Hey Mofos! Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know--I'm trifling as hell for not blogging but one time this entire year. A sista has been booked, busy, and well none of your biznass. So I figured, might as well do my usual end of year post right?



This year started out rough and ended well, not AS rough, but still rocky.

What you mean Meik?

I'm glad you asked! On January 2, my grandparents home was destroyed in a fire and luckily my grandfather made it out safely. So many of my friends and acquaintances came through and donated clothes, money, gift cards, prayers, food, any and everything to make sure my granddeddy was ok. I love you all for that and even today he is still so thankful as he sits in his new home at 90 years old. It is an absolute blessing for real! It brought my family closer together and I think my grandma is smiling from the heavens about this.



The year continued to unfold in some unexpected ways in my personal life--for the first time in YEARSSSSSSSSSSS--I mean damn DECADES--I uttered the L word--and felt feelings that I had no idea of what they were--hell for a moment, I thought I had the flu or some ish, but when you go thru some things with someone you start to realize how much they mean to you. Now before you scoot me on down the aisle, this is still a work in progress and my overthinking and anxiety is a problem :). That's step 1, admitting your own foolishness. I've learned to finally let go of the past and to live in the now and look forward to the future.



Anyhoo, this year started out on a high professionally and ended on the lowest of lows with me feeling like what's next for my writing career?? Is there a writing career? Several of my long-term contracts ended, editors left, outlets stopped using freelancers, and my pitches seemed to fall into the abyss of well hell, I don't know where they are, but it seemed like I just couldn't find my footing until I turned back to the local side of things and I have enjoyed writing about stories right here in my own backyard. I realized that writing about music was no longer my focus or passion, that telling the stories of people that have made an impact in our lives in some form or fashion is what I love. I love hearing about their journey to get to where they are now, and usually I take away a nugget or two to stick in my own journal for future reference and breakdowns. I love feature/entertainment stories (take note in case you are hiring! LOL). I couldn't and still haven't been able to land a full time gig, but thankfully God has allowed my part time job to pay my bills and keep a roof over my head. I even waltzed my arse down to the dealership and got a new car--now that's some big energy right there ain't it? It never occurred to me--how the f am I about to pay this car note?



But the pile of rejections from employers has done a number on the ole ego, so while I slide down the wall and throw a temper tantrum every week--I allow myself one hour okay---- maybe 4 to sulk--then I shake it off and get right back to Operation Meik Needs a Damn Career RIGHT NOW movement.

This year I had my first PAID speaking engagement. Yes y'all, someone paid to hear ole Meik Meik talk about pitching to the media and it was so much fun! I felt so important yet empowered speaking to a room of professionals about my experience in the newsroom and as a writer. I also spoke to more students and hopefully impacted their lives in some way.

2018 was my first year on the NC Music Hall of Fame Advisory Board and I threw myself into all things Induction Ceremony by editing bios, writing video scripts, and doing the voice overs for each video for 7 inductees. This process was so fun and I added another notch to my resume. It was so awesome sitting in the Gem Theatre hearing my voice on the big screen and being complimented by the artists--especially John Tesh! Yep THE JOHN TESH.



I of course kept up with interviewing some amazing people this year from Jody Watley, James Mtume, Ananda Lewis, Cynthia Horner, Melba Moore, Mara Brock Akil, Yvette Lee Bowser, and more. Ya girl even did a few Facebook Live interviews!

I almost crawled my arse back to TV News but then God intervened and said BUT GIRL... and I realized that won't make me happy and now that I've learned the joy of sleep, I'm not ready to give that up.



This year with lots of time on my damn hands, I've learned a lot about myself and what I will and won't tolerate. I've learned that you can't surround yourself with toxic people, because their negative thinking will rub off on you. I learned that I do know how to be there for someone and actually mean it and want to be there as support. I learned all about self-love and embracing who you are. I've learned that love looks different for everybody, and nobody follows the same blueprint. You do what works for you. Same as the career path--everybody's journey is different. It took me a while to get to that point. I might be growing up ya'll.

For 2019--I wish for a damn job and a husband, but I also wish for happiness, success, love, peace, and soullllll wait.. I admit I miss Soul Train, it slips out every now and again.



Happy New Year y'all. I can't promise I'll blog more in 2019, but we can pretend I will. :)

What’s up Mofos?! Yes it’s been a long time, I shouldn’t have left you without a dope blog or two to read, but hell, here we are and at least I’m blogging now right?



Have you ever had to go through something at the wrong damn point in your life?

What you mean Meik?

I’m glad you asked.

