Here’s my two cents

Hermione Did It, Why Can’t I?

GraceLeave a comment

I quit something!

Normally I’m not the type of person who shouts this from the rooftops, or even whispers it across a table in a noisy coffee shop.  But in this case, having gotten overwhelmed and exhausted and emotional and angry and just generally drained on the second day of school, not to mention having three separate friends ask if there was any way I could cut back on my activities – well, something had to go.  I didn’t have many options; most of my time is taken up by classes, which qualify me as a full-time student, and work, which brings me a little money and which I also happen to love.  One of my internships is technically being taken for credit, and I only need 5 more hours to earn it.  So that left the newest internship, the one only a few days old.

I felt like a traitor, because I had pursued this opportunity myself.  I felt like a slacker because I had only completed one task (she had only given me one task, but that didn’t make me feel any better).  I felt like I always do when I have to make a perfectly legitimate excuse for bowing out of something, which is to say that I was certain my professor would think I was flaky, irresponsible, and ungrateful.  It took me a full five minutes of staring at the email I’d written her, analyzing its professionalism, to work up the guts to hit send.

And you know what I felt?

Relief.

This internship thingy had to do with organizing writers’ visits to my university campus throughout the year.  Now I didn’t have to worry about sporadic weeks of hectic stress cutting into my already packed routine, nor did I have to shove aside activities to make room for writers who may or may not have even worked in my preferred genres.

But even though I knew it was the smartest decision for me and my mental health, I still found myself justifying to all my friends who asked about it.  “Oh, yeah, I just didn’t have room for it in my schedule,” I would say, hastening to add that I was still very busy, not slacking off, not flaking out on all my other obligations.

My friend wrote a wonderful column in our university newspaper today about the problem with perfectionism, particularly in college students.  She points out that many of us strive for perfection in order to avoid shame; if we’re perfect, no one will chastise us.  The size of the failure doesn’t matter because the shame is always looming, gargantuan, disproportionate to most of the ways we fear “failing.” I thought pulling out of the internship would undo all the good work I had done in that prof’s class last semester.  Even as I happily marked down the hours I could now spend relaxing or doing, I don’t know, the homework I hadn’t had time to do, doubt poked at the back of my mind.  What if she got mad?  What if my thesis advisor thought I’d flake out on him too?  What if this was the beginning of my new slacker lifestyle?

I realize this is illogical.  The thing is, when it comes to shame and perfectionism, logic has very little to do with it.  Hermione took All The Magic Classes Ever in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I tell myself.

Yes, the more reasonable part of my brain answers, but she needed a magical Time Turner to do it.

As it happens, I got an email from my professor a few days ago.  She said that my schedule did look demanding, and she hoped that I could join the group for dinner with one of the writers anyway as a thank-you for the work I had already done.

I think I can pencil that in.  But if I can’t… it’s no big deal.

Personal Bubble Encroachment

GraceLeave a comment

Lacking a parking pass, I have to navigate my college town’s public transport system this year, unless I feel like walking for 20 minutes in the smoke.  Interestingly, I’m finding that the bus is becoming the perfect metaphor for my experience of the first few days of school.

For one thing, the bus is packed.  All the time.  Being short, I get to either dangle from the overhead bars or lean awkwardly over another person to grab the upright handles (there’s pretty much never a seat).  So my personal space shrinks to nothingness first thing every morning.  The first week of school is also the most crowded.  It’s when everyone shows up to class to find out if attendance is mandatory.  It’s when it’s impossible to find a parking spot or a free mat at the gym because everyone is trying out the free classes and telling themselves that this semester they’ll work out every day.  It’s when people who are pretty much never on campus for the rest of the year explore every nook and cranny of the buildings they never visit and steal the regular seats of students who actually hang out in on-campus coffee shops (I may be slightly bitter about this part).

My introverted side is having trouble adjusting to this.  Unpredictable behavior from hundreds of other bodies milling around the same spaces as me is preventing me from slipping back into my School Routine as quickly and easily as I would like.  Other people are variables; I like limiting the uncontrolled variables in my life, but for the first few days of school, I can’t do that.  I can’t prevent others from invading my personal physical or mental space.

