Book Review: Falling For Me: How I Hung Curtains, Learned to Cook, Traveled to Seville, and Fell in Love by Anna David

Summary:
Anna David is a successful writer in her mid 30s living in NYC when an overwhelming depression hits her.  She’s still single.  What’s wrong with her?  While fighting off tears in the self-help section, she finds a copy of Sex and the Single Girl by Helen Gurley Brown, which was a bestseller in the 1960s.  Essentially a guide to being happy single while still keeping an eye open for Mr. Right, Anna instantly connects with Helen Gurley Brown and decides to spend the next year challenging herself and taking advantage of everything being single has to offer.

Review:
It should really need no explaining why I picked this book up.  I’ve always been the relationship type (even when I tried not to be), but I also won’t settle for just anybody, and sometimes that combination leads to some ennui.  I was hoping I would find a connection to and insight from Anna, and I was certainly right about that.

The very first chapter has Anna breaking down in line for food in her head, basically saying, “I’m going to be alone forever,” and going on from there adding that she’ll be the crazy old maid cat lady and going further and further on into ridiculousness that really doesn’t seem that ridiculous when it’s your brain saying it to yourself.  I knew instantly that Anna and I would get along.

As opposed to a lot of other single gal memoirs, the focus is neither just love yourself the way you are nor fake everything to land a man.  It’s more like….Do you have any idea how lucky you are to even have this phase in your life?  You’re single!  You can do anything, go anywhere, decorate however you want, and etc…  Anna realizes that she hasn’t been taking full advantage of the things being single affords to her.  Things like deciding to house swap and live for a month in Seville (try doing that with a baby) or taking French classes in the evening or spending the day rollerblading and winding up in a park in the sun.  So Anna isn’t just trudging along being herself.  She’s pushing herself to try new things, go new places, and yes the future Mr. Anna may be there, but even if he’s not, she’s still having a fun time doing it.

The book also addresses another common issue among single women and, well, people in general–grass is always greener syndrome.  Anna eventually realizes that she seems to think all of her problems will just disappear if and when she gets married, when that is really not the case at all if you pay an iota of attention to married couples.

One specific line in S&SG that I keep thinking of—“I’ve never met a completely happy single girl or a completely happy married one”—and how it’s helped me to see that I’m somehow convinced that getting to the next stage will make me instantly joyous.  (page 36)

The other thing that is sooo relatable that Anna talks about is how it’s so easy to become so desperate for a partner that you start trying to change yourself for him or worry constantly about whether or not you’re good enough for him, when that’s not how dating is supposed to work!

You spend all your time trying to manipulate a guy into wanting you to be his girlfriend when what you should be doing is enjoying yourself and then later figuring out if you even want him as a boyfriend.  (page 205)

There are definitely things about Anna that I don’t like or I disagree with (for instance, she eats veal and foie gras, ahem, the book almost got thrown across the room at that point), but even though we’re different, we’re also the same.  We’re two single gals who are wondering why everyone else seems to be coupling up but me?  What Anna slowly realizes over her year-long experiment is that there is no timeline for love and marriage.  It’s not like it’s a game of musical chairs and she’ll be left the only one without one.  Maybe her music is just playing at a different speed.  I think that’s a really important thing to remember and touching to see someone else struggling with, because it’s far too easy to start pressuring ourselves and the men we date into situations that just aren’t right for either of us.  It’ll happen when it happens.

This is a rare instance when I feel the need to sort of reveal the ending.  I was worried the book would end with Anna abundantly happy in a relationship, kind of like Eat, Pray, Love, which honestly would only have made me more depressed.  Like the book was all about yay singlehood but I still landed a man, right?  But no.  Who Anna falls in love with is not a man, but herself.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand: I used to not really believe I deserved thick, gorgeous panels for my windows or to pull books from a bookshelf specifically selected for my apartment. It didn’t occur to me that I was worth cooking homemade chicken soup for or dressing in beautiful clothes. I thought I was half a person because I didn’t have a partner but that when I had one, I’d do those things for him. Now I see that I’m entirely whole so that if and when I find him, we can be two whole people together, not the person and a half we would have been.  (page 305)

Yes, yes, yes!  Finally.  A book about being single and loving yourself and taking care of yourself and being a whole person as just you.  Sure, the professionals tell us that, but it’s super-nice to get to hear it from a gal who could easily be somebody I have bimonthly cocktails with.

