Proof of Insanity & Summer (The Season)

I spent over half of this post writing an extended build-up and then decide to save my original topic for another day. I had a lot of fun writing it. 

I took a brief hiatus from blogging because I had someone important come visit me from out of town, but I'm back!
Better than ever!
-Is a really debatable statement but I've landed on a solution and it's that none of us consider it too deeply.
How to capitalize on the widespread excitement and fanfare prompted by my whirlwind return to the blogosphere? You ask?
First of all, please calm down. Really it's a lot right now, what you're doing, and I honestly don't need that kind of genuine passion or real curiosity in my life. It's so obvious. You have no chill.
Despite your humiliatingly ostentatious display of interest, I've decided to answer the question:

Today, August 2, 2105, I, Rowan Youngs, am going to dive deep into an incredibly taboo subject.
Because this subject has been virtually untouched by the general public and mass media (largely due to the fact that it is too vast and nuanced and inflammatory) I feel like I need to drop some mad disclaimers on you.

Mad Disclaimers™

1) If at any point during the upcoming intellectual journey you begin to feel nauseous—if your left knee told you it was fine this morning but is acting really weird and passive aggressive all of a sudden, like you talked about this just last tuesday and agreed on open communication but this feels so typical and it's getting exhausting—stop and throw a few prayers in a general upward direction (specificity is unnecessary, someone will catch them) before re-committing.

2) Sometimes the unknown can be scary. It's okay. I understand. I'm here to lead you gently out of your self-imposed ignorance. I will take you by the hand and yes, I know my fingers are cold, I never claimed to enjoy poor circulation but we'll get through this together, side by side, if you stop being so dramatic and just deal with a little bit of a chilly limb. No there's nothing I can do about it. It's medical.
What the heck just grab my hand ok. You're actually making me feel bad now.

3) Last month my cat told me my ankles looked big.

I have resented her immensely ever since.

It's kind of like that.

This Concludes your Bi*-Weekly dose of Mad Disclaimers: The Reclaiming: Nobody Is Safe™ 

Now that I've disclaimed the heck out of you**, on to today's topic: Summer Break!

Just this morning I sat at Radio Coffee & Beer in the fair, bat-infested city of Austin, TX
(incidentally I'm still sitting here and let me tell you my butt is not at all sore. These are nice chairs.) and made a master list of all the things I want to accomplish in the last 3 and a half (!!!) weeks of summer preceding my return to school.
After it's completion I made the executive decision to take it all in for a second and was struck, as I often am, by how not-at-all surprising most of the listed items were. In fact, quite a few of said items have been occupying that great to-do-list-in-the-sky since May. MAY. Also locally known as "Three Sweet Months Ago" or just "Too Damn Long" if you're in a hurry.

Which I like to think is the nature of summer, at least for many people. Certainly for me.
Lots of great intentions, declarations of intent, and setting of goals. Lots of claims that this summer will be very much so different than those past.
All followed by summer actually happening, at which time reality catches you in its sweltering 100 degree grasp and begins its slow squeeze (this may sound cute but is decidedly not).

All this isn't to say I'm a summer break defeatist. That is THE LAST THING I would EVER want to be. 
Because though summer used to be hard for me, it's no longer a bad or sad time.
And with each passing year my ability to stay positive, productive, and creative improves—not in leaps and bounds, but steadily.
In fact, I think there's something to be said for a chunk of time with wiggle room—where a change of plans doesn't necessarily amount to a lower grade or lost internship opportunity. It's so important to have that time. It's so important to develop a better relationship with messing up, with taking a break, because in life that will happen and it doesn't have to mean Failure.

I'm going to be honest right now:

I just [finally] wrote the paragraph in which I address the original core idea behind this whole post  and realized I have a lot more to say about it than I expected. It also involved getting into my experience with ADD, which deserves more time and space than I can offer in this moment

Additionally, I think the subject would now be at odds with the ridiculousness that is everything I've already written.

So my next post will be something of a summer break part 2. I hope this is amendable to you my dear, sweet, empowered, stinky, trembling, lukewarm reader. 

For now I will share some disjointed anecdotes and thoughts about the summer:

-Summertime sadness is a song I never liked but a concept I believe in wholeheartedly. I've always hated bright, sunny weather when I'm sad. If it's dark and rainy it's like the world is on your side, patting you on the head and saying "it's okay if you want to have a lazy day in. It's also great if you want to make art or be creative. I'll make that nice as well. You have soft hair."
Thank you, rain. Thank you.

-One night on our way to a concert with Mimi a college guy stopped us and asked for directions—he was visiting from out-of-town for a conference on nutritional legislation—and it turned out we were going to the same venue. He grew up in Las Vegas, said it's pretty much a dystopia, and called it "agonizing."
Obviously this is great.
After the concert we gave him a ride back to St. Edwards and realized that neither of us remembered his name.
I think it was Jake but Mimi insisted on Young Sam.

-This summer I realized one of the scariest feelings for me is inauthenticity, perceived or internally felt.

