Gym class hasn't changed

In middle and high school, I was one of many who had her fair share of humiliating gym class moments. I'm surprised I got out of 10th grade gym class with zero concussions, due to the number of volleyballs that came careening at my head. Even the advice to picture the volleyball as the head of the guy who teased me mercilessly and called me Ki-ara didn't do much. Thank God gym teachers put picking teams to rest, or I would've been the girl in the bleachers doing her English homework.

The only times I looked forward to gym class were when I could show off my mad speed walking skills (oh, the number of times I have walked the track just to avoid soccer), giggle at my friend collapsing off the stationary bike, and participate in the dance unit. Let me tell you, I rocked swing dance, and only then could I feel uninhibited enough to ask the cute guy to dance. I mean, when else can you dance with an awkward teenager in the middle of a gym? Oh wait...

So by the time I got to college, I figured, never again will I have to feel awkward in a sea of sweat and testosterone! No more will my legs feel like jello on a treadmill, nor will I have to face the humiliation of attempting to run a mile. I could just yoga it up like a normal person, and be done with it. I could avoid both the freshman 15 and utter embarrassment...only now am I starting to realize that's said by NO ONE EVER. Maybe there are no torturous Phys Ed classes, but if you want to stay in shape, you will, at some point in your life, have to answer the doom that is the gym. There's only so many times you can unroll your yoga mat in front of episodes of How I met Your Mother and a roommate who's wondering why you're squatting in front of her Pop Tarts shelf.

The gym is a scary, scary place. Every other physical activity I've engaged in encourages some form of self expression. Periodic breaks were given. Good times were had by all. Everyone at the gym, it seems, is in their own little bubble of "no pain, no gain." They only break that rule to check out just how fast you're going on the stationary bike. Not that it matters that I have the incline set ten times higher than your machine...nooo, it's just a bragging point that you're going a bajillion times faster. Well la-dee-da, but we'll see how you'll feel when we see whose calves are more built.

Okay, the gym class hero wins that point again. How is it that everyone at the gym is already so freakishly buff? Did they do a pre-gym workout so they could look cool at the public treadmills? I thought abs of steel were only in the movies and on Jillian Michaels, but nope, take a look at Rec Hall, and you'd think we were all training for triathlathons. I mean, seriously, does anyone eat cookie dough around here? Everyone is thin, ripped, and sprinting like the flying spaghetti monster is on their asses (oh no, carbs!). And then there's me. An appreciator of chocolate, I'm less than skinny, and sluggishly traipsing on that treadmill at 3 MPH. And it's like people know--they can sniff out the imposters, the people who dream of one day becoming athletic when homework and sleep don't get in the way of life. You know that person who keeps tabs on you while you're gasping on the treadmill? They're always next to me, forcing me to sprint when I already feel like dying, or my pride will just fly out the window. Except my pride is too exhausted to fly, so it just kind of meanders.

And you can't just break out into dance or a bunch of yoga moves right next to the ellipticles. I'm weird, but not that weird. So suffer I shall, and maybe by the end of this semester I'll be able to run for more than 2 seconds.

Namaste.  

Hey I heard you were a wild one

I learned something today...according to my friends, I am the wild one of the group. Maybe it's the hair. Maybe it's the fact that I run around downtown bursting into Taylor Swift songs. Or perhaps the feather earrings give off a "I'm gonna party like it's 1999" impression. But whatever it is, I'm always shocked by people's beliefs that I'm a party girl. Do you know what happens on a typical weekend for me? I wake up, go to work, blog for a million hours (yes I do actually keep an academic blog too, don't judge), and then this happens:

So unless you count jamming out to some maroon 5 with a bunch of virtual fish partying, I'm about the lamest you can get on a Friday night.
It's not like I don't embrace silliness...believe me, if I had to be serious all the time, I'd crawl into a hole and die. I've pretty much been the group goof since I discovered caffeine and glitter. But sometimes, in response to the way I talk, my friends will give me that whole "make good decisions" talk, and discuss, in all seriousness, what they would do if I ended up drunk, pregnant, or both. I have been neither of these things, nor do I plan to be for a very, very long time!! So when does the line get drawn between silly and stupid? Sometimes you need some quality blond moments, but that doesn't mean I'm going to sacrifice my morals for a few memories about "the good old days in college." If those nights even get remembered. Blacking out? I've already experienced that when I had the flu in 6th grade...not as fun as you'd think.

