5 posts tagged “qotd”

The Cure sing “It’s Friday I’m in Love.” What are you “in” on this particular fall Friday?

Mental chaos, I think.

Also, yoga pants and slippers.  Helps with the mental chaos.

How do you think having siblings (or not having siblings) affects who you are as a person?

I can only say that I know it does, but I don't know how.  I was only an only child for four years of my life - not enough time to really know.  I was worried and happy and everything all at once when she called me to announce her pregnancy.  I could never understand some of her choices.  I've always wanted to support her in every way she needed.

I am the older sister.  I look out for her, as best I can.  Like a parent, there are times when it's hard to let go and let her make her own decisions.  Unlike a parent, I come to that conclusion sooner.  Or possibly just with more a more complete data set, since she confides in me a bit more than she confides in them.

We don't talk much.  When we do talk, it's easy and open, though I doubt she tells me everything.  I certainly don't tell her everything.

We wouldn't be friends if we weren't siblings, but woe betide the person who messes with one or the other.

Mom usually updates us on each other, and I know she speaks to Mom more often than I do.  However, I think that more a result of physical proximity than emotional closeness.  Either way, it's good to know I won't be much out of the loop for how little we talk.  However, since I can count on her to not tell Mom half of what's going on in certain situations, sometimes I have to follow a branch all the way to the root.  I don't really mind this.

There's two of us.  We're totally different, and we're way too similar.  My own grandmother tells us she never saw the family resemblance between the two of us until one day when she and I were both adults.  It took me even longer to see it, and then one day her angry frustrations were staring at me from the bathroom mirror.  It was so freaky; I completely lost whatever was bothering me.  And I've never been able to replicate that vision.

How does it affect me as a person?  Simplicity itself.  It's one of the many things that define me.

Are you a go-getter or do you wait for good things to happen to you?
Submitted by sleepybear.

I used to think I was a go-getter, and I used to think I was a risk-taker.  Then, many years ago, I woke up and realized I was wrong.  I dreamed of all the risky things I'd do with myself (like take the Hill road at 100+mph), but there were always reasons I wouldn't do such a thing (completely unfair to do that without the road somehow being blocked off for me and me alone, because the chances of not wiping out, and thus potentially killing many people, were practically zero).  Eventually I came to accept that I was a dreamer, but had very little action in my soul.  Even after having done some pretty active things, like raising the money to go to Kenya for a study abroad in three month's time.  And, frankly, despite what everyone told me, I didn't believe going to Kenya was that much of a risk.  It certainly didn't occur to me that I was going out and getting what I wanted in raising the money to get there - I was too busy doing it to think about it.

So, I continued to feel passive, though there was an oddly dull ache in feeling that way.  I'd be curious to find out how artgeek perceived me, in terms of this question, once we'd gotten to know each other a bit.  When we'd met, I'd dragged myself and my now ex-husband across the country for graduate school.  But I was already admitted, and I knew what would be happening and so on.  Furthermore, not only was it the only school I'd been admitted too, it was the only one I'd applied for.  I felt I'd done a pretty half-assed job about looking for school, but I wasn't sure how to go about getting what I wanted.  Knowing that I was pretty much fumbling in the dark added to the feeling that I'm the type of person who waits for good things to come, because surely a "go-getter" would find a way to turn on the light.

As I implied, I didn't enjoy feeling of being cautious, but I couldn't shake it.  So I just accepted it (and, truthfully, the fact that I often accept things when I should perhaps continue to push only adds to that feeling, even now).  I chewed on it.  I may have gone so far as to mentally define myself that way.

Then one day, after my marriage had disintegrated, I decided to move half-way across the country.  I didn't have a job lined up.  I wasn't in graduate school again.  I'd only visited the city once, and had no friends there.  However, I had a dream, rooted in my Kenya trip, and the only way to give that dream a fighting chance was to move.  I wanted to be in graduate school again, and I knew who I wanted to work with and what I wanted to study.  The problem was that the people I wanted to work with were not based at a university, and therefore the only way to get into one or both of the universities I'd applied to was to move to the city my hoped-for adviser was in and start convincing professors they wanted to take me on as a student.

It wasn't easy.  Aside from the previously mentioned difficulties, I had to move out of an apartment I very much enjoyed and put my cat in a foster home.  I had to get rid of over half my stuff.  The sacrifices I had to make to follow my dream, even before moving, were myriad.  And then I had to move, all by myself (in a snowstorm no less, but if I add that my audience will probably start hearing "uphill both ways - and we liked it!).

