Being Neat

Whenever I feel out of control, I make up my bed. It's this one little thing that gets totally disregarded when things are fine and fun and hectic and exciting and is just a thorn in my side when things are slow and sluggish and hardly bearable, but it's an easily removable thorn so when things feel out of control, I remove it. I make up my bed and I feel like, out of all the things I've done wrong, at least I have done this one thing right. It might not give me a star in my crown, but at least it's something.

I had to make up my bed when I got back home today because I yelled at a dear friend yesterday. She told me that I had a tone of defeat and I snapped and said that of course I did, because she had been attacking me all night, which was absolutely true to me at the time. I went on a lovely little rant listing off the wrongs she had done me and how hurt I was and how I really just needed to go away and think about things like this and then I left and went to bed hours earlier than I planned. I lay there for probably an hour, seething at the laughter coming up the stairs and listing the reasons why I was right and she was wrong.

I can't get over how childish it was. I can't get over how defensive I was being. But maybe it'll turn out to be a good thing that I was childish and defensive, because looking back at it has turned this into a tipping point. There have been a lot of tipping points in my life lately, or opportunities for tipping points. I feel like the guy on his roof during the flood, you know, the guy who ignores the weather forecast, the storm warning, the emergency warning, the guy in the row boat and the emergency helicopter because he says God will save him and then when he dies, asks God why he never sent anyone to help. I might have missed the warnings, but, after yesterday, I think it's about time I jumped on a rowboat.

I'm in a weird place in life. Friends are getting engaged and married, they're starting careers, they're working and living these lives that I'm consistently amazed at. I wonder who stopped watching us and started letting us play adults. Doesn't the world know that we don't have it figured out, that we've never filed our own taxes before, that we barely know how to live our lives, much less combine our lives with someone else's or even make another life? I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Am I grown up? Because it sure as hell doesn't feel like it.

It feels like I'm going through being a teenager again, you know, rocking out that angsty, independent, finding-yourself phase. Did I never have opinions before? Because I'm defending them now like a mama bear defending her cubs. Have I never looked in a mirror before? I'm noticing all sorts of flaws and features I never considered until now. And someone needs to pull me aside and explain to me that while animal crackers and icing may seem like a great idea for a meal, it's not. Just because you can eat something doesn't mean that you should. I have a lot of thoughts that are all, "I'm an adult! I can make my own choices! Can't nobody tell me what to do!"

It's just that I've been making choices that haven't always reflected the person I should and want to be. Some of those choices have dug me down deep and deeper into a hole that I've been in long enough to question whether I even want to get out. Being in that hole makes it easier to listen to the lies that echo around in my head, and if you hear a lie enough, it begins to be absolutely true to you. And I don't think that there's an amount of afterschool specials or cheesy morals in movies that can overcome the lies-that-became-truths in your head. I think some people can think their way out of it, maybe. I think that sometimes people whom you respect have to remind you what's right and what's good and what's true, and they may have to remind you of that often, whether they're people who've written a book or people who've written a song or people who've made a movie or a TV show or people who see you on a daily basis and choose to see your potential for good as being greater than your existing bad. I think that sometimes you need to get help greater than what is readily available to you in your day-to-day life.

 I think it's time to turn a corner. It's time to move beyond making up my bed. Let's chose to be better today.

What about you? What are your turning points?

Quitting (Or, the Difficulty of Opposites)

I don't like to be in the way. 

Given the option, I'll sit in the smallest corner and look out the window and hope no one needs to use the outlet beside me. Actually, given the option, I'll take the second smallest corner if it isn't near the door and doesn't have an outlet. I wouldn't want to inconvenience anyone. I just don't want to be a distraction, you know? I'll walk around on tiptoes and set things down as gently as possible so that no one is bothered by my noise. Really, I just don't want to be in the way.

Maybe I just really don't want to draw attention to myself. But then, I know that can't be right, because I say things and do things that are just attention-getting. I mean, I have a job that routinely requires me to stand up in front of a group of people and talk about outer space, and even though I'm not the reason they scheduled the visit, I still make sure to wear socks that don't match, so they notice me. I talk loudly and quickly, so that you hear me and you have to focus. But then, I also got glasses to hide behind, and wear bland clothes, and prefer sitting in a corner by myself to sitting at a table with fifteen other people.

