The whole process of writing this entry took ages. I wanted to write it weeks ago, and post it here on this site, but I had two problems.

1. ndelamiko.com was woefully out of date. Running Joomla 1.0.12 (:O) and
2. While I had been cross-posting here with journalspace, there were real gaps in the dates regarding posts, and finally
3. When journalspace.com died, and the death of the blog that was hosted there became incontrovertible (WOE, WOE!) I had only about 600 of my posts backed-up in different journalling software, and a four-year-old av.html file (the entire journal in HTML as provided via JS’s old interface, before peanut.)

Things were looking bleak.

Read more…

I’ve been watching my blog go up to and right on past 85,000 hits and am reflecting on the fact that my blog turns two years old tomorrow. I do more than think. I’m actually quite pleased to see this. This journal is the most consistent thing in my life. No house, no job, no friend, no family, no man has been as consistent as this blog has been since April 29, 2003.

I’ve kept journals before, but none as consistently as this one. Some are more personal, tell more of my story, but that’s not the kind of writing I am willing to share. This however, I treat as a kind of pool for all the ideas, experiences, fears; triumphs, glories, travails and observation that I can. The Goddess Room is both balm and pressure point for me.

I want to tell you that you get everything I have to tell, but in fact I couldn’t and don’t write everything down. However, I am compelled to keep writing in this space.

I’m afraid sometimes I am boring. That I am not being clever enough; expressing enough of the things I think. I feel sometimes I am lazy. I’ve become lazy. Where are my 9,000 word writings? Where are my posts so long I had to break them up across 6 posts? I am lucky to manage 800 in a post these days. I blame first the lack of a computer to work on. I mean something that’s mine, and I can use want I want to express what I really want to. I blame second, lack of time.

When would I write? On the train? With all these people around me, and with all kinds of people I know and work with on the train. That’s actually my only inside my head time I have, but you know, just not onto that writing on the train. At work? I am paranoid about it and try not to commit thought to binary on a work laptop.

In any case, my life right now is reduced to dull mundane commuting, big corporate employed-by scenario. There’s nothing really interesting about it, and in any case it would be indiscreet to discuss it in such a public space.

I feel like I am rambling a little, but in truth this is a celebration of two years of consistent writing, no matter how piddling and insubstantial, no matter the body of good stuff I’ve produced in this space. I don’t know what it is about my blog that I find both time and words to pour into it. I don’t know what it is, but two years on, I’m still here; still at it and showing no signs of cessation.

I’m excited about tomorrow. Truly. I want to go and stand on Regent St. and report what’s going on. I’ve been reading Mac magazines and Apple rumour sites obsessively for the last four months, and you know, I’m excited by this. For me it’s great to be a part of Apple history.

Mahie is lending me her camera, I’m going armed with a book and something I can sit on and my iPod, and I am going to line up. Pity Mahie won’t be coming (exam pressure in ya scrunny, oui?) but I will take pictures! And blog damnit!

I plan to have a drink tonight, and enjoy the beginning of a hard earned four-day ‘me’ fest.

So if allyuh feeling me, raise your glass and toast a milestone in my life.

So bluemoaner (meh side) was having a moan about boring people, and resorting to have people who are ‘really interested in his writing’ email him with their requests.

It got me to thinking about the feedback to posts ratio here in the goddess room.

I’ve been writing on here for almost two years now, and some of the best stuff I’ve written got no comments at all, were ignored, lost in the shuffle and now so deeply buried in the Archives, I self don’t even know where to find them.

Not only that, but if I go a week or two without writing anything even remotely meaty, the traffic to this blog dies down dramatically. Start writing again and POW! up goes the readership.

I’m still quite gobsmacked, the goddess room is projected to hit about 70,000 readers (hits, blah, blah, blah) sometime in the next week. When I started this blog (as I’ve written before) I did it to please myself and I still write in it to please myself; although I do consider those regulars who get worried about me when they don’t hear my mouth for a few days.

I guess it’s because I’ve written for regular publication for so many years, that I’m immune to who comments and who doesn’t comment; immune to who reads and who doesn’t read. Writing a newspaper column in the Caribbean has the tendency to inure you to the whims of readership. Readership is nice, but where I come from the people who read are rarely mouthy about it, unless you touch some raw open nerve and even that is rare.

