Self-loathing and other minor inconveniences

Whether it's the recent foray into the realm of politics, or the general increase in saying things, I don't know. I feel vulnerable and apprehensive lately. I keep thinking everyone is going to turn against me or some such paranoid poppycock.

I've tossed around the idea that I have not acquired any new opponents lately and am therefore waiting for the usual rival to pop up out of nowhere. However, I wouldn't exactly say people have been patting me on the back and telling me what a rum job I've been doing lately.

You know what I really think it is? I seem to be listened to and even respected. Some people have even, therefore, come to expect a certain caliber of activity out of me. I hate that. And by hate in this case I must also confess I mean love. I should explain.

I love being expected to be my best, I thrive under these conditions. I feel more significant or shall we say loved. But that's just it. I can't trust myself or like myself enough to believe I can consistently be anything but a disappointment. At my lower moments I even believe that I work so hard to gain peoples' trust and confidence only so I can dash their hopes. Or maybe it is just the politics thing.

I feel foolish trying to express those sort of ideas. Probably only because I've rarely if ever done so before. More explaining.

One thing me and my brother and my sister all have in common is a strong dislike for politics. This, I believe, is for two reasons. One. My dad's opinions on politics, at least the way he has traditionally expressed them, are so cynical as to lead us to believe there is no order or reason to it. We will not get heard, people will not do the right thing or even the smart thing except by accident, and oh by the way society is going to self-destruct any day now. Well, unless the world ends first. Two. We associate politics with my dad and we'd rather not think about him or think much like him or even worse be much like him. As harsh as that sounds coming out like that, it's the truth. I have healed these past few years to the point where I like and respect him again, but I find it is hard to think about things that have happened in the past.

Or maybe this is just another part of the crazy emotional roller coaster that is me. I assure you if you have been unable to determine a rhyme or reason to my moods, if in fact you have found most any fault in me, I am in the same boat. I get so sick of trying to figure my self out sometimes that I almost think of her as some alien being.

Also, too. I am at a vulnerable point in my life. I have left academia, the land I had explored, behind. I am living in my parents' basement. I don't know if I'll ever find a job, or if my husband will. So there it is. I am scared. I am scared to the point that I don't even know what exactly I am scared about any more. I am scared that all this fear will make me into an adult not unlike my father. In fact, that I am like him in all of the worst ways.

So I ask my self. How will this post help? And I answer my self. In the same way that I keep putting myself out there, keep speaking my mind, the more and more it scares me I ignore my fear and try to learn how to like myself and allow others to like me too. I need to grow. I am vulnerable, yes. It is okay to be vulnerable, yes. It is okay even to be scared. This is what growing up feels like, this is what opening up to the world feels like.

I think.

Quite Possibly My First "Political" Post

This is a response to a friends status on facebook. I have a lot of respect for this friend. Her statement is about the problem of voters not taking it into their own hands to become informed.

I think there is also a wide spread mistrust of information due to many corrupt sources, which can lead to a feeling that there is no way to actually become informed. Personally, I get around this feeling by listening only to direct statements and speeches by candidates, however it is very hard to know who to trust (if anybody).

I'd like to add that voters have a long history of not becoming well-informed. Many are too trusting, or don't know what resources to use, or treat it like a sports event where they can root for their home team, or are completely apathetic. So while I agree that the real problem is the voters, I think that there are things that can compound the problem immensely and that these things should be avoided.

Besides which, if a candidate can't get any funding and we never hear about him period or don't hear enough to make a decision he is immensely less likely to even enter our realm of possibility.

Which is only to say. I don't think the problem you proposed could be simply solved by "the voters" waking up tomorrow and deciding to become informed. In the age of the internet there is a surplus of information, and it becomes important to have a critical enough mind to decide which information to pay attention to. Yes, even to be able to determine what is information and what is merely data.

It is a bit overwhelming even for a critical mind like mine, that has many hours a day to devote to this. Many people don't have the time or the basic logic skills needed to even begin this arduous journey.

While I agree with your statement, I also think it is an oversimplification. But, then. What statement isn't? Giving candidates a "yes" is an oversimplification of what we really want as voters.

p.s. if you have enough money you get to determine what looks like information and what doesn't.

Thank you also to my other friends who discussed a similar subject with me when I joined a group, a move I now think of as a bit impulsive and silly, about the Supreme Court selling the US to the "filthy rich" which according to them is "fascism". When I left the group our comments were lost, I forgot that would happen, and I am sorry it did.

Here's the real personal scoop. My dad came in the other night as I was cooking dinner. He was rather upset. He started angrily spewing about how the US is dead now etc. I laughed at him as I usually laugh at what I consider cynical alarmism and conspiracy theory that he participates in. My dad is very intelligent, and actually very well informed, I think perhaps a little too well informed. He's got a bit of that hippy fight the power left in him, and he gets riled up far too easily (that has always been an issue, his temper that is). However, in the end there is usually more than a kernel of truth to what he is saying. I mean to say I think the facts point toward hard times ahead, and I think constantly worrying about those facts leads to his extreme views.

So far I think I have seen people who are too up-in-arms over this issue, and I have also seen people who don't seem to be concerned enough. Whatever your view, I do think this is a big deal. Even if it is only symbolic, or only the straw on the camel's back, it still means something. I see the alarmists looking at the non-alarmed and growing even more scared because of the lack of concern. And I see the non-alarmed laughing at the alarmists.

I waver somewhere in the middle. I don't think this is the end of the country. I am not alarmed, but I am serious about this.

This will change things more than some people seem to think, even if it won't end the world as other people claim.

This was quite possibly my last "political" post.

Twenty-Ten

Fashionably late I start my newyearsey post. And I am telling you. As much as 2009 was a year of change and new experiences for me... as much as I have grown and flourished... as much as that year will always have a special place in my heart... I am glad it is over. The new year, as arbitrary as it seems, marks a new time for me.

In 2009 I learned to accept the many blessings life has to offer, to be flexible and wait my turn, to enjoy the little things and remember why I love those I love. In twentyten I intend to take back some of the control I relinquished these past few months. Not to stop living for the present, but to increase efforts toward my future goals as well. Maybe put off a few fewer things, and be brave even more frequently.

I have been grateful for all the support I have received from my friends and family this year. I truly believe I needed to learn to let go and let others be there for me. But this year, I need to regain some of my self-reliance while not forgetting the lessons I have learned. Mostly I want to keep up the work on being who I am openly and unabashedly. Not doing what is expected but what seems right. This is my hope for twentyten.

My hope is that I will truly begin what I consider to be my adult life, an adult life which I have spent much of my youth needlessly apprehensive and downright scared of, and that I will propel it in the right direction that it may flourish and balance itself for years to come. This I hope for.