Just what you expected... Reflections on 2011

I started out writing this ridiculous blog post. It was sentimental in every way. I realized though, that all I really want to say is thanks.


My year consisted of learning these lessons:
1. Laugh it off
2. Breathe
3. Remember that you're not really alone
4. It's okay to ask for help
5. Take every opportunity to learn something new
6. Those people that tell you to live in the moment? They're right.
7. If you don't want to give someone your number you don't have to; if you do want to, you probably shouldn't ignore their calls
8. Remember how you got to where you are
9. Be grateful
10. Relentlessly pursue the higher road ;-)


Thank you to everyone who read my blog this year. I think next year will be a little more exciting.


Thank you to everyone who helped me get to the places I'm going.


Thank you to everyone who reminded me to stay calm.


Thank you to everyone who showed me kindness.


Happy New Year everyone, here's to an amazing 2012.

Gift giving

Lately I've been reflecting a lot on how various parts of life contribute to equality and while none of my reflections have turned up anything new I still think it may be appropriate to just throw onto the blogosphere my recent frustrations with toy options. And by "throw on..." I mean "rant". 

Friday morning I read the Metro and I was a little more than outraged, and let's put aside the fact that it's a piece of junk sometimes anyways and focus on the point:
Metro had their gift-giving guide and they had some interesting, to say the least, options for kids. Let's play a game of spot the difference... For the girls they had a Hello Kitty guitar, dolls, a teacup piggie thing, a LeapFrog Discover House, a jewellery making kit, a hair accessories kits and a little mini kitchen. Meanwhile the "Toy story for boys" had a LeapPad explorer, gross-abulary (a game designed to help your child learn new words), a bicycle, books, Smart Labs Weird & Wacky Contraption Lab, Songs Just for Me Personalized CD, a Cranium brain teaser and then some general toys such as a Star Wars Lego character encyclopedia, some RC animal toys, cars, and Angry Birds plushies.


While I appreciate the guitar and the Discovery House, why are we not able to suggest the same number of toys that have educations qualities for girls as we can suggest for boys? Or maybe I should ask why there aren't more toys that have been specifically designed for and targeted to girls that offer similar qualities. How can we expect our girls to be on equal footing if the toys we offer them don't have the same brain-training capabilities that the boys' toys do? Why is this still appropriate?
The documentary MissRepresentation briefly discussed the fact that at 7 years of age the same number of girls as boys want to grow up to become President, but if you ask the same question 15 year olds, the gap between boys and girls is dramatic. This may have more to do with all of the media messaging and crap being thrown at them on a day-to-day basis that says girls will still be judged by their looks before their intelligence. I feel like more people will question this practice if we can get them all on the same page to start out. We need to encourage our girls just as much as we encourage our boys to be as bright as their potential. We need to change what's currently set out for them.


I know it's less than a week to Christmas so it may be too late but if you haven't finished your shopping yet do me one solid: promise that you'll break the gender norms and encourage your kids (and any kids you buy for) to play with all the toys. Your sons should feel just as comfortable in a kitchen as with a toolbox and your daughter should feel just as comfortable playing with science goo as they are with redressing their dolls. And they should all be given books, bicycles, cool science experiments and awesome music things.

A girl watches Miss Representation...

I always believed that the media had very little effect on me; the images that were put before me rarely actually made me want to buy the crap they were toting, movies don’t make me think I need a relationship to be whole and I don’t strive to be the characters put before me – I never have, thanks to my mom instilling certain values in me.

What I didn’t realize is that I didn’t get the idea that I couldn’t do everything – work on things I care about, be a successful student, spend time with friends AND maintain a relationship – from myself. I got it from movies. I’m a sucker for chick-flicks. Like I said above, though, I was under the impression that I would think critically about the message they were portraying. I was pretty sure that one message I thought critically about was the “need” for a relationship: you would see successful female protagonists who had everything going for them but no relationship and they weren’t really complete until they had a partner. That part I legitimately wrote off as bullshit.

But then we have the set of successful women portrayed in these films who put their personal life to the side so that they can rise to the top of their professional life. These characters are seemingly content without a romantic partner and they have reached their professional goals. They are ambitious and confident. To me, they have it all. What I didn’t realize about these movies is that they were also telling me that to be a successful woman I have to be a robot; I can’t have time for getting to know someone because I need to get ahead. Romance will only hold me back.

This is so very wrong.

It’s ridiculous to teach girls that they “need” romance of some sort in their life to be complete, and it’s also ridiculous to teach girls that they can’t get ahead in life if they take time to build relationships – any type of relationship. In the last year and a half I feel like I’ve become some sort of robot. I took part in things and related it to how it would affect my professional life – hell, I didn’t take part in things because I considered how they might affect my professional life. I spent less time with people I really cared about because I wanted to make sure I was on top of my game for work or any political thing I wanted to get involved in. I did not take the time to get to know people that I could’ve potentially cared about, and I had a lot of “Yeah… see… I don’t really have time for a relationship” type of conversations. And the annoying thing about these actions is that I didn’t think critically about why I was participating in life like this. I can’t put all the blame on movies because movies and other media haven’t given me eating disorders, haven’t made me buy outrageous items and haven’t made me a “mean girl” (as far as I can tell). I know I have the ability to see things, to know what message their sending me and to understand how that affects my life.

