Obligatory end-of-year summary

What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?

Made a zine! Went to Lollapalooza! Did legitimate feminist activist work! Rode a Greyhound bus for 14 hours straight!

Did anyone close to you give birth?

Rose did. :) My cousin Sandy also had twins, but I don't know if that counts, because she and I are not especially close, and I haven't yet met her kids.

Did anyone close to you die?

My cat Mac. Really, though-- he was my very best friend and I miss him a lot.

Which countries did you visit?

The only country outside of the U.S. that I've ever visited is Canada, and I don't count that because I have citizenship there. I did visit a number of states, though: Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Illinois (for the millionth time), and Kentucky. In that order.

What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

Some kind of job or extracurricular activity that actually pertains to my interests.

What dates from 2011 will you always remember?

Technically, all of them. My memory for dates is completely absurd. That said, some are more memorable than others.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

My grades this semester are AWESOME.

What was your biggest failure?

Being afraid to take risks. Wasting too much energy on people who don't care about me at all.

Did you suffer illness or injury?

Other than menstrual pain, no. Really, though, my uterus developed such a distinct personality this year that I named her Maude, after the 70s sitcom. She is obnoxious, demanding, and opinionated, but means well.

What was the best thing that you bought?

Lollapalooza tickets. That weekend rocked. I'm being literal, of course.

Whose behavior merited celebration?

My mother's. Somehow, I managed to get her to jump on the organic food train with me (this can also be counted as one of my greatest accomplishments of the year).

Whose behavior left you appalled and depressed?

The haters. You know who you are. Wise up, fools.

Where did most of your money go?

I gave it all to Trader Joe! In exchange, Trader Joe gave me food and cute tissue boxes with cute sayings on them.

What did you get really excited about?

My birthday, because I'm not-so-secretly an overgrown child about that every single year. Other than that, there wasn't much to get excited about, because most of the awesome things I did this year occurred pretty spontaneously. "What? You guys are leaving Saginaw for Pittsburgh RIGHT NOW and will be at my house to pick me up in less than two hours? Okay-- I will be ready!"

What song will always remind you of 2011?

My taste in music is so varied and questionable that it is quite impossible to answer this question. Ask me which 1,000 songs will make me think of 2011, and then we'll talk.

Compared to this time last year, are you:

Happier or sadder? Much, much happier. Much better-adjusted, also.

Thinner or fatter? Thinner. One of my mom's reasons for giving in to my demands for organic food was that I apparently refused to eat anything in our house, and she became concerned, because I lost a lot of weight.

Richer or poorer? Financially, poorer. My life feels a lot fuller than it did at this time last year, though.

What do you wish you'd done more of?

Reading. Risk-taking. Speaking up.

What do you wish you'd done less of?

Babysitting.

How will you be spending the holidays?

Quietly, at home, in a food & wine coma.

What was your favorite TV program?

The Golden Girls. This, I'm sure, will remain a constant throughout my lifetime.

What was the best book you read?

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts. If you're interested in race, class, and reproductive justice, I highly recommend that you read it. It'll break your heart and fill you with rage. But it's worth it.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

The Penny Loafers. They're an a capella group I discovered via Pandora Radio this year. I think they're cool because instead of singing without instrumental accompaniment, they use their voices to create the background music. It's really interesting.

What did you want and get?

FRIENDS! The beginning of this year was rough because I'd transferred schools but didn't know anyone on my new campus. The people I've met through the women's studies program have made things much better, and I'm so grateful for their friendship.

What did you want and not get?

A pony and infinite naps.

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 23. I kept things pretty low-key because my birthday fell on a Thursday during finals, so not only did I have things to study for, but I had to babysit, because I babysit every Thursday. Also, I had the worst cold ever. It turned out great, though. I got a pair of warm slippers from my parents (seriously guys, they're awesome), and the kids I babysit teamed up with their mom to surprise me with all kinds of goodies, too. It was really sweet.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

Well, see, that's just the thing. I lack a fashion concept. I wear whatever's on top of the clean pile. And those things don't always match and people assume I'm mismatching on purpose and trying to make some kind of statement. But I'm not a hipster. I'm just lazy.

What kept you sane?

I don't really claim to be sane, but talking to people who care about the same issues I do really helped me to feel better about things.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I think most people are aware by now of my huge-o celebrity crush on Emma Stone.

What political issue stirred you the most?

I don't know how anyone could turn away from the Occupy movement. Also, all of the anti-choice bills pushed through congress this year really got my ire up, of course.

Who did you miss?
The many friends I met at SVSU-- I haven't visited Saginaw very much this year. Also, Stephanie and Sarah, because I always miss them (I got to see them more times this year than I usually do, though, so that's good). And my cat, who died in August. :(

What new friends did you make?

At WSU: Lura, Kali, Alie, Kaitlyn, and Ashley. And then there's Stef, who I met via the Intarwebs. She lives in New York. I haven't yet met her IRL; maybe that'll be a goal for 2012. :)

Share a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011?

Warm slippers will make your life immeasurably more satisfying.

Today I am 23.

Which isn't any kind of milestone. And please don't remind me about that one Blink 182 song.

In the past 23 years, I've written countless poems and published some, written a ton of stories, but published none of them. And I've written a bunch of other things. Blog posts, letters, birthday cards for my pets. I've edited two school-sponsored art & literary magazines and then had this (poorly developed) idea to make my own zine. It'll get better someday.

I had something like a 20% chance of survival at birth due to my failure to adjust to the idea of breathing outside of the womb. But then I conquered that obstacle and screamed for three months (sorry about that whole colic thing, Mom & Dad), thereby developing one hell of a set of lungs. I've since used those to grow into a singer who has danced onstage in horrible shiny pants. And then later I became a loudmouth feminist. I wonder what's next.

I've read a lot of books. And I think I wrote a novel when I was fifteen because accidentally, out of nowhere I realized I'd created a 237-page Word document-- a story that went on way longer than I had intended it to.

I had knee-length hair as a child because my mom couldn't bear to part with my baby curls. So I've gotten my hair stuck in an escalator and also pooped on it. And then I wrote slam poems about those things and performed them at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island and won a swanky trophy.

I've lived in the suburbs and also in a cornfield, but that's really it. I like to make birthday cakes out of healthy foods.

I am kind of a square, mainly because I'm the only person of my generation who uses the word "square."

I've seen Chantal Kreviazuk in concert three times. I also met her and was a little bit bummed out when she spelled my name incorrectly.

I floss compulsively but still get reprimanded every time I go to the dentist. I'm convinced that dentists are just used to reprimanding everyone for not flossing enough.

I've developed some really embarrassing celebrity crushes and some not-so-embarrassing ones. My most recent one is of the latter variety, so I'll spill: Emmastoneemmastoneemmastone!

I've skinny dipped at 4 a.m. in Higgins Lake and napped in the sunshine. I've had way too many dreams about having sex with people I really shouldn't ever even think about have sex with.

I've mastered the art of fighting with soccer moms in SUVs over parking spots outside of the elementary school at dismissal time. Because I babysit a lot.

And yet I've never had kids and can't ever picture myself having any.

I named my uterus Maude. I like to tweet about it.

I've flown to Colorado on Christmas Eve. And have had pizza and vodka for breakfast on Christmas morning. We mixed the vodka with Powerade because that's all we could find at the gas station, which was the only place open on Christmas morning.

I think Karen Carpenter's voice is totally gorgeous, even if no one my age even knows who Karen Carpenter was.

I got in big, big trouble with my mom one time because I decided to stop at the candy store on my way home from school one day in the second grade.

I've injured my sister badly enough to have her sent off in an ambulance... not just once, but twice.

I've developed and maintained a pretty impressive coffee addiction. And memorized a lot of random facts and dates and numbers. I'm fairly certain I know the birthdays of just about everyone I've ever met.

At sixteen I attended a summer writing seminar because I'm a nerd and it completely changed my life. And then I went back every summer for years.

I wish I could do that with everything I love. But I hear that living in the past is unhealthy.

So, I'm off to be 23-- which, for the immediate moment, means babysitting and getting some last-minute studying in for an exam I've got tomorrow morning. And also eating cake. And telling my cat that I love him even though he's asleep and can't hear me and doesn't even speak English anyway.

"It's hard to dance with the devil on your back, so shake him off."

- Sarah calls me "green bean" because we both love YA literature and there's a character in the sequel to _Stargirl_ who's five years old and instead of saying "human being" she says "human bean." So, green bean because I am one of Sarah's favorite "beans" and green is my favorite color.

- I have another friend, also named Sarah, who sent me a coffee mug in the mail for my birthday yesterday. She is always doing random nice things for people, and I love her for it. She sent me a condolence card when my cat died this past summer, too, complete with a full color photo of him that she printed off of my Facebook page.

- I am currently obsessed with this song (this live on SNL version in particular because Florence Welch just looks so happy).

