two zero one four

Well it looks like this little bloggy has fallen by the wayside but this yearly tradition continues. Got most of my resolutions/wish list for 2013 so why not send another one out into the great cosmos / internet

2013 highlights
- well I got dumped twice this year but don't worry bloggy babies because it was USEFUL - if there was no i) then there would have been no ii), and what came in between was important - this also means that I have been a BRAVE gal who got back on that horse and tried again and has the resolve to continue try, trying again, even if it's hard, even if it hurts, because things that are worth doing usually aren't easy. also I said ILY to another human being in a serious romantic way for the first time since I was 17, big deal, big girl GETTING IT ON
- master's thesis idea, research design and data collection and transcription and data coding, no small feat
- found a relevant summer job that paid $$$ and granted me information and networking opportunities
- hosted a veritable BEVY of lovely and loving visitors to my new home in the southern half of this country - best friends, family and acquaintances alike and this shall continue 2 days after I get back to town
- healthy routines maintained! better cooking eating & staying full
- participated in a serious political moment for women's health in the TX legislature, revived/regained my passion for organizing/making a difference and got to know other people who feel the same
- grad student organizing is a thing at my university and it all started because of my friend Adam and I. we put on some good stuff, we got the word out, we gathered momentum. I met a bunch of new and good friends from it, I got involved in student government, I became known as somebody who knows what's going on and is working on changing things
- I made new friends. I am widening my Austin network. I got closer with friends from before and found new ones too. this had been the loneliest part of moving but I grow less and less lonely as I am sinking in my roots
- made it through a seriously TOUGH semester in terms of course content; emerged from the ugliest depths of the social world (child poverty, sexual violence) no longer demoralized but with vibrant ideas and a renewed commitment to social change
- learned more about MYSELF: that I am a social creature and good talks with good folks revitalize me and are essential to my happiness and well-being; found a seasonal pattern of sadness that I am taking steps to preempt; discovered a tendency towards complacency within unhappy relationships - these are USEFUL, I can do things better now that I know them
- abundance: not only sufficient but comfortable necessities even on the penury of a TA stipend; more than enough intellectual puzzles to last me a lifetime; more people that I love than I could ever count

2014 goals
- write, revise, finish master's thesis. submit portions for publication
- finesse academic relationships, work through disputes professionally and respectfully
- learn enough STATA to write a paper with PES/CAS data
- find a way to get paid in the summer (bonus points if relevant to research)
- find a new living situation that I like even a fraction as much as the one I have now
- G.F.H.; try to do a race competitively maybe
- organize, build networks politically, professionally and personally
- keep in touch with people back home more consistently
- do not write anybody off. not even the mailman. patience. appreciate the sanctity of others' time, give everyone the time of day
- learn how to harmonize
- work with/through tendencies; know thyself. break up with people if they don't make you happy, don't wait for somebody else to do it. open up to other people, be vulnerable, get hurt. it's okay. it's never the end of the world anyway
- in leisure time, do stuff that makes you feel good (music, books, catch up with friends) not stuff that makes ya feel bad (facebook for hours)
- remember the Big Questions and tackle them again. discuss and debate and refine them with others. be open to learn from them, be open to be wrong. be tolerant. keep asking and looking and thinking and reading about it
- tell the people you love and like and appreciate that you love and like and appreciate them. practice gratitude. be patient
- practice the harmonica

maybe i'll seeya in 2015 suckers!

year in review and preview (2)

It's kind of like making a wish list to do this. Last time I wrote them down and a bunch of them came true so that might happen again, so I'll do it.

accomplishments of 2012

- graduated college summa cum laude. on paper that sounds impressive but it didn't feel like it was very hard to be honest

- after much consternation and countless tears and $700 worth of shipping costs I kissed everything I have ever called home goodbye and moved halfway across the country to a place where I didn't know a solitary soul. this was the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life but it's in the rearview mirror now so this must mean that I could actually do anything

- managed to carve out a pretty nice and comfortable life for myself in this new place and climate and turned a bunch of strangers into people that I know and trust and care for. More confirmation of the lesson I learned in italy there are people that you can come to love everywhere

- made some grown up habits like cooking meals for myself (not just in the microwave) and making my bed in the morning and doing my laundry weekly instead of when I run out of clean socks

- cultivated a healthier lifestyle only partially created out of near-poverty - started looking at the clock when I run instead of just taking my sweet time. bringing work out clothes in my bag so that it would be silly if I didn't go every day. bike to school everyday uphill both ways and got my sea legs

- convinced 2 classrooms full of 18 year old kids that I am a valid authority and that they should take notes on the things I say

- a million dates, almost all of which I instigated just like a brave person. got pretty good at my first date swag

- after innumerable false starts finally lost that v-card

- found a human being that I like who has become the first person I've called my boyfriend since like 2008. getting to know him and be comfortable with him and growing some real feelings and learning how to accept the fact that I like somebody instead of pretending that I don't care. finding the appropriate sized place for him in my days and weeks that isn't overwhelming or excessive like high school boyfriends. and playful orgasmic sleep overs

- found the courage to renounce catholicism even to my parents. after much guilt and anxiety came to finally believe them when they said that they love me anyway

- foxjuice

goals for 2013

- be proactive about stress so it doesn't knock me out twice a year. accupuncture? massages?

