Year: 2016

KO-Rose Colored Glasses-jetsetterproblems.com

How to Recover from Rose-Colored Glasses

Published by Khadijat Oseni

We’ve all had this fantasy at some point in our lives. You meet a dashing stranger in passing and spark an instant, soul-searing connection. On this fateful day, you chat for hours and imagine how you’ve never encountered each other before but are certain you’ve met in a past life. Dopamine and euphoria cloud your better judgment and your instincts become heavily reliant on emotions and the “feels” of falling fast and hard in love – though often times it’s a whole lotta lust! Like the hopeless romantic you are, you decide to be spontaneous despite what logic tells you and agree to hit the road together on a quest to turn this fairy tale into a reality of sweet nothings. This all sounds beautiful in theory but can realistically turn into the biggest nightmare of a first date if you ignore certain cautionary signs along the way. I’ve been down this road before hopping on a plane and traveling out west for a weekend with a guy I only met just shy of a …

The Road Home: Marching from Selma to Montgomery

Published by Khadijat Oseni

One plane. Two feet. Three breaths. Four different thoughts flickering back and forth like a light bulb spiraling out of energy. Step after step after step definitions of purpose circle my brain as I move from point A to B, trepidation to resolve. I had been tapped by the State of Alabama and the National Park Service to partake in their 50th Anniversary Walking Classroom where 300 people from across all U.S. territories, including Puerto Rico, would congregate and reenact the historic Selma to Montgomery March for voting rights – 54 miles for five days straight. We would learn and document firsthand experiences from some of the original foot soldiers, like Dr. Bernard Lafayette and Dr. Frederick D. Reese who walked alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965, and I was afraid of debasing a legacy that made relatively cold, still gravel appear like shiny rose petals beneath my feet. This was holy ground, and I was sullied in this matrimony of thought as freedom of choice is something that I’ve tasted all my …

Candid Chats w/ KO

Published by Khadijat Oseni

Last year at BlogHer15’s Experts Among Us conference in New York City, I met fellow blogger, Liv of Unbelievably Human and we connected on travel and life experiences. I invited Liv to be a part of my #100DaysofConfessions project and she equally had a few questions of her own for me regarding thoughts on travel and self-love. View our candid conversation below! Has travel always been apart of your background? or Did something call you to Travel? Travel has always been in my genes and from birth I’ve been nomadic due to having parents from different cultural backgrounds creating a delicate tight rope between America and Africa. Tracing where I was born and raised always turns into a geography lesson of sorts with the most frequent stints in California, New York and Nigeria so roaming has always been a natural extension of who I am at my core. However, despite my frequent movement as a child, I truly didn’t appreciate the character growth that stems from travel until my junior year in college when I …

Postcards from the Edge: London Edition

Postcards from the Edge

Published by Khadijat Oseni

I long for summer days and playing through the rain. Days that make you feel despite the weather, absolutely nothing has to change. With these days I gaze through the corners of memories well spent, right there over on that park bench. When the times of my life were so vividly engaged as though the life in my palms were meant to create. Gone are the days that fall by the sidelines but by and by are built with the dreams of my unflinching eyes… x KO    Queen Mary’s Gardens//Regent’s Park, London, U.K.   Instagram | Twitter    

The Curious Case of Beauty

Published by Khadijat Oseni

When it comes to the concept of beauty, I was raised from the neck up as a “smart symbol” and as a result, have always had a disjointed connection to my psychically as a point of entry to celebrate. Growing up, I found beauty in all forms of art including paintings, literature and music as well as through genuinely connecting with people and ideas outside of my general perspective. Beauty was always an experience, never quite a destination. I almost always found beauty particularly striking in two extremes – belly-aching laughter and painstaking vulnerability – expressions and emotions that could never be concealed behind any set of eyes. My confidence came from my intellectual awkwardness and although I had a brief moment during school days where I was teased because I was too tall, too skinny, my lips too big, my eyes too far apart, my gap in my teeth too wide, I never dutifully placed a value in those moments because I lived inside my head and subsequently fought back against my bullies with …