Please Stop Sending me Subliminal Messages

Okay, so I’m not talking about the actual psychological theory. I’m talking about that thing that people do when they try to plant a seed of an idea in your head (insert Inception gif about elephants here). Most people, I think, think they do this seamlessly. They think they’re James Bond or something. Very sneaky. But, what I’ve noticed is when people try to plant a seed in your head, they are as obvious as Obi Wan Kenobi waving his hand in front of your face, except without the added benefit of the force.

You get these little messages and stuff, people telling you,”You’re okay, I’m okay, we’re okay.” You are not a hypnotist. Please stop.

Looking back on that last sentence, I feel like a member of an eighty’s punk rock band sticking it to the man. But, sometimes the man needs to get that I’m not falling for it. This is very real! I have woken up and am no longer in the Matrix (I’m challenging myself to see how many nerdy references I can get into this post).

I feel like this has been a thing ever since I became a teenager. I got on the cusp of puberty, and suddenly everything that made me upset was just “angst” or “hormones”. Yeah, okay, usually my crying spontaneously at a lamp probably had something to do with an influx of estrogen, but it might’ve been rooted in something a little deeper. Maybe, it was because my best friend turned out to be an ass, and I felt like nobody really got how much I was hurting, and the lamp understood for some reason what I was going through.

I hate to bring the feminist movement into this, but sometimes it feels like as a girl (and a younger girl at that), that when something upsets me, it has to be because I’m on my period or emotionally unstable or my “feminine nerves” can’t handle it.

A lot of the times people  who are upset, have a valid reason to be upset, even if you don’t see it. Like I might think Judy is a total nightmare because she’s crying because she thinks basic addition is super hard. My initial thought process is she’s an idiot crybaby, and I took a torturous year of precalc and she just needs to deal. But, upon reflection and realizing that I can be a grumpy insensitive jerk sometimes, is that Judy’s problem is as massive as a problem for her as precalc was for me.

It’s like multiplication. If I divide it down, it’s all the same base problem (math nerds everywhere are cringing).

It’s always annoyed me when you’re frustrated about something that may seem silly. Ya know, you tell your best friend you’re having a panic attack because you don’t know what to say to so and so about something, and your friends says something like, “Think of the kids starving in Bangladesh.” Okay, I did not grow up in Bangladesh, so of course I have no idea what their suffering feels like. If I were complaining about something material, like how unfair it is that Daddy’s not dropping $2,000 for a new Prada handbag, I understand that argument. But, if it’s emotional, then it is all relative to my past experience. Now does that mean I should compare my devastation at a C in a class to my friend loosing her father? Probably, not. But, it cannot be ignored that we are both experiencing grief, and both problems need looking into.

So, next time some one mentions that they are struggling or having a rough go at, please listen, instead of telling them how you undervalue their suffering. (If you already do this, than you’re awesome; I’m sorry I bossed you around in that last sentence.)

What Does the Cat Say

Prompt: “You are a loser who lives alone with a cat and have for quite some time. One day your cat can’t take it anymore and starts talking. What does it say?”

I return home from work for the alien overlords at about nine o’clock. I habitually grab my pocket upon remembering that a little over a year ago I opted for the surgery to get the iPhone head transplant. Then Apple screwed me over, and two months later released the newer version that was lighter and thinner, and would’ve meant I could still access the part of my brain that understands algebra.

I check the back porch to find my latest shipment of Ben and Jerry’s frozen yogurt has come in through the black market. The aliens are allergic to yogurt, but I know a guy. I open it up and find that instead of yogurt, it’s ice-cream.

“What the heck!” I yell. That was a good few months wages spent on the black market, and it’ll be ages before I find that link online again. I open one and begin to chow down on what will be a 1200 calorie dinner.

I rush past the mirror without glancing into it. I haven’t been able to face my reflection in quite some time. All of me is this sort of droopy mess, and my hair is falling out in chunks. It’s really gross because now that I no longer really get any human contact, I don’t really care about showers and lotion and all that crap. I mean the only time I need to shower is when I notice the smell, and after living for ten years with my own natural musk I’ve come to enjoy it.

I log onto to tumblr, where the same people I followed in college are posting strange (and slightly uncomfortable) Sherlock posts, even though Sherlock went off the air ages ago. In a last minute attempt to save humanity, the dictators who took over in the crisis sacrificed all the movie starts to the aliens. Their hope was that without all those beautiful people, the aliens would feel we weren’t worth conquering. That was the last we saw of Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig.