It's strange, the kind of impression you give off when it's the least like yourself. At work, I am the timid girl who never talks. In my friend group, I'm the most likely to do stupid things. While I love to be silly and meet new people (as long as I'm not supposed to come initiate the conversation that follows "hi"), it's a dilemma to have to refute these first impressions I'm constantly faced with.

I know, I know--"be yourself" right? But this whole core self chase can be exhausting...as of now, I'm a serious student, mixed with the party girl who just happens to be completely un-interested in alcohol or drugs, mixed with the brooding existentialist, mixed with someone who was almost named Zaidico Mac. Yes, that was a thing that happened.

Namste.

Libster sloppers are cool

No, that wasn't a typo. My beloved lobster slippers have been named "libster sloppers" for as long as I can remember. Let it be known to the world that it was an English professor who made this slip-up...which narrows it down to all three of my parents.
But here, friends, are the infamous slippers that I am currently chillin' in in my dorm room...in in? I should really go become an engineering major or something.
Let's try this again. Here are the infamous slippers in which I am currently chillin' in my dorm room.
Okay,. I admit. There is no way to make a sentence sound sophisticated when it contains the word "chillin'." That is just a sad, sad fact.
But I digress.

So normally I would be upset that it's going from iced coffee weather to hot chocolate weather. I mean, which one do you think has more calories? But actually. I woke up this morning to discover frost on the deck. It's September, people! It should be illegal for all things snow related to enter our universe until at least five hours after we have all stuffed ourselves silly with turkey. Which makes the freak snowstorm of 2009 both a peril to our electricity and our law system.
Yet one thing I can console my poor frozen body with is these slippers. I don't know what it is about putting water dwelling creatures on my feet that is so amusing, but I have giggled more at these slippers than the funny parts of Angela's Ashes. Take that, English teacher.

I could despair about the long winter ahead...or I could snuggle up with a few galleons of coffee, my fuzzy monkey pants and libster sloppers. 'Cause these things are just epic.

Namaste.

Parallel universes and Catholics...oh my!

Two of my best friends are practically mirror images of each other. They're both Catholic, they have similar taste in guys, and they both have a sarcastic edge to which I always respond "WHY CAN'T WE JUST ALL BE FRIENDS??" They can go hours on end discussing history, the Pope, and how they want eight kids. Eight kids? The only way I could raise eight kids is if I grew nine heads...one to watch marathons of Scrubs and 30 Rock. However, me and another dear friend Keri-- who has abandoned us to frolic in Georgia (sniff sniff)-- are parallel images of each other. We both have an odd obsession with French accents and get tickled whenever we hear someone say in a French accent "your happiness makes my ass twitch" (Watch the film French Kiss and your life shall be enlightened forever). We both dance, do yoga, and burst out randomly into song, in hopes that our lives will someday turn into musicals. What's interesting, however, is that me and Maria are besties, as are Megan and Keri. Is this because opposites attract? Or were these friendships crazy random happenstances that would have been switched if we'd met our mirror images earlier?

These people make life full of awesome-sauce

Sometimes it seems religion plays a big role in common threads, which can be quite a dilemma for agnostics. I am interested in learning as much as can about world religions, but I would feel uncomfortable chanting the rosary in my room when I wasn't brought up to believe what it's saying. Anyone can pray, yes, but I almost feel like an imposter when I try to get it on my friends' Catholic practices. Religion isn't for the sake of fitting in--it's to express your morals, your values, and what you truly believe. So I can't just up and claim Catholicness for the sake of friendship.

I guess it's the same for the yoga half of our friend group. While neither Keri or I consider us Hindus, om-chanting and meditation are things that Megan and Maria would feel uncomfortable partaking in. Yet a farther line is drawn when we reference inside jokes that were made up on our way to yoga, thanks to mishearing a bunch of frat boys yelling "tits out for the boys!". It's differences like these that make me wonder why friendships happen the way they do. In a lot of ways, my best friend and I couldn't be more different from each other, yet our personalities play off each other in a way that makes for a good dynamic.

Maybe in an alternate universe, best friends would have met more similar friends beforehand, but I'm happy to learn about Catholicism history, and I'd always be thrilled to show my friends yoga/dance stuff. The dissimilarities can be cause for divide, or a more interesting group that bounces off each other's interests.

Namaste.

Technology frustrates me, and other life-related rants

So you know how I try to make my blogs all witty, whose small components all wrap up into a nice little moral at the end, complete with a flattering photo of myself? I try to make those entries entertaining, I really do. But today is just going to be a full fledged RANT (yes, the all caps are necessary), with a plethora of grumblings about first world problems. So if it's not really your style to indulge in the pity of others, you have been warned.