Life lately

It's been a really dreary fall in Detroit. I don't think I've ever suffered from seasonal depression, but I'm definitely feeling weird and apprehensive about the coming winter months. I've spent the past few months feeling hungry for sunlight; I can't seem to get enough-- not that there's much to get around here these days. It's rained a lot, and now that we've turned the clocks back an hour, it gets dark around 5 p.m.

But I'm still pretty excited about things. Namely that:

• Sarah will be in Michigan this coming Friday, November 18.
• A week later, on Friday, November 25, she and I are driving to Bowling Green, Kentucky (where the guy she is dating lives-- Sarah will be moving there too after she graduates next month). We'll spend a couple of days together there, and the 27th, I'll take a Greyhound to Michigan and she will fly back to Oklahoma.
• I may visit Saginaw the first weekend in December, but this is still dependent upon my friends' schedules. We'll see, but if that works out, it'll be good, because so many people I care about live there, and I miss them.
• On December 10, I'm going to see Tori Amos in Chicago with Lura (which is ridiculous because I've already seen Interpol and gone to Lollapalooza this year, but whatever).

So much random travel. And somehow I keep winding up in the South, of all places. More important is who you're with, though, and I'm so excited to spend time with Sarah. We haven't seen each other since January, when I flew to Oklahoma to visit her. The other day we had this weird "Internet slumber party" where we got on Skype and braided our hair pig-tail style while drinking (bourbon for Sarah, beer for me), if that tells you anything about what our friendship is like. We are ridiculous, but she means a lot to me. Everyone needs friends like that.

In other news, I'm finishing up the first edition of my zine; I'm glad that I actually made one. I was kind of afraid that I'd talk about wanting to make one, but never actually do it. But it's coming together quite nicely, actually.

I spent this weekend working more than usual (I had to babysit on both Friday evening and Saturday afternoon), so decided to treat myself to Han Nolan's newest book. I'm almost done with it; I love YA literature so unreasonably much. The stuff I have to read for my degree program gets depressing sometimes. YA lit is also kind of depressing (the book I'm reading now addresses issues such as teen pregnancy, infidelity, and suicide). But I feel like it's easier to deal with because I've been there already-- it's only been four and a halfish years since I graduated from high school.

Just trying to keep myself grounded, I guess.

"The world spins madly on."

Yesterday was weird. Really weird. I woke up at 5:30 a.m. and got online. The first thing I saw was a tweet about Occupy Oakland, and my immediate reaction was to just start sobbing. This inevitably led to more of that-- half an hour of it, exactly.

Then I made a pot of coffee. After I drank it, I attempted to start my day over again, so crawled back into bed for a bit and pulled my four-month-old kitten close to me.

Back on the Internet: Read, cry, rinse, repeat. So much for starting over.

One of the things I found was an article in USA Today titled As NOW marks 45 years, is feminism over the hill? Never mind that Shelby Knox, now 25, was the subject of a documentary on the importance of comprehensive sex education. Or that Katie Stack, 23, who won this year's Speak Out for Choice Award from NARAL, is the president of a chapter of NOW which consists mostly of young women. Or that my good friend Stephanie Sutton, 22, was one of the main organizers of SlutWalk Chicago & then traveled to New York City, where she bravely shared a poem she wrote about her sexual assault in front of ~4,000 people gathered there for SlutWalk NYC. And if I may connect this to the subject of OWS, my friend Stef--who lives in Brooklyn and can't find a job even though she had a master's degree by the time she was 22--has been actively involved in OWS and sent me a text message yesterday that said, "I'm running Occupy Student Debt on FB and @OWSDebtDay on Twitter to help have a Generation Debt rally on 11/12 at all OWS events!"

So here's the thing: I actually think that the USA Today article is directly linked to what happened in Oakland earlier this week. If people truly think that no one really cares and it's all just a game, then yeah, cops are going to get away with sneaking up on people and beating the shit out of them. It's not that no one's working hard to change things. It's that it's simply more convenient for people to say that no one gives a shit so that they can continue to uphold the status quo.

Anyway, by that point it was well after 10 a.m. I decided to get some homework done. I actually tend to do better on schoolwork when other stuff is stressing me out, because I use it to keep myself distracted from reality. Except um, I'm a women's studies major. So basically, I'm getting a degree in not turning away, in caring too much. "Distraction" really isn't part of my vocabulary these days.

I had to babysit at 3:30-- pick up the girls (ages five and eight) from school, help them with their homework, feed them dinner, bathe them, and put them to bed before their mom got home. So on my way out the door, I went to grab a book to bring with me; I'd have time to read it after they fell asleep. And I have tons of reading to do for school, but I couldn't decide on anything. My options were to read about this kind of oppression or those other people over there who are being discriminated against or all this other heartbreaking shit that's going on in the world.

And that's when I lost it. Sat in my car outside of the elementary school and cried until the dismissal bell rang. During that time, I used my cell phone to post the following to Twitter:

I really can't cope with shit today. I don't know what my deal is, but I feel like all the work I'm doing will amount to nothing. #mope

Between my women's studies classes & the news & other activism, everything is disheartening. Idk. I don't feel very strong today.

Other thoughts that were running through my head: Why do we bother? History just keeps repeating itself; this obviously is not the first time that there's been news of police brutality at a peaceful protest. And not only that, but it turns out that if we do care and we do work hard and we refuse to give up, PEOPLE WILL STILL FAIL TO ACKNOWLEDGE US.

And then I think of the kids I work with, and how I can't deal with the fact that they're growing up in a world like this-- where they're told that they can be anything they want to be when it flat-out isn't true. The government doesn't give a shit about them. They can grow up and work their asses off and, like Stef, have master's degrees by 22. But then what? They could, like so many already have, realize they've been lied to all along. And then they could protest and raise hell but it won't matter. They'll just be ignored.

I'm posting this because I think that if you deny that you feel helpless and desperate, you'll never be able to work past those feelings and make something good out of it. And, if I'm going to frame this as a response to that USA Today article I read yesterday: Maybe people are failing to recognize that we're here because they're looking for burning bras and rage but THERE ISN'T ANY LEFT RIGHT NOW because feminism has changed over time and currently takes the form of despair.

I'm a young feminist. And I'm angry. But I'm also profoundly sad. The problem isn't that young people don't know what's at stake. All you need to do is take a brief look around to realize that. Instead, I think that because of the current political climate, compassionate people who believe in equality are, in some cases, shamed into keeping their mouths shut. And those who are brave enough to speak out just aren't being heard over the noise of those who insist on holding all the power.

Shifting gears

There are a lot of things I've been thinking about. And writing about.

But not here.

I've kind of neglected this blog recently. Sure, I've updated from time to time, but mostly just to say that I'm still alive and (miraculously!) haven't burned down the kitchen in my attempts to keep myself fed.

This is a far cry from what I was doing with this blog a year ago, at which point I was an active participant in feminist blog carnivals (This is What a Young Feminist Looks Like, NARAL's Blog for Choice Day, and I Stand with Planned Parenthood, among others). I also wrote posts reflecting on books I read, and shared my thoughts on things like education, young adult literature (because I will not-so-secretly always love it-- no matter how old I get), and general 20-something-type stuff: feelings of inadequacy, uncertainty, etc, etc.

But I think it's important to put those posts against the backdrop of where I was at in life last year. At the time, I'd just transferred colleges, moved in with my parents, and was--even though I was hesitant to admit it then--incredibly lonely. My self-indulgent blogging habit (as I came to call it) helped me not only to organize my thoughts and figure out what the hell I was doing, but also kept me connected to people who shared my interests.

And some of those online connections turned out to be far more profound & long-lasting than I would have ever expected. This year, I've had the chance to meet and work with feminists from across the country, and have gotten involved in a couple of projects that I'm really excited about.

(And yes, I've also made some friends at my new school. I couldn't be more glad about that.)

Anyway, I've thinking of making a zine. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I got the idea from my friend Lucy, who, in the editor's note of her inaugural issue, explained her reason for replacing her blog with a zine: "Every time I try to do a blog it ends up feeling like I'm pulling teeth to say what I want and make it politically correct for any future employment. This zine is created on my terms and with my own words."

I have been very busy and active-- infinitely more so than I was a year ago. As I mentioned, I'm incredibly excited about the stuff I've been doing, and have a lot to say about it. But here just isn't the place to share my thoughts on those things.

So I've been looking for a more appropriate venue for sharing my thoughts with a few friends and fellow activists. And just as I was pondering that, a copy of Lucy's new zine arrived in the mail.

