Quote of the day

"A Unitarian believes that Jesus Christ founded a new religion and a new religious philosophy on the love of God for man, and of men for one another, and for God, and taught it by his life and practice, with such Heaven-given sincerity, sweetness, simplicity, and all-compelling force that it lived after him in the souls of men, and became the basis for a civilization struggling toward the highest ideals....They feel the life of Jesus as a man to be more helpful to them, as a religious inspiration, than if he is to be regarded as God in human form."

-William Howard Taft


Full text here.

Awesome day

What I did today was kind of an odd experiment that actually worked pretty well. People have been talking around unschooling forums and chats about how it's healing to say yes to your kids. Well, I don't have kids yet, so I decided to spend some time imagining if I did. Basically listening to what *I* wanted to do, and imagining if it was my kid asking me, and trying to find ways to say yes. I didn't realize how much I tell myself no unnecessarily, until now.

Oh, it started because I was drawing something with markers while the movie was on, and wrote something in yellow. I thought about how if a kid asked me to write something in yellow my kneejerk response would be to tell them it wouldn't show up anyway, and it would really be a better response to just write it and let them see that. I had a rule in my head about not writing in yellow, and didn't realize it. Anyway, I thought of all this because when I wrote something in yellow it actually showed up just fine, and I was surprised.

So I was wondering what other stuff I "say no" to myself about without thinking about it. And one of those things is going to the park to swing, because I'm always afraid somebody will think I'm a weirdo. But so what? There's no law saying an adult can't go to the park and swing, and I like to swing. (I shudder to think what Google results that sentence will turn me up in.) So I decided to go to the park, and then to just spend the whole evening saying yes to things I wanted to do. I imagined what I'd say if it was a kid asking me, because somehow it's easier for me to say yes to other people than to myself. Which is what I'm trying to fix, but you know, baby steps and all.

I didn't go to the playground, though. When I got to the end of the road I had the sudden urge to veer left and go to the new ecological park in the next town over, because I hadn't been yet. I'd been waiting until somebody would go with me, but why? That was another rule I'd made without realizing it: don't go anywhere by yourself. Well with all my friends living in other towns and my mom not feeling well much, that adds up to just never going anywhere. Anyway, the park was great. It's just a boardwalk into the woods with signs naming the different plants and birds that live in the area, but it's really serene and pretty, especially since no one else was there. I learned the names of a lot of plants that grow in my yard that we've always just called "those stupid sap trees" (sweetgums) or "those vines with the stickers" (smilax) or "those big green fan things" (saw palmetto).

The few times I did have to tell myself "no" today I tried to come up with a reason that would have satisfied me as a kid. There was a little trail off behind the park path that looked really cool, that I know you're not supposed to go to because I would've had to jump a fence to get there. How would I tell a kid no to that? "We can't" isn't technically true, the fence was low. "We're not supposed to" is kind of a lame answer, but "It could be illegal to go back there, it's hard to tell if that's even part of the park. It could be someone's property" would work.

Next I went to Target, to look for hair henna (they didn't have any, dammit) and browse the toys. I will always love toys, but I still have the old "you're too old for toys" tapes playing in my head. So looking at toys was an important part of breaking the rules in my head and saying yes. I picked up some kids' foaming soap because it was cherry scented and I never find cherry shower gel. I also got a really cool, big velvet poster that has a really intricate design like a mandala with a celtic knot, and I replaced my box of 120 crayons (the old ones are dirty broken and I had donated some to work), and bought a box of Cap'n Crunch. The Cap'n Crunch thing brought up another old rule, because when I looked at the cereal this internal dialogue came up:

"I want the Cap'n Crunch. But I don't like Cap'n Crunch, I can't possibly want it. I probably want... oh what else do I want? None of this other stuff looks good right now... except the Cap'n Crunch. But I don't LIKE it!"

I realized this was pretty stupid and just bought the damn stuff, and you know what? I like it! Duh! I think I didn't like it when I was six or seven and had made some kind of lifelong rule about not buying it. It's funny how any little thing can become a self-imposed rule.

