Bummed

It's the 21st century way of saying "disappointed."

You'd think I was used to things not working out the way I wanted them to because I have experienced several instances of it throughout my life, but at the end of the day, I'm still not used to rejection.

I mean, any time I throw my hat in the ring for something, especially something that I really, really want, I know there's the possibility of rejection.  It's always there in the back of my mind.  But despite it all, when I really set my sights on something and it seems like it would be perfect for me, I just know that it's going to work out.  I just know that the opportunity + my desire + its perfectness for me = a sure thing.  Many times, that equation has held true.  But when it hasn't, my ensuing disappointment has always surprised me.

I don't know if I'll ever get used to rejection.  I hope I never do.  But for now, can I be honest and say I'm just kind of bummed?  Yeah, I'll get over it.  I always do.  Yeah, I know "God has something better." I would say that I can't wait to find out what it is, but I have a feeling that patience is something I need to continue to work on . . .

The Awkwardness of Being Me

It seems that I always find myself in awkward spaces.  Or is it just that I'm an awkward person, so the spaces I find myself in are awkward by default?

Even so, I should be okay with being awkward, shouldn't I?

This is what I don't like: Being in a spot where I feel I have to force a smile or fake amusement, and being in a spot where I feel obligated to hold back my boisterous laugh.  I usually lose on the last one.

You know when you see someone you know from a distance and you're walking towards each other, and you know it's them even though you're really far apart?  But you don't want to try to wave or otherwise acknowledge them when you're too far apart, because that would be awkward.  You have to sort of look down and pretend to be engaged elsewhere, and then when you get close enough, look up and smile and wave and say a quick greeting as you pass each other.  I hate having to do these awkwardness-avoiding things.  Because it makes me feel even more awkward.

Waiting for the bus in a hot black shirt because you didn't think it was going to be that sunny or warm.  Standing out there in your boots, even, sun beating down.  Yeah, it cooled down eventually, but for those awkward minutes out in the sun, waiting for the bus, constantly shifting your weight, folding and unfolding your arms, tingling beginnings of sweat formation.  In late October.

To your colleagues, you're a prude.  With your skirts and your tights.  I even sent a FB message to someone letting them know I deleted a couple of their comments on my posts because they contained profanity.  They probably didn't even notice I had deleted them, but I felt like I should be honest and explain myself just in case they did.  Why do I still feel antsy and awkward about having done that?  They weren't offended and totally understood.  But now, what's going on in my mind about what's going on in their mind: squeaky clean, Pollyanna, nervous, repressed, squeamish little self-righteous rabbit.

To the church-bloc, you're an unmarried anomaly.  See, that's why.  With all of your worldly knowledge.  Forever in school.  Obama-loving liberal.  I just don't understand how . . .  of course you don't.  How could you?  Even when I'm smiling that toothy smile during meet-and-greet, what's going on in my mind about what's going on in their mind: liberal, weird, proper-talking smartypants, lonely single old maid.

Stop thinking and start being.  What else can you do but learn to be consistently comfortable with yourself?

Work on Now

Yes.  I will preface.  I will preamble.  I will backstory.  It's what I do.

I'm usually not into certain . . . stuff.  (sigh.)  You know, that church series stuff.  That let's watch a churchy cookie cutter series on Wednesday night stuff.  That's the kind of stuff I'm not into.  Especially when the title of the series is "Love, Sex and Dating," by Andy Stanley, shown especially for the benefit of the (younger) young people, but presumably for the benefit of all.  It makes me want to skip church. (Egad!)

The whole "Single people, I'm telling you . . . " gets on my nerves sometimes.  I know it's meant well, but it's annoying.  Thank God I was able to get over myself.  Because it was actually, surprisingly, really, interestingly good.  It was fresh in a way that I didn't expect.  

Here's the question that was kind of the focus for the series: "Are you the person the person you're looking for is looking for?"  I know, kind of corny, but if you stop for a minute, it's actually pretty thought-provoking.  Here I am, telling myself, "Okay, I don't want this, I do want that," focusing on some hypothetical person, when I should be focusing on a real person that I already know.  Me.

The possibility that maybe I haven't happened upon the One (which, as I've put as an aside in many previous posts, I don't really believe there is only one person in the universe out there who could meet my needs) yet is because I'm not yet the person that the person I'm looking for would want is kind of sobering.  Don't get me wrong, I don't believe there is some inherent undesirable thing about what makes me me that's holding me back or turning people off.  I mean, come on, just one look at that smiling mug on the sidebar should be enough to tell you the devil is a lah.  (har, har.) But there are some things that perhaps I could stand to work on now to better stabilize myself and better prepare myself so that when Mr. Right does come along, I'll be ready.  I'll be in a position not just to make a commitment, but to be able to fulfill that commitment.  To be able to carry it out.  To be able to back that stuff up.

