And we'll all float on...

Driving north on I-95, I was feeling kinda down. I found myself listening to depressing music and engaged in circular thinking (which can lead to insanity, I hear). Realizing I needed to take action and break the cycle, I turned on "Float On" by Modest Mouse. This is a song that reassures me everything's going to be okay. In need of some reassurance, I turned it up. The speed of my car increased with the song's volume.

My favorite part of the song is the part that goes "I backed my car into a cop car the other day, but he just drove off, sometimes life's okay." That part was coming up, adrenaline began to pump, and I was preparing to belt out these lyrics. I was speeding. I looked to my left and who was driving beside me? A cop.

Immediately, I hit the breaks. "Fuckkkk" is what I belted out instead. I watched the number on my speedometer quickly reduce to a speed that was only a few digits above the legal limit. He would pull me over for sure- I was guilty of speeding and it was obvious I knew that. Only, he didn't pull me over. He drove off. And it was okay. This all seemed to take place during the 11 seconds of that part of the song.

I cracked up. I started laughing, hyterically. Coincidence? I watched the cop car disappear ahead of me.

I know not getting pulled over for speeding is not exactly the same thing as not getting arrested for backing into a cop car. But, I still found meaning in the alignment of these song lyrics and my life. In that moment, I was able to laugh and I was okay. I was floating on.

A thought experiment

Observation: Today at work, while chatting online, listening to music, creating deposit spreadsheets, answering phones, and attending to emergency infobox emails that said "WHERE IS MY LOGIN PASSWORD?!", I became suddenly conscious of that fact that I was multitasking. How did I develop this skill? I am challenged by the combination of walking and chewing gum (cliche, I know), so I pondered this unlikely development (which became yet another task I performed at work). And then it hit me- each of the friends I was chatting with were at work, too. They were all holding at least 3 unrelated conversations while performing mundane work tasks and wondering what they were going to have for lunch. Everyone was multitasking. We all had this in common.

Hypothesis: If we all have this in common, then it is generational.

Experimental Thought: The present generation has been greatly impacted by technology, i.e. computers and the internet. Such technology has been at the heart of blame for my generation's awful laziness, need for instant gratification, and problem with obesity (all intertwined). I have heard that we are the first generation that will have an average lifespan shorter than our paternal generation (which I am hesitant to believe because we aren't old enough to really know yet). All of our resources can be found at our fingertips- literally. My Blackberry is practically a pocket sized laptop computer and fits in the palm of my hand.

Conclusion: We rarely need patience to access information or put our full attention into any single task. Thus, we can pay attention to lots of things at once. Thus we have all developed multitasking skills.

Taking it a step further... I am wondering, is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Knowledge: I am far too lazy to fully explore this question. I guess I am a victim of my generation.

I know I will need to work from home this evening to make up for the work I failed to accomplish at work, because of the million other things I was doing. Perhaps we are just easily distracted. And I wonder if anyone else is in this same boat. I'm sure they will be online later, and we can talk about it while watching the Olympics, having dinner, checking facebook, and, oh, finishing up our work.

A cluttered room... a cluttered life?

Looking around my room, it's a mess. Drawers are hanging open with their interiors exposed. Clothes, worn and washed, are strewn across my floor, pulled from my closet or off of my body before bed. Empty water bottles and half drunk mugs of tea litter the flat surface of every piece of furniture that offers the opportunity. My bed remains unmade and crumpled papers lie as evidence beside my waste basket that I was never meant to play basketball. All my things are in a state of utter chaos. Ideally, I will simply pick everything up and put them in order, back in their place. But I can't. I am living in a world that is not ideal and picking up my things to diffuse this chaos seems an impossible task right now as I lie in bed.

And it hits me; I want my things to put themselves away. I don't want to do it myself. It would be much easier for things to place themselves in order. That way, I can continue lying in bed, which would provide immediate contentment and relief. I would not have to work to change the chaos that has built up in my environment. Then I get hit again and I turn my dilemma over the clutter in my room into a metaphor about the clutter in my life.

