Month: March 2016

My first review is up on utopia-state-of-mind.thr3.de  it is a review of Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I would encourage you to take a look at it and leave me some feedback here!

Things you might have wanted to see (or not), what is helpful, what you look for in a review, etc. I would love some feedback! And you can always go to the bottom of the page and subscribe to that website as well. I am trying to post one new review there once a week!

I hope it pleases you all, even if it’s just a sign of progress and setting my feet on a path (wherever it takes me)!

I would encourage you to take a look, subscribe if you like it (or believe in its beginnings) and share it with others who might like it. I am trying to get my friends and family to subscribe and share so I can get a sense of what I am doing and how to change my style. Feedback is greatly appreciated!

(My goal is 30 subscribers, hopefully this is just an initial goal)

I was recently reminded of how even just a generation above me how different things are for women, in terms of domestic work. How much they are expected by society to perform, how isolating, and how much little gratitude and respect.

TO BE CLEAR, I am not talking about anyone in particular, I am just speaking from experience, and also things I have heard from my friends. ALSO I should say that this is not at all solved nor is not the case for today.

I shall present two examples, one from my generation, and one from a previous one.

Previous one: A couple where the female was expected, through comments and experience, to clean up after meals and to prepare beforehand. After the meal, no help was offered, and none asked. Everyone knew their roles. The man had his work, whatever that means, and the woman her her work (both in the sense of housework and in her lesser important work she found important).

My generation (and from me): I was cooking a meal for myself and others and no one offered to help me, even though I would have liked company. I was very upset by this, and when I voiced this, it was met with something along the lines of well the meal you were cooking was quite simple and didn’t need help, but if you wanted help you could have asked. To which I was upset, because their lack of help (which would have happened if the meal was ‘more complicated’) was based on their judgement of the easiness of the meal. Something I thought it irrelevant. The meal was meant for not just me and even just an offer would have been appreciated. But it also speaks to something I have seen and experienced. That, often, men decide that their time is worth more. They leave us waiting at the table for them to find a space in their time they can break, or just put whatever they are doing down, while we, wait. Waiting. Something I hate. There’s a difference between once in a while needing time to make a break, then a systematic difference.

And I should, at this moment, take a moment to make that distinction. I am not speaking about isolated incidents, I am speaking about systemic incidents, subconscious events, things we don’t even realize we are doing, because those are the ones we are so used to doing. These events are the dangerous ones because they are so ingrained in us, that we confronted we often say “I didn’t know I was doing it”. I am not blaming or pointing fingers. I am asking for a little self interrogation, some quiet moments spent in reflection, where you look at your parents, the media, your friends, and you think critically and, trying to be, objectively. (Because I always find I have to put out these disclaimers, so that some people don’t immediately become enraged and persecute me [which may sound ridiculous to you, but it would surprise you how much time in my life goes into making my words as logical and objective sounding so that some people’s feelings are not instantly enraged, and how often that fails].

Who makes the meals in your home? Who cleans up after them or after the space in general? Who becomes the most invested in the cleanliness? And why does(not) the other person(s) help?

Just think about it. I know my opinions, but perhaps you didn’t even realize your own.

But this echoes so many conversations I have had with my friends, about themselves, their mothers, about their values of time as opposed to their significant other.And conversations I have had with people about the value of their time versus mine. So many. So so many. Because, my time is worth something god damn it! Excuse my language, but I want to scream that from the roof top. Because my friend’s time is worth something. Because everyone’s time is worth something.

You may be asking, well what do we do after this?

I cannot give tailored advice, but I can say, perhaps, try to pitch in occasionally or just a simple gratitude can change the course. Because that, often for me, is all I want.

Just a simple: I acknowledge what you are doing, that you are using your time, and I appreciate it. I see you. I see what you are doing. I want to say thank you.

Our world is not perfect. There is injustice, inequality, and cruelty. But it is still a lot better than earlier worlds before, more equal than before.

