In past years, a lot of my goals revolved around content. I get a lot of my creative ideas by consuming other peoples' work, so I made it a goal to read books and watch movies. This year, it felt like content was more of a vehicle to take time to enjoy myself, connect with other people, and reflect. I have been reflecting a lot on what the point of goals even are or what the point of going through each year is. This year, I was most proud of what I accomplished away from content. I made it through another year of working full-time, and my first full year in grad school. I felt fulfilled in my volunteer roles and blogging with Reverse Hipster. I went lots of new places, but more than that, I became a better and new me. I have felt that people have been stuck emotionally in their pre-pandemic age, which means I have been 23 (objectively the worst year) since March 2020. It's ironic that at the end of 2023, I feel like I can finally say goodbye to being 23 and on to something better. MoviesTop 5 New Releases: 1. Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse (5 Stars) Years away from watching the first one, I wasn't sure what to expect from this movie, but Across the Spiderverse is three hours of straight fire. I rarely rank anything five stars, but this movie doesn't give you any reason not to. The animation is astounding for anyone who has looked into that type of work, and all the fat is trimmed so that the three hours flies by. I thought the movie was only halfway over when it ended, and I can't wait to see what they do with the next one. 2. Barbie (4.5 Stars) Okay, I saw Barbie three times in theaters. If that isn't enough of a recommendation, Greta Gerwig takes such deep care with this movie about personhood and social constructs of gender that you can have a new takeaway each time you watch it too. Barbie blends hilarious blockbuster theatrical with reflective indie. It made me laugh, cry, and think on what the point of life is anyway. 3. May December (4.5 Stars) The performances in this movie are insane. May December has an ability to tackle such a complex and taboo story while making everyone in it still feel like a real well-rounded person. While I haven't had as much time to sit with the themes of this movie, May December will make you think about relationships, feelings, and performance in a new way. 4. Oppenheimer (4 Stars) Oppenheimer was one of those rare movies that lives up to the hype. The special effects and sound in theaters made it an experience, and the performances humanized a story of true horror in history. While it wasn't my favorite movie of the year, Oppenheimer is still my front runner for a number of Oscars. 5. Elemental (4 Stars) Elemental created a beautiful and immersive animation world. Ignoring the love story in Elemental, I was captivated by the way they portrayed systemic racism, culture, and familial expectations in an a digestible way without minimizing it. Movies I saw for the first time this year that I loved: The Big Lebowski (4.5 Stars), The Last Day of Summer (4.5 Stars), The Shining (4.5 Stars) BooksThis year, I read eight books with a few recommendations in order of when I read them The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey (4 Stars) The Inner Game of Tennis is a game we all play with ourselves no matter whether you play tennis or not. I learned a lot from this book about self doubt and letting my "person a" take over, the part of me who knows what they are doing if I get out of my own way. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (5 Stars) From a recommendation of my student, this book was a beach read that I couldn't put down. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo has a couple beautifully written relationships that stayed with me months later. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (4.5 Stars) This book dives into the profession of game designer in an interesting way. The two main characters are soul mates in a completely novel way, and this book moved me to tears. Every Day (4.5 Stars) From a recommendation of my friend, Every Day was such a unique concept where the main character wakes up in a new body each day. Each day was a new chapter in the book, which made an interesting venue for storytelling and learning a new character each day while the main character navigates their own story too. Woman in the Window (5 Stars) This was the first book I read as part of a real book club with my coworkers. Woman in the Window was a perfect book club read. It was an addictive thriller that gave us lots to speculate and analyze across three club meetings. Everyone ended up loving it, even if thriller wasn't their preferred genre! Pro WrestlingTop 3 Wrestling Matches of 2023: 1. MJF vs. Bryan Danielson (5 Stars), AEW Revolution MJF tried to prove that he could hold his own against professional wrestling darling Bryan Danielson in a one hour Iron Man match and prevailed (in his own MJF way). This was the peak of MJF's run, though there were plenty of hot moments the rest of the year too. 2. Kenny Omega vs. Will Ospreay, AEW Forbidden Door Maybe I'm biased because I was there live, but this match was a burn burner. There was work rate out the gate and held at a high level throughout the whole match. When Kenny Omega kicked out of Will Ospreay's one-winged angel at 1, it was the moment of the year for me. Ospreay still earned the win in the end, and the respect of everyone in the western wrestling world with his performance. 