I avoid diffusing the clutter in my life because it would be difficult. It would take an energy for a will that I would rather not expend to have. That is simply it; it's too hard. Why? I wonder. Am I afraid of the challenge or am I just lazy? I have been called stubborn before. My life is not chaotic; it's cluttered by things I am unhappy with. Instead of picking up the pieces and attending to these things I attend to things that offer immediate gratification, an immediate sense of relief. I am learning, however, that such is quite fleeting and ultimately adds to the clutter.

What am I really saying here? I am seven years old again and I don't want to clean up my room?

Struck by the master hand

This Saturday morning, I rolled out of bed late and decided that my free time would best be spent playing some Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Really, I need practice. I talk a pretty big game and, let's face it, I suck when I'm challenged. Usually horribly (depending upon the opponent, most often a well-practiced male.)

My character of choice is Kirby. I was once told that this character is for chicks who don't really know how to play the game. This reminded me of the time I was told my choice of undergrad major, psychology, is a major for people who don't know what they want to do with their lives. Both of these statements ring true, to an extent. Screw you. I am figuring out what I am doing with my life and I can learn how to play this game with Kirby.

Anyway, this morning I cleared 11 stages. I cannot conquer the Master Hand. First, it's introduction is intimidating. Second, turning into a rock, hitting it with a hammer, and slashing it with a sword don't even injur the damn thing. And, I cannot seem to escape when it's crushing me in a fist or flicking me off the side of the platform. How do I beat this? Really. Comments of advice would be helpful and most appreciated here.

Despite my consistent failure and frustration battling the Master Hand, I am still trying. I want to find a way to beat it.

I noticed that my initial instinct, after the first battle began, was to run away and avoid contact at all cost. It struck me (before the Master Hand did) that this is often how I approach scary things in my life. I run. I avoid. I shouldn't. How am I going to overcome obstacles in my life this way and get anything that I want? How am I going to beat the Master Hand?

And fuck. I can figure out my life and I can learn how to really play this game with Kirby. I just need to stop running away.

Oh, self-awareness. Who knew I could experience such playing an insignificant video game?

I am human.

Last evening / early morning, a good and quite wise friend (I hope you are reading this) explained confidence to me. I am cautious to qualify confidence- a concept, a goal, a state of being? Previous to last night, I thought of confidence as a goal to strive for, a "thing" to be attained through hard work, determination, and focus. Now, post-conversation with my sage friend, I don't know what the hell I was thinking. Did I think confidence was something magical that streamed down upon one, sparkling and glistening in a ray of light as angels sang, after said one ran the extra mile, raised the test score an extra 100 points, or captured the person of her dreams? Kind of.

"The difference between being confident and not being confident is just that. It's being." - sage friend.

"Huh?"- foolish me.

You are either confident or you are not. No amount of intellectual or physical achievement is going to make you confident. You have to be confident about who you are everyday, waking up, every morning.

I always found songs with lines such as, "I would die if I knew I could come back different" or "You go to sleep dreaming how you would, be a different kind, if you thought you could" really profound. It's exactly how I feel; I want to wake up different. Because waking up different would be waking up not exactly me, as I am now. I could wake up a different me, a confident me.

So, I work out, a lot. It's not to be healthy, it's to be thin and physically appealing. I read thoughtful books to seem interesting. I achieve(d) high grades to appear intelligent and successful and make people proud. I don't get caught listening to pop music because I don't want to be perceived as a shallow member of the current pop culture. This doesn't work.

Everything I am, is a facade. I am a fake and completely clueless. I have no idea what makes me happy or who I am. I feel completely uninteresting. And I am not at all confident.

Thus, doing what I have been doing, doesn't work. It's time to try something new.

