anti-climactic

Apparently a big, important, fancy bill was passed today.

How has the public at large responded?

Have I witnessed crowded parades cheering? Mothers crying tears of joy? Or men and women taking to the streets, crying, "Fascism!"

No, not really.

Have I felt a tangible wave of excitement in the air among the individuals I walk by? Or a cloud of dread hanging over their heads?

Not exactly.

Just some facebook comments revealing mildly excited praise, a couple of good-tempered debates, and muted criticism. No angels singing. No devils cackling. Just one anarchist friend ranting, but he'll always find something rant about as long as we have a government, now won't he?

I'm sure in due time there will be emails and symposiums about What This Will Mean for Our Dear Profession, but right now we're more concerned about passing statistics and deciding where to apply to internship.

I have a feeling that someone is sad that she wasn't the mother who birthed this bill, but dry your tears ma'am, there are still problems in the Middle East to attend to, and you could get 1/4 credit for solving them if you keep your chin up and roll your dice right.

By the way, I'm still here, in the blagosphere.

looking forward a bit

It's been a fun first week and a half back in CS, filled with dancing, nertzing, good weather, biking, photography, shopping, cooking, flea killing, flirting, yogaing (yoging?), and catching up with my family that I love here. Truly, I couldn't ask for better times in the BCS than these.

But all good things must come to an end as the semester begins in earnest this week. And as fate would have it, the first week that I actually have things due is the same week that my computer starts freaking out on me, periodically shutting down for no good reason and then refusing to start until the next day. Fortunately, I have a new battery traveling on a UPS truck headed for my house and my roommate's computer to borrow as a backup on the days when my computer decides that it just will not start. Also, last week I backed up all of my school-related documents on dropbox.

I'm excited about this semester, for nothing else but the fact that I have more flexible time than I've possibly ever had in grad school, allowing me to schedule things like yoga classes and swing-dancing lessons during the week instead of having to plow through 12-hour day and after 12-hour day waiting for the weekend to take a breather. Still, it's an odd schedule, and I still have many things to accomplish this semester, forcing me to figure out how to structure my time in a productive manner. I'm busy almost every evening of the week until 8 or 9, but I have most of my mornings free. I tend to be more productive during the day time, but I also have great difficulty getting out of bed when I don't have somewhere to be or an imminent deadline, so I'm scheduling yoga classes, meetings with professors, and appointments with clients to ensure that I get my bum up and out and moving and doing. Hopefully I can make the most of my free time in the afternoons and mornings and not get stressed out trying to make deadlines at the last minute. Which I'm kinda doing today.

And I'm writing a brief blog post instead of reading or writing for another 10 minutes :P

Rubber and canvas

After working up my courage for three or four songs, I finally approached the attractive young man also looking out of place sporting Converse sneakers at a country and western dance hall. With a tap on the shoulder and a, "I like your shoes," our very brief conversation began. Immediately, I got a gay vibe from him. He didn't ask me to dance and I didn't ask him, and our conversation soon halted. He turned a smidge back towards his friends, and I quickly turned out and walked back to mine without even saying good-bye. Which I guess wasn't too rude considering that we had never said hello.

I don't know how guys do it. Err, at least sober guys. The drunk ones seem to have no trouble flirting, as they forget or mishear my name and call me "Debbie" and "Casey." Just the idea of asking someone to dance, not expecting more than a dance, makes me nervous. Sometimes I wish I were a guy and had the opportunity to be more forward with the opposite sex, but often I realize that it's harder than it looks, taking a certain gutsy vulnerability that I sometimes possess.

Looking back, I wished that I'd stayed and introduced myself to him and his friends. They seemed like a good bunch, just a group of friends having fun together, like my friends and I were. We probably would have found some things in common. Oh well, I'll keep dancing and keep my eye out for other fellow Converse souls and keep myself open to more possibilities of friendship and romance.

Things to do in 2010

I dislike the term "resolution" because it invokes a sense of dreadful pressure, that I have "resolved" myself to do something, to carry out some new task or habit, which if I don't live up to it, I will feel defeated, guilty, and discouraged. True, we should feel sorrow when we disregard our word, break promises, and fall through on commitments, but this western tradition of New Year's resolutions seems to bring more negative emotions than necessary. To avoid unnecessary shame and defeat, this is not a list of resolutions. I am not resolving to doing any of these things in the year 2010. Instead, this is a list of things that I would like to do in the coming year. Hopefully in 2011 I will look back at this post and rejoice that I did most of these things. Also, these are just a list of activities I'd like to do, not any goals about my character or inner person. For more on that, please refer to my previous post, which relates to how I would like to be a better lover in the coming year.