3. Orange Cassidy vs. Jon Moxley, AEW All Out I waivered on what I wanted to give the number three spot, but I settled on this because nobody expected Orange Cassidy to be that guy in 2023. Cassidy main evented an AEW PPV in Chicago with an underbuilt card going in and overdelivered to the point that it was my PPV of the year. Even in defeat, Cassidy was gutsy against the ace of AEW, and that's what pro wrestling is all about. Honorable Mentions: Men's Showcase Match, WWE WrestleMania (4.5 Stars); Bianca Belair vs. Iyo Sky, WWE Backlash (4.5 Stars); MJF vs. Darby Allin vs. Jungle Boy vs. Sammy Guevara, AEW Double or Nothing (4.5 Stars); Becky Lynch vs. Trish Stratus, WWE Payback (4.5 Stars); Bryan Danielson vs. Zack Sabre Jr., AEW WrestleDream (4.5 Stars); Adam Page vs. Swerve Strickland, AEW Full Gear (4.5 Stars) Top 3 Wrestlers of 2022: 1. MJF MJF was the champion for my top promotion throughout almost the entire year. He brought passion to the top of AEW, featured in some of my favorite matches of the year. 2. Will Ospreay With limited times in promotions I watch, Will Ospreay stole the show in every appearance. I'm excited to see what Ospreay does in AEW after Wrestle Kingdom. 3. Bryan Danielson In his last full-time year of professional wrestling, Bryan Danielson was lights out in my favorite match of the year and any other match he had in 2023. I will be sad to see him go from full-time wrestling, but happy he will still be around to light up some AEW PPVs. Honorable Mentions: Becky Lynch, Iyo Sky, Orange Cassidy, Swerve Strickland Opal AwardThe Opal Award is my catch-all award for the best non-film, non-TV content. This year, I have decided to give it to something that seized the cultural moment. While I didn't get to see it live in-person, I saw it in theaters, inspiring a future blog-post on my page. 2023: Taylor Swift's Eras Tour We may never see another time where the most famous active artist in the world decides to put on a tour with as deep of a discography as Taylor Swift has in 2023. Swift put on a three-hour long show across the world and was still willing to share it in theaters, which brought more people to theaters to see the movies I love too. It also brought opportunities for fun dress-ups, tacky themed nights, and imitations of the eras theme. Other ContentAlbums I listened to most this year:
Bright Blues - Ripe, think later - Tate McRae, The Album - The Jonas Brothers, GUTS - Olivia Rodrigo, The Barbie Album - Various Artists, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess - Chappell Roan Games I played most this year: Pokemon Go, Splatoon 3, MarioKart 8, Mario Party Superstars
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Posted on my lucky day in honor of the person I was, the person I am, and the person I will be. 2013The sunset has always been that cliché symbol that represents the end of something beautiful, because that’s what the sunset essentially is. The sunset is something that ends the light of a day, each day beautiful in a unique way. But the sunset also ushers in a shorter, yet equally beautiful, thought-provoking night. I think night brings out this brutal form of thinking in me. When darkness has gone on for long enough, one forgets about the light. I forget that at the end of night, there is a sunrise, and another day with consequences of what you have done the night before. By no means is night ugly, but it is definitely a difficult time. Well in many ways, I think August is the perfect representation of summer’s sunset. The perception of summertime can be embodied in one phrase: fun in the sun. We picture sunny days, beaches, bright clothing, enjoying time with friends, etc. We act like it doesn’t get dark in summer. In those August nights, though, it becomes apparent. I’m lying in bed during one of those August nights right now. As another school year approaches, I hear the crickets outside every night before I go to bed. Without silence, I can’t sleep, and without sleep, I can’t stop thinking. I begin to notice how much I love this life, how precious every second is that I spend with the people I love. I notice how much I hate the thought of going back to school and how overwhelmed I get thinking about being around people that don’t seem to care about me at all. Or those people who do care about me but only enough to talk to me while confined to a