“What are you doing?” I hadn’t seen him in a long time. Or texted with him. Or even looked at his Instagram. We used to see each other everyday; we were colleagues, working together in the trenches of a Corporation, sometimes at odds, often on the same page. He was now at the tippy-top of the White Boy pile; I was in age-ist purgatory, not being hired, being ever so in my fifties. So after a hug and an excited exchange of children’s photos, came the inevitable question of work-status.

“I’m doing BARB,” I said to him.

“No, but what are you DOING?”

I understood his skepticism. That blogging wasn’t the path to monetary greatness. That it wasn’t a heralding of future greatness. That it simply wasn’t greatness, it was blogging. He was a cog in a money-making enterprise, allowing for his penchant for Prada, his children in private school, his wife having the luxury to do her art; he was inside his success, proud of it. Me, not so much. Being part of online community—blogging, as it were—is not a credible source of activity. It is a discounted endeavor. As if to say, your thoughts-on-display have no value, not really. That there is no obvious payoff suggests lack-of.

And yet. Doing BARB has saved my life. My sanity. My confidence. It’s restored my ability to write regularly. It’s given me a lifeline. It’s allowed me to connect to anger, justice, joy. It’s opened me up to women again, to my lens, to the bits of me long dormant and necessarily replaced by the urgency of raising and living with others. And all of these things, while they may not translate to economic power, is the basis of my empowerment, my drive, my being. And that has no price tag.

So this is what I’m doing. I’m blogging. And I’m proud of it.

Stacey Abrams: “My belief is that we have an obligation to defend the rights of women, the rights of families to make healthcare decisions and the rights of doctors to provide care. Any laws that weaken those opportunities and those responsibilities should be fought tooth and nail.”

Bonnie McFarlane: “What have I done? I realize I’ve done a lot.”

Sandi Tan: “I’ve been wasting so many years not doing anything, and I feel like I just have to make up for lost time.”

Remember the television series, “Thirtysomething”?

Madonna, about to be sixty.

A look back at the 19th Amendment.

A Mother on what Robert F. Smith’s Moorehouse gift means.

What you eat before you sleep can make a difference.

And now have a laugh with Rosebud Baker.