Picture it, the year was 2017 and it was a regular arse day and I went to the dentist to get a crown—err well that day would have a temp crown but you get the point. Now years ago, this particular tooth had a root canal and the dentist didn’t put a crown on it after—instead he did some other finagling and IDK what it’s called but it had held up over the years.. UNTIL..

The dentist begins drilling and says “we have a problem.”



WHAT YOU MEAN A PROBLEM?!

Y’all..

She tells me there was a hole in my tooth and after drilling—there isn’t enough tooth left for a crown.

What does that mean???

It needs to be pulled.

Y’all. The tooth in question is in the front of my mofo’n mouth. I CANNOT DEAL. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO WALK AROUND SNAG-A-TOOTH and try to be on somebody’s television/red carpet/Youtube whatever.. HOW I ASK?



As I start to hyperventilate, the dentist says, the only option here is an implant, but in the meantime, she will use temporary material to fill out that tooth—but it won’t last long.

As I got to the car—and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I realized that this procedure was going to cost WAYYYYY more than I had in my pockets but a gal has to do what a gal has to do right?



Luckily thanks to God, I was able to make a way out of absolutely no way to come up with the $5000 I was going to need for this ish. –why $5k you ask? I had used up my dental insurance for the year, and my insurance didn’t cover implants any dayum way.

I made my consultation appointment with a specialist.. then got scared and changed it at least two times.. finally I went in for it and of course because my ish was difficult—this was going to be a 2 phase thing and take almost a year to complete. So in September, I had step one taken care of.. a flipper was made so that I could have some sort of tooth in place and not look like a jack-o-lantern. If you haven’t had the joy of wearing a flipper—it basically is like a retainer with a tooth on it—except it doesn’t fit like it should LOL --this is what it looks like:




A few weeks later I went in to have the tooth pulled and a bone graft—it wasn’t too bad—not that painful. With the stitches and the healing however it was disgusting to look at, but luckily with my trusty flipper –no one was the wiser. Well, unless you noticed I now talked with a lisp, couldn’t eat in public, and constantly sounded like my dentures were slipping.

Let me pause here to say here’s where things got interesting because at this point ya girl started seeing someone and I just couldn’t bear to tell him that I was missing a damn tooth. Whenever we went out—I only ate soup or mashed potatoes—and took the rest home or claimed "I'm not hungry!" while my stomach growled in protest. *yes I'm skipping right thru this part cuz the rest is none of your biz*



Sleepovers got a little tricky because you aren’t supposed to sleep with a flipper in—so I would wait until his arse was snoring –go yank that thang out and throw it in a cup (yes complete with denture cleaner and pray he doesn’t wake up and look in the cup. I’d wake up extra early to sneak it back into my mouth so he would never know!
WAYMENT--I mean no sleepovers EVER happened if this my mama reading this!!!

This went on for months, until finally a mofo got hungry and I was like look, I gotta eat—I took it out of my mouth, explained the implant situation—and proceeded to eat and he was like oh hell, I bet you have been hungry LOL—#LoveIs real when a mofo don’t care if you are missing a tooth in the front and shoveling food in your mouth and he still finds you sexy.



I wore that flipper from Oct to March, got the implant put in and more bone graft, and had to wait until May to finish the healing process. Once that was done, I was able to go to my dentist to finish everything and get my crown. I have never been so happy to eat like normal! From Oct to May, I was on a soft food diet—even at work I would only eat yogurt, but bish the day I could go to the vending machine for candy I was on cloud nine. It’s the little things, don’t judge me.

But let me tell y'all about how good God is. I got a letter right before I got the final crown placed from my insurance company and it said they would cover 40% of my implant. Mind you, I had to pay for this on my part time job/freelance hustle salary out of pocket because my insurance hit me with the NAWL SIS. They renigged and sent me a check that actually ended up covering the cost of the crown. LOOK AT GOD I TELL YOU!



The implant looks great and it took a week or two to get used to but thank goodness I'm no longer spit talking with a lisp, sneaking to eat. HALLELUJAH. My advice-- if you ever need an implant it's definitely worth the investment --especially if you need it for the front of your mouth--the back..ehhhh you can get by without it. LOL

I didn't think I wanted to share this story but once I tweeted I got an implant-- many of you with sense KNEW it was dental and not boobs-- cuz lawd knows I have enough for two people..but anyhoo-- a lot of you wanted to know the process so there you have it. I'm glad I got my smile back :)




Have you ever gotten a dental implant? What was your experience like?

Until later-
~Meik

*tip toes in* Hi Mofo Friends!