I highly recommend this book to any single ladies in their 20s and up.  It’s a nice reminder that we’re not the only ones learning to love ourselves and be patient for the right person.

4 out of 5 stars

Source: Public Library

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Book Review: The Baker’s Daughter by Sarah McCoy

Summary:
It’s 2007, and Reba is a journalist living in El Paso, Texas, with her fiance, border patrol guard, Riki.  She hasn’t been able to bring herself to be fully honest with him about her dark childhood overshadowed by her Vietnam Vet father’s struggle with depression and PTSD.  Christmas is coming up, and she is interviewing Elsie, the owner of the local German bakery.  Elsie has some intense secrets of her own that show it’s not always easy to know what’s right when your country and family go wrong.

Review:
I have an intense love for WWII stories, and I immediately was drawn to the idea of intergenerational similarities and learning from an older generation innate in this book’s plot.  It is a complex tale that McCoy expertly weaves, managing to show how people are the same, yet different, across race, time, and gender.

Reba’s and Elsie’s tales are about two very different kinds of bravery.  Reba has a wounded soul that she must be brave enough to reveal to the man she loves.  She lives in fear of turning into her father or losing herself entirely in the love for another, the way her mother did.  She faces a struggle that I have heard voiced by many in my generation–do I risk myself and my career for love or do I continue on alone?    To this end, then, the most memorable parts of Reba’s story, for me, are when Elsie advises her on love in real life, as opposed to the love you see in movies and fairy tales.

I’ve never been fooled by the romantic, grand gestures. Love is all about the little things, the everyday considerations, kindnesses, and pardons.  (location 482)

The truth is, everyone has a dark side. If you can see and forgive his dark side and he can see and forgive yours, then you have something.   (location 844)

One issue I had with the book, though, is that although we see Elsie’s two relationships before her husband in stark clarity and reality, we never really see what it is that made her ultimately choose her own husband.  We see their meeting and first “date,” yes, but that’s kind of it.  I felt the book was building up to what ultimately made Elsie choose her American husband and move to Texas, but we only see snippets of this, whereas we see a lot of Elsie’s interactions with her prior two boyfriends.  That was a big disappointment to me, because I wanted to know how Elsie knew he was the one, and how she herself was brave enough to take the leap she encourages Reba to make.

I am sure most people will most intensely react to the story of Elsie’s actions to attempt to save a Jewish boy during WWII and may even wish that was the only real story told.  Elsie’s life during wartime Germany.  It is definitely the stronger of the two stories, but I so enjoyed the lesson in valuing and listening to those older than you that we see through Reba meeting and learning from Elsie that I must say I like the book just the way it is.  Is it different? Yes.  But that’s part of what makes it stand out in a slew of WWII fiction.  Elsie did this brave thing, and her whole life she never knew if it really made much of a difference.  She just lived her life, married, had a daughter, was kind to a journalist.  In a sense, it makes her story seem more realistic.  Less like something from “The Greatest Generation” and more like something possible to accomplish for anyone with a strong will and willingness to make up her own mind.

One critique I have that slowed the book down for me and made it less enjoyable are the insertion of letters between Elsie and her sister, Hazel, who is in the Lebensborn program.  Compared to the rest of the book, the letters were slow-moving and only moderately interesting.  I can’t help but feel shorter letters would have gotten the same message across without slowing down the story quite so much.  Yes, the inclusion of the sister was necessary to the story, but I feel like she got too much stage time, as it were.