It sort of worked. The aliens just sort of use of us for labor, but the world is running pretty normally. Except for global warming or climate change. Turns out Al Gore wasn’t as nutty as we thought, and we haven’t seen New York City, DC or most of California for over twenty years.

My cat turns to me as I rest on the couch, taking large bites of Ben and Jerrys. Ahh my cat. My one true friend. The sadness of this statement hits me, and I burst into tears, sobbing and drooling ice-cream down my face.

“Oh, seriously, come on,” says my cat. I turn wide-eyed.

“Did you say something?” I ask.

“No,” responds my cat.

“Oh okay..hey wait a minute.” I scowl. “Not cool.”

“Sorry,” says my cat.

“So, are you really talking to me?” I ask, wishing that this is all true, and I am justified in keeping a cat as my only companion.

“What! Oh God no!” says my cat with a look of utter disgust. “Meghan, cat’s don’t talk.”

“I know that.”

“Clearly.” I’m really getting sick of my cat’s sarcasm.

“So, who is talking?” I ask grumpily turning back to my ice-cream.

“I…for heaven’s sake.” My cat lands in my lap pushing the ice-cream to the floor.

“Uggh,” I say leaning over with the spoon. So much effort.

“Meghan! Put the spoon down!” the cat snarls. He’s surprisingly strong, or I’m surprisingly weak. He pins me down on my chest.

“Meghan,” he says gravely, “I am a projection of your subconscious telling you to pull yourself together!” I lean again for the ice-cream because this is so much to take.

“Leave it!” says the cat. “You know you used to care. About how you took care of yourself, how you acted, having manners, taking showers. Then you just stopped.”

“Well!” I say exasperated, “Aliens invaded Earth.”

“You were a mess before that!” says the cat. “You were a mess long before that. You’d given up waaay before the aliens.” I start to cry. Why is my cat so mean?

“Stop crying.” it says. If it weren’t my subconscious, I would be way harder on it right now I swear.

“You know cat!” I snivel. “Everything just got so hard. There was all this pressure, and I didn’t know what I was gonna do so…”

“So, you just shriveled up alone?” says my subconscious with disgust.

“I didn’t mean too it’s just, nobody wants…anything to do with me.” I begin to wail, and I think my cat actually sighs, if cats are capable of that type of thing.

“Meghan,” it says. “You had so much potential. So much energy and intrigue. You could’ve done something. You could’ve done better. Instead you gave up because you thought it would be easy.”

It leans in super close to my face, and it’s kind of gross because it smells like cat food, which is nasty. I tried about two years ago because I felt like I should be closer to my cat. I do not feel this need anymore.

“I wouldn’t have minded if you grew up to have just a cat at home, but you didn’t even try to make the most of it,” says my cat. “You just fell apart. So disappointing.”

“What can I do to change it?” I snivel. There’s melted Ben and Jerry’s all over my carpet now, and if my cat has any suggestions for how to improve my life it will probably improve the carpet and my ability to fight my cat.

“Stop feeling so sorry for yourself all the time!” yells my cat.”Learn to push through and move on. Learn to not just give up because you had a bad day” Then he swats me in the face particularly hard, and I feel myself drift away thinking I should’ve bought a dog.

I awake in my college dorm room. I look to roommate. I grab my phone, happy to find it no longer implanted in my skull. Good. I check the news. Thank goodness. No alien overlords.

 

Sorry this was such a weird post.

It’s You and Me Against the World Book

An important message to the people of the world: Currently, there is a dangerous crisis arising, and all citizens are needed to combat its effects.

The crisis is a result of avid book reading. Book readers everywhere are resorting to dangerous methods to try to finish their books. The biggest threat is the dreaded book walking. Book readers are trying to read and walk at the same time. Not only is this a nuisance to society, but a danger to the health of book readers. They are falling down staircases, running into walls, and obtaining threats when they impede the lines at Starbucks.

To help save this slowly dying population of avid book readers, we call upon the citizens of this great nation to initiate small protocols to keep book readers from endangering themselves. What you, the citizen, can do is when you see a book reader is in the vicinity reading, do not engage them. Leave them to their reading. This will control the viciousness of the book reader and keep them from attempting to move, which could result in the dangerous results listed above.

The book reader must be protected. If we leave them be, they will quickly finish their book, suffer with the irony of their quest to finish a book quickly, the disillusionment of completion of the task, and return to being productive normal members of society.

So, if you see a book reader sitting, do not engage them over talk, text, or other form of communication. If you see one attempting to move somewhere, steer them towards the nearest park bench, hipster coffee shop, or Barnes and Noble where they can be protected.

Thank you.

Which is worse, failing or never trying?

