Unspokens

I've been telling myself to grow up lately, usually with expletives involved, but I do try my best to keep the expletives inside of my head instead of out in the world where they could do some real damage. And it's not all the time, before you get worried about my mental state, just those times when you turn a corner or walk into an empty room and take a second to collapse under the pressure of thoughts you'd rather not be thinking.

Because adults can do that, right? They can just stop thinking about something they don't want to be thinking about and it doesn't bother them anymore, yeah? Much better than Barney's "just be awesome instead" idea. That's clearly why I need to grow up: so I can get that skill of selectively forgetting. It has to come in handy.

I definitely know kids can't do it. Kids and teenagers and college kids, we all are held sway by the things in our heads, the ideas we like to focus on and the ideas that don't leave us alone. You ever promise a kid ice cream or cotton candy and forget about it? They sure didn't, and they will remind you every second of every day until you drive over to the State Fair and buy them a package of that blue and pink sugary goodness. Speaking as a writer who has a tendency to border on the emo Myspace side of melodramatic, I can tell you for a fact that any of the billion problems accosting the regular teenager can get stuck in their head and run a little racetrack rut in their brains until every creative and bland method of expression has exhausted it. Ideas, thoughts, they're out to get us, really.

Of course, thoughts and ideas lead to actions. I remember listening to the other girls giving prayer requests at my Bible study in high school and they all had these unspoken prayer concerns. It was a codeword that meant that there was something going on about which they either couldn't or didn't want to talk in front of the adults (or the other rather puritan girls in the room who would definitely, for sure, no chance of it happening any other way, judge them for whatever it was that was bothering them). but for which they knew they needed prayer. I head those unspokens and I never thought it could mean anything serious. The unspokens of a high school girl must be something as frivolous as being upset over a guy who didn't like her back, not getting enough attention, being worried that she's too vain, or something.

But now I'm on the other side of that, where I have a rather large unspoken taking up a lot of my thought time and I would dearly love a prayer group to take that need to and have it lifted up. I mean, I don't know what prayer does, but it comforts me to think that something's being done and to see that proof of caring in a group.   Then again, maybe I'm just hanging onto an idea so I can shoulder this burden and get some attention by having an unspoken. God, it's so easy to be cynical about myself. Add that to the list of things at which I excel.

You never know. Maybe this unspoken will teach me a better way to deal with other's unspokens. Maybe that's what adults actually do- they just learn to deal with it and there's no magic trick involved. Ugh, why is it that half the inspirational posters lie to you and the other half try to make up for that first half by presenting what has now become cliche bits of counter-intuitive knowledge?

Sorry for all the posts about growing up and not being an adult and thinking about what adults do. It's just that I thought I'd have it all figured out by now, not being in the oft-mentioned position of finding out that no one's got it figured out just yet. Sometimes I wish someone would sit me down, give me and affirmation that high school me was good and college me was good and post college me has a lot of potential to prove how much good she can bring to the world. And then someone needs to sit down high school me and tell her not to judge post-college me because she's not that bad of a person besides the fact that she washed her sheets yesterday and has been too lazy to make up her bed and has been sleeping under extra blankets on top of her comforter while trying not to kick the pile of clean sheets off her mattress and onto the floor. Because I think high school me would judge me for that, among other things.

That's not my unspoken, by the way.

Our Stars

You know what I'm really good at? Running over acorns with my car. They're tiny and they're everywhere and I can hear them crunch when I back out as I'm leaving my apartment. I basically do half the squirrels' job for them. Really, I should get a medal. Win one for the humpbacked squirrel who has difficulty eating with no one to break his acorns for him!  

I'm also pretty good at pointing out stars, knowing which planets are up, explaining some astronomy topics. It's kinda my job right now. I was working an observing session at a wedding, sometimes manning the scopes but mostly doing star tours and answering questions. After one rather lengthy session with plenty of good questions and conversation, one of the ladies there suggested that I read Steve Job's commencement speech at Stanford because it was all about finding what you love and making that your job, and, clearly, I had found what I loved. I had heard a similar thing from a couple visiting the planetarium earlier that day, who came by after the show to ask a question and tell me how good they thought I was at giving shows. So, with all that, I guess I have found what I'm meant to have been doing all along. 