classroom. I notice that summer folder I placed on my desk back in June, filled with all the assignments to be completed for next school year. Books to read. Papers to write. Applications to fill out so that I can go to more school? PROBLEMS TO SOLVE? How am I supposed to solve problems in Math and Physics when I can’t seem to figure out my own problems? The crickets’ chirps begin to get louder. “You know, you should go volunteer more, it’ll look great on a college application, AND you really need to help out those that are less fortunate than you.” Don’t you think I should worry about helping myself, getting a little more stable before I work on helping others? I love the people that share this planet with me, but sometimes I think I need to worry about myself first. I know I’m being selfish, but is that always a bad thing? The crickets’ chirps continue getting louder. “I think you should get a job. You could really use the money. AND you really need to learn the value of hard work and stop being so lazy all the time.” I put all my time into school and extra-curriculars! I thought you said that if I let my grades slip, I wouldn’t be able to go to college. Aren’t I going to college to get a good job later in life? Robotics is my job now. I’ve poured all my blood, sweat, and tears into that. Actually, the tears are being wasted into my pillow now. I’m completely sobbing now, eyes looking straight into the plush, white memory foam, trying to silence the crickets. The crickets are screeching into my ears now. “You’re a kid! You get to run around and have fun all day, and you’re whining and crying about your life. IF YOU THINK IT’S BAD NOW, it’s only going to get worse from here.” I’m crying too hard to even respond to that. The crickets’ stridulations have reached such an obnoxious level, their limbs fall off, settling between thick blades of grass. After the madness, there is finally a clear silence in the air. I hate being a teenager with passion, but I love these August nights. They force me to recognize that I’m a teenager, which is significant enough. Somewhere in my mind, I think that it’s better to realize how moody and ridiculous I can be. Sure these problems are all serious enough, but perhaps I’m blowing them out of proportion. Back in my room now, I lay flat on my back, looking at the ceiling. The crickets outside seem to be chirping at a normal volume level, but I turn the TV on to drown out the noises they continue to make. The crickets have succeeded in keeping me up long enough tonight. They can come back tomorrow night. They will continue to come back every night, at least until I spend enough days of restlessness and hard work to silence them. 2015When you make it all the way to the time you are an adult and your grandparents are still alive, you convince yourself that they are immortal. Because that’s the way things always were. As a kid, your grandparents are alive. As an adult, your grandparents are alive. Therefore, your grandparents will always be alive. It is August 2015, and your father’s father is dead. Years ago, I wrote a poem called “Death is not a thing.” I didn’t really understand that death was a thing, and now, I understand that death is a thing. I don’t know what a thing is, but I know something has to be a thing to feel it like this. I’m just feeling it. I’m feeling this true and utter sadness that can only come when a person is definitely and irreversibly gone. I’m dressed in all black, and I get on my knees in front of my bed, leaning on it so it can support the weight of my grief. I end up just sobbing here, and my body is shaking because it doesn’t know what else to do with all of this feeling. After about thirty minutes, I just lay on the ground with my knees up so my back is flat, and I cry about everything. I cry about my grandfather, and I cry for my other relatives too and how they must feel. I cry thinking about what my dad must have learned from him and what I have learned from my dad. I cry because this isn’t what I wanted for anyone. I cry thinking about how emotional I am and how I must just be a burden on everyone in my family. I am still young enough to think that I was crying for my grandfather and not for myself. I am still young enough to think that I am immortal. I am selfish, reckless, and determined. I change my favorite color from blue to red. I pull myself up because I have a dinner reservation and people waiting for me, and I believe this is what you do for people who are your friends. You get this out of your system, put your game face on, and you get back to work. 2018“Our star life, yours with mine. As someone said over dinner once, each of us is given at least nine versions of our lives, some we guzzle, others we take tiny, timid sips from, and some our lips never touch.” I read Enigma Variations by Andre Aciman, and I think about how rare it is that someone can put something in my life into words better than