Tag: dreams

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

Write 2 Be Magazine will be debuting on January 15^th, 2013 so please go join the magazine on twitter before it debuts on https://twitter.com/write2bemag and join the email listing for the magazine at Write2bemagazine@yahoo.com. Also please feel free to go and friend me on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310 and like my Write 2 Be Magazine fan page. Please help support my endeavor and my new journey and help me spread the word about Write 2 Be and its meaning.

Nothing Like a Good Kick When You’re Down to Get You Going Again

October 9, 2012 jcladyluv

I have always known I wanted to be a writer (well obviously not as a baby but from the age of 6 so fairly young) and once I knew that writing was my dream I slowly began guiding myself towards that. Now at 6 I wasn’t crafting novels or anything (although that is not unheard of today) but I began reading all kinds of different stories and discovering what types of stories interested me. By the time I turned 10 I began taking the bad experiences that were going on at home and using those emotions that I felt to begin crafting poetry.

I started to envision all of the roads and paths that writing was going to take me down. I admit I was always a bit of a dreamer and that my dreams of where I was going to go within my writing career were probably a bit exaggerated but I could have sworn that I was going to be somewhere so different by the time I reached my thirties and I always imagined the best of circumstances.

Here I am now, in my early thirties, and I am not even in the vicinity of where I thought I would be at this point in my life. I feel as if life keeps kicking me when I’m already down and while I know that what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, I don’t feel like I am getting any stronger with every struggle that comes my way. I sit and wonder at times where did things get off track and wonder if I could only go back to that point where the course changed then maybe I could finally get to the point that I want to be at.

The problem with that is that going back and trying to reroute the course changes a lot of the good things that have happened, one of them being my daughter, and I can’t say that I would trade a lot of the experiences that I have had for anything else. If I dwell on what could’ve been in some dreamed about future from when I was too young to know any better then I will begin to take for granted all of the good things that I do have. Not only that but I will take for granted all of the lessons that my mistakes have taught me.

I suppose there’s a reason for everything that happens. Even when you veer off the path that you were meant to travel on, the detours always provide something that you wouldn’t have experienced otherwise. It’s hard when you feel like you are continually being kicked when you are already down. However, the other side of that coin is that sometimes it takes a good kick to get you headed back in the right direction again. It’s never too late to change the circumstances that are keeping you down as long as you’re willing to keep getting right back up for the next round.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

Everything Is Not Always a Good Fit

October 2, 2012 jcladyluv

Last week my best friend Ms. L. wrote a blog post about people not thinking that they are too good to do something in order for them to get further ahead. She was speaking of people who make comments such as “I don’t do windows, or I will not work at a fast food restaurant, or I won’t scrub and clean people’s floors” but still find themselves scrambling to get ahead. She spoke about the people who turn their noses up at those particular types of jobs because they believe that they are supposed to be somewhere better but yet they have not paid their dues.

Now while I agree with some of what she says in her post, I have to say, unashamedly, that I am one of those people who will not take a job at a fast food restaurant or cleaning rooms at a hotel. However, it is most certainly not me looking down on people that work in the fast food or restaurant industry or people who are maids, or are in the retail industry. In fact I worked in the retail industry for years and yes as a part of that work I did clean some bathrooms, and I cleaned up other people’s mess, and I did grunt work that I absolutely hated.

When I decided to work on making writing my full time and only job (or passion with benefits of income as I would rather refer to it) it wasn’t because I felt I was too good to work in those industries (because believe me, I know that is not the case), but rather because I no longer wanted to work to further someone else’s dreams (being the owners of those companies) while my dreams took a seat somewhere in the far back corner. It wasn’t that I felt I was above those positions, it was more that I felt I would be doing a disservice to those who worked in those industries and loved what they do and who do it well.

It’s kind of like when you go into a restaurant and have the worst waitress you could possibly have and you leave the restaurant saying to yourself “if she doesn’t want to be there, she just shouldn’t be working there”. I don’t want to be one of those people who is doing a job because I am desperate and have no choice because then I will never do the job the way that it is supposed to be done. I feel that I am destined to do a specific job on this earth and I just don’t want to waste my time, or anyone else’s for that matter, doing a horrible job at something that I wasn’t meant to do in the first place.

I agree that you should never look down on jobs that don’t appear to be glamorous, especially if you don’t know what it is that you want to do and you are trying to find your footing. However, I also feel that if you know that you have a dream and a goal, and you know what direction you are headed in, you should never settle for something that you can’t give 100 percent to. It’s not turning your nose up at a particular job, or even those that do that particular job, to realize that you just wouldn’t do that job justice and that it just isn’t a good fit for you.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Even When the Bad Days Outweigh the Good

September 4, 2012 jcladyluv

So it’s not starting off being a good week and I am feeling almost completely defeated. But notice I said that I almost. The bad days that I’m having are really starting to overshadow any of the good one’s I manage to have. But I can not throw in the towel because that would be too easy. To let everything that I’ve been working towards and struggling to achieve fall by the waist-side all because I can’t see the finished product ahead of time would be quite possibly the biggest mistake that I could ever make.