I've spent the past couple of weeks reading up on zine-making. Lucy's also given me a few tips. She and I are both former editors-- she of the student newspaper at NMU, and I of two art/literary magazines (Looking Glass in high school and Cardinal Sins at SVSU). And yet this is an endeavor very much unlike either of those publications. I have some graphic design know-how, but don't really intend to use it. Lucy's zine was a mix of things: typed stuff that she photocopied, pages of handwritten material, and a few images. She took pages of 8.5 x 11" computer paper, folded them in half, and stapled the pages together. I will likely do something similar. I like that what she made looks very much like a scrapbook. That, I think, is well-suited to what I hope to accomplish by doing this: something tangible to show for what I've been up to lately-- a more interesting way of communicating with people than Facebook messaging. Maybe it'll eventually evolve into something a little bigger than that, but who knows; it's all a big experiment for me right now.

I'll still update this page from time to time; unlike Lucy, I have no plans to delete my blog anytime soon. When I joined Google+, for example, I didn't leave Facebook. I just post whatever's most appropriate for the audiences on those respective sites. Same thing with this. Assuming my zine actually materializes, it'll certainly have a much more limited audience than my blog does. Therefore, it'll contain different information.

Anyway, that's all for now. See ya around, Internet.

Things I think

This past weekend, I received a zine in the mail from my friend Lucy. It was really cool; she mentioned in her "editor's note" that she'd been inspired in part by the Riot Grrrl movement to create it. Parts were handwritten, others were not. And then she'd photocopied pages from books she's been reading lately. And there were a few images, too.

My favorite page was one where she'd written "Things I think" at the top. And then she just listed stuff. From reading it, I learned that she'd growing out her hair and that she's taking an Arab Islamic history course right now that she loves.

One of the things she really emphasized was the importance of not just embracing chaos, but creating it. That spoke to me because even though I hide it well, I'm pretty uptight, and panic if I feel like I'm not in control of a given situation (even one that I'm not supposed to have control over in the first place).

In an attempt to loosen up a little, I'm going to make a list of things I think. Here goes:

• I really want swoop bangs like Mary Weiss (lead singer of the Shangri-Las), circa 1965. This is something I've been thinking about for years now, so maybe I should just do it already.
• I want to go back to creating music. Singing & playing piano were two of my very favorite things when I was younger. I'd like to go back to it.
• Sometimes I take a deep breath and remind myself that I will not be babysitting forever, because the kids I watch will not be children forever.
• Iron & Wine-induced naps are so, so great.
• Some days I wish that the Internet didn't exist so I'd be forced to get up and go after what really matters to me. The web is the only way I stay connected to the people I care about, most of whom live far away.
• "Super Bass" by Nicki Minaj is my happy song.
• This is slightly morbid, but just like anyone else who writes, I have to admit that I think about death a lot. And I'm convinced that traditional funerals are unnecessarily expensive (I feel the same way about weddings, but that's another rant for another day). I think a great way to stick it to the man would be to research exactly what a traditional funeral would cost and then give that amount of money to a cause that the deceased person was passionate about. And then instead of having a normal wake, just cremate the person and gather at someone's home to reminisce.
• The sound of people talking over each other makes me really anxious and panicky. I don't watch TV for this reason, or listen to radio talk shows. Everyone in my family loves to watch TV though, and there are often several TVs on at one time. It's overwhelming and awful and sometimes I wonder if there's something physically wrong with me, because other people seem to be able to handle a shitstorm of noise. But I just can't.
• I'm constantly being made aware of my own blinders, my own preconceived notions about things and people. I live in a notoriously conservative town. So when I decided to wear overtly political pins on the strap of my tote bag, I assumed that I'd get nothing but shit for it. While I have gotten some (a lady at Kroger told me that she'd pray for me), I've also gotten into great conversations with like-minded people because of the pins I wear. Shame on me for making assumptions.
• Public transit > driving.
• I have a thing for 80s sitcoms. My favorite show of all time is The Golden Girls. I spent my summer watching all 7 seasons of Family Ties on Netfilx (yes, really).

That's it for now, I suppose. I've decided to stop making excuses and just write as much as possible, because no matter how much I try to deny it, writing is and always will be extremely important to me. I need to write more often. And maybe I'll post some of it here; I've kind of neglected this blog lately. :-/ I've felt annoyed with myself because I've had this blog for over two years now and still don't know what the hell I'm doing with it. Can't seem to focus.

But maybe that's because I care about a lot of things. And that can't be bad. Embrace chaos. Create it.

Thanks, Lucy. :)

Lollapalooza and other Chicago adventures

Aside from the fact that I came home from Chicago to news that my cat had passed away while I was out of town, the weekend was fucking awesome.

Going to Lollapalooza was my friend Toni's idea. She spent last summer campaigning for someone who ended up not getting elected, so decided that this summer, she deserved to have as much fun as possible.

So I spent months being a hermit in order to be able to afford to go with her.

'

And damn, was it worth it.

Toni was excited for Lollapalooza itself, as was I. But I felt oddly luckier than her, because I had another good reason to visit Chicago. My friend Stephanie lives there. I've written about her before-- a fellow feminist and poet, she has long been a great source of sanity for me.

A few months ago, she started a literary collective called the West Side School for the Desperate, and offered to let Toni and me crash there for the weekend. I'd been really curious to see it; from talking to her, I knew that it wasn't a normal apartment. But I didn't really know what to expect.

As it turns out, the WSSD is actually listed as a commercial property. It used to be a Good News Bible Church (lulz), and before that, was a bakery. Now, Stephanie and her roommates use the main area as a performance space. Near the back of said performance space, there's this tiny door leading to a kitchen. There's a bathroom back there too. And they sleep in what I guess used to be closets. The walls to those rooms don't go all the way to the ceiling. It's hard to explain without a visual. But it's really interesting and open.

The night Toni and I arrived, Stephanie and her roommates were hosting a poetry workshop at the WSSD. So we sat in on it. It was a weird experience for me, in both good and bad ways.

One of Stephanie's roommates Julie (who also went to high school with us) has a background in visual art, not poetry. But she still wanted to find a way to contribute to the workshop. So she handed each of us a piece of surrealist art and had us write poems about them.

I hadn't written a poem in a very long time, and doing so felt really good.

Workshopping others' pieces was another story. Toni realized just how much of a nerd I was in high school, because I explained to her that that's all I did in my free time. But I hadn't taken part in a productive workshop session since early 2009, so when Stephanie put me on the spot and asked for my opinion on someone's piece, I stumbled through a response. It was weird, because that's something I used to feel confident about.

After the workshop, we all wound up at a nearby karaoke bar, and after a couple of pitchers of beer, Stephanie and I sang "Fuck and Run" by Liz Phair together. It's good to know that even though I've not been active on the poetry scene lately, Stephanie and I are still close-- even though our interest in poetry is the reason our friendship developed in the first place.

The next day, Toni and I finally headed off to Lollapalooza. But not before a delicious lunch at a sushi place across the street from Grant Park.

I love hanging out with people who love seafood as much as I do.

That day, we saw The Kills, The Mountain Goats, Crystal Castles, and Ratatat. The last one was probably my favorite. The only group that was sorta disappointing was Crystal Castles, if only because they stopped playing abruptly and disappeared forever and no one knows why or where they went. :-(

I think Toni and I were both surprised at how utterly exhausted we were after our first day at Lolla. Having been on our feet all day, we literally limped back to the West Side School for the Desperate-- arriving, appropriately, both looking and feeling pretty desperate. We slept for 600 years that night. It felt awesome.

The next day, Toni caught a train to Oak Park to meet up with her aunt for lunch. This gave Stephanie and me some time to spend alone, which was nice.

A few years ago, Stephanie and I got together on Christmas Day and watched a few episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm." One of the episodes we saw was the one about the Larry David Sandwich. In it, Larry has a sandwich named after him. And he's disappointed, because the sandwich is made up of whitefish, cream cheese, and capers. And who the fuck likes those things?

Stephanie and me, that's who. We were like, "Man. People need to stop hating on the Larry David Sandwich. That shit sounds delicious."

We proceeded to raid her parents' fridge for fish. This was especially hilarious because her family had just eaten Christmas dinner, so there were piles and piles of delicious leftovers for us to eat. But did we want any of it? No. We wanted whitefish.

For the record, we didn't find any, and ended up eating leftover ambrosia instead (mmmmm). But since then, we've said that we'd someday eat seafood sandwiches together.

Soon after that, Stephanie discovered a classy sandwich shop in her Chicago neighborhood. She has been nagging me for literally years now to come visit her so that we could eat delicious sandwiches together there.

One in particular is named after Alice Walker. It contains salmon, avocado, cucumber, feta cheese, and wasabi mayo.

So, needless to say, we officially (finally!) declared Saturday, August 6, 2011 "Sandwich Day," and went to this sandwich shop together. And I ate an Alice Walker sandwich and my life was forever changed.

After that, I met Toni downtown for more Lollapalooza madness. We saw the Black Lips, Death From Above 1979, Ellie Goulding, and Beirut. Again, the last one was my favorite, mostly because they played an encore, which is virtually unheard of at Lollapalooza.

Sunday was pretty intense. Stephanie took us to a classy breakfast place for crab benedict. Except they were out of crab benedict. :-( So we ate various other delicious things instead. And then Toni and I headed off to Lollapalooza, day 3.