Part of that is being an introvert, and I don't like the idea that there's something wrong with preferring time to yourself or needing to recharge if you've been with other people too long. I think we live in a society of extroverts that favors those who would speak up for themselves and it bothers me that those who would think for themselves are brushed aside for lack of vocality. But I can't soapbox my way out of everything. Part of the difficulties I have in life spring from a lack of confidence in myself, which is too big a problem to deal with when you're perpetually fighting to keep your head above water in the sea of constant human contact.

I've really been convicted of my lack of confidence lately and I think that conviction is important because it reminds me that I'm not who I used to be. The lack of confidence comes from this need to have people like me and knowing that I don't measure up to their standards. I don't always dress in well-fitting clothes. My hair is not always done up. I don't always make it to the earring selection time of the morning and I rarely get beyond that to the makeup time of the morning. I have too much fat in too many places and too ugly of a face to be intrinsically pretty by society's standards. I have one of those faces that is just pretty enough to make me think kindly of myself until I catch a sideways glimpse in the mirror or see a particularly unflattering picture. Say what you want, but I will never walk in a room and be the prettiest girl in the room. Mix in a surprisingly large amount of social awkwardness, and you get the last few years of my life: realizing that I'm not the amazing person I thought I was and standing too long out in a rainstorm of self-doubt and self-depreciation. Add a major that regularly called my intelligence into question and it's no wonder I lack confidence.

But the thing is, I'm supposed to have the confidence regardless of what people think of me. I have infinite worth in the eyes of God just for being a human, a creation of his hands, and that is supposed to be an unshakable confidence. The Maker of the Universe loves me and calls me daughter- how can the state of my clothes or the size of my eyes matter?

That's the crux of the matter for me. Living into my God-given birthright became so much harder when I realized there was value in what other people said too. I had to trade in my old thoughts, what I knew, before I could get new ones. And what new thoughts! There's beauty in many things that were never intended by their authors to reflect the glory of God. There are songs that weren't written for churches that express the desires of my soul. There are good thoughts and deeds happening outside the boundaries of the people of Christ and it's not even hard to find them. And I don't want to have to cherry pick. I want to love humanity in all of its messy wonderfulness, encircle it with my arms and love it for the good. But we're an occasionally messed-up bunch and hugging humanity can mean that you get stabbed by barbs as often as not.

So while I want to hold on to these thoughts of beauty, I can't get away from the barbs that cut in, from the judgmental looks that say that you don't measure up to my standard of beauty or you don't like the things I like or you don't laugh at the things that I laugh at. Those looks knock you down, especially when they come from someone who has brought beauty into your life. When those barbs are cutting into you, it's so hard to keep yourself together. It's hard to look at yourself in a positive light. The idea of being fearfully and wonderfully made is a joke in the red tinged light the barbs bring with them. Between that and questions of purpose and path and justice and fairness, my confidence never had a chance. It's hard enough to wake up in the morning and battle the demons of doubt, apathy, and anthropophobia. I can't fight for my confidence as well. It's just easier to give up and live another day among the incurably meek.

I say all this so that people who never think that they're in the way understand what it's like to be someone who always prefers being out of the way. That's the thing about introverts and extroverts, or any pair of different-thinking types of people: it's beyond difficult to get the opposite team to understand the way you think. And even if they do, it's hard to get them to understand the depths of your feeling. To get up every day and say I'm going to be confident in who I am? That's a tiring thought. To get up every day and express that confidence in ways that everyone will see without being found prideful or objectionable? Impossible. There's always going to be someone who thinks you're wrong, who is opposed to your viewpoint, or doesn't understand why your viewpoint has to be expressed that way. People will think you're too political, or not political enough. People will shake their heads sadly at your ideals or frown at your lack of action. When you get entrenched, people will mistake your olive branch for a barb. And even if none of these things ever happen, there's the possibility of drawing this hatred to yourself just by being you, which is a scary thing for someone who doesn't like to be in the way.