I was recently in a situation in which I felt like I was constantly being steam rolled, ignored, and pushed around. It felt like my voice didn’t matter and because of this, my identity didn’t matter (because I associated myself largely with my voice). It felt like I was being flattened against the wall, disappearing, becoming more of the background. And it felt pretty horrible.

And I thought, thank God I do not have to do this everyday. Thank goodness I do not have to have my voice silence, my words ignored, everyday (to which in some situations I do, but for the majority of my life, I don’t). Because I could feel how if I was born in another time, how stifling, constricting, and suffocating it would be.

It would drive me crazy, drive me up the walls, and I thought, Okay, I understand The Yellow Wallpaper more now (a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman). I really like that story, it has always made an impression on me. But I could imagine how all these circumstances would make me mute, crazy, and isolated.

At the end of it, I just wanted to get out, to be alone, to be anywhere else. It felt like someone had swaddled me in blankets, and stuck me in the tropics next to a heater. The kind of heat that makes you crazy, that makes you feel like your brain is melting out your ears.

And I thought how horrible it was for women before me, to watch injustice, to feel injustice, and have little ways to escape, no light at the end of the tunnel, just a long haul.

I am happy to be home.

The other lasting thing that this book gave me was a note about finding your own mind harbor.

I’ve started being vigilant about watching my thoughts all day, and monitoring them. I repeat this vow about 700 times a day: ‘I will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore.’…The first time I heard myself say this, my inner eat perked up at the word ‘harbor’, which is a noun as well as a verb. A harbor, of course, is a place of refuge, a part of entry. I pictured the harbor of my mind…This island has been through some wars, it is true, but it is not committed to peace, under a new leader (me) who has instituted new policies to protect the place. (Gilbert 178)

This reminded me a) that we have to be our own advocate, to treat ourselves like we would want our loved ones to be treated, to treat ourselves like we treat the most precious thing we have and b) that cultivating positivity is a process we must undergo.

The book goes on to write, what I have to hang up and make my mantra to those inner demons whispering in my ear:

You may not come here anymore with your hard and abusive thoughts, with your plague ships of thoughts, with your slave ships of thoughts, with your warships of thoughts-all these will be turned away. Likewise, any thoughts that are filled with angry or starving exiles, with malcontents and pamphleteers, mutineers and violent assassins, desperate prostitutes, pimps and seditious stowaways-you may not come here anymore, either. Cannibalistic thoughts, for obvious reasons, will no longer be received. Even missionaries will be screened carefully, for sincerity. This is a peaceful harbor, the entryway to a fine and proud island that is only now beginning to cultivate tranquility. If you can abide by these new laws, my dear thoughts, then you are welcome in my mind-otherwise, I shall turn you all back towards the sea from whence you came. That is my mission, and it will never end. (Gilbert 179)

Boy that was a long quote. But it resonated with me and I want to frame it, to read before I leave the house, and start my day, to remind myself to be my best advocate.

On another note, the book asks Liz what her word is, what word describes her. So I shall ask you as well, what one word describes you? As for me, I have no clue.

I may be a sucker for those find yourself, books about self discovery (Wild, Eat Pray Love [are just two I can think of at the moment]). So I may be, I’ll just leave that for now. Or maybe it’s just where I am in life now where I need some advice, some stories to inspire and to convince me that we all don’t have it figured out. I always love the underdog books. Maybe I’ll find a self discovery novel that I don’t like, there are some, now that I think of it, that I do not like. So perhaps it has more to do with where I am in life now.

But there were some things that were really great and touching about this book (which I will try to post the first review on the book site). The first was later in the book, but was about choosing to be happy. “Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it” (Gilbert 260). Happiness is something you have to cultivate, it’s not something that necessarily happens.

For example yesterday I was feeling pretty sick, spent half the day crying about the various things you cry about when you’re sick (spilling tea, eating too much candy, being tired, or this just me??). But after that I had some nice dinner, got some good TLC, and did things which made me feel good and, despite feeling sick, thought at the end of the day, this was a good day, I was happy today.

I’m not saying that it was a great example of cultivating my own happiness, but it was one of those days where if I relied on the circumstances, I wouldn’t have found a reason to be happy. But I found happiness in the tasks I did at those moments. Happiness is like gardening, you have to plant the seeds, and you might not see something immediately, but they need love, care, water, and sunlight.