What can I confidently say makes me happy? I am going to start small. I need to stop being afraid I will turn out to be something I have been striving not to be. I realize now, being true is better than being false and unhappy. So,

On working out: I <3 endorphins. I need them, I crave them. I love to run and it makes me feel good, especially when I increase my endurance. I get runners high and feel peaceful, in the zone. I like feeling in shape. I like abs and I like bones. However, I also love junk food. Peanut butter with chocolate and anything cookies n' cream themed is heavenly. I can eat a whole bag of cheese doodles.

On books: Entertainment is key. Some thoughtful books keep me interested, others don't. I will never enjoy respected, classic writers like Jane Austen or Charles Dickens. I like darker authors. Give me Fitzgerald, give me Salinger, give me modern day Burroughs or Palahniuk. I also read "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" faster than all books written by the aforementioned authors.

On grades: They prove nothing. I achieved amazing grades. I worked really hard. Stress was involved in every assignment I was given- even assignments not worthy of stress. I retained nothing. The grades I achieved were for other people.

On music: I love music. I love knowing bands that aren't famous but I do listen to my fair share of bands/artists that are well-known and may even be considered sell-outs or pop. The song "Party in the USA" by Miley Cyrus makes me happy. Then again, so does "Two" by the Antlers.

A lot of this stuff has been hard to admit, to other people, to myself. I fear judgment. But I'm putting all this out there now. Liking Miley Cyrus doesn't make me a bad person, it makes me human. And I want to be a confident human. So, to start, I am going to be confident that I am human. Being human, I matter, literally. So don't cut me in line. Because I am standing there, confident in place, waiting to be acknowledged as a living person, who runs against herself, likes junkfood, is unimpressed by academics, and is smiling either because "Party in the USA" or "Two" is stuck in her head.

Another one

Here's another story. It's very rough- a first draft. It's somewhat fucked up.


Lying face down in the snow, she realized she could drown. The idea dawned upon her in far too an appealing way and she knew it. Most who lost their life in the snow froze to death. Never had she heard of an individual who choked on snow until her demise, lungs flooded by melted droplets of once frozen rain. Her body heat would surely melt the snow enough for this to happen. She had a college education.

The girl knew she just needed to wait. Minutes passed and she continued to breathe into the snow. It was cold and it was dark. It made her face hurt. She wondered if anyone would see her. She wondered if anyone would know she had done this intentionally when she was found, hours, perhaps days, later. Should she leave a note? She wondered if she was the first to have ever died this sort of intentional death.

And then a thought that had haunted and depressed her since she had first conceived it entered her mind. Nothing she could ever think would be something that had never been thought before. Every one of her thoughts, another already had. There was no such thing as original thought for someone like her. This had to do with her intelligence and the timeliness of her life. Brilliant inventors, decades ago, had to race to patent and publicize their revolutionary ideas and devices before someone else equally brilliant and innovative beat them to it. And even then, a more brilliant but less innovative individual may have had the seemingly new idea first. She knew, being a girl of average IQ who had done average things within the context of her life, that she would never have an original thought. She was very self-aware.

She thus concluded that she had not been the first to die intentionally in this manner. It was likely that she would belong to a smaller group of dead individuals, but death is the great equalizer, anyway.

But what if when people found her, they thought her death tragic? That she had slipped and fallen unconscious and suffocated unintentionally in the snow or worse, frozen to death, like so many others. Perhaps she should leave a note. She wanted people to know; she wanted credit. She chose to lie face down. She chose to melt the snow with her breath and slurp the puddle into her lungs. She did not fall like a clumsy idiot. And because of all this, life without her was the way it should be. The loss of her life was not tragic. It was intended and okay.

Then, breathing more slowly than before, she heard her name. “Anna.” At first, “Anna” was muffled by the sound of her thoughts and the hood of her jacket. She froze and stopped breathing. She waited to hear it again.

“Anna?”

The voice was inquisitive and curious. The voice was male.

