself. Keeping these new budding ideas to myself was probably one of the worst things I have ever done because, in doing so, I was stunting my own development. It is perfectly natural and extremely important for us to question things. The questions you ask dictate the knowledge you acquire and having knowledge is what gives you the ability to form opinions and beliefs. You can’t decide what you think if you aren’t sure of what you know. The more I prevented myself from questioning authority and the generally accepted truth, the less I developed into my own person, and the more I became a mirror of my surroundings. It’s no wonder I had no idea who I really was.

The first step in my road to self discovery was deciding to allow myself to exist freely. Instead of filtering my thoughts and actions to fall in line with my upbringing and what is socially acceptable, I began to think about the things I wanted to think about and act the way I wanted to act without judging myself for doing so. This, in my opinion, was the most important step. We often cast away ideas because we feel that we are weird for thinking the things we think. The same applies to our actions. We act differently at home and around loved ones than we do around the general public out of fear of not being accepted or being labeled “strange”. Sometimes a moderate filter is very much needed, but many times it is limiting. If you are constantly moderating the things you do and say to please others you are allowing yourself to live by their standards and stripping yourself of what makes you unique. If a person is defined by what they believe and how they act but their actions and thoughts are controlled by what others deem acceptable, what does it say about that person?

Once I began to exist without judging myself using society’s standards I started to really get to know who I was and slowly but surely I began to love the person I was becoming. You have to know who you are in order to know how you feel about yourself. Now that I have a better idea of who I am, I can truly say I love myself and enjoy my own company more than I enjoy most things. Much to my surprise, other people have begun to love me too. Granted, I lost a few friends during this process, but it turns out that for the most part people love genuine people and ironically, it was the approval of my peers that served as confirmation that I was doing the right thing. While I loved getting the outside recognition, their approval wasn’t my motivation to continue on my path. It was the empowering feeling of finally being my own person. It’s a feeling I want everyone to experience because it is one of the things I believe makes life worth living.

I’m Back and I’m Better

Thoughts

I started this blog about a year ago with every intention of making it a compilation of thoughts and critiques on the society we live in. It didn’t take me very long to realize I didn’t have much to write about because my understanding of the world we live in was so small. Then, I decided that it might be easier to focus my writing on myself and the things I have learned about my place in the world as a young Latin American woman in the United States of America, and again I found myself stuck. It dawned on me that I didn’t know myself as well as I thought I did and I had no grasp of what my place in this world was. After spending 21 years growing and developing I should have had a good understanding of who I was, no? It turns out I didn’t have the slightest idea. It was then that I decided I needed to do some self discovery and here I am a year later, more me than I have ever been, but not as me as I’ll ever be.

I finally have things to write about and I have never been more excited to do so. I would like to thank everyone who supported me and this blog first time around and everyone who stuck by me during this past year. I hope you all enjoy everything I plan on sharing with you.

Early Morning Thoughts

Thoughts

How long will it take for us people of color to recognize and support our own businesses, entrepreneurs, and artists of all kinds? We keep calling out for equal representation in institutions that were never meant to include us while still blindly supporting those very same organizations that ignore our talents time and time again. We have to stop asking to be valued by people who may never understand our struggles and accomplishments. Instead, we need to love, nurture, and enrich ourselves.

I support people who share the view that we need to invest our hard earned money in our communities in order to see them grow. We waste hundreds of thousands of dollars a year buying european designer clothes that were not meant to be worn by us. When those designers host runway shows how many models of color do they choose to showcase their work? One? Two if we’re lucky? But how many of those designers appropriate our culture by having their models sport textured hair and braided hair? Definitely more than just one or two. Please keep that in mind the next time you buy a European designer hand bag.

The truth is too many of us are furthering our education and taking our new found knowledge to the corporations that continue to oppress and exploit us. Do not underestimate the power of knowledge, and be aware that knowledge acquired outside of the classroom can be just as important. In other words, do not discredit the lessons passed down to you from generations and generations of hard-working people who have struggled to make it possible for you to have access to an education. Knowledge is a resource we cannot afford to waste or misuse.

I’m not saying we need to boycott all things outside our communities. I’m just asking that we think about exactly who we are supporting with our money and make efforts to allocate funds to the organizations that have our best interests at heart and represent us in ways we deserve.

Being a Latina in the US

Thoughts

The older I get the more I realize how truly difficult it is to be a Latina living in the US. It’s like I’m constantly trying to find the perfect balance between assimilation into US American “culture” and my own Dominican culture. I’m either too Dominican for US Americans or too “white” for my Dominican family. I’m constantly thinking back to the scene in the movie Selena where her father Abraham tries to prepare her for exactly what she was getting herself into by being a Mexican-American artist crossing over into popular culture. It is exhausting.

I find myself cringing everytime I hear my Spanish accent roll off my tongue when I’m around white Anericans. I still don’t know why or how I’m so proud to be Dominican but so ashamed of my accent. I still refuse to accept the fact that I have an accent even though im always being told otherwise. I guess it’s a learned self-hatred and I’m still in the process of decolonizing myself inside and out.