I find that on days where I “stack” my happiness, like points or bricks on a scale, are the days in which I am the most unhappy. It reminds me of a quote from doctor who:

“The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”
— The Doctor, Season 5, Episode 10 (link)

Because sometimes Doctor who just hits you in the gut. But those days in which I try to balance the sides of the scale, are the days in which I cannot find peace. Happiness isn’t about having more good things than bad, it’s about finding the happiness in what you do.

Savor the good and experience the bad. Relish in the good and move past the bad.

 

Dear Future Kids,

I know I may not be the best mother on the planet, I can have days where I don’t even want to get out of bed, but I am trying every day to be as good as I can. There will be things we will plan to do that will fall through, times when I will lose my temper, and other days when everything will fall into place. There will be good and bad moments, days when we yell at each other, and others where we can walk in silence and contentment.

But if there’s anything I want to teach you, or take away from my life (which must seem old and distant from yours), it’s these few lessons that I didn’t learn until late. I hope the way we’ve raised you have taught you already to be generous with your heart, kind with your words, but also your actions. I hope we have showed you that we will love you no matter what, forever and for always. That you will always be our child, our love, and our treasure even when we don’t say it.

I hope you have learned from us to not let other people convince you to be something you are not. To convince you that you are not okay the way you are. You aren’t at your final state, and we never are. We are constantly evolving, changing, and how we are is only who we are in that moment. I hope you know that when people lash out at you, it’s more about themselves than it is you. I hope you know that authority, a uniform, or power, does not mean you ever have to blindly obey. I want you to know you should always question, even me (although I will hate it). I want you to believe in your power to change the world, to know that something you do can make a difference, whether it be on a large level or just treating those around you kindly. I want you to know that relying on others does not make you weak, we live in webs, in communities, and learning to trust is an important lesson (especially when your trust has been betrayed, which it will). People will make mistakes, but they also are able to change. While we shouldn’t walk around naively, we should recognize the best in people and their ability to evolve. I hope you have learned that making mistakes is not bad, you can gain experience from anything (even if it’s learning not to do something in the future). Mistakes can teach you something, and you will pull yourself to the other side, changed. Change is important, don’t let the fear of change paralyze you from moving.

Trust your heart even when people try to tell you otherwise. Your heart may lead you into trouble, or even heartache, but if you ignore it, it can never lead you to happiness or love. Trust your gut, learn that you are worthy of love of others, but more and most importantly yourself. I hope you have learned the importance of self love, the importance of saying no, not overloading yourself, learning that you need to love and value yourself.

There are and will be other lessons I will want you to learn from me, but this is all for this letter.

You are strong and you are loved.

Especially by me.

I want to live unapologetically. I want to inhabit the space and refuse to apologize. I want my motions, my actions, and my word to live unapologetically. For them to stand out against the darkness, never afraid of who they are.

My goal from now on is to remove this chain of shame. To step out from under this cloud of guilt and self-inflicted punishment. I want to embrace the me that doesn’t apologize for her choices and decisions. I want to own my words, to stamp my name on them.

I want to echo my anthem with each step I take. To walk with purpose and not allow anyone to make me feel guilt and shame for my choices.

It’s hard for me to think of living like this, to live a life with less shame and guilt than I have now. I feel like I’m living under this haze of sadness, guilt, and shame. Guilt for not doing more work, and shame for not being as successful as I thought I would be by now, or shame for not having a job (although I suppose in this sense shame and guilt are quite closely intertwined here). Then on top of this sadness for not being able to motivate myself out of this, to just wake up one day and be productive, to sort out my life, and ‘fix my problems’. Sadness at the knowledge that one more to do list won’t solve anything. I can’t just write another list with the problems and my potential solutions. Because the first one and the one after that did nothing. I have felt myself slowly sinking again, like I was before, down this hole of darkness where I know I am not meeting my expectation (when have I ever though?). Perhaps this would be solved if I didn’t have such large demands on myself, but I don’t even know what that life would be like. Where I didn’t push myself or continue to tell myself that it isn’t good enough. I feel like I have lived most of my private life as not feeling good enough, and, to a degree, that really hasn’t changed. I write all these posts about being better, improving, but it’s an uphill battle filled with setbacks and progress. Sometimes progress does include going backwards.

