PLEASE NOTE: This is not an anti-Valentine's Day screed. If anything, it's actually a pro-Valentine's Day message.
So Valentine's Day is tomorrow. To me, this seems like one of the more polarizing holidays that we have. How we feel about this particular holiday so often depends upon our relationship status. Since this is supposed to be a holiday for lovers, it so often feels like those of us not in a relationship are left out in the cold. Or at least that is the expectation. I think it's kind of a stereotype, though. You don't always have to be miserable in being single on a day like this, but I think society expects those of us who are single to be miserable on Valentine's Day.
Let's get this out of the way: Sure, as a modern holiday it's a construct made up by the evil greeting card and heart-shaped chocolate industries. Which means that, just like every holiday we have these days (I'm looking at you, Christmas), it's way too commercialized. However, maybe that's still better than it's pagan origins: Back in the day, Valentine's Day celebrations consisted of slaughtering animals and whipping young women, which somehow was supposed to guarantee fertility. Nowadays, you whip a young woman, and you're either on your way to jail, or getting ready for a really, really wild night. Depends upon whether she's a willing participant in the whipping, I guess.
This year, I'm choosing not to be bitter over not having someone to shower affections on. Since moving here, I have increased my efforts at finding someone by a factor of ten, which is a pretty impressive increase over the last few years. The fact that I have basically nothing to show for it is certainly disheartening, but it is what it is. I'm not going to begrudge the people who do have someone from celebrating that fact. I think it's sweet.
And I think we need a day like Valentine's Day. Our lives are so busy, between work/school, family, hobbies, etc., etc., that Valentine's Day may be the one day of the year that you stop to appreciate your wife/girlfriend/husband/boyfriend/whatever. It kinda sucks that it comes down to that, but again, it is what it is, and you just have to roll with it.
And yet there's always that expectation that single people should loathe this day. It's like we're looked down upon for being solitary, at least for one day of the year, if not the other 364. I would ask you kindly to please not do that. There's so much pressure on us already to find a mate, settle down with her/him, start a family, and live the rest of our lives in wedded bliss, and we don't need more of it, even if it's only for one day.
At the same time, single people need to not begrudge couples their happiness on this day. Being bitter won't help anything. If being single bothers you, do what you can to fix the situation, or just be happy in your current situation. That's our choice to make.
So I won't be angry about tomorrow. I will look upon you with some envy, true, but in the end, I will just smile a little to myself, wish you luck, and let you enjoy your happiness together. Hell, I might even be happy for you. Just don't try to set me up with your best friend from high school, because that would just be awkward. Okay?
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Doing It Anyway
So it's Super Bowl Sunday. I have marked off several hours of my day from this evening on to celebrate. It's not that I care all that much about the outcome (although I would prefer to see the Steelers, since I like the city of Pittsburgh), but c'mon, it's the Super Bowl. I HAVE to watch. It's required viewing, especially since I so rarely take a break nowadays to watch football or hockey or anything at all on my television. I never really thought I'd say this, but I hardly watch TV at all anymore. I just don't have time. Not that I necessarily have the time right now, but still, I will take the time out of my day to watch anyway.
I also don't particularly have time to write this post, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Which kind of segues right into today's topic:
Doing It Anyway
So as you may or may not know, I am constantly looking for some source of inspiration, something that causes me to pick my ass up and go out and do something. Anything. Right now I have two books sitting next to my bed. I read them periodically, by which I mean when I am just going to bed or have just come home from a long day at school and need a bit of a break. One of them is the Bible. There is no religious reason for reading this. It is mostly for personal edification. I can't remember the last time I picked up a Bible and thumbed through it when someone didn't tell me to do it. I probably never have. So at one point I got it into my head that I would just go buy a Bible and read it cover to cover. I even bought one that has this daily reading schedule that will take you through the whole thing in the span of one calendar year. My goal was to stick to that schedule. A month and change into the year and...yeah, that ain't happenin'. I'm already pretty far behind. This might take me two or three years, at the rate I'm going.
