Tag: God

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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.

Shifting the Focus

December 6, 2012December 6, 2012 jcladyluv

So every year in December I try to prepare for the year that is coming. I can’t help it, I’m a planner, that’s just who I am. I make lists (yes I am an extreme list maker) for different avenues of things in my life. Typically I make 3 lists (goals for the year, books to read for the year, and writing projects to accomplish for the year) but this year I added a list (goals towards better health) which only adds to the expectations I place on myself.

There is one thing that I am changing about how I make my lists. Usually I push the envelope with the lists I make in the fact that I make them highly unattainable and marginally off focus, hoping to push myself to a higher standard to achieve them. This time I am making the lists not only with a more realistic expectation of completion in mind, but also with a different focal perspective in my sights as well.

I think that a part of my problem in the previous years (also one’s that just did not go as great as I had planned) is that my focus was on the wrong things. My focus was shifted on things that I just didn’t have any actual control over; things that required me trying to work my way around the plans that God already has worked out for me. I’m realizing now that there were things that I should have been directing my focus towards, things that are actually in my power to control, things that are where my focus needs to be, that I just wasn’t concentrating on the way I should have been.

Quite possibly, the reason why all of my plans for previous years were not going accordingly is due to the fact that they were my plans for me and not God’s plans for me. It’s not that I don’t also want the things that God has mapped out for me, it’s just that my focus got off track on other things that I thought I wanted and they weren’t necessarily what was right for me to have (at least not at this time). I was focusing on the wrong things. I was placing my energy into things that weren’t right for me. I was putting time into forcing something that was out of the realm of God’s plans. I was getting off track.

Now that I’m in a better place, a place where I can clearly see that the direction I was going in was leading to the wrong destination, my focus has shifted. My mind is clear. I know where my energy and time needs to be placed and everything else that comes as a result of that, is whatever is meant to come to me. My writing career hasn’t been what it should have been by now because I wasn’t focused on that. I thought I was. I had even managed to convince myself that I was steadily focused on that. However, my actions were just not matching what I was saying.

I wasn’t putting the energy and time into doing the things that I, as a dedicated and passionate writer, need to put into it. I was focused on other things that just weren’t worth my time. I wasn’t focused on the number one thing for my life (besides my daughter of course) which is my writing and my career. I’ve got it now and I’m back on track. Next year should be really interesting!

I have the Write 2 Be Ambitious and Driven…

What is your Write 2 Be?

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

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 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.

Does One Mistake Really Erase All of the Good?

October 23, 2012 jcladyluv

FALL FROM GRACE. These are the three words being used to depict the athlete Lance Armstrong and all that he accomplished throughout his entire career. Of course we all know that Lance Armstrong has just recently had his seven Tour de France titles stripped away after being found guilty of “doping” during his career and those races. On top of that he also had major endorsement deals that rescinded their offers due to the controversy.

Now I don’t know whether or not Lance Armstrong is in fact guilty of doping in order to win all of those races that he won or is this just a witch hunt that they are on and pinning the bulk of the blame on him. Frankly I don’t really care if he did or didn’t because in my eyes what they are doing to him and to his name is a disgrace. Stripping him of his titles doesn’t change the fact that he did win those races and I don’t know too many people who could have done what he did, on or off drugs.

What is really a shame is that in order to punish him for a mistake that they have absolutely no real tangible proof that he did (only hearsay by his so called ex-teammates and results from blood work that could very easily have been medication from his cancer treatment) they have tainted his name along with all of the good that he has done. His foundation, the Live Strong Foundation does good work for cancer research and it also goes to great lengths to provide free services to help anyone who is affected by cancer and cannot monetarily take care of those responsibilities, and recently he was forced to appoint someone else as the head of it in order to preserve its integrity.

There are a lot of people who are angry about this and disgusted with Lance Armstrong but let me tell you why I am not one of them. It is because we are all human and we do not have the right to pass personal judgments on anyone else not knowing what they live through on a daily basis. I’m not naïve to think that Lance might not have doped up in the latter part of his racing career but I certainly don’t believe that he did in the beginning. What does stripping him of his titles do, really? He knows he still won them. The world knows that he still won them. When they talk about stripping his titles in the news they still refer to him as the one who won 7 Tour de France races.