After Target I decided to go to the beach. I've lived 30 minutes from the beach my entire life and have probably only been there 15 or 20 times. My parents always made it a big production with a cooler and a bag of sandwiches and staying all day, so of course they didn't feel like going more than once a year. And of course I always whined and tried to bargain to stay longer, because the beach was this rare thing. Jeez, I'm sure there are people who live in the midwest who get to the beach more than a few hours a year. So that was another rule in my head: the beach has to be a big deal, you have to go in July, you have to swim for hours and take a cooler and blah blah. This was spontaneous, alone and at night, and with regular clothes on. The beach is beautiful and serene and otherworldly at night. Only a few people were there. I waded a little, and built a sandcastle. Didn't stay long because the bathrooms were closed, argh! Oh, and I climbed on the playground a little for good measure, although it was too dark to see well.

I drove home feeling really good, until I passed Blockbuster and had the urge to go in. Then a bunch of thoughts jumped at me: I already watched a movie today, I already spent $15 at Target, I don't know if I have my Blockbuster card with me, we're getting Netflix soon anyway. Of course by the time I thought all this I'd already passed Blockbuster, so I decided to stop at the one closer to home. Well that one was closed. I noticed myself getting into a bad mood that I couldn't explain, because I'd had such a good day and didn't even want to watch a movie THAT badly. Then I realized it wasn't about a movie, it was about why can't I just go to Blockbuster? What's it really gonna hurt just to GO? I could just browse and see if there's anything that looks good, maybe something I haven't heard of. I could make a mental note of what I might want to look up on Netflix. I could just buy a box of Raisinettes!

So I realized I wasn't going to feel really satisfied until I made it up to myself somehow. I decided to go to Movie Gallery, but by this point it was almost 10:00 and they'd be closing... but something inside me needed to at least drive there, just to SEE if it was open. So I did, and when I saw for sure that the sign was off I felt better. I came home and looked up a movie on Hulu, which I only watched part of, but it filled the need to watch something anyway.

All of this was really just three hours of my day, but it opened my eyes to just how many little rules there are in my head... I actually used to be a fairly rulebound person. My parents had almost no rules, but I was terrified of breaking rules and getting in trouble in school. I was the kid who teachers bragged about for being "well-behaved" when really I was just frightened. And while my parents usually said YES to anything at home, when it came to going out and doing stuff, or buying things, they were really quick to say NO. I didn't realize this before. Because I've seen how most people are raised with constant rules, I've thought I had a perfect childhood and shouldn't be allowed to feel bad about any of it. And I do think I was lucky, and I do appreciate how good my parents were to me. But I think getting over a lot of the issues that I have about perfectionism and wanting everyone to like me, is going to require me to acknowledge what wasn't so good, and to get rid of some of the stupid rules in my head. Today helped a lot with that.

1812

Won the battle




Lost the war

Cats and Peace

I have a cat who is very smart, who I used to think was very dumb. When she does something irritating, and you stop her from doing it, she just keeps doing it until you give up, or waits until you're not looking. When we first got her (at which time, I should note, I was working in a school) I mistook this for a lack of ability to learn. Actually it just meant that she was smart enough to realize that I'm not all-powerful. Lots and lots of kids in school are treated as "dumb" for the same reason. Or "he's smart, but he has no common sense" which is seen as even worse.

Because Kasey is smart, she knows how to manipulate people to get what she wants. She knows there are certain times of day when I always come out of my room, and at those times will wait outside the door until I open it. When I do, she runs inside, and then under the bed where I can't reach her. This used to cause a lot of headaches and bad mornings and yelling and cursing and stomping, not just at her but at anyone who was unlucky enough to get in my way until I either got her out or got over it.

One day, I finally gave up. It was a day when I didn't have to rush off to work, so I just let her stay under the bed. There's nothing under there that could hurt her, anyway. After just a few minutes, she came out and laid on the bed. When I saw that was all she wanted, I suddenly felt bad for all the chasing and yelling and stomping. I went and sat by her on the bed and petted her, and she started mewing, purring and rubbing her chin on me as if I were the greatest person in the world. This was a cat who was never affectionate, and up to this point I'd been convinced that she deliberately tried to piss me off. I realized then that it hadn't been about the need to have her out of my room; it had been about my need to be in control. Unfortunately, being in control meant that both of us - and my poor mom, who had to deal with my bad moods - were miserable. If I let go, we could both be happy.

