About Me

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I blog. I also mother, wife, create, preserve, recycle, cook, act, quilt, exercise, laugh, write, lolligag, work, volunteer, sing, and sometimes sleep.

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Ok...Cupid.

A few years ago, to prove a point to a single friend of mine, I went onto OkCupid and created a profile so that I could search the options available.  I used a junk email account, put in the bare minimum of information and promptly forgot it even existed.  A while later, I got asked by a friend to check out his profile and give my opinion, at which point I remembered I had an account...from there I started periodically helping friends edit content, suggesting picture changes, etc.  Michael tried to get me to perform a few social experiments, but I used a variation on my actual name as my screen name, so I was reticent to do that.  

It's been really interesting.  I've actually met a few people there who seem nice enough, some who don't believe the "I'm married" line (or who hope it doesn't matter) and a couple who wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell on their best day.  I eventually put a picture up because I had gotten chatty with one man who told me a LOT of personal information (M said I was his free therapist), and one day, at his insistence, I showed him my picture.  I never heard from him again.  I'm pretty sure I'm not *that* hideous, so my theory is that he somehow knows me in real life and panicked that I all of a sudden had a whole bunch of information he wouldn't want someone he knows to have.  I figured, since I wasn't trying to hide my presence (unlike the other married folks on OkC, who you can pick out by the fact that they don't have identifiable profile pics), that a picture would be fine...so I put up a non-suggestive, but recognizable shot.  That way, I wouldn't hear any more secrets unless someone wanted to tell me.  

WELL.  The messages started coming in like crazy.  Pictureless, I got very little attention.  With a picture, despite the clarity in my profile, the messages came.  Most people tentatively checking in to see if married meant I wasn't actually looking...then one day a young man asked how much I charged for editing services (I mention in my profile, in the "you should message me if" section, that "you should message me if you want me to edit your profile.)...I had no idea how to respond, so I asked if he was looking for grammar/spelling or content editing.  He responded "Content.  I need someone to take a good, long, hard look at my...content."  Aha.  Okay.  I told him I didn't provide the sort of services he was looking for and we both moved on.  

But today, it finally happened!  A "gentleman" wrote me, seemingly simple, just a "good morning, how are you..." and when I responded...well.  That's when the fun started.  





Monday, September 8, 2014

Silver

When I was 13, I challenged myself to stop being judgmental.  It stemmed from a challenge posed to me to strengthen a relationship with my beliefs.  Fresh out of a horrible Catholic school experience, I wasn't ready for that challenge to be religious, despite the spiritual focus intended.  My mentor through the process was patient and kind and suggested I challenge myself to figure out WHAT I believe in and to come up with a challenge that would help support that.

Sitting on a red rock formation in the desert at dusk, watching my friends prepping their camping equipment and settling in for the evening, I was asked "What DO you believe in?".  I remember pondering that question.  I remember jokingly answering "pre-marital sex!" (I was years away from it, but not that far away from being a smart ass.)  And then, while watching the antics of a person who has stalwartly stayed one of my closest lifelong friends, but had a tendency then (and sometimes now) toward the annoying...I said, quite simply...I believe in the goodness of people.

I continued (although without the gravitasse of Kevin Costner's BULL DURHAM speech or even a Chuck Lorre vanity card) to explain.  My recollection of what 13 year old me is strengthened by the fact that I was a writer, even then...and my journal explained it quite clearly.  Too lazy to find it and recount it verbatim right now, I hope you'll trust my paraphrasing... I decided that while I believed that all people were INHERENTLY good, their actions didn't always add up...but that I needed to force myself to stand by my beliefs.  To recognize that a person acting in an annoying or mean fashion may be doing it because of any number of reasons.  It could be because of their upbringing, fear, insecurities...any number of reasons over which they did not have control. And while every human can control their ACTIONS, that I needed to realize that no one was perfect and not judge them.  The 13 year old who had been judged since the 3rd grade for her weight, her unruly hair, her dramatic flair, her Jewish background, her Latina heritage, her general lack of cool points, her economic level, and her parents' divorce decided while sitting on that rock that she wanted to believe that people were good and her challenge was to NOT judge them when they acted in ways that were annoying, mean, or "bad".  Instead, to have patience and not "talk behind their back" and to hope that they would be able to learn the errors of their ways and find their way back to good.

Grownup me has trouble with this sometimes.  First off, certainly, in the wake of such serious current events like the uprising in Ferguson, or the domestic violence issues in the NFL, it's hard for grownup me to think anything but anger and frustration towards the people responsible.  13 year old me may have not been thinking about criminal activities, exactly, so it's possible her theories aren't foolproof.  But this morning, I found myself getting all worked up about a person's status update on Facebook.  A status so judgmental and self serving it made me want to punch something.  Or someone.  And then, as I do, I felt 13 year old me wearing the silver piece of cloth, symbolic of my challenge, tapping me on the shoulder and reminding me that anger and annoyance and frustration would not benefit me. 13 year old me reminding me that this person lives their life in fear.  That their status isn't INTENDING to hurt anyone.  And so, as she often does, grownup me calmed down and stopped judging and moved on.  Well, first I blogged.  But now I'm moving on.

Monday, September 1, 2014

Enough with the Blessed, Already

Stop saying you feel "blessed". You're not blessed. You can feel fortunate, lucky, humble, grateful, appreciative, thankful… But stop feeling so "blessed". You were NOT handpicked by the universe to get that new job, get that new car, go on vacation, see that sunset, have good cholesterol, sleep through the night, find your partner, have a healthy family, or what ever else you think you've been blessed with.
You.  Were. NOT.

You are fortunate. You should feel grateful. You can show appreciation and gratitude and happiness and pride.  But you need to realize that being #blessed means that YOU were better than the person who did not get that thing.  YOU were better than that person who just got a cancer diagnosis, who just had a car accident, who just got hit by a drunk driver, who is getting a divorce, whose child is sick, who just lost their job.  Do you even realize that's what you're saying???
The next time you want to show the world about how you feel "blessed" you feel, I would like you to go down to St. Jude's and say it to all the kids there affected by cancer and other horrible diseases. Tell them you were blessed because you're healthy and your life is good. And explain to them maybe they just weren't good enough to be blessed like you.  Go ahead. Tell them that. I dare you.