I'm a proud bandwagoner of the movement towards creating and supporting black owned business.
...And I hope that you're here for it! I'm striving to be as honest of a person as I could possibly be, so here's a moment of transparency: watching young black entrepreneurs coming up all throughout the pandemic has made me a little jealous. There. I said it. As a young muslim girl being raised within a small, structured religious community, there was always a strong emphasis on productivity, being how us as black people have been at a huge disadvantage in American society since we first arrived. The theme is and has always been "Do for self". Not necessarily having direction as to how I would personally approach that theme and make it a reality in my life has had me paralyzed in overanalyzing. It wasn't that I didn't know what I wanted to do because there's always something to be done, it was that I didn't know what to do first and how I would approach the work ahead of me.
“I simply love to create. That's truly all I'm here to do.”
I felt intimidated by the congratulatory posts I would see on social media of my peers graduating with bachelors degrees while I have not even an associates under my belt. The thing about social media, though, is that there's a little bit of everything for everyone. So my lack of hard credentials came to be normalized through other people who share similar circumstances — people who were quite productive (let alone successful) in the entrepreneurial area.
I've arrived at this point by way of pure creativity, so my prayer is that since the inspiration is genuine, I am successful in my efforts. What "success" looks like for me I have yet to define, but the process thus far has proven quite therapeutic because I simply love to create. That's truly all I'm here to do.