-I love Cheryl Strayed, remembered this, and re-read every Dear Sugar column. It was interesting to revisit the ones that made such an impact on me a few years ago, and to see how the way I connect with her stories has changed and evolved since then.

-The first week back in Austin I was sitting at this same table in Radio and the woman next to me told me she was recently thinking about the Miranda July book I have on my table—that she was in a dance aerobic class and thought "this feels like Nobody Belongs Here More Than You."

PART 2 should go up within the week! Don't go anywhere! Stay! I have needs! I'm needy!
Okay I understand.
See you soon.


*hah a
**I know you're scared but I really believe in you, I always have. (maybe I should have told you that more when you were growing up but all I can do is be better now and try to move forward) (like The Little Engine That Could) (What do you mean? It's a book. I read it to you when you were little) (You're kidding. I never read you that book?) (I never read you any books at all?) (What's a book??? Did you really just ask me that?? Stephanie, you're 24. You went to college. I'm legitimately so baffled right now I think maybe we both had too much to drink and should continue this conversation when we're less emotional)

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Memories, Quotes, & A Culture of Opposition (i.e. Nobody Is Special, Be Nicer)

Sometimes I am hit with the overwhelming fear that I will forget the things in life that have brought me happiness. These things don't have to be big—they're often small. I'll look back through my photos and stumble upon a screenshot of a particular funny or meaningful text conversation I had and think, oh no.
In 10 years from now this will be buried almost entirely. Memories will be stacked hastily and miles deep, partially faded, either fuzzy around the edges or soggy in the middle. In my mind, the detritus of my captured day-to-day life—a delicious meal*, a snow day, a funny photo of a friend—looks like a sediment deposit, each striation a subtle variation on the last, a slow shift that is unsettlingly(beautifully?) deliberate and enduring. The memories at the bottom spread thinner as the combined weight of time and the new press firmly downwards.

This impulse to hold tight is one of the reasons I collect quotes, second to the fact that I love them.
I really, really love quotes.
There's nothing more exciting than hearing someone say something just right, using words in a way that is innovative or unique or beautiful, egalitarian or overflowing, concisely conveying meaning or thrilling in way they occupy space.

A few of the quotes I've collected happen to be about this very subject—words and how freaking great they are. I will now insert a few of my favorites:

“For my husband, words were fascinating—their origins and mutations, their ability to combine intricately. When somebody would say something in an economical way, and use grammar originally to some satisfying end, he would usually repeat it to me at the end of the day. It stayed in his mind, like a song or a painting he loved.”

—Rebecca Lee, Bobcat & Other Stories

“A sentence, Forbes seemed to believe, not only had to say something, it had to say it uniquely, with verve. A sentence was more than just a fact-conveyor; it also made a certain sound, and could have a thrilling quality of being over-full, saying more than its length should permit it to say. A sequence of such sentences exploding in the brain made the invented world seem almost unbearably real, each sentence serving as a kind of proof.” 

“I later found the same quality in Hemingway, in Isaac Babel, Gertrude Stein,  Henry Green: Sentences that had been the subject of so much concentration, they had become things in the world instead of attempts to catalog it” 

—George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone

The first quote will always be one of my favorites because I goddamn IDENTIFY with it. The way I see it, people's words, regardless of how they are packaged—whether they take the form of book, song, movie, or online article—are just as precious as more tangible manifestations of human creativity.
This is why I so often write down the things people say to me. My snapchat story (Good God, I have now referenced snapchat on my blog and there's no turning back) can be viewed as collateral damage, the unlucky result of my fascination with words uttered. If you are with me and I'm in the mood, I will publicly quote the heck out of you. That sounds like a threat but actually #consent guys, I take it seriously.

In addition to writing down sentences that strike a cord with me for their inherent special-ness, I record quotes as an exercise is getting away from myself.

Recently I wrote about this in a letter. I also self-reflected for a while, which I'm including because I am now just one big, open, emotionally introspective book:

Right now I’m sitting in the corner, on a small raised platform with just one other table. There’s a couple sitting there (about a foot away from me), and over the course of the past hour I’ve dipped in and out of shamelessly listening to their conversation. I’ve also been writing down some of the things they say, which is always something that should feel more invasive to me than it does. I do this sometimes not even because the things people say are particularly fascinating or eloquent, but because they’re so incredibly mundane and foreign at the same time. I think some incredibly talented authors (Miranda July comes to mind) write characters that are undeniably marked by the writer’s own consciousness, but it’s incredibly important to be able to write apart from ones-self (I hope that makes sense). For a writer to step entirely outside of the way they personally observe and believe and process, placing themselves squarely in another human and inhabiting that entirely.

This is definitely where I feel like I need a lot of work—I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to articulate the contents of my own brain, but when it comes to fleshing out separate characters I don’t have much practice. 

I realize that I’ve dedicated a lot of time to combing through my own head, working on figuring that mess out, and it’s about time I looked past myself**. 

