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Esperanza Spalding

November 15, 2015

On knowledge of self: "It's something you live everyday. It's a practice of speaking truthfully and acknowledging the beauty that's in us innately. Acknowledging the value that's in us innately, and having the courage to sit in comfort with that as our representation in the world.

That's a very powerful process, of life, I don't know how to do this right now, but I trust that I have the ability and I trust that how it's going to manifest in my life is of value, and I'm not going to ask somebody's permission to create my art or to speak my beauty. I'm not going to ask permission to do it. I'm going to do it."

In #myKSS Tags #myKSS, esperanza spalding
← Marissiko Wheaton

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"That's a very powerful process, of like, I don't know how to do this right now, but I trust that I have the ability and I trust that how it's going to manifest in my life is of value, and I'm not going to ask somebody's permission to create my art or to speak my beauty. I'm not going to ask permission to do it. I'm going to do it." @esperanzaspalding #tbt to her 2013 interview on Know This!
(2/2) "In 2010 instead of choosing a life path, I decided to simply focus on the next project I felt strongest about, and knock it out the park. My project was to publish a poetry collection, something I’ve wanted to do since I started writing at age 10. Although I’m interested in many forms of expression, writing a book just seemed the most put-together idea at the time. So I started writing. And writing. Four years later, the book project turned into an entrepreneurial journey that led me starting a small business and driving across the country on a book/workshop tour. 
The process of writing the book helped me understand that just because I chose one career focus (a writer), it doesn’t doom me to just sit behind a laptop clicking away for the rest of my life. Choosing one project granted me a vehicle to explore so many facets of business and art I would have never got to try had I just sat back wondering which passion to pursue first.

To produce the book I became a writer, editor, publisher, and marketer. To prep for my book tour, I became a crowdfunder, venue-booker and travel-planner. Along the tour I was a workshop facilitator, photographer, and road-tripper. Hard work? Yes. But in this process I have never felt so alive, so purposeful, and so clear. It wasn’t that I gained clarity on what I wanted to be when I grew up but I became clear on what I wanted to feel while I’m living and working. I plan to seek out this feeling in whatever I do.

There is no box anyone can put me in, and just because I chose a convenient title for myself, choosing a path doesn’t have to be one-dimensional. As I continue to find ways to live a multi-passionate life, I hope to inspire others to see that there are no limits to the complexity and beauty one can bring into their life and work." @aliciazakon #myKSS
(1/2) "Clarity. Something a scatterbrain like me always seeks. To know with certainty the path I want to lead. To be able to proclaim boldly my career of choice. 
My stomach churns when someone pops the passion-prompt: if you had zero limitations, what would you do?

Um, I'd do EVERYTHING. Dance, write poetry, travel, model, snap photos, write songs, learn to code . . . and the list goes on. There isn't one thing I'm utterly in love with or that I want to stick myself to for life. But, when you reach a certain stage of adulthood, the demand to "choose a path"  becomes oh so real.

But I'm a "choose your path" rebel. I haven't been able to figure it out thus far, and I believe that more and more so, we don't have to choose.

So I didn't...." @aliciazakon #myKSS
"I'd be lying if I said the stares didn't bother me at work during my first days of being fully natural, fully self aware. My hair being completely full, some stared because they don't understand. Some stared because of love, admiration, or envy. My sister tried to explain it, the history of our emergence from East Africa 200,000 years ago, yet even then I didn't understand the heritage robbed of me, my heritage's definition masked in chemicals because I needed to assume the look of the land I was born in. But now I rock my hair as a badge of honor, the emergence of who I've always been. Rich in history, rich in definition, and I don't knock my weave queens 'cause hair like shoes are meant in different fashions. I just now lay claim to the hair I was born in.  It's been a journey to freedom, a labor of love, and the beginnings of understanding who I am wholly." @erelford #myKSS

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  • November 2015
    • Nov 15, 2015 Esperanza Spalding Nov 15, 2015
    • Nov 16, 2015 Marissiko Wheaton Nov 16, 2015
    • Nov 16, 2015 Erin Relford Nov 16, 2015
    • Nov 16, 2015 Nikita Hamilton Nov 16, 2015
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