Cleaning out my desk this morning...

Funny feeling, kinda.

I've worked here six and a half years, which I suppose is an eternity in today's highly mobile economy. (Man! More than half a decade!)

Ha, I just remembered that the day I first came here I thought “Alright… This is a good place to work for maybe two years while I get my head together.”

Six and a half years later…

I guess it really is for the best that I move on, regardless of how things turn out with TOO MUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMAN because if I don’t, I’m gonna just sit here and rot.

I just found an old newspaper article at the bottom of one of my desk drawers… It’s an article my mother sent me about two weeks before I started working here, about how the new technology of digital video was going to revolutionize independent filmmaking.

(Remind me later to talk a little bit about how fucking awesome my mom is and how aggressively supportive my parents have been of my artistic path – something that is almost unheard of among Nigerians. Even back in Nigeria when I was studying Law because I thought that would make them happy, my mom stayed pestering me about this Cinematography program at USC and how there’s this new young Black filmmaker named John Singleton that I need to check out before she basically threw me on the plane and forced me to come to America and pursue my dreams. Sometimes I almost feel like I let my folks down by becoming just another drone in the corporate America machine, really.)

By that time I had kinda put away my cinematic ambitions and was writing a novel and was in the advanced stages of planning a Black men’s magazine that was a cross between GQ and Playboy (This was years before KING and SMOOTH and even before Maxim and FHM and the other British “lad mags” invaded America… Believe me, I’m still kicking myself for not following through on that!) I felt that getting a regular 9-to-5 would help out and keep me focused.

Six and a half years later….

Oh well… It’s been an interesting time. I learned a lot of cool things, met a lot of cool people, and it’s an interesting conversation starter when you tell people that you spent six and a half years editing dictionaries.

Time to move on.

(So move, homie!)

That reminds me: I haven't even started packing. I mean, I don't even have a suitcase.