I don’t think I’m alone in this struggle, and I hope that everyone out there who is trying their best to fit in with their family and the general US American population knows that they aren’t alone either. Maybe we’ll find a happy medium… Maybe we won’t. Who knows? I sure don’t.

Natural Hair Journey

Lifestyle

I started my natural hair journey by accident in early 2014. When I was 12 years old (2007), I stopped relaxing my hair after getting a really bad relaxer that had my hair all kids of messed up. For the next 3 years I went through a really awkward transitioning phase until my hair was finally 100% natural. I learned how straighten my own hair as a freshman in college (2012) when my mom bought me my first flat iron. Once I had started straightening my hair on my own nothing could stop me. I had mastered the flat iron and I loved it.

By the time I was halfway through my sophomore year of college (2014), I decided that I wanted to wear my hair curly more often. By this point my hair was so heat damaged that it literally did not curl. Loose frizzy waves were the most my hair could manage, even after endless crunching.

Eventually what I had started doing was french braiding my hair while wet and letting dry to achieve a more defined curl and I would rotate back and forth between this and straightening my hair.

FullSizeRender (4) — My braid out on a good day.

Since I didn’t really know of any curl styling products besides gel at the time, I had been relying on my conditioner as a styling product to hold my “curls” and fight frizz. I had attempted using gel in high school but I could never find one with enough hold or one that gave my “curls” any definition so I abandoned the idea of using gel altogether. By now, it was early 2015 and at some point someone recommended that I look into Shea Moisture products because they were really good for styling curly hair, so I did.

I started off simple with their Coconut & Hibiscus Curl Enhancing Smoothie and boy did I love the results. It was the best curl styling product I had ever tried. It held my “curls” like Gel was supposed to and gave them definition I had never seen on my hair before. Now that I had found my new miracle product I wore my hair curly all the time. I should probably note that what I considered curls were actually more like deep waves (which is why I’ve been putting the word in quotations) but as time went on they kept getting closer and closer to the curly side of the spectrum.

Throughout the Spring 2015 semester I only straightened my hair a handful of times and as a result my hair became so much healthier and thicker. As a child, I was always told that I had so much hair that I had enough to supply four people with a whole head’s worth of hair. Once I had begun relaxing my hair I lost a lot of the fullness I once had and I never really regained it. It was only until I had stopped applying so much heat to my hair that I finally began to see a difference in my hair’s fullness.

FullSizeRender (6) — Wash & Go, February/March 2015.

Towards the end of the semester into the beginning of the summer I began to experiment with different products ranging from styling jellies to styling lotions and milks. I started combining different products to see which ones worked best to achieve my desired look. Finally, towards the end of the summer, I found a product formula that worked best and it was one of the best days of my life! My hair finally developed its own curl pattern, and I was the happiest girl on the planet.

FullSizeRender (5) — Wash & Go, July 2015.

Today, my curls are healthy and bouncy and actually curly but I still feel like I have a ways to go until I can say I am 100% satisfied with my hair. Looking back my journey thus far I can say that this has been one of the most rewarding experiences. Not only do I feel accomplished when I look at how far my hair has come but I also feel more like myself.

FullSizeRender (7) — Wash & Go, November 2015.

My natural hair journey has served as so much more than just an aesthetic transformation. It has been a road to self discovery. I’ve learned so much about myself and the woman I aspire to be and I’ve gained a sense of accomplishment. For so many years, hair stylists had me under the impression that my hair was an un-tamable entity and now that I have learned not only how to “tame” it with a flat iron, but also how to properly care for it in its natural form, I feel like there is very little I can’t do if I put my mind to it. Through my natural hair journey I’ve been able to inspire and assist so many young women my age to start their own and being able to have that kind of effect on people is such a rewarding feeling. Going natural is something that I would recommend to every woman. It is not a quick or easy process, but it has such a beautiful outcome.

Black Lives Matter

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I feel like a lot of people are misunderstanding our modern day black and brown power movements. We’re not trying to say that black lives matter more than non-black lives, or that our naturally curly/kinky hair is better than naturally straight hair, or that melanated skin is more beautiful than lighter skin tones. What we’re trying to say is that our lives are important too, our natural hair is just as good, and our darker skin is also beautiful. For almost a thousand years the world has been solely praising/appreciating/advocating for European lives and aesthetics, and we are simply trying to tell the world that we too deserve praise and respect.

We are not aiming to compete with any other race/ethnicity, or belittle anyone’s phenotypes. We are trying to tell our brothers and sisters that we are beautiful the way we are and that our existence is valued just as much as anyone else’s. If our messages of self love and appreciation make you feel threatened or insecure, it is probably best that you take some time to address those feelings and evaluate what about us loving ourselves makes you unhappy and try to build some self-esteem that does not rely on other peoples self-hatred to thrive. Remember, it’s not Black Lives Matter more, it’s Black Lives Matter too.