If I really don’t have time for relationships, or if I really do need to stay in because I have an early morning, or whatever… well that’s all fine. As long as I’m actually putting myself in control of these situations. The second that I’m allowing these outrageous view of what a successful woman looks and acts like get in the way of me being well… me, that’s when I’m letting media skew my vision. Let’s be totally honest here: 80% of the times I say I need to go home, I really do have the time, I can stay up the few extra hours, I can get to know someone. I like being surrounded by people, and I do like romance, so why do I hold myself back? I care infinitely about the causes I’ve taken up but all of the aspects of life can come together, I don’t have to leave anything out, despite what characters in some of my favourite movies have taught me.

I want to challenge each and every one of you (am I still at like, 5 readers?) to look at how you live your life and to decide: is it because somehow the media has told you something you do should be that way, or is it because you have made your own decision?

We all know how the media can affect us; let’s remember to understand how it’s affecting us.

Be thankful; Love always

Today I am writing a very specific piece about a very specific issue to some very specific people.

Maybe it is shitty of me to do bundle these people together into one giant thank you, so for that I apologize.

For anyone who reads this you may have followed the KSA saga. And you'll know that I have a fair number of friends who have worked to unearth some of the gems that have made the controversy possible. You'll also know that I have a good handful of friends who work for the KSA and are stuck in a weird realm of keeping the KSA services booming while having to be the ones to answer students' questions. Furthermore, these staff people are all working on keeping their sanity and every day I'm sure many of them are questioning what the whole situation means for them. And every day it tears me to pieces to know that they are seemingly hopelessly unhappy.

So today's blog post is about thankfulness and love.

It's possible that we're not thankful enough on a day-to-day basis. My mom sent me a cute chain e-mail about a week ago that pointed out a bunch of "crappy" things that happen in life that really are nice little reminders of how life has actually gone well (and really, if you think further on it, how life could be worse). And so...

I am so thankful for the people I know. For the people that this blog post is specifically about, I want you to know that your drive and your willingness to fight makes me feel exceptionally blessed. I don't think you realize how much so many of us owe you. Actually, I don't think many people even realize that they owe you. You are all amazing.

Love

Love love love. All I really want to say is that every day I want to send you all reminders of how awesome you are and how much I love you because I hope you never stop being you. But I don't, mostly because you already think I'm a little crazy. So I'll keep it cool. But I want you to know that I absolutely adore all of you. As mentioned above, your drive and your fight make you absolutely incredible. The world is so lucky that people like yourselves exist.

I hope this helps you feel a little better because I don't know what else to do. I mean, I know some things to do but for instant morale boost? Not a clue...

It's okay to be scared... There is only now...

Sometimes I am a bad friend.

Not in the backstabby way or in the selfish way. Crappy things happen (or really good things happen) and I always say, "I will spend more time with my friends. I will reach out to them more. I will take the time!"

...and then I don't.

I have this tendency to put up walls because I'm so scared of saying the wrong thing. I don't like messy. I try to avoid messy as much as possible and when things get uncomfortable my mind becomes a tower that I'm not willing to step down from and I spend a lot of time at home.

Rarely do I reflect on my commandments, in which I included "It's okay to be scared" and "There is only now," but right now I decided to check back on what I had told myself to do. When I wrote the commandments I was in a very different place; many of the commandments meant something so different from what they mean now.

It's okay to be scared

When I first included "It's okay to be scared," I really just meant it in a cease-the-day-be-adventurous-love-life kind of way. But over the past year it has definitely evolved.

Like I mentioned, when things get awkward, messy, "bad" or whatever you want to call it, I try to ignore it. This is something I've done since I was little - it would drive my mom nuts when we would have a huge fight, I'd go to my room and pass some time. I'd come out of my room a couple of hours later acting like nothing happened (internally I knew I screwed up and was just trying to make the situation lighter). As time has worn on I've somehow gotten worse at social interactions and have instead been working on avoiding them. I don't want to be that person. I am likely among the most social people you know. I thrive on interactions so I need to remember that it's okay to be scared, that's life. You screw something up, that's fine; don't make bad situations intentionally and apologize when you do create something negative. Because really there is only now. Life can sometimes take a toll on your happiness but if you spend all your time making perfect situations, you're not going to have a life. And that's just lame.

Oh and still.. you know... It's okay to be scared to try something new, cease the day, etc etc.

Don't sell yourself short

I go through these waves of loving who I am and what I look like to feeling desperately uncomfortable in my own skin. I always remind my friends that they're wonderful and that they should love themselves, I've even said "Don't blame your body, blame the clothing." I have a tendency to remind those around me that they shouldn't let others dictate how they feel about themselves and then I let myself do it. Except for, no one has ever told me that I'm physically unappealing: only I have ever told myself that.

And then tonight I found http://curveappeal.tumblr.com/ and I realized that I'm being totally ridiculous. It's fascinating because I look at these photos of women who are my size and look absolutely fantastic; I've been in similar photos (similar clothing and all) and have tended to look at the photo and decide that I don't love the way I look. Often I'll go through my photos months later and think that I did look great afterall but rarely do I love me at the time. Yet these women look great. So what's the difference between them and me?

I guess it's just the learning curve and where you are on it.

The reason I'm posting this is because I think there is a number of people who follow my blog (you know, of the three of you who read this) that feel uncomfortable in your skin. I know it's harder than looking at a blog to feel better about yourself and so I just want you to know that you're not alone. It takes a lot of getting to know yourself and how to feel good in your skin to actually love you. But it happens and we're all on our way to self-acceptance.

Just remember, love yourself; there's no one else to be.