I agree that a change has to come for me, because, like most people, I can't always go on the way I am. I understand that people can be wrong and that there often needs to be a voice of reason brought into their worlds so they can move into a better place. But I don't need another ladder tossed into my hole in the ground- I need someone to remind me that I can climb it and that the climb is worth it. I have promises that it is, but promises aren't guarantees. I can't move for a promise.

Comparisons

People like to label each year and section it off, like if we put it into a box and analyze its problems, we'll be better able to take on the future, like events and changes limit themselves to a three hundred and sixty-six day span. Now, I'm not knocking year-end reflections, because I think it's valuable- it’s like we as a society needed to schedule a planning period and this was the time we picked. I'm always in need of some planning, so I'm happy to go along with it.

For me, I think 2012 is going to be the year of the metaphor. I mean, it's only one of many kinds of year- it's a leap year, an election year, an Olympics year, the apocalypse year- but you have to make it personal, somehow, and this was the year that I discovered just how much I love metaphors. I mean, it also could have been the year of staying in places that weren't mine (between adventuring, house-sitting, and a job that requires you to be on the road half the month, I've been around), the year of fear (afraid of being a thorn in someone's side, afraid of pain, afraid of not having enough), or the year when I read Anna Karenina. But I think that 2012 is best defined as the year when I finished watching Friends ("It's like all of my life, everyone has always told me you're a shoe... And then today I just stopped and I said, What if I don't want to be a shoe? What if want to be a purse, you know, or a hat? No, I don't want you to buy me a hat, I'm saying that I am a hat- it's a metaphor, Daddy!"), the year when I read The Fault in Our Stars ("It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing."), and the year when I discovered the PBS Idea Channel ("Why does this guy insist that everything about internet culture is 100% the best? And come up with bad metaphors around it?" Because he's looking complexly at a huge section of today's society and linking it to big philosophical ideas. Duh. ). And now, since I've named it, I wanted to give you a list of metaphors about my life, but phrasing those proved to be challenging, so here's a list of similes for my life that I've discovered.

-Life is like my old computer. I got it in college and am consistently amazed at how it still works (not because of its quality, but because of sheer determination) , and how I still haven't completely replaced it with new technology.

- Life is like driving on a highway. There's a certain amount of pride that has to be squashed when you get passed while driving at a respectable speed, directions are occasionally difficult to come by or wrong, but the road's predictable enough that you can get by, and you can't always tell someone you've wronged that you're sorry. Also, you could die.

-Life is like snowflakes. Each one is unique because of the specific set of circumstances that it was formed in and traveled through to get to the ground. Plus, most of the snowflakes you see are conglomerations of individual snow crystals. When the crystals form, they start out as hexagonal prisms, and then the branches or arms form on the corners of the hexagonal prism, because that's the easiest place, and the crystal grows the way it does because it's easier to build on the existing arm than to make a new one. You never see a four or eight sided snowflake in nature, even though those are easier to make when you cut out paper snowflakes, unless the snowflake is deformed. Most of them are deformed, because journeying to the ground is difficult.

-Life is like searching for something on google. Sometimes it knows exactly what I want, because it's what everyone else wants too, and sometimes I can type in twenty different combinations of keywords without finding a thing because I can't for the life of me think of a different way to ask for something.

-Life is like getting a new phone. There was absolutely nothing wrong with my old one, but people kept on telling me to get a new one, and now I can't think how I functioned without it. Also, I'm surprised when people from purportedly third world countries have the same kind of phone I do, because you'd think that other things would get in the way.

-Life is like writing. To have any kind of confidence at all, you have to realize that when you speak with your own voice, it has a quality that no one else has, and you should be valued for that. Just because it's something that I would say said the way I would say it does not mean it is intrinsically bad. The contribution you're going to make is going to be unlike anything anyone else has made, even if tumblr has proven that there are hundreds if not thousands of people almost exactly like you, except with a weird affinity for squids.

-Life is like a literary comparison. It's difficult to understand, and it's never perfect.

Happy New Year! My New Years Resolution? Read 12 books. What about you?