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Life After TNT
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Like many of you, after Trinidad Carnival, I returned home with a feeling of fulfillment and renewed energy for life. I was happy to get back to my family and to communicate with my friends and tell them about the greatest show on earth and to make them a little bit jealous as well.

I was also unfulfilled on some level because there's absolutely no way that you can trap that lightning in a bottle... that feeling from carnival. The best that you can do is be a carnival junkie and soca junkie.  The best you can do and all that you can do is chase that one carnival with another carnival and that one fete with another fete and that one soca mix with another mix and to put that one chune, that is your favorite chune, pon de replay.

That is the best that you can do.  But just like anyone who is sick... when you need your meds, yuh does NEEEEED yuh medication!

I was cool after TNT.

I really wasn't struggling until I couldn't find a fete to go to.  It seemed like every time there was a fete or a post-carnival fete, that I just happened to be out of town or on assignment for work. I wanted to fly into New York and do the post carnival fete. I wanted to do one in DC, but couldn't. Then there was a fete in Tampa, but I was out of town.  I was vexed.

After a first few weeks it wasn't bad but when everybody started preparing for carnival in Jamaica, this is when that feeling hit me.

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"The Feeling".....
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It is the feeling that I've never had to experience before because I always go to TNT, so I'm never in that crew or group of people that are sad, jealous, vex and happy-for-you-but-pissed-off at the same damn time. 

I found myself doing what my friends that aren't able to make it to Trinidad do with respect to Bacchanal Jamaica.  I started running from the TriniJungleJuice Facebook page and website because I didn't want to see the pictures. I disconnected myself from social media outlets. I started trying to listen to different types of music instead of soca. (I said, I tried. I was unsuccessful because nothing helps you get through a workout like soca!) 

I was literally trying to run and hide because I didn't want to hear anyone ask me the dreaded question one more time, "Dred, you in Jamaica dis year?"

So I hid under a rock.

And I tried not to look at any pictures. But my friends...the nasty cusses that they are, they were emailing me pictures and texting me pictures to my phone with messages like, "Man, you are missing it!" and sh** like that!

So, now that Bacchanal Jamaica is over and carnival in the Virgin Islands is upon us as well as the Cayman Islands I can now come up from under my rock and tell you that I feel 100% completely satisfied in knowing that I will be able to satisfy my fete fix and get my first injection of medication since carnival on April 25th in Miami. 

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Finally, I Will Get
My Meds!
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My schedule finally cleared up and I will do the Generation X Jouvert Band Launch and I will have the time of my life. And although nothing can compare to carnival in TNT, that is not what we look for when we fete. What we look for is that one moment when we hear the right song and we can close our eyes, put our hands up in the air and slightly tilt our heads back and see ourselves in that same place in TNT either in a fete or on the road.  It's that one nostalgic glimpse that we live for. And each fete injection and soca injection gives us that moment. And sometimes that's all the high that we need.  That'll hold us until the next time.

My friend Marisol, a true veteran, told me about the time when she could not make it to Trinidad for carnival.  She said that she cried and cried. And even went out into her backyard with her Jamaican flag and had her own backyard mas experience because she admits and knows that she is a carnival junkie.

I've never had that feeling of anger and disgust that I couldn't go somewhere but this year, I did.  I did not do Bacchanal Jamaica this year.  From what I saw, heard and understand... I am probably not going to miss it next year.

I got it bad......  and that ain't good.  :-)

Pray Fi Mi.

Blessings From Here To There,

Rhadi Ferguson, PhD
"The Carnival Doctor"
www.TheUltimateRoadReadyGuide.com

P.S. For the best information in the world concerning carnivals please visit www.TriniJungleJuice.com  For the most comprehensive site available for fete tickets and masquerader costumes, please visit www.MyCarnivalBands.com

P.P.S. For more information on how to properly prepare for carnival like a true veteran, please visit www.CarnivalPrep.com