I also have to say that I really hate the cover.  It reflects none of the spirit or warmth of the book itself.  The story is wrapped in warm ovens, scents of cinnamon, and bravery, and yet we get the back of a woman’s head with an inexplicable gingham strip at the bottom? Yeesh.

Overall, this is a life-affirming story that teaches the value of connecting with the older generations and cautions against thoughtless nationalism.  I highly recommend it to fans of literary and WWII fiction alike.

4 out of 5 stars

Source: NetGalley

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Book Review: Brothers (and Me): A Memoir of Loving and Giving by Donna Britt

Summary:
Now in her fifties, Donna Britt, an award-winning and ground-breaking black, female journalist, takes a look back at her life to see what has influenced her the most.  She is unsurprised to find that her life has largely been affected by loving and giving to brothers–black men she’s both related to and not.  From growing up surrounded by three blood brothers, to loving brothers, to raising them, Britt discusses the universal influence heterosexual women’s love for men has on their lives, as well as the unique aspect of loving a race of men persecuted in the United States and raising her three boys in the face of the odds stacked against them.

Review:
Britt’s career as a writer shows in her memoir.  It is the most well put-together memoir I’ve read in quite some time.  Each chapter looks at a key event in her life in order of it being lived, but also looks at the impact those events had on her as a person.  She does this by starting with a photograph and an anecdote related to the event, then moves on to describing the event in detail.  Everything in her life, though, is impacted by her brother, Darrell’s, death at the hands of two policemen in his early 20s.  This terribly unjust incident and how it flavors the rest of her life is the simplest and most effective anti police brutality message I’ve ever read.  Was her brother threatening the officers? Maybe.  But all it would have taken was for those two men to aim to stop rather than to kill to prevent the loss of someone’s loved one.  Britt says later in her memoir that she knows that those officers just saw “a crazy black man” and not a person, and it is now her goal to always see the person, not the stereotype.

Britt, like other memoirists I’ve enjoyed, never takes a “poor me” attitude or tone, in spite of the fact that she really could given the loss of her brother, being raped, and a first marriage to a man who soon got lost in cocaine addiction.  Not to mention her second husband’s affair.  Yet, through all of this, Britt’s resilience is evident.  She constantly tries to improve not just the world but herself.  Britt has an ability to look at herself without rose-tinted glasses.  She knows her own faults, primarily that she’s a perfectionist and expects too much from people.  I think that’s what makes her so relatable and sympathetic.  She’s an imperfect person struggling in an imperfect world, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t right about the injustices she’s seen throughout her life.

I think any female reader who has a brother can understand the other central question in Britt’s memoir–How exactly did these boys who were our brothers who loved us and pranked us and guarded us with their fists when we were young grow up into these baffling men?  Boys are easy to understand.  Men, not so much.  That’s even the case with Britt’s own brothers, one of whom grew from a rebel into a religious man who changes his name from Steve to Melech and whom she barely speaks to anymore.  Why is it when boys become men and we go from girls to women that communication becomes so hard?  Hard, but rewarding and not impossible.  Sure, no answers are offered, but it’s nice to see this experience through someone else’s eyes.

Beyond social justice and the universal communication difficulties between men and women, Britt’s memoir also clearly demonstrates an issue that is sometimes hard to explain–that of privilege.  Those born with privilege sometimes have a hard time understanding what, exactly, it is those without it are speaking about.  I sometimes wonder myself if I’d understand privilege if I’d been born a white MAN instead of a white WOMAN.  Britt with a gift of subtlety makes this clear.  She talks about needing to be extra perfect, extra good in order to combat the stereotype of the useless black children.  Of feeling like she’s representing the entire race when she’s the only black student in her graduate class.  Of the fact that maybe if her brother had been white and acting crazy the cops might not have shot him.  Of being extra concerned when her son shoplifts because he probably wouldn’t get away with just a slap on the wrist if he got caught.  Instead of talking loudly about privilege, it’s simply evident throughout her entire life and the lives of those around her.  I would hope that anyone reading this would start to see how inequality survives today, even if it’s not as institutionalized as it once was.