We got drenched, and our electronic devices (namely my cell phone and her iPod) were taken as casualties. But it was my favorite day of the festival.

We saw Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. in the blazing sun. They did a rock cover of "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston, which was the most hilarious thing I have ever experienced.

And then the clouds rolled in and the temperature dropped 10 degrees. During that time, I ate a delicious vegetarian wrap thing that completely blew my mind.

All I care about is food. Don't judge me.

We headed off to see the Arctic Monkeys, and that's when it started pouring. It poured for at least half an hour, which was long enough to turn the ground to muddy mush. Also, our clothes were completely soaked through.

I danced in it, because I have no shame. You have not lived until you've experienced an outdoor concert in the pouring rain. Just sayin'.

But that was just the beginning. The skies cleared (there was even a rainbow), and once the Arctic Monkeys finished their set, we wandered over to another stage to see Explosions in the Sky.

After that, the skies darkened again and it poured even harder than it had the first time. The whole park flooded. We watched the Foo Fighters from a distance and then got delicious falafel pitas. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, more food.)

We heard the Cold War Kids playing nearby, but didn't stick around long enough to figure out whether they played "Hang Me Up to Dry." It would have been extremely appropriate.

We found our way back to Stephanie's, where we took turns showering. Stephanie had milk and cookies out for us, which was super cute, and then we went to bed at 11 p.m. because we're old and boring.

And that, my friends, was my Lollapalooza/Chicago adventure. It was both excellent and delicious, even if it ended badly.

I'm not just referring to the death of my cat.

When my mom heard about my waterlogged cell phone, her solution to the problem was to dig through drawers until she found my very first cell phone (circa 2005). She took it to Verizon and got it activated for me.

So until it's time for an upgrade, that's what I'll be using, I guess. Lollapalooza and Mother Nature teamed up to force a reunion between me and my 16-year-old self.

Never thought it would have ended that way, but okay. I still count the weekend as a win.

Good friends and good energy

Yesterday, I hung out with my friend Lisa, and this morning, I received a letter from Sarah in the mail. I've decided to write about both of these things because they've filled me with some much needed good energy. And I think that good energy should always be shared.

My mom has been driving me crazy lately. She's a lot more conservative than I am, and in the past few weeks, has been picking fights with me more than usual. I won't go into too much detail, but I get the feeling that she's disappointed in me for not graduating on time, and just wants me to grow up already. And by "grow up" she means "realize that being so freaking liberal isn't a good idea."

Which is ironic, because now that I've transferred to an urban university in one of the most liberal cities in America and picked up a major in women's studies, I've got even more fuel inside of me than usual. So we clash. And it's especially hard, because we live together.

So I've made a point of surrounding myself with people who are sources of good energy. Like Lisa and Sarah. They have done me a world of good. I'm so lucky.

Lisa and I met last year at SVSU, right before I transferred to Wayne State. She was working at Starbucks on campus, and I was hanging out there, doing homework or whatever. It was a Friday and the place was pretty dead, so she came over from behind the counter to tell me that she liked my shoes. Then she added that she'd seen me hanging out there a lot, and had actually admired a lot of my outfits. She told me that she found my creativity really refreshing, because she thought that Saginaw tended to drain the life out of people.

My response was something like, "Well, it's funny that you should say that, because I do feel like Saginaw's draining the life out of me, so I'm transferring."

We added each other on Facebook and surprisingly, kept in touch, mostly because as it turned out, we know a lot of the same people.

She's originally from Royal Oak, which is about half an hour from my hometown of Grosse Pointe. But she's seldom there. After she graduated from SVSU last year, she went to Korea and then Taiwan to teach. And now she's hanging out at home for a couple of weeks before she starts grad school in Arizona.

Given that we're so seldom in the same time zone, I decided that I was going to take advantage of her being in Royal Oak and spend a day with her before she moves. It could have been awkward; we haven't seen each other in well over a year, and have never hung out one on one. But whatever. When I see a good opportunity, I run with it.

I think that both of us were surprised at the extent to which we understood each other. We were really on the same wavelength with everything: namely our taste in weird healthy foods and habit of getting lost in bookstores for hours.

So that's what we did yesterday: We combed through bookshelves and ate dinner at an adorable smoothie/sandwich shop. Then she stopped at the health food store to pick up some falafel (MY FAVORITE THING), and we ended up trying to figure out whether there are any actual health benefits to steel cut oats, or if it's just a texture thing.

You can't have that kind of conversation with just anyone, you know?

Later that night, she told me that she likes hanging out with me because the fact that I'm good at going with the flow and am generally pretty chill about everything removes any anxiety she has about everything.

That surprised me, because I am super anxious about a lot of things much of the time; it's not really a secret. And that's also why it was one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.

I was in a really good mood when I got home last night, and was still in a good mood when I woke up this morning. But then my mom started spewing conservatism at me before I'd had any coffee. So my good mood disappeared. So I checked the mail, and found a really encouraging letter from Sarah.

In it, she said, "I love being out in the woods away from technology--I get so overwhelmed by all the screens in my life sometimes. That's why I admire your wanting to be an activist. I couldn't cope with the need to be connected and in touch and on top of various political happenings; the need to mobilize people, etc. I'd just shut down. But I am really epically proud of your decision to pursue feminism. It isn't easy. But you're brave and tenacious, even if you have to fake both of those things sometimes."

I don't think I need to explain why her note meant so much to me. Also, it was very nicely timed. I'm not going to lie and pretend that I never think about what my life would be like right now if I hadn't transferred and added another major to my degree program. I'd definitely be closer to graduation. I act like that doesn't bother me, but it's hard to watch so many of my friends graduate and not be there, too. If I hadn't left SVSU, though, I'd still be miserable. So it's really validating to hear that what I'm doing to keep myself sane isn't just selfish and ridiculous. I'm sure now more than ever that who I am and what I'm doing is right, even if it is hard sometimes.

Thanks, friends. I don't know what I ever did to deserve you, but I'm glad to have you around. And I hope you are as kind to yourselves as you have been to me.

Love.

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day 15

5 people in your life right now who mean the most.

I'm going to organize this based upon how long I've known these people. The ones I met earliest are at the top.

Stephanie
I met Stephanie when we were juniors at Grosse Pointe South High School. She had just transferred there from Interlochen Arts Academy. And she was one bitchin' poet. (Still is, in fact. She's graduating this weekend with a BA in poetry from Columbia College Chicago.)

As you'll be able to see by glancing at her blog, Stephanie's also one hell of a feminist. She thinks that I give her too much credit for her role in helping me to view the world from a feminist perspective. But I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it; she did a lot to help me become who I am today.

I was a little intimidated by Stephanie when I met her. I don't know why, exactly. Probably because she, like me, wanted nothing to do with most of the people who graduated with us. So I assumed that I was just another one of the people she wanted to avoid.

But I was wrong. Thanks to our similar interests, the two of us became friends. We were kind of huge dicks in those days, and thought we were better than everyone else. We talked a lot of shit and smoked a lot of weed.

But I think that both of us have grown up a lot since then, and our friendship has lasted; Stephanie is one of the most intelligent, compassionate, generous, and reliable people I know. She's also hilarious. And she pours a lot of her energy into really cool/important projects, like West Side School for the Desperate and SlutWalk Chicago.

I actually just sent her an email earlier today asking for some advice on something I'm dealing with, and as I was working on this blog post, she replied with a list of things I need to do right the fuck now in order to fix the situation.

Put Stephanie in charge of any project: running the student poetry organization at Columbia College, forming an arts collective, or dealing with her friends' personal issues, and I assure you, shit will get done.

Sarah
I met Sarah at the Controlled Burn Seminar for Young Writers in 2005. We were in Mary Ann Samyn's poetry workshop together.

But for whatever reason (likely my teenage lack of maturity--Sarah's three years older than I am), our friendship didn't really form until a couple of years later. She graduated from SVSU in 2007, the year I finished high school. And then I enrolled at SVSU, so pestered her with questions (What the fuck is a FAFSA form? Whose classes should I take? Etc, etc).

That fall, she moved to Marquette to pursue an MA at NMU. But she came down to Saginaw damn near every weekend, and we spent a lot of time together. We also spent spring break together that year. We hung out with her adorable pet ferret Bandit and broke a lot of rules.

When she finished her MA and moved to Oklahoma, I was sad because we'd no longer be living in the same state. But it's not like we've ever lived in the same city. So in a way, things didn't change much. I don't usually like talking on the phone, but I really like talking to Sarah, and because we're completely ridiculous, we manage to talk for two to three hours at a time. I also flew out to visit her this past January.

Also, she sends me the most beautiful postcards, usually for no particular occasion. I wish I could say that I did a decent job reciprocating. But I don't. So props to her, fail to me.

