Tasha J. Riley is a writer and comedian from New Orleans.  She’s an essayist and a TV and Film screenwriter of comedy, coming-of-age drama, coming-out drama, feminist thought, dark comedic animation and dystopian/fantasy and LGBTQ+ romance short stories.   Along with being the storyteller, currently in several production projects that will also credit her as Creator, Director and/or Producer. (got to get those guild units…)

She loves wine and beer and coffee and tea and cheese and her Queer community…and feminism of every type, and dark, sarcastic humor, and dramedy and rom-coms that disrupt the familiar…and corporate disruptors…and secular thought and philosophy.

She grew up in a cult, but nine years of therapy and Xanax broke her mind free - finally.  She did, however, wind up with seven personalities - three operating as different people in the world and the others lying dormant...we hope.

She was a spoken word poet for a short stint but was always more of a writer and reader than performer.  She rants...a lot.  Some rants are anger based, but they are all excitedly delivered in love - tough love, but in a loving way, to be sure. Screenwriting for film and TV has now become a very sick obsession. (more on that later…)

She thinks that she has a good singing voice and attempts playing piano and acoustic guitar.  These attempts are sad, but she won't stop (lord, help her...).  She's friends with lots of professional musicians and thank goodness this is the case, as they have not allowed her to play or sing publicly for the good of all who would be in earshot.

She's a tax accountant and financial services pro, too.  She was always a 'numbers' person and worked in finance for over twenty years - got her brokerage and insurance licenses at twenty-two, was a financial planning assistant at nineteen, managed a coffee shop and learned about franchising at sixteen, and was doing the books for a family business as early as twelve.  She wrote technical manuals and taught insurance licensing courses and gave seminars all across the Gulf Coast, jazzing up some of the most boring materials imaginable - becoming known in her region for her unique style of delivery.  She hated the typical corporate financial services industry (and taxes, like other normal people) but loved numbers and studying money and helping folks who work hard to plan better. She had to find a way to be professional while enduring this overwhelming internal conflict - you know, because of all those personalities living in her head? Some days, this proves to drive her just a little bit insane…for like twenty minutes a week. Enough time to spread out the mental breakdown and get right back to work. Just as all true leaders have, she’s been a grunt worker with time and experience and exposure to all things corporate.

In other words, she's done twenty years.
 

She eats the same things every week, and when she’s not parading around town like some twenty year financial office-model, you will find her either writing a script or her next book or essay rant or doing comedy. She wears the same t-shirts with the same jeans and high heels when working from home. This helps in her corporate downtime so that she doesn't have to integrate too often with the humans who see that other side of her.  Sometimes she writes blocks away from home at the neighborhood coffee shop because they 'get' her…read: allow her to be the weirdo woman who nurses one latte for 3 hours.

She loves doing everything virtually. 

#gointernet #googleislife #dontcallmejustlistentomypodcast

She supports her writing with anything that allows for flexibility of schedule and avoiding any required or regular physical contact with others.

#remoteworkpreferred #Icandoitallvirtually #whyleavehome

She's an introvert.  She prefers books and gadgetry to shoes and handbags - an openly abnormal 40+ year old, urban woman who codes for fun. (...stop shaking your head.)

Her life is a definitive mess wrapped in a shit show, but she still manages to make friends easily - probably because people are still trying to figure out why being around her is so easy.  One reason may be the fact that she doesn't judge.  She can't!

She also likes long walks through old oak trees and trains and British Comedy and tarot cards and, if you haven't noticed yet, blending things that don't seem to go together…like growing up black in the hood and British Comedy.

Being an idea-blending misfit, her life in New Orleans has been the perfect platform for her amalgamated-renaissance of a career.  Though she's been a welcomed temporary resident of many other places, from Europe (Oxford-shire), to France, to California, to Georgia and even Texas, New Orleans is home for her.  Born in, raised in and riled up because of the Crescent City, New Orleans will always be her real hearth.  Even if this writing thing lands her a castle in Norway - a dream for her retirement - she will always be a New Orleanian at home and heart.

Why this blog?

Well, writing is her passion.  Novels and screenplays are being crafted and drafted as we type/as you read this...but she still does accounting (taxes, insurance and retirement plans and audits, for heaven's sake...) and she desperately wants to stop.  The stress is making her sick, literally, physically and mentally, and her health is such that seeing her dreams come to fruition now is more important than anything else. 

“If you lose your dreams...what else is there?”

So she's freelancing, trying to squeeze her way into the writing scene, blogging and writing articles and short stories and reviews and so forth, breaking into this game on her own terms while she pens her screenplays and novels.  She will write-to-serve anything but ads because copy-writing, as it is currently done, fills her with hate.  Essays, rants and short stories are fun for her because she loves to teach and tell stories...and...why is she...why am I talking in the third person?!  

I hate when people do that!  I hate those marketing rules from the seventies and copy-writing like the corporate drones.

I like blatant honesty and making people catch the 'feels'. 

Listen...let's try shifting this a bit. 

As of now, I am talking.  I am speaking to you as me.  First person - breaking every rule of this blogging thing.  I'd just rather not be fake, yeah?  Oh, and by the way, I promise you that reading what I write - contrary to all professional writing opinions - will be an easier read for you because here's what's going to happen... you will create a voice in your head and it will be as if I were sitting with you having a chat over a couple of coffees.  I know, right?

I prefer this style and I am much better at it.  And though it feels like I am committing the grave sin of the internet and writing like I speak to people and I am choosing to journal on my blog because it's all about me, me, me, this is how it's gonna be. (Yes...I said gonna. No, I'm not apologizing.) 

I'm an irreverent heathen and I will curse like an angry, horny sailor and bake brownies to give as gifts and drink red wine and bourbon while I also meditate for hours to heal people I know and care about that are sick and sing along with friends who play pianos at bars and dress up for Halloween on Halloween morning, functioning in the costume all day as if it’s normal and I consider finishing a book as a social emergency valid enough to leave a party.

Here's another curious thing about me...

I hate churches but I love old church buildings.  I detest just about anything that stinks of traditional religion, but I love hanging around peaceful, turn-the-other-cheek-and-give-to-the-poor faithful, believer-type people (I like people that live by their convictions - of which there are a few of them inside those pretty church buildings). 

And I also love my LGBT community and I have friends I adore who are humanist, scientific geniuses, agnostic and atheist, so some of my friends don't hang around each other and never will.  They couldn't.  I have friends from India and Pakistan...I know some friends with families from Israel and the Gaza Strip, even some self-proclaimed rednecks and black militants - bottom line, I have to check my dinner Evite lists at least five times before hitting send. 

Yeah, shit gets real.

And I am just the type of huge-hearted, empathetic sicko that prefers a life filled with this level of inclusion and diversity.  And I hate the terms intersectionality and diversity…those terms still feel divisive to me somehow.

I prefer the word inclusion. 

So, yeah, there's that...the OCD side of me kicks in every once in about five paragraphs.  OCD stands for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, but if you've read this far, you know that already. 

See?  You see how the 'rules' waste precious writing/reading time?

Anyway...

You should also know that I am a Black-American woman who doesn't always feel "Black" enough around other "woke Black-Americans".  You'd only understand that if you are also.  So inclusion is just a real big thing with me, and not just because of the Black-American thing, as there are other parts to me that don't fit anywhere. As much as I love my blackness, I feel analyzed when I sit with certain folks - and I acknowledge that sometimes this is in my head, but sometimes....some folks are just...they just have a way of speaking to you like you should scrape off your skin because of that time you brought your blonde girlfriend to that party full of old friends and...just trust me. It's a whole thing.

(Please note, I will go off on riffs about the many wrongs Black-Americans face in this country and it is important to my psyche that I do not remain in that mental stance of justified anger for more than the allowable thirty minute ranting episode or things will inevitably get ghetto...)

That said - those of you who are considered weirdos by your normal family and friends (if you still have any of those), those of you functioning miraculously right outside that straight-line 'norm' , those of you challenging this twisted, middle class US Civilian way of adulting - you, my friend, are always welcomed here. You are allowed to get shit wrong and be flawed, as long as you want to be better and right your wrongs. Stay aware (notice, I didn’t say “woke”) but don’t stress out. Relax - seriously.  We are all going to be fine. It’s fine. It’s fucking fine!

Big exhale - there ya’ go.

No, not criminal deviant crazies (yeah - if you're one of them, you go away now...) but if you have trouble fitting in with the metro-suburbanite, transplanted, gentrifying queens and asshole hipster, Ivy-league kings of your neighborhood kingdom (yeah, Harper and Bailey - I’m looking at you!) if you are one of the mommies like me who were thrown out of the mommy-and-me groups because of their love of open conversation about the things we hate and/or don’t get and searching out wine at the earliest possible time in the day and you honestly have a valid fear of failing at mommy-ing, you - yes, even you, will catch the truth I drop. 

Just give up on all that and come, be one of us. Embrace this way of life. Don't try anymore to squeeze your square, nerd-loving mind into their perfectly well-rounded life holes...we are not of them.  We just have to live next door and occasionally bake cookies and make three playdates a year so our children can have friends and not turn into that kid in the back of the class who eats paste and likes it…in ninth grade. (Our kid will probably be that kid's friend though, so get ready for some crazy times ahead!)

Are you one of me?  If so, I include you, my friend.  You belong.  You are welcomed here also.

Here are a few other things about me you should know before deciding to click on another one of my posted log bits...

I love audio-books and plays and BBC 4 Radio shows and the smell of a new hard cover print book and being in old crotchety libraries and small, nearly-extinct bookshops and really, really good bourbon and scotch.  I choose bourbons that are twenty years or older and scotches that are single malt, because there is such a thing as too young or too corny. 

Judge me.  Go ahead. I don’t give a shit.

I like talking about the things I read, such as feminist theories and things that challenge it and modern philosophy and progressive innovations in capitalism and corporate social responsibility.

I love dark, sarcastically funny animated series and some anime and graphic novels/comics with stories that feel real and some sci fi, but not all.  My illustrative attempts are just as sad as my singing attempts, but still, animation is a real and deep love of mine.

Fullmetal Alchemist, anyone? Bojack Horseman - anybody? No? Okay.

And, finally, I like cosplay.  I just happen to be horrible at it.  My closest friends are more into costuming detail than I - so I hang with people who cosplay and costume better than I do to learn from them and to look like I'm good at it by association.

There.

That's about 65% of who I really am.  There is no other way to get to know me better than to keep reading what I write and see if you like some of the same things.

Thanks for reading my log bits and for your support.  I like that you're here.