Apologies, friends. I’ve got to make a temporary departure from thoughtful, decently crafted posts to geek out for a moment.

I’M GONNA BE ON THE NEWLY LAUNCHED HUFFPOST LIVE TOMORROW!!!

Excuse the all caps, but this is pretty wild.

A little over two months ago, I wrote this. And this afternoon I got an email inviting me to discuss black mental health on HuffPost Live tomorrow, Sept. 7 at 12:50pm. It’s a twenty-minute segment, hosted by Marc Lamont Hill, and I’m really honored to have been asked.

It isn’t just the show (although that’s an amazing opportunity); it’s about what it represents for me.

2012 has been a crazy year. I started it by stating that I had expectations for it. I don’t often do that, make grand declarations at the top of a year, prognosticating a favorable future and actually hoping I’m right. But I did it this year. And, if God wills, I’ll keep being right.

From May until the end of August, I was a daily contributor at Clutch magazine, which led to my work being republished at The Root and, one dizzying time, at Salon. Needless to say, my visibility as a writer increased, which has always been one of the deeper desires of my heart. It’s a heady, blissful sensation, working really hard on a piece of writing and watching it land with a large cross-section of people. But I’ve always stopped short of pursuing the “brass ring” kind of opportunities. National mag pitches. Spec TV/film script pitching. The aggressive pursuit of a book sale. Speaking engagements. Personal branding.

It’s been too easy for me to psych myself out, to tell myself the market’s oversaturated and too many people are already doing work similar to the kind I do. Or I’m not as good or as smart as I want to believe I am (good enough, smart enough). Or I’m going to be eviscerated by critics. Or the audience I court will find me patently underwhelming. I’ve always been afraid to cast my wings toward the sun, for fear of singeing them, of falling. (See my previously-written faith issues.)

Concurrent with those issues, though, my ideas about possibility and self-worth and self-acceptance have been expanding. It’s the kind of work you should ideally do in your teens and twenties, and work that some women (and men, really) count themselves blessed to accomplish at all. My work began when I had my daughter. I started believing I could inhabit a much larger space than that which I’ve allowed myself till now, because I’ve promised her as much for herself, and in order for her to trust me, she has to see me do it. But believing and bulldozing the cement walls are different endeavors.

Coming up with an approach to the latter remained a mystery.

Sometimes the approach finds you.

This is probably the first year of my decade-plus career as a writer that people have sought me out to write or to discuss things I’ve written, rather than me frantically searching for outlets willing to publish me. And more than any other time in my life, my work has been resonating with a large cross-section of readers, people from different walks of life, people with wildly divergent philosophies, people who I wouldn’t have ever imagined taking notice of the work I do. It’s also been met with far more criticism than it’s been before (in part because it’s been more widely published). And I’ve had ideas. Oh, the ideas. Grand, sprawling, lavish, daring ideas, which for the first time ever, I feel capable of implementing.

All these experiences have converged at just the right moment. It’s the moment I’m finally, mercifully prepared to handle them.

At any rate, if you can, tune in to HuffPost Live tomorrow at 12:50pm EST and watch the 20-min panel discussion on mental health in the black community. I’ll be there.