I can myself. I am in Northern Michigan, and I have just read three books in a row that changed the way I look at things. This last year, I made it to the peak position of my life and failed drastically. I am on a final vacation to try to do some healing before I go back to life on earth, get a job, and get in line with the rest of the common people. I am obsessed with the idea of a star life because it implies that something exists even if it’s not quite realized. At age 21, I already know that I will not reach my full potential. I have been living on the trajectory of my star life for the last three years without ever doing the work to self-actualize. I am living under the assumption that things will fall into place because I am a good person, and I have done what I am supposed to. I worked harder than I’ve worked at anything in my life to get to the top position I could. I will be rewarded with a new opportunity, and I can do that again. In my star life, the girl I am in love with has been patiently waiting for me to return home and tell her. We will have to date for four years as a formality before I ask her to marry me on the beaches of Northern Michigan, her favorite place in the world as it is mine. Not long after our wedding, we will have two kids, a boy and a girl, named after the streets we grew up on in our hometown. I love the way she pretends like my cooking is good when I don’t know what spices to put on it. I love the way she furrows her brow when she’s focusing on something she’s reading. I love the way she sits on the couch sideways, feet pointed toward me when we are talking about nothing. I love the way we can talk about memories when we grew up together without being corny. I love the way I am when I’m with her, and I love the way we flow easily in and out of our roles. I love us. I love her. For once, I love me. I am being woken up on my thirty-fifth birthday by my two kids. I set an alarm that she turned off so I could sleep in. They bring me a box of Kraft Mac n Cheese to eat breakfast in bed because they know it’s my favorite, and she knows it’s my favorite thing that they can handle cooking and that it mattered more to me that they cooked it than that it was the perfect food for breakfast. It tastes perfect, so I smile at them, and I think about how much they look like her. And I smile at her, and I know everything she went through this morning to get to see me smile like that. Lines are forming at her face where she smiles and squints, and I think it makes her more beautiful. I can’t live forever in this moment, but I can live the rest of my life with her. I can live on through my kids and my kids’ kids and my kids’ kids’ kids. This is my star life. In my real life, we are on the beach, grounded by our toes in the sand, and laying flat on our back on reclining chairs that point our eyes into the sky for us. We are watching a comet shower that the news has hailed as “once in a lifetime,” and so far, it seems true. No more than a minute goes by without seeing one or more shooting stars. “I can’t tell the future, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.” She said earlier at lunch when I told her how I felt. And for one moment, I let myself laugh because I realize that she’s telling me what I’ve told other people and what I’m sure they’ve told other people too. The irony isn’t lost on me. “I’m sorry I don’t feel the same way.” She says like the period at the end of a sentence. It’s funny because we all know we can’t control our feelings and yet we apologize for them. For so long, it wasn’t my star life. In my head, it was what was going to happen. I thought I knew how she felt, but I had just projected and extrapolated my own feelings. So, I’m sitting next to her watching our star life crash down from the sky and back down onto earth. This is the earth I live in. This is the real life I live. But for one last night, I can pretend that I know what is coming and take it all in. For one last night, I can pretend that I am still in my star life. I wonder if she is thinking about the same thing, and I remind myself again that she is not. The next day I am on a boat with a friend of a friend who I have long admired. She is vibrant and creative, as wise as she is whimsical. I’m telling her about the job offer I received before I came up here. It is one of those offers that makes sense. The job is a good fit for you, and you’re a good fit for the job. It’s not exciting, and it doesn’t make you want to get out of bed every day, but you know you could do it. The works not world changing, but if you’re being honest with yourself, you’re not world changing either because if you were, you wouldn’t have failed, she would have said yes, and you would be on your star trajectory instead. “We all have to start somewhere in our life.” The friend of a friend says. It’s a reminder that this is your life, and you are on earth, and it means something. “This could be the start of something really exciting for you.” It stifles you for a second. This is someone who is creative and inspiring and believable. She’s usually right, and she must be here too. Perhaps giving up your star life as you know it is essential for starting your life now. 2020Did anyone write a book about 2020 in the same way George Orwell wrote about 1984? I’m sure people in 1984 kept reassuring themselves that shit is not this crazy. 