Category: Real Life

My Toxic Traits

There’s a meme that made its away around Twitter starting in *checks Google* 2018 that has found its way into my everyday speech. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s saying “My toxic trait is…” and then following it up with a tongue-in-cheek truth about yourself that sometimes may cause you discomfort or harm. I did some digging and found the original tweet, written by @nokathy_, who gave the prompt “name a toxic trait that YOU have”:

And this may not be totally accurate (I’m not that interested in doing a deep dive on it, so this is based on a quick Google search), but it looks like the meme really took off–and became tongue-in-cheek–when the original tweet was quote tweeted by @Raquel_Savage who responded with “I’m attracted to men.”

So, in true Akilah fashion, here I am four* years late to the party with a list of my own toxic traits, prompted by me pointing some of them out to my daughter when she was here for break and then me needing a blog post topic.

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2022 Goals #AMonthofFaves

I lost my will to blog the week of Christmas, so I’m going to catch up on the two topics that I planned to do but missed that week. First up is goals! The prompt:

WED | Dec. 22 – #AMonthofFaves Challenges and Goals Check-In (share your intentions, challenge progress, personal goals, etc.)⁠

Girl XOXO

My personal goals for 2021 were:

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#AMonthofFaves A Day in My Life

This was Friday’s prompt!

FRI | Dec. 10 – #AMonthofFaves – A Day / Weekend / Week in the Life (give us a peek into your life)⁠

I didn’t post this on the day of because my daughter came home for break, and my day absolutely got away from me, and then yesterday I had to catch up on work because it’s the end of the semester. I almost talked myself out of posting at all, but then I remembered I had already written everything down, so here’s what my day was like on Thursday, December 9, 2021.

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#AMonthofFaves Best Buys of 2021

I’m linking up with Tanya and Kimberly to participate in A Month of Faves. Today’s Yesterday’s prompt is was These are a Few of Our Favorite Things, and I am focusing on my best buys of 2021.

So, um. I bought a lot of stuff this year. Partly–okay, mostly–because I moved. But also, I just saw a lot of stuff that I wanted. Full disclosure: I looked back through my Amazon purchase history and may have made this face: 😮. And then I looked back through my Etsy purchase history and made this face: 😅.

Anyway, I regret nothing.

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Depression, part III #SOL21

slice of life logo

“Am I secretly depressed?”

This was a question I asked my primary care provider over five years ago. The question came about after she asked me if I was depressed, and I told her no. Why did she ask? Because one of the meds in my history was for depression. When I explained that no, it was for headaches, she just nodded. Then, when I asked if that meant I was secretly depressed, she said no; the medication was contraindicated for headaches.

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#AMonthofFaves Best Moments of 2021

Hi. It is time.

And just as a heads up, this post is very image heavy. Descriptions are below each picture. Also, these aren’t necessarily in date order because I grouped similar things together.

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V is for Vaccine #PandemicAlphabet #SOL21

It started with a group text.

There I was, up at 1 a.m. doing who knows what (scrolling a social media site, most likely) when my phone lit up with a notification. It was one of my co-workers sharing that the communications person from our school had just sent out information about available vaccines.

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A is for Anniversary #PandemicAlphabet

You know I have tried to write this post a bunch of times and a bunch of different ways, so I think I am going to stop trying to be profound and deep and just be honest.

One year ago today I started social distancing in earnest, a day before I believe the statewide Safer-at-Home lockdown began. There are a lot of things I miss about The Before Times. I miss going to the gym and the movies and hanging out with friends. I miss seeing my students in an actual classroom and going places other than the store.

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What We Talk about When We Talk about Favorite Colors

Well, that title is a mouthful, huh?

I was texting with a friend of mine today and asked her what her favorite color is. I felt like, I said, I didn’t know what hers was, but I felt it was something I should know. That led to a long back and forth about favorite colors and how we both had multiple faves, but also had quite a few conditions on our feelings on colors. Some examples:

  • She has a favorite genre of colors (jewel tones)
  • There’s only one shade of red she likes but the rest make her mad
  • Green is fine–depending on how it’s used

Then I had to chime in with my colors and how there are colors I like in general, colors I like in my home, and colors I wear even if I don’t like them. More specifically:

  • There’s a light shade of purple I love, but it looks horrible on me so doesn’t love me back
  • I look awesome in red, which I don’t love but wear anyway because it clearly loves me
  • I also look great in orange (see red above)
  • Teal is great all around
  • I love black and white prints that are more white than black
  • I also love gray and gray/white prints but don’t wear them so you’ll find those plus the aforementioned shade of purple in my home (also teal and black/white prints!)

So what did we learn? There are colors we like to look at and wish we could wear, colors we wear but don’t particularly care for, and colors in our homes because we either can’t wear them or we can wear them and just really like them.

This would be a good time to share a picture of something in my home, so here’s a gray and white ottoman I have along with a teal TV stand. The Rokumote cover is turquoise and the tray is gray with different shades of blue (so, you know, same energy).

I also have these black and white (more white than black!) slipcovers on my bar stools.

Five Random Things, Two Random Books

I didn’t post last week because I didn’t finish any books and then about halfway through the week I was like, “Okay, but that has literally never stopped you before???” And I seriously don’t know what I was thinking but it was so ridiculous that I had to tell you all.

I mean, it’s certainly not like other stuff didn’t happen. So here’s a list because honestly my brain is kind of mush.

1. I finally got DDR–yes, Dance Dance Revolution–for my Xbox, so have been playing it almost every day. The thing about DDR is that the songs are the most important and the Xbox has the worst options for songs, I swear. They only have one DDR game with a good tracklist. All of the other ones have weird Japanese songs with NO BEAT. My daughter was watching me play, and I kept missing the arrows and she asked me “Does the pad not work?” and I was like, “No, these dumb songs have no beat.” The proof is that I did just fine on both “Dancing Machine” and “Conga.” So anyway, I need a PlayStation to get a version of the game with a better tracklist.

I look absolutely nothing like this while playing, btw.

I did, of course, buy the version with the good tracklist and have been crushing those songs, thank you very much. But only on basic because that’s just who I am.

2. My daughter went back to campus for spring semester. She’s doing well.

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