What it does do is send a message to others, especially the children of the future, that if you dare to make one mistake, that suddenly means that all the good that you did do means nothing now. Is that really what we want to communicate to people? That if, God forbid, you mess up in your life that you don’t deserve another chance and that you have to be beat down for your mistake continuously.

We make mistakes in life. We do things that we once said we would never ever do in a million years. People don’t just wake up with the idea of doing something morally and ethically wrong. People don’t intentionally set out to make their lives a circus. People do expect that if they make a mistake that it will not erase every good thing about them. You expect to be given second chances and you expect to not be deemed a bad person simply because you made an error in judgment. What ever happened to forgiveness and understanding? How are we supposed to ever learn from the mistakes that we make if no one will ever let us forget them?

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

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

Even In the Midst of the Storm

September 26, 2012October 2, 2012 jcladyluv

I read an inspirational message on facebook the other day that made me stop and rethink about the things that I’ve been dealing with lately. It read:

“Don’t confuse your path with your destination. Just because it’s stormy now doesn’t mean that you aren’t headed for sunshine.”

I’ve been so frustrated with this path that I am on lately. I have been second guessing decisions I made months ago, even years ago, and wondering if my gut steered me wrong this time. I’ve been second guessing the destination that I thought my path was leading me to.

I’ve been hit with a recent storm of bad weather and agonizing over just how long this particular storm was going to last because Lord only knows it’s not my first and it probably will not be my last. When I read that post on facebook I started to realize that maybe that’s what I have been doing for the past couple of weeks during my own personal torrential downpour that I have been experiencing lately.

I have been confusing the path that I am on with the destination that I am eventually headed towards. I have been forgetting that the rocky path has absolutely nothing to do with the destination that God has already laid out for me. I’ve had a life full of days of bad weather and what seems like even less days of sunshine.

I may have to weather the storm right now, in this moment, but I have to remind myself that with every storm the sunshine does follow. And sometimes after the storm there’s even a rainbow just to show you how bright it is on the other end of that storm that you’ve just weathered.

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

Time Is Of the Essence

August 20, 2012 jcladyluv

I’ve found myself saying to quite a lot of people lately that they shouldn’t wait to do whatever they said they were going to do the next time they get a chance. That they should take the opportunity to do whatever it is now, in that moment. Simply put, I have been reminding people that tomorrow is never promised and that you shouldn’t keep waiting for the next available moment when the moment has presented itself right now.

Isn’t it funny how we can impart wisdom and advice to other people, probably advice that was at some other time imparted to us, but we can never really seem to take that advice ourselves? I was telling Ms. L. today about how every time I make a plan to really buckle down and get things done I find myself at that moment, with all of my tools lined up around me ready for me to get stuff done and then either something gets me distracted or I simply fall asleep from being so tired. Hours later I end up with just as much done as I had before which is nothing.

I can’t keep repeating this same cycle of having a whole lot of plans to do something and ending up with very little to nothing actually being done. Is anyone else in a cycle of repeated procrastination or is it really just me? I only hope that I somehow learn to take my own advice (and advice given to me by others in the past) before time really does get away from me and it becomes too late to do anything about it.

As much as people would like to believe that it is never too late to do the things that you were meant to do, everyone’s time is up at some point. If I leave this earth without making a good enough use of the gifts and talents that God gave me and without fulfilling the purpose that he placed before me, then I really will have wasted all of the valuable time that I was given and I will have nothing to show for it.

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

Mood For Thought

August 7, 2012 jcladyluv

I did not wake up in the best of moods this morning. I was in a funk and to be honest I am still in one. I had hoped that the run I did on the treadmill this morning would help but it didn’t. I got some work done on my novel (thank God for that) and I went to the grocery store to shop for some decadent goodies to make me feel better.

However, as I was sitting here contemplating on the reasons for the mood that I am in I started to question myself as to why I was filling up my precious, already over extended time with thoughts of what is making me feel depressed and making me feel inadequate. Why am I giving those negative thoughts so much power? Why am I not taking this mood that I woke up with this morning and throwing myself into any piece of work that I can get my hands on in order to keep my mind focused on what is important and on what matters the most?

I mean sure a piece of pie or ice cream (or both) will make me feel better in the moment but then when they are gone the problem is still there. And so is the work that needed to be done that I just let pile up because I decided to let my mood hold me back. I do get in some really funky moods often and I always let them take over. It’s time that I start learning to take my moods and turn them into a source of productivity instead of a point of being stuck.

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

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”