2020 is, for the most part, holding up its end of the bargain. The utopian future we were hoping for hasn’t come true, but all of the dystopian predictions are pretty true. Living under the jurisdiction of a singular evil power? Check, although that’s mostly dramatic. No, maybe the only part that’s dramatic is that we’re living under the jurisdiction of many evil powers. The part where the people have convinced themselves that this is a good system? Check. That’s the part that scares me more than most. Are we already at the part where people are too scared to speak up about it? Some big event that reminds everyone how bad of a situation we’re in politically? Check that, too. And some people are still defending this system. It makes me think a lot about objectivity vs. subjectivity, and if they can be right in their own way. But how can they be right when I don’t even see their side? And usually, I see every side. I think maybe I should write about this, but I think everyone is going to write about this when this is over, and that would be too cliched. As for me, I’m still living with my parents, in the same house I grew up in. After I crashed in 2018, my parents graciously let me come back to live with them until I got my feet under me. My writing career never took off, and actually, a lot of things I thought I was going to be great at in high school haven’t panned out. I thought I was ready like a racehorse getting off the track to run somewhere. I thought I was ready to be done running on a hamster wheel to explore a maze of tubes and other cages. I’ve been having more vivid dreams than ever lately, mostly that I’m in high school. I spend a lot of time on the stage, even though I wasn’t ever in drama club, I present to people an act of someone who is perfect at what they do. I smirk when people applaud, and I go backstage and cry because I’m worried so much that they are going to find out that I’m not an actor or that they’re just applauding to make me feel better about myself. When I’m not dreaming of the stage, I’m dreaming of some test that I didn’t prepare for, usually in Math or Spanish, so I don’t even know what the question is. Now, I’m laying in bed in the room I grew up in, thinking that I’m still here. The portable air conditioner hums loudly, which is actually welcome because it’s giving my thoughts a stage to stand on. If it was too quiet, my thoughts and words would keep doing serpentine motions in my head, and I wouldn’t be able to grab any of them. I’m also just grateful the air conditioner is blasting cold air on me, and the air in my room finally feels cold and stable enough to breathe in, since I found out I had asthma two months ago, and the heat has just been blasting my ability to breath as much as any other part of my body. But what was how this all started? Oh, yes. I’m still here. Six years later, and I know more than anything the part that hurts my chest is, yes still the asthma, but also that knowing high school me would be so disappointed this is how I turned out. Apathetic? No, that’s not quite right, but at least that’s how I appear. I care SO much about everything. Maybe I care too much about too many things, so now I’ve just shut down completely. And now, I’m thinking that in six years, I’ve gotten absolutely nowhere because I’m still debating these questions and self-doubts I have had for six years. My air conditioner forces itself off. It does this sometimes when it’s overwhelmed because it’s so hot outside, it can’t keep up. I think it might be cool enough in here to go to bed, but without the hum of the air conditioner, I can hear all my thoughts. Worse, I can hear the crickets outside again. Fuck, it must be August. I think to myself, and I realize part of why I’ve felt so shitty lately, part of why I’ve felt this feeling in my gut that I’m going back to something big like school or work or anything, but none of this is true. I think about everything about August, and I think about how I think August 20 is when my parents met, and if they never met, I wouldn’t have to be here. I think about how I used to think August 26 is my lucky day because that’s when I got a new kitten, but it died later that year. I think about how every August 26 for the past 3 years, I’ve ended up crying inexplicably but laugh crying at the end because this is my lucky day. I think about that shitty poem I wrote when I was 16 and how absolutely nothing has changed. I can’t even think over the noise. I