Okay, so it's a semi-sabbatical

August 29 to November 18. I mean, that's a sabbatical, right? And I'm not really coming back, or making any commitments and still have grand plans for my little piece of cyberspace. But I missed this. Because I am an egoist and think people want to hear my thoughts.

I've had a lot of thoughts recently. This is probably a good thing, since I'm in college and thinking is kind of expected. I wish I could disseminate all of my thoughts to you, give you a taste of my intellectual angst, but I don't really know where to start. Ethics? Advertising? Globalization? Alternative energy, the future of civilization, what being civilized means,writing, loneliness, aloneness, being a loner vs. being independent, what the individual owes to society, what a country owes to the world, how we define ourselves, how to break free from materialistic consumption? The list is endless, people. I can't turn my brain off.

No, really. This is kind of a problem. I woke up at 5:30 this morning, and found myself contemplating commodity fetishism while waiting for the coffee to brew. This might be because I just wrote four pages about an ad for the Gap holiday collection run in the New York Times. (Totally just corrected that sentence for AP style. Please begin planning an intervention.) In case you were wondering, I argued that the ad uses counter-hegemonic visual and verbal rhetoric but promotes hegemonic social norms. The point is, I shouldn't be contemplating these sorts of things at freaking 5:30 in the morning. I should at least ease into it slowly, start by figuring out what I'm going eat for breakfast, say, before trying to solve my country's problems.

Let's talk about that last sentence for a minute, can we? It's definitely a judgement call. "Solve my country's PROBLEMS," (emphasis added). To some people, consumerism and materialism aren't a problem. This was driven home to me in one of my courses the other day. We were discussing Adbusters in class, and some people really had a problem seeing the problem. (I've got mixed thoughts on Adbusters, but that's a different post for a different day). That same day in a different class we looked at different forms of visual rhetoric, including a video on the contrast between life in the US and most of the rest of the world. Sometimes, the reactions of my classmates caught me by surprise.

It isn't until I'm in situations like this that I realize how out of the mainstream my thinking is. Situations where I suddenly realize that the important issues I contemplate on a regular basis haven't even crossed the minds of some of my peers. Where I suddenly realize that the people I am with are viewing the world– and their role in the world – from a very different standpoint than my own.

It makes me ask myself: Just what exactly do I believe? And why? It makes me step away from the comfortable circle I surround myself in – the magazine, the e-zines, the groups and people – that share my views, or challenge my views with other so called "radical" views.

Step away. What do you believe? Why? And what are you going to do about it?

Sabbatical

Just in case you couldn't guess, I'm taking a break from blogging until I have a more focused and worthy sort of blog. Which will probably be linked to my personal website which only currently exists in very rough form. The goal is to have it up and running by the end of the fall semester, but, um, let's talk about what the semester looks like? Which is why I am "officially" going on sabbatical.* When I return, it will hopefully be on a more consistent basis. 

*Subject to whims of personal desire, nature, divinity, sanity, etc.

Random Observations

It's 10 o'clock and I should be in bed, but it's rather hard to convince myself of this fact. My day was entirely spent with 1 yr olds followed by an evening spent in a house full of 9-13 yr olds. (Okay, so there are only 4 of them, but it feels like more. And it sounds like even more. Honestly, how do the kids do it?) Now that the house is (nearly) silent, and I am actually in a room by myself I hate to give the silence over to sleep.

I actually had a long, self absorbed, whining and pitiful post written out - in long hand - in my head. It's probably best for the whole world if it stays there, so I'll just offer you a few random observations and then go read The Fellowship of the Ring and drink some tea for a bit. 

Random Observation #1:

Tomorrow is my last day as an editorial intern at a magazine. I didn't expect to feel sad, but I kind of am. What will I do for the remaining 3 weeks of summer when I don't have an hour long lunch break twice a week with people my age? When I don't put on grown-up clothing twice a week and speak to others who answer in complete sentences? When I am forced to listen to Barney sing about his affection for me and my young charges without the respite of an entire day spent listening to my indie rock or chill stations on Pandora? My friends, the rest of this summer could be rather dire. Oh, and right. I won't be writing articles of a magazine anymore.

Random Observation #2: 

Driving to work on Tuesday, I saw a bumper sticker that read "Art is freedom." I like that phrase, and it sparked a deep and intellectual conversation within myself for the next fifteen seconds.

