I was bullied mercilessly growing up. It wasn’t until middle school when I was in class with the other smart kids that I started really having any friends. Having someone to defend me meant a lot, even though the teasing continued. Yes, I am smart. Yes, I am fat. Yes, I do have hairy legs. Yes, my accent was different from that of my classmates. The difference is that none of those things actually (should) impact my ability to be loved. None of those things make me an inherently bad person. And that is what no one ever told me when I was 12 years old.
The First Day of the Rest of my Life
Anyone who’s been following this blog knows how miserable I’ve been working in a call center. Friday was my last day, and today I started my new job in a feminist bookstore I can walk to from my house. I feel like a weight’s been lifted off my shoulders. I can feel the tension melting […]
The Power of Words
I’m usually not a huge fan of labels. I prefer to self-identify in ambiguous terms. Life is complicated and if I learned anything in graduate school it’s that dichotomies are always false, if easier for the human brain to comprehend sometimes. That said, sometimes naming something can be really useful. I’ve always known I can […]
Thoughts in the Bath
Tonight the sunset was beautiful here. And I felt grateful to see it. It is a small blessing in my life that it is no longer pitch black when I get off work… nothing is worse than feeling it’s the middle of the night before you’ve even had dinner. Whenever I most seriously entertain the […]
Change is Inevitable
Something I’ve been musing over lately is how different my life is now than what it was while I was in graduate school. I hardly see any of the friends I made during my graduate studies and fieldwork due to the time constraints of my current job and how disconnected I am now from the […]
My Body, Myself
It’s the new year and a time when a lot of people are making New Year’s Resolutions, and a common one is always dieting. I, on the other hand, have never been big on dieting. I love food and I find when I try to count calories that I just end up obsessed with food […]
New Year; Old Problems
It’s January. Can I just say, “Holy Hell, how did this happen?!?” Wasn’t it just November yesterday? I really thought I would have found a new job by January. That was kind of the plan in my head even if I hadn’t set it in stone. And while I looked and applied some yesterday, there […]
A World of Abundance
There are some insights I’ve been wanting to hash out, but I’ve been too sick and brain fuzzy. I woke up this morning with laryngitis and had to call in, so I’ve had the day to rest and sleep. Feeling a bit better, but now whatever I’ve got’s moved from my sinuses to my chest. […]
What makes a difference?
One of the things that has been bothering me of late is not feeling a sense of purpose in my life. Even in the darkest days of graduate school, I could look at the work I was doing and know I was making a meaningful contribution to the world, and that kept me going. I […]
Synergy; or, Life is like…
I went to hot yoga again tonight. I’m going to a different yoga place for a while because it’s cheaper. But because I’m not used to hot yoga somewhere in the middle I get light-headed from being hot and sweating so much and have to spend some time in child’s pose. And I was trying […]