Life Update #5 | Rant | Motivation

I’ve admittedly missed this too much. Like way too much. But as so you know from my previous posts I was in nursing school for the past few months and by far this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in relation to school. Like I desperately needed these three weeks off. Desperately.

I still have school to go to during the summer, fall and next spring will be my next semester. Just keep praying for me, will you? Like I need a lot of prayers. Just. So many prayers. You have no idea how completely done I was with this semester. Hopefully during the summer, I will be more used to nursing school and cope with it better. I have two clinical sites that I have to go to so I will be interacting with real people and have them be assigned to me as a patient. I’m interested to see how it’ll go.

While I was going to school I was working at most, two and a half days a week at different public schools as a teacher’s aide. It turns out I am really good with kids, I’ve already been offered two positions to do it full-time. I don’t know I guess I have a lot of patience with elementary school children because for the most part, they really are just beginning to grow as a person. They are just trying to do the most basic things: have food, play with friends, and learn about stuff that interests them.

An accurate description of me during the entire semester. if you know the original artist let me know so I can credit them.

Next thing I have a rant about is consumers, specifically: fast food consumers. As some of you may know, I have a short stint working at a local fast food restaurant where I was a team member. I took a lot of orders at the front, worked the drive food, and handled the fryer. I worked there for several months and I have to say this to customers: please don’t be awful. Like it is a nightmare to serve a customer who has a temper, lacks patience or sympathy for the people serving them. I’ve had to deal with customers doing the most obnoxious things from throwing a milkshake at an employee because the lid was not completely on to another customer ordering food for their family of five and leaving their half-eaten food on the tables and refusing to throw away their food or drinks or trash.

I’ve only brought this up because I went to get a large fries at McDonald’s today because gosh darn it I was craving some for a long time and I had a huge headache today and I was going to get some fries whether it was good for me or not. So I did and I proceeded to wait in line for my large fries for 30 minutes in the drive thru. A long time for fries? Yes. Does that give me the right to start cussing the employees out who have apologized profusely for the wait? Absolutely not. Just be courteous is all I’m asking. And you may never know, those employees are the ones handling your food. I’m not saying it’s right for them to do something to your food but regardless, it happens. Don’t anything that may warrant them to do something.

My "you know better" face

Finally I just need some motivation to, like I said, be “healthier”. In what regards? I guess all the aspects I discussed earlier in my previous post but my primary goal is my physical health. I have not consistently exercised in such a long time. I believe, it’s because I have not quite been able to figure out a schedule where I can fit my thirty minutes of being healthy and my “me” period where I am not working (I’m working full-time currently. Not exactly on vacation.) It’s not hard…I’ve done it before. I’m just lacking the motivation to do so.

I guess things I could do to increase my motivation is just look at other people’s achievements. Seeing what others do to achieve their goals makes me motivated to go ahead and use their strategies to do the same. Meh, I’ll figure it out soon.

Okay, that’s it. Nothing much. I’ve just missed talking to you guys.

Have a good day or evening!

Sincerely,

Jante Fazaldin

America - Languages - ERGGGHH

Hey, it’s Jante and I got a topic to discuss. Languages.

We use it to communicate with each other so here is my point. Why in America is it such a normal and accepted thing for someone to know only one language?

Look I definitely understand that there are going to be incidents, backgrounds and just times where someone cannot afford to know a language either because it costs money to formally know a language, they don’t have family or friends who know another language to teach them, or it just isn’t a priority because there are more important things to worry about, such as food, water and shelter.

I am not ignorant to this and I’m pretty sure I’m leaving out other situations where learning a second language just isn’t even conceivable.

BUT when I take all of this into account it still leaves many of us (I included) who for too long of a time, were perfectly content with being monolingual. And I realize that me being comfortable with that was just stupid. Plain idiotic.

I come from a background where my mom and step-dad are bilingual, they speak both Swahili and English and my biological father being trilingual where he knows Swahili, Hindi and English. When I grew up, my parents didn’t really enforce Swahili onto me so of course, I didn’t end up speaking it when I got older and I still till this day am not fluent at it at all.

And I’m kinda sick of it.

And the thing is I feel like Americans are so easy to dismiss not learning a second language, because hey, other people should know English.

And the argument does have stuff to back it up. English is the fourth most commonly spoken language with over 510 million people speaking it.

However, the argument becomes flawed when you look at how many native speakers….it’s only 340 million people who actually spoke English as their native language…..which leaves over 100 million people to learn it as a second language.

It just bothers me so much that we have this nonchalance about it and this righteousness about ourselves as English speakers that we absolutely refuse to acknowledge the fact that it’s completely unfair to just assume other people should just learn the language. And it has gotten to the point that English is recognized as an official language by over 60 countries and even though English is not the native language that the populace speaks to begin with! Just so bothersome. So so bothersome.

But sure I understand that two of the major superpowers of the world (America and England) are English speakers and they do have a lot of say in trade and business so it is advantageous for others to learn English as a second language. But why as English speakers do we not feel like it is a necessity to learn another language??

For instance, in the US there is a huge Hispanic community, something that has definitely become more relevant since I moved to Houston. I mean Mexico is like right there. Why isn’t it required for the American public school education to teach Spanish from kindergarten to when they are a senior in high school?  

