Thursday, July 29, 2010

Last night I held the largest social gathering I have ever held since probably my childhood birthday parties.


I'm not going to say how many people were there because then I would look like the biggest dork ever. Let me assure you though our small group made enough noise for a group of 20 to 40 people.
Last night was fun and wholesome and a great time to catch up before I go on vacation. 
Last night I learned a lot. I learned that my friends are incredible and I learned why I'm friends with them
Even at our darkest our most sarcastic and our downright meanest there is a light and an optimism inside of us that is always visible. There is a uniting force that keeps us together. I talk about balance all the time in this blog and yesterday was a real lesson in balance.
I learned that a good evening is made by balancing pure youthful energy ( for example waiting for a friend and practically jumping her when she arrives) and darker teenage sarcastic stuff. 
I learned that I don't want to put my friends second to just about anything but my family. I learned that I don't want to be with anyone who has a problem with that.
And I learned that when it's time to call it quits you just know. My venture into my first relationship was short and lukewarm. I had fun and it taught me what I wanted and what I don't want. I learned that what I want is someone who understands that I am neurotic, sarcastic, impulsive and cheap I want to be with someone who understands that my priorities (at least for now) are family friends and then relationship. I want to date someone like my friends because over these past (almost) two months I didn't feel what I feel when I'm with my best friends. In the end the breakup was short and filled with long awkward silences and it was very very anticlimatic. But I remembered what I said to a friend a little while ago when asked about my relationship.
"It's a mix of falling and not falling of wanting and not wanting but I know that whatever happens it is important"
This is what growing up is. Taking chances being unsure and in the end learning.
It is through this that we become happier more intelligent self aware beings.
I hope.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Little sister, come and sit beside me, And we'll play a tune on this old piano

Today I learned that that though we don't get to choose our family we do get to choose how we interact with them.


In terms of friends I am reaching def con one here. You know cause most of the world seems to have vacations to enjoy jobs to work at or camps to attend.
Oops maybe I should of planned something other than walking my dog and watching buffy for this summer.
So right now it's me and the family. Well not really me and the family it's more like me and my younger sister. You know the one inspired this blog.
She's starting her freshman year at my high school come September and I'm excited for her. I realized though that seeing as my school is so tiny I will probably see her on a daily basis more than once. 
This is very scary. I haven't had to see my sister that much at school in five years.
eeks.
With the future looming terrifyingly and the present a monotonous seemingly never series of days I figured I might as well begin to get closer to my sister.
I learned that attitude is everything.
I learned that this lesson is something that we have to learn over and over again.
Every single day we are presented with challenging people and circumstances that give us the chance to break down barriers and we ignore them most of the time.
I can't say that these past few days have led to the dramatic change in my sister and my relationship and she still does things that make me want to push her down a set of stairs but who would she be if she didn't make me want to do that?
Family is important and they won't be here forever. You won't be here forever either. 
We need to make connections deeper than blood while we still can.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Everybody, everybody wants to love Everybody, everybody wants be to loved

Today I learned that we are incredibly lucky. Not in a wow I live in an incredible house in Canada and I have an education and loving parents thing (even though I am very very grateful for all that) but in a way that we need to stop judging our lives (in this case our social lives) by what the media shows us. I've often said that being a teenager is quite possibly the biggest rip off (and at times relief) because it is nothing like television,films,books  or even music tell us. You know as much as a homebody as I am I still feel the need to go out to do it all because as teenagers we're stuck between wanting to grow up and being so scared of getting old. We fear regret and we're taught that if we don't live our lives like the media shows us then we will have regret.
It makes sense because the point of the media is to sell us things and they sell us things by making us feel inadequate.
It's not right but it's true and it's only now that I would realize this.
My sister and I have been talking a lot lately and mostly it's started off complaining about the heat and then it turned to complaining about our lives, whether she's not totally happy with her current boyfriend or I'm bemoaning my social life. But just now I realized how great everything is. We see our friends enough, play a little work a little, date absolutely wonderful people, have lovely clothes and a lovely family. 
We don't have the drama of a television show and maybe our relationships aren't Naomily amazing but they have potential.
We have enough
We have more than enough
I'm happy I saw this as early as I did and I hope my sister can too.




Friday, July 9, 2010

you're such a freaking chauvinist...wait what does that mean again?

This past two weeks I have learned two things. The first is very brief. That is that heatwaves are the best possible learning enviroments and that the best way to expand your mind is of course not through drugs but through picking a topic a week and reading as much as you can about it. This week for fiction was male coming of age stories and non fiction was an intro to modern feminism.
So onto the bigger stuff.
Which ties into the shorter stuff. This week the book that realy stood out was Female Chauvinist Pigs : Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. The book dealt with everything from the boi subculture of the modern LGBT community to how thongs are marketed to ten and twelve year old girls. What it really all tied into though was the fact that women are considered unequal to men and a lot of women will do absolutely anything to be equal. Women put the same ammount of work (if not more) at the office and they want to be in on the celebration whether it's a cigar or a trip to a strip club. This book gave me some basic background on feminism and helped me understand where I fit in.
I learned that most movements (especially those involving women) are stereotyped into radicals or used as a quick excuse to basically do whatever you want (especially be sexually promiscous in the name of feminism) (god I'm using a lot of brackets today).
I have been reminded that things marketed to women are usually dismissed. Things like fashion or feminism or staying home to raise kids are seen as things of less value.
I have  been reminded that sometimes we need to make our own values and that they will occasionally (or often) contradict what society tells us and as long as what we believe is not hateful towards others than that's okay. 
What I like about Feminism is that it raises a million questions for me. Like do I really believe that as Robin Morgan said "Porn is the theory rape is the practice" ? 
I don't have an answer for that yet I guess I'm somewhere in the middle.
Summer is a time for questions and answers but most importantly it is a time for learning and searching.