Now that I’m thinking about it, for so many years I saw people as complete mysteries, but in a scary and potentially dangerous way—they had infinite power to misjudge me, out-think me, understand the world in ways I did not, and subsequently leave me behind. I really used my combination of low self esteem/anxiety/ever-present ego to remain locked inside an unpleasant but wholly self centered box of my own design. I reduced the people around me even as I exalted them, made them props while I assessed their every attribute in relation to me. Even when I admired a person’s intelligence or skill, I would begin to analyze how that manifested in their perception of me—it might make us compatible in a way I was convinced they could not recognize (cue internal despair) or superior in a way that made them separate and untouchable (why didn’t I recognize all that I could learn from these people rather than anguishing over whether or not they would like me?). What a sad, small way to live. What a thick collection of missed opportunities—chances to inquire, to listen, to understand.

So I guess that’s my round-about way of explaining why I like listening to other people. The lady next to me just said, “other people don’t have hobbies, they have pets,” which I don’t necessarily agree with but I think is an awesome thing to say. They’re experiencing a lot of financial problems but seem to have a very healthy and communicative relationship.

Now I'm listening to a couple discuss the relative merits of a "sweetheart table" with their wedding planner. I have no idea that that means but I love that it's happening.

Speaking of the importance of words, I just read George Saunders' essay "The Braindead Megaphone" (included in his book of personal essays bearing the same title), and it is magnificent. I cannot recommend it enough. Not only does he address the abject failure that is our media, and the adverse effects it's had on our collective IQ as a nation, but his argument is rooted in a belief system that I very much subscribe to. The "braindead megaphone" is most dangerous in its refusal to acknowledge the humanity within all of us—the universal elements of being alive and occupying space in the world that are simultaneously enduring and fragile, constant regardless of race or border.
I have returned again and again to a particularly powerful idea found in Audrey Lorde's Women Redefining Difference. She states that we live in a culture of opposition—of binaries—and that the devastating effects of this cultural climate can only be combatted through a fundamental shift in the way we conceive identity and difference. In the case of our fun society, in which the "mythical norm" is white, young, thin, male, heterosexual, able-bodied, and financially secure, people are assigned value based on how closely they resemble or differ from this ideal. Through a cultural lens of opposition, the further a person is from this construction the lower they fall within society's invisible hierarchy (a hierarchy that manifests on a structural level in every sphere of life). Additionally, their difference is interpreted as at-odds, or as a challenge. Lorde presents the idea that we must instead work to shift this mentality, instead seeing the world in "shades of difference." In his essay, Saunders bemoans the loss/lack of of these shades and the strengthening of black-and-white thinking. As a society we have grown increasingly incapable of subtlety. Our grasp on compromise, our ability to appreciate nuance, is buried in absolutes.

I could go on about these ideas for quite a while, and probably will in future posts, but this feels like a solid stopping point for now.
If you don't feel like reading Saunders' full essay, I'll finish this off with an excerpt that just so happens to underscore the other topics discussed today! Serendipity is Alive and Well!

“But if we define the megaphone as the composite of the hundreds of voices we hear each day that come to us from people we don’t know, via high-tech sources, it’s clear that a significant and ascendant component of that voice has become bottom-dwelling, shrill, incurious, ranting, and agenda driven. It strives to antagonize us, make us feel anxious, ineffective, and alone; convince us the world is full of enemies and of people stupider and less agreeable than ourselves; it is dedicated to the idea that, outside the sphere of our immediate experience, the world works in a different, more hostile, less knowable manner. This braindead tendency is viral and manifests intermittently; while it is the blood in the veins of some of our media figures, it flickers on and off in others. It frequently sheds its political skin for a stroll through Entertainment Park, where it leers and smirks and celebrates when someone is brought low by, say, and absence of underwear or a drunken evening.

But why should this tendency be ascendant? Fear, yes, fear is part of it. In a time of danger, the person sounding the paranoid continual alarm will eventually be right. A voice arguing for our complete rightness and the complete wrongness of our enemies, a voice constantly broadening the definition of “enemy,” relieves us of the burden of living with ambiguity. The sensibility that generates a phrase like “unfortunate but necessary collateral damage” can, in the heat of the moment, feel like a kind of dark, necessary pragmatism.” 

-George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone

CONCLUSION:
Our society and the world in general can be fucking terrifying! It's true! I know I'm scared!
Despite this, people are not fundamentally bad or stupid or unknowable.
They are not entities to be simplified.
They are not easily quantifiable or fodder for sweeping generalization.
Other people are not the enemy, even when they are The Enemy, and it is easy and infinitely unproductive to think we have risen above the mass of lesser-minded individuals that currently populate the earth.
In summation,
Nobody is special. Be nicer.

*I refuse to abandon the conviction that food is one of the better things you could ever choose to photograph.
**And I recognize the irony of including this in a blog post about ~me~

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I Will Be a Good Old Person (my vow to me)

Disclaimer: If this feels reductionary or is offensive to people past 65, I apologize. It was a fun brain and writing exercise borne during breakfast when my mother and I had this spell-binding conversation:

Me: I think I'm going to be a good old person. 