Then there’s the fact that the bus tends to be so packed that it cannot take on any more passengers, thereby precluding itself from serving its purpose… by serving its purpose.  It’s a weird cycle.  My schedule is starting to take on a similar tinge of cyclical futility.  I’m only taking 12 credits (the minimum required to be considered a full-time student), and I’m only working 10 hours a week (so far), and I’m only working out about an hour in the evenings at the rec, and I’m only doing 2 part-time internships, and I’m only starting the research on my thesis (the real work comes next semester, I keep telling myself).  But all those “onlys” add up to a lot of stuff going on in my life at once, all of it ostensibly necessary, most of it something I really do want to do.  This leaves very little room for error; procrastinating on one assignment would be like putting another bus out of commission and increasing the demand on all the others.

All my work on self care in the past year has taught me that I am most likely to drop the things that are personal first.  It’s much harder for me to bow out of obligations to others that I have agreed to fulfill than it is to tell myself that I don’t have time to work on my manuscript because I have so much homework.  But the manuscript makes me happy.  So, to drag this metaphor past the point of reason, like the bus systems, there are many demands on my time.  Now I just need to figure out a screening process to decide which passengers to allow to get on.

Which would be a lot easier to do if there weren’t so many other people throwing elbows in line for coffee.

Night Owl

Aside GraceLeave a comment

I think I stay up late because it feels as though I’m stealing time, sneaking in a little more living, even quiet living, while the rest of the world is asleep.  Never mind that the sun is shining on the other side of the planet, that thousands of other people lie awake staring at screens or at pages or just off into space.  The important thing is that I feel hidden, secret, and therefore powerful.

Oh, You Don’t Want To

GraceLeave a comment

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me, “And what are your plans after graduation?” I could probably pay for another year of college.

But that’s just kindly curiosity.  People are just being inquisitive, or concerned for my welfare, or even just making small talk.  I get that.  It’s what we ask as humans, isn’t it?  What are you going to be when you grow up?  What college are you going to?  What outcome are you aiming for after this Big Socially Recognized Transition?

What gets me is the number of opinions offered based on my answer, no matter what that answer is.  It’s usually, “I don’t know,” to which they reply, “Oh, you don’t want to decide anything now, you’re so young!”  If I elaborate, “Maybe grad school,” then the op-eds really start flying.

“Oh, you don’t want to get an MFA in creative writing – all you can do with that is teach.”  “Oh, you don’t want to study literature – all you can do with that is teach.”  “Oh, you don’t want to stay at the same school for your Master’s.”  “Oh, you don’t want to lose any momentum by taking a year off.”  “Oh, you don’t want to stay in school forever – work for a few years, then come back and get that degree.”

If I mention a job?

“Oh, you don’t want to stay here, publishing is much bigger in New York.”  “Oh, you don’t want to go into editing, there’s no money.”  “Oh, you don’t want to go too far from home.”  “Oh, you don’t want to get stuck in some office job, you’re much too smart for that.”  “Oh, you don’t want to waste any time, you should start networking now.”

And forget even hinting that the Engineer might come into it.

“Oh, you don’t want to make decisions based on a boyfriend.”  “Oh, you don’t want to do a long distance relationship, so few couples can handle that.”

And on and on it goes.

I’ve been calling these bits of speech opinions rather than advice.  That’s because of the four- or five-word formula at the beginning of each snippet: (oh) you don’t want to.

Don’t I, though?

Don’t I want, in some moments, to study more creative writing because it’s what I love?  Don’t I want, at times, to elbow my way into publishing regardless of the paycheck?  Don’t I want to take the person I’ve been dating for years into account?

How kind of these opinions, sensing my confusion, to tell me what I want.

I’m used to some of these.  I’ve heard them before.  “Don’t worry, lots of people change their majors,” acquaintances would say, trying to give me a way out after I told them I was majoring in creative writing.  Sounds an awful lot like, “Oh, you don’t want to do that.”  But I did, in fact, want to.  It was like Warner thinking Elle Woods couldn’t get into Harvard even after she, um, did. 

like it's hardMy chosen area of study, like Elle’s sudden decision to pursue law, has raised a few eyebrows.  It seems implausible that writing would maintain such a strong hold on me, especially in a society that places so much emphasis on money making.  I get it.  And, following up on those undergraduate doubts, it makes sense that people would make similar assumptions about my choices post-grad.

