A Post Without a Title

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This past May, I crossed the five year mark from graduating college.

The day after I graduated, the local newspaper in the town where I went to college ran a story about the university’s graduation in which they quoted my roommate and me, then took it upon themselves to say of us and our job outlook that “neither seemed very hopeful.” Find me a college graduate on his or her graduation day who isn’t at least a little bit freaked out about the future. I think you’d be somewhat hard-pressed to do so. I’d like to invite that reporter to meet up with me now and I can show him what a lack of hope regarding job prospects really looks like. But I digress. Continue reading →

Make-Believe Nostalgia

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Yesterday I visited a community pool for the first time in a number of years. Growing up, we relied on our friends’ swimming pools because there wasn’t one in our community. In fact, the one I went to today was a small one that I’d never been to before, and I went because my aunt was feeling nostalgic: she used to go to that pool when she was a girl, visiting her aunt in the next county. So she and I went. As it turned out, there was a certain charm about this place that made me somewhat nostalgic for a life I’d never experienced.

My own nostalgia started stirring as soon as my aunt told me how she used to come to this town – only twenty minutes away from our own – and stay with her aunt, and come to this pool with her cousin. I started thinking about who I’d gone to stay with as a kid and what family I’d visited. Where I should have felt nostalgic, it was all made up: my entire family had always been right in my town. There’d never been anyone to go visit away from there.

Later, as my aunt attempted to swim laps around parents holding little kids and small children doing handstands and chasing diving sticks, I sat nearby on the edge of the pool with my legs in the water. To my immediate left was the lifeguard and to my immediate right was a group of about six elementary school boys. They kept doing cannonballs and the lifeguard kept yelling at them, and the only thing I could think about was The Sandlot. If you’ve never seen it, you’re missing out. It’s funny, but it’s also nostalgic to the core. I kept expecting the lifeguard to morph into Wendy Pefferkorn and those little boys to become the kids from The Sandlot. When those boys got kicked out of the pool for doing (what else?) obnoxious cannonballs, I started observing other groups further in the distance, and for the rest of the day was struck by the dichotomy of early and late teenage life that was, in some sense, quite idyllic. Continue reading →

Blog Recommendations

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I’m taking a break from my normal babble to do a little unsolicited blog promotion. I like reading blogs because I feel like there’s always a lot to learn from other people and often times I find that they offer ways for me to readjust my own perspective. They can be quite educational. There are a lot of great blogs – by people I know and people I don’t – that I could tell you to read. I’m only going to start with three of my personal friends’ blogs, though, because I don’t want to be overwhelming. When I go to a blog, I like to click on other links in the blog roll (a good reason to establish one), so if you haven’t checked out these blogs on mine, please do (all links in this post will open in a new window). If they don’t strike your fancy, feel free to pass them on to anyone else whose fancy they might strike. I just used the word “blog” a lot. Bad writer.

Please note, however, that I can’t do these justice in a short blurb. You’ll just have to check them out for yourself. Continue reading →

The Internet Giveth, and the Internet Taketh Away

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There’s something ironic about the fact that I have such conflicted opinions of social media and electronic communication when it is by and large the way I most often communicate. It always makes me think of the Wally Lamb novel She’s Come Undone. If you haven’t read the book, let me first recommend it (or anything Wally Lamb has written, really) before saying that I won’t ruin it for you by giving too many details. Suffice it to say that in the novel, the main character’s life goes into a tailspin after she receives her first television and her life completely changes (and not really for the better).

I was in 8th grade, awkward, shy, socially backwards, and probably with ugly shoes, when my family got its first computer and AOL account. Going into chat rooms changed the way I communicated with people. With the safety of being behind a screen, it was more difficult for people to hurt me, and I had a much easier time letting my true personality show – my sense of humor and my compassionate side, particularly. (However, for those who think Internet bullying is a relatively new concept, I can attest to the fact that it existed in the mid-to-late 90s. Some of the same people who said mean things to me at school found me online and said mean things there, too. Kids are sharks.)

It wasn’t long before I went from chatting with friends and total strangers to talking to people I didn’t know well at my school. This was a cop-out in some ways and good in others. I would never have talked to these people at school, nor would they have likely talked to me, without the buffer of a chat window. However, when it was time to meet face-to-face with classmates (I never met strangers for obvious reasons), I knew that they would think it odd if I didn’t act in accordance with who they knew me to be: my “online personality” – the person I actually was, as opposed to the person who couldn’t figure out how to be herself around others. This forced me to come out of my shell, and by the time high school was over, I was still shy, awkward, and socially backwards (still am, really), but not nearly to the degree I had been (and I have a far cooler shoe collection). Continue reading →

In the Books: On Finishing My Novel

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I know I haven’t been blogging much lately. I think you’ll understand why, though.