hear the crickets, now, and they’re fucking screaming man. Fuck stridulations, they’re fucking screaming. And now there’s moths flying around the room too so fast I try to grab them, and they fly through my hands. I grab a couple and kill them, but it’s not enough, and I realized there’s so many goddamn moths. I realize there are these little wigs on the wall that look like flies but if you stretched them vertically. Everything I forecasted came true. I wasn’t cut out for this world. Now, it’s almost 6 a.m., and I’m still up. The sun is rising. This is when it’s supposed to get light, right? This is when it’s supposed to get light, right? And I think about just saying fuck it and staying up for 48 hours straight because if I go to bed now, night will be all I know. I think about just ending it all, and I don’t think about God or religion or afterlife. I don’t think about seeing my grandparents in heaven, but I do think about my mom’s expression when she finds me hanging from the beams in our living room, and the thought deters me a little. I think about just ending it, and I would feel nothing. I wouldn’t have to listen to the crickets anymore, and I wouldn’t have to spend all night grabbing at moths in my room and scraping wigs off the wall. I could just sleep. I would just close my eyes, and it would just be over. I would just be dead, and I would know death is a thing or a real option at least. I don’t know who I’m praying too, but I’m closing my eyes, and I’m praying I don’t wake up. But something stops me. My blinds are open, and the day has visibly started because it’s light out. There’s something there. I realize I haven’t been up early enough to watch a sunrise in so long that I cry a little bit, but not like I’ve been crying. I cry realizing that there’s something still out there for me, and there’s still new things to discover, but not necessarily new things to discover but things that are the same but different. Like how I haven’t seen the sunrise in forever, it seems so new to me despite it being so constant. Like how my parents and I still talk every day during dinner, but now it’s okay if I say fuck or they’ll tell me how it is really or I can share my opinion as an equal but they can still teach me something with their opinions. Like how suddenly, I’m writing this, and it feels natural again, and I’m writing the same thing all over again, but there is a newness to it all too. Inexplicably, I’m walking downstairs in my underwear, and I walk out on to the back deck. The air feels so nice again. The morning is cool and sunny, and the air is fresh enough for me to take the first good deep breath I’ve taken since March. I’m going to stay up, I decide. Because I still have a whole day ahead of me and a fresh cup of coffee, and a day that’s cool enough that I can open my window and sit by it and write again. I forgot how much I loved writing, or at least how therapeutic it is. The crickets are quieter during the day too. If I stay up long enough, I can go to sleep before it’s too dark. The sunrise was beautiful wasn’t it? I’m reminded how much of a 20’s sentiment that is. For someone in their 20’s to think something so mundane is so beautiful. I’m reminded how much teenage me would hate that sentiment or keep sleeping through the sunset or have some predisposed ideas of the sunset. Nobody warned me being in your 20’s would be so hard. I was so ready to be a teenager, and that angst was unrivaled, but being in your 20’s is so goddamn anxiety-inducing and hard too. There’s no playbook, and I think somewhere in my head I’ve feared that forever. But during the day, there’s a beautiful neutrality to it too. The idea that you can go anywhere you want whenever you want. You can stay up all night if you want too, but you absolutely do not have to nor should you. You can write this story however you want it. 2023For the first time in my life, I had a panic attack. And for the first time in my life, I had three panic attacks in one week. I’ve always been aware that mental health isn’t linear, but I didn’t expect it to be so cyclical.
And just like that, it is August again, and it’s really easy for me to think about how not much has changed. I’m still sitting in my childhood bedroom, looking out on the backyard in the house that I grew up in. I’m still not sure if I know what I’m doing. I still go to the high school and the college and downtown. I’m still driving a Ford Escape to something that I don’t quite love doing, but I can get by. I still struggle to get out of bed in the morning when it’s still dark out, and I still have problems falling asleep when I’m thinking about everything I’m anxious about. But at the same time, I have lived 100 years in the 10 years since I wrote August 2013. I am dangerously close to self-actualizing, and I have been steeled by my experience in education, years of reflecting on what got me here, falling in and out of love, living through