How many personally insightful pieces have I churned out for publication, and never recieved a single letter, phone call or response from anyone about it.

Okay, so blogging is different. The immediacy and instant gratification of blogging is not the same as writing for print, but you know, maybe it’s my history as a print journalist in the largely indifferent Caribbean that has made me so laissez faire about other people’s opinions on the things I write.

I love feedback, don’t get me wrong. However, a lack of feedback isn’t going to stop me from pouring out what mental processes I choose to reveal into this little encapsulated space in binary I have going on here.

Chile, the day I decide to stop writing in this blog, is probably when JS shuts it’s doors forever, or someother equally horrific occurance like being unable to type (and even then I will become a dictaphone addict quick, quick). Since I can’t see those things happening, again, let me reiterate: Big Mami can be found here. I’m here for the duration.

Over at Tribelife.com we have a little slogan, “Talk Yuh Talk”.

Comment. Don’t comment. Lurk. Don’t Lurk. Take your pick.

I’ll still be here.

Here’s the list in my Stats:

1: cjarabia

2: TiffanyStone

3: HottTxBoi

4: aflyonthewall

5: kittywoman

6: sungoddess

7: foodieporn

8: slut

9: Insane-Li

10: smotlock

11: keifel

Here’s the list on the home page of JS:

Yesterday’s Highest-Read Journals and Blogs

1. Diary of a Flight Attendant , published by QueenofSky

2. Cathy’s World, published by CathySeipp

3. The Meanest Girl On Earth, published by cjarabia

4. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, published by TiffanyStone

5. confessions.of.gawd, published by HottTxBoi

6. A FLY ON THE WALL, published by aflyonthewall

7. The Kitty Lair, published by kittywoman

8. the goddess room, published by sungoddess

9. eat your heart out, published by foodieporn

10. The Slut Diaries, published by slut

Literally… two completely different lists…

—-

From my stats Nov. 7:

-2: CathySeipp

-1: HottTxBoi

0: aflyonthewall

1: TiffanyStone

2: slut

3: sungoddess

4: randomprose

5: Bidinotto

6: cjarabia

7: smotlock

8: closeyoureyes

I think I was listed as #8 or something on the front page…

—-

From my stats Nov. 6

-1: QueenofSky

0: CathySeipp

1: aflyonthewall

2: TiffanyStone

3: HottTxBoi

4: sungoddess

5: slut

6: cjarabia

7: closeyoureyes

8: ceciledubois89

9: wagner

—-

From my stats Oct. 28

0: aflyonthewall

1: closeyoureyes

2: TiffanyStone

3: slut

4: foodieporn

5: sungoddess

6: robofrost

7: HottTxBoi

8: Sugarmelon

9: smotlock

10: ceciledubois89

—–

Not for the first time: What is going on?

(And probably not the last….)

I’ve been read 50, 000 times in the last eighteen months!

Isn’t that cool?

LunaMoon was my 50, 000th reader!

Thanks Luna!

I have such good friends.

One sister, one of my big sisters in DC, sent me some wonderful words of encouragement regarding YMK that I really needed to hear. She’s also a big part of the reason why I have my laptop today. She also got me some CDs that I really appreciated.

My cousin, oyasdawta, understands me so well and give me great solace when I can find her on MSN. She always greets me the same way “What’s up Queen”.

My former lover dayoman is still my original Yardie for life, and assures me he will kick anybody’s ass who fucks with me. He says he’ll buy a plane ticket to do it. (You know I named a character in my book after you right? That’s the best kind of love baby…)

And speaking of kicking ass, my Padawan, who is tiny and slim, not only flew up to defend her Sugar Mami, but tells me almost everyday that she is backing me up. She, I miss the most sometimes, because we spent almost a year sitting at a desk together, smoking in the car park downstairs and liming on the weekends. Never mind she’s ten years younger than me, she’s become one of my best friends. Shit, we all need comic relief and unflinching support sometimes.

prettytrini and ohans came through with some donations so I could keep Tribelife and Sunhead up and running.