Overall, this is a powerful memoir by a humble woman that again demonstrates why it’s important to listen to the life stories of those older than us.  There is always something to learn or to relate to from their life journey.  I, naturally, don’t always agree with Britt or her choices, but I respect her commitment to living the best life she can.

I recommend this memoir to fans of the genre, especially, but also to those with an interest in racism in 20th century America and relationships between men and women.

4 out of 5 stars

Source: NetGalley

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Friday Fun! (What Goes Up Must Come Down or I Order Zen Flesh Zen Bones From My Library)

Hello my lovely readers!  Those of you who follow me on twitter know that this week turned into a doom week from hell for me after my cheerfulness last weekend.

I really need to learn to stop tempting the fates thusly, DAMMIT.

It’s not that any one horrible thing happened; it was just one of those weeks.  First off, I’ve been seeing a guy for a couple of months who I was really liking, but I wound up having to break up with him on Tuesday.  Let’s just say, he wasn’t treating me the way I deserve to be treated, and I’m older and wiser and don’t put up with that shit anymore.  But still!  It’s sucky.  It’s sucky to be backed into a corner and have to do something that sucks.  It’s sucky to think you’ve met someone who might be right for you, and it turns out they’re not. It’s just sucky.  It’s also sucky to have that happen and currently be working on a paranormal romance novella then discover that you’ve written the last 3,000 words without the male love interest showing up because you’re just not into that right now and have to write just short stories all week.  That sucks too.

Second, I somehow wound up working both of my jobs three days in a row, which means that I’ve been gone from home from 7:30am to 11pm.  Not. Fun.  I need to learn how to say no to the part-time job sometimes.  It is, after all, part-time.  At the very least I need to never do three days in a row again.

Suffice to say all this stress and emotions (damn them) added together to lead to me walking home from work in the rain. Crying.  I was a walking, eye-roll inducing scene from an overly dramatic movie.  Only I ended my walk with whiskey and whining to @bitchylibrarian on gchat.

It’s ok though. Really, it is.  One huge thing I’ve been working on in my 20s is accepting reality for what it is.  Which leads me to why I ordered Zen Flesh Zen Bones from the library this week.

The day that I was preparing myself to accept the fact that, yes, dude I was seeing wasn’t treating me right and I needed to stand up to that shit, I saw this excerpt from the book on tumblr:

Twenty monks and one nun, who was named Eshun, were practicing meditation with a certain Zen master.

Eshun was very pretty even though her head was shaved and her dress plain. Several monks secretly fell in love with her. One of them wrote her a love letter, insisting upon a private meeting.

Eshun did not reply. The following day the master gave a lecture to the group and when it was over, Eshun arose. Addressing the one who had written her, she said: “If you really love me so much, come and embrace me now.”

That’s all there is to it, isn’t it?  If someone really cares for you, everyone will know.  It won’t be in secret, and it won’t be something hidden.  If you really love me so much, come and embrace me now.  Here.  In front of everyone.  And you know what?  That’s what all my lovely friends do, which is why they stay my friends.  They tweet me encouragement when I have a shitty week.  They tell jokes to try to get me to laugh.  They text me to check in.  They are just generally awesome, and that’s the kind of people we should want to have in our life.  People who ease the stress of living, not people who add to it.  And I’m pleased to say that tomorrow I get to see at least some of them for an awesome fall potluck I’m hosting.  I can’t wait!  Although I will miss those who can’t make it.

As my yoga instructor says:

Shanti Shanti Shanti Namaste

Or as myself and Regretsy like to put it:

Namaste, Bitches.

 

Book Review: Hungry For You by A. M. Harte

Summary:
A collection of zombie-themed short stories and poetry with the twist that they all have to do with romantic relationships in some way, shape, or form.

Review:
This is a solid collection of short stories and poetry that can be enjoyed one at a time or inhaled in one sitting.  I went for the one sitting option.