I'm jinxed with technology--let's just face it--a computer has lasted no more than 2 years in my hands. I don't walk around smashing computers against a wall, or demanding too much from them other than Netflix, iTunes, and the occasional Word document (I am in college, after all), but all things technology seem to be able to sniff out my incompetency and play a nice little round of "let's freak Kira the hell out." It's not an enjoyable game, dear Gateway, that much I have learned. An IBM and a Gateway later, and I only have the tale of dying screens to show for it. Seriously--two different computers, both whose screens decide to go completely kaplooey on me? It's absurd.

So after much research that my father did for me I worked so diligently on, I came to the conclusion that I could trust an ASUS. Maybe they were still part of the PC family, but they'd gotten good reviews, and they weren't stuck in the '90s world like my previous computers. It was on the relatively cheap side, and had enough memory that the episodes of 30 Rock wouldn't freeze up every two seconds. It had a shiny screen I could ooh and aah at once again. Life was looking up...or so I thought.

Two days after many-a-happy-dance about the shiny excitement of a new computer, Netflix did end up freezing every two seconds. And while Sylar from Heroes doesn't look as scary in slow motion, it can still be vastly inconvenient when t-he.....ch-a----rac....ters tA-l...k l---iKe t...hi----s. So just as I was starting to lose faith in this lovely PC, I, being a naive believer in technology, shut my computer off for the night. The next morning, after 30 minutes of tearing my hair out, all I got was this:

  Minus the weird reflection of the window. Yup, two days after the notion that I would never have to battle another computer for as long as I lived, and this happens (you may wonder what on earth I'm typing on--all I can say is, in desperate times, you get used to limping through a Gateway that has something against firefox and only charges if you have the adapter cord just so).

So I guess I've learned that I should either live in the 18th century, or I should stop using my paychecks for bottles of glitter and perhaps invest in a MacBook Pro. If a Mac fails me, only then will know that I'm just a failure at life.

And on that note...turtles! (Just to make this entry slightly more uplifting)

If you have any technology horror stories, feel free to comment. I'd love to know I'm not the only one who wants to hit computers with a brick sometimes.

Namaste.

Keep coming back for more?

Today was a day for rampages. Five episodes of Heroes and 2 purchases of M&Ms later, I'm wondering why I spend my life watching things I've already seen, eating food I already know the taste of, and going through the same conversation topics with my friends. Isn't life supposed to be comprised of totally new experiences? Why don't we get bored with the same stuff? It doesn't feel natural to keep desiring a taste I've memorized, especially when it's not like chocolate is of any nutritional value (long way of saying it makes you fat, why keep eating it?).

The episodes of Heroes don't change as time passes, and my roommate often asks why I don't just move on to a new show. But the plot is really the least interesting part of what makes a show. It's the character quirks that you can pick up on the second time around that strike me--or the humor in a line that I didn't get before. Maybe there are even some references to classic texts that my naive high school self let go over my head. It can be like an inside joke to chuckle at those moments, rather than purely focusing on who's saying what, and why that guy can only fly on Saturdays. And maybe this sounds a little sad, but re-visiting the characters can be a bit like hanging out with a group of people you know and love. Why do you think F.R.I.E.N.D.S. was so widely popular? The plotlines weren't particularly original, nor was the dialogue always witty, but the dynamic, the feel that you were hanging around Rachel and Joey, made it easy to get immersed in.

I don't keep coming back for more because I have a sucky memory and want to re-discover the taste of chocolate, or what happens in a show (although I do have a sucky memory). It's because I'm familiar with these tastes/shows, and am comforted by their lack of change that I hold onto them. And as long as that doesn't hinder my ability to try new things, I'm fine with the occasional comfort food.

Namaste. 

ORION part deux

After a month of a completely new situation, it's easy to disregard past experiences that were, albeit shorter, just as life changing. Since my entire summer feels lifetimes away, ORION was beginning to feel like an experience that I memorized, traced over in my head, and re-told without actually believing what I was saying. It's like I read through that week instead of experiencing it. While it can be disorienting to not truly feel that something happened, it's extra rewarding to be reminded of the people that I met, the challenges that I faced, and the pure fact that I slept under a tarp for four nights and didn't die. It's a bit like seeing how to be a little kid again...when we were all silly and sorting out M&Ms and throwing wooden sticks at each other. Sometimes that innate kid-ness can hibernate when you have to write a gazillion papers that throw claims, datas, and warrants like frisbees. But just stepping into that lecture hall and seeing my fellow backpacker's faces made me want to strip all the makeup off my face and start playing in dirt.