I was sitting here thinking about how I have trouble finishing things, but then it occurred to me that it’s not really true. I can think of fewer than five books that I’ve never finished and don’t intend to. Even when they’re really bad or boring, I try to slog my way through them. I tried to quit softball after 6th grade when I should have been moving up from pigtail to ponytail league. I was afraid that it was going to be more difficult and I’d look stupid. About a quarter of the way into that first summer, I told myself to suck it up and go back to practice, so I did, and I played until I was getting ready to leave for college. I waited a whole year of being unhappy at my first real-world job before I quit that, and I agonized so long over my decision to quit calculus in college that I missed the drop/add deadline and took a voluntary F. And when I say I agonized over that decision, I mean that I found myself in the Dean of Students’ office nearly in tears.

So I guess I don’t quit well. Continue reading →

5 Facebook Habits That Annoy Me

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No, I couldn’t come up with a more clever title. It’s hot. My brain is lagging hours – maybe days – behind my body.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that those of us for whom Facebook is an integral part of life are all guilty of some kind of obnoxious and/or annoying Facebook behavior. That’s totally to be expected. I will be the first person to admit that, especially when I’m bored, I update my status way too often, and usually not with anything close to revelatory. In an attempt to justify my own less-than-ideal habit by pointing out that it could be worse, I’ve come up with the 5 Facebook habits that most irritate me, and why. This is not in any way meant to offend any of my friends (although it would appear that it’s mostly just randoms, mostly in California, who are reading my blog, anyway). Then again, when you consider that most of the people a person is friends with on Facebook aren’t really that person’s good friends…. well, I’ll get to that. Continue reading →

Letters

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Everyone goes through periods in life where they feel like throwing in the towel. What’s the point? I’ve been feeling that way for a while, but in an effort to make up for the last post, I’m writing about something more positive this time. It never fails to surprise me when, just as I’m ready to give up on myself and people in general, something makes me stop. Perhaps another time I’ll explain how I’m possibly the most secretly optimistic pessimist you’ve ever known.

Yesterday, after I heard the mail truck drive off up the street, I put my book down and peeled myself off of the couch. I’ve been receiving mail every single day this week, and none of it was good. In fact, every single piece of it was bad news relating to money. No. I’m sorry. I got three pre-approved credit card applications.

So when I pulled the stack out of the mailbox, I said to the dogs, “What kind of bad news do we have today?” There was a stack of envelopes, two of them coming from the source of my livelihood at the moment. There were a few envelopes for my parents. And there on the bottom was a plain white envelope, addressed to me with no return address. I didn’t need a return address because I immediately recognized the tiny cramped handwriting as belonging to a student I taught during the 2006-07 school year in Virginia – my second year teaching.  Continue reading →

Between Gears

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I think that one of the most difficult parts of growing up is feeling placeless.

When I was out on my own, I rarely minded the occasional night in by myself. Looking back, I think it’s because I knew I had a choice. I’ve never been big on hanging out in bars. Once in a while it’s okay, but it’s really not my cup of tea. Too many people, and so many of them annoy me.  Still, I knew that I could, if I wanted to, and sometimes I did (and sometimes I still do). If I wanted to go sit on the couch at a friend’s place and watch t.v., I could. If I wanted to have friends over to my place, I could. I am growing increasingly frustrated, though, with being home (as in, the house I grew up in) and not having that option. As a result, I keep getting the distinct feeling that I have no place.  Continue reading →

Occupational Hazard

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It’s not really hard-hitting news if I tell you that I don’t sleep at night. When I was employed, I had myself trained to go to bed and wake up, but with nothing else to do, I can’t sleep at night. This is my writing time. This is also when it’s finally quiet, and therefore when I get a chance to think about things enough for them to get under my skin, but this time it’s in a sad way. Continue reading →

…And Now Ahead

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In my last post, I spent some time looking back and reflecting on someone I used to be. This time, I want to look ahead and think about someone I want to become. Some of this may sound hypocritical now, but I hope I can work that out in time.

There are a few reasons why I’m not sure that having my own kids someday is in the cards for me. This isn’t really the forum on which I wish to discuss that, but suffice it to say that I would like to have my own family with my own children. Tonight I really got to thinking about what kind of parent I would like to be, and even though I’ve been mulling over it for about four hours now, I’m not totally sure it’s completely fleshed out. Then again, how can one ever know these things so far in advance? At any rate, this may not be so well-constructed.

First and foremost, I never ever ever want to belittle my children and give them any reason to doubt themselves. I never want to tell them that they’re worthless or that they’ll never amount to anything (or make them feel as such). I never want to cause them to sit around wondering where they went wrong in life and what they did to deserve my wrath. I want to support them and let them know that even if I don’t always agree with them, I trust them (this, of course, goes to a point; if they’re doing something dangerous, that’s another set of rules) and their decisions. I want them to know that their happiness is what matters most. I also don’t want to discourage them from ever thinking that they can’t be anything at all that they want to be. If they spend their entire childhoods pursuing a dream and then suddenly decide to change it, I will not be disappointed in them. I will not consider them failures for changing their minds. I will consider them brave for wanting to do something new. Continue reading →