And that is why I love Sarah. She's really ambitious academically (finished college in three years, is working on her second Master's degree, etc), but loves me even though I don't know what the fuck I'm doing with my life. She has always been really encouraging and sincere.

(And since I know she reads this: Hi, Sarah! ILY.)

Tracy
When my parents met Tracy, my mom said that she was "charming" and my dad referred to her as "a breath of fresh air." Nearly every time we hang out, Tracy rubs this in my face. (Since then, I've been referred to as "charming" in a letter of recommendation, and just the other day, someone told me via FB message that I am "a source of energy for good vibes," so there).

Tracy and I were roommates during our first two years at SVSU. We first bonded over peach yogurt and wheat bread three days after moving in together; I rather liked her taste in groceries. :)

I didn't know it at the time, but food would become a really important part of our friendship; Tracy loves to cook and is damn good at it. She even managed to whip up some pretty interesting things during the year we lived in a dorm without a real kitchen.

One of the things I love most about Tracy is her wit. She's fucking hilarious. All the time. And she makes it look effortless. Her sister Tricia works in a hair salon, and one day, we paid her a visit and asked her to tame my eyebrows. We were both laughing so hard at everything that came out of Tracy's mouth that finally Tricia said, "Trace, I need you to stop being funny for five seconds so I can get this wax off of Amy's face without screwing up the shape of her eyebrows."

Tracy's the friend I stay with whenever I visit Saginaw. She knows to stock up on coffee when I come. And she puts up with all of my quirks and questionable habits. We don't actually talk much when I'm in Grosse Pointe, but whenever I visit her, it's as if I never left.

Matthew
Matthew and I went to SVSU together; he was the editor-in-chief of Cardinal Sins before me. He's fifteen years older than I am. When I met him, I was a nineteen-year-old freshman; he was in his 30s and a lot closer to graduation than I was.

So if someone had told me then that we'd remain good friends even after he went off to grad school in Baltimore, MD and I transferred to Wayne State, I wouldn't have believed them.

We make an odd pair, but I've realized that that's just the point: Our entire friendship is based on our quirks and fondness for cats. He didn't think it was weird at all that I brought a rubber dinosaur to the student publications office and instead of helping him lay pages, talked to the dinosaur and gave her a name: Gertrude.

In fact, that night he wrote on my FB Wall, "Give Gertie a squeeze for me."

Our friendship hasn't gotten any less strange since Matthew moved out of state. Last month, he sent a package addressed to "Mac the Cat, c/o Amelia Glebocki." It was a mix CD. And yes, there were songs on it that mentioned cats.

I "made Mac send him a thank you card." Matthew told me that I'd done a good job of teaching my cat how to write.

It's just weird enough to work. My guess is that you can only base friendships off of quirks like this if you're both legitimately strange and comfortable with that strangeness.

Rose
Rose and I went to SVSU together, but that's not where we met. We met a year or so after she graduated, at a coffee shop in Saginaw in August of 2009.

I'd gone to a poetry reading there and met up with a bunch of people I knew (among them Matthew). I didn't know Rose at all. But when she walked through the door, all my friends went to her. I guess Rose doesn't come out to play much? Everyone was so happy to see her.

Through the crowd of people, Rose saw me hanging out awkwardly by myself in a corner of the coffee shop where our friends had left me. She came over and said simply, "Looks like you're friends with my friends. And they ditched you for me. Sorry about that. I'm Rose. I'll add you on Facebook when I get home."

I figured that we wouldn't interact much on Facebook, and that I'd end up deleting her from my friends list. Boy, was I wrong about that.

For about a year, we commented on each others' posts. By the time I moved back to Grosse Pointe in May of 2010, we were exchanging lengthy, candid FB messages. And that October, she invited me to her wedding.

So back to Saginaw I went. I hadn't seen her since the day we'd met over a year earlier.

She also came to visit me in GP this past February, which really meant a lot to me.

It's hard to explain how we became friends or why. But things that she says make sense. And she listens. I like to think I do the same for her. I think it's lovely that we used Facebook not only to keep in touch, but to get to know each other in the first place.

Friendship takes effort. I think both of us realize that in a way that a lot of others don't. Getting to know each other online and living far away from each other has really forced us to practice what we preach. And I like that.

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day 12

Bullet your whole day.

Friday, May 6, 2011

(Of course, catch me on a day when I'm not enrolled in classes and don't have to babysit.)

• woke up just before 9
• went downstairs to make coffee/feed the cat
• read for a while (while drinking the coffee I made, natch)
  
• played on the Internet
• received a text message from my friend Victoria, asking if I'd like to get together for dinner/drinks once she got off work at 8:15
• replied to that text message with "yes"
  
• took a shower
• did boring, responsible things like 3 loads of laundry, Swiffering the floor, and cleaning the bathroom
• ate some peach-flavored yogurt and a Nutri Grain bar
  
• read some more
• did the dishes
• read
• decided that I needed a change of scenery, so went to Caribou Coffee by Victoria's work to wait for her
• finished reading _White Teeth_ by Zadie Smith (A+)
• got really excited when I heard an Adele song playing in the coffee shop
• ran into someone I knew from high school and exchanged awkward pleasantries
• went outside to read some more (_When We Were Saints_ by Han Nolan) because it was warm outside and had stopped raining
• marveled at very large dogs walking with their owners
  
• met up with Victoria and her friend Ben
• went to Victoria's so she could change out of her work clothes; wound up watching "Sexy Gay Friend" videos online for half an hour
  
• drove to a 24-hour diner in St. Clair Shores because my uterus demands such foods once per month, if you catch my drift
• ate $14 worth of cheap diner food, wondered why my bill was so high, then remembered that I'd only eaten some yogurt and a Nutri Grain bar thus far that day
  
• went to a nearby bar but left after the first drink because the music was too loud and we're old and boring
• went to another bar, where Victoria was disappointed because they no longer had her favorite beer
• went to another bar, where Ben and Victoria got drunk
• I stayed sober because I'm boring (and had to drive)
  
• we played pool
• the bar closed, so we went home
• went to bed around 3:30 a.m.
  

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day 10

Someone who came into your life unexpectedly and made an impact.

The thing about my best friends is that they've all come into my life in very surprising ways. But I'll save detailed descriptions of specific close friends for a later prompt about five people who mean a lot to me. Here, I will elaborate on a group of people who came into my life a little over a year ago.

I spent three years at SVSU prior to transferring to Wayne State at the beginning of the fall 2010 semester. While I was there, I majored in creative writing. The English Department is split into several areas of focus, literature or creative writing, and English education.

And so not surprisingly, there are all these groups/cliques based on one's individual major within the English Department. And even though SVSU's a small school and elective courses have us taking classes with people from all across the department, people tend to stick to their own area of focus socially. That's not an absolute, obviously, but you get the idea. And I'm sure the same type of thing happens at other schools, too.

For a whole bunch of reasons that I won't get into right now, three years into my degree program, I suddenly found myself torn between transferring or changing my major from creative writing to literature.

For purely social reasons, I sometimes wish I'd chosen the latter.

Because all these awesome literature majors popped into my life right before I left. I have no idea what they saw in me, honestly: the semester before I transferred, I was really standoffish. I knew I'd be leaving, and it was hard enough to say goodbye to all my old friends. I didn't even want to think about making new ones.

But somehow, I did. And I've kept in closer contact with them than I have with some of the people I've known since my freshman year at SVSU.

A year ago today, I was packing up my apartment and preparing to move back to my parents' house in Grosse Pointe. My friend Sara invited me to spend my last night in Saginaw celebrating her birthday with her. I gladly accepted, even though I didn't know many of the people she had invited to her party.

And that's how I got to know Toni. We'd had a couple of classes together, but prior to Sara's party, hadn't said more than a few words to each other. And one year later, we're really good friends. Last weekend, she came down to Detroit to spend the day with me at the DIA and Greektown. It was awesome. And later this summer, we'll be going to Lollapalooza together.

Baffling, given that I met her the day before I moved away. (Thanks, Facebook!)

The same goes for Angela. I met her in a class I took the semester before I transferred. And actually, I dropped that class about two weeks into the term. And then I loaned her my textbook. I figured we wouldn't interact with each other again after she returned it to me at the end of the semester.

But no. As a thank you gift for letting her borrow the book, she bought me (of all things) three tiny (and sparkly--yes, sparkly!) donuts from Starbucks. That was just weird and hilarious enough to give us something to come back to. So after I left, we got to talking online. And then I visited her in Bay City a few times. And she even came down to Grosse Pointe for my birthday this past December.

Furthermore, Stephanie, Jamie, and Carolyn--The three people who took me with them to Pittsburgh this past March--are all literature majors, too. While we were waiting for them to come and pick me up my mom said to me, "I don't remember you mentioning these friends of yours, Amelia. When did you meet them?"

My answer: "I've taken a few classes with Stephanie and Jamie. And I don't actually know Carolyn very well at all."

But now that I've spent three days with her in Pittsburgh, I do!