a global pandemic, and working three jobs that drove me to go back to graduate school. Progress doesn’t look like how far you still have to go; it looks like how far you have been. Looking back, I have been through a lot. I wasn’t always set up to succeed, and it dawns on me that nobody was. This summer, I was trying to undo two years of burnout in two months. Something about getting to August shook me to my core. It was like I knew. It was like I was still listening to what they said. Perhaps the disorganized summer sadness has always been the most dangerous to me. My thoughts have been like loose clothes strewn all over my room, and I know it would be better if I could just hang them up in the closet, but I can’t bring myself to. So I’m thinking about August and what it means to me. I can always feel it coming up because August is the end of something. I’ve never been super good with change, but when I think about it, this is a change I can rock with. I get three months to rest and be indulgent. When I get to the end of August, I get to return to my routine. I get to move back to meaningful work, and I get to get away from the silence that forces me to listen to the crickets. I’ve been pretty good at making my own noise lately, sleeping through the night and listening closely to what actually matters. It’s not always the right thing to do, but it’s better than listening to crickets. This is what it means to be 26- to be dangerously close to self actualizing, panicked by unlearning all of the bad habits you’ve picked up over the years and still able to relate to that sleepless 16 year old with the knowledge you’ve acquired over the past 10 years. August is a sunset. August is the end of summer. August is a time to reflect, listening to the crickets, realizing we have a finite amount of time left, falling out of love, and succumbing to the absurdity of life until you are unsure if you want to continue. And despite all of this, August is beautiful. August is standing up for yourself and listing every reason that the crickets are wrong. August is acknowledging the pain and being grateful for what you learned from it. August is letting go of the past and consenting to a better future. August is staying up all night and watching the sunrise. August is all of this, and still hoping, no, believing that September will be better. I wrote this first part in 2019, but I ultimately decided not to publish it because it was “just a rant.” In 2019, I couldn’t decide what the point of my blog is, though I still don’t. I thought it might be a good on-ramp to uploading on my blog, with some updated thoughts on it now. The problem with "adulting" (January 30, 2019)Language is important. A few years ago, I read “What to Say When You Talk to Your Self,” a book about self-talk and how to frame things positively when using your inner voice. To me, the book was equally about the importance of language, rephrasing your internal statements to use words that make you feel better. Language can shape the way we think, feel, and behave all the time. Yet, it doesn’t seem like people promote this sort of technical solution to their mental health. Think of how helpful it would be to adjust the language you assign to yourself instead of just trying to “be more positive.” Obviously, the same concepts of language and attitude apply when communicating with others. Think about the way you hold onto positive emotions when somebody compliments one of your strengths or hold onto negative emotions when somebody insults one of your insecurities. Now, I think everyone in their twenties is familiar with this phrase: Adulting: “I can’t hang out this weekend because I have to work Saturday and go grocery shopping on Sunday. Adulting is so hard!” In my opinion, the way we use adulting in sentences day-to-day is really problematic. The problem with “adulting” is that we’re using the word to catch any sort of discomfort or negative emotions we feel about growing up. The problem with that is anybody over 18 is legally an adult. Most people using this phrase are young adults. It’s a label you cannot shed, and yet, you’re attaching the word “adult” to only the negative aspects of growing up. For some reason, now, being an adult is associated with paying bills, working long hours, or applying to new jobs but never to the autonomy you have or the opportunities you have for growth in front of you. More so, you’re distancing yourself from the term as if being an adult is something you need to act and not already are. Some other examples of this phenomena: Life: “I know it sucks working overtime for two weeks, but that’s life. Get used to it!” Real world: “It’s just so much harder making ends meet when you go out into the real world.” If you’re following my thinking, the way we use “adulting” is literally distancing us from embracing adulthood, making us dread coming changes, and stunting our potential growth in areas