Today she ran in my room again, and if she'd gone straight to the bed it would've been fine, but lately she's been going to my spare desk. I don't like her getting up there because there's piles of stuff on the desk and she always knocks something over, so I tried to put her out of the room. She wasn't going to let this happen and ducked under the desk. I sat down and called her, sweetly, but she's not stupid enough to fall for that trick and just stared at me. I started to get all exasperated about how mean this cat was and how I wished I had a dumb cat who would just listen.

Then my unschooling philosophy hit me and I thought about what my goal here was. Was the goal really to have the cat out of my room? No, I didn't care if she sat on my bed, I just didn't want her knocking all the stuff off my desk. But she didn't want to knock all the stuff off my desk either. She just wanted to sit by the window. I was the dumb human who put a big desk in front of it and covered the desk with stacks of flimsy junk, after all. It dawned on me then that her goal and my goal weren't incompatible. I moved a few things around on the desk so they wouldn't fall over so easily, and went about my business. The cat jumped up easily without knocking a single thing over, and that was that.

Our goals were only incompatible when I made them that way. When it was her will vs. mine, a battle of "I'm not gonna let her get her way!!", somebody had to lose. But when I stopped to think what the goal really was, there was a compromise. The same thing applies to relationships between humans, except the consequences are worse. If I make my cat "lose", she might pout a little and not trust me as much next time, but she's probably not going to harbor emotional scars. But if I make a friend or a spouse or a child lose, I might make them see me as a tyrant, or they might believe all my bullshit about how stupid they are and how much I hate them. In either case the relationship will be damaged. In the latter case, they might be damaged. That's too high a price to pay for winning a battle of wills. But if I compromise, both sides reap more than they've sown: the relationship improves, the house is peaceful, and a problem has been solved.

And even if it is just a cat, by being kind to her I bring that much more kindness into the world, instead of taking some away. Not only have I given some to her, but because I didn't get mad I'll have more to give out for the rest of the day. The world doesn't have enough kindness to go around, or enough peace or love or joy either. But you can add to it, and every little drop counts.

Week of Freedom: Wednesday

And on the third day of Christmas, it occurred to me that maybe these posts would be more interesting if I just mentioned our activities, rather than making you read about every time I read a blog post or pick my nose or whatever. So this time, you get a summary. (I don't know who "you" is, since I don't actually have any readers. But then if this is being read, I guess I do. If a post falls on the blog and no one is there to read it, does it make a sound??)

Lunch (for me) was a sausage dog and microwave mac & cheese. Yum!

Then the neighbors came over to shut off the electricity to the old trailer we're having torn down so the poor guy doing the work doesn't get electrocuted and die, and also to rudely helpfully nag suggest that I get a "nice government job". Apparently being without a job for three days is unacceptable and totally everyone's business to correct. Yeaaaah.

AND THEN AND THEN AND THEN! It was warm, so we decided to go in the wading pool. See, a few weeks ago it got pretty hot, and this being Florida we assumed it was going to stay that way from now until, oh, Thanksgiving. So I went and bought an 8-foot-across, 18-inch deep wading pool to cool off in.

And then it got cold. By "cold" I mean approximately 67 degrees, which probably sounds like July to some of you crazy people up north in the snow, but to me 67 degrees means autumn. So the last couple of weeks, every trip outside has resulted in the following stream of pestering, from me to my mom:

"Why is it so cold?"
"When is it going to get warm?"
"Did the weatherman say it's going to get warm soon?"
"Why isn't it warm yet?"
"You mean it isn't going to get warm until THURSDAY?!?"

And so on. So today it was finally warm enough to go in the pool, although the water was ice cold since this was the first warm day in a couple weeks, so we froze a little. We also took the radio outside and blasted 60s hippie music like the Hollies and the Lovin' Spoonful, since the pool inspires childhood nostalgia. (Note that I was born in 1985. We move forward slowly around here.) I managed to get approximately 5 seconds of video of Frieda playing in the grass before the camera said MEMORY CARD FULL like a big party-pooping jerk. At some point I got on the trampoline to get warm, and looked down through the trampoline at Frieda underneath, and she kept jumping up to try and get to me. This was very funny, but I didn't get video of THAT because my memory card is full. Bah.

