Tag: dailyprompt

Lately I’ve been realizing that exercise does wonders for my body. I tend to sit a lot so I’ve been trying to become more active. I love Yoga with Adriene because she has a lot of great videos, and I also love Grow with Jo because her videos are fun. It’s a tie between cardio and yoga, to be honest. I enjoy both.

Daily writing prompt

Your life without a computer: what does it look like?

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It would be hard to get a lot of stuff done without a computer. I probably wouldn’t be able to write this blog without a laptop, but if I just had to make do, I would write on pen and paper just like the old days. I think it would have been harder in 2020 since we had an emergency in place and many if not all people were told not to go out, so many people had to rely on Zoom and other videoconferencing and online tools to communicate. But even during 2020 and before 2020, I remember writing letters to my friends and family. I probably would communicate with mostly pen and paper and the telephone if I didn’t have a computer. I definitely remember a time when I wasn’t using a computer all the time. It wasn’t until I got a little older, maybe around 10 or so, that I started getting on the computer more and playing computer games (gosh, now that I think about it, there were so many great computer games: Zoombinis, Clue Finders, Carmen Sandiego…but I’m going on a tangent.)

But I think about what people did before computers were invented, and I forget that they still somehow managed to communicate with each other through calling on the phone and writing letters, and hell, even walking to someone’s house to communicate a message. I’ve really been reflecting on my own phone and laptop usage and my own history of technology, and I really want to explore this more in depth.

Daily writing prompt

List three jobs you’d consider pursuing if money didn’t matter.

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Three jobs I would consider pursuing if money didn’t matter:

1. Writer.
2. Musician.
3. Filmmaker.

Daily writing prompt

What’s your all-time favorite album?

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Introducing Joss Stone is one of my favorite albums. I heard of her when I was around seventh or eighth grade and when I first heard her singing I was hooked. She just puts so much soul into her music, and these past few weeks while working on my assignments I kept listening to the songs on this album. One of the songs on the album I really love is “What Were We Thinking.” Another album I really love listening to all the time is Brown Sugar by D’Angelo. It’s an R n B album like Introducing Joss Stone, and I love listening to D’Angelo’s voice. He does a really beautiful rendition of “Cruisin'” by Smokey Robinson, and adds his own unique flavor to it. His voice is just so mature and, I don’t know, sexy. I am going to be honest, I got an eargasm* every time he hit those high notes on the song “Cruisin’.” I couldn’t stop listening to it this week. Another album I recommend is Frank by the late Amy Winehouse. “In My Bed” is one of my favorite songs on the album, and I just love her combination of jazz and soul. I really miss her but she left an incredible legacy of music I can continue to listen to in those moments when I’m just going through a lot and need some good music.

*all credit goes to Blackstreet and Dr. Dre for coining the wonderful word eargasm on their song “No Diggity.”

Daily writing prompt

How do you relax?

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I love to watch movies, read books (mostly fiction), listen to music, take a nice hot bath, knit, and chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

Daily writing prompt

Why do you blog?

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I love to blog because it allows me a space to get my thoughts out. At first I wasn’t sure about having a blog since I tend to be a pretty private person, but to be honest I had all these journals I had written through my life, and I wondered, What if I wrote electronically? I also watched the movie Julie and Julia, and in the film Julie Powell keeps a blog about mastering recipes by Julia Child. She wrote at a time when there weren’t all these blogs about blogging and it was the early days of blogging, but I think reflecting on that movie and seeing how blogging gave Julie this deeper purpose in life and joy really inspired me to start one of my own. I actually started a WordPress blog around 2014 or 2015 but I discontinued it because I was a total perfectionist at the time and after writing one article I was super critical of myself and thought it sounded like trash and that I would never blog again. At the time I was a philosophy and Afro-American Studies major and I wanted to create an academic blog about philosophy and Afro-American Studies, so I wrote my first post on Saartjie Bartman, who was a Black woman who was exploited and put on display in Europe during the 19th century (to be honest, recounting the history is pretty difficult for me because it’s just so disgusting how brutally she was treated so I won’t go into a long explanation. I will just say, the account of Saartjie Bartman’s exploitation is disturbing, painful and sad. It made me an angry Black woman.) I don’t know why I deleted the post or discontinued the blog, but that was the end of the blog and I ended up not writing a blog again. In 2019, I decided I was just going to try again. I had a full time job, was stressed and I just wanted to write. So I took a class or two on Skillshare about blogging and realized finally after many months of blank screens that I just needed to sit down and write some stuff.