There were several practical things my man mentioned at the end of the series that he suggested we could stand to work on now.  I'd like to list them and see how I'm doing on each count:

1. Get into the habit of forgiving.  Hmm . . . I'd say I'm usually a forgiving person.  I really am not one to hold grudges or stay angry for a long amount of time.  Maybe that comes with growing up with brothers?  We always got into it and then always made up.  I will say though, that I have become less tolerant of flakiness.  Like, I used to justify flaky guys' behavior towards me a whole lot.  I used to give people mad chances and mad benefit of the doubt.  But not so much anymore.  Like, if you want to be a wishy washy flake, I don't have time for that anymore, boy, bye.  If you want to come at me with some half-baked lameness, nawl, son.  Don't waste our time.  If you want to "just see where things go" indefinitely, umm, I have a seat for you right over there, go saddown.  If you think you're a player who's going to try to manipulate your way through, I've dealt with the likes of you before, too, so go spit that asinine game elsewhere cuz I ain't falling for it.  So, all of that to say, I believe I am forgiving, but I admit that I'm not as tolerant as I used to be.  

2. Address unresolved childhood issues. Messed up childhoods and family situations growing up really do create messed up future relationships if things aren't worked through.  I am quite thankful that I had a positive family experience.  Not perfect by any means, but we were (and are) a functional family, I have very supportive and loving parents and even though my brothers are knuckleheads, they're actually really sweet and love and respect big sis.  I really am thankful for that.

3. Get out of debt.  Yeah . . . about that.  lol.  I'm actually in pretty good shape, though.  The only debt I have is "good" debt, namely student loans.  And the amount of student loans I've taken out has been relatively minimal.  I'm pretty conservative when it comes to taking out loans and the like.  I don't have any credit card debt to speak of (praise the Lord), and I've paid off my latest car (knock on wood).  What I'd like to work on is building up my savings, (which is kinda hard to do as a grad student) and establishing some type of IRA for retirement purposes.  I do technically have a couple of things floating around out there from when I worked in the real world back in the day, but once I finish this puppy up, I'd like to consolidate them and have something established.

4. Break your bad habits.  What are my bad habits?  I pop my knuckles a lot.  I bite/pick at the skin at the bottom corners of my thumbnails. When I chew gum I have a tendency to smack and I love popping it.  I take really long showers.  I shed a lot of hair, so it ends up everywhere if I don't sweep and vacuum it up regularly.  I slobber when I sleep ( I can't really do anything about that, though.  I'm asleep).  I'm a little heavy-handed so I tend to slam and yank things unintentionally.  I procrastinate.  When I get excited, I talk loudly and inadvertently interrupt people.  I can be very snide when I'm in a bad mood.  I'm often impatient.  I'm a crybaby.  I'm often dismissive of people I perceive as ignorant and unintelligent.  I have a tendency to slip into this melancholy/spacy/detached/easily annoyed mode from time to time.  I'm sure I can think of more.  But one thing I can say is that I'm a pretty tidy person.  That's not to say that my apartment is never a mess.  But it doesn't stay that way for long because if my living space is unclean, I can't focus.  

5. Postpone the physical component of your dating relationship for as long as possible.  100% agree.  Once you cross any physical boundaries too soon, it definitely 1. speeds things up, and not in a good way, or 2. complicates things up, or worse, 3. cheapens things up.

6. Get involved in your local church.   Well, halleluyer.  Choir girl, Sunday School girl, nursing home girl, volunteer girl and most recently, guitar girl over here!  But it's not simply a matter of "getting involved."  It's a matter of service.  It's a matter of making meaningful connections with people.  It's a matter of being and working in an environment where you're most likely to come across someone like-minded.

There are a lot of other things I'd like to work on.  I'd like to be more consistent in spiritual disciplines.  Despite being a liberated woman and all of that liberal business, I'd like to improve and broaden my cooking repertoire.  I'd like to become a better manager of my time.  I'd like to become better at keeping in touch with my long-distance friends and extended family.

See, I have my work cut out for me.  I'm not waiting around for anybody.  I'm rolling up my sleeves and getting down to business.