In some stories Harte sticks to zombie tropes but in not all.  The ones where she varies or surprises the reader in some way are definitely the stronger ones.  She has an ability to imagine multiple different possible zombie apocalypses that are all, if not equally believable, still believable.  Her dialogue is a definite strength, reading as incredibly realistic in the midst of fantastical happenings.

Where she excels though, and where I would encourage her to focus future horror writings, is when she uses the zombies and zombie apocalypse as a metaphor or an instigator for something in a relationship from women’s perspective.  My three favorite stories from the collection–”Dead Man’s Rose,” “Seven Birds,” and “Alive”–all feature this element.  In “Dead Man’s Rose,” the zombie is a metaphor for an abusive lover who refuses to grant the woman her freedom.  In “Seven Birds” the surprise of the zombie apocalypse coincides nicely with an unexpected break-up (I particularly enjoyed that female character’s reaction to both).  In “Alive” the female character must deal both with the zombie apocalypse and the emotional fall-out after a one-night stand with a co-worker.  These are all three things modern women face in relationships and getting to see them take place in a world infested with zombies (one of my favorite kinds) was such a welcome change!  Too often, especially in zombie movies, we see the apocalypse from a man’s perspective and not from a woman’s.  I found myself saying to Harte in my head, “Ignore the male perspective and switch to just writing from the female perspective, because you do it so well!”  For instance, it’s not every day in a female zombie fiction fan’s life that you come across a resonant passage like this:

When I am lonely for boys what I miss is their bodies. The smell of their skin, its saltiness. The rough whisper of stubble against my cheek. The strong firm hands, the way they rest on the curve of my back.  (location 1206)

Never have I come across a passage in zombie fiction that so struck at the heart of what it is to be a modern straight woman, and to have that followed up by oh no zombies was just awesome.

There are a few shortcomings though.  A couple of the stories simply felt too short, and a couple of them–”A Prayer to Garlic” and “Arkady, Kain, & Zombies”–just didn’t make much sense to me.  I think the former would have benefited from being a bit longer with more explanation, whereas the latter actually felt too long and had a couple of plot holes that I couldn’t wrap my mind around.  This collection is periodically more British than at other times.  One short story revolves around tea to an extent that I’m afraid a Boston gal like myself just couldn’t quite relate to.  I know that those more British stories will definitely appeal to the type who love Doctor Who for instance, though.  I also really wish it included a table of contents.  That would be super-helpful in revisiting those stories readers would like to revisit.

Overall this book is definitely worth the add to any zombie fan’s collection, but particularly to female zombie fans.  It’s different and fun simultaneously.

4 out of 5 stars

Source:  Smashwords copy from the author in exchange for my honest review

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Friday Fun! (Quirky Wolfy)

I’ve always had this problem that I just don’t quite fit in anywhere.  I’m what they call an odd duck.  If I was a house, you’d say I was decorated in an eclectic fashion.  I’m kind of a big bunch of contradictions.  I’m a huge reader, so people think I’m a nerd, but then they find out that I scoff at D+D and WoW.  Suddenly, the nerds don’t know what to do with me.

I love going out to sporting events and cheering on the home team, but I don’t wear makeup.  Suddenly, the jocks are wondering how on earth I got into a sorority.  Um, I didn’t.

I recycle and garden passionately, but I shave my legs.  The hippies become very confused.

I am highly educated, but I’m more comfortable drinking at a bonfire and roasting veggie dogs over the open flames than I would ever EVER be in a fancy restaurant.

All of this has led me to make a pretty eclectic bunch of friends, and I love it, and I love them for it.  It really has enhanced my social circle to the umpteenth degree.  I have my hippie friends and my artistic friends and my nerd friends and my girly girl friends, etc….  I love them all for their own reasons, and I can pretty much always find someone to do any of my various pursuits with.  The problem, of course, comes when I’m trying to date.