• Be more active - take yoga classes, ride my bike more, and swing dance again.
• Grow an herb garden that stays alive.
• Start an investment fund.
• Propose my dissertation.
• Get a new job.
• Find a new roommate. (One of mine is graduating, I love both my roommates!)
• Clean the catbox more often.
• Have less boy drama. (I probably say that every year, which is why these are just things to do, not resolutions)
• Bake bread every now and then.
• Apply for internship OR decide what to do and where to live in 2011.
• Buy a used roadbike and ride a marathon/race on it.
• Read more non-fiction, non-academic books than I did in 2009.
• Complete the Celebration of Discipline by Foster with my church small group, and start to practice more of those disciplines. (I'm sure there some fodder for some good Lenten practices in there)
• Take a daily photo. (check out my facebook account for the link to my flickr account, or comment and I'll email you the link)

Yup, those sound pretty good for now.

surely he taught us to love one another

Love. Is something I seem to be learning a lot about lately, and also am learning how little I know how to practice.

As Christians, we are told to love. To love God, to love others, to love our family, to love our neighbors, to love the church, to love our enemies, not to love the world, not to love money. We know that we are to love, that's a no-brainer. But to love the people we are commanded to love, I'm learning that this is a more difficult task that I ever realized.

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers" 1 John 3:16

Love is laying down our lives for others. But what does that look like? Sacrificing all at the expense of our own spirits? Doing everything that a person asks? Giving another person everything they want? That doesn't seem like love. It seems more like spoiling a child. It's hard when someone says, "This is how you should love me," and when you don't do, they don't feel loved. But are we really responsible for making others feel loved? This is hard for me to accept, but I do believe that we can love others without them feeling love.

A friend and I recently had a great conversation about loving others. About how loving someone means trying to meet their needs, not their wants. Meeting someone's wants provides instant happiness and the other person may say that they feel loved, but truly loving someone, truly meeting their needs should provide for their eternal well-being, truly loving someone doesn't always produce those warm fuzzies that I'm likely somewhat addicted to. It's easy to know what someone wants to feel loved, but it's a more difficult task, requiring prayer, patience, and understanding, to discern what another person that I'm trying to love truly needs.

Sometimes, people need the truth spoken to them, even if it doesn't seem loving on the surface. As an only child who loves to preserve harmony around me, this is something that doesn't come naturally to met at all. It seems that I'm learning these skills simultaneously as a therapist to my clients and as a daughter, friend, sister to others in my life. My supervisor this past semester, in encouraging me to confront a client about unhealthy behavior, told me, "You can say almost anything if it's coming from a place of love and compassion." I have a feeling that this statement will stuck with more than anything else a supervisor can tell me. It's true, if my motives are love, concern for the longterm well-being of another person, then I can say something hard to hear, but it can still be loving, and hopefully will be received well. But if I'm saying it out of fear or selfishness or anger or bitterness, then it probably won't be received well, and it's not loving at all. But this isn't my temptation. My temptation is to say too little, to preserve the peace. Maybe it's not even the path of true peace.

So, I'm learning to be better lover. It's a long journey, and I recognize that it's the whole point why I'm a Christian. There are a lot of things that seem good about me naturally. I'm good at being kind, at being considerate, at being thoughtful, and at times, being loving. But I'm also good at trying to protect myself, at fearing the loss of relationships, at being prideful, at being jealous, and all of these things hinder my true expressions of love. And this is where I need God to continue his work in me, to continue to bring situations and individuals who strip away the areas of fear and who encourage me to love more truly. I need His grace to make me a better lover.

everybody's coming to get me, just say you never met me

So, I have my moments of paranoia that at time lead me to take unnecessary and sometimes dramatic precautions. In high school, I once arrived home to an empty house to discover the phone lines weren't working. Because sometimes in movies the bad guy cuts the phone lines so the victim cannot call for help, I grabbed a big kitchen knife and dramatically kicked open every door in the house. I'll admit, I took such dramatic actions half for the fun of it, the fun of pretending that I was in a spy movie or something. Sometimes I'll worry that a car is following mine when a car behind me begins making the same turns at me. I'll begin making unusual turns, until the car takes another route. Recently, some of my friends were followed home from a club, so this isn't something that's bad to be paranoid about! About a month ago, I arrived home late at night to find my cat acting strange, avoiding my bed, and I worried that some critter was in my room, under the bed. While 80% convinced that there were no strange animals in my room, I still slept on the living room couch that night. One of my roommates thought I was being ridiculous, but the other one told me that she sometimes thinks this house is haunted, and related some unusual experiences to me, that only increased my paranoia about what could be lurking in my room.