Irons in the Fire

So, just got finished updating my CV and writing a letter of intent for the Teaching Assistant position for the study abroad program to Cuba next summer.  A million other people are applying, but I have a special feeling about it.  I dunno . . . I've had special feelings about other things that ended up not working out, so . . . lol.  It's just that the program director has mentioned something to me about it on more than one occasion, so it seems like he really wants me to go for it.  Which doesn't hurt my chances.

I also cast an abstract upon the waters of a conference going on in Texas in February.  The conference theme seemed to fit beautifully along with a paper that I wrote last semester, so I went for it.  It's a really awesome, well-known conference in my particular field, and would give me the opportunity to hear from and meet top scholars in my area of interest.  I had a moment the other day when I was passing along some articles and book chapters I gathered from research last year to a colleague of mine who is interested in a similar area, and I recognized the name of one of the authors of a book chapter as one of the conference organizers!  "Why, hello, Professor.  While making a copy of one of the chapters from your book, I realized you were one of the ones who read my abstract!  Har, har.  How splendid to finally put a face with the name!"  Er . . . maybe not.  Shall it return unto me after many days?  We shall see.

I'm also getting my guitar game on point.  Kind of crazy, but I've been asked to play a song with the worship team this Sunday.  A little scary, to be honest, but cool in a weird way.  Like, a year ago, I never would have pictured myself seriously playing the guitar in church.  But here I am.  Ten thousand reasons for my heart to find.  God really does have a way of doing things.

I'm learning just how short a year really is, but at the same time, just how much can change in that short amount of time.  I'm already in the 2nd year of my PhD.  As in, next semester is my last semester of coursework.  Ever.  Like, if I never wanted to take another class for the rest of my life after next semester, I would still get a PhD.  But knowing my nerdy self . . .

(Sigh.)  Time will tell.

Politics as Entertainment

I'm indicting myself on this one.

The truth is that people don't watch presidential or vice presidential debates to make up their minds about who they're going to vote for.  Please.  Nobody watches it to get more informed on the issues, none of that.  The supposed "undecided" voters the networks always round up beforehand are so fake.  Acting like you "undecided" so you can get on CNN.  Sitcho self down.

It's a pure style contest.  Who's got it, who doesn't. Who looks "presidential," who doesn't.  (How do you look presidential?  If you're the president, don't you technically look presidential by definition?)  We don't want to hear facts and figures.  Nawl.  We want to hear gaffes so we have fodder for parody Twitter accounts.  We want to hear zingers to inspire us to create memes to spread through the Facebook ranks like wildfire. We want to see blood drawn.  We want a political cage match so that we can say who crushed who.

Yes, I am criticizing this behavior because it shows how an arena as crucial as politics has been reduced to theater.  Though that's nothing new, it's still striking to me that even in the face of domestic and world crises, we still want our show.  Here we are now, entertain us. 

I'm guilty of it.  I am.  I will admit that I'm looking forward to ol' Mad Dog Uncle Joe Biden bringing the crazy on Thursday.  I'm sure his handlers have him on lock, so he won't be totally off the chain, but I will admit that I hope some craziness will slip out.  I don't really know what to make of Paul Ryan other than that his budget is whack.  But he looks like a sad-eyed, hangdog pup wanting to be nurtured.  There's a tiny part of me that wants to bake him chocolate chip cookies and read him Curious George stories.

Awkward Mingler

Hey, you.  Yeah, I'm talking to you.  Hey, awkward mingler.  You, nervously smiling, nervously laughing, not knowing where to stand, feeling like you're in the way, twisted, nervous Spanish coming out of your mouth.

I made you go.  Yes, I did.  I wanted you to go and socialize and get to know people in the department better, even though you didn't want to.  I didn't want you to be holed up in your apartment, so I made you go.

You need to get over it, you do.  I'm trying to break you of it.  I'm trying to stop you from being so self-conscious.  I know, I know.  You were the only grad student there and the rest were professors, lecturers, instructors and their families from the department.  But so what?

I'm trying to stop you from focusing inward all the time.  This was a chance for you to get to know people, to show people who you are outside of the classroom.  It wasn't the time to think about how awkward you felt, how out of place you felt.  It was the time for you to forget about that crap and be relaxed and confident and enjoy yourself.

You looked nice, didn't you?  Your hair was just right, you wore a simple polka dot dress with a belt that actually goes with something else and your bright red platform sandals, didn't you?  Didn't people compliment you?  But you couldn't accept it gracefully.  You accepted it embarrassedly.  And I don't understand why.

But I know one thing: Until you learn to get over it, I will continue to make you go.  I will drag you there every time.  I don't even want to hear it.  You are a grown woman and I'm going to force you to learn how to be comfortable in situations that are out of your comfort zone.

