Change

I am making a change everyday. I'm going to release myself from guilt everyday little by little. I'm going to unstick myself from inaction. I'm going to embrace myself.

Updates

In an effort to maintain academic momentum, while also realizing that graduate school must wait until I actually know what I'm doing with my life, I have decided to enroll in a post-baccalaureate writing certificate program through UC Berkeley.

It should take a little over a year to complete the course work and hopefully by the time I have finished, I will have figured out grad school.

It means a couple things, for me which are exciting and scary-- excary if you will. It means I will be sticking around the bay area a little longer, first of all. Second of all, it means committing to writing for the first time in an academic setting. Third of all, it means taking responsibility for my fate, something I haven't done a huge lot of since graduating college 7 months ago.

I have always liked writing, even if I didn't think I was very good at it. And it is something I have always done (even when I was too busy to update my blog or follow through on my new years resolutions to write more).

It sort of goes back to this thing I posted here recently, which I think a lot about, where I said that I think people deserve a calling. Or, not deserve exactly, but should have-- in like a perfect world.

But also maybe that Malcolm Gladwell was onto something when he said that people who do a thing a bunch of times are destined to be the best at something, rather than say, destiny deciding things.

So I'm doing a little of both and I figure I will see what happens.

I think about my life and here's how I rank it based on how many hours I spend on it collectively throughout my life:

1. Sleeping
2. Eating
3. Talking
4. Reading
5. Writing
6. Studying
7. Watching Netflix
8. Showering

And here's how I rank my life based on how much I like things:

1. Sleeping
2. Eating
3. Talking
4. Reading
5. Writing
6. Showering
7. Gardening
8. Watching Netflix

So I figure, unless I can find a way to make a living sleeping or talking, I should try making a living by writing. If we are talking passion, I've got it, and if we are talking 10,000 hours, I'm at least well on my way.

The nagging feeling about the practical details of being a writer has not disappeared but I am at the very least comforted by the fact that by the end of this process I will have three things:

1. A certificate certifying my certification in the realm of writing
2. More concrete information as to whether writing is my "thing"
3. Another stepping stone to grad school, whatever that may be.

It is official, and my first class is "Fact or Fiction: Reading and Writing the Personal Essay". Woohoo!

....by *blank*

Here's what infuriates me when someone is speaking and they say something like, "It's not safe to walk home late at night in the city because you might be harassed or assaulted by men." And then someone else says, "Not all men assault women." 

Because 1. Did that person say all men? Did they specifically say, It's not safe to walk home late at night in the city because you might be harassed or assaulted by men."? 

And 2. It's just the way people talk. It's not meant to offend universally, and if you are offended, try to check yourself and see if that's more than a defensive reaction to a painful truth. 

People say things using the plural form of things without the implication that they mean ALL of that thing. 

"If you get cut and are bleeding while you are swimming in the ocean, you should get out of the water before you are attacked my sharks."

"When Harry Potter was picked up by Hagrid and introduced to the world of magic he was happily welcomed by wizards."

"While I was driving during the storm, the leaves were being blown off the trees by the wind."

You don't have to drop everything and interrupt someone to tell them, "NOT ALL SHARKS ATTACK PEOPLE/ WIZARDS LIKE HARRY POTTER/ WIND BLOWS LEAVES OFF TREES."

Because most people already know that. Because they can listen to a statement and think critically about what that statement is really trying to say and not get tangled in the semantics of the statement. Unlike people who go around shrieking "NOT ALL MEN."

Uninspired

I don't want to write but it's part of my resolution so blah blah blah blah words words words yes very good. Bravo me. 

Today I watched TV

I watched tv for the vast majority of the afternoon which was nice but I wasn't feel good so that wasn't nice. I've enjoyed the existence of Friends on Netflix. I've also enjoyed having a DVR again so I can watch what I want whenever I want. It's nice to be able to marathon shows I actually like as opposed to just watching whatever is on at the time. 

Cures for the common headache

4:00PM Advil
4:20PM temple rubbing
4:45PM telling your co-worker you are going to leave early
5:00PM not leaving early
6:00PM listening to NPR
6:45PM still being in traffic
7:20PM wash face
7:30PM foam roll
7:40PM lying on the ground with your eyes closed
8:00PM dinner
8:05PM with a beer
8:30PM doing the dishes
8:45PM updating blog


Never mind. Sometimes you just have a headache and there's nothing anyone can do.

Feb 2 & 3: Special Skill

I have this fantasy that everyone has a special skill bestowed on them. And if you find that skill you will succeed. It is an inspiring and forgiving fantasy. It is inspiring because it means that everyone can succeed. And it is forgiving because it implies that if you aren't succeeding it is because you haven't yet found your special skill and if you keep searching and trying you will get there. I don't know where this idea of a bestowed characteristic-- or a calling-- comes from. I don't even know where this special skill is bestowed from. I'm not religious so it wouldn't be a gift from God. Nor does any belief in fate or an implicitly ordered cosmos factor in.  This belief is almost instinctual, even while my brain denies it, pointing out 10,000 hours to expertise, practice makes perfect, and other commonly accepted ideas about success being tied to actually DOING. Somewhere deep in my core a very stubborn part of my rejects this for the more romantic notion that I will someday stumble upon my calling. That it will come naturally to me. That giving up easily on things I was not immediately good at, not investing enough time or effort into any one thing, not choosing to pursue any one interest for fear it was the wrong one-- these were good decisions. That they weren't driven by laziness or fear or incompetence. I have been biding my time and every day that passes special skill still absent, the more panic consumes me. It's going to be too late to perfect anything now if my heart is wrong and my brain is right and practice really does make perfect. Who has 10,000 hours to spare? What if my life and success is really up to me? I'm not confident I know how to approach that kind of responsibility. I which is why I have this fantasy. 

Feb 1

I promise to be better in February. I really do. What happened was I fell off the bandwagon and once you are off it's really hard to get back on. But I'm back on. Crisis averted. 

IOU Sentences

I forgot some days in January so here are some make up sentences.

14. There are four seasonal smells that are universally recognized by the human race. 
17. Let's start with autumn.
18. Autumn smells like wet pavement after the first rain since summer. 
19. Like the first shiver down your back.
22. Like the dry, dusty smell of orange leaves. 
24. Winter smells clean and bright and hollow. 
25. Like mud and puddles. 
26. Like frosted windshields. 

27. Spring smells like the inside of a Monet painting. 

28. It smells like life and hope.

29. Like the first flower poking out of cold, hard ground. 

30. And, finally, summer smells of dust and melting asphalt. 

31. A mustiness fills your lungs in summer, along with the heat. 

Galaxy

If I could, I would tattoo our galaxy on the inside of my skull like a planetarium so when I'm bored through out the day I can close my eyes and look at the stars.