This afternoon, I found a strange package sitting on my kitchen counter. It was a bulging Hungry Jack pancake box wrapped in plastic packing tape, sent from a name I didn't recognize in North Carolina. If it had been sent in a normal parcel box, I probably would have just gone ahead and opened it, even though I didn't know what it was or who it was from. Somehow, the strange packaging just seemed shady to me. I squeezed it, and felt something hard and indistinguishable inside. I couldn't remember ordering anything recently, and it seemed logical that this was some online seller's address. Maybe someone I knew had sent me an early Christmas present. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was fishy about this package.

I looked up the name on the package online, but found nothing substantial. Nothing that said, "Oh, I sent a package to Texas" or "I'm an online salesperson." I thought about calling the post office, "I received a suspicious package," but decided that was likely too dramatic. I imagined the possibility of a bomb inside. Though I assured myself that no one hated me enough nor was I important enough to be the target of an assassination plot, I couldn't get rid of the feeling that this package could be dangerous.

So I did the most logical thing I could think of in handing a potentially dangerous, mysterious package. I donned my bike helmet, grabbed a sharp kitchen knife, cracked open the door to the back porch, and began opening the package, with the door in between my body and head and the package, my hands, and knife. If there was an explosion, I would only lose my hands. The imagined explosion could blow the door down, but I was wearing a helmet and hopefully would not sustain a fatal injury. (Somebody who knows more about bombs than I do please tell me that this is not a ridiculous notion). Probably the most dangerous think about this scenario was the fact that I was using a knife while not looking at what I was doing!

I successfully opened the outer package, revealing another smaller package, wrapped equally tight in clear packing tape. This too seemed suspicious, so I quickly removed it, and dropped it on the other side of the door. At this point, I began imagining that this package held illegal drugs instead of explosives. There was something written on the package, that at first glance I thought had my name on it. I turned the package around, reading the sharpied text, "Kitty Ring Holder." Then I remember two weeks ago buying an antique silver cat-shaped ring holder on a whim from an etsy shop. I don't even wear rings, but I thought the thing would make a fun decoration. I removed my bike helmet, brought the package back into the kitchen, and quickly opened it to enjoy my purchase.

This is probably the type of story that I should just keep to myself to save my reputation, but I like laughing at myself and I don't mind friends laughing with me. For my friends reading this who run etsy shops, please label your packages as an etsy purchase. You never know what dramatic, paranoid young woman with an over-active imagination is going to be ordering from you!

I think I'll name him Billie Joe.

jealousy

How can something so ugly be so natural to us humans? It's as if him saying, "Thou shalt not covet . . . " he was saying, "Thou shalt not feel hunger." Is jealousy an action? A choice? Or is it a feeling? A state of being that overcomes me and entangles me in ways that are often difficult to shake loose? I don't feel like I choose to be jealous like I might choose to tell a lie, but I certainly entertain jealous thoughts, I feed them when they come, giving them enough light and water to stay alive until I distract myself with something else.

So how do I kill it? How do I be not jealous? Ideally, I should rejoice for my friends when I feel jealous of them, celebrate the things and opportunities that they have, even when I selfishly desire them for myself. But sadly, it's easier to focus on the good that I have or bad that they have to get rid of the thought that I want what they have. "Well, I may not have that, but I do have this, and this is really great," of, "Well, they have that which I want for myself, but they also have that which I don't want, so I should be glad that I'm me and not them." It's great to focus on what I'm thankful for, to rejoice in my blessings, but that kind of comparison, of measuring myself up against you seems just like the thing that is at the root of this jealousy in the first place.

Am I even capable of killing it? Maybe I just need to confess and repent and ask for forgiveness and healing, and remember that I'm not the One who killed it, I'm not the One who nailed it to some wood where it died. But the very word "repent" implies action, it implies a turn, a new direction. So where do I turn when I feel jealous? Towards gratitude, contentment, trust, love for others, towards things that often seem so much less natural to me. Again, I must turn to the One who not only killed it, but who opened the path for those things that I truly desire, the things so much more foreign to me than jealousy and pride and selfishness. He must have experienced it too. He must have been tempted by it also.

I hope that one day, I can really truly learn to rejoice with you and to want the best for you more than I want it for me. Until then, I'll keep fighting this thing I hate, and rejoice on the days when rejoicing for you feels easier than worrying about what I don't have. Even reading this feels dirty and ugly, and I'm tempted to delete it, and forget that I ever confessed these things. But I need to see the dirt before it can be washed, and I know that you experience it too. And again, it's not as if I'm confessing a secret felony I commit, it's more like I'm saying, "I breathe."