I do think I'm still "dejobbing" in a way. Life is good, much better than it was a week ago for sure, but not exciting and sparkly yet. That's going to take a little while. The voices of "live this way or else" are still stuck in my head and will take some time to dislodge. Right now I seem to be spending more time whining about cultural norms than cheerfully defying them. I spent about an hour ranting to Roni* about society's expectations of every single person to have a job, and then decided I needed to energize myself. A very hot bath with loud rock music playing helped a little, but I stayed in too long and crashed again. I tried to lay down, but I was sort of restless, so I got online.

A friend of mine was having some issues and needed to talk, so we talked for about 2 hours. Then at 8:00 I watched The Presidents on TV, and then Sarah (the person, not the dog) called and told me a little about the camping trip we're going on in April. I finished watching the presidents show, then listened to a talk on unschooling while straightening my room some. Sarah and I had made plans to play Magic: The Gathering the next day, so I looked through the Magic website a little. Then I went to sleep listening to music and watching Winamp visualizations.

*I can't remember the last time I had a conversation with Roni that wasn't mostly ranting. Poor Roni.

Introversion

One of the things that unschooling/uncollege/unjobbing has allowed me to learn about myself is that the more I'm able to live inside my own head, to ignore time and appearances and the parts of the outside world that aren't useful to me at the moment, the better I am. I'm more creative, calmer, wiser, more able to help people. I think more deeply and learn much faster, and I just all around have more energy and enthusiasm and light.

Everything in mainstream society says to live the opposite way. Be extroverted, be alert, be aware. Manage your time, follow a schedule, have an active social life. Never stop being aware of what others are doing, but never stop to think about what they're feeling. Never stop to think about what you're feeling either. Focus on the external; be neat and look tidy. Be productive. Go, go, go.

This is all fine if that's the personality you have. But for a lot of people, living that way is so counterintuitive that it crushes the real person they are. Focusing inwardly comes naturally; focusing outwardly takes some effort at best. At worst it is so mentally exhausting that it deprives that person of the chance for an original thought.

It also deprives the world of the original thoughts that person would otherwise have.

Autism is an extreme version of this personality, but it's not just people on the spectrum who feel this way. When my friends and I - some with autistic shadow traits, some without - all took the Myers-Briggs personality test, a majority of us came up as INFP, or Introverted Intuitive Feeling Perceiving. This relatively uncommon personality type means that we are the most introverted of the introverts. INFPs tend to be artists, writers, philosophers, musicians or particularly gentle stay-at-home parents. We and other introverts are the people who, as children, would sit at a window and just watch the birds for hours while we dreamed our dreams and pondered the ways of the world.

Unfortunately, mainstream society seems to have forgotten that the world needs such people. The internet has helped, but we are still discouraged, sometimes from birth, from being who we are. Stop daydreaming. You can't make a living as an artist. Get your nose out of that book. How will you ever get a date? Even if we have supportive parents, most schools are set up so that introverts get ignored while the teacher deals with the louder children (who, I hasten to point out, have their own set of prejudices to struggle against), or bullied and treated as outcasts. When we grow up, we find that the biggest key to getting the job we want - or the one we've settled for, after being convinced that the one we want is impractical - is not our talent or experience, but an interview that tests our social skills more than our job skills. If we want to date, we must either endure noisy clubs that make us feel awkward and unlikeable, or shell out hundreds of dollars for a website to tell us who we're supposed to love.

There is no easy solution to this, just as there is no easy solution to any other prejudice that's built into the collective unconscious of a society. But there are things you can do to help change things, bit by bit:

Those of you who are extroverts, recognize that not everyone thinks or feels the same way you do. If someone seems disheveled, or flighty, or awkward, remember that their best side might just be the inside, and that you haven't seen it yet.

Those of you who are unschoolers, take extra joy in the fact that your children can live on any schedule they please, and that this could be the thing that makes or breaks their confidence and self-expression.

