Written by Nicole

It’s been just over two months since I wrote my last blog post, as I took some time off from mid-February to now. It wasn’t for any particular reason – I just felt like it. A lot happened in my absence, including a bombshell royal interview, some kerfuffle with a prominent gospel singer and his son, a cheating scandal that really shouldn’t have come as a surprise, Satan getting a lapdance with some literal bloody shoes thrown in, a sideways shipping container, a prince dying, then a rapper dying, then another one…and a whole lot more. There was no shortage of interesting topics to write on, but alas…

I chose rest.

Rest is so important! In a world where the only time we’re not peering at our screens is when we are asleep, it is crucial to take long, indefinite, or even permanent breaks from being online. And that’s what I did.

Plain old rest.

I wasn’t “resting in my femininity”, which has become somewhat of an overused phrase in my opinion. Femininity takes work and doesn’t involve being fed grapes on a canopy bed while fanned by palm leaves. But that’s another topic for another day. I severely cut down on social media, didn’t read the comments of any controversial topics, only listened to news that was interesting or relevant to me, and just lived my life.

And I’m better for it.

The sinister intent from social media and society at large is to keep everyone distracted so we don’t reach our full potential. For black women in particular, social media is even worse. In addition to holding our attention for everyone else’s problems instead of the ones that are uniquely ours, that distraction is served with a heaping helping of denigration. How can we reach our highest level of self, when we are partaking in comment sections that reduce us to simply being “female” instead of women, (“you females are always complaining” etc.). How can we focus on the issues that are uniquely ours, when we are made to witness trigger after trigger from sun up to sun down? You can’t, really, so I chose rest. Choosing rest as a black woman is like giving the universe the most peaceful of middle fingers.

And I’ll be resting more long-term too.

What does that mean?

In my time off, I had a think about what my future held. And my future requires me to chill. As such, gone are the days of 2000+ word blog posts with links and data that supports my claims. Social media pages that I used to follow for inspiration have been removed from my view. And while I’ve stopped writing about certain topics altogether (namely hair and weight), I’ll slowly be adding to the writing no-go-zone, until there is little else to write about. So, look forward to more light, love, and some black-women-centric introspection. I hope to approach the blog with a different perspective, and get lots of rest in the meantime. Make sure you’re getting your rest too.