Without an acknowledged thought, she pulled her face out of the snow. The winter air stung her cheeks, upon which melted snow burned a deep, fiery blush. Tiny icicles shattered from the lashes of her eyes as she broke them open. Looking up in a daze, she saw him. Her latest let-down. Her latest heartache. He was standing over her.

He shouldn’t matter and she knew this. Everyone around her knew this. She knew they knew because they told her so. But she was a fool. She was so very self-aware.

He pulled her to her feet. He held her by the shoulders and looked at her. Her blushing cheeks turned her pale skin into porcelain. The dark hair that framed her face made the blue eyes peering out from beneath her hood piercing and breathtaking. Her lips, chapped by the snow, were red and plump. She had never looked more beautiful. And, being a young boy under the influence of exciting hormones, he had never wanted her more. In that moment, the coldness he had shown her these past months melted away. He was in love.

She was delicate.

Taking her in his arms, he pulled her into him. Her face pressed against his chest, he embraced her with all the warmth and power of a man that he possessed. And moments later, her body went limp. He had suffocated her.

This was not intentional.

Oh, the loss of young life in love-
how fragile,
how, very,
tragic.

A self-reflective snowed in weekend

This weekend, I got snowed in. The plan was not to be alone, but that is essentially how things turned out. My nerves had been shot all week and I was pissed off that the weather was going to ruin my long awaited weekend plans. I was taking this personally; weather forecasters on television were saying, “Jill, there is an 80% change you will need to cancel your plans this weekend and a 95% chance that this will take a toll on your personal life.” What I learned from being by myself for 72 hours was that the weather was not the sole force impacting my personal life. More forceful than the weather were people. And me.

Mostly me? It's not clear. I’ve blamed myself most of my life. But people are fickle and come with so many variables; they are dynamic, constantly changing. People are selfish, they want what they want. Myself included?

Some thoughts from the weekend...

I do things people want and if they’re happy, then I’m happy. I'm a people pleaser. Only, I’m not happy. And because people don't know better, I become personally offended. My unhappiness doesn't matter to them as long as they are happy, getting what they want. And then I classify them as selfish. I don't speak up until it's too late and I'm upset, a selfless victim. And then I just sound nuts. I’m often told I'm too sensitive. Surprise? No one wants to be around this- me, least of all. Surprise? I ended up alone this weekend.

Alone, with myself, was hard. I was self-destructive. Once I became more comfortable with myself, I took the time to do things I had not taken the time to do before. I learned some guitar, and I am proud right now of the blisters on my fingertips. I started reading a new book. I started writing this blog. I explored music I had not before and I enjoyed all activities thoroughly.

It might be better to be alone.

A snowed in self-reflection/realization: for an individual who exercises her independence as much as I do, I am extremely dependent. I realized this shoveling snow.

I accomplished the task of digging my car out of very high and very heavy snow. At first, I was resenting this job. I felt embarrassed because I was alone. A young girl with no help. I could only imagine what passersby were thinking. Someone should be there with me and no one was. No boyfriend and no best friend. Just me. I was angry but had no one to direct my anger at.

And then I remembered that it was my car and therefore my responsibility. It is incorrect to depend on anyone else to have a responsibility for me- I am responsible for me. And guess what? I took responsibility and I did it. I felt accomplished. And I received some unexpected help, too.

A neighbor I had never met helped me guide my car out of the tight space between snow mounds and into the street. I appreciated his kindness more than if I had had a man by my side, shoveling the snow for me, or a friend helping me, with the understanding that I would pay her back later. Their help would have been more for show than appreciated, too. It would be to say to passersby- look I have people that care about me. Really, passersby don't care. I'm the only one that does. Selfish.

So, what I learned from this weekend is, I’m alone but I’m not. I have a responsibility to myself and this may be the best way. And the most appreciated help comes with no strings attached.

I hope I can pass this on.