And those of you who are introverts, recognize that what you can offer the world is valuable. That all the things you've been told about how lazy or impractical you are, were told to you by people who didn't understand what you do best. It's true that following your dreams may take more thought than going along with the mainstream. But dreaming, and reaching for dreams, is what you were born to do.

And for everyone: Always remember that your dream is someone else's dream too. Someone out there - maybe even someone you'll never meet - may gain faith from your faith in yourself. And even if your goal is only your own happiness, it's a worthy goal.

No act that adds more joy, more hope and more love to the world can be called selfish.

Week of Freedom: Tuesday

(Tuesday was a pretty boring day, really, but I've tried to distract you from that with excessive and questionably interesting photos and embedded Youtube videos. You're welcome.)

I woke up just after 10. Mama was gone to town so I made a toaster streudel and sat down to watch the History channel. They were showing something about the Lincoln assassination, which has been a big interest of mine lately, and they're showing more all day, so I thought I'd watch a lot, but just ended up watching one show. Around 11 I added a second coat of polish to my nails and then came back in my room to mess around on the internet. Frieda was whining so I took her outside a few minutes and checked on my plantings. (I don't know why; they're not going to sprout overnight.) Then I came back to the computer and chatted with Fez some, and made some changes to my blog layout and graphics.

At 1:00 I took a shower and got dressed. By this point I was getting kind of restless because Mama still wasn't home, and it's unusual for her to be gone more than an hour or two, so I was starting to worry. I knew where she was, but I hadn't expected it to take so long. I thought about making lunch, but I wasn't really hungry yet, so I just went back in my room. I had to put my headphones on for awhile because Frieda was whining and I didn't feel like sitting in the living room with her all afternoon, especially since the History channel had switched over to something boring about telephones. (This is why we want to dump Directv - we watch basically one channel each.)

Mama finally got home at 1:30, exhausted and frustrated from an appointment that took too long and went nowhere, so I made us hash browns and hot dogs for lunch. My book - Motel of the Mysteries - had finally come, so I read some of that after I ate, and then we went outside twice, first with Sarah (pit bull) and then with Frieda.

Then I got back online - Roni was on, and we had a long discussion about how her husband is tired of his job and hates school and isn't sure what to do, so we talked about different uncollege/unjobbing ideas. A lot of my friends have personalities that don't mesh well with traditional jobs - they're too free, too creative, too independent for that. Meanwhile I looked up the Museum of Science and History, because I've never been and wanted to know how much admission costs, and I found a page about volunteering at the museum, which I think I'd like.

Roni signed off and I decided to organize the kitchen cabinets to fit all the new food in. Well, the cabinet where the dry goods go was overfull, so I decided to put some things in canisters, but I didn't have enough. So I went to the dollar store and got two glass jars, and to the grocery store and got a few things we were out of, and some yeast to bake bread. When I got home I put up a few things while Mama cooked, and then I came in my room to eat and read blogs.

Look! Food!

Fez: Ooo, I wish I had open shelving, I just have cabinets.
Me: Those are cabinets. They're just opened.

Look! More food! In jars!

At some point my mom had cleaned out the living room desk, so we put the record player in and then I finished organizing the cabinets. Then I watched an episode of the Venture Bros., and read blogs for a long time - got sucked into a big discussion about classism over at Shapely Prose, which took a long time and got me all agitated. Then I took a shower, and played an online game of Literati (Scrabble) with Sabrina. Then my usual evening chat group (I make it sound so formal) signed on and Fez showed me this video of "extreme sheep herding":



Around midnight I started feeling restless and wanted to start up some late-night fun... maybe Singstar, or Trivial Pursuit, or something busy. But my mom has somehow gotten on a normal sleep schedule (!?!) and was sleeping out there. So I just came back to the computer AGAIN and turned on the TV and watched Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. I don't know why I only watch, like, three different TV shows. I complained of being bored and Buncy presented me with this:



I told him to remind me never to tell him I'm bored ever again.

I spent awhile longer chatting and then went to bed around 2am. I wasn't that tired, but I was bored and it was late.

Gratuitous cat photo:

She stares at me, just like that, all day long.