The other is something I picked up while I was Christmas shopping. It's called "Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists." The book examines how people can create some sort of meaning in their lives despite all of the obstacles put in their way, from the mundanity (yes, dictionary.com says that's a word) of every day life to the social, legal, and economic institutions that are practically designed to thwart any efforts to change the status quo. It follows eight people in different parts of the country who are working on various causes of their choosing. You've never heard of most of them (or at least I haven't); it's not like Bono or George Clooney are profiled. The only one you may (or may not) have heard of is Rosario Dawson, who is an actress of moderate fame ("Sin City," "Death Proof," and "25th Hour" are among her credits that immediately spring to my mind).
So far I have not really had time to actually start reading this book. However, a few nights ago, for some reason, I decided to read the conclusion. Why I read the conclusion before the rest of the book I am not sure. But I did. And it's a good thing, too, because it served as grist for my mind mill. There are a lot of themes contained within the conclusion that I can relate back to my own life. One of them deals with the idea of a successful failure (or, learning from your mistakes and not repeating them). Another is the search for community. A third is finding the energy to go out and do something despite the obstacles. In the end, it's all about trying.
There's lots of things I've been trying to do lately. This is important, because there are lots of things I haven't been trying to do for quite a while now. Much of this has to do with leaving a job I had increasingly grown sick of and giving up the routine that it entailed. In it's place I now have this slightly frantic, somewhat unpredictable graduate school experience. It has meant once again picking up stakes and moving to a new place that I had absolutely no connection to before arriving here. These things tend to make one reflect on life: what's good about it and what's missing. It's the parts that have been missing that I am slowly trying to fill up, with varying degrees of success.
One of those things is a sense of reason or purpose. I got stuck for years doing nothing particularly important or interesting, and often being miserable because of it. Now that I'm at grad school and feel like I'm surrounded by (mostly younger) people with activist spirits, I feel like I need to be out doing something more important than what I need to do to make it through this experience. So far I am not sure I have succeeded at this. By that I mean that I haven't really found anything that I feel like I can sink my teeth into and actually be a part of. To some extent, this just reflects the fact that I'm not the activist type, and I'm not sure that the opportunities exist here for me to really involve myself in things that mean a lot to me.
Part of this is also not my fault. For years I've thought about helping out at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving. This past year, I actually planned to do that. I contacted a place that was serving the needy a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving. At first it looked like everything was good. Then the day before Thanksgiving I suddenly get an e-mail that says, "Oh, nevermind, we have all the help we need, thanks anyway." So there went the only plans I had for Thanksgiving (and naturally it poured all day, so I couldn't even go outside. Yeah, my day sucked.) Then there's the organizations that don't respond when I send them e-mails through the city volunteer network offering to help out. These things make it really difficult to get motivated enough to try again, and it makes me mad because I know it's not my fault, but I can't help being angry about it.
But I have been trying. Mostly little things here and there. I helped at a children's event on Martin Luther King Day. Yesterday I helped collect recyclables at the basketball game (and watched our team squander yet another lead at the last second). I'm helping find volunteers for a big community sale at the end of the summer that will take a whole lot of furniture, clothes, and appliances that would have ended up in dumpsters and re-sell them to incoming students. So I try and find things here and there that make me feel like I'm helping out.
These experiences illustrate whole "learning through failure" idea. Right now I'm mostly having to deal with this in regards to my search for a summer internship, a search that usually hovers somewhere between "barely breathing" and "hopelessly moribund," depending upon the week. I feel like it's going so poorly because I'm having a real hard time dedicating the time to it that I feel like I should be. The one good thing about a full-time job is that it was less work than grad school. Now I'm spending full days reading boring passages, meeting with groups, working on assignments, etc., etc., all day every day. On top of that, I'm trying to carve out a social life for myself, create some meaning in my life by doing things for other people, and doing the other things that keep me from completely going insane.
I find that this leaves very little time for the internship search. It's probably also complicated by the fact that I have no concept of time and thus poor time management skills. I spend lots of time on things that do not need to have lots of time spent on them (such as writing blog posts) when I feel like I should be spending it looking for an internship that I technically probably don't need to obtain my degree. It is also probably harmed by a lack of focus: I'm trying to follow many different tracks in my internship search, and from day to day, I never know what I should really be focusing on at any given moment.