I am weird.  Guys never know quite what to expect, and just when they think they have me figured out, I do something that to them is out of left field, but to me is totally perfectly normal.  I can go from discussing Kant to swearing like a sailor in five seconds flat.  I seriously get why it’s confusing.  The problem is that that’s just who I am, and I ain’t gonna change it to suit nobody.  I can’t pretend to be a classy lady when I’m not most of the time.  I can’t pretend I’m comfortable just sitting around drinking beer and watching the game every weekend, when sometimes I want to go to the museum.  I love who I am and how I am and the fact that it makes my life so varied and unpredictable.  The problem is that’s a lot of quirks to match someone up to.  Or at least to find someone who thinks they’re all cute.  I’m sure that quirky guy is out there somewhere.  I mean, after all, my father and uncles are all similarly quirky, and we can’t be the only family like that on the planet.  (please oh please oh please universe)

But, you know, waiting for him kind of sucks.  Even if I do get to pump iron at the gym, go out for beers to watch the Bruins, read on a riverbank on my kindle, and then hit up the MFA all in one weekend in the meantime.

Friday Fun! (What’s Important to Me)

Hello my lovely readers!  I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking the last few months about what really matters to me.  I guess you’d say what values I hold dear.  I didn’t just stick with the ones I was raised with.  I’ve done a lot of research and soul-searching to figure out what’s important to me.  That’s what makes me stick so strongly to my guns on things I truly believe in.  The more time that has passed since I’ve gotten back on my feet from the awfulness that was winter, the more I realize that what it all boils down to, for me, is that I haven’t lost hope in the world.  I have hope that we can change the world.  I have hope we can make it a better place.  I have hope we can fix the trajectories of previous generations’ bad decisions.  I have hope that the cycles of violence, grief, and pain can stop.  We only have to want it.  I firmly believe that Gandhi was right when he said “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”  That is at the core of my belief system.  I don’t have faith in a god or spirits to fix things.  I don’t have faith in government to fix things.  But I do have faith in myself.  I have faith that I can change for the better.  The cycles of violence and pain stop with me.  That basic philosophy extends out into everything else I do, from my firm belief in vegetarianism (that is gradually moving toward veganism) to my commitment to someday adopt at least one child.  And I just can’t be around negative people anymore.  I can’t be close to people who are willing to just give up.  Humanity didn’t struggle and evolve so much to just quit evolving.  It’s just that maybe the next step of evolution has more to do with our minds and our behaviors than how our bodies work.

Namaste, yo.

Something I Learned Recently

I had a bad childhood.  By that I mean bad in the sense that I’m having to deal with the repercussions of it today.  It’s given me challenges that I have to overcome in order to have a healthy life today.  I know, I know, a lot of people have to do this, but that fact doesn’t mean I shouldn’t talk about it ever.  In fact, I think if people talked about it more, the world would be a healthier place.  But I digress.  Since I first became aware that I needed to unlearn some thought processes and behaviors and learn new ones, I consider each lesson I learn a victory.  This is one more way in which I won’t repeat the mistakes of my elders.  I will break the cycle.  Of course I also always wish that I had learned it sooner, but one should focus on the positives.  Something that it kind of astounds me it took this long for me to learn is how not to have a disagreement with people you care about.

People model how they fight primarily based on two things:  how their parents fought with each other and how their parents responded when the child disagreed with or felt hurt by them.  My mother was the model of the “I’m angry at you but I’m not going to tell you and simultaneously make your life miserable until you figure it out” woman with my father.  My father, who I love dearly, has the classic Irish temper (although it’s mellowed with age).

