Hey, folks… I know, I know… I was AWOL again, LOL… but I hope the fact that I was working on Book 11, The Shadows—and turned it in on time, will count for a lil’ somethin’ something,’ as they say (BIG SMILE!)

Seriously, it’s been a long haul—a LOT—of stuff going on… but this is the time of year when no matter what is happening in our lives, we have to stop, pause for the cause, and say a resounding THANK YOU for all our blessings - big and small.

See, by this time of year, the average person is weary. There’s all the daily grind issues that have finally piled up on our shoulders till we feel like Atlas; the weather is getting dreary (days are shorter, darkness comes too quickly); we may be fighting our way through the holiday madness at the supermarket to get ready for a huge celebration—or missing folks in our family who are no longer here; and we may have just gotten bumped from a flight, or bumped in a train car aisle, or had our fender bumped on the road… whatever is going on, it’s easy to lose perspective about why one would want to be thankful.

So, I submit to you, let’s all take 30 seconds—yeah, right now—to just breathe in slowly and close our eyes. Think about someone who makes you laugh, who opens up your heart and makes your spirit soar. Maybe it’s a kid, a crazy friend, a hilarious sibling/relative, a buddy on the job who is always quick with a joke, or a kind neighbor, or maybe it’s your cat or dog, could be a person who you don’t really know but who’s always pleasant when you pass them on the street. The point isn’t so much the rank of that person (or pet) of affection in your life, but rather the “feeling” you get when you think of them. Then transfer that feeling onto images of everything you have to deal with this season. See yourself easily navigating traffic and supermarkets and relatives and work crunches. Let calm become your blanket for just a few minutes and let that meander through your system before making another “to do/must do” list in your head.

I say this because with all the steady, heavy, “mental incoming”—it’s too easy to forget that everybody who was here last year didn’t necessarily make it to this year. When you’re under siege in your life, it’s hard to step back and gain perspective. Ask me how I know

Therefore, if you were standing in line with a loaded shopping cart fussing about the “damned shopping” today – remember 10,000 people never lived through a cyclone last week and 1.5 million of those who did are waiting on military cookies to drop from the sky from U.N. relief efforts. Scary. A lot to be thankful for. With that in mind, I ain’t mad at the old lady who can’t work her debit card, if I put it all in perspective.

Truly, if we count our blessings then it’s harder to have room in our minds to count our deficits (or anyone else’s.) If you walk around with a little mantra in your head saying: thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you – watch and see how calm you’ll get all of a sudden. Works like a charm.

For real, I do this when I feel my blood pressure rising. I tend to be impatient; always gotta be somewhere with not enough hours in a day to get it all done did. Plus, you know this time of year everything is hurry up and wait. Everybody is frenetic. Not to mention, it seems as though people behind whatever counter you’re standing in front of were put there just to make you lose your natural mind. It’s a conspiracy, a plot, of this I’m too sure. But I’ve learned that, if I smile at them, regardless of their attitude or questionable skill-set, and simply say “thank you’ – realizing that dealing with the general public is just about the most thankless job in the world, usually I make them smile and pass on the joy. In fact, I’ve found it to be so effective that I’ve been able to commandeer customer service people away from nasty customers… folks tend to like to wait on the pleasant person, and they will stretch out the time they spend waiting on you just so they don’t have to deal with the next snarling individual.

Admittedly, I digress. Not sure how I got here in this mental ramble, smile. But you get my drift. My brain is truly fried, LOL! Can’t fake the funk… but with all the “to do’s” and whatnot swirling in my head, I’m trying to keep a clear picture of the things I’m really thankful for… and once I started thinking hard about that, I realized I needed a very long sheet of legal pad (maybe the whole pad itself!) Here and some of the things I’m thankful for:

While I was gone from the blog, I had the phenomenal opportunity to go to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida for the South Florida National Association of 100 Black Women’s Literary Jazz Extravaganza, with a bunch of writer colleagues and friends (Victoria Christopher Murray, Travis Hunter, Keith Lee Johnson, Beverly Jenkins, Earl Sewell Lewis Banks, Phil Duck—to name a few, and I know I’m forgetting folks, chalk that up to my feeble brain but not my heart.) The wild mix of authors, organization hosts, and wonderful hospitality led to laughs like you wouldn’t believe… wiping your eyes kind of hooting and howling (mostly because Travis is insane and Earl ain’t far behind him, LOL!) I’m just gonna say, “Coca Cola,” – classic – and leave it there!

