I suck at current events

Stuff To Do This Summer

Aside GraceLeave a comment

Pray.

Bible study with Bird.

Study for the GRE.

Enjoy and learn from my new internship.

Do DuoLingo or something to keep up my extremely rusty Spanish.

Maybe learn some basic Italian while I’m at it.

Keep up an exercise routine.

Keep up this blog.

Work on some of my own stories.

Get back in touch with old friends.

Go to a friend’s wedding.

Start research for my thesis.

Speaking of which, should probably get that proposal revised and turned in.

Visit the Engineer.

Visit the Southern Belle.

Learn my way around my new town, including finding a bookshop and coffee place to frequent in my down time.

Start journaling again.

Put on sunscreen.

Drink a lot of coffee.

Be happy.

Conversation About Conversation

GraceLeave a comment

I like to joke that typical dinner conversation at my house delves into the Big Questions, discussing Life, The Universe, and Everything.  It’s true that what Bird and I consider normal mealtime chat includes the stigma on mental illness, the treatment of women throughout history, the state of the education system in the US, and so on.  I never knew this kind of thing wasn’t necessarily typical until I began having dinner at friends’ houses and learned that when they talked about their day, they stopped there.  They literally just talked about their day, and maybe what they had planned for the next day, or the weekend, and maybe a funny story from last summer when they all went inner tubing and the youngest dropped her sunglasses and cried.  I mean, we had those conversations too.  (Believe me, there are plenty of stories we love to bring up at the slightest provocation.  Remind me to tell you about the time Dad got a speeding ticket.)

But we also enjoyed going off on extended tangents about abstractions and Important Concepts while our dinners cooled in front of us.

And I am so grateful for that.

My family’s tendency to engage in abnormally esoteric dialogue gave me a foundation for extracting themes from the literature I read in All the English Classes Ever.  It gave me a vocabulary for identifying abstract concepts.  It gave me practice for listening to others and having a Real Discussion as opposed to a shouting match.  And it gave me the mindset that led me to the Writing Center.

My university’s Writing Center became my haven during a semester when things were pretty rough for me.  I found an affirmative place where like-minded people weren’t afraid to have conversations about their enthusiasm for language.  Even though the required job trainings take chunks of valuable Netflix  time out of my evenings, I love them.  I love getting to talk about the importance of body language while working with a student and our desire to change the campus perception of us as a personification of spell check.  It almost feels like spending an evening at home again.

The environment that encourages these conversations is slowly helping me figure out what I want to do with my life.  Not the answer to the perpetual question of What I Want To Do, as in a job, but the values I believe the world needs to see more often and how those should influence my own choices.  If I never talked with anyone about these things, I would probably be facing those looming Life Decisions with even more paralyzing terror than I currently have.  As it is, I am buoyed by the knowledge that somewhere out there are other people who like to have conversations about conversation.

others

New Year – Now What?

GraceLeave a comment

Have you ever noticed how the end of an old year seems like the perfect excuse to let good habits slide, because in a week or so you’re going to start new ones anyway? Maybe that’s just me. So I’ve been thinking about past resolutions I’ve managed to keep and new ones I’d like to try, and I’ve got it divvied up by a few different areas of my life:

1. This blog!

My posts here have been…irregular to say the least.  I’ll have to see what my work and class schedule is like, but my general goal will be to post at least twice during the week and once a weekend.  Fingers crossed I’ll be able to make this blog into a real thing!

2. Health!

The Southern Belle and I were pretty good about keeping up a workout routine this semester…until Dead Week rolled around.  Then we tended to go for Starbucks over the gym.  But I’d like to resurrect that workout routine with both cardio and strength training, as well as continuing to avoid packaged dinners.  I should probably also take my boyfriend’s advice and drink more water.  And eat more veggies.  You know.  General healthy eating.  But also not beating myself up over occasional slip-ups.

3. Communicating!

I seriously need to keep in better touch with my family.  And friends from high school.  I’m also filing more consistent journal writing under this, because I need to be better about communicating with myself and articulating what I’m feeling.  Along this same vein, I want to be better about keeping myself informed on what’s going on in the world, because for most of 2014 I seriously had no idea.

4. School!

This is my job right now, but I need to keep it balanced and give schoolwork the value it deserves, no more and no less.  Part of this is my resolution not to do homework at home.  Instead I’ll be utilizing the office I get a key to because I’m a managing intern for my school’s online journal (yay, power!).  I’ll also try not to rely on my tutoring shifts as time to get homework done – as nice as it is to get paid to do homework, it’s not a good habit to rely on that opportunity and then get annoyed with my students when I have to, y’know, actually do my job.

5. Fun!

I want to try new things.  I actually promised my boyfriend I would even *gulp* go skiing with him.  This semester I’ve realized that I got into a habit of writing off certain activities or aspects of life just because it’s easier to define myself that way.  For example, I tend to laugh about the idea of me going skiing because I’ve just automatically said that I hated it for so long.  I know that if I were to agree to try it, people would make a big deal out of it, so I don’t admit that actually I might be willing to try it again.

What are you trying to improve on in 2015 (or are you just staying your wonderful self)?

Thoughts on Recent Hashtag Controversies

GraceLeave a comment

You can learn a lot on Tumblr.  Or, if you’re like me and still don’t have a Tumblr, the Tumblr stuff that makes its way to Pinterest.  For someone who sucks at current events (I still don’t know who/what/where Benghazi is), it can be quite an education in social justice issues plaguing our world.  The most popular posts tend to contain multiple viewpoints, usually quite reasonable (in my opinion).  But the quality of these posts is not the point.  The point is a particular issue and my personal experience with it.

My sister, who just got a Tumblr, showed me the #YesAllWomen hashtag a few weeks ago, and I started reading some of the articles, blog posts, and general responses it’s generated so far.  Some of them were inspiring.  Some were repulsive.  Some were just dumb.

But others were frightening.

Not frightening in that I suddenly felt threatened by some idiot on a commenting power trip saying he would rape every woman who subscribed to these ideas (although there were comments to that effect).  Frightening in the sheer number of men who truly believe this isn’t their problem.  They went on the defensive, creating the hashtag that #YesAllWomen was responding to.  The reigning sentiment seems to be, “I’m a nice guy.  I’m not going to rape or assault anyone.  I’m not bothering you.  So my part is done.”

My response to them, in words frequently attributed to Albert Einstein, is this:

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.

 

I, myself, was reminded just how incredibly lucky I am a few weeks ago.  Like many girls in our society, I grew up believing that I was not sexy enough, and that failing or succeeding in this regard was incredibly important.  (This was not my parents’ doing – they were wonderful – but it’s hard to ignore society on the word of two grown-ups who don’t seem to be doing too well in the way of love themselves.)  Now that I’m in a relationship, I’m still struggling to let go of seeing myself that way, even subconsciously, even though my boyfriend initiates conversations about consent and making sure I know he does not believe he deserves physical pleasure from me, whether we “usually” do it or not.

This cultural double standard (which cheats boys too, by the way, but that’s a topic for another day) affects all of us.  Those of us in relationships, those of us who are single.  All of us with our varying beauties, inner demons, sexuality, beliefs, education, experiences, etc.  And I’m only just starting to learn how many people don’t seem to know that.

I wish I had a more conclusive way to end this, but I don’t have a solution.  I don’t have any ideas.  I just know that it’s important to think about these things.