Ellen: You're going to be a great old person!

(5 second pause)

But why do you say that?

I Will Be a Good Old Person (My Vow To Me)

I think I’m going to be a good old person. I’m really well suited to the activities of the elderly—reading and talking and thinking about things too much. Old people have a lot of time to think about things, and I assume they aren’t quite so tied up in the neuroses of the fresh and self-conscious. I’ll finally be able to stop worrying so much about my Self and my “Direction,” because at that point I’ll either have screwed things up or I won’t have. When you’re young the future is always there, looming, a presence. Even when you say “fuck it, I don’t care about the future, I’m going to do ALL these drugs,” you’re still making an active decision to ignore what may be. Old people don’t have that weight. They have the weight of their past—which I’m sure is an entirely different burden I cannot begin to conceive of—but this is an encumbrance the elderly are much more equipped to handle because of all that perspective they’ve accrued over the past 70 years. A great thing about living is that you can’t not gain perspective the longer you do it. Even if you locked yourself up in an empty room for years, stared only at blank walls and counted to one hundred again and again—what an experience! In my mind, a horrible one! Why did you do that? But look! It happened!

Regardless of how happy and connected and self-actualized I am, there will (most likely) always be a small, subconscious part of me worried about screwing it up. “It” being the cultivation of a sustainable and fulfilling life. I will (most likely) feel this way until it’s no longer an option on the table. Until one day I wake up and either have enough money to take it a bit easier or am living under a bridge.* And I’ll look back on my life—now the bulk of my earthly experiences—and say “today I’m going to read Thomas Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd. I will contemplate public policy, and the events unfolding overseas, and I will do it with very little of myself getting in the way. Myself has had it’s time to be, and now I will be completely and fully for other people, and within the world, and soak the last of it up while I can. It will be a relief to step aside in this way.

I keep a list of the books I have read, because the thing that still scares me the most is forgetting.

Of course it will be hard. It’s going to be disappointing because I am so close to death and my body is slowly deteriorating, but I will make peace with that and work on being mindful. I will have mornings when I don’t feel like getting up because my catalogue of aches has grown inexplicably more expansive, or the diverse array of pills awaiting consumption seems suddenly impossible to stomach. A mountain of pills, surrounded by a moat of creatures that sliver and chomp. I will chop their heads off and begin the ascent.

I will look in the mirror and think,“Very little about this is pleasant. I am no longer an entity that is nice to look at,” and I will learn that there is freedom in this. Mostly I read, but will occasionally indulge a movie or TV show. There was a time 10 years ago when media portrayals of the elderly frustrated me—“we’re not just kindly grandmothers, old shells waiting to expire!”—but these feelings have passed. Now there is resignation, but a kind that rings of acceptance rather than exhaustion. I will be exhausted. Some days will be wholly exhausting. But I will remember the people who have loved me and that I have loved in return. I will read ancient histories—Greek, Roman, Egyptian—and feel confident there will be no test. I will devour tales of conquest, love, hatred, grief, and growth. They march past with drama, a colorful fanfare of others who have exploded into this world and did what they could with it. Some stories may linger, and they are warmly welcomed. The brevity of their stay is no longer cause for sadness.

Hopefully I will have people in my life to care for, but I don’t like to assume. If I do, these people will mean a great deal to me. I will live vicariously through the discoveries of the young and I will have time to truly know the humans surrounding me. Sometimes I will hear of adolescent hardship and I will feel a pang of nostalgia—if only I had known back then. If only I had truly appreciated. 

When I am in the presence of others, I will ask them the questions I was once too self-absorbed to formulate, voice the thoughts I was once too self-conscious to say. 

I try to garden but it’s hard on my back. 

I spend time cooking elaborate meals. 

I occasionally invite loved ones over for dinner and they're so sorry but things are crazy right now. 

Soccer practice runs late, trouble at school, the business is finally taking off.

Things are crazy, but definitely some other time. 

The list of books continues to grow.

*please note that if I am ever forced to live under a bridge, there is no way I won’t be in Japan. I will be sitting there, under a Japanese bridge, and even if it’s the worst I will be in Japan.

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Hilary Duff & Quotes

Ok! It is time to write something! Because I have 3 long blog posts that are not yet complete, it is time to write a 
loosely disorganized, stream-of-thought blog! 
If the crowd is not going wild right now I really don't know what else to do, this is it, this is what I have to offer. Also tomorrow is July 4 so God bless America. I am agnostic and we can do better as a nation. 

I would like to thank my friends who have reminded me to keep blogging over the past week and a half. They have done this with varying degrees of bluntness. Shout out to Mimi for saying "You haven't posted anything" and to Madhav for asking me about it the past 3 times I have seen him. He also greeted my at one party by bonking me on the head (in a kindly manner) and saying "Write!" which was confusing and then heart-warming in that order.