Weird how that works. It's taught me to be more open minded, really. I wish I'd met them sooner. But I'm glad I was given the chance to get to know them at all. I hope I don't fuck up my chances at opportunities like this in the future.

Summer plans and other random things

Hi, Internet.

I haven't blogged too much this month. And if I may be perfectly honest, t's not because I've been busy with end-of-semester stuff. It's because I've been really down about a lot of things, and everything I wrote sounded whiny. So I just didn't post much.

The political climate in this country is really, really upsetting me. Earlier this month, governor of Michigan Rick Snyder declared the city of Benton Harbor to be in a state of crisis and appointed an "Emergency Financial Manager," who stripped all elected officials in BH of their duties.

Giant democracy fail, I know.

Furthermore, the Detroit Public School System sent layoff notices to every single one of its teachers. We can blame Rick Snyder's budget plan for that, too.

My mom is Canadian. She was born in Sudbury, Ontario, and moved to Detroit when she married my dad (24 years ago yesterday). So I have a lot of relatives in Canada. And one of them--my mom's older sister Kerrie, who lives in the Yukon--offered to let me come live with her for the summer.

I thought it was a pretty neat idea. And not surprisingly, I've been fantasizing about getting out of the US for a while. So Kerrie talked to a friend of hers about getting me a job. I didn't tell too many people about it, because I wasn't sure whether it was going to work out.

And in the end, it didn't work out. I'm oddly not too bummed about that though, because a fear of mine is that a summer in the Yukon would make me lonelier than I already am here in Grosse Pointe.

So, my summer looks like this:

• classes at Wayne State
  
• babysitting/searching for another job
• the release of Bonnie Jo Campbell's novel _Once Upon a River_ at Kalamazoo's Bell's Brewery in July
• my friend Rose having a baby
• Lollapalooza in Chicago with my friend Toni

That last one is sort of a big deal. The day tickets went on sale, Toni wrote on my FB Wall, telling me that I should come with her. As much as I liked the idea, I did not at first intend to say yes. Shit's expensive. Gotta plan a purchase like that in advance.

But then she followed up with a lengthy FB message, detailing how much it would cost. I appreciated the gesture and really like Toni. Besides, I wanted to go.

So I told autonomous adulthood to suck it, asked my mom to loan me some money, and bought a 3-day pass to Lollapalooza.

I just paid it off a couple of days ago, and will spend the next few months being a huge tightwad in order to be able to afford to spend three days in Chicago. But it will be a fabulous end to the summer. :)

Also: Summer would not be summer without summer reading. Recommendations? Here's a(n unrealistically ambitious) list of books that I'm thinking of reading (in no particular order):

• _Sexing the Cherry_ by Jeanette Winterson
• _The Golden Notebook_ by Doris Lessing
• _Midnight's Children_ by Salman Rushdie
  
• _Breeding a Nation: Reproductive Slavery, the Thirteenth Amendment, and the Pursuit of Freedom_ by Pamela D. Bridgewater
• _Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and For Those who Want to Write Them_ by Francine Prose
  
• _The Way We Lived_ by Audrey Jacobs
• _When We Were Saints_ by Han Nolan
  

And speaking of books (especially that last one): My inner 13-year-old is jumping up and down, turning blue, and squealing over and over, "AMELIA, TELL THEM YOUR NEWS!" So: I learned today that HAN NOLAN WILL BE RELEASING A NEW BOOK IN THE FALL. I love her books so much: reading her work has made me a better person. I've blogged before about how much I love her.

Anyway. This post has been all over the place. I apologize. They'll soon go back to being more focused. I've decided to participate in a 30-day blog challenge. Let's see how closely I can stick to it.

I'll leave you with a really great NYT article I read last night, which I think sums up everything that matters to me. Virginia Woolf once wrote about what it would have been like if Shakespeare had had a sister. Well, Benjamin Franklin did have a sister. Her name was Jane Mecom. And she didn't do so well.

And this is relevant today because, as the article states:

"Tea Partiers dressed as Benjamin Franklin call for an end to social services for the poor; and the 'Path to Prosperity' urges a return to 'America’s founding ideals of liberty, limited government and equality under the rule of law.' But the story of Jane Mecom is a reminder that, especially for women, escaping poverty has always depended on the opportunity for an education and the ability to control the size of their families."

On vulnerability

I've been listening to Adele's new album, 21.

Her voice is the most gorgeous thing I have ever heard.

I love Adele. She's young, ambitious, and (I'll say it again) has an incredible voice. Also, she recently told Rolling Stone, "I don't make music for eyes. I make music for ears."

So much win in those words.

Until recently though, I took issue with most of her lyrics. It bothered me that someone as strong and beautiful as Adele was on her knees in so many songs, most of which, she has told the public, were inspired by a bad breakup.

But then I started thinking about my own writing habits. And I came across a note I made to myself in January of 2009:

I don't know why I'm so opposed to sounding vulnerable in a poem when I know that I'm the narrator. Like, if I take on the voice of someone else, I have no problem with sounding vulnerable. But when I know it's me narrating, I can't. I have to be a super strong feminist allthefreakingtime. So. My new goal is to write a poem in which I, as narrator, expose my vulnerability.

I never wrote it.

Last night I was out at a bar with a friend from high school. And I ran into someone I met at SVSU, of all places. This particular person was once a very close friend of mine, but we aren't really in touch anymore for a lot of complicated reasons. There is a lot of pain connected to my friendship with her. So it hurt to see her again, and brought to the surface a lot of emotions I didn't exactly want to deal with.

So I look at Adele, who confronts her pain, and I have to admire that. It takes strength to admit that you've been betrayed, because in doing so, you admit that you trusted someone you perhaps should not have.

That's something I struggle with because if you admit all of that to yourself, you then have to acknowledge the fact that some people do some pretty hurtful shit. And it's hard to accept that if your entire philosophy is built around loving everyone.

I own a copy of Ani DiFranco's album Canon. And between two uncharacteristically sad songs, she says:

And so now like, it's so funny like, all the righteous babes--well, not all of 'em, just a few who have got their panties on a little too tight--they're all up in a twitch because they're like, "Oh, well, you fucking wench, just writing about like, love n' shit. What happened to your politics? What are you just gonna sell out? Is this a conscious move away from overly political songwriting?" And I'm like, "No man. It's just. I got kind of... distracted."

Distraction then, is good. And necessary. You can't be strong if you merely bury your weaknesses/vulnerabilities. Because then they will inevitably turn up out of the blue and join you for a drink right before final exams.

Much as I've been trying to deny it all this time, the truth is that (as Adele puts it), "Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead."

Guess I'm off to write some poems about the times when "it hurt instead."

Let's take a spontaneous trip to Pittsburgh!

On Wednesday afternoon, I was sitting at the Cass Cafe near Wayne State, wasting time on Facebook. My friend Jamie (who is a student at SVSU) had posted a status about how she was packing her bags and heading to Pittsburgh for the weekend with a band of nerdy English majors.

Nerdy English major that I am, I offered love and cookies in exchange for a ride to Pennsylvania.

Moments later, having seen my comment, my friend Stephanie offered to take me along. Apparently, one of the people who was supposed to be going on the trip couldn't get time off work, so Stephanie had an extra spot in her car.

I eagerly said yes and spent the next hour or so frantically packing and wiggling my way out of work. And to Pittsburgh we went.

I don't know why I'm blogging about it, really. I don't see this post benefiting anyone other than me. But I have to write about it because I had a damn good time. And it's been a while since I've enjoyed myself that thoroughly.

Their reason for going to Pittsburgh was the Sigma Tau Delta International Convention. I'd never been to a conference before; the experience left me feeling personally validated, but professionally doomed. In other words, I'm smarter than I feel and need to tell my various insecurities to shove it. But smart though I might be, I'm getting a degree deemed useless by people who are more pragmatic than I am. So I need to find someone willing to let me live in their basement for the rest of my life, because I'm going to be penniless. (Anyone? Anyone? As always, I will provide love and cookies.)

But at least I'm not the only one who's freaking out about the future. During our three days in Pittsburgh, we had a lot of coffee-fueled conversations at 2 a.m.

And by day (when not at the conference or napping), we wandered around Pittsburgh and were exceedingly silly (as evidenced in the photo included with this post). From left to right: Carolyn, Jamie, me, and Stephanie in the oldest building in Pittsburgh. We stumbled upon it accidentally while waiting for Carolyn to pee in an outhouse (let me reiterate: we were very silly). Naturally, the tiny one in a bonnet got to hold the gun. :-)

(But don't worry. I'm a pacifist in real life, I swear.)

On Thursday night, we ate at a Lebanese restaurant called Kassab's (recommended to us to a literature professor at SVSU who happens to be from Pittsburgh). Anyone who knows me knows that I love food about a thousand times more than the average person. My mom has said that watching me eat is like watching a kid open gifts on Christmas morning.