That is why, even though each cell in my body wishes it could like unapologetically, at this moment I don’t even see how I could do it. How I could take off this albatross of shame, guilt, and sadness. I can momentarily escape from it, do some yoga, take a walk, but I know where it lives and, more importantly, it knows where I live.

So I have no idea what to do really. I don’t have any answers, and while it may be hard to read this, it’s harder to open up.

While I don’t know where I go to put my feet upon the road of self-discovery and success, I know I cannot function like this. So I suppose the first step I have found, or think might lead me eventually, is to unapologetically confess this weakness, this mind set, whatever it is. Because if I would ever live unapologetically, it seems logical that the first step is to admit, to open up in an unapologetic way. To say I am feeling weak, and some days I wonder what I am going to do, how I am going to save myself, but it’s how I feel.

If I am ever going to unapologetically live the way I want to, then this has to be the first step.

Why does our culture tell cram the philosophy of reduction down our throats? For example, shed those pounds, cut those bad fats from your life, eliminate those bad habits. On one hand there’s the constant emphasis on removal, never addition. Never add good habits. It’s always a negative comment and it always cut you down, shames you. It makes you less and less of yourself. It’s designed to cut you down and whittle you into some version society deems acceptable.

Society doesn’t focus on building you up, but tearing you down.

We hear these thoughts and it filters down through our psyche until we are shrinking, slowly collapsing under the strain of fitting ourselves into that ever growing smaller box.

I am not saying all of society is like this, but at the end of the day, what does it teach us? It teaches us to cut ourselves up, to dissect others, instead of aiming to build them up. It teaches us to be our worst enemy, to reflect those whispers that can’t wait to cut us up; to slash away our ‘flaws’. Society turns our shadows and our demons into surgeons excising pieces of ourselves disguised as tumors. We see that cutting down, being critical, is the normal, and it’s hard to build ourselves up against a world that strives to diminish us, to distract us from our potential.

I want to stand strong, to reject the notion that I need to remove anything. I want to step out of the box and stand straight, to take up space, to make people see me, respect me, listen to me. I want to cultivate a culture inside of me that relies of positivity and progress.

I am #blessed. This phenomenon has been around in social media for a bit. The #s have been around for so long, but the #blessed. A lot of people use it to show some perspective on what makes their life blessed. So I thought I would take a moment to talk about what that means in relation to my life.

Reasons I am blessed.

• I was adopted
• Not only was I adopted, but I was adopted into the most supportive and understanding family
• I went through school, including college
• I am able to go home whenever my parents are willing
• I have my both parents and my sister
• I have clean water
• I have supportive friends who will be there for me
• I have a partner who puts up with me and my quirks and hanger (hunger-anger)
• I have my eyesight to read all the books I want
• I have a laptop where I can write these blog posts
• I don’t have any major health problems at the moment
• I can hear all of my music whenever I want
• I have heat when it is cold outside
• I can go downstairs quickly to get any groceries I want
• I have electricity
• I can read

And many more. It’s hard every day to be grateful for all of these things because they are so common (to you) that they become invisible. I hope I can use this post whenever I am feeling especially down and reference it to put my life into perspective.

How are you blessed?

Many people have been telling me that I would be a good book reviewer. And you know what, I agree. I could be. I love books, I love to see beyond their words and feel their impact, to share the moments I love and the cry. I live for books and reading, the feel of their paper on my skin.

And I think I could do it. So I will. I am going to embark on this journey. It will take lots of time and hard work, but I believe that if I put my mind to it, and follow it fully and totally, something great could come from it.

I’ll update always on my progress and what not as soon as I know. But I thought I would share my seed idea and maybe you will be as excited as me.

Any feedback or suggestions are more than welcome!