Creating this website layer by layer after cancelling a contract was the most beautiful anxiety ridden experience that I’ve done this year.

Last year, I realized that my Running Fat Chef blog blossomed into a movement. Sharing uncensored commentary about fitness, food and everything considered TMI – too much information – made every nerve ending soar back in 2016. If there was any part of this process that I was gleefully anticipating, I couldn’t wait to write my first blog post. So now I wonder why I am struggling to say something of substance.

For years, friends and family told me that I should write a book or at least, continue telling stories. Running Fat Chef afforded me the opportunity to share without limits. Sharing my unhinged thoughts about being a plus-size, Black, queer athlete with chronic disabilities, an affinity for f words, and food unexpectedly afforded me internet fame. Unbeknownst to many who presently follow my social media, this is not unchartered territory. Before becoming a multisport athlete, people knew me as that profane laced slam poet from Brooklyn, New York named Alterego. Dare I admit that once upon a time, I allowed someone to call me Sweet Peaches – let’s pretend that didn’t happen. But before I knew what the hell a slam poet was, I was introduced to Myspace. By now, you know that I’m possibly a millennial. I grew addicted to writing posts at 3AM, purging line for line out of my system.

Writing was always a friend to me, even when I was and, still at times, unspeakably cruel to myself. It never told me to shut up or reduce myself. It never ridiculed me for speaking like a walking metaphor. It never made me feel like I’d lose my identity; it was always a form of an escape or provided respite. Sometimes my mind is filled with an overwhelming number of words. It impacts my vision and stifles my next step. When I release them, even when scatterbrained, I find humanity. She allows me to unravel in ways that the world oftentimes doesn’t extend to neurodivergent, anomalous, and eccentric people like me.

This wasn’t supposed to be the first blog post. Today’s intrusive thought told me to lead with a bold statement to match the colors of this website or how others tend to receive my personality. When I read my first post on Running Fat Chef, I immediately verbalized the word “fuck.” It is typically one of my favorite f words but this time, it represented failure. The person who used to write those posts was a different f word: Fearless. She spoke with candor, clarity, and freedom. Shifting my hobby into a career changes things, including your words.

In a private conversation with my friend, I expressed my aggravation about a public figure that I met virtually through a 2021 program through META. I asked him this wildly successful businessman about protecting your intellectual property. Though loosely quoted, he told me to allow others to steal my work – I was pissed. I was pissed to hear this response from a Black multi-millionaire. For context, he suggested that I took a risk of allowing my intellectual property to be stolen if I wanted other financially successful people to invest in my business. If I wasn’t muted, the entire webinar would’ve heard me wildly cackle. My friend responded to me and stated he wasn’t surprised by the response on both ends. And then my friend reminded me that oftentimes Black people in the corporate ladder give up a piece of their identity – I agreed. Who knew that hours later, sitting in front of a blank screen, I’d realize that I gave up something too with my success: The freedom of my fearless voice.

My last entry on Running Fat Chef as of today was on July 7, 2021 – “…fuck.” In almost 8 years, my life significantly changed from the blogger seeking extra characters to share her thoughts with an intimate audience beyond Instagram and Facebook until now, the multi-hyphenate that I am today. My last entry was about the obtuse disregard of Black athletes’ mental health and wellbeing. Life was imitating art because I was drowning. In 2019, people who never considered me poked at every ounce of my existence that I contemplated ending it. It was one thing to attack my body but to reduce my intellect reminded me of every reason why I dropped out of high school, and it wasn’t for the academics. My words offered me solace before my vulnerability extended a place for others to kick up their feet. I censored a part of my voice for the sake of being a professional. I gift wrapped my former fuck yous in environmentally friendly snark with the option of paper or reused plastic. It is my goal to pull that level of clarity back with a healthy blend of seasoned experience, liberation, and less respectability politics in my clap backs. I don’t need to mourn what hasn’t died; sometimes we go through long periods of being stagnant to make way for the resurrection. It is my intention to be intentionally loud, soft, unhinged and most importantly, nuanced, and free – this is the most efficient way to unravel.

If this is our first- or hundredth-time meeting: Hi, my name is Latoya Shauntay Snell and I am a multi-hyphenate athlete, entrepreneur and eccentric deliberately sharing my thoughts without the burden of being anything to anyone except honest to my own identity – welcome.

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