Here’s a sample scenario that got played out over and over.  My mother wanted my father to help her with the dishes, but she didn’t ask him to, because he should just know that.  (This is a mistake psychiatrists call “mind reading” and normal people call “ask for what you want, doofus, your husband can’t read minds”).  My father, being unable to read minds and working full-time while my mother stayed at home so probably figured her doing the dishes was probably part of the deal, didn’t help with the dishes.  My mother got angry and instead of calmly telling my father that she was hurt he didn’t offer to help with the dishes, she went on full-on attack mode.  One thing couples know, it’s how to push each other’s buttons, so my mom would set out to do exactly that.  My dad would take it and take it and then suddenly, randomly explode.  Then yelling and screaming occurred, and also sometimes throwing of things by my mother.  (A long-running “funny” family tale was how she threw dishes at his head in their first year of marriage).  This generally revolved around bringing up old wounds, yelling insults, and more until finally the actual original incident might possibly be brought up.  This was followed by more yelling and screaming at which point my dad would vacate to the garage where he would “fix things” aka throw tools around.  Eventually my mother, after ranting to us about our father for a while, would follow him to the garage where I’m assuming they made up as they came back in happy.

The above scenario wasn’t a rare occurrence.  This was how my parents fought, almost each and every time they had a disagreement.  At least to my knowledge.  Maybe they calmly worked some things out by talking to each other, but they certainly didn’t do that in front of us.

Now, couple that with how my mother would react to me disagreeing with her.  Kids don’t always agree with their parents, and sometimes parents do make a mistake and the kid has every right to be upset, yes?  Not in my mother’s world.  In my mother’s mind she was the adult so she was always right and disagreeing was synonymous with disobeying.  For instance, we’d be driving someplace and my brother would tell my mother he was pretty sure we got there by taking the left turn back there, and my mom would tell him she’s the adult.  She knows what she’s doing, and is he implying that she’s stupid?!  Then there were the few times I dared to tell my mother, for instance, that it hurt me that she called me that name she called me.  My mother’s reaction was always “that never happened,” followed by her entirely made up version of what happened and me being punished for lying.

Put these two things together, and it’s not exactly in my nature to calmly say “hey, when you did this, it upset me.”  Why?  Subconsciously I think my feelings won’t be calmly listened to or validated.  Also it’s just instinctual at this point to get upset and just act upset until the other person asks what’s wrong.  For some reason, it’s only recently that I realized healthy people don’t interact this way!  It’s normal when relating with people to sometimes have a disagreement or feel irritated or hurt by something they did, but if they’re a good person and you bring it up calmly and rationally, you can talk about it, forgive each other, and move on.  Novel concept, eh?

Honestly though, I think that a lot of people had bad disagreements and fighting modeled for them as kids.  Maybe they do realize it, not everyone is as slow as me to realize being mean to the people you care about is not the way to handle things.  But maybe they don’t.  So, internet-world, there is such a thing as the good way to disagree versus the bad way to disagree.  Talk to each other.  Really listen to what the other person is saying.  Try to see their perspective.  Validate their feelings.  Accept and give forgiveness gracefully.  Your life will be better, and maybe the world will be a slightly better place.

The Stress of Twitter

I base a lot of my value in the librarian career field as being young and tech-savvy.  As such, I work hard to stay on the cutting edge not only of new technology, but also emerging Web 2.0 and social networking.

To this end, about a month ago I decided I should develop a professional presence on Twitter.  I would tweet insightfully about everything library-related!  I would follow libraries, librarians, library organizations, publishers, writers, etc… and thereby stay well-informed.  It would be Wolfy the Librarian 4.0! Twitter would be my new networking tour de force.

This lasted for about a week.  The second week I found myself incapable of restricting my tweets (the mini-updates) to just career-related sentiments.  Subtle “my life” tweets started being mixed in.  Things like “Mmm, chai tea for breakfast.”  These started to change more to “my mood” tweets, such as “Why do I always mess everything up.”  Ok, so not the most professional, but it was helping me maintain a personal contact with librarian friends.

When I became concerned about my twittering habit, though, was on a weekend day.  I was doing one of my more well-loved activities (food-shopping and cooking), when I found myself thinking about how I would wittily tweet about the cooking I had yet to do.  I was even automatically checking to see if it would be short enough.  My inner dialogue had turned into a series of 140 character witticisms!