I was wondering

how long it would take for me to get here this semester, but here we are.  Tonight is the first night.  My first procrastinatory late-nighter post of the semester (I don't do all-nighters, did I tell you?).  It seems like last year, my professors required mad response papers but this semester at least, the matters at hand are a boatload of reading, sprinklings of presentations, a few "process" items (outlines, bibliographies, rough drafts) and then the big mama final paper at the end.

"So, what do you want to do with your degree?"  "If you could do exactly what you wanted to do, what would it be?"  "What's your ideal, dream job?"  "Where do you see yourself 5 years from now?" "Hispanic studies?  Do you have Hispanic in your background?  No?  Well, that's kind of odd."

These are questions coming from people at whom I smile tensely and fakely nicely.  You don't really want to know what I want to do, do you?  You just want to hear me try to justify why I'm spending the time and effort to get a PhD.  If I said I wanted to be a trash collector after all of this, what difference would it make to you?  And to the lady who told me it was "odd" for me to be interested in Hispanic Studies because I'm not Hispanic?  The concentration of sense you have in your brain is 0.00%.  Girl, bye.

And for those who are reading this and really want to know what it is I want to do, are you ready?  If I could  choose whatever it is that I wanted to do, do you really want to know what it would be?

Nothing.

Stop clutching your pearls.  If it were up to me, I would do nothing.  I would sleep in, lay around all day, eat Popeye's 3 wing combos with red beans and rice and watch episodes of The Mentalist and Scandal. But noooo . . . I have to contribute to society and pull myself up by my bootstraps and get out there and get my hands dirty and make a living and realize my full potential.  So, here I am.  Writing late night papers about Delmira Agustini, organizing student panels, submitting conference abstracts, applying to be a program assistant to Cuba, tutoring and presenting test prep stuff on the side . . . doing stuff.

But we all know what I do best.  It's what I'm doing right now.  Pro-crass-the-nation.

Home

I like to think that my sense of home is unique, but I know, in the grand scheme of things, it isn't.  I like to think that there's something special, peculiar, even, about the sense of having an island of home on a sea of never quite at home.  But there really isn't.  I know.

Home, for me, is a house.  It's embedded in a neighborhood which houses all three shades of middle-classhood.  On a street with a funny name.  When giving it out over the phone, I don't even say it, I just spell it out.  It's a neighborhood which can tell a tale of two suburbs: The one before and the one after white flight. I suspect it's undergoing another cycle, as have many places which have been touched by the white flight fever, of a Southern version of so-called gentrification.  I've been noticing an increasing number of pseudo-hipsters jogging with their dogs lately.

The shutters and door of the house has undergone a revival of more vivid recoloration.  The doorknocker replaced after years of begging my dad (it still had the name of the previous owner engraved) and the doorbell re-installed.  That was a while ago.

The piano that my mom bought for me when my Casio keyboard just wouldn't do is still there.  That repository of knicknacks.  Dad jokes about my supposed abandonment of the instrument now that the guitar is my hot new thing.  "All those years of paying for piano lessons . . . give me my money back!"  My eyerolls that make my dad grin from ear to ear.  I'm his only daughter, he reminds me.

My brothers.  Those rare, holiday-like occasions when we're all there together.  Laughing, making fun of one another, ganging up on one another.  Pledging to play Monopoly.  It's just the game we play together.  And one of us always ends up quitting before the game is over no matter how old we get.  The same crass brother burps, the same obnoxious brother joking and jostling.  The same inconsiderate brother leaving the toilet seat up, the quintessential mark of brother presence.  Thank God I don't have to share a bathroom with them any more.

Church.  Ties and heels, father preaching and mother singing and brother wisecracks.  "Why does mom always do that?  She looks like a back-up singer doing that stuff."  (Mom exuberantly gesticulating during song service.)  Trying to use me as an excuse to go somewhere other than Golden Corral after church.  "Yo, Dad, Chantell talking about going to Carrabba's." (Knowing good and well THEY'RE the ones who want to go.)  And the obligatory post-church message critique over fried calamari.  "Honey, sometimes you joke around too much."  Mom to Dad.

The smell of strong coffee coming from the expresso pot Mom brought from Italy.  She stays up till midnight making tiramisu because that's what she likes to do.  I made sure to put some in a Tupperware container to bring back with me.  On the rainy, drear ride back to my home away from home, melancholia swirling around and Bach fugues on NPR my only company, the container of tiramisu beside me provided a bit of comfort that only home can give.