I know most of these people mean well.  They want to see me succeed, or at least not starve to death or bankrupt my parents within a year of graduation.  They probably believe that their opinions are, in fact, good advice, and I appreciate that intention.

That’s where I run into trouble.  I was raised to respect adults, to seek advice from those with more life experience than me.  So I don’t really want to just start arguing with everyone – “Oh, you don’t want to [insert action here]” “OH YES I DO COME AT ME BRO.”  But I don’t know how to politely disengage when the opinions are irrelevant to me (such as when the information is outdated or based on hearsay, or just has to do with their own worldviews that I don’t necessarily share).

And even if the advice underneath the opinion is sound, I can’t help chafing at that formula. You don’t want to.  Words carry weight in my world, and that particular phrase is like an anvil dropped from a Looney Tunes cliff.  If you know what I do and do not want – why did you ask in the first place?

To Whom Much is Given

GraceLeave a comment

Mom, Bird, and I said grace before our meal in the food court at the mall last night.  No one shouted at us, threatened us, or asked us to leave.

We were at the mall to shop for dresses for a friend’s wedding later this summer.  Bird and I have never had to worry about whether or not our eventual marriages will be legally recognized in our home state.

I’ve been fortunate enough to live most of my life in a relatively tolerant community in one of the country’s most tolerant states.  I’ve been even more fortunate not to need this tolerance for my own sake, because I was born a white, middle-class, heterosexual female who identified as her biological gender.  I fell into pretty much every category of “majority” you can think of.  Admittedly, I didn’t realize just how blessed I was until I started college and the bubble of my existence dramatically widened (with the help of the internet, particularly Tumblr).

When the Supreme Court made its decision on marriage equality, I was overjoyed for my friends who could now plan the weddings of their dreams.  When I heard about the Charleston shooting, I mourned the victims – and got angry about the ignorance displayed by those who tried to dismiss the racist implications of the massacre.  I was still seeing these things from the outside, and I was not directly affected, but that does not excuse me from working to change things for the better.

I’m still learning, still developing my worldview (and I pray it won’t become as rigid and cemented in ignorance or partial knowledge as some of the people giving out their opinions like candy from a stranger’s van), still figuring out what I can do from here to help – or at least not make it worse.  I don’t know.  Sometimes it feels too big.

014b868afc10c6e19990969f956e90f6And I’m realizing that the best thing I can do is listen.  I don’t say this as if I can somehow validate others’ experiences simply because I, a privileged person, take the time to listen to them, people who have been denied something (or several somethings) that I have been blessed enough to have.  Their humanity validates their experiences.  We are all people no matter how many variables we can or cannot check off on a list of too-easy identifiers.  Yes, we are different, but that does not negate the intrinsic personhood or value of those different from me.

And my privilege or luck or whatever you want to call it does nothing if I let it drag me into complicity with the current value system that wrongs so many other people.  I guess what I’m working on is finding not the role that society tells me I should take up by virtue of all these things out of my control (ethnicity, sexuality, etc.), but a role in helping all of us crawl a little bit further out of that society’s reach to where we can start building and changing things.

To do that, I’m going to have to learn.  And to learn, I’m going to have to listen.

It doesn’t feel like enough.  I wish I had more ideas, more answers, more words.  But at least I can demonstrate my respect for my fellow human beings and remain open to educating myself and others.

One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.

~Bryant McGill

So I Got Fired

GraceLeave a comment

This is an entirely new experience for me.  Sure, I’ve failed at stuff before; I’ve failed to meet expectations, I’ve disagreed with an authority figure’s decision regarding my penalty, I’ve gotten in trouble.

I hate getting in trouble.

And I hate feeling embarrassed and rejected.

And getting the termination email for my internship out of the blue brought on the worst combination of embarrassment, rejection, and frantically flailingly wanting to set things right.

