Tonight was supposed to go differently. Due to COVID-19, I have been staying at home with my husband to do my part to flatten the curve, like so many people are. Producers Swizz Beatz and Timbaland have been hosting a series of producer battles, for the last month or so, and tonight’s scheduled battle between Teddy Riley and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds was highly anticipated.

I logged onto my homegirl’s Zoom watch party, put on my favorite lipstick, poured myself a gin cocktail, and got my scorecard ready. This was, after all, the one of the first things I had to look forward to in weeks.

So you could imagine my extreme disappointment when I saw it all fall apart due to Teddy Riley’s terrible sound issues, including audio feedback, as well as a basic failure to understand how Instagram Live worked in the first place.

It’s easy to understand how this failed so terribly. If COVID-19 hasn’t taught us anything else about Instagram Live, it’s that a lot of our favorite artists do not, in fact, know How It All Works. Many of them have at least one person who normally manages and designs Instagram and other social media content for them and in the absence of that person there exists a steep learning curve.

But that’s not the only thing Teddy screwed up last night. There are some key elements that make for a successful virtual event, especially when using Instagram Live. By adding so many extra elements—a band (when he should be social distancing!), all the mics in the world, a step-and-repeat—he made it harder for the viewers to enjoy what should have been a simple set up with decent audio. Babyface, on the other hand, kept it simple: a studio, one mic, and likely a laptop connected to a speaker.

In short, Teddy tried to use high tech elements to a platform where low-tech thrives.

Last week, I did a presentation with my Raben Group colleagues about online advocacy during the coronavirus, and I would encourage you to check it out! A lot of the principles given apply here, too. So let’s get into the keys to a great online event:

1. Keep the technology simple.

   This is the first place Teddy effed up, and it affected being able to pull off the other necessary elements to make it a fun, successful event. All those bells and whistles become overwhelming when you are working with a platform like IG Live, especially when you are new to using it in this way. It just makes technical difficulties even more magnified.

2. Instead, focus on an event that has the potential to make a high impact.

   This should have been an easy win for both Teddy and Babyface. These are R&B legends, for goodness sake! That alone could have made a huge impact had that first step—low production value and technological requirements—been executed well on Teddy Riley’s end. Unfortunately, it ended up being like watching two of your uncles trying to figure out video calls on the family Zoom party.

3. And then, prioritize high-quality content that engages your audience in a positive way.

   Once again, Teddy failed to do this. He focused on being flashy and put creating good content that the fans would love on the backburner. Even most of the engagement was a failure—the comments were filled with frustrated viewers trying to explain to Teddy that there was an echo. Not a good look at all.

The biggest failure of all though, was that Teddy was selfish and did not care about the viewer experience. It didn’t matter that his fiddy-leven mics were causing a terrible echo. It didn’t matter that his colleague Babyface was recovering from the coronavirus and that his technical difficulties made this a waste of time and energy. Virtual events like these depend on the person producing the content to put the audience’s needs first and foremost. Right now, people need to feel good and have fun during a time where leaving the house to do that is ill-advised. Folks had been waiting for this particular produce battle for weeks only to be let down because of issues that had an easy fix. Teddy had one job and didn’t get it done.

When it comes to virtual events, less is more. Focus on giving the audience some great content to enjoy, and keep the tech you are using simple and easy to use.

In other words, be more like Babyface.

(TW: suicide ideation, depression, anxiety)

Ten years ago this June, I got so depressed that I had to move back to Los Angeles.

I had been hospitalized at a psychiatric ward for a week, walking off my still-new job in the middle of a nervous breakdown. I wandered the halls of the hospital, sure that I did not belong there. I remember the cold floor in the bathroom, the woman who kept conjugating the Latin word for the verb “to love” loudly, over and over again, the doctor telling me I was on suicide watch. I remember every single person who came to visit me: my mother, my aunt Susan, my frat brother James, my soror Vanessa.

I would call my mom, my thoughts and words jumbled. I would randomly think of another person she had to call or email. By now, my internet friends I knew through Twitter were wondering where I was. I had to tell them that I was okay and alive, and I asked my mother to call them. She also called my line sister Stephanie.