Let's face it: All of these things stress me out. I'm being pulled in so many different directions that I frequently just go into survival mode, hunkering down and doing what I need to survive and praying it'll all be over soon so I can rest. This is really horrible for my overall health. I would love to say that there are things I can give up and get by just fine, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what those things are. Which just increases my stress level. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Where was I going with this? Oh yeah. Perfection. This is what I'm striving for, and I'm sure I will ultimately fail at it. I can't say exactly which aspect of my life I will fail at, but I'm betting there will be something. How I respond to it will be instructive. I'm already trying to be more forgiving of myself and taking time out to do things that ease my mind (like writing extremely long blog posts). I'm hoping that will allow me to react well if/when I don't get an internship, or my grades take a hit. I guess we just have to wait and see.
To bring this whole discussion full circle, I will return to the idea of doing it anyway. How do we find the inspiration to make changes, whether they are lifestyle changes or changes that just might be for the good of all humanity? I guess we just have to look around and see what really matters to us, how badly we want to create change, then survey the obstacles in our paths (many of which we construct ourselves)...then do it anyway. Get rich or die trying, so to speak. We take inspiration from wherever we can, whether it's from a piece of art or from the people around us. Finding the inspiration is probably the main thing, and that's different for everyone. But it's also the most fundamental part of "doing it anyway." So find it wherever you can, and act upon it, and realize that it's not always gonna work out...then just keep doing it anyway.
To close, because I can't resist, I will quote Ian MacKaye from Minor Threat's "In My Eyes":
You tell me that I make no difference
Well at least I'm fuckin' tryin'
What the fuck have you done?
Just fuckin' tryin', I guess.
I also don't particularly have time to write this post, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Which kind of segues right into today's topic:
Doing It Anyway
So as you may or may not know, I am constantly looking for some source of inspiration, something that causes me to pick my ass up and go out and do something. Anything. Right now I have two books sitting next to my bed. I read them periodically, by which I mean when I am just going to bed or have just come home from a long day at school and need a bit of a break. One of them is the Bible. There is no religious reason for reading this. It is mostly for personal edification. I can't remember the last time I picked up a Bible and thumbed through it when someone didn't tell me to do it. I probably never have. So at one point I got it into my head that I would just go buy a Bible and read it cover to cover. I even bought one that has this daily reading schedule that will take you through the whole thing in the span of one calendar year. My goal was to stick to that schedule. A month and change into the year and...yeah, that ain't happenin'. I'm already pretty far behind. This might take me two or three years, at the rate I'm going.
The other is something I picked up while I was Christmas shopping. It's called "Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists." The book examines how people can create some sort of meaning in their lives despite all of the obstacles put in their way, from the mundanity (yes, dictionary.com says that's a word) of every day life to the social, legal, and economic institutions that are practically designed to thwart any efforts to change the status quo. It follows eight people in different parts of the country who are working on various causes of their choosing. You've never heard of most of them (or at least I haven't); it's not like Bono or George Clooney are profiled. The only one you may (or may not) have heard of is Rosario Dawson, who is an actress of moderate fame ("Sin City," "Death Proof," and "25th Hour" are among her credits that immediately spring to my mind).
So far I have not really had time to actually start reading this book. However, a few nights ago, for some reason, I decided to read the conclusion. Why I read the conclusion before the rest of the book I am not sure. But I did. And it's a good thing, too, because it served as grist for my mind mill. There are a lot of themes contained within the conclusion that I can relate back to my own life. One of them deals with the idea of a successful failure (or, learning from your mistakes and not repeating them). Another is the search for community. A third is finding the energy to go out and do something despite the obstacles. In the end, it's all about trying.
There's lots of things I've been trying to do lately. This is important, because there are lots of things I haven't been trying to do for quite a while now. Much of this has to do with leaving a job I had increasingly grown sick of and giving up the routine that it entailed. In it's place I now have this slightly frantic, somewhat unpredictable graduate school experience. It has meant once again picking up stakes and moving to a new place that I had absolutely no connection to before arriving here. These things tend to make one reflect on life: what's good about it and what's missing. It's the parts that have been missing that I am slowly trying to fill up, with varying degrees of success.