that we need to work on. This is all because of the way we use a word as a catch-all for negativity. In another example, we use “that’s life” to catch negatives like working long hours, waking up to early alarms, or even the death of a family member. In reality, life is embracing all of the positives and negatives that come your way. I think we can do the same thing with adulting. Being in your twenties is a unique opportunity. You get a relatively free pass to try new things and get better at them in the process. Life in your twenties is filled with notable milestones and unignorable growing pains from achieving those milestones. So, what should we do? First, stop using adulting or other phrases as a catch-all term for negativity. The phenomena above show ways that we can start to feel bad about being an adult or even living. Then, get specific with what you’re good at and what you need to work on (note: not what you’re bad it, phrase it constructively). There are so many things to be confident in because you made it this far. Big decisions coming up? You’ve probably made so many big decisions already. This is just another round of them. Things to work on? Definitely. I’m sure we all need to develop our communication skills with older adults, increase our comfort levels with debt, and work on having a better attitude when that alarm goes off at 6 a.m. But I think that defining these tasks more specifically is going to help everyone’s mental health. Instead of viewing adulting as a barrier to overcome, let’s start conforming to it as a part of life. That means we choose to talk about the good parts too. The problem with communicationAs it turns out, writing a blog of my rants was not a substitute for meeting weekly with a licensed mental health professional who gives me constructive feedback on my destructive thought patterns and behaviors. This is what most people call therapy, though my therapist and I haven’t really agreed on what we call it yet. I’m still not sure if it matters. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about verbiage, conflict, and communication. At its core, this is what communication is. We’re doing it now: I, the sender, have something I want to tell you. I’m encoding it in these words, putting it in a Microsoft Word document that will later be a page on my blog, and sending it to you, the receiver, to decode. When I wrote “The problem with adulting” in 2019, I went through this process because I wanted to talk about how it was weird that I felt we were all engaging in this self-destructive behavior of linguistically equating adulting with negative chores. When my first readers read it, they decoded it as a rant with no real target. Me in 2019 got that feedback and decided nobody else really needed to read it. So, my therapist and I were recently talking about an example where I was giving advice, and the person I was talking to said it was bad advice. I was taken aback by this feedback and stunned to the point that we pretty much ended the conversation right there. The more my therapist and I broke it down, the more we realized the sender and the receiver were standing in two different places and looking at the same thing. “But that couldn’t happen to me,” I said, “Because I’m a good communicator, and they should have known where I was coming from.” The next week, I came back after having a little think about it, and I admitted she was right. I said that the reason I was able to get over this example was putting my “ego” aside. As soon as I said that, we got in a new debate. “Well, you’re not really talking about ‘ego’ in a Freudian sense,” she said, “You’re talking more about pride or self-importance.” Ironically, now, I realize we had devolved into a similar debate that prompted “The problem with adulting” from a similar debate that led to me not publishing it. “Honestly, I’m not smart enough to know what that means.” I admitted. So, we spent the next twenty minutes asking questions and citing examples. It was like we were in a plane above a small planet, exploring the clouds around the word we were searching for without ever landing on the surface. By the end, we both knew what we were talking about, we just didn’t have a word for it. We were speaking two different languages, and the encoding/decoding process wasn’t perfect, but we were communicating. The problem with communicating is that there is more than one player, and there are so many pieces to it. While I am confident that I can fully understand what “The problem with adulting” means to me, I will never understand how it reads to another person. And each person is going to have their own interpretation on that too. Is Dr. Mario a doctor?... and similar questions |
AuthorI am a proud creative, U-M LSA employee, University Activities Board at Michigan State University alumni, pro wrestling fan, Detroit sports follower, Nintendo geek, and sandcastle champion. Categories |