Here are a couple thoughts:

1) I've been in a weird funk the past 5 days. Yesterday I realized that this funk was no longer starting to feel like a creative slump, but something more concerning. I wasn't sad, but I wasn't happy. Everything felt flat. It was like I had been pulled out of the flow of life and was watching it rush past without me, and this made me feel fairly ambivalent. Said realization set off an alarm in my head. This alarm is annoying and panicky in an aimless way, and it yells something along the lines of "TIME TO TAKE ACTION" before scratching its head and wandering away.
Thankfully, the events of the next 30 minutes were documented with a staggering and brilliant amount of accuracy by this series of texts:

I don't need to tell you how much fun it is to get texts from me. We all understand.

Hilary Duff did me a real service on the evening of July 2nd, both in helping me feel alive and reigniting my sense of natural curiosity. For example: How is Hilary doing? What are the names of her children? Are they well-adapted and on the path to self-actualization? I just did a quick Wikipedia search and, YOU GUYS, Hilary is crushing it!

If you feel like leaving a comment, please include your favorite Hilary Duff song and a short haiku on the role her musical stylings have played in your life.

2. I really love quotes and I collect them (in a real-life digital Word document on my computer). Because my allotted blog-writing time is almost up, I am now going to share the most recent additions to my collection.

Life: 

"I don't want anyone to worship me. That sounds oppressive" —Mimi

"I never realized that about the Jenga: You can join any time because the only important element of the game is losing." —Colin

Media:

“It’s really liberating to say no to shit you hate” —Hannah Horvath, Girls

"I love you but you have no idea what you're talking about.”—Sam Shakusky, Moonrise Kingdom

Book:

"Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the earth again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet day after day, alone.” 

—Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

“We were fighting so very hard and achieving so very little aside from staying alive. BUT THAT’S EVERYTHING, my father wrote to me, when I told him that in a letter”
—Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“If one of the things people do is establish a civilization out of nature, a way out of the chaos, then Ray was failing at being a person, falling back into the glut of the physical world. He’d been fooled by life. It had triumphed over him. I wanted to call it out to him, over his wife’s head, Hey Ray, life has triumphed over you.”
—Rebecca Lee, Bobcat & Other Stories

Have a great fourth of July! Honestly if someone is setting off a firework above you, don't look up, you will get ashes in your eyes.

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21 Drunk Antelopes & Clearly Defined Life Goals

Here is a list of Things I Am Thankful For:

-Existing.
-Entering my freshman year of college and emerging alive and unscathed and also, dare I say it, a more evolved human.
-Books n art n stuff.

Things I Am Ok With But Not Thrilled About:

-My not-yet-fully-developed ability to stick with the things that are important to me.
Consequently:
-The fact that I have made only two posts on this blog.

I mean, it's ok. It's fine. Things happen and the world continues to spin. I have about 5 unfinished posts quietly waiting in a queue—sometimes they whisper to me at night—and I'm not sure that any of them are relevant anymore. But I am turning over a new leaf, or maybe just making the best of the leaf I have, and am infused with a fresh sense of motivation and purpose. This is all part of a tri-monthly cycle involving 1) gradual loss of momentum. 2) slow slide into lethargy. 3) realization that I need to get my shit together. 4) Assertion to friends and loved ones that tomorrow is the day I get my shit together. Sometimes I send snaps where every one of my chins look radiant, saying "tomorrow is the day I get my shit together." 5) I did it! My shit has been gathered! It is together, all in the same fun, pungent smelling location!* 6) fairly steady levels of productivity maintained. This phase of the cycle is excitingly variable. Who knows how long it will last? Not me! As I get older and become more self-actualized (ok Rowan, whatever you need to tell yourself) I'm able to keep this one going for ever-lengthening periods of time. 7) Repeat.

Last night I went for a night walk downtown with my closest friend, Mimi. We have known each other for 16 years. I feel confident in this fact because once during a phone call we had this conversation:

Me: Wow, it's crazy how long we've been friends. How many years have we known each other?
Mimi: I don't know. I don't really care.
And then I proceeded to crunch the numbers slowly and painstakingly because I had no help and am also very bad at math.
Me: Okay well we've known each other for 16 years and it's actually really adorable so it's all good, I can be the one in this relationship who cares.

And then I made a clever mental recall device to remember her birthday, because after 16 years you should probably remember your best friend's birthday (21 drunk antelopes stumbled over a hill, in case you were wondering. This means that she was born August 21, I think. It could be April but I feel more positive about the first option.)

This brings us to Chapter 2, entitled "I know you had a point, maybe try and make it":

One of the reasons I love Mimi (among many) is that we're very different. When asked what my goals for the summer are and responding with something typically vague like, "doing as much writing and art as possible" (what does this mean? What does "as possible" imply? Can "as possible" be measured? Of course not but don't worry, this is where Mimi steps in), she turned to me and said, "Ok. But how much writing? What kind? How much art do you want to do in a week?" And then she added "What's your third goal?" because everyone knows goals must come in three's.
This was a helpful thing for me to hear, and I've been thinking about it since. So in the spirit of actually cultivating a fulfilling summer where things are accomplished both in my head and in real life, I have settled on a FOURTH GOAL. I KNOW.
Goal #4 is to post on this blog once a week. Goal #4 requires me to let go of the voice in my head that would like every post to be equally meaningful, well developed, and interesting.** And I'm really, really excited about goal #4. In the spirit of letting go, I've decided to write about whatever interests me or comes to mind, which sounds obvious but is something worth affirming. There will definitely be more stream-of-conscience musings on thoughts and feelings, some book reviews, and anecdotes from daily life.