Yeah I know we are well into 2018 and this is the first time I've fixed my fingers to type anything over here. Hey, I'm a busy woman and since I got grown and quit the full time gig a few months ago, I have to hustle hard for my coins.



Which reminds me of something, a friend of mine asked at what point do you give up on a dream? Then a Twitter follower asked me to share something.

What's that Meik?

I'm glad you asked.

The answer to the first question is NEVER.

Let me explain. Forgive me ahead of time, this is a long post.

At the age of 5 I knew I wanted to be a cheerleader thanks to my parents buying me a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader costume-- I didn't know what the hell a cheerleader did but I wanted to do it. Then in first grade some of my friends mentioned cheerleading tryouts--well from that point on--I chased my dream. I was going to be a cheerleader despite the fact I didn't know what they did except wear cute outfits and yell. I studied cheerleading, I lived, breathed, and damn near did everything that revolved around it because my next goal was to cheer in middle and high school. I did that. I achieved those goals. Why? I never gave up. Even in 7th grade when I didn't make it-- I still busted my ass over the summer to get my jumps higher, my motions sharper, and become the best cheerleader I knew how to be.



My body hates me for it now, ankles shot to hell, knees just angry, wrists hurt for no reason at all, and well.. I had fun.




Next dream-- I wanted to be an entertainment reporter--no scratch that..first I wanted to be on television interviewing artists like Don Cornelius, Arsenio Hall, Donnie Simpson, and Sherry Carter (don't act like y'all don't remember Sherry!).



I wanted to be just like Oprah but hosting a dance show or having a couch where Ralph Tresvant would come and gaze into my eyes or Al B. Sure! would show up and answer all my deepest questions and then realize he loves me and whisk me off in all his acid washed denim glory.



I knew I loved to write--I had a creative crazy mind. If you were in my 9th grade English class then you probably remember my AMAZING script that I wrote as a spinoff of Romeo and Juliet. Ramon and Jalessa was my best work--and to think of acting out the script with Barbie Dolls. Yeah. I have a WILD arse imagination. Of course this was met with blank stares. But hey, they didn't get me.



But I went to college with a dream-- I wanted to be an entertainment reporter. In a way, I did it in college--interviewing Case when he came for our homecoming, doing 2 min of entertainment stories for our 5pm campus news, and eventually hosting my own show on our campus channel that had absolutely NOTHING to do with entertainment news but more entertaining mess. Welllllllllllll shit happens. I fell in love-- my uncle hooked me up with a job at a local TV News station, and that dream got altered. I decided I wanted to learn the news biz--because then that would ultimately take me to my dream right?



Yeah.. still didn't happen. It took me to more jobs that seemed to get me further and further away from my dream. I never really gave it up..but it got altered.

The twitter peep asked me how I got to where I am without an internship. Good question.

I got my first TV job my junior year in college--so what's an internship? LOL I was a production assistant making $6.50 an hour and working thru the 6pm news.. running to class and coming back in time to prep for the 11pm news all while trying to be a good bae and Soror. This prob explains why I love being busy now but anyway, I basically made it my business to learn how to do everything in the newsroom. I shadowed reporters on my days off, I asked producers if I could write stories, come in early and learn how to produce, I learned how to edit, shoot, EVERYTHANG. Still, that reporting job never happened, but what did happen is the opportunity to produce.

Next up I left the TV station for a couple of other odd jobs, but ended up moving to Charlotte after graduation and well.. ended up in another news gig--even further away from my dream. But bills had to be paid, so I kept pushing. Eventually after 2 years I ended up back at the station I started at working as an associate producer making $19k and going to grad school. As an associate producer I was supposed to just assist with the 6pm and 11pm newscasts but the weekend producer got promoted and guess who slid into doing those newscasts on the weekends? Me! It was fun for about 5 seconds, and being broke was not part of this dream. However grad school got interesting--I signed up for a class on making documentaries. Finally a class I can unleash my creativity in! Long story short I still think my group's project on The Underground Railroad Through East Tennessee was an amazing one --that ain't the right title but you get the point.. the creativity we were able to put into that project was the kick in the pants that I needed.

So I started sending out resume reels --even applied as a home shopping host where they told me I spoke "too Broadcast News and proper instead of like a friend in your neighborhood." I was crushed. I had worked hard to get rid of my country mountain accent and that's how they did me?! I remember not leaving my bed for days crying and feeling like a failure.


But I shook it it off and realized that wasn't for me and I kept pushing. I eventually moved back to Charlotte, started blogging on Yahoo 360 thanks to some heartbreak and it opened a door for me.