- thesis research - be on schedule to finish by summer 2014 so I can get paid more in 2014 $$$

- do the right amount of reading. find out what that is. more than I did this semester, that's almost certain

- manage time better. one day's worth of my own work per week? tuesdays? or friday mornings?

- more confidence & self-positivity. more courage in social situations. more TX friends

- deepen existing TX friendships. get lunch with somebody once a week

- call home biweekly

- continue balancing well with josh. be vulnerable enough to let it deepen if that's where it goes

- theorize care as philosophy/religion

- keep up with home friends more regularly

- get a tattoo

- run faster. do a 5k for time?

- explore Austin more. not just the same spots I already know

- talk more in fem(me) sem

- more filling lunches and breakfasts

- Gregory pool

- friend visits

- CONCERTS

- try new things

c u l8r

4 days left on the east coast before i move away from every single person that i know - good thing i wasted so much time in the previous months thinking about & dwelling on & crying over byes that i'm only doing now. thursday was ben and i had mysterious and psychosomatic maladies that prevented me from being fearless & genuine about it even though we had spent a nice day together and tonight was my dad who kept it concise so we could separate and be alone and unselfconscious in our individual grieving, even though charlie mistook me for the birthday girl at dinner because my parents were making such a big deal about me. this morning i got to do 9 more of my best friends from college- though i may see a few in the coming days- and the creeping fissure kept me mopey and reticent for a lot of the last opportunity i'd have to see them in a really long time, so instead of dancing and drinking i walked on the beach in the dark and listened to small talk and quietly took on the weight of the goodbyes. i have 24 hours or less before  the next round and in between i have packing and preparing to do. i was mostly worried about the possessions that i'll have to ship & pay for by the pound but the weight of these goodbyes is heavier

Sexual and other revolutions

"What, finally, are we afraid of when we stand back from our own sexual revolution, when we leave it unannounced, unclaimed, uncelebrated? Ridicule, perhaps, or a loss of dignity, and for women, dignity is still a scarce and precious resource. If we are feminists, we are under pressure - by no means entirely external pressure - to confine ourselves to the 'real issues,' the urgent matters of economic survival and political power.... Even on the more liberal fringes of politics, talk of 'liberation' or of any expanding sense of human possibility can be dismissed as the dated utopianism of a more naive decade.

Yet it is precisely this punitive mood that most challenges us to pick up the lost thread of sexual liberation. If the 'real issues' are economic deprivation, the threat of nuclear holocaust, the destruction of the environment, and so forth down the grimly familiar list, then we should perhaps acknowledge that the issue of human pleasure is not, after all, so marginal or secondary. For the 'real issues' only reflect our vast, collective separation from the body, from the earth and other life on it, and from the possibility of delight in ourselves and each other. We may have come to the point where we no longer have the luxury - and puritanism can be a perverse kind of luxury - of dividing what is 'real' from what is only personal; what is public, from what is most deeply felt. We may finally be obliged, by the very threats we have created for ourselves, to rethink pleasure as a human goal and reclaim it as a human project."


- Ehrenreich, Hess & Jacobs. 1986. Re-Making Love: The Feminization of Sex. New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday. 207-208.

If you go straight long enough you'll end up where you were

7/22/08:
"Also crying a lot about leaving, Charlie especially - he won't even know it's coming. Loving my family more fiercely and transparently than I can ever remember. Reading 'Organizing your Inner World' feels in vain because my soul is in shambles. Looking for spiritual fulfillment and a paradigm shift on my outlook, but I haven't had the time because I always feel too tired. Basically, one foot in the door and one foot out but the foot still inside is glued to the ground with the love and stability that I am fortunate enough to experience here in my home--my 'high school life.'"

I KNOW THAT FEEL, 18 Y/O BCOZZ

3 day forecast

Local weather Philadelphia

our bodies, ourselves

Seeing real people's bodies is the best antidote to the culturally-inscribed feelings of self-consciousness and inferiority that many of us have spent our whole lives feeling. It might sound like weird advice, but seeing your friends naked is really good for you. Since you already love them, you are not judgmental about the way that their bodies look because their bodies are the physical manifestation of the people that reside inside the bodies. And it helps you realize that your body is the same way. I've lately been consumed with love and affection for my own body--not because I have big round boobs or a flat stomach (see Fig. A.) because I have neither of these. Instead, I've become less concerned with the way it looks from the imaginary observer's standpoint (into which I'd formerly constantly placed myself) and more concerned with the way it works and the way that it feels from the inside. My boobs are important and wonderful because I get pleasure from them. My stomach is wonderful and important because it digests the food that I eat and it strengthens and clenches from laughter, not sit ups. If my body does so much for me - from keeping my heart beating, to moving my legs so I can get around, to effortlessly forming on my lips the words that I want to speak - how could I be so ungrateful as to wish it were different?

Fig. A. 50% insane discipline and repression of appetite, 50% photoshop
Nobody that I know actually looks like this, and I probably won't meet anybody who does.

Fig. B. Much closer to the way that I look and the way that the people I know look. She's not dieting or obsessively working out but she's obviously living the life. She's also more womanly than Fig. A. who looks more like a teenage Barbie.
(P.S., who is the girl puking in the background?)

so dance around your house naked even if the neighbors see you over the fence. Fuck it.