Who am I?

My name is Sarah Kelley Felicia Jackson. Felicia is my 8th grade confirmation name. Yes, there really is a Saint Felicia, but please don’t ask me what she did. All I know is that s–t was dramatic, sexy and awesome.

I live in Queens, NY with my hair. My hair has taken on it’s own life and personality due to my unhealthy daily obsession over whether or not I should leave it curly or blow it out straight. This battle for my hair’s mortal soul comes from my bi-racial background. Having an African-American father and white mother is excellent. But a hairstyle that is so dependent on the amount of moisture in the air was a big part of my childhood identity crisis. (For the record, my mother is Irish but you rarely hear “Irish-American”. I don’t want you to think she fled to America during Ireland’s potato famine. She’s from Upstate NY.)

Fortunately, I had plenty of brothers and sisters to commiserate with, and eventually celebrate the phenomenon that is bi-racial hair. (That’s me, in the biggest yellow coat ever made.) We are each other’s best friends and worst enemies. There is no one on the earth who makes any of us laugh harder than another Jackson, but you are expected to BRING IT every time. In fact, my sisters recently expressed their concern that I was 17% less funny due to my recent switch to vegetarianism. The Jackson family is a tough crowd. Tough, but fair. I’m updating the act to include my new love affair with alternative sources of protein.

Speaking of food, I totally love it. In fact, I loved it a little TOO much back in the day…about 60 lbs too much. Contrary to popular belief, being close to 200lbs in high school is not as much fun as you might think. After college I quit smoking and started running my face off. To date, I’ve completed 5 half-marathons and one, ONE New York City marathon. WARNING: Marathons are 26.2 miles, for real. Also, your hair looks terrible at the end.

Mo through Fo, I write and produce promos for Comedy Central, and I hump it. Yes, my co-workers are hilarious. No, I have not met Jon Stewart. Yes, I get to wear jeans at work. No, it’s NOT a great idea to blow your hair out straight when directing a shoot in the woods. (The smell of the products required to make the magic happen is a magnet for gnats, mosquitoes and every other microscopic winged creature in all of Christendom.)

I have a regular Buddhist meditation practice going. I don’t subscribe to any one tradition really, but I do love me some Vipassana meditation. Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield are brilliant and need to adopt me as their spiritual daughter. But I also think Susan Piver, a Shambhala meditation teacher, is lovely and amazing. Norman Fischer, an American zen monk, is beyond cool. In fact, my first meditation retreat was at a Zen monastery. It was very rewarding and crazy hard. Difficult to sum up here, but I definitely had a teary breakdown on the second day, “Doesn’t anyone else just want to get out of here and watch “Project Runway?!”

Buddhist teachers say that every moment of your life is an opportunity for awakening. You shouldn’t push away or attach yourself to any one awesome, annoying, or boring life event. Just relate to it wisely, mindfully and compassionately. “It’s all workable.”

So this blog is just another part of my practice, I guess. If all of it really is workable, that means my family, my job, evil mosquitoes at shoots, marathons, my ethnicity and Project Runway are all steps on the path to enlightenment. Right? Yes. No. I mean, maybe? Well, we’ll see.

In the interest of balance, let’s close this entry with a picture of my hair blown-out. Remember, it’s all workable. Even the freaking hair.