Then again, someone wrote in to complain that my show didn't fit his expectations and that neither he nor his grandchildren gained anything from the show. So maybe I'm not as good at this as I thought and maybe I'm not in the right place after all. On the other side of the seesaw, though, you can't make everybody happy all of the time. You just gotta think these things through. 

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I mostly just retweet other people's stuff, things that I find interesting or things that I think need attention from the masses. In the alternate universe where I'm well-known and important, what I retweet would make a difference, but right now, it's just a collection of articles I'd like to peruse later. Like this one, about dropouts and failures fueling the US economy. Now, I don't intend to start a new business but I do intend to fail. Well, not really intend, I just know that it's inevitable. I like the idea of being comfortable with failure, mostly because I'm not and I want to be. The idea of doing something badly, or just having the odds against you, and learning to pick yourself back up is really appealing to me, which is impressive considering how overdone it is in inspirational montages and the like. 

Because I tend not to fail. My life basically works out for me. And that bothers me, especially when so many other people's lives don't work out for them. I didn't do anything to deserve the good luck and veritable blessings I've gotten over the course of my life. I tend to pick things I can do and then do them well. Setting out on a journey that might end in failure isn't something I've ever done. I want to change that. I mean, I'm certainly not asking for hard times. There's enough of that going around. If you could grow by vicarious pain, we would have the best generation of people and leaders in the history of humankind. But I think it's time that I stopped waiting for my real life to begin and started making it happen. 

I'm just not quite sure how to do that. 

And as far as having found my passion, I went to hear John Green speak last Thursday and seriously considered writing as a profession. Part of the talk was about his new book, The Fault in Our Stars, for which I am beyond excited and which I shamelessly link to on Amazon here, and part of it was about the ideas that are in the book and the struggle that ensues when you look at the world and see how much pain there is, and how much of it gets doled out to the innocent. And I swear, I was hanging on every word, feeling like I was jerked back to reality when my friend said something to me or the high school girls in front of me shouted out something. I didn't leave the talk with questions answered. In fact, I left feeling unsettled, but that might just be because it was John Green speaking. My best friend, when recommending Paper Towns to me, said that you shouldn't read his books if you're already in a funny mood, because they make you think. But I love the way his books make me think and the way he uses stories to talk about bigger things, bigger themes. And there's always hope, and I like that. I want to do that in my life. I want to make something, give something to the world that makes everyone who sees it or hears it or reads it think and hope. 

Have you ever heard an organist say that they're really meant to be an organist because they need to hear the sermon twice? I've heard at least two church musicians say it, so it must be a thing. Well, I think that, for right now, I'm meant to work in a planetarium because every day, I'm reminded of how tiny and insignificant our planet is and might be in the grand scheme of the universe. I need that dose of thoughtful humility so I remember that the simple shower of leaves outside my window wasn't shaken down for me. It's just the way the universe works and the universe is a big place and I am so small. But I can change my corner of the universe, and make it better and that has to count for something. 

So maybe that's my passion. Eh, maybe not. It's a pretty vague passion. 

Maybe I'll just stick to naming our stars. 

Single

I have in my general acquaintance several men of the thirty to forty age range who are really good guys. They all have a family or are starting one, are great with kids, good at what they do for a living and seem to be very kind and caring human individuals. One of them in particular I love watching interact with his wife because they always seem like they're happy to be together. I look at them and think, "I want that."

I've also been thinking a little bit about the idea of extended adolescence since that's what people seem to be calling the phase of life in which most of my friends and I exist. We're not adults and we're not viewed that way by society. I don't really know how I feel about it, having this opportunity to pursue my dreams without any expectations of a family weighing me down, wondering about how I'm contributing to society while still feeling like I'm living on God's good graces. It's a privileged burden and I feel terrible that I have such choice and freedom in my world. I can do anything but I feel like I pick a job and settle down.

Having had no classes or formal education of any kind in gender studies, it didn't really strike me to think about the different effects extended adolescence has on men versus women, but I found this article about it to be fascinating, true and explanatory. It also gave me a sense of relief. See! There's a complex sociological reason why I'm single!

