Where I've Been

Hi! I know I went ghost after Octoberfest was over (this appears to be a recurring theme with me after I do a month-long promotion, huh? lol) and even though I'm quite sure nobody noticed, I still wanted to explain in the off, very rare chance that someone did. In the first few days after Octoberfest, my primary concern was finishing all of my late posts in the series and keeping TNT going. At some point, I realized I didn't feel like watching any movies this month so I was a bit undecided about it. By the time the month's 2nd TNT came up, our election had just happened and the results left me in a funk that honestly, I'm just now starting to come out of, so TNT was definitely off the table for November at that point. Maybe I sound dramatic, but there was this level of terror and uncertainty following the election and I debated continuing anything at all for a few days. Everything I read online made the future sound near apocalyptic and my entire livelihood as an African-American, as a woman, as a disabled person on government assistance, seemed to be up in the air. 
And there are no guarantees that it isn't still up in the air. There are no guarantees or promises that it won't be every bit as apocalyptic as I initially feared. But life has no guarantees or promises. Even though Obama didn't do all he said he would do, there was still a level of safety there for me. I know that there were others who probably felt the fear I do now when he was elected both times and while I don't understand why, it's not for me to judge. For me, there was safety. But that security blanket, that sense of safety, was completely obliterated for me following the election. For the first few days following that night, I didn't have the desire or energy to write. Writing about vintage was the absolute last thing on my mind, even more so because history, which is a large part of my view on vintage, is a painful reminder that in some ways, as much as things change they stay the same. Many of my favorite decades take place during a time where things were segregated, where Blacks and other minorities weren't free to go where we pleased as we pleased. But I don't often talk about that. I try my hardest not to, because for the longest time I thought that we'd moved past that as a country. But the events following Election Night showed me that if I felt the country was already doing badly, it could certainly be a lot worse. I couldn't see the logic in hopping on here, talking about times gone by, and continuing to ignore the racial tension so I can focus on the pretty things. What POC went through (and in some places, are going through now) was not pretty. It wasn't fun, it wasn't safe and it wasn't pretty. That I know from experience. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to start talking about these things, in an effort to bring awareness in a way that made sense for this blog, but to continue to not talk about them seemed like intentionally pulling the wool over my eyes and I found myself feeling conflicted. 
But I also don't want to make that the point of this site. Vintage for me is both a hobby and an source of escapism. I love history and certain things about vintage, but there are also things I detest about it and for the longest time, I didn't talk about them because I felt comfort in assuming we'd (mostly) moved away from those things in present-day. But have we really though? I feel this obligation now to at least mention the ugly parts, the real. Maybe not on a regular basis, but at some point. So there was this uncertainty with what I wanted to do with the blog, whether or not I even wanted to continue doing it, and I made myself have several damn seats until I got my head out of my ass about it. lol 
I'm still not completely out of my funk, but I'm not doing the most about it anymore. lol I'm not changing shit. Because I'm such an anxious person, fight or flight often results in flight for me. And that's what I was going to do here, for no good g*ddamn reason at all. I don't even have readers, the f*ck am I gonna leave for? LOL I think I will probably integrate more of the serious things into the blog over time, but I don't want this to become a politically charged blog. I don't want racial issues to become my mantle. I want to speak on the topic in general because being intentionally oblivious is dangerous in this day and age, but I don't want to become a voice for it. I stopped writing about my anxiety partially because I realized I didn't want that to become my 'thing.' I wanted to educate and support others, but I didn't want that to be the primary thing people associated me with. I don't want to be a voice for racial issues either, mainly because I don't know enough about all of them to speak as eloquently on the topic as I would like. Maybe that sounds bad, but I'm being honest. 
After all that died down, I turned my focus to RRNT, which as I continue to whine about, has been neglected in lieu of what I do over here. I'm going to learn how to balance these damn blogs one of these days. There are a lot of drafted posts that have yet to go up, so for December the focus on both blogs is going to be to finally publish a lot of those drafts. I call them the Vault posts, but really that's just my nice way of saying that I'm posting a bunch of late shit I hope you'll read. lol 

TL;DR=The election results made me question everything for awhile, I got in a funk and at the worst of it considered closing down my blogs for a combination of reasons, but after a few days I took my head out from its resting place between my bumcheeks and realized that running scared wasn't going to help anyone, least of all myself. Now I'm on the review blog cleaning out my drafted posts and publishing a few, and I'll be spending December doing the same over here when I'm finished. I considered doing a few new posts, but decided against it. 
Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. Thanks for reading and I'll see you soon.