There is nothing more poisonous than feeling sorry for self but it is hard to resist sometimes. When things happen in your life that hurt you or cause pain, to not feel bad is unnatural…inhuman right? You get a divorce, a loved one dies, you say goodbye to a friend or a lover…in my case today one in the same who is heading off to Afghanistan in a few weeks.

I want to feel sorry for myself right now…time is to short, the goodbye will be to difficult but I won’t…I will fight the urge. I will fight the urge and I will go and make him an amazing meal! The best I have ever made in my life and I will hope that are time together and my love for him will never be anything either of us feel sorry for!

Quote Of The Day!

SELF-PITY IS AN OPIATE.

The most insidious problem with drugs is that the human body develops a tolerance for them and requires larger and larger doses to achieve the same effect. The same is true with self-pity. The more you allow yourself to indulge in it, the more you will require.Soon, self-pity will become a habit, one so debilitating that you will rob yourself of all the potential you possess. Happily, there is a cure. If you truly analyze the situation, most often you will find that the problems that have driven you to pity yourself are mostly of your own creation. It follows, then, that the best person to remedy the problem is the person who created it: you yourself.

This positive message is brought to you by the Napoleon Hill Foundation. Visit them at http://www.naphill.org.

The stroke of midnight on New Years Eve celebrates the ushering in of the new and closing out the old. I’ve rung in New Year’s pasts so many different ways, with so many different people and many of them (for better or for worse) haven’t remained in my life through the duration of that year.

This year I will finally sing the traditional New Year’s song Auld Lang Syne with an understanding of what it means.

Auld Lang Syne (The Good Old Days) should be forgotten and never brought to mind in order to make room for new beginnings. This song represents saying goodbye, joyously and maybe a bit wistfully to the past but also welcoming in the new start…it’s bittersweet.

Maybe 2008 was wonderful for you or maybe it was the worse year ever. Whatever it was at the stroke of midnight sing along with those around you with a promise never to long for what’s already gone! Happy New Year!

Auld Lang Syne
Robert Burns

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne

We twa hae run aboot the braes
And pou’d the gowans fine;
we’ve wander’d mony a weary foot
Sin’ auld lang syne

We two hae paidled i’ the burn,
Frae mornin’ sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin’ auld lang syne

And here’s a hand, my trusty friend,
And gie’s a hand o’ thine;
We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne

“[Jesse Jackson's] stunningly inappropriate comments symbolize the social, political and psychological vertigo that all of us, and especially Black Americans, are experiencing because of Obama’s success. We are all, including Obama, in a place we never really thought we would be, and it has knocked us off our feet. We don’t know how to act. We don’t have a plan. We’re searching for our equilibrium. And until we regain our footing, we can expect all sorts of bizarre behavior from people who ought to know better. Hold on to your hat.”
–Jack White, who suggests Black people aren’t truly ready for a Black man to become President in his July 10 article for The Root, “When The Man is One of Us.“

Black people are so used to fighting for change with outsider status that we become confused when one of us plays an insider’s game well enough to have a real chance of being the Ultimate Insider, reasons former Time columnist writer Jack White. Our uneasiness with Obama’s recent shift toward the political center is a symptom of this confusion, says White. Our discombobulation explains Jesse Jackson’s castration comment and criticism that Barack Obama talks down to Blacks instead of addressing the issues that really matter to us, White explains.

Of course, many of our GGMS readers took exception with Jackson’s comments and accused him of having what MSNBC analyst Kelli Goff has called “jealous Negro syndrome.” A number of readers who commented on this morning’s post said Jackson’s brand of leadership is obsolete, and he can’t adjust to world in which a Black man would have to represent everyone’s interests—not just ours.

But to White’s point, are African Americans really ready for this moment in history? A recent NiaPulse survey suggests that most Black women are optimistic enough to believe that Obama can go all the way. Of the 670 Black women we surveyed online last month, 71 percent said they believe that America is ready to elect its first African-American president. However, this optimism is actually at its lowest among the young. Two-thirds of 18-29 year olds said yes, while 34 percent either said no or they were not sure. By comparison, 76 percent of 30-39 year olds said yes, while 24 percent either said no or that they were not sure.

Maybe when older folks act a fool, it makes the young question whether we’re truly ready for a real change?

–Sheryl Huggins Salomon

Do you agree with White that some African Americans, like Jesse Jackson, are acting out because as a people we aren’t really ready for one of us to become President? Or can the old guard leadership adjust to a new political game? Share your thoughts below.

“If the only way I can earn a living now in African-American adult fiction is to sell my people the same poison that they’ve become addicted to, then I quit with my artistic integrity still intact, while moving on to a more progressive mission.”
–Bestselling fiction writer Omar Tyree, in a June 19 column published in The Daily Voice.

There’s an ever-growing pile of raunchy “urban lit” novels on my office desk, sent by publicists hoping to reach NiaOnline’s audience of Black women. Zane, Noire, Geneva Holliday, Teri Woods are among the authors of these potboilers, which are chocked full of explicit sex and dirty dealings. It’s a genre which seems to have overtaken the African-American books section of many bookstores. The Black literati have been complaining about the trend for years (while some join it under pseudonyms, such as Holliday), but judging from what I see sisters reading when I’m on the subway here in New York City, there’s an unabating demand for urban lit.

Now, one of the early entrants to the genre says he’s getting out. “After sixteen years and sixteen novels in the African-American adult urban fiction game, I feel like the man who created the monster Frankenstein. Things have gotten way out of hand,” said Omar Tyree (Flyy Girl, For The Love of Money, Diary of a Groupie) in a recent column that is, at times, self-aggrandizing (kudos to Eisa’s Blog for alerting us to the column). Going easy on the current crop of writers who he says were inspired by his earlier work, Tyree puts the much of the blame on the urban audience, which he says has “a preference for denigration.” He complains that when he tried to offer more uplifting stories with positive characters, such as A Do Right Man or Boss Lady, the audience didn’t reward him with praise or book sales. It’s a dynamic that he relates to “a similar destruction of hip hop, where the same ghettocentric stories began to take precedence over the creative perspectives and multifaceted voices and subjects of our urban music.”

With his publishing contracts winding down, Tyree says his final adult fiction novel, Pecking Order ( “which is all about the innovation and hustle of making legal money” ), will be released in September. While he does not specify what his “more progressive mission will be,” a year-old posting on his web site talks about his aspirations in the film industry.

Do you agree with Tyree’s complaints about the state of Black literature? Is it the fault of Black book readers, the writers, or the publishers? Share your thoughts below.