I'd like to note that I'm still settling on how much I want to share on this platform. Much of my writing ends up in a deeply personal place, regardless of where it began, and I'm grateful for this. Writing has been a constant in my life: the most authentic means of reflecting, processing, and examining the ideas and relationships I hold dear (as well as the ones I may reflexively shy away from). In many ways I find a safety and security in the written word, in that I feel I am wholly expressed in the sentences I put to paper (or Word document). Despite my natural impulse to write all of me, I am aware that the things I post here are public—effectively out of my hands once posted. This isn't to say I think many people will take the time to read these thoughts, simply that the option is there. As such, walking the line between public/private will be a delicate balancing act for me, and one I hope to fine tune over the next month.

In summation, I'm excited. I'm excited to try and stick with this, goal #4, and am very much looking forward to the posts that will follow. If you are reading this and are a friend of mine, I wholeheartedly encourage you to bonk me on the head and say, "Write!" whenever you feel like it. This could be a great excuse if you're ever getting annoyed at me and need to physically channel that frustration.

*I'm sorry
**At least to me. Obviously this is as subjective as it gets (a sentiment whose clarity could only be improved by words "as possible.")

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On Trains, Peeing, Happiness, and Hillary Clinton

I just boarded the train from Baltimore to Washington, DC and I figured this was the perfect time to do some aimless writing*. Right now I’m hyped up on coffee and sugar—let me take this moment to say dunkin donuts is bad, guys, and not even in the fun way—and also on the knowledge that in a few hours I will be in the presence of the queen herself. No, I’m not talking about Beyonce or Her Actual Royal Highness up in England. I’m referring to the one and only Hillary Clinton—one of the most intelligent, brilliant, and badass women to ever own a closet full of pantsuits. I was invited by my friend Anna (via her grandmother who is now everything to me) to go to the Emily’s List 30th Anniversary Gala, and spent this morning panicking about what to wear and then firmly scolding myself for worrying about such materialistic, frivolous, inconsequential things and then being like, no, but really, I need to look nice for this. It was the fun kind of emotional roller coaster where you get little sweaty and shave 5 minutes off your projected lifespan.

Thankfully all is now good and with every moment that passes I get closer to Hillary Clinton! How cool is that?? “Very cool” feels like a gross understatement. And I’m taking the time to really appreciate a warm seat and snow-covered hills outside the window and a chance to breath and be alone. This bit of solitude couldn’t have come at a better time. As any highly social introvert will tell you, there comes a time when it all gets to be a bit too much. I realized said time had arrived two days ago, when I had just spent hours writing and discovered that I was feeling really antisocial. Really, really antisocial—the kind where I didn’t want to be looked at or pick up on social cues or speak intelligible words of any kind. Unfortunately, I was also sitting at a desk in the middle of the library. Humans surrounded me. 

My second realization was like a deep stab in the heart: I had to pee. So I sat there, frozen, internally torn between human contact and actually peeing on myself for a good 45 minutes. 

My problems aren’t real.

Which is why it’s a good thing that I’m sitting here, feeling at peace with the world, in a string of cars slowly making their way towards Hillary Clinton. This is good both for me and the chairs at the Ath**—who were narrowly spared a sad, pee soaked day—and for all the people who I love spending time with normally. I will be the first to admit that I’m a pale imitation of myself when I haven’t had a chance to recharge. And now that I’m thinking about it, a train recharge has to be about twice as potent as a normal one, right? This feels right to me.

Recently (i.e. 20 seconds ago) I realized it’s important to not be so hard on myself when I feel a little less colorful than usual—when I don’t have as much to say. This goes for all of us. The truth is that we aren’t going to be on our game all of the time. Just like we aren’t going to be happy all the time, or feel particularly smart or witty or socially adept. Sometimes we just exist, and that’s okay. 