I think this is a question that most people think has an automatic answer. It’s the whole, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” 

I think that quote is totally wrong. You don’t miss anything. That’s the whole point. That’s the reason you decide not to take the shots in the first place. By elimination yourself as a factor, you don’t ever have to take a shot. You eliminate the devastation, embarrassment, and shame of not making a shot. You just abstain.

The real point is that never trying means there was and will never be a chance for triumph. You never get to feel that excitement or elation.

Basically, no one ever cares what you do because you don’t do anything.

The world, myself included, tends to agree that trying and failing is better than not trying because not trying is the “weak” way out. There’s no thrill in it. And never failing means never having to improve or get better. You never have to overcome anything.

Alfred famously told Master Bruce, “Why do we fall? So, we can learn to pick ourself up.” And Bruce picked himself up, and he became Batman. But, just because he’s Batman doesn’t mean he get’s his parents back; he is now something else entirely.

But, in the interim, the falling down really, for lack of a better term, sucked. Falling down really really sucks. When you fall, you don’t feel the assurance of the “something better.” You’re worried you’ll become Alice. It’ll all just keep going down down down…

So, I would say, to answer the question, that I personally choose to try and fail. I try and fail a lot because I feel like I’m meant for more than just the hum drum. But, I don’t think stupid whimsical statistically inaccurate quotes really capture how much it really sucks to “shoot for the moon and fall amongst the stars” because stars are pointy and they hurt. 

And, while I’ll never understand people who sell themselves short, every time I get stabbed by one of the stars I hit, and I find myself thinking, “What’s so great about the moon anyway!”. Before I see the light of that star, and all the goodness in its beauty, I begin to understand and sympathize with those who decide they’d prefer to stay on Earth. 

What do you do if the Most Exciting Thing about Now is the Future?

Seriously, what do you do? Because I have no idea.

This is one of those questions I’ve been grappling and mulling around in my head lately. The thing is I recently underwent a huge shift (huge as in 2,000 mile shift), and I find that my life doesn’t feel like it really changed. This may sound really stupid to some people. I know it really sounds stupid to me of three months ago who’s buried herself in her iPod and looks up at me, face streaked with tears mouthing, “Are you kidding me?” But, it’s true! Life has reached a halt, and if feels like this train really didn’t go that far from the metaphorical station.

Aye but here’s the rub: The distance isn’t literal but emotional. 

Well, now some people are shaking their heads because that emotional mumble jumble is all a bunch of nonsense.

Here I am though. I am a forward thinker. I am mature and thoughtful about my future. I try to tamper my unbelievable romanticism and imagination by bombarding it with logic and schemas. I want a job not so I can buy Kate Spade5 boots (which, hey, that would be nice), but so I can start my Roth.

And I watch these movies, like The Social Network, and these kids are having a phenomenal time killing brain cells and eating pizza. While I like being healthier than the average college student because I will most likely feel better and look better in twenty years, I feel like a forty year old trapped in an eighteen year old’s body. I’m eighteen! And I’m reading women over forty health blogs!

My biggest fear right now is no longer that I will age poorly, but that I will be so focused on the forward for the rest of my life, that I will realize that I spend my youth making plans instead of living.

Not that plans aren’t good. Plans are great! Plans are security and wonderful! But, too much planning becomes procrastination for living. I feel like I’m procrastinating on my life right now. That I need to go out there and find my version of getting a tattoo or spray painting a wall or something.

The inspiration for writing this blog was that I was having some difficulty in my current situation, and I was sort of letting my subconscious roll over it. Then I was hit with the idea of a future that my current situation could lead me to, and I was totally stoked about my current situation. Then I realized that this was the same miserable feeling I had all the way through high school. That there was no point in trying to enjoy high school. I can do that when I get to college.

But, what about now! There has to be something worth it now!

The problem here is two fold.

One: I know that sometimes to get to the top, you have to slog through a bunch of crap. It’s like the coffee runners on capital hill. They’re work is pretty miserable, and they are not governors or lobbyists or president yet. But, they know that you don’t get to just walk up the mall one day and announce to the House that you are now running this show.

Granted, the house doesn’t work like the typical sort of job. But, you see the point. You connect yourself to Senator or Congressman Bob from Rhode Island, and then you tell your story and you get experience. Then the people of Rhode Island “promote” you. In the meantime you get four hours of sleep and are slightly miserable.

But, that kind of misery is sort of elating. Or maybe that’s all the coffee you drink to stay awake.

The other problem with my discomfort is that is emotional. Emotional discomfort is so hard to explain to other people. Sometimes, it’s just because you’re being whiny. So, someone tells you to shut up, and we all move on with our lives.