Realization of this hit me like a ton of bricks.  I sat down.  I thought about it.  I realized that Twitter had become a stressor in my life.  One more thing to think about.  One more place in the world where I needed to maintain the mask, the facade.  I have enough stressors in my life, which won’t be detailed here.  My stress threshhold therefore is easily crossed.  Twitter was keeping my stress stasis at a much higher level, closer to the stress threshhold.  Not only that, but since when do I, the perpetual philosophizer and writer, enforce myself to think in 140 characters?

I thought back fondly to my blog, which I haven’t made entries in for multiple reasons the past couple of months.  I was never limited as to how long I could take to say something.  I could take the time to think it through as I wrote.  I could go back and edit if I changed my mind about something.  I had allowed blogging to become a stressor by only ever writing about things that pissed me off, but it didn’t have to be that way.  It can simply be a place where I can express my thoughts when I feel the desire to say something.

Further, recently, Twitter is increasingly being viewed as a marketing place.  Companies find new customers on Twitter.  So what about me?  I’m not a company, yet I truly was trying to use Twitter to market myself.  Market myself.  It sends chills down my spine.  I am not an object; I am a person, but here I am devoting copious amounts of my time to marketing myself like an object.  On the other hand, that’s what networking is, and my career is valuable to me.

So here I am saying that I don’t know what to do about Twitter.  It was indeed impressing others in my career that I had a firm presence on Twitter.  I was even re-tweeted by a well-known professional organization.  Yet it was hurting me and my life.  Who I am and how I interact with people in the real world.  Should I trust myself to retry twittering only as a librarian in my 9 to 5 world?  Or do I need to abandon it entirely?

Honestly, I know myself and my addictive personality.  For my own sanity, I need to abandon Twitter entirely.  Yet it bothers me that I can’t do what I should do for my career and still be the person I want to be.

Feminism

I’m a feminist.  I say it loud, and I say it proud, but today’s society has so many different definitions/interpretations/connotations on what the word means.  So, here’s what I mean when I say I’m a feminist:

I believe that men and women are different but equal.  Yes, I believe some things women (but by no means *all* women) are naturally better at doing, and vice versa with men.  However, if we do the same job, we better get paid the exact same amount.

I believe the duality of masculine/feminine is beautiful and wonderfully expressed by yin/yang.  Some women are a bit more feminine, and some men are a bit more masculine than others, but I think the most beautiful interaction is when the masculine/feminine in a couple blends to make one beautiful yin/yang.

I believe patriarchy has worked to keep women’s unique skills/talents/power down and in control, because patriarchy irrationally fears women.  I believe feminazi-type movements therefore hurt the cause.  I, however, also do not believe meekness/humility/whatever is a feminine quality.  These are qualities the oppressors want the oppressed to possess, but they are *not* a naturally female state.

I believe patriarchy fears women, and patriarchy’s methods and rules are robbing men and women of the beautiful yin/yang type relationship we could be having.

Due to my belief that patriarchy harms everyone on the planet, I do not believe anyone can work for the cause and simultaneously subscribe to a patriarchal religion.  Sometimes I come under fire for believing this, but I firmly believe it.  You cannot fix what was broken to start with.  You just have to throw it out and start over.  If there is duality all around us (dark/light, day/night, cold/hot, etc….), then why on earth wouldn’t a higher power (if one exists) be a duality?  For this same reason, I don’t believe in matriarchal religions that exclude men either.  We are a duality, people, get used to it!

I believe women should embrace our unique talents, skills, and powers that make us amazing, just as men should embrace the ones that make them amazing.  I firmly believe women’s sexuality is one of our most powerful qualities.  This has been manhandled by patriarchal religions (keep it quiet, keep it quiet), used by consumerism, etc…  Women in general no longer own their own sexuality.  I believe nothing is more beautiful than a woman in full ownership/embracing of her sexuality.  I support friends’ sexual choices, whether promiscuous or abstaining as long as it is *her* choice based on *her* feelings, not based on beliefs imposed by a patriarchal religion/culture/whatever.

That, in a nut-shell, is Wolfy’s version of feminism.