Well that’s just silly!! Why did I go and make my topic for Day 2 about my blog name? If you want to know about how I came up with my blog name, read it here. In an effort to keep this interesting, I thought it would be fun to share some snippets from one of my grade 1 journals. Journal time was my favourite time as a kid, because I loved to write and draw pictures.
I Want Long Hair
This entry is very related to The Essence of Freedom Fro. I spent so much of my childhood, youth and young adulthood loathing my hair, fighting my hair, feeling restricted and limited by my hair. Today, I am a woman who embraces her afro. Big hurr, short hurr…bring it!
Blonde?! Self Portrait: age 7
Some of my funnest journal entries involved my self portraits. This one is a classic. When I was 7, my Mom dyed us matching blonde splotches on the front of our curls. My blonde afro was stylin’ (Mom’s was a perm) and I can’t help looking at my class photo the following year and LAUGHING! My Mom had a lot of fashion influence on me when I was a kid. Because we kept my hair short, she would experiment with shaving designs in the sides (back when it was cool to do that sort of thing) and she’d put some of her funky jewellery and tops on me.
Atari!
Another thing that popped up occasionally in my drawings was the backdrop of my livingroom. While it looks like I am sitting on a low chair playing Atari…in a tropical forest, you’ll note that I have drawn the thermostat on the upper left corner. My Mom has always been artistic (I had to get it from somewhere), but we didn’t have money for expensive art supplies — so she would use a combination of make-up and those super cheap paints from Chinatown to create these large murals on one of our living room walls. I loved the palm tree and flamingo scene that she did so much that I not only drew it in multiple journal entries, but I grew obsessed with drawing tropical birds and palm trees. She also did this incredibly detailed portrait of a geisha.
I should be inspired by my 7 year old self. I would write if I had a good day, I would write if I had a bad day. My journal represented an open book into my emotions. When I was going through rough times, it was identified by a change in tone from my journal entries by my teacher.
Anyways, that’s all I’ve got for today! Ciao-dah!