I was thinking about happiness yesterday, as I crouched on a chair and ate my cinnamon roll (I know. It was pretty cute). We have a culture where society’s taught us that happiness is simultaneously very important and something that is tenuous, something to be fought for tooth and nail. We place so much emphasis on being happy and then say things like “when you enter the real world…”, like woah, then you’ll be in for a cruel awakening. The implication is that the true nature of “real life” is discontentment and we’re all just working to briefly enter the vague, ethereal half-reality of happiness before it slips away. But, guys, what makes sadness the default and happiness the exception? Sure, sadness is a lot sexier. The hard emotions are dramatic and intriguing. When literature, art, or movies depict ennui, heart-wrenching loss, and seething hatred we call them “gritty, bold, unflinchingly real.” I never really stopped to wonder—what makes them more real than romantic comedies, or children’s movies that have happy endings? Those things can happen! Actually! Why do we act like talking about them is easy? Because, when you really think about it, it’s a lot easier to flounder and sink. Trust me, I get it. I’m a cynic by nature who’s spent many years actively working to sidestep pits of despair. Only within the past few years have these attempts been what I’d call “successful.” I also get how those hard emotions can inspire creativity. I was looking back through my notebooks yesterday and was struck by how very much inner-turmoil most of my writing, creative or otherwise, explored. The angst of it all! The hardship! Also shoutout to hormones because those things know their stuff.

At the heart of it all is the fact that happiness is easy to take for granted. We overlook it and we forget that sometimes we have to make it for ourselves. It’s very hard to ignore disillusionment or anxiety or depressions. Those things burrow into you and they make a home there—they coat our skin and clutch at our bodies and clamp down. It seems to me that this whole cultural perception, that hardship = reality, adds to the idea that once you stop feeling happy you might get stuck that way. I’ve seen in my peers (and myself) that the moment people aren’t especially excited, overtly stimulated, happy in the best way, they have a moment of internal panic. They start to wonder if this is how it will always be. They scramble to find a thing or a person or a place that will “fix” their situation. What makes us need fixing? Isn’t it enough to just be for a while?***

Okay, I was about to top this stream-of-consciousness post off with a book review, because rhyme or reason was abandoned soon after the first sentence, but I HAVE ARRIVED. HELLO, WASHINGTON! Now placing bets on whether it will take me 15 or 10 minutes before I run into Obama.

Final thoughts:

-If you, too, are a self-identified introvert, I highly recommend the book “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain. This was not the book I was poised to review, but it’s wonderful.

-I just got a strong feeling that greyhounds are the most subversive kind of dog, but I need a little more time before I can articulate why. Maybe this will be my next topic?

*arguably the best kind. I would entertain the idea of having that argument.

**Library

*** Also, yes, this thought process is 100% enabled by my own privilege! Just the fact that we (my peers and I) can sit in the Ath moaning about deadlines and contemplating happiness is a gift, it really is, and I get how lucky I am.

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Thinking About Life (As It Pertains to High School) Part 1

Guys. This is some straight-up inception level* stuff happening right now. I originally wrote the first half of this post the summer before I went to college. My wonderful cousin was preparing to start her freshman year of high school, and as I contemplated it my thought progression looked something like this:

"Wow, I love her so much. I hope she never experiences crushing sadness or regret or heartbreak or isolation"

"She's going to high school (and is also A HUMAN). 
This shit is inevitable"

"Oh my god, I will kick anybody who makes her sad"

"I 100% will. I challenge anybody to get near my feet and hurt her feelings. Their reckoning will be painful and swift."

"How can I help her (besides stellar accuracy and precision)? What advice could I possibly give that will make things easier, when all of my advice hinges on experience and perspective and having lived through things. She is but a sweet, hopeful babe in the woods, not yet hounded by the horrors of adolescence" (things get needlessly dramatic here but no worries I'm about to steer it back).

Realization: Even if I can't kick everyone and everything who will make her life difficult, I can share a little bit more of my life with her. My wonderful cousin and I are incredibly different in most ways (something that will come in handy for her quite a bit, I'm sure), but there are some parts of the human experience I like to think are universal. These are the parts that are significant and difficult and wonderful, and in my infinite knowledge as an 18 year old, I am totally qualified to talk about them. For me, sharing effectively means putting my thoughts into writing. 
I am not delusional—I remember how little the advice of the elderly did to aid in my adolescent struggle. But I'm also obnoxiously persistent when it comes to hoisting my opinions upon unwilling recipients**.

Summation: If I could give anything to my wonderful cousin, it would be the knowledge that she is not alone. She just isn't. None of us are. And that's why I decided to write about high school (a decision soon followed by: "This feels hard. Like, this feels like a really hard thing to do.")

In a predictable twist of fate, I never finished writing about high school. I woke up today and realized I should do that. For my own peace of mind, and also just to get that stuff out (as people do). I'm not going to edit much even though my views have changed slightly—distance does that—because the most important parts are the same and always will be.

*is that reference still relevant? was it ever? quick, someone remind me how to be hip and/or cool! 
**it's one of my more finely honed skills.

I'm a week away from wrapping up the first semester of my senior year, and it's a strange feeling. Every year of high school has inevitably been unique in it's own right—remaining static is impossible and change is part of growing up—but this year stands alone in an interesting (and hard to articulate) way. 

Today I got an overwhelming urge to write about my high school experience. I have no idea why, because it basically encompasses all of the most difficult and undefined feelings, events, and realizations I've had in my veryshort life so far. 