It was true. I had thought of killing myself not even a week before I was admitted into Seaton House (or as I like to call it, The Worst Place In The World). The thought crossed my mind the way that the idea of going to a new restaurant would. I was sitting on the couch in my SW Washington, DC apartment, feeling numb, zoning out even as music videos played on my television. I knew there was a set of knives on my kitchen counter. The thought entered my mind. You could use one of the big chef’s knives. It would be quick. No one would know for days.

The second time was, naturally, the day of my second anxiety attack, when I had been coaxed to head to my therapy appointment that morning. I was at Metro Center waiting for the redline train. I visualized throwing myself onto tracks. You wouldn’t be missing much. Your life is in shambles.

I arrived in LA not even 48 hours after being released from Seaton Hall, my hair just a little bit longer than it is now because I made the quick decision to cut off my long dreadlocks before getting on the plane the next day. The first sound I heard was the windchimes hanging from the small entryway outside my mother’s duplex apartment. The only clothes I had were in two large suitcases. I spent weeks looking for random items that I left behind: earrings, my gold-plated name necklace from senior year of high school, my Pucci silk scarf my auntie bought me on a business trip to London. All of them were gone, but I did manage to find my official sorority pin, which my mother kept close to her so that it wouldn’t be lost like everything else. I often would talk to myself while doing my grooming routine in the morning, not because I didn’t know what I was doing, but because I was willing myself to believe I was Getting Back To Normal.

I’m nearly ten years removed from the week I learned that what I was going through had a name, and it was depression. Ten years sober as my therapist would put it, who also told me last week that she believes I am currently at my most emotionally healthy. For the first time, I fully believe that to be true.

I’ve been thinking that I will get a tattoo to commemorate the milestone anniversary. I wanted something that I see as a symbol of my hometown. Los Angeles was the one place I could go back to and heal. It was where I got back to myself, where I rested, where I chose a new career, where I allowed my mother and sister to love me. I learned how to enjoy my own company, how to make a good turkey burger, and I rediscovered my personal style. I needed an amulet, a reminder.

I decided that the reminder I needed was the Adinkra symbol Sankofa, which roughly translates to “return and get it.”

An actual Sankofa amulet given to me by a dear friend a few months ago.

Sankofa. The symboI I would see on almost every screen door and every iron gate in South Central LA where I grew up and where I lived after being hospitalized. I think we even had one on our screen door.

I returned to LA and got an understanding on how to take the best care of myself. I returned to LA and got a better sense of direction for my life and career. I returned to LA and healed from sexual trauma, work trauma, and at least one bad relationship.

I returned and got it.

Come June, I’m getting a tattoo of Sankofa on my left arm, closest to my heart, on the underside of my forearm. I think it belongs there.

I just finished reading I’m Telling The Truth But I’m Lying by writer and one of my Twitter faves Bassey Ikpi. I am someone who has read a LOT of memoirs and essays written by Black women, a few written by other folks, and of all the memoirs I have read, I related to Bassey’s the most. In this collection of essays, she tells her story of living with Bipolar II Disorder. No one else has put into words what it is like to be hospitalized, and what it is like to know that the way you had been feeling, acting, experiencing the world had a name the way Bassey does in this book. I cried all the way through “We Don’t Wear Blues,” which reads like a journal of her week in the hospital, feeling less alone than ever.

But one thing stuck out to me the most, and that was her recommendation that we “allow [ourselves] morning.”

“Today may have been a rolling ball anxiety and trembling, a face wet and slick with tears, but if you can get to morning, if you can allow yourself a new day to encourage a change, then you can get through it. Allow yourself morning.”

I was in Los Angeles for two years total.* Those days were hard, they were sometimes monotonous, and I spent some of them angry at myself for hitting rock bottom. But each day, I woke back up and gave it another try.

There are still days where I cry, still days where the anxiety monster tries to eat me whole. I allow myself morning every time, knowing that maybe tomorrow I’ll win.

I’m thankful that I’ve allowed myself enough mornings to see myself ten years sober.

*(I came back to DC for about three months to chase a relationship—that was a terrible mistake that I will write about one day.)