But, I feel  like a lot of the times we undervalue that emotional discomfort. For example: I hate the city of Los Angeles. I could tell you it’s because there’s lots of smog, and I’m not a huge fan of desert climates, and I think it’s overpriced. But, the real reason isn’t quantitative. The real reason I hate Los Angeles is because when I cross into that city my insides twist around, and my breath gets shallow. I feel tight in my shoulders. I’m on my guard, and the air is thin, and I don’t like breathing. 

People, for some reason, don’t accept this reason as much because there’s no measurement. But, it’s a gut feeling. These are the instincts that keep people alive. Not calculus. Calculus didn’t come around for a while. So, before mathematics and psychology and chemistry slapped a label on all these things, we relied a lot more on our feelings. Emotions matter. We have to live with them, and sometimes there just aren’t words to express them.

My main point is today I got excited because once again I felt the promise of something that could happen in the future. Then I realized that the maturity that I have gained a sliver of in the past few months reminded me that that was exactly the kind of thinking I was trying to move on from.

So, I’ll ask you again: What do you do if the most exciting thing about now is the future? 

Here’s a Poem for You

If I could have one wish

At this moment

My greatest heart’s desire

Would be to not live in fear

Of whose head I may see

Of whose eyes may peek

That there be no distant sounds

Except nature’s version of silence

That my ears could be forgotten

But to listen only to peace

That I could walk from place to place

And not feel the irony of what I want

That I could weep in peace

Or laugh at something else

That I could have friends

Without having any around

That I could wrap myself up

In the comfort of unhindered thought

To rest for just one moment

Lay my head on my shoulder

And no guilt nor shame

Could plague my heart

Everything is good and right

In that moment there is patience

A babbling brook perhaps

Or a forgotten ocean

To push away any discomfort

In the silence that I feel

That I live in and breathe in

No feelings for another allowed

No sense of discontent in being half

Of some theoretical whole

To hear only breath

And fear no one will approach

To fear no one will do anything at all

This is my wish

My wish that in this longing

In this separation

I can find myself

Peaceful and content and alone

Journal Dilemma

I am that person in the group who when we need a powerpoint, chart, list, diagram, etc., I excitedly thrust my hand into the air. It’s a trait I inherited from my father, that came to gestation a little later in my life. When we get together, we sit at the kitchen table or in the car challenging each other to make lists for abstract concepts. Then we compare our lists and algorithms for defining these lists.

Okay, so I like things mapped out. And, I have all this stuff I want to do. I think the reason I make lists is that I imagine the inside of my head is this spinning whirl of ideas. Occasionally, one just smacks against the windshield of consciousness, and “Dun dun-un-un” a new life goal is formed.

I think of some new idea, like I want to go vegan once a week or I want to get in better shape or I want to be happier or I want to teleport a grapefruit to the moon. Ya know, normal stuff. “I have lists!” I think. “I will just make a clear concise step by step list, and that is how I will manage to do this thing I want to do.”

I  decided at the beginning of this school year, as I was now IN COLLEGE, that the sky would split open, and I would be showered in culture, charity, culinary arts, and underwater basket weaving opportunities, I could just get to all of this stuff with lists.

Then I realized a flaw. Getting a grapefruit to the moon needs a totally different algorithm then I want to be happier. There’s formal science for that. Not as much with the happiness (shut up psychology; you’re all over the place). And eating healthy, well there were too many things to do for that. Physical health is such a pain. It makes sense why you’re subconscious is nearly limitless; everything in your body needs such varied attention.

Anyway, overwhelmed in a pile of lists, I realized the solution. “Journals!” I yelled and all the lists were blasted to the wall with the light of my amazing power of journals.

Okay a journal for prayers, a journal for health day to day, a journal for gratitude, a journal for long term goals, and lists for everything else. Oh, and my psychotic fat schedule, filled with different pen colors and hi lighters and yeah…

I’m just overwhelmed thinking of it all! I love my Moleskins, but how do I do all this stuff? How do I manage all these journals. I feel like I have all these whiny children, and at the start of each class I whip them out. There’s five minutes of assurance as I fill them out, and then I’m stressed again.

Should I do less? But, I’m young! I have to save the world! What do I give up? Running? No because that’s healthy. My own personal happiness? No, because the rest will be not fulfilling and probably unsuccessful if I don’t have that. No charity work? Oh yeah, I’ll just be that callous.

I guess my point is, people talk about how overwhelming their life becomes, but nobody seems to talk about when your plans to solve that problem and get organized overwhelm you too.

What do you do?