Now that it’s a week or so after the fact, the heart-pounding-oh-God-I’m-getting-sent-to-the-principal’s-office feeling has mostly subsided, and the main thing I wish I could change is the fact that I had no idea I was failing to meet expectations until I got the email saying things were not working out.  All the feedback I got was positive.  All the communication with my boss seemed normal and friendly.

This is a trend I’ve seen before.  I had an internship sophomore year that turned very toxic, in part because I received little direct feedback and discovered at one point that my supervisor had told another intern to “help out” because rather than talking to me, apparently, they decided that I could not or would not improve my performance if asked to do so.

I’m a writer, guys.  I like to think I can take constructive criticism.  I like to think that if someone called my attention to the fact that I needed to step up my game, I’d do it.  Maybe, in some cases, I wouldn’t.  Maybe I’d decide I couldn’t invest any more time and needed to walk away.  But I’d like to have the choice.

So here’s what I’m thinking: perhaps the responsibility is, at least partially, on me to ask for feedback and make sure , rather than assume, that the supervisor/boss/overlord and I are on the same page.  Perhaps I need to develop a formula for requesting this kind of communication in future jobs, internships, what-have-you.  (Advice in the comments would be appreciated!)  And perhaps I need to start developing this habit of requesting feedback now, early, before I get stuck in the passive-aggressive stream of the work world as a Full Fledged Adult.

After all, now I’ve got plenty of time on my hands to think about this stuff.  My summer is now wide open.

Why Yes, You Can Sit With Us

GraceLeave a comment

A follow up to yesterday’s post.

As my more reasonable readers could have probably predicted, my visits to the gym and the writing group did not, in fact, result in me getting chased out of the building.  Despite my apprehensions, it actually went rather well.

There was one employee at the gym who looked at me askance, but I just chalked that up to the fact that I sidled in wearing street clothes and not carrying anything that looked remotely like gym equipment.  The girl who ended up helping me was perfectly nice and answered all my awkward questions.

Similarly, the writing group greeted me warmly (I’d even met one of them before, even though my boss wasn’t there) – the proprietor of the coffee shop where they hold it noticed my laptop and asked if I was here to write.  When I said yes, the others looked up, asked what I was working on, and scooted over to make room for me.  The atmosphere was great, and I managed to get a decent amount of work done on my own stories for two whole hours!  There wasn’t much talking, but it didn’t feel oppressive – rather, we were all there to accomplish a similar goal, and that tacit support helped me make progress.  (My story is actually starting to look like a novel!)

Even though I slept through yoga this morning, and even though I probably won’t remember all the other writers’ names next week, it was reassuring to be accepted.

Now I just have to stop being so nervous about the writers’ conference coming up in July.  Sighhh…

Walk Into the Club Like Wait, I Can’t Dance

GraceLeave a comment

I didn’t get invited to parties in high school. I don’t say this for sympathy, or to complain; honestly, I didn’t even know there was a party scene at my school because my circle of friends all hung out at the coffee shop at the bottom of the hill and didn’t care much for loud music and mind-altering substances. So it’s not like I ever really felt left out. I had my crowd, and the partiers had theirs. You do you.

Rather, I bring this up because that’s the only social situation I can really think of that might have helped me suppress my introversion to the point that I wouldn’t feel so supremely uncomfortable walking into a room where I don’t know anyone and where I am not completely certain that I’m welcome.

Cartoon from the fabulous Hyperbole and a Half
Cartoon from the fabulous Hyperbole and a Half which you should check out because it’s perfection.

For instance, I signed up for a gym membership on the island where I’ll be living this summer, so as not to negate all the progress the Southern Belle and I had made in Zumba during the school year.  But joining the classes means walking into the gym.  By myself.  Where people, stronger and fitter and taller people, are also working out.  And judging me.  Probably.  I feel like that would happen, anyway.  The employees will probably be perfectly happy to have me there – I did give them my money, after all – but the social situation of trying to improve myself while also being acutely aware that I’m in a group of complete strangers doesn’t exactly put me at ease.

