Summer decided to take a break yesterday until Tuesday, so I'm writing this as I recover from the cold that I get every year when the seasons go through an identity crisis. Ginger tea, NyQuil, and this have been helping me along the way.
I'm not sure if Rawleigh's products are unique to the South, but my maternal grandparents used to make sure to buy some whenever the salesman came to the door. Anytime my siblings and I sneezed, coughed, or slightly sniffed at their house, we would be greased down from head to heels with a whole handful of this. If we refused to be slathered with it while we were awake, my grandmother would sneak into our bedroom and rub our chests down while we slept. We would wake up wondering A) how did I get so greasy? and B) why do I smell like a pharmacy? And then bacon and Saturday morning cartoons happened, so A and B started to not matter. I must say, however, that whatever illness we had was gone by the morning. It works better than anything at the drugstore when it comes to congestion, so this is a family tradition that I'm definitely keeping. My kids will definitely get Rawleigh's Ointment jumped (with love) the at the first sniffle.
End tangent. Welcome to my new website.
You may have noticed that everything on my social media accounts that was Reasons And Roses changed to Nichole O. Nichols. The original intent of Reasons And Roses was that it would be somewhat of an online magazine for Southern metropolitan black women, and this blog will continue that spirit, yet I'll be able to be more relaxed and not as concerned with an editorial calendar although I will still have one. The Anna Wintour/Susan Taylor in my head won't be happy without one. I hope that this new format allows me to be more spontaneous, and that means that I will be able to write what's on my mind in real time instead of waiting for the day that's assigned for that particular topic. I'm also planning on taking the original idea of Reasons And Roses to the next level. If you follow me on any of my social media accounts, especially Facebook, then you've seen the surveys I've been fielding, and you have an idea of what I'm about to do. Since I can't really work on that with the intensity that I need to in order to get it where I want it to be, I won't say much else about it until it gets closer to completion.
I'm taking a hiatus from working on the aforementioned project because I am back in graduate school for a degree in library science. Going back to school is very exciting for me, and I think that the new skills that I learn in this program will help me to to mold the project into exactly what I want it to be, and more importantly, what my community needs it to be.
My main focus will be on studying and doing well in this program, but in addition to all of this, I am working on writing and editing projects. Writing is still a priority to me, and I'll be journaling everyday plus blogging when I can. Matter of fact, I have to blog for my program, so I'll probably post links from my work on that blog here.
That's what's going on with me. Let me know how you like my new website. Tell me in the comments.