From that fantastic venue, it was on to an unexpected personal trip to Hawaii (Mahalo!)—if I tell you, I gotta kill ya, LOL… but, yeah… very, very thankful, BIG CHEESY GRIN… then I headed directly to Philcon in Philly, and had a blast with the sci-fi folks. Jonathan Mayberry is my road dawg! Can you believe how small the world is—we used to go to middle school together back when he had a long, hippie ponytail and I had an Angela Davis afro, ha ha ha! Very cool people (if you like hardcore, intelligent, brilliant horror - read this man!)

But there’s a whole list of things I’m profoundly thankful for that I cannot even begin to quantify… like my daughter—I’m so proud of my boo, she’s about to go to college in 2008 and I’m excited, blue, crazed, happy, sad… conflicted—sigh… a mother. I’m thankful that my family finally pulled together after many, many years and had a ridiculously funny and outrageous family reunion in the Poconos. Shooot, I’m thankful that I’ve even got family, feel me? Some people don’t have that—or have folks who are blood relatives that treat them worse than a stranger. I’m blessed. Yep… I’m thankful for my friends, my health & strength, and career. Thankful that my old dog, (she’s a 12year old black Lab), is still my “girlfriend.” I’m thankful that I have somewhere to live—because year before last, we’d had a fire and couldn’t be “home for the holidays.” I’m thankful for my sister and her zany phone calls and for her understanding me—just like I’m thankful that my agent is my buddy and his wife is my good friend and his daughter is my angel… so it’s all in the family… same with my editor, who listens to the good, the bad, and the ugly laughing all the way (we tight!) That’s cool… all of it is very, very cool, in the grand scheme of things.

However, maybe the coolest thing of all, and what I am beyond thankful for, is this community of people who previously didn’t know each other—but who came together around a project: you guys made something very profound happen. That first single-cell being quickly morphed into many, and they became Street Team, and forum posters, and VHL advocates, and Light-sharers, and friends, and chatters, and lovers of the series… and this whole organic experience came out of a big bang called joy. It sprung up from people sharing their joy and friendliness with one another. I am thankful for you all. I’m blessed beyond measure that some wild madness, a sort of mental primordial ooze that jumped out of my imagination, somehow got people talking and drew people together and that grew into a community that now has a life of its own. Deep.

This Thanksgiving I am awed, humbled… and moved. I thank the Creator for all this abundance, but I also wanted to take this time out to thank you all for patiently waiting for me to resurface, for allowing me to go underground to work without talking about me too badly (grin), reading the books, for keeping the on-line dialogue going, for stirring things up and sharing your excitement with others… for caring about each other—for caring about me, for being the fabulously diverse tapestry of interests, religions, ethnicities, and philosophies, and perspectives that you are. The thing that is so deep to me is, I had hoped people could function like this… so I wrote that hopeful concept and belief in fiction and called it The Neteru Guardian Team. And here we are, with truth being stranger than fiction, at almost the finale of the 12 book series, and oddly, the on-line community around this series looks EXACTLY like the fictional team—where EVERYBODY is included and represented and valued and is needed as a part of the overall balance to make the whole thing work because they each have cool powers of their own. How awesome is that?

Y’all have a wonderful, loving, fun, joyful, hilarious, safe, eventful, abundant Thanksgiving! When the Divine takes over amazing things happen! Shaking my head…

Much Love, Always… and Stay in the Light!
–Leslie

PS: November ends on the 30th of this month, LOL—so, nooooo, I did not forget that I promised a BTB before November is out. I gotchure back!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 9:12 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.