One of those things is a sense of reason or purpose. I got stuck for years doing nothing particularly important or interesting, and often being miserable because of it. Now that I'm at grad school and feel like I'm surrounded by (mostly younger) people with activist spirits, I feel like I need to be out doing something more important than what I need to do to make it through this experience. So far I am not sure I have succeeded at this. By that I mean that I haven't really found anything that I feel like I can sink my teeth into and actually be a part of. To some extent, this just reflects the fact that I'm not the activist type, and I'm not sure that the opportunities exist here for me to really involve myself in things that mean a lot to me.
Part of this is also not my fault. For years I've thought about helping out at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving. This past year, I actually planned to do that. I contacted a place that was serving the needy a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving. At first it looked like everything was good. Then the day before Thanksgiving I suddenly get an e-mail that says, "Oh, nevermind, we have all the help we need, thanks anyway." So there went the only plans I had for Thanksgiving (and naturally it poured all day, so I couldn't even go outside. Yeah, my day sucked.) Then there's the organizations that don't respond when I send them e-mails through the city volunteer network offering to help out. These things make it really difficult to get motivated enough to try again, and it makes me mad because I know it's not my fault, but I can't help being angry about it.
But I have been trying. Mostly little things here and there. I helped at a children's event on Martin Luther King Day. Yesterday I helped collect recyclables at the basketball game (and watched our team squander yet another lead at the last second). I'm helping find volunteers for a big community sale at the end of the summer that will take a whole lot of furniture, clothes, and appliances that would have ended up in dumpsters and re-sell them to incoming students. So I try and find things here and there that make me feel like I'm helping out.
These experiences illustrate whole "learning through failure" idea. Right now I'm mostly having to deal with this in regards to my search for a summer internship, a search that usually hovers somewhere between "barely breathing" and "hopelessly moribund," depending upon the week. I feel like it's going so poorly because I'm having a real hard time dedicating the time to it that I feel like I should be. The one good thing about a full-time job is that it was less work than grad school. Now I'm spending full days reading boring passages, meeting with groups, working on assignments, etc., etc., all day every day. On top of that, I'm trying to carve out a social life for myself, create some meaning in my life by doing things for other people, and doing the other things that keep me from completely going insane.
I find that this leaves very little time for the internship search. It's probably also complicated by the fact that I have no concept of time and thus poor time management skills. I spend lots of time on things that do not need to have lots of time spent on them (such as writing blog posts) when I feel like I should be spending it looking for an internship that I technically probably don't need to obtain my degree. It is also probably harmed by a lack of focus: I'm trying to follow many different tracks in my internship search, and from day to day, I never know what I should really be focusing on at any given moment.
Let's face it: All of these things stress me out. I'm being pulled in so many different directions that I frequently just go into survival mode, hunkering down and doing what I need to survive and praying it'll all be over soon so I can rest. This is really horrible for my overall health. I would love to say that there are things I can give up and get by just fine, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what those things are. Which just increases my stress level. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Where was I going with this? Oh yeah. Perfection. This is what I'm striving for, and I'm sure I will ultimately fail at it. I can't say exactly which aspect of my life I will fail at, but I'm betting there will be something. How I respond to it will be instructive. I'm already trying to be more forgiving of myself and taking time out to do things that ease my mind (like writing extremely long blog posts). I'm hoping that will allow me to react well if/when I don't get an internship, or my grades take a hit. I guess we just have to wait and see.
To bring this whole discussion full circle, I will return to the idea of doing it anyway. How do we find the inspiration to make changes, whether they are lifestyle changes or changes that just might be for the good of all humanity? I guess we just have to look around and see what really matters to us, how badly we want to create change, then survey the obstacles in our paths (many of which we construct ourselves)...then do it anyway. Get rich or die trying, so to speak. We take inspiration from wherever we can, whether it's from a piece of art or from the people around us. Finding the inspiration is probably the main thing, and that's different for everyone. But it's also the most fundamental part of "doing it anyway." So find it wherever you can, and act upon it, and realize that it's not always gonna work out...then just keep doing it anyway.
To close, because I can't resist, I will quote Ian MacKaye from Minor Threat's "In My Eyes":
You tell me that I make no difference
Well at least I'm fuckin' tryin'
What the fuck have you done?
Just fuckin' tryin', I guess.
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