And Lebanese food just happens to be way up there on my list of favorites. So I was particularly vocal about how much I loved the falafel and stuffed grape leaves. In fact, by the end of the weekend, I'd acquired a new nickname: Falfy. And the others were ready to lock me in isolation out of fear that I'd eat their souls. I am not exaggerating.

Other highlights:

• The view from the condo where we stayed. Pittsburgh at night is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.
• The shower at the condo. Seriously, hear me out on this. Settings included "massage" and "monsoon." Monsoon!
• The condo was up on a mountain (hence the gorgeous view). So naturally, whenever we drove up there we sang, "She'll be comin' around the mountain when she comes..."
  

I could go on, but you get the idea. Suffice it to say that the trip was amazing. My friends are brilliant; this weekend was full of nerdy hilarity (and some not-so-nerdy hilarity, too). I lost count of how many times I said, "I am so, so happy right now."

I didn't realize how much I had needed that spontaneous vacation until I got back home to Grosse Pointe [insert sigh here].

What the hell am I doing with my life? There is a world out there, and I need to be part of it.

A few words on education

Yesterday my friend Dan (who is a student at SVSU) posted a note on Facebook titled "The Cold War of Life." It's about what he's learning at school, and how that contributes to the greater picture (which is a topic I've wanted to write about). But until I read what Dan wrote, I wasn't sure how to frame what I wanted to say.

I'll start with an excerpt from his post. It's kind of long, but I wouldn't be sharing it if I didn't think it was worth your while to read it.

I have just come to the realization that my current semester is a bit of a downer. In one class, I am learning the historical beginnings of colonization and enslavement of native peoples by capitalists, leading to the current international economy and the division of labor that exploits the weak by multi-national corporations, who use economical power to control corrupt, undemocratic, resource-rich governments. In another class, I am learning about the Cold War. Additionally, during the day, I am being bombarded by negative information whenever I try to catch up on current events. But what I thought was another internal, moral crisis actually led me back to upholding my original principles and values.

Learning about the Cold War has taught me that it was just like life. George Kennan, writing from his insightful vantage point as a post-WWII diplomat, outlined what was to become the main American policy towards the Soviet Union for the next four decades, with an article (and a byline of “Mr. X”) called “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in the magazine Foreign Policy. In the article, he notes that the Russian Revolution demonstrated the youthful impatience of revolutionaries who tried to industrialize a mostly-agrarian society too quickly. This swift change of policy and ideology led to distrust from Lenin and Stalin, on down to the peasant, and created a culture of fear and totalitarianism. Additionally, Kennan notes that because one ideology (capitalism or communism) will eventually “win” due to the fatal flaws of the other. Although Stalin believed capitalism would implode under the weight of its own greed and imperialism, Kennan believed the opposite, that communism would fall due to the rigid top-down nature of the Communist Party system and the lack of easy governmental transition upon the death of the Chairman. Kennan turned out to be right, while Stalin is remembered as a paranoid genocidal maniac and Russia is a shadow of what he knew when he lived. To meet this end, Kennan focused on a policy of vigorous “containment” toward the Russians, that if communism can be prevented to spread, the system would eventually splinter and bring change to an oppressive government that had to keep its people in with barbed wire.

Which brings me to my main point: Patience will bring change. We can respect each others’ ideologies because when it comes down to it, the truth will always come out, even under the most authoritarian of regimes, both here and abroad. When Martin Luther wrote out his complaints regarding the selling of indulgences by corrupt Catholic Church officials (which was an offense punishable by death), he had no idea that his little screed would literally change the known world. One little action propelled peasants, nations, kings, and popes into the boxing ring of competing ideologies; one spark from a lowly Catholic monk set off a cultural bonfire that led to new ideas such as national sovereignty, liberalism, the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, and the expansion of capitalism and democracy, just to name a handful. All the previous events listed brought us to a new era of humanity, forever separating us from the base animal with violent, wild instinct.

He goes on to give other examples of how seemingly small acts by patient individuals have ultimately changed the world for the better. After he posted the note, he updated his status with a quote from an individual whose identity is unknown: "Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow--that is patience."

Reading that, I thought about how school has been making me feel lately. I love it, but feel that it needs to be a bigger part of my life, because I cannot possibly keep the experience contained to the classroom.

And yet, that's what I find myself doing. I'm a transfer student who lives with her parents twenty minutes from campus. So I often feel really lonely. The only people I spend a significant amount of time with are my parents (who didn't go to college) and the girls I babysit (they're four and seven--so it's not exactly possible to discuss my 5000-level English and women's studies classes with them).

Last night in class, my professor was talking about the importance of critical pedagogy. And my internal monologue was like, "Oh. This is why you feel so crazy and alone. Because you understand that this needs to be an ongoing discussion. And yet you feel as if the only person you have to talk to is yourself."

I got really mopey when I realized that everything I'm learning at school (and pretty much everything I believe in, for that matter) stands in direct opposition to the structure and belief system of the world in which I live. For example, we were talking in English class recently about how it's bullshit that college has basically been an unlearning of K-12's version of American history. What did we learn about Columbus? That he came over to what is now the United States and had a nice dinner with the people who lived there before he did. And what did we learn about slaves? That they were freed.

That in particular is really hard for me, because I babysit a first grader and see how that's exactly what she's being taught to accept as fact. And I feel helpless to stop it. What's the point of even teaching that? Her options are to either go to college and unlearn it all, or keep believing that forever. I have a hard time seeing how we've supposedly "come so far" as a nation when we're still teaching children this stuff, you know?

So I see a great danger in isolation: my keeping what I learn at school confined to a classroom at Wayne State; or telling first graders that what happened in the past will stay there, and has nothing to do with life as it is now.

Yesterday in class, we were talking about how Harriet Jacobs, who wrote _Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl_, tried to get white women in the north to understand her perspective. And to do that, she had to try to identify with them, even though she knew that her experience was vastly different from theirs. Her audience embraced the "cult of true womanhood," believing that women should be pious, religious, confined to the domestic sphere, and above all else, completely devoted to their children.

In order to get them to sympathize with her, Jacobs had to prove that she actually fit into that very mold. She justified the decisions she made by making her audience aware of the circumstances surrounding her situation as a slave. Even though she spent seven years hiding in an attic, she explained that she still loved her children; she made clothes for them. She used these examples to explain why she should not be held to the same standard as the white women to whom she told her story (thus dismantling the idea of the "cult of true womanhood," woo hoo)!

I got home last night and started thinking about how relevant that still is, almost two hundred years later. The next book I have to read for that class is _Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty_ by Dorothy Roberts. I haven't actually opened it yet, but I don't see how it's such a dramatic shift from our discussion of motherhood in the time of slavery in the U.S. There's a blurb from Ms. Magazine on the cover: "Compelling...Deftly shows how distorted and racist constructions of black motherhood have affected politics, law, and policy in the United States." Um, black welfare mother stereotype, anyone?

And so, the helplessness. I worry that nothing will ever change or get better. I want to quit real life and devote all my time to activism. But instead I gotta be a grown up and spend my time doing my part to support the very structure I oppose. And I do that by earning money babysitting.

But Dan's post showed me how I can, in my own little way, carry what I'm learning in school over to other aspects of my life. The other day I had a conversation with the four-year-old I babysit. She had just gotten home from ballet class and asked me why some of her classmates are boys. We had a little chat about how boys can take ballet, too. (And girls can do things that have been traditionally only associated with boys!)

That seems so insignificant, though. Maybe my talk with her won't change a damn thing. But maybe it will. And that hope is what tells me that I ought to continue to do things like that, however small and seemingly pointless. And I'll be patient. Not lazy, not passive. But patient.

Let's be honest for a second, here.

Tomorrow I'll be twenty-two (which I guess just means that I can -officially- relate to just about every single Lily Allen song ever written). This one's my favorite.

And like everyone else, I'm trying to convince myself that it's okay--okay to be unsure, okay not to know, okay to acknowledge that I feel a little lost (or a lot lost, even). Okay to admit that even if I am strong, I often don't feel that way.

People keep asking when I plan to graduate from college. The truth is that I don't really know or even care. I finally looked at my credits and figured out that I'll probably be able to graduate sometime in 2012. But I only did that so I'd have a "real answer"to give. I'll get there when I get there. It's kind of hard to pinpoint it when I'm not even sure what "getting there" means to me yet.

I spent the day working on my women's studies final--a series of short essay-length responses to questions about articles we've read throughout the semester. I was geeking out so hard. I loved it. I'm lucky. At least I know that there's still something out there I love, even if I don't quite have a firm grasp on it just yet.

I keep repeating to myself that we're all different--myself included. And we all have our own ways of handling things.

Tragedy, for instance, affects me more profoundly than it does many people, no matter how distant it is from me. And I was surrounded by a lot of it last year. I felt as though I was expected to to push it aside because it wasn't "mine." My friend Liz (who's my age) lost her parents and brother suddenly. A month later, Tracy's house burned down. And three months after that, Sharon's six-year-old daughter drowned in Otsego Lake during a church outing.