I realized people actually were reading and liking what I had to say. I was writing about the trials and tribulations of dating and folks could relate. In 2007 I got the brilliant idea to go on a reality show-- and that's about as close to entertainment as I had gotten, but the brief brush with fame scared the ish out of me. I think I prefer to stay hidden--or do I?

The dream persisted. I still wanted to be an entertainment reporter, correspondent, host SOMETHING... but HOW?

Once my blogging made its way to MySpace and eventually I started this blog, still trying to find MY voice-- then a local pub came calling looking for bloggers to write for free in exchange for exposure. I did it. That's prob the only "internship" I did. I asked a couple of local websites if I could write entertainment type of stories for them..you know practice on their ish and not mine in case if fails LOL --

The first story I got paid for was a story on Dealz Jackson- Jackie Jackson's son for Creative Loafing--best $50 I ever made! I worked for free on an online show as an entertainment correspondent and I swear I loved every minute of that even though it didn't last long but it was material for my reel.

Meanwhile I was still working full time as a news producer back in Charlotte. In my down time, I took my talents to SoulTrain.com and really learned how to research, write, and interview. I found my niche and my voice during the 5 1/2 years I wrote for the site. I nurtured relationships and networked my arse off and finally I felt like an entertainment reporter especially on red carpets getting elbowed in the ribs while trying to get interviews. I knew one thing and that was I would be respected. You hear so many stories about folks sleeping with folks for interviews.. not here. I don't give a damn who you are ..well... if Idris Elba insists..



Anyway, I started writing for Uptown Magazine, and eventually WEtv.com. Once the ride on Soul Train ended, I had two choices-- panic or find a replacement outlet ASAP. SoulTrain.com ended and three days later I had pitched my way into a steady contributing gig with Jet Magazine. I used what I knew-- old school music and I dragged Tevin Campbell out from under the rock he was hiding under just as I had done years before and the ball was rolling. I was also writing again for some local pubs from time to time, blogging here, and writing for Sheen Magazine-- my goal: to be published. I did that. Then I wrote for Ebony Mag-- published. Did that. I kept stacking my writing portfolio--pitching without fear-- I hit up Vanity Fair-- got a piece published, and eventually the Ebony/Jet space dried up without warning and I was left wondering what next? I can't sit idle too long and I have a dream to keep pushing towards right? I headed over to Essence Mag. I missed writing about music so I reached out to the National Museum of African American Music and pitched myself into a contributing blogger role. Eventually I started writing for several other sites. Whew, I should be tired right?



I felt like I had finally reached my dream in an altered kind of way the moment I saw MY NAME.. MY BYLINE on Entertainment Tonight's website. I literally sat here and ugly cried. It took YEARS to get to this point. To have the editor tell me how good the interview was.. I just slid to the floor and sobbed. To have the editor reach out to ME to do interviews. I couldn't believe it! Then to later see MY NAME.. MY BYLINE on Shondaland's website--yes Shondaland that belongs to THE Shonda Rhimes, I really felt like I was getting somewhere!




Yeah it's frustrating when it feels like folks aren't reading your work or appreciating your hard work that goes into putting all the pieces together for a final product. But the most rewarding part for me is when the person that I'm interviewing NOTICES that I took the time to research them and that I took the time to come up with questions they haven't answered 100000001 times. My favorite interviews are ones that end with "I enjoyed talking to you, thank you for asking thoughtful questions." That is why I do this. I want to tell their stories--the stories we haven't heard or the angles you may not have thought about.

While I'm not on television being the entertainment reporter on E! or hosting a show on TV One (YET! Hell I'm claiming it still!) I have achieved some of my dream-- and that's enough to keep me pushing to achieve the entire dream.

So I say allllllllllllllllllllllll this long drawn out story to say-- just because you didn't do an internship doesn't mean you don't take your life experiences and your own drive to learn how to do ish, and just because you can't break into your dream job the way you planned, you kick the damn door in some other way. An outlet that I had applied to and pitched countless times before read my essay on Shondaland and came calling; you put in the work, folks will notice. I'm also a co-host of a web series called Date Sheet. Look at that!

Now, let me get back to my writers block and figuring out how to crank out some more pitches to help me reach my goal of interviewing Oprah in the year of 2018.

Lesson Learned: Don't give up. Adjust your dream if you have to, but NEVER GIVE UP. In the words of the great Uncle Luke:


Now lemme see if I can apply this to my personal life and relationships LOL.

Until later-- (and I swear I won't let this drag out as long again! I'll return to the blog soon!)
`Meik