It's hard to feel an instant connection with something--with most of the hobbies I pick up, or the people I meet, I find they have to grow on me before I feel comfortable. And while backpacking with a bunch of complete strangers did have its challenges, I realized, only after some time to reflect, that never before have I so instantly felt drawn to a group of people, or my surroundings. Maybe I haven't hung out with my ORION friends since I started classes. But the time without seeing these people didn't stop me from chattering nonstop with them about school, clubs, and the luxury of spitting out toothpaste into a sink.

Excited to finally be cleansed :P

You don't have to know someone's entire morning routine, or what insecurities they had in the sixth grade (or rather, didn't have) to feel close to them. You don't even have to talk on a daily basis. Seeing the other ORION participants makes me realize how lucky I am to have a group of people with whom I can immediately pick up where we left off.

Namaste.

Photos courtesy of Kyle, and awesomely possumly ORION mentor :)

The herpes of craft supplies? I think not!

Glitter sometimes gets a bad rep. It can be viewed as childish, messy, and an overall waste of three bucks. I find this to be an unfair judgment of all things shiny--I mean, what did glitter ever do to you besides brighten your day? People tend to think obsession over guns and explosions are more legit, but glitter never started any wars. If anything, it sparks our desire to be creative geniuses that can be channeled into productive human beings, thus preventing war.

So, in the long run. Glitter will end all wars. Of course I'm kidding--it will end all violence in general. But that's not purely why I'm addicted to it. I'm a fan of glitter because it initiates the whole "let's all be friends" attitude that there should be more of in this world. I've had many-a-bonding moment when people came across my stuffed crab Phyrso (the sparkly pink crab--maybe you remember him from previous entries?), and burst out "it's so shiny!" From there it's much easier to break the ice with rememberances of favorite shiny toys. At least I've had more luck with making people feel comfortable with my sparkly pink crab than "so...what are you majoring in?" Friendly originality, as it turns out, makes for more original friends.

So not only has glitter given me some common thread with other people, but it allows room for self expression. Makeup, as it turns out, can be rather dull when it's the same old "a little mascara on the lash, a swoop of blush, blah, blah...*falls asleep*". Don't you miss the days when makeup was meant to be fun and creative, and nowhere near meant to make that guy who ends up sleeping with your sister say you look hot today? (I don't have a sister, or a guy to betray me with said sister...but I'm just sayin') I'm all for letting my eyelids say I'm feeling creative; it often does a better job of getting that across than my mouth. Similar to writing, glitter can show the world that you're actually a fun, hyper, random person who happens to freeze whenever you're supposed to go "hey, I'm [insert name here]."Either than, or people mistake me for a vampire. So maybe I didn't think that through when I bought body spray that makes me sparkle in sunlight...

How could I have resisted it? Cant really see it here, but it's shaped like the Eiffel Tower. And that's just sexy.

We're all adults here, but that doesn't mean we have to stop playing with sparkly stuff. Everyone can appreciate glitter.

Weeeeee, more sparkly stuff ^_^

Namaste. 

Hairy impressions

I embrace curly hair. Okay, so I don't trek around and start hugging people's heads, but I admire kinks and curls. I kinda have to, what with walking around town looking like a lion ate my scalp. Maybe it's silly to have to take so long to accept the kind of dead skin cells that sprout from my head, but technically, curls went out of style at about the same time Michael Jackson stopped looking like a person. Thus, I've tried to flatten my hair into submission, wasting a precious hour that could be used, y'know, helping the homeless--or sleeping. Priorities, people. I've gotten some weird first impressions from others when I leave my hair alone. Seems a little like typecasting to me, but when I leave the 'fro look, I'm a hippie. When I battle with the hair straightener, I'm a Paris Hilton wannabe. If I dyed my hair neon colors would I be Pink? If I put meat on my head, would I be Lady Gaga? We're the only species that casts judgment because of how malicious your hairdresser was feeling that day. I'm sure we wouldn't be so quick to judge a dog's character if he sported a few curls. If anything, we'd be back to blaming the humans.