Like what cons are there to learning two languages? None. Absolutely none.

And the thing is, this can be done. Sure you would have to rework the entire school curriculum but I don’t think that it can’t be done. It’s feasible and it enlightens people and gives people a necessary and handy skill that they wouldn’t be able to get on their own.

But yeah, until that happens, I really do urge other people to LEARN A LANGUAGE. Specifically, a language that you have people who can practice with you but honestly any language that you are interested in will do. I mean, don’t be arrogant. 60 plus countries have listed English as an official language for a reason man. The least you can do is attempt to learn a language.

I understand, you may never be completely and utterly fluent. And that’s fine. What is important is the intent and the effort to do so.

So for me, I am making a pretty big goal for me to accomplish but I think I can do it, it’s gonna require a lot of practice but I’m really determined to do this.

•         At 28 years old, I will know and be able to communicate Spanish and Swahili adequately.
•          At 35 years old, I will have a basic understanding of Arabic.
• 
  

But that’s just my personal goal, and in the end, just don’t be an arrogant fool. Learn a language if you can.

And app I really suggest downloading is called Duolingo. Free language service that helps you learn a language by playing games and activities and “messaging” their robots in order to help with the conversational skills. I am learning so much from this and I urge everyone to use it. It can honestly jumpstart your second language journey.

I wish you all the best of luck and have a wonderful weekend.

Sincerely,

Jante

Colorism | Corpus Christi | Chit Chat

Hey!

So this is Jante and I guess this is more of talky/opinion post on whatever I want today. Right now, I want to discuss colorism/natural hair/personal beliefs etc, while in between I feature pictures from my time in Corpus Christi.

And look, I already know that I’m going to get a lot of hate if I were to talk about feminism or racism because it is such a polarizing topic so colorism seems like the next best place to start. 

Colorism(n.): Prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group.

(Courtesy of Oxford Dictionary)

To be frank, from a very young age I always thought that light was beautiful and straight hair was beautiful and light colored eyes were beautiful. European features were ideal and I began to despise my African features including my curly hair, dark eyes, and wide nose. My brother Jameel got the long Arab nose, the sunken deep eye sockets, everything that made him look less "black" while I got all the uglier features.

Me and my sister at Pier 99

I failed to see my beauty and put that alongside me being an overweight child, with limited social skills (that I am still working on till this day), it made for an unhappy childhood and rough growth during my formative years of middle school and early high school.

I’ve realized that “natural” hair in the black community is coming back and I am very happy that many women are embracing and loving the hair that comes out of their head like yes, this is definitely progress. But I really hate that we hold ourselves back because we still want to put the European standards of beauty on the hair that grows out of our scalp.

Left to Right: Babbie (step-dad), brother, and brother

We are mainly going to be talking about colorism in the natural hair community for now. Colorism in everyday life and in the black community is just such a broad topic and I can do a series on it, I don’t know, we will see.

First, let’s say you go to YouTube to find a "natural" curly hair routine. Most of the time you would find curly hair routines on girls with curl types that range from 2c to maybe 4a. You want to learn more about curl patterns? Go here.

But no one wants to watch a video with some lady with “kinky” hair where there isn’t a definite curl pattern. Why? It’s not considered pretty. Basically, the rule of thumb to be a popular natural hair guru on YouTube is that people are going to watch your videos if you can lay your baby hairs down. If you can’t, you’re not going to make it as a huge YouTuber or natural hair care blogger in general.

Brother

My hair has a long story but I didn’t have a relaxer in my hair until I was 14 and it was mainly because I had no idea how to take care of my hair. I hated combing it out and just putting it in a ponytail and I yearned to have the ability to wear my hair down like the rest of my friends….even if I had a hijab on. (Whatever that’s a different story)

I did it and I really liked it for the next couple of weeks until I got tired of it and saw how lifeless it was. No movement, no body. It was dead and thin and it wasn't me but instead, I was faking it and in the end, I grew resentful of it and hated it. So for two years I grew it out and slowly trimmed it every month or so until all the relax hair was gone.

I was dibbledabblying with straighteners and experimenting with short hair cuts until when I was 19, I straightened my hair in Dubai and whatever happened it completely denatured my head of hair leaving only two inches of my hair from the root curly and the rest of my head pin straight. It left my hair damaged, just like it was when I relaxed my hair five years ago. In August of 2015, I cut my hair into basically a long afro that barely reached chin length when stretched out.

Anyways it’s been a little over a year and it now reaches past my collarbones. I’m happy with it now, it’s curly, it’s healthy and I am extremely satisfied with it.

Now my hair is what I would consider to be 3c to 4a curl pattern so I’m cutting it close but because I can lay my baby hairs down, I have “pretty hair.” And now add the fact that I am mixed with other things other than black and now I have this unwanted label added onto me like I’m some rare commodity.

It’s weird and honestly, when we talk about natural hair we need to stop labeling hair as “good hair” and “kinky hair”. No. ALL hair is good hair no matter how coarse, short, long or WHATEVER it is. It doesn’t need to have defined ringlets or curls for it to be beautiful. It can have no curls, no waves, just be as coiled and zigzag as it can be and just be as beautiful.

Anyways I think that’s all I have to say for now. Thanks for reading.

Mom

Sincerely,

Jante  

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