For lots of reasons, including working crazy hours and having a job that required significant travel, I did not start trying to have a baby until I was in my late 30s. My experience is hardly unique. I am one of countless women who almost waited too long without realizing it.
I love when I am not typecast. I've been acting for 50 years. I was such a baby face; I was playing children until I was in my 30s, which frustrated me enormously. Now that I am 65 and getting to play women in their 50s, I am getting paid back for having to play children for so long.
In 2010, I was working in a bank in Lagos. It was a crazy job with long working hours. I had to leave for the office by 5:30 A.M., and sometimes I wouldn't be back until midnight.
There are lots of reasons for that gap between men's and women's wages but to me, the big one is the work-family issue. Trying to juggle children and a job is tough under any circumstances, but especially if you're shooting for the kind of career that involves long hours at work and being on call 24-7.
Being a late bloomer, I really didn't have any interest in children until my late 30s, but I'm so happy I didn't go through life without that experience.
Acting is a tough, difficult job with long unsociable hours, although it can be a brilliant job, too. I don't want to complain too much, as nurses, farmers and teachers are out working long hours.
I've been trying to come to terms with what I am and what I do and what I believe in. And I see that I'm not happy with - well, it's almost as if being a poet is not enough for me. It's too late for me to do more now. I did what I could in a small way. I did it as theater, too, to be honest.
I am proud of our diversity, and when you attack the federal workforce, you are having significant impact on women - many of whom are single moms working to support their family - and you're having a significant impact on communities of color.
As a child, I did what any normal kid who grew up without any electricity would do - I spent countless hours working on a computer wired to my parents' car battery... and learned how to code. This natural passion for computers lead me into the Internet market during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Are people crazy? People waited all their lives. They waited to live, they waited to die. They waited in line to buy toilet paper. They waited in line for money. And if they didn't have any money they waited in longer lines. You waited to go to sleep and then you waited to awaken. You waited to get married and you waited to get divorced. You waited for it to rain, you waited for it to stop. You waited to eat and then you waited to eat again. You waited in a shrink's office with a bunch of psychos and you wondered if you were one.
I was a late starter on the romantic front. I didn't start dating until I was in my 30s.
I shattered that memory by going back there. Without realizing it until it was too late, I replaced that memory with the emptiness of that day.
But the most dangerous thing in the world in the world is to run the risk of waking up one morning and realizing suddenly that all this time you've been living without really and truly living and by then it's too late. When you wake up to that kind of realization, it's too late for wishes and regrets. It's even too late to dream.
I enjoy working on a series and having a long stretch of time to get to know and connect with my cast and crew. It also gives me the ability to play a character over the span of countless hours of television.
As I settled down to sleep in that new bed in the dark city, I saw that it was too late now, too late for everything. I would not be given a second chance. In the hours when I woke, I have to tell you that this struck me almost with relief.
Cuba is actually one where I am more optimistic because of the unique nature of Cuba - 90 miles off our shore with a massive ex-patriot population, now Cuban-American population that still have deep links to the island. There I am more confident that over time that the winds of commerce and telecommunication and travel start shifting the nature of that regime. But that's a small country which has almost a unique relationship to us.
You finish a job and it's very emotional because you're working crazy long hours, and your work family is like a real family.