Obviously these owners aren't thinking straight...in more ways than one

 

 

 

  So is this scalp-burning piece of machinery worth the people pleasing effects? Maybe I do tend to feel better about myself after trying to deny genetics, but that could be responding to society's expectations rather than my own aesthetic appeal. When presenting the idea of chemically conditioning my hair to be straight, my dad demanded why. Without a hint of hesitation, my sixteen year old self would claim it's because I thought it looked better. My stepmother brought up the important reasoning that it's the code of youth. And while, at the time, I was furious that someone suggested I couldn't possibly think for myself, it turns out, she was right. I did get the odd sensation that I was setting my head on fire to fit in. I was sacrificing my own hair's health for the code of youth...and throwing away a couple hundred dollars that should have been used on freaking makeup textbooks. My life.

So the whole chemical procedure of "curing" my hair? Been there, done that. Gotten horrid split ends because of it. Yet I still can't be rest assured that it's never okay to be vain. I mean, obviously I know my self worth has nothing to do if I'm pulling a Blake Lively or Mariah Carey that day, but for some reason, my self confidence goes up when it looks like there's a bunch of straw coming out of my head. So perhaps the style itself isn't appealing, but everyone knows confidence is sexy as hell. (Since when has this expression ever made sense? Is hell sexy?) And hey, I can always use that hour to catch up on episodes of Heroes. It's a win-win situation.

Maybe I still have some growing up to do, and when I grow old, I can wear a shitload of purple and never straighten my hair and all will be right with the world. But as of now, if I'm feeling the need for an added confidence boost, I shall no longer wallow in a box of chocolate. I'm not about to base all my actions on which thing would look cuter, but I'm not afraid to admit to a "vanity day" every once in a while. Even if hippie hair can be pretty damn sweet on days when I'm just not caring.

Namaste.

In case y'all were wondering...and b/c today is one of those days where I get happier than I should about posting pics of myself (hah! I admit it!):

hippie hair...

The "girl who used to have free time" look

Would you judge someone's personality from their hair? Does that give any indication of how they might act?

I like to move it, move it...

If, two years ago, someone walked up to me and claimed I would be doing improv dance somewhere other than my room, I would start laughing my ass off, tell them they mistook me for social Sally over there, and curl up with a book until no one was looking...only then would the cabbage patching commence.

Strikin' a pose in the middle of downtown state college...the best kind of imrov

Every dance troupe or class I'd participated in was choreographed in some manner, but RAM's only instructions were to "let the music move your soul." I had walked into the club meeting freaking out that I hadn't practiced "the right way" to dance in over a year. I walked out forgetting there was even a correct way to dance. What was liberating about RAM was that you could do your own thing, even if the most experience I've had with hip-hop was one semester of classes and wistful watching of Step Up. Even when a majority of us were socializing/stretching on the floor, someone would be up in front of the mirror, popping and locking like nobody's business, and it was obvious judgment wasn't an issue in this club.

My main dance experience, the high school dance team, couldn't be more different from the styles people did in RAM. They have their own positives, but a hip hope kickline would fail miserably, and improving around the band would result in total disaster...

Okay, so perhaps I still worried what people were thinking about me when I started doing jazz in the midst of a bunch of break dancers and krumpers. Grand jetes don't look nearly as impressive when someone's effortlessly looking like a piece of machinery. A very self expressive piece of machinery. It was painfully obvious I was the whitest person in the room (I went in for a handshake when someone tried to bro-slap me), but by hour two of the session, I had gotten off the bench and, as Lady Gaga advises, I just...danced.

Sometimes, you just need a place to be goofy and weird and let your body respond to the music. I'm guessing an organized group with amazing personalities is a better place to do that than the shoes aisle of Plato's Closet. So what if I don't know how to break dance? The RAM squad isn't about having the best technique--it's about not being afraid to move and let go for a while.

Namaste.

That other thing that's gold

We've all heard that cheesy song whenever a transition happens upon our lives..."make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other's gold." I've been following through with the latter part of that advice pretty well--but for the past month or so, I'd been bemoaning that I followed it too well. In the scheduled, freak-out-if-such-and-such-if-something-doesn't-happen-by-a-specific-deadline mess of my head, I was sure that I was doing this whole college thing wrong because I'm a human being who likes to be in familiar situations and thus sticks around old friends from State College.

If I started fresh and met people who didn't know that I inhale coffee like nobody's business, or that I essentially talk with my facial expressions, maybe reaching out to strangers wouldn't be so hard. But college is an especially tricky balance between old and new experiences. But I'm not going to know what life would've been like if money issues instantly disappeared and I could go anywhere--so it would be ridiculous to dwell on the what could've been. Even if that is oftentimes my Friday night activity of choice.