That was really how I was going to phrase this whole idea that I've been rolling around. It was going to be a vaguely angry fake letter to the guys around me, imploring them to grow up and get some of the characteristics of the good men I see around me so I can find someone and stop spending so much time alone. For a while I felt vindicated by the article. It's not my fault that I'm picky- guys really are different now from my grandparents' generation, from my parents' generation. In the world of college graduates, they're stuck with over-achieving women who don't need them and who are competing for the same jobs for which they're applying. It's different. It means a new understanding of the families we'll have, if we have them at all.

Because I want it all, but not right now. I want a career, though it might take me a while to get to the career stage, and I also want a family. And I want someone beside me the whole time who's figuring out what he's going to do with his life and who's going to be happy bringing other lives into this world with me to ponder their own complex social structures. Really, what I want in my life is one of those men who have their lives figured out, who are starting their families and enjoying the comfortable middle road of their lives after the tumultuous path they took to get there because I want my life to be that settled. Or as settled as life gets, anyway.

Then again, I potentially have several more years to watch Star Wars, make s'mores in my microwave and seriously discuss the merits of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. And apparently there are guys out there who are in the exact same boat. Really, there are worse ways to spend the time it's going to take the world to figure us out.

And as long as the world gives me the chance to bring my kids to the quad to play, it can take its sweet time figuring us out.

Changing

I couldn't find an appropriate place to link to it, but I think you should have a chortle at the premise for this movie entitled Leaves of Grass. Basically, you're welcome. Now, onto my real point(s).

At the beginning of the summer, I bought Leaves of Grass (and Paper Towns and An Abundance of Katherines) in preparation for Europe because through a combination of 31 Jokes for Nerds and the Anglerfish Song, I ended up watching a lot of Vlogbrothers videos in one go and fell in love with John Green's ideas, enough to, you know, go read a book or something. Leaves of Grass was a little bit of an impulse buy- I didn't know it'd be such a big part of Paper Towns, but two of my good friends had mentioned it and I wanted to broaden my horizons, so I picked it up (and besides, Whitman was a solid quote machine). It was a pocket-sized version (if you habitually wear trench coats) and it fit quite easily in the mesh side pocket of my little brother's purple extra camping backpack that wandered around nine countries with me all summer.

It also stayed in that pocket pretty much the whole summer.

I'm not really sure how the conversation got started but I distinctly remember walking up the steps to the train station in Venice in the rain, talking to Christine about how I wanted to read Leaves of Grass and enjoy poetry more and she said, "But isn't that just changing yourself for other people?" And I think I stammered and hand waved and ended up agreeing with her, partially because I didn't have a good counter argument, partially because I think the people in front of us spoke English and were listening to the conversation and partially because I've spent so much of my life changing myself for other people that it's a bit of a foreign concept to change simply because I want to change.

I'm only about halfway through Song of Myself and that's even after some intense attempts at poetry reading while I've been back. I get distracted by the imagery, I get distracted by words, I can't focus for long enough, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I really must have only wanted to change so that people I like will like me more and we'll have more in common, otherwise I would have read the whole poem and have thought deep thoughts about it. I dunno, I'm just not that into poetry and try though I might, I am actually and truly more interested in my particle physics textbook than Walt Whitman. Sometimes I think this earns me judgmental looks from my humanities major friends.

I had a similar problem when considering the things I do. Throughout college, I didn't really go out to bars or to parties, nor did I drink or smoke. I didn't date, much less hook up with anyone. I stayed up late to finish papers and problems sets. I was involved in organizations because that's what I do well- I'm more comfortable in a committee meeting than I am shooting the breeze with friends. It's an unfortunate antisocial fact of my life. In a committee meeting I know who's in charge, I know what's supposed to be happening and I know what the goals are. Social settings are more complex and I'm much more likely to make nerdy jokes or inappropriate puns that lead to awkward silences while everyone around me tries to calculate the exact amount of time they can let pass before starting an entirely different topic of conversation. You've been there. You know what it's like.