Random Observation #3:

I would really like to have an adult meal some day. With, like, conversation. Conversation that does not revolve around telling people to sit down or not throw food or not smother everything in hot sauce or who is going to do what chore. 

Random Observation #4:

It's a really bad idea to put granola in the fridge over night. 

Random Observation #5:

I may have a serious issue with lying about fake boyfriends. It's just that, people are so gullible sometimes. And it's so fun. And also, I tell stories. It's just what I do. There are always stories in my mind and there isn't enough time to write them all down. At least most of them are never passed off as truth, but somehow postmen and gibbets and guys are easily believable fiction. 

Lighten Up (The World is Waiting)

Sometimes, when the day has been crappy and the world depressing, all you have to do is read the NY Times to remember that the world is a funny, crazy, beautiful, mixed up sort of place. It's a world that includes yoga music festivals and portaging canoes as art and bears as smart as humans.

What else is out there? You just have to dig a little...

Defining Irony Through Real Life Examples

My great-grandmother used to say "Never say never," wisdom I readily acknowledge but utterly fail at following (or maybe it was my great-great-grandmother, but it's been passed down all the way to my mother, so it's immaterial). 

Here's a list of things I once swore I would never do:

1) Study journalism

2) Attend Penn State

3) Work an office job

4) Work in childcare

5) Commute to college 

6) Write romance

7) Continue studying Spanish

Guess how many of those things I've done. Go on, just take a wild stab. 

Are you ready for this? Because the grand total of the list of 7 things I swore I'd never do but which I've ended up doing comes to...six. (If you guessed 7 we are no longer friends because I can't believe you think I've written romance. Please.)

As you pretty much all of you are aware by now (read my profile maybe?) when my sabbatical from college ended I found myself (literally, that's what it felt like) commuting to a Penn State branch campus. And then I was at main campus studying journalism, something else that just seemed to happen. Honestly. To round out my BA requirements, I found myself in a college Spanish course, and this summer my internship at a magazine includes the joys of working in a cubicle 9-5 and wearing business casual. In order to make money and afford a degree from a school I swore I would never attend, I'm working a job I swore I would never work - can you say 'daycare center'? Yeah, I have trouble saying it too.

As for writing romance? Still haven't succumbed to that. But you know, even if I become that desperate in life, I'll use a pen name. 

Trusting God

I started reading a book on trusting God today. It was given to me last semester, and I've left it sitting in my room wanting and not wanting to read it. I wasn't sure I was ready to hear glib Christians comments on trusting God. I wasn't sure I wanted to trust God.

But when there is no center to your life, it can start to feel repetitive, and today I felt that I at least needed to give some thought to the faith question. My biggest complaint against the church is it's fear of questions, but there I was, afraid to really face my own questions. To some, I know there aren't answers and even though questions without answers are the ones worth asking, they are difficult. Others, I don't even know what the question is. And for others, I am afraid to face them alone.

I picked up the book and started to read, and the experience was pretty much what I had predicted: I'd heard it before. Some of it I agreed with, some I didn't. It was good to face the issue, though, comforting in some way to read words and language that I've been hearing all my life. Language that might make me angry, language that I might find trite and unloving, but language I can also forgive. Because I've been there, tried to put things into words and failed, tried to describe divinity in human terms. 

There was nothing extraordinary that the book taught me, but it made one things very clear in my mind: I am tired of being told what to think. I am tired of feeling boxed in, scripture so familiar that the struggle is not in understanding it, but it in approaching it openly and without preconceptions. If I am going to follow this faith, then I will not be afraid of questions. 

–––

This post is a little more open than I envisioned it being, a little more honest and straight forward. I'm tempted to edit it, but I am also tired of hypocrisy. More on that later...

June Is Nearly Over (and other obvious statements of that nature)

I realized this evening that I only posted once in all of June. I realized I must remedy that even though I don't have much to write. Or, rather, I don't have the energy to write much. At the same time that I feel certain it is better to end June with two posts instead of one, I also feel certain that it would be better to let June stand as the month in which I only posted once. And I also feel certain that quoting some T.S. Eliot is probably what everybody needs right now. Since this last certainty is very certain indeed, a selection from Burnt Norton follows. And in order to satisfy my mind on all accounts, I'll schedule this to post at 11:59 pm - as possible as it is to reach the edge of time and melding of June and July.

"Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden. My words echo

Thus, in your mind.

But to what purpose

Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves

I do not know."