All those college advice books that my parents threw at me told me to disregard my high school friends, like they were items of clothing I could just upgrade to a new, shinier version. But since more than half of our graduating class went from little lions to big, intimidating lions, it's a little impossible to pretend four years of my life didn't exist. And what can I say--the overwhelming nature of essays, scantrons, and lecture halls can seem less scary when you have a group of people to share your stories with over weekly milkshakes at Baby's. I just have to not close myself off to new people who have no idea what the hell this "nerd clot" is.

The "gold" part of old friendships is also growing in wealth. People who were mere acquaintances in high school seem to becoming much closer friends--and not be chance that we just grew up in the same area. Sometimes, one tiny thing two people have in common can lead to realizations that you both have thoughts about McDreamy from Grey's Anatomy, or that you devoured The Hunger Games in a single night...or that you both have a severe disliking for math and plan on taking the easiest class possible in that respect.

So it's not to say I've spent this past month stuck in my dorm room watching Eddie Izzard and eating M&Ms...that's only on Wednesdays, or when I feel like I've been run over by twelve trucks instead of just one. I'm still making a conscious effort to be open and friendly so that my face doesn't stay stuck in the "I hate the universe" expression I apparently wear when I'm trying to be neutral. So today's one activity that will take me out of my comfort zone is going to a RAM meeting (Raw Aesthetic Movement...a dance troupe that's essentially beat poets of the movement world). Having not danced for over a year, this should be an interesting group to join late, but I'm excited to see how it goes, and I shall report back in due time. (Suddenly my blog just switched to a British accent...I'll blame the caffeine on that one.)

Namaste. 

The accidental sympathizer

In my first year seminar class, we were assigned to read Lolita. As any sophisticated student would do, I looked up the spark notes plot summary to get an idea about what the hell I was about to endure (I'd heard many horror stories regarding this text wanted to be prepared). I saw it was about a pedophile, pondered for a bit about the irony, and figured I could move on with me life.

Oh, how very wrong I was. As soon as I started reading about this Humbert Humbert fellow, I forgot that he was our chief villain, and began to sympathize with him. Obviously I don't want to have sex with twelve year old girls, but despite this noticeable difference in our characters, I still found the narrator relateable (to the english profs that are currently reading this...yes, that is a word). I, like Humbert, simply want a comfortable living situation. And sometimes I just feel I have no control in the situation at hand, and will be forever victim to all my faults and insecurities. Humbert and I both feel pain when a loved one is far away. I can bet that the reader of Lolita comes from the same roots as Humbert as just wanting to feel loved.

This feeling of sympathy scared me a little bit...how could I even fathom having pity for a crazy, malicious predator of a man? Hearing his story from first person made understanding Humbert's motives not such an absurd notion. But do we really want to admit to ourselves that we can come to recognize the vulnerability of creeps? It may just be me and my messed up brain, but I'm wondering if we read Sandusky's story in first person, would we be more likely to feel pity? Just to clarify, I do not feel sorry for Sandusky, nor do I want to see him anywhere except locked behind bars for five bajillion lifetimes. But if a first person narrative can make a fictional pedophile a sympathetic character, who's to say the same wouldn't happen for a real life version?

It's uncomfortable to think that a sob story we may have blindly felt sorry for came from an undeserving scumbag. It could work the other way too--someone could present an innocent being as cold and heartless and because of the rhetoric of the article/story/book/telegram from aliens we mistakenly accuse someone for being a bad person. Can we find any hard truth when we so passively follow the way a story is told? Characters such as Humbert aren't flat or in black and white...which makes it scary that someone who is so clearly messed up can still be viewed as humane.

A little dark today, so to lighten the mood, I'll post something that struck my brain as soon as I started writing "Humbert" for the umpteeth time:

So that was a thing that happened

I should really stop daydreaming. Time may pass by faster, but my brain tends to create schemes where the entire Problem Child committee sits down to read my story, gets guffawed expressions on their faces, and says, "why this is the most insightful piece of art I have ever read in my life! Whoever wrote this must be a literary genius!" and then I slyly slip in that it was me, but no big deal, I just threw some words onto paper in between classes. Then all the writers of the universe would live happily ever after, the end.

But actually. That happened in the lovely world that is my mind. What really went down was we read my short story, and I, hearing it for the first time out loud, realized just how disturbing it really was. The number of cliches hit me over the head like a ton of bricks (heh heh...), and not only did I sound like a terrible writer, but I was also introducing myself as that girl who writes about cutters. Wonderful. Why don't I just go stick my social standing in a bucket of hornets next time?

