Skip to main content

DashaFEST

Thirty-one days. When was the last time you spent thirty-one anything on yourself? I'm spending 31 whole days on me.

Welcome to DashaFEST.

I was in my early twenties when I first expanded my birthday from one day to the entire month. Indulgent and absurd, yes, and yet I've been shamelessly committed to this self-celebration for almost two decades. Some years have been resplendent, some more privately powerful. All, however, have been filled with reflection, adventure, assessment and rejoicing.

This year, DashaFEST falls during a time when I've made a conscious decision to match the passion of my work with a renewed enthusiasm for the amazing humans surrounding me. Operation: Social Life, I call it. We don't often recognize our habits of existing until they bear the rigid grooves of a rut.

I've been carving out such a rut for myself for quite a few years, I suppose. It hasn't felt like one because the nature of my work is social and I am so wholly fueled by the opportunity to do it. Still, there's something to be said for "playing hard." I used to know how to do that. Before the meeting agendas, and bedtime stories, and cameo appearances, and strategic planning meetings, the Girl Scout cookie sales, and airport terminals, I knew how to play hard for no reason. I proved it to myself every year during the month of October.

So, I'm excited about DashaFEST this year. Yes, for the events and challenges I've scheduled for myself, but, mostly, for this revived fervor to enjoy ME and the life that has stitched itself around my shoulders. I am blessed. Life is bountiful. Let the rejoicing begin.

dnk

Comments

Yetunde said…
Sounds like an awesome plan, Sis!
2:54 PM
unlocked said…
you are an inspiration!
2:56 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tiger Pause

At eleven, my daughter's fears were getting mauled by a tiger, injured a car crash and being a victim of rape. We talked a lot over the years about sex, sexuality and patriarchy, music lyrics and power, media, shame and the law, discretion, integrity and the whispered fragility of boys. At sixteen, I rocked her as she wept. Her slender shoulders were violent from crying. One of her friends had been raped. Months ago, but was only beginning to share. Months ago, when she started losing weight, stopped hanging out before pre-calc, and kept exhaustion shadowed beneath her makeup contours. We sat crouched on the stairs leading up to my room. She'd called out my name from the dark hall. Her voice, normally expectant and full, had been small and reaching. I peeled away from my husband to find her on the landing, shaking. My daughter felt helpless and hurt that her friend had gone through so much all alone. That she didn't know. Couldn't have known. That it was so unfair....
2 comments
Read more
Dear Deborah Brown Community School ~ It is quite a feat for a small charter to make national news.  It is perversely disappointing, however, to read that a charter school led by two black women is systematically persecuting students of color for celebrating the natural textures of their hair. As an educator, I understand and value the impact of comportment.  Indeed, many ills of the contemporary school environment can be aggravated by lax guidelines on conduct and appearance. Nonetheless, your policies against natural hairstyles levels a much more serious attack against your students.  Rather than teaching them how to be “presentable,” your policy forces the concept of “acceptable” at a disastrously early age. Yes, the school should vigorously mandate “neat,” “modest” and “respectable.” These are essential expectations.  Denying the option of neatly, modestly and respectfully showcasing the heritage of their hair, however, reinforces a wickedly...
4 comments
Read more

Kraken the whip

It. has been. a YEAR since I've sat down to write. From this side of my pen, that is. Writing projects, yes. Scripts for one-woman shows. A children's book. A 11-minute poem that I performed with the Milwaukee Ballet.  Nothing to boo hoo about, at all.  Except these words weren't, necessarily, for me. I might have etched five poems, but I would have stirred them in a workshop I was leading or supporting. Not sure if that counts as writing for myself. When I started counting on my fingers, my eyes tracking absently across the ceiling, the math was incomprehensible. I thought of friends I'd giggled with about their comparable sex dry spells. A year, girl? A whole year, like twelve months, back to back, f'real?  My bad, y'all. In this past year, my best words were tiles for funding mosaics, grants and proposals, strategic plans, contract agreements and curricula, social media posts, text messages -sometimes a panel's worth, and eight trillion emails. ...
1 comment
Read more