After I hit a home run I had a habit of running the bases with my head down. I figured the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases.
Defensively, hitting-wise, running the bases. There's always room to improve. That motivates me to get a little better every day.
I had a lot of ups and downs through my career at BYU, through different injuries and stuff. The fan bases have always been right there to pick me up and support me through all those injuries.
Now that I think about it, my 40th birthday was the most anxiety I've ever had, and my wedding was also the second time I've had that much anxiety. So I'm starting to realize that I can't be throwing these big bash parties because I need to own that I get anxiety with a lot of people diverting their attention to me.
Believe me, I bash liberals for being mean-spirited and angry, but there are plenty on my side who are the same way.
My thing is, I don't get in nobody's business or nothing like that or try to bash anybody for what they do. I've got cousins who are gay. To me, there's just no difference. We always chill and have family functions the way we always have. It's not a problem.
There was a question in my mind, because I am black, if the fans would accept a black world champion. 'Bash at the Bash' was a topsy-turvy night. Finally, when the 1-2-3 came, the fans erupted. All my questions were answered; they really did want to see me win.
In the sports world it's all about argument. It's all about having a hot take. The other person has to have the polar opposite opinion, and you bash them together. To me it is an outlier to have a conversation be the basis of why you are listening.
One 'I am woman/Hear me roar' speech may play well with her allies in the media, but women need to look beyond her rhetoric and the snazzy ads. If they do, they'll quickly realize that the Hillary Clinton who bashed women and called them bimbos in the 1990s is the real Hillary Clinton running for the White House in 2016.
Just the basic principles of what makes America work for me are very strong in my heart. It's like no other nation in the world.
Being in a field like healthcare, for me, as someone who is basically on a mission to make a global impact in terms of affordable access to healthcare, I am very, very concerned about the fact that there are a large number of people in this world who need to have some access to basic rights, whether it is in education or healthcare.
Throughout my whole life, as a performer, I've never played with a band. I've always played alone, so I was never required to stay in rhythm or anything. So it was a real different experience for me to start playing with a band. There were so many basic things for me to learn.
Sharia is, for me, a personal basic set of guidelines that Muslims follow. It's about being respectful to elders. It's about praying five times a day. It's about etiquette that I have with members of my family. It's about inheritance, and it's about how we get married. Just the kind of basic things that anyone engages in in life.
We all fight over what the label 'feminism' means but for me it's about empowerment. It's not about being more powerful than men - it's about having equal rights with protection, support, justice. It's about very basic things. It's not a badge like a fashion item.
One of my best friends growing up was Vietnamese, and he and his mom would teach me how to say certain things so I could impress my nail girls. Then the nail girls would teach me how to count to 100 and basic things like 'Thank you' and 'You're welcome.' It's funny, because any accent that I do now always turns into Vietnamese.
I was really looking forward to the release of 'Villain.' I put in a lot of hard work, and I am glad people are noticing basic things - like how I synced perfectly with the Malayalam dialogues or that I came across as a Malayalam girl - makes me feel wonderful.
'Prison Notebooks' gives me a basic understanding of how power can influence people through cultural products and intellectual groups, so they will voluntarily support the hegemony.
I basically started performing for my mother, going, 'Love me!' What drives you to perform is the need for that primal connection. When I was little, my mother was funny with me, and I started to be charming and funny for her, and I learned that by being entertaining, you make a connection with another person.
I don't even call them fans. I don't like that. They're literally just a part of my life; they're a part of my family. I don't think of them as on a lower level than me. I don't think I'm anything but equal to all of them. So yeah, they're basically all of my siblings.
My father, he really encouraged me to really get into acting. He loved it so much, and he taught all the basics.