  Apparently you can't just pull an Ellen Hopkins and smush all the depressing parts of high school into angsty sounding prose and be the next great American novelist. You can, however, feel like a fool when you realize it's not a great idea to base a story off of a fortune cookie. Duly noted.

So this whole submitting my work for the entire world to judge didn't exactly go as planned. But hey, it was another "first"...I've certainly been critiqued before, but never anonymously, and this was the only time my writing hadn't been sugar coated by "this is good, but..." After the initial hurt, however, it was strangely liberating to be judged. The kind of happiness you feel after eating too much chocolate cake. Guilty, but glad it happened. Maybe this is exactly the kind of thing that I need to go through to get a thicker skin. Or something.

So hardly anyone has appreciation for my intellect and skill...or, *gasp* I still need to learn how to be intellectual and skilled. Imagine, coming into college not having learned and accomplished everything! This club certainly isn't an ego massager, but I don't want it to be.

Next week, I'm going smaller with an angry poem about peer reviewers (which may or may not have been written after the initial incident), but I shant daydream about raving reviews or book offers. I'm happy to gain insight from writers who have done more than sat in a stifled classroom for the past four years. And I hope that with each submission, I can get more skilled as an author, and, more importantly, a receiver of critique.

Namaste.

Eleanor Roosevelt was right...

There's a magnet on my fridge back home that, while I'd always found pleasant, had never given much thought to. It's a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt: "Do one thing everyday that scares you." It was easy enough to ponder over that phrase while I scouted the fridge for a gallon of iced coffee, but putting that advice into practice proved more difficult after the inconveniences of school, work and chores got in the way of my motivation. How could I go bunjee jumping when I had twenty pages of world history to crawl through?

I'm not a fan of being scared. I hide under covers during horror movies. I was a disaster whenever I had to take a shower after watching Psycho. But I realized that Roosevelt's words weren't telling us to be insane and go cliff diving or something. This quote is really reminding us that we should take the time to acknowledge our fears and to step outside our comfort zone once in a while.

And so begins the quest of getting over discomfort over most of life. Maybe the anxious of sorts can be perceptive writers, good listeners, yadda yadda, but it can be a real pain to look at every new situation as a death wish. That's not really living--that's observing others' lives and blending into them.

So maybe I won't be chatting up strangers by tomorrow evening, nor will I be flying jet planes anytime soon (or ever). But I'm not going to disregard every small step towards being a more relaxed, happy person. Even presenting this goal to the internet world was slightly intimidating. But now that y'all know about it, I can't back out, right? ;) So hey, if you see me on campus and whatnot, stop me and ask how project Eleanor is going.

As for today, the thing that scared me was submitting one of my short stories to Problem Child--a literary magazine at Penn State. Tonight the whole club is going to review and discuss it without knowing said submitter is sitting in that very room. Generally I take constructive criticism very personally, which is silly, because a suggestion to more fully round a character isn't saying I'm a hopeless failure at life who should just sit in my room with a tub of cookie dough. And yet my brain enjoys toying with me and jumping to such conclusions. So it should be interesting to see how I react to real criticism, not those polite peer reviews I've experienced in high school where the whole point is to play nice with the other children and not step on any toes. I'm tempted to skip this meeting and just pretend that my short story was a raving success, but that makes for a much less interesting story, no?

What's the worst that can happen? I can curl up in fetal position for a few hours and gain a pound or two from pity ice cream. Shit happens.

Namaste.

Identified

I wish I could say I was out yoga-ing and being all productive and whatnot, but I have caught the PSU fever, so I'm snuggling up with some hot chocolate and True Blood episodes. That whole homework thing can just stay on a backburner while my head feels like it's been pounded on a rock. All this free time has got me thinking about identity. Many people leave senior year of high school hoping to be a completely different person since they can start fresh with people who haven't seen that awkward braces/glasses/failed pickup lines phase. They strive to strip of all awkwardness and re-invent themselves. But after 18 years of acquiring certain personality traits, can you really naturally transition into a whole new person? Or will it perpetually feel like one giant act? 

Some changed parts of a person gradually happen with time; I've found myself to be thinking more about techniques used in books, and why teachers always seem to take out their rage on unsuspecting victims known as scared little freshmen. But every intention that I've had to instantly be more outgoing and peppy has been downtrodden by both sleep deprivation and a natural desire to curl up in my dorm room with a book. Perhaps if all your energy was used to convince others of this new persona you would succeed, but it would be exhausting as hell and not worth that whole failing classes deal. 