But I think everyone expected me to go a little crazy while I was in Europe. I really think that there was an honest expectation of me finding a boy over there or at least coming back with good stories about the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam (apparently it's like the paintings come to life- definitely worth a try, from all accounts). Guys, I saw a bunch of churches. There's not much else besides that.

When I was in Edinburgh, I went to church on Sunday morning. The Fringe Festival was in full swing, so many people were already awake when I was leaving, filling the common room with the smell of tea and coffee. I waved and told everyone where I was going and I got a look from a couple of people at the table. The owner glanced up from her computer and said, "Oh, is it Sunday? I hardly even noticed." And as I was leaving, I thought about reverse judgement. I'm sure no one in that room changed the way they thought about me because of the fact that I went to church, but it's impossible not to imagine their interactions with me changing. Oh, can't talk about this around her. She goes to church. Oh, probably shouldn't mention that to her-it's a bit awkward since she goes to church. Do you think she'll think badly of me if I tell that story? She does go to church.

So lately I've been wanting to go out more. I mean, I don't really have a reason not to- yes, I work, but most mornings I don't have to be in until 9:30 or 10 and that's much better than the 8 AM classes I had the majority of my collegiate career. Yes, I'm tired at night, but I'm not so tired that I couldn't go to a bar and have a few drinks. And yes, my budget is tight, but I just got a credit card (which signaled my initiation into the adult world). I could flirt more, buy clothes that fit me differently (though I've gained back most of the weight I lost carrying around the weight of a small child on my back all summer), make an actual effort with my appearance. I could go out and get some stories and tell them as the true events they'd be. I wouldn't need jokes to fill my time in conversations. Plus, if I do all these things, people will see that I'm not judging them for their actions. Look, I'm doing it too. How can I be judging you if I'm doing it too? Can't you see I'm just like you?

But then, aren't I changing myself for other people?

And I know the youth group, high school, Above the Influence commercial response to this. Just be yourself and that will be enough. You are a wonderful person, you just need to find the other people like you. Don't change what's good about you. Who cares what other people think? It's their problem.

Being an adult, though, is realizing that things are complex, that there's more than one side to every issue and that even though the well-meaning, self-bolstering slogans contain grains of truth, living with people requires compromise. At my core, there's still this kid that really just wants to read her Bible and pray every night until the world's problems are solved. But that kid has a terrible time making conversation.

And I do so want to have conversations.

October

I love October.

I love the weather, I love the leaves, I love the smell of the air, I love jackets and football and potentially the fair and the feel of the end of the year when we leave the discomforting heat of the summer for the quiet peaceful cold of the autumn and winter.

I love the wind that blows in when October comes. It makes the dark magic of Halloween plausible, it stirs up the mind and makes the heart race as it rips through jackets and steals the comforting warmth of normality, it stirs up the world around us to make us believe in ghosts and fairies and wishes. I love being lost in the memories of far away places where dreaming such dreams doesn't seem so delusional.

October makes me want to write. It makes me want to pull out my quilt and curl up in a chair on my porch, watching the leaves change and fall while my pen races across another page. I could almost stay out there all day and into the night, warming my hands with coffee as ideas pour out of my mind, the paper filled with ghouls that remove my stories far enough from reality to be recognized.

Or I could, you know, sit at my computer all day watching Youtube videos and catching up on TV (I'm halfway through season 6 of How I Met Your Mother! Don't tell me what happens at the beginning of this season!). I could spend my evening hours worrying about when I'm going to get things done and whether I'm doing a good enough job and what I'm going to do next year (next year? next year? I have a job 'til August, let's not rush into things here). I could drag every hour down with the general guilt of laziness and apathy, which is surprisingly easy to do. Or I could just play the one song I know on the piano over and over again while glancing over at my guitar and wondering if I'm ever going to learn to play something on it.

It's a choice we have to make everyday, the choice to live perfectly acceptable lives of normalcy and productivity, or the choice to allow ourselves to live a little of the magic that our minds are capable of imparting to the world in which we live, to smile that sardonic smile at the banal beauty of everyday life and know that behind our eyes, we are seeing something more. And I don't think there's a wrong answer.

I just think there's a normal one.