And then tomorrow, my boss invited me to a writing group at the coffee shop on the end of the pier.  Now, I’ve never been part of a writing group before.  And I will know someone there (my boss) and I have been explicitly invited (again, by my boss).  But I can just picture myself walking in, laptop in hand, pulling up a chair to the corner of the table because of course there won’t actually be room for me, so right away I’ll be inconveniencing the people who have probably been coming there forever, and then I’ll have such bad writer’s block that I’l end up just rereading that horrible, horrible mystery story I tried to write in 5th grade and slink out at the end of the meeting, aware of my own utter lack of talent and convinced that everyone else could tell I didn’t deserve to be there.

Yeah, even as I write that it sounds ridiculous and a little paranoid.

The fact is, everyone at the gym will probably be in their own little world, just like me, and some of them might even be encouraging.  And the people at the writing group will probably be perfectly welcoming and eager to hear what I’m writing about and want to motivate everyone in the group to just get writing, no matter how terrible the first draft might be.

But this is how I feel anytime I walk into an unfamiliar place, like a gym or a writing group, on my own.  I can’t seem to shake the idea that I am somehow lacking, that I will be intruding if I ask for guidance or friendship, that I am annoying the one person I do know by sticking so close to them but also will commit some kind of social sin if I try to branch out on my own.  I feel like I stick out like Elle Woods in her bunny costume at her first Harvard party.

I may be faking it pretty well.  I may even be socializing even better than I think I am.

But all I really want to do is go home and read with a cup of coffee.  It’s so much easier to introduce my awkward self to the world through the written word, like this blog.  Socializing is hard, guys.

Enjoy

GraceLeave a comment

to experience with joy; to take pleasure in

For someone whose brain rarely shuts up, I have a tough time with mindfulness.  The concept of being present, of taking in each thing as it comes instead of constantly planning and worrying, makes plenty of sense when I look at it objectively.  Executing the practice, on the other hand…

Sometimes it seems as though there’s too much space in my mind devoted to doubts, worries, rants, complaints, and failures.  My memories love to dredge up classic reruns of my most embarrassing moments, so much so that I’ll be squirming in my seat at the thought of something that happened years ago.  I may not be the best at this “adult” thing, but I feel like blurting out something awkward in 5th grade shouldn’t still bother me so much.  (Then again, if any of you have found a way to truly get over your middle school embarrassments, for the love of all that is good in this world, TELL ME YOUR WAYS.)

Some people call this “negative self-talk.”  These same people tell me of something called “self-compassion,” which is, again, a concept that sounds grand but is tricky to implement.  My thoughts have worn ruts of worry in my synapses.  I don’t have the time, it seems, to stop and breathe.

That’s why I’ve been thinking about the word “enjoy” lately.  It caught me while I was rereading Madeleine L’Engle’s excellent memoir A Circle of Quiet, where she spends several early chapters discussing the concept of joy.  She talks about existing, about resting, in that joy she feels in a simple moment – and she talks, too, about how rare it is for her to quiet herself enough to do that.  It comforts me that I am not the only one who has difficulty simply being.

The word “enjoy” originally came from Middle English for “to make joyful,” or Old French for “to give joy to.”  Joy, it seems to me, is a much more serious business than mere contentment or happiness.  “Happy” has something of a giddiness to it.  “Joy” has weight.  It leaves an imprint.  But that mark, that gentle, comforting weight like a hand on our shoulder, only comes when we let ourselves “enjoy,” when we let ourselves exist in the moment.  In joy.

So I’ve been trying to pay attention to the joyful moments, to the little things that allow me to exist “in joy” for a second or two, and to rest, rather than squirm, in the unusual quiet of my brain.

I started off easy – it’s all too natural for me to enjoy the first sip of coffee in the morning, or a well-written sentence that makes me close the book and stare off into space for a moment to absorb the craft of the words, or a monarch butterfly flashing across my path, or a fuzzy puppy rolling over and begging to be petted.

