I spent a few hours yesterday going through all of my notes, pages of writing, old journals, and ideas. It was fun to notice the themes that have continued throughout the years. For instance, I had three separate folders labelled “fragments”, but most of them are little ideas or lines of dialogue for a character and setting I’ve been working on. But the other thing I noticed is timing.

Timing matters, no doubt. But I think personal timing matters nearly - if not as much or more - as any other type of timing. Things can go on too long, too short, too soon, or too late. For me, this was the second part of this UnWoke series.

My wife has been a beast lately in the professional world. She’s been speaking all over the country, and continues to get requests to speak on things of race and race relations. This ramps up during Black History Month, and so I wanted to try and support her efforts by pointing out things I’ve learned (as a white dude) being married to a black woman.

And I have seen and been privy to situations that a lot of my fellow white Americans have not. And I’ve learned from them, and want to share some of those lessons. But I rushed it. I pushed annual timing in front of my own timing, and the organization was off. Which doesn’t make for a good flow - or do justice to those experiences.

Last week, I recommended a few books that have helped me. I took the second weekly post off for our birthdays. This week, I was really thinking about it, and know that to show my support I must re-route. So I’m going to follow that intuition. We can only grow and change when we’re ready; we can only treat The Other well when we see them as equal, which means waking up - being UnWoke -in a different way.