To be honest, I still struggle with perfectionism when writing on my blog. I may sit at the screen and think, “Will people actually like this?” But that’s why I’m glad I have a spiritual/ religious practice to keep me grounded and to remind me that I deserve to write and call myself a writer, and that at the end of the day the important thing is that you sat down and wrote. When I chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo I am basically saying that I am respect-worthy and love myself. It doesn’t mean I have stopped dealing with insecurities but I have something to weather those insecurities and get me back to my main purpose in life, which is to just be the truest most authentic version of myself that I can so that I can encourage other people to be their true authentic selves. Because what I’ve learned in my time as a writer is that you’re going to write bad drafts, but it’s better to have bad material you can sift through and edit than a blank page with nothing on it. Of course, I do love to put my writing on paper first; that’s why I have so many journals and probably need a new bin so they don’t mildew. I love writing on paper before typing stuff out; somehow I can collect my thoughts better.

The main reason I love to blog though is that it gives me a space where I can just be myself. I thought at first I needed to be a perfect blogger, but to be honest everyone’s version of perfect is different. I am an introvert when it comes to being with people, but on this blog I am a total extrovert. I love to write and sometimes I even have to tell myself, Hey this is too long, stop talking so much. But writing is just so freeing.

Daily writing prompt

What’s your favorite recipe?

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Last night I made a delicious pizza from a vegan cookbook by Chloe Coscarelli, and the pizza had butternut squash, spinach and sliced apples on it.

Daily writing prompt

What are your top ten favorite movies?

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Oh I love this one because I could talk about movies for days, weeks, months, years…

Ok, so my top ten favorite movies:

1. Despicable Me: This is one of my favorites because it is just so heartwarming and the humor is great for both kids and adults. I first saw Gru and was like, This guy is so mean and hates everyone, but as you get to see him throughout the movie, he develops this beautiful relationship with the girls he adopts (Margo, Edith and Agnes). Steve Carrell is a great actor and I loved the Minions. 🙂 I pretty much know every line from this movie because my family and I have watched it so many times. Pharrell is also a musical genius because the soundtrack is phenomenal!
2. The Devil Wears Prada: Oh my gosh another favorite! If you haven’t seen it, it’s a film adaptation of the novel The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger, and it stars Anne Hathaway as Andy, a new assistant to the editor of a fashion magazine. The editor, played brilliantly by Meryl Streep, isn’t convinced that Andy has what it takes to last on the team (especially after one particular scene where Andy laughs at a couple of belts that look exactly the same but then Miranda grills her about the difference between them while also making a snide comment about her “lumpy blue sweater.” I’m pretty sure I would have been like Andy and broken down in tears after being grilled like that but I also get Miranda was just trying to let Andy know that the fashion world isn’t just stuff.) But Nigel gets Andy to change her look and change her attitude if she wants to stay at the magazine, so Andy does change but she also becomes someone she isn’t and starts to think her life at work is more important than her friendships and relationship with her boyfriend, Nate, but then she realizes that she is becoming someone she isn’t and changes back to being herself. The acting is phenomenal and after seeing Meryl Streep in that movie, I started craving more movies with Meryl Streep, which leads me to another of my favorite movies with Meryl…
3. Julie and Julia: I saw this in 2009 when it came out in theaters. It was the summer before I was starting tenth grade. It was a very heartwarming movie and it inspired me in part to write this blog. Julie Powell, who is the subject of the movie and died last year at 49, published a blog where she described cooking every Julia Child recipe in a book called “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Amy Adams plays Julie and Meryl Streep plays Julia Child. Julie in the movie goes through the frustrating process of making these recipes, and she makes many mistakes when making these recipes, but also learns about herself along the way. As a staunch vegan advocate in high school, I wasn’t a fan of seeing all the meat on screen, but now that I am writing this and reminiscing on the movie my mouth would water if I watched this movie again because all the food looked so delicious. Even though I’m still vegan, if I could eat meat, I’m pretty sure I would do like Julie Powell and make all those recipes. There are just some things you can’t veganize.
4. Bridesmaids: This one was absolute gold. All of my friends had seen it before me and were like, “What you haven’t seen Bridesmaids?!?” So I finally watched it at some point a few years ago, and I can see why everyone was trying to convince me to watch this movie. It features a cast of women that are spectacular in every way and the movie sends a great message about not giving up on yourself and hanging onto friends when things get tough. I was nervous about watching it at first because there is a vomiting scene and I am an emetophobe (having a fear of vomit) but I just closed my eyes through the scene. I thought the relationship between Annie (Kristen Wiig) and Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd) was pretty sweet.
5. Moonlight: I can’t remember exactly when I saw this, but the film score and cinematography in the trailer pretty much had me hooked, and when I saw the movie I literally just bawled my eyes out. If you haven’t seen it it’s a powerful coming-of-age movie about Chiron, who navigates the challenges of being a Black gay man in a homophobic society. The music is brilliant and it was composed by Nicholas Britell (who also did the score for another great movie called Vice) and the acting was incredible. I’m pretty sure this film was one of the first A24 films I watched and I think it got me hooked on A24 movies.
6. My Cousin Vinny: Oh my GOSH…this movie. I pretty much know all the lines to all the scenes: The 5 minute grits scene in the courtroom where Vinny is grilling Mr. Tipton on how long it took to cook his grits, the scene where Mona Lisa and Vinny are in the diner and they first encounter grits, the scene where Mona proves herself a total beast at cars and mechanics in the courtroom when they are asking her about the Buick Skylark… I saw this the summer my junior year of high school. We were at Blockbuster (RIP) and my parents recommended we watch this movie because they really loved it. It came out in the 1990s so I was too young to watch it then, but when I finally saw it I howllllleed. It was hilarious and now that I’m working at a law firm the courtroom humor kind of rings with me. Marisa Tomei’s outfits were also amazing. The grits scene also was one of my favorites because I’m from the South, and down South people are serious about grits (although I was in for a surprise when I lived in New England for a few years to find that some of my Massachusetts friends also loved grits and that they served grits in the dining hall.)
7. Lady Bird: Honestly, I have seen this film at least… five times. And counting. It’s that good. Even though I didn’t grow up in the same circumstances Lady Bird did, I can relate to that feeling of wanting to leave your hometown and follow your dreams. Lady Bird was relatable, too, because she is stubborn and independent, and I am very much like that. I really loved the acting, too; Saoirse Ronan was so good in this movie! It’s honestly one of my favorite A24 films. It’s also just a beautiful movie about a mother-daughter relationship, and it actually made me appreciate everything my mom went through to raise me, even when I lacked appreciation for her or disrespected her many times.
8. Rent: I saw this movie when I was at a Gay-Straight Alliance meeting in high school. It was a small meeting and we had cheese pizza and chocolate chip cookies while watching this film. I am sad I never got to see the Broadway musical Rent, but the movie is absolutely amazing. The acting and the music, oh gosh. And I fell in love with Idina Menzel after seeing the movie because she is absolutely beautiful, especially during the number “Take Me or Leave Me.” She looks stunning in leather pants, let me tell you, and girlfriend was belting it out with Tracie Thoms during that number. I still listen to the musical number “Santa Fe.” It’s one of my favorite songs.
9. About a Boy: I saw this at some point when I was in college. I had read the book when I was in high school and fell in love with Nick Hornby’s books soon after, but when I was younger I was in the mall and I saw this poster for About a Boy. I was too young to see the movie at the time, but when I got older, I really appreciated the film. I really love the scene where Marcus raps to “Shake Ya Ass” by Mystikal and is confronted by an older student named Ellie when she hears him rapping the song as he walks behind her, so that it seems like he is telling her to shake her ass rather than just singing a random song. I really loved seeing the actress who plays Nymphadora Tonks (Natalia Gastiain Tena) in her role as Ellie, and Nicholas Hoult as Marcus. Hugh Grant and Toni Collette were also really great in their roles in this movie.
10. 1917: I just really loved the cinematography in this movie. I had read it had gotten a lot of praise for the directing, so I watched this movie and it was excellent. It definitely isn’t an easy watch, but then again, no movie about war is going to be easy to watch. The movie vividly captures the trauma, pain and disillusionment of war from the eyes of two soldiers who are sent on a mission to deliver an important message. The score is absolutely phenomenal, too. But definitely the cinematography was gripping; I was on the edge of my seat, and I’m pretty sure I shed a tear or two by the end of the film. In all honesty, right after the film, I was wondering how to send a letter to Sam Mendes thanking him for this film because it really was one of the most powerful and well-directed movies I have seen.

Like I said, though, I could talk about movies all day if I had my druthers, so this list is far from exhaustive. Would love to know what movies you love, too!