I have a deadline for a goal I set at the beginning of this year and I haven’t spoken about it much lately because several times I have almost placed it on the back burner and wanted to just give up on the idea altogether but it is not in me to just give up. I said that I was going to launch the Write 2 Be Online Magazine in January of 2013 and that is what I am going to do.

I’ve been working on this magazine and putting it together little by little (both in my mind and on paper) and I have taken my time with it so that when I launch it I can be proud of it. This, for me, could be the start of things heading in the right direction (or at least a better direction then I’ve been heading) and I really want to honor what my heart and my gut is telling me to do. I just have to work really hard at not letting those bad days get the better of me.

I am still looking for contributors if anyone who reads this is interested and you can check back on this site under the Write 2 Be Magazine tab for periodic updated information.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Quitters Will Never Win

August 28, 2012 jcladyluv

As I was sitting here thinking about what to write today I was thinking about just throwing in the towel. You know you can only keep trying at something for so long that doesn’t appear to be working before you start to really wonder if it’s just not going to work, or maybe it’s just not meant to be. Lately I’ve been feeling as if every time I take one step forward, I end up getting knocked two steps backward. I was beginning to feel like all of this was pointless and that all this dreaming that I’ve been doing had been for nothing.

Just as I was getting ready to give up and just say to hell with it I looked in my email inbox today and received one of my Tyler Perry mailing list pep talks (it was actually sent a couple of days ago but I hadn’t checked my email in a couple of days). His message was short, sweet, and to the point. Simply put it read “IF YOU QUIT OR GIVE UP THEN YOU DON’T DESERVE IT! Process that and get back in the fight, DREAMER! You can do it.” As I said before, time and time again, Tyler Perry always has a way of sending out his inspirational messages just as I need to hear it.

I love writing and most importantly I am meant to do this. I know it deep down inside my gut. Even when I doubt myself, I never doubt my ability to write. Even though I keep getting knocked down repeatedly, I have just been reminded that I can’t throw in the towel because if I do I never deserved it in the first place. I have never been one to quit anything that I really wanted and that I knew was for me. I’m not going to start now!

If any of you are out there feeling like it’s just never going to come together, don’t stop now, don’t give up the fight. Just when you think it’s time to quit is the precise moment that you need to keep holding on.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Are You Living Your Life Or The Life Someone Else Thinks You Should Be Living?

August 2, 2012 jcladyluv

I love my emails that I get from the Tyler Perry mailing list. I swear it’s as if he knows when I need to hear a specific message and writes them just for me. Like he was somehow the vessel that God chose (one of the many vessels) to send me a very bold and clear message. He sent a message that didn’t mince words and didn’t beat around the bush by sugar coating things. The subject title in this particular email was simple: Don’t let anybody define you!

His email talked about how when he was a young boy he had so many people tell him that he would never make it, that he would never become a millionaire because he was black or because he was poor. Among those many people there was actually a teacher and even some of his family. I understood exactly what he was talking about because I have always been told that I would never amount to anything by the one person who is supposed to think the world of me, my mother.

Now there are plenty of others who have said things like I dream too big, and I am never going to become successful, and I’m always going to be in a state of struggle, and basically that all of my efforts to become successful and to build my own company doing what I love to do and what I know is meant for me to do are for nothing. I would like to say that I haven’t listened to those words of discouragement and that I responded to those negative voices in a way that Tyler Perry did, by ignoring them and doing it anyway. But I can’t say that because I have spent the better part of my life trying to defy what I was told I couldn’t do all the while, deep down, believing in what those voices were saying.

I have since learned to tune out those voices (for the most part anyway) but every once and a while, mostly when I have a new idea or a new way to develop and produce the ideas I already have, those voices do get deep inside my head and sometimes they even manage to convince me that they are right, but only for a little while. When I read this message from Tyler Perry, it came after I had just finished brainstorming an idea with Ms. L. on how to bring one of my dreams on my list of accomplishments to fruition and those doubts began to creep in on whether or not I could really do this.

I shared some brief ideas with another person that I thought could possibly help me in one area of making my idea a reality but they essentially told me every possible thing that could go wrong and that could keep me from being able to do it. Not what I needed to hear. I know everything that can go wrong. I know that I am operating on little to no money most times and that my credit might not be so hot to a bank or possible investors. So What?

I am finally starting to realize that if I am constantly waiting for the money fairy to rain some money on my dream then I might never make it happen. I have to have faith that it will happen, not just because it is a really good idea, but because it was what was meant for me to do. God didn’t give me this gift for nothing and he sure doesn’t expect me to waste it. So I’m not going to waste it.