Personally, I see the value in social growth, but people seem to be popping up with these new personalities overnight. It's a little bit like seeing Harry Potter suddenly fall in love with a horse. Although slightly less creepy. I don't want to be fake, but I'd hope not to come out of college exactly the same as how I acted in high school. Do I need to push a totally new view of the world for this change to happen? 

This is feeling like more of a freshman dilemma than the freshman 15. Gaining personality seems way more important than gaining some weight.

Namaste. 

Faux Crisis?

Full disclosure: I have a "crisis" at least once a day that involves hair tearing, high-pitched squeals, and scribbling in a journal. My friends have been witness to many of these crises, and while it's always amusing for them to watch a freak-out about what my facial expressions look like, it feels increasingly high school to bemoan such tiny parts of my life. College, as it turns out, isn't purely about self-discovery through poorly hired DJs--mainly, I have discovered that my life doesn't suck nearly as much as I thought. English class has gone from drilling "I before E, except on weekends and holidays" into our heads to realizing that a lack of tacos for dinner is nothing comparing to a poor Irish family whose father drinks away all their grocery money.  I mean, seriously--reading Angela's Ashes makes me want to chuck my new pair of heels out the window and go volunteer in a soup kitchen for a few centuries.
Or what about kids who grow up with worms in their guts? Here I am, bitching about some bad pasta, while poor families are eating worms! I almost want to feel shame in the luxury in having money to spare to open up a textbook that tells us we're all greedy little children who care too little for the rest of the world. Should all my past uncomfortable situations be erased because they all happened under a roof and with multitudes of pudding in the fridge?
What distinguishes a true crisis? Is it measured in the discomfort the sufferer feels, or in the suffering around them?

Food for thought. Namaste, friends.

Sleep, social life, and success: Pick two. Welcome to college.

I didn't believe such a Sophie's Choice-esque situation would happen in college, but happen it did, and I have been left in a "trunk" (drunk off of tiredness) state ever since homework turned into something other than "fill out this crossword puzzle." While some of my homework can be turned into a social event--like gathering to watch creepy vampire porn in which our teacher finds literary merit--but the line between overdoing the serious student mode and being that guy who pays thousands of dollars to just have fun can sometimes be hard to spot. The line is oftentimes a squiggle, drawn from that lone marker that nobody ever wanted to use from the bin. Ah, to be young and fighting over markers again.
Perhaps I'm exaggerating the overwhelming nature of college just a little bit, but it's true that having this much power over your free time can be intimidating. It's harder to justify looking at videos of cute puppies when you have a 3 page paper assignment creeping up on your syllabus and a handful of clubs that looked so easy to handle come involvement fair. Wasted time is no longer what you do to avoid getting dragged into chores by your parents. Suddenly my brain cells are more acutely aware that it's solely in my hands that I'm killing them. And you know, my head too.

It's true that my classes are more challenging than high school, but the information itself isn't much harder--it's simply the way that it's presented that might seem intimidating. Instead of regurgitating information on a multiple choice test, we are told to think, to question, and *gasp* to argue with authority! Respecting our elders isn't obsolete, but we're also being told to respect ourselves...which, after four years of mockery towards braces, glasses, and awkward hair days, can be hard to accomplish. Being opinionated towards someone who has all the power in that little red pen (or erm...giant black keyboard) isn't something that comes naturally to me; but speaking out, even to say "that's an absurd notion!" gains a good grade rather than a trip to the principle's office. It's strange to have this desire to do homework, but it almost feels like a brain workout rather than brain torture.

In terms of social life, there was this preconception among freshman that if you didn't engage in drinking and short skirted silliness, you'd have the world's most boring year and would be stuck in your dorm room for the rest of eternity. Maybe it's just the writer's perspective, but observing this culture can be more fun than feeling like you've been beaten over the head with a brick. I mean, just overhearing conversations by Canyon pizza (AKA hangover pizza) has made for some interesting stories. Even after living in State College for 18 years, I feel like I've entered a whole new universe when people are stumbling on the sidewalks and downtown looks like one giant advertisement for Victoria's Secret.

So as of now, sleep will just have to stay on the back burner for a while. It's the one YOLO-esque thing I've chosen...I have the rest of my life to sleep, but when else can I have wild Spongebob Monopoly parties, or walk around campus belting out "Bohemian Rhapsody"? College just has a way of unleashing that inner weirdo, and I'm definitely taking advantage of that these next four years.

Namaste.