But it’s other things too.  It’s realizing that it doesn’t bother me to eat lunch alone in a strange town because I know I’m here for an internship that provides me with work I truly love doing.  It’s one-word texts from the Engineer.  It’s establishing witty rapport almost immediately with my new coworkers.  And it’s stepping outside the trailer in the evening and letting comfort seep down from a starry dome, even though it’s cold, even though I should go to sleep, because it feels good just to be – just to exist in joy.

Now I’m curious – what do you enjoy?

That Time I Almost Punched a Sexist

Grace2 Comments

As a freshman in high school, I was the type of girl who enjoyed stepping menacingly toward my male friends when they said something that offended me, even though we all knew I would never actually lay a finger on them. Besides, I was too short to be scary. (I’m still short, but I sometimes pride myself on the ability to be menacing when necessary.)  Violence was not, in fact, my go-to problem solving strategy.

Still, I knew I would have a hard time not slapping the smirk off P.B.’s face the minute I met him.

calvin and susie bug

We were in English, one of the few classes in which I was not on the honors track because my high school did not have an honors English class for freshmen.  While by junior year I could happily spend 75% of the day away from those students to whom I was merely a nerd who took school too seriously, freshman English required me to rub shoulders with people who still stopped at the end of every line, whether or not there was a period, when reading aloud.  (The teacher also frequently asked my help spelling things on the board, which didn’t exactly inspire confidence in his pedantic abilities, but I digress.)

I don’t remember how it started – the teacher must have asked us to have a conversation about something in the lesson with a partner nearby – but somehow I found myself talking to P.B., who was twisted around from his seat in front of me and was draping one lanky arm across my open copy of Lord of the Flies.  Glaring, I slid it out from under him so he wouldn’t wrinkle the page.  Whatever we were originally supposed to be discussing, the conversation turned to grades and schedules.  He bragged that he had a B+ in the class, to which I nodded approval.

I was less approving of his shock at the fact that I had a high A.  He began quizzing me on my grades and how many honors classes I was in.  At first I didn’t care, but it quickly grew satisfying to see him attempting to process the idea that I was probably beating him in the GPA department.

“Well, I must have a higher grade than you in math,” he said finally, leaning back against the metal bar connecting his chair to his desk.  (His arm was still across my desk.)

I rolled my eyes.  “I’m in Geometry Honors and you’re in Algebra,” I said, trying to point out that he couldn’t really compare our grades there because we were studying entirely different things.

He smirked patronizingly.  “I’m still probably better than you.”

“Why would you assume that?”

“Because guys are better at it than girls.  You just aren’t smart enough to think that way.”  The most remarkable thing, now that I look back on it, is his tone – there was no malice.  He was simply stating something of which he was utterly convinced.

“That…is..the most sexist thing I’ve ever heard,” I said, trying to control my tone.

He shrugged.  “It’s true.”

Almost unconsciously, as though independent from my body, my left hand curled into a fist and my elbow drew back as though I was about to fire an arrow from a bow.  I had never punched anyone before, but P.B. was about to be the lucky first.

Until my teacher materialized at my side and asked, “How’s the conversation going here?” a little too brightly, having seen it all unfold from across the room.  I honestly don’t remember the rest of that class, although I do remember that when we next came to English the teacher announced we had new seats and P.B. was diagonally opposite me, literally as far away as the teacher could physically place us.  This was probably a wise move.

This incident, one of my earliest face-to-face encounters with the concept of sexism, sticks with me for several reasons.

One, I had never realized that people could be so certain of something that I found so obviously wrong.  P.B. was jeering at me, but he was just as convinced that females were inferior as I was convinced that the earth is round.  We had discussed discrimination and assumptions about women’s abilities in my family before (see: weirdest dinner conversations ever), but it hadn’t really dawned on me that there were people – people in my day-to-day world, no less – who actually thought of me that way. It was suddenly and newly personal.

Two, because it was one of the first times I had ever come right up against sexism, I had no idea how to react.  I was angry, but I didn’t have the vocabulary to correct him or explain to him why his certainty had no actual support.  (Sometimes I wonder, though, if one good punch would have convinced him much faster that girls are just as good as boys…kidding, kidding!  Mostly.)  And I realized how much I – and all the girls around me – needed to develop that vocabulary.