It worked.  I've been admitted to one of the two universities, and I start this August.  I'm already attending lab meetings and thinking about pieces of dissertation projects.  I know I'm already making a mark in my lab meetings, because I refuse to hide out and be quiet - I demand of myself that I contribute, and this week I was thanked for those contributions in the most recent meeting.

This isn't to say that the move was the hardest part.  I'm unemployed at the moment, and despite my volley of applications, that doesn't seem to be changing.  I'm in a state of mental agony because for all that I want to start my research right this second, I don't have the money to do so without a job, and with a job I probably won't have time.  I haven't figured out how to get this latest, greatest good thing.

And that's how I know I can finally say that I'm a go-getter.  I got myself to Kenya.  I got myself into two graduate programs, at different times as I needed them.  I moved with very little safety net just to further my goals.  And now I'm frustrated because I'm suddenly stymied on how to get something I truly want.  I'm not sure that's ever happened before.  Yes, I've not gotten things I kind of want (a job at this exact moment comes to mind), but I've come to realize that I have never failed to get something I desperately want, and am willing to work for.

I'm a go-getter, but I think me I'm reaching my limits.  Alas.

What do you do with the cards and letters you receive?  Do you keep them all, just keep the photos, throw them away? 
Inspired by jacolily.

The only thing I can post as definitive is that I keep all the photos that are included in cards and letters that I receive.  I still have photographs from short-lived friendships and crushes.

Letters and cards are a different animal.  I used to keep every letter I got, because letters were so rare, you see.  And I sometimes kept cards and sometimes didn't.  Often it was not predetermined, but quite random.

"Not predetermined, but quite random" could actually sum up a great deal about what I kept and what I didn't in life.  I have felt quite compelled to keep all sorts of things in my life, for all sorts of reasons.  I kept slightly broken ceramics, because my grandmother made them for me.  I kept totally broken pieces, because I really was going to fix them someday.  I kept things I loved and things I hated because I had a hard time telling the difference between the two sometimes.  I threw out broken pieces because I was glad to not have to deal with something anymore.  I donated clothing because I didn't believe in keeping clothing I didn't fit into anymore.  Either I didn't ever want to fit into it again, or I was going to deserve better when I got down to that weight again.

I kept receipts because my ex was insistent that all credit card receipts needed to be shredded.  And we didn't have a shredder for more than a couple of years after we got married.  I kept other receipts because I was going to get organized.  I got rid of other receipts because I had a fit of recognition that I was never going to get organized.

Moving didn't help, really.  I've moved more than an average of once a year for a very long time.  And I still kept random stuff and got rid of other random stuff.  Typically I didn't miss what I got rid of; very occasionally I did.  I often resented what I did keep, though.  Yet even with the resentment, I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it.

My ex and I split up, and finally I had to get rid of a lot of things.  And it hurt so badly.  Unlike previous times when I thought I didn't have a choice, this go-round I really didn't have a choice.  Stuff had to leave.

In the process I found all the old cards from the wedding.  Some made me cry.  Many made me cry.  A few made me angry.  Some just confused me.  One made me viciously happy, though I can't remember the exact why now, only the who.

And I threw them all away.  (Okay, really, I recycled them, because I really am an environmentalist at heart.  But that doesn't sound as dramatic.)  All of them.  And now I can't remember the ones that made me weep and the ones that fueled my rage.  I can't even remember why I was so smug at the one card.  It had to do with a power-strip, and if that doesn't strike you as insane and yet totally normal, it's clear you've not been through that level of break-up.

I lived in a new place, and really came to grow in the first six months or so of being on my own.  And, frankly, I leaned extremely hard on two very dear friends, and I will never be able to thank them for everything they did in that time.  I leaned very hard on my extended network too, and faced the question "Why?" so much that it alone is now a reason not to have children.

Suddenly, an opportunity came and I had to move again.  Perhaps I made my own opportunity.  It's often hard for me to tell the difference between those two things.  Either way, I was moving again, and to an even smaller space.  So I got rid of so many more things, and this time it just felt like a weight was being lifted.  Several tons, in fact.  Largely made of paper, but occasionally made of ceramic or leather or whatever.  And I got rid of a lot of letters and cards and other things I'd moved.

Now I have photos of long