AfrikaX, keeps me believing that some day a man will know how wonderful I am and give me the kind of love and care that I need even though I throw off disappointment after disappointment. He also bought me copies of the Tarot Lukumi, Tarot of The Orishas and the companion book, after reading my post on Tarot Lukumi.

Bluey keeps sending me links for jobs, and keeps encouraging me to reach for my dreams and is making me God Mama to her sweet little Amadi soon to be here.

Eyaniev, sent me some change that helped me tremendously the last weekend I was in London. And she’s a good friend who started out as a friend of a friend, but if it wasn’t for her I don’t know how I would have gotten through Keffi’s passing. Now our friendship has it’s own curves and we’ve been through things together that might have destroyed an ordinary friendship. Good woman with a big, beautiful heart.

The professor-dude, keeps calling me and telling me he’s sending my CV off to his friends and people.

Laura, pushed me to come to England because she knows I need ed to get out of the Caribbean. She also gave me the professor dude’s number.

Keifel let me keep my mac.com email address for another year, even though I have no money to pay for it.

UT, is still my UT, even after almost 25 years.

Ezebaby, my oldest friend, and the mother of one of my god daughters, is still the person I know if I have nothing, no place to go, no place to live I can go to her house and live without drama indefinitely.

Bluemoaner read my Piquant Bass manuscript and thought it was good, and gave me just the right kind of encouragement to keep working on it as a book.

My JS yardies are so supportive when I need them.

I am richly blessed, with great friends. It’s not because some of thes people send me presents or help me out with money from time to time, it’s because they care about me and help me out and are there for me when I need them.

I am a thousand times blessed.

I must be doing something right.

For the last week and half I’ve been twiddling with this little extension for Firefox called JustBlogIt.

It’s kind of neat. It lets you grab text and links from web sites as you surf, and post them to your blog. I’ve been using it with one of my other (secret) blogs, and it works pretty well.

However, I was having the devil of a time trying to figure out how to do it with JS.

However, that was no reason not to reccommend it, it’s a great little tool. So when banjk, mentioned he wanted a kind of HTML scratch pad business in the Gods Of Layout forum, I told him to go over and have a look. It’s not quite what he was talking about, but I thought it was worthy to the discussion at any rate.

Well, beat ya sister’s pants off, when I logged into JS tonight to find them reccommending JustBlogIt on the front page, and big me up for the pointer.

Ya girl just sat there and blushed alone in the room. That’s JS love BIG-BIG.

So, hear what.. if you’re using Firefox and blogging links and cool sites, this is an indispensible little tool. Download, install and format it for JS using the ‘Custom’ selection.

Thanks to JS-Admin, I can FINALLY format the thing.

Here’s the sequence below (for prosterity since it’s also on the JS front page):

(YOUR JS POST URL)/new_entry.php?title=%TITLE%&text=%TEXT%&url=%URL%

Let me also take a moment to strong reccommend DeepestSender. I’d like it to support my JS categories, but it’s still a great tool.

It doesn’t support JS categories, but it’s still extraordinarily useful.

I started another blog purely for template design and testing purposes.

This is to facilitate the number of people who have asked me to design blog skins for them, and for my own blog skin testing.

Big Mami’s testing blog

Hello darlings!

Sunhead is back online.

Tribelife.com is active, and so is Sunheadmag.com. sunheadweb.com is still offline, but will be up by the end of the week.

Apetebii.com, will go into migration before the end of the week, and the merge with ndelamiko.net will follow.

I still need help with the web hosting, so if anyone still wants to contribute, feel free to do so. Until I start to work, I’ll need a little help from the Tribers and all others who care, to keep the thing going.

Thanks again for the generosity of ohans and prettytrini, who made this happen.

Okay, Big Mami going to crawl back into bed and crash. Bless.

Prettytini is an ANGEL!!

An angel for Sunhead!

God bless you girl! God bless you!!

The last of the most urgently needed funds came through thanks to my girl prettytrini, who is currently blowing up my MSN messenger.

She don’t know I am sending out her praises to the world!

THANK YOU GIRL!!!

Big Mami surely does appreciate your generosity!

Now all we have to do is square the web hosting and we’re G-O-O-D!