I tried to focus on my own shit. At the time, I was very busy with work I didn't really find fulfilling. The trouble wasn't the workload or even the fact that I didn't find it meaningful, but rather, that I couldn't bring myself to admit it. And time was a'wastin'.

Everything that had happened to Liz, Tracy, and Sharon, plus the fact that I was still closeted and thus living dishonestly, made me realize that life's too short. Well-intentioned adults (my parents, professors, etc) kept telling me to chill out because I was only twenty and had all kinds of time to figure shit out. But I had learned the hard way (by attending a funeral for a six-year-old) that you don't know how much (or how little) time you have. No one can really afford to live the way I was living--if you can even call it living.

So this year, I've tried really hard to be honest. I came out to my parents (and just about everyone else who hadn't known). I gave up on editing, transferred colleges, and am undoubtedly happier than I was a year ago.

But since I'm being honest, I'll admit that I'm still scared shitless. I don't really know what's next and know that it's not over because I'm still living and therefore, becoming.

Life is messy. I am messy. Admit it, you're messy too.

It'll be okay.

Thanksgiving

Okay, so I guess I take back what I said in an earlier post about not being a fan of holidays. I freaking love Thanksgiving. This is because like birthdays, Thanksgiving gives me a chance to celebrate who and what I love. (I also like that it just means I get to eat myself into a food coma and drink wine and lie around doing nothing on a weekday. And Thursday is actually my busiest day of the week this semester, so I'm really diggin' the fact that I'm writing this from the comfort of my bed.)

So, here's a (non-exhaustive) list of things I'm thankful for, in no particular order:

1) My mom
...Without whom there would be no Thanksgiving dinner (or no dinner ever, for that matter). Who comes along with me on all my crazy adventures (i.e. "let's skip real life today and go see Michael Franti in Ann Arbor"). Who does all kinds of wonderful things; it'd take me a lifetime to list 'em all.

2) The "blogosphere"
I usually read a lot in the summer, but for some reason, that didn't happen this year. Instead, I watched oily pelicans on the news and when that became too overwhelming, I'd switch to The Golden Girls. Rinse, repeat. I was pretty bummed out about it. I did read a few books: short novels, collections of poetry, that sort of thing. But it didn't occur to me to ditch books altogether and turn to the Internet for good reading material.

Thanks to the "THIS IS WHAT A YOUNG FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE" blog carnival (held this past August), I was made aware of just how many blogs are out there. There are the big ones (like Feministing), and the funny ones (like Hyperbole and a Half), and then there are the ones written by college students procrastinating on their homework (ahem). It's endlessly interesting to me, how much is out there, and how many perspectives there are. I was telling my mom the other day about how much I love blogging. It's got me reading and writing again. I've really missed that. No wonder I'm happier now than I was at this time last year.

3) Everyone's support when I came out to my parents
Even though my parents are wonderful and took it well, telling them I'm gay was still one of the most draining experiences of my life. I was blown away by all the support I received from people who helped me through it: my fellow LGBT friends who answered my endless questions about their coming out experiences, people who listened even if they couldn't relate, and everyone who left comments on my Facebook page and here on Blogger. It meant so much. I say this because, to put it lightly, things haven't gone as well with my extended family. It's been really hard, actually, and I'm not ready to write about it yet. But suffice it to say that all the support I've received has given me the strength to deal with the reactions of those who haven't been accepting.

4) Angela
I met Angela in an English class earlier this year--right before I transferred to Wayne State. I was hesitant to make new friends that semester, because I knew I'd soon be leaving SVSU. Therefore, I was purposely standoffish. I regret that now. She has done a better job of keeping in touch with me since I moved than anyone else has (and that really says something, because I'm still very close with quite a few people from the Saginaw/Bay City area). But lately, Angela and I have talked literally every day, and she's coming to visit next month. It's wonderful, and I'm sorry that I was at first so hell bent on preventing this friendship from forming. Lesson learned.

5) Libraries
Okay, I know it's the 21st century and all, but libraries are awesome. I say this as someone who hasn't read very many books recently. I say it as someone who spends way too much time online. I still think libraries are fabulous. I hope they never go away. Also, if you live in Michigan and don't use MeLCat, you are missing out. Interlibrary loans = endless knowledge, endless geekdom, and endless fun...for free! This nerd is getting off her soap box now. But really, libraries win.

I should sign off now and help my mom do whatever she's doin' in the kitchen. Happy Turkey Day, everyone. What are you thankful for?

How I became a feminist

A week or so ago, I was poking around on Twitter and came across a link to this post titled "How I Became a Feminist." And I realized that while I've blogged quite a bit about feminism, I haven't actually written about how I got here in the first place.

I come from a very traditional family. My dad's the breadwinner, and my mom's always done the stay-at-home thing. I like to think that my parents might not have assumed traditional gender roles had they been given the chance to figure out what else was out there, though. They were both raised in very traditional settings, and married young.

Kids worry about all kinds of weird things. And because my parents were the people with whom I spent the majority of my time, I tried to picture myself in their shoes and worried incessantly about what my future would be like. Neither of my parents were born in the United States; they're not native speakers of English. I remember thinking that in order to ever be considered a "real adult," I, like my parents, would have to learn a whole new language/culture. And it scared the shit out of me.

But the funny thing is that in becoming a feminist, I've done exactly that.

Although feminism was not a part of my upbringing, it entered my consciousness when I was still very young--long before I had a word for it. I distinctly remember being in the first grade and going to a friend's house after school to play for a few hours. I was surprised to find a babysitter there instead of my friend's mom. I'd never had a babysitter before, and asked my friend where her mom had gone.

"She's at work," my friend replied (with a tone suggesting I was an idiot for not having known that instinctively).

She didn't know it, but she had, in only three words, eliminated the anxiety I'd felt about my future. I didn't have to grow up to be a stay-at-home mom. Maybe that meant I didn't have to be a mother at all. Maybe I didn't even have to get married. To this day, I think this is the most liberating realization I've ever made: Holy crap, people have all kinds of ways of going about things; there are choices.

From that point forward, I looked for affirmations of what I'd discovered at my friend's house: that as a female, I was equal to males and wasn't limited to gender-specific roles in society. This was hard to do, being that I was an elementary school student with a limited vocabulary. (Feminism? What's that?) But I got lucky anyway. I grew up in the 1990s--a time when women dominated the music scene. My mom was a big Tracy Chapman fan. And I don't even think she paid all that much attention to the socially conscious lyrics, but I couldn't help but take notice. I've always had a fascination with language, and can't deny that those lyrics shaped the perspective from which I viewed the world.

I finally came to identify as a feminist as a high school senior. I have my friend Stephanie to thank for that. She had transferred from Interlochen Arts Academy, where she'd focused on her poetry. That year, I was the editor-in-chief of Looking Glass, the art/literary journal at school, and Stephanie joined my editorial staff. We were also in the same AP literature and creative writing classes.

She and I entered the same poetry contests and submitted our work to the same journals. We were both recognized with Detroit Free Press Writing Awards and placed in the Albion College Michigan High School Poetry Contest. We were on the school poetry slam team, and got to compete at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island.

Because of that, Stephanie and I got to spend a lot of time traveling around the state together, and I took advantage of every opportunity to pick her brain. I was passionate about writing, but she brought something to hers that was missing from mine: focus in terms of subject matter. She viewed the world through a feminist lens, and was able to articulate everything I'd believed in all my life, but had never had the words for.

Armed with what Stephanie had taught me, I enrolled at SVSU. Not having her around actually gave me the chance to further develop my own views. And the classes I took gave me a safe environment in which to do that.

I took a zillion English classes at SVSU, but none of them had anything about gender or feminism in their titles. Still, many of my professors did an excellent job of integrating feminism into their classes--such an excellent job, in fact, that I craved more and was disappointed when I had trouble finding it. Most of what I learned about feminism during my years at SVSU came from the English classes I took, rather than classes such as The Psychology of Sex, Sexuality, and Gender.

And so I learned firsthand what makes women's studies an interdisciplinary topic. I find it impossible to separate feminism from any of my other interests. It's a mindset, a lifestyle. I don't think I ever "became a feminist," exactly. I just learned that there was a word for my version of common sense. I try my best every day to use that word well and often.

What's funny is that even though I've openly identified as a feminist for quite a few years now, I'm still surprised whenever I hear anyone refer to my "reputation" as such. Maybe that's because of the negative connotation. Again, I don't separate feminism from anything else I believe in or do. It's not like I'm this average, ordinary woman with a "secret life" as a feminist behind the scenes. Please.

I'm still learning, and will be as long as I live. That's what's so incredible about it. I'm in awe of just how much I don't know. Maybe that means I'm still becoming a feminist (which would explain why I can't pinpoint the moment when I "became" one).