I'm writing this to reflect on where I started and where I am now. Next year I'll be leaving the house and town I grew up in and the parents and friends who have taught me so much, and to call the transition significant would be a gross understatement.  I've always been fascinated with the way people relate to one another, and over the last four years I've done a lot of relating. 40% of it is made up of things that make me vaguely uncomfortable, while 30% of it has been things I've done/said/believed that I, in hindsight, would probably not repeat.

The other 30% is made up of moments that have effectively changed the way I think and see the world around me, and those are the things that remind me why being a human is sometimes great. I'm going to bust out a grand cliche here and say that I wouldn't change 95% of it if given the chance (this is as far as my math skills go. No more percentages from here on out), and maybe soon I'll stop thinking about the things I could have done differently. Until that point, I've (for the most part) forgiven myself for my mistakes and apologized to those I've hurt. 

Now begins a summary of my educational life comprising lots of self-analysis and cliches. I just found out that writing about high school involves many cliches. I recognize this and can't really do anything to change it (without becoming a better writer).

In elementary and middle school, I felt things deeply and struggled to express them. When I thought I was being rejected or excluded, I didn't know how to articulate my hurt. Instead I would lash out. When I felt uncomfortable or unwanted, I tried to appear hard and infallible. I wanted to show others that I didn't need them, that they couldn't affect me, when the reality is that I did and they could. Like many adolescent girls, my self-esteem was low and my desire to be accepted was strong. When I made mistakes, though I berated myself internally, I was too embarrassed to acknowledge them. Apologizing, for me, was almost physically difficult. Admitting that I'd messed up meant revealing the flaws I had already internally catalogued and reminded myself of constantly. People saw me as confident and opinionated (if not pleasantly so), and I struggled to reconcile the way I was perceived with how I felt inside. I mention this not because it sets me apart from others in any particular way, but because I was still struggling with these things when I began high school.

During my freshman year I was both incredibly invested in my social life and determined to make the most of a semi-fresh start. The high expectations I had were matched only by strength of my insecurity—it would be many difficult semesters before I began to recognize how reliant my self-esteem was on the opinions of others. I entered school with a close group of friends and, because of this (as well as discomfort in social situations), didn't work hard to make many more. Meeting new people meant opening myself up to rejection, which scared me. I realize now that on a deep level, I felt I had very little to offer—the possibility of my friends and peers realizing I was unnecessary affected me in many ways, none of them positive. If I could tell myself anything about this year it would be that:

1) In order to treat others with kindness, you have to allow yourself the same level of respect and understanding. It was in the moments when I felt fundamentally worthless that I said the most hurtful things to others, and my inability to recognize the power of those words helped nobody.
2) Perspective helps. This thing you're feeling will not last forever—it generally won't even last a few months.
3) Along the same lines: when people hurt you, hurting them fixes nothing. It makes them more likely to pull away. Moreover, when people pull away, hurting them more will not help the problem.
4) In high school, there may be times when all your friends decide they don't like you. This feels like the absolute end of the world, I know. I wish I had some insight that will make this experience hurt less, but it's heart-wrenching. These are your people, they know you deeply, and they've chosen to treat you like you are deeply flawed. It's critical that you know you are not. You are just normal-flawed, and guess what? So is everyone else. Which is pretty great when you really let it sink in.
5) Try your hardest not to discuss other people in negative ways (this is called gossip but we all know that).

In the course of my first two years of high school I learned to communicate with those I'd hurt as well as those who had hurt me. This kind of communication does not involve texting, online chats, or a host of mutual friends and crossed signals and hushed stories relayed and dissected with everyone but the one who could actually elucidate things really quickly. It's so important to learn how to look someone in the eyes and truly listen, and this is something that is only learned by doing the damn thing (a motto for life).

The summer before my junior year I recognized that there is no obligation to remain close with the people who have cut too deep. Because it can happen—words have impact, and they can impact relationships in significant ways. They can be hurled and spit and withheld and rubbed in until they're there, even after time has passed and apologies have been made. There were moments when broken connections with others were audible. When we looked directly at one another and knew too much had been said and not enough had been heard. There were also times when the crack was created without a sound—by the time we recognized it, the damage had been done. It's a glorious thing to realize that it is possible to see these mangled relationships mend and taper off without bitterness or residual hurt. It's freeing and healthy, and sometimes I worry that our culture is too focused on permanence. Why does "best friends forever" mean more than just "best friends"? Isn't it enough to be someone's everything in the moment—why do we have the urge to pin a relationship down and hold it there? Part of growing up is loosening our hold on the illusion of permanence and giving ourselves a little space to breath. This goes a long way towards appreciating the present (an idea I could write pages about), which in turn can help squelch any impending existential crises (but they're so fun!).
Just because a friendship doesn't last a lifetime doesn't make it any less meaningful. I've been affected by everyone who's been a part of my life, regardless of their role or the amount of time they spent there.

This concludes Part 1! I feel like an audiobook right now. The nostalgia is hitting. Oh jeez, now I want to take a bath and listen to a Harry Potter book-on-tape and wear a bathrobe with a dog face on the hood.

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