It’s hard to think that you have to tune out the people who are supposed to be close to you but if they can’t support me in living the life that I want to live then I don’t need to listen to words that aren’t driving me forward. I’m done living the way everyone else thinks I should. I can’t live the life other people would rather me live because that wasn’t the life that was meant for me. Whose life are you living, yours or someone else’s?

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

What’s Your Motivation When the Odds Are Stacked Against You?

July 30, 2012 jcladyluv

I read a blog post the other day that asked the question ‘Is having something to prove a good enough reason to do something?’ When I read the post the blogger discussed how perhaps we should not use someone telling us that we can’t achieve something or someone’s negativity altogether to influence or motivate whether or not we in fact decide to go after what it is that we want. She stated that people pleasing was something not to get caught up in. Initially I felt that she might have a point to that statement and that people’s sheer passion for doing something should be enough to ‘just do it’ and that it shouldn’t take someone else telling us no or rejecting our passion for us to go at it full force.

But then I realized something. Isn’t that the nature of how dreams are realized, and how businesses are built, and how people are made to be successful? I mean of course you dream something and naturally you want to achieve that dream no matter what and when you start a business you hopefully are starting that business because it is something that you’ve always wanted to do. But if you listen to a lot of successful people talk about how they got there and how they accomplished their dreams and started their businesses, a lot of it had something to do with what someone told them they would never be able to do.

Think of how many singers and film stars were told no, and how many times they were told no, and how many people even told them that they were crazy to think they would ever really make it. Now think about how that just fired them up to going after that dream with even more force and more drive. Think about Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey and Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates and how many people told them they would never make it and that they would never see their dreams become a reality and how those words must have fueled the fire that was already lit underneath them.

I remember hearing an interview once about an entrepreneur going after their dream and starting their own company (can’t quite remember who at this exact moment) and when they were asked what made them go after their goal when all of the odds were stacked against them, their response was simply ‘someone told me I couldn’t have it’. It’s amazing what someone telling you NO will do for your drive and ambition to prove them wrong and get what you want in spite of all the odds stacked against you. I hate to be told NO but if I really think about it, when I do get to where I want to be in life, those No’s will be what made me so fiercely determined to prove everyone who said I couldn’t do it wrong.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Redefining What Is Possible

July 19, 2012 jcladyluv

It seems as if this week God is sending me all sorts of signs to lead me in the direction that I need to go. It’s as if every doubt that I have is getting answered and addressed each day of the week and leaving me with absolutely NO excuses. The other day I was going over just how many things were holding me back from just diving right in and then Ms. L. tells me about her 11 year old son starting his business with probably more limitations than I have, and yet here I am holding myself back.

This morning I was thinking of all of the big dreaming that I keep doing and wondering just how much of what I want to accomplish is attainable. I mean just what are my possibilities of making all of this stuff actually happen. I was honestly going over the list of life goals that I made a long, long time ago in my head and wondering just what it was that I should cross off because it just wouldn’t be possible. Then I heard a remarkable story on the news this morning about a man who had just climbed the tallest mountain in the world, Mount Kilimanjaro. Now I know what you’re thinking. What’s so special about that, surely he’s not the first person to do that? That would be a true statement, but I believe that he is the fist person to do it with no legs.

Spencer West was born with a genetic disorder in which his lower spine was poorly developed and left his legs permanently crossed and essentially useless. By the time he was 5 years old he had to have his legs amputated to just below the pelvis area. The doctors told him and his parents that he would never be able to sit up let alone walk and that he would never be a functioning member of society.

Not only did he defy what the doctors limited him to but he has gone on to do public speaking, candidly telling his story in hopes of inspiring others that anything is possible. He works with a charity called Free The Children and the climb up the mountain was a campaign that he called Redefine Possible and helped to raise almost $750,000 for the charity.

Now as I am watching and listening to him speak and being so inspired by his story, I am wondering how can anything on my list of goals be considered impossible when this man, who has every reason to think that his options are limited, doesn’t see that there is anything that is not possible. It is completely ironic how the stories that you need to hear the most, the one’s that truly will inspire you, always come right at the exact moment that you need to hear them.

I suppose that it’s not really about my big dreams and goals being impossible, it’s more so about what my definition of possible really is. Everything is not possible for every individual, but once again, this is not about what someone else deems as being possible when it comes to my ambitions. It’s only about my own interpretation of just how far I can go and what I know is not impossible. It’s kind of hard to think that there is anything that you can’t do once you see a man with no legs climb the tallest mountain in the world.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

The Lesson That A Cinematic Genius In the Making Has Taught Me

July 18, 2012 jcladyluv

I think that anyone who knows me knows that I don’t mind learning valuable lessons from children. Sometimes the people who show us whether or not we are moving in the right direction or whether or not we’re just stuck standing still are the children that are a part of our lives, whether it be our own or someone else’s child.

My best friend Ms. L has an 11 year old cinematic genius in the making. It is amazing to think that at his young age he can make his own movies, cut and edit film, put together book trailers and produce graphic artwork as if it were as easy as breathing. He is truly a gifted little boy and Ms. L told me last night that he has finally decided that he wants to make a go of it as a real official business so that he can make the money he needs to afford the more high tech things that he needs to go even further in his adventures of film making.

I mean it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’s so talented because his mom is essentially the most gifted writer that I know. What amazes me even more is the fact that in one night he managed to make this decision, create him a website (a freebie one—he is a kid after all), create business cards and rehearse his spiel that would land him his first of many clients (which he got the next day by the way). In one night. I am 32 and have been working at making my dream a reality for the last decade or so and I am still not as far along as I should be. It really made me (and Ms. L too) think ‘what the hell am I doing and why am I wasting so much time?’

I keep getting in my own way, so much so that I’m sometimes not even able to recognize that that is what I am doing. I tell myself that I will get rejected for an article before I even bother to try sending it off. I tell myself that no one will like the story or characters I have created before actually giving it a real shot. I constantly tell myself all of the reasons why I can’t do something without seeing the most important reason why I can, because it was something that I was meant to do.

I believe that everyone is talented at something and even if there are a hundred writers out there who are just as talented as I am, it is only me who can write the stories that I was meant to write and who can tell them in only the way that I can. I’m no Maya Angelou, or Terry McMillan, or Alice Walker, but I am Jimmetta Carpenter and just as I can not write the way that they do, they can not write the way that I do either.

Ms. L.’s son has so much belief in himself that he is not letting the fact that he’s 11 and has no real money of his own to fund his business stop him. He’s just diving right in and handling whatever hiccups happen along the way. My God if an 11 year old can have that frame of mind about his business then why on earth can’t I. My best friend’s son doesn’t realize the lesson that his leap of faith has taught me but one day he will realize that he just showed me that the only person that is really in my way, is me.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310

http://www.passionatewriterpublishing.com/thediary.htm

Maybe Things Would Have Been Better If…

July 17, 2012 jcladyluv

Often times I wonder (too often to actually count) if I made the right decision by choosing not to go back into the traditional work force as most single parents do and make that steady and stable income every other week. I mean let’s face it, it’s not as if I have hit it big or anything and if I want to get real honest I am not doing as well in my writing career as I thought I would be by now, or that I know I should be doing.

I think of all the things I want to buy for my daughter and the activities that I would like to put her in to enhance her creative nature that I just can’t afford right now and I wonder what the hell am I doing and I constantly wonder am I completely screwing her life up by not just accepting the fact that this just isn’t working and maybe it’s just not for me. I mean it’s not like it wouldn’t be nice to have a steady and predictable stream of income coming in that I know I can count on.

But then yesterday morning as I was getting my daughter ready for daycare (it acts as a camp during the summer) she said ‘thank you mommy’. I asked her what she was thanking me for and she replied ‘for taking such good care of me’. She said that I am always there when she needs me. She almost brought me to tears and I was so touched. She made me feel like the choice not to go back to a traditional job and stay home with her, all while still pursuing my dreams of making what I love to do my career, was totally worth it. Yesterday, just her appreciation of me, let me know that it was the right decision, for me anyway.

It is all the more motivation to let me know that I have to have less moments of procrastination and more moments of productivity because I have to make this work, I have to do what I know in my heart I was meant to do. Not just because I love doing it and it is my passion, but because being able to write and become more successful at it makes moments like yesterday with my daughter even more possible.

It would make it more of a certainty that I will continue to always be here when she needs me and that I will always take very good care of her. More importantly it will show her that you can go after your dreams and make it work even though everyone else around you may be telling you that you’re crazy for ever thinking this could work and to be more realistic. I want her to not be afraid to go after her dreams and to not have to think that going after her dreams is going to do more harm then good.

So in an effort to procrastinate less and produce more, I am going to make it a point to accomplish at least three things every week (3 is a nice workable number) to get me further along in my writing career. Whether it is actually working on my novel (which is still not finished) or just getting those query letters that I keep trying to make perfect sent out so someone can actually see them. Even if it is just gathering research for a particular project, that is still working towards the end goal of finishing that project. I think that is a goal that I can work with and actually stick to.

Until I do make things happen the way that I want them to, I have to work on tuning that voice in the back of my mind that questions if things would’ve been better if I had made another choice. Fact of the matter is that I will never know the answer to that because I chose to do me and not what someone else might have thought I should do. I’m certainly not going to become the success that I want to be by doing what everyone else thinks I should.

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”