Thanks for Voting!

So, before my wall starts getting inundated with congratulatory messages on Facebook let me first say the winners have not even been announced yet 🙂 The Black Weblog Awards will be announced for the first time live tonight here in LA and I will be in attendance. But you see, that’s the source of this post’s inspiration. I, the new travel blogger who finally took her writing seriously in December 2010 and took a chance by sharing it with the public, am a now nominee at the 2011 Black Weblog Awards!

OMG!!! Its like all finally hitting me now that I’m here. And saying I’m grateful to be here would be a travesty of verbal injustice. I’m kind of overwhelmed. Because once you are exposed to greatness you have no choice but to strive to become a part of it. From the sheer hilarity of Awesomely Luvvie (if you haven’t visited dumbesttweets.tumblr.com, it will give you life) to the soulful spirit of our keynote speaker Angel Laws, founder of Concrete Loop, the people I have met in the past 24 hours have inspired me to do even bigger and better things.

But I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for the voices. No, I’m not crazy or schizophrenic (though the former is arguable.) I’ve been hearing voices for almost a decade now. At first they sounded like they were just playing with my emotions but eventually they tried to get all serious on me talking about “Tracey you should seriously write, like for real. *serious face* Seriously.” Then the voices hit the world wide web and would show up in my inbox, bearing all caps and exclamation points

“OMG your recap from Vegas was hilarious!! I sent it to my sister’s, mother’s, auntie’s boyfriend’s, play cousin-in-law’s boss and he was crying laughing!! Girl, you need to do something with this. SERIOUSLY!!!” 

After I started this blog, the voices took to the comments section, often times anonymously, expressing heartfelt gratitude for sharing my experiences and letting the world know about the beautiful light that emanates from the people of cultures that are so often misconstrued as dark and undesirable. These voices almost got me here to Los Angeles. Almost.

Then there was one last voice. The one of my sister, who pushed me to come out here when I had no intentions of attending, reminding me of a saying our grandmother used to tell us when we were little. “You should totally go!” she exclaimed. I responded “Why?” and before I could go into my litany of reasons why I wasn’t about to book a flight she interrupted, “Why not you?” Our grandmother always said that whenever we thought we weren’t good enough for any accolade, honor or anything good in life. Whenever we’d ask her “Who me?” she’d always reply “Why not you?”

Grandma in Astoria, Queens circa 1980-something

So in my grandmother’s honor, I’m here. And tonight, I will put on my fancy new dress, sit up straight like she would have wanted (I slouched a lot as a teen lol) and sit amongst the sea of nominees, writers, journalists, authors, entrepreneurs, and actresses that will make up tonight’s audience. I will smile. I will cheer. I will take pictures and get excited and if my name is called, I may very well bust out into spontaneous Cabbage Patch. But regardless of what names are called tonight at the awards, I have already won in coming this far so soon. Thank you to everyone who helped make this happen and get ready for even bigger things in 2012!