Robyn Louis's Blog

Well.

That’s one way to start a year.

I didn’t have hope for 2021. I told myself I’d play it by ear, a day at a time. The way I do everything else. I know, I know. Stoicism is boring and you’re sick of hearing me not have expectations for anything, but it is how I managed to survive 2020 in one piece, so I’m sticking with it.

Even with my ambivalence for 2021, I was unprepared to witness an armed insurrection at the United States Capitol.

My emotions ranged from shock to fear to a...

It came to me in the middle of the night, staring at my ceiling.

Youve never liked yourself.

Whoa. That couldnt be true.

I conceded my childhood and teens. I was good at one thing: school. I pushed myself to excel because the acclaim I received being a good student was the bright spot in an otherwise difficult childhood. As I entered my teens, I added self-righteous good girl to the mix. I didnt like myself anymore, being not like the other girls, but it turned down the volume on the...

So remember my triumphant return to blogging? Because the world was in shambles and I thought we’d need mediums like these — emphasizing the personal, the mundane — to act as our bridge over troubled waters? (I did not say “bridge over troubled waters” at the time, but it sounds good here, so I’m going with it).

Well. That hasn’t quite worked out.

It’s hard to write about yourself when you’re lost. When you’re sick of yourself. When you have no idea who the hell you are anymore and you’r...

I am not an infinite resource.

I am not a giver. My cup does not runneth over with affection or love or anything lying in wait for someone to receive it.

I am selfish.

I’m a bitch.

I am a fierce protector of myself.

I am rarely overwhelmed.

I used to be a person who dreamed impossible dreams, craved the adoration at the top of the mountain, needed to affirm my ability to anything and everything I put my mind to. I used to burn at both ends.

Now, I do not.

I say no....

The thing is . . . I’m just not open.

I thought I could be. With a few quick stretches and reflex checks, I realized the muscles still worked. I remembered the steps; could fall easily into the waltz of asking and revealing; enticing from a safe distance.

It was like riding a bike.

Until I said too much.

How do I explain?

I fell into a routine. A self whose lines I’d crafted and memorized years ago. The me I was the last time I did this dance.

And while this new self remains...

The Sun enters Leo tomorrow and I’m… excited? Is that the right word?

That’s the word I’ll go with. Excited.

This matters on the global scale because the Sun going into Leo alleviates some of the *gestures broadly at the state of the world* going on outside.

For me, it matters because the Sun (my patron planet, if you will) will enter the First House of my natal chart: the section that represents the self, life, body, and health; “the focal point for the personality and manner of exp...

I had my first Don Draper moment in 2004.

I was at home on winter break after a personally disastrous first semester of my junior year of college. Sixteen years later, good and grown, I’m embarrassed at how viscerally I can recall the moment that snapped me in two; that I still tear up over something so small in hindsight because I can still feel myself shattering. The details are irrelevant, just know the situation is what I think of when I hear Destiny’s Child’s “Is She the Reason.”

If...

Like the rest of my social media bubble, I watched the Hamilton musical film this weekend. And like everyone else, I was floored by how compelling it was. A piece of historical fanfiction where America’s founders tell their stories in the lyrical stylings of Big Pun (Lin Manuel Miranda has admitted that his Alexander Hamilton portrayal is a Big Pun impersonation), Eminem, Busta Rhymes (Hi, Hercules Mulligan), and Destiny’s Child sounds absurd. I resisted listening to the soundtrack for years for...

When the world explodes into chaos, my instincts send me inward; so I’ve been quiet here for the last couple of weeks. As self-centered as I am, I don’t believe in the power of a single voice in a din of pain and outrage, so when everyone shouts the obvious thing — that Black people are flesh and blood, heart and soul, worthy of humanity — I fall back and let them.

There isn’t much more to add.

Except.

I have a pragmatic voice in my head that demands I see the world as it is and that...

I’m an addition-by-subtraction kinda girl.

Blame it on my Moon in Scorpio or the ruthless minimalist in my head that believes the shortest route to peace of mind is through the obstacles blocking it, but I am far better at cutting out what I don’t want than identifying what I do want.

My imagination is pretty limited; creating a “vision” isn’t my jam. My visceral gut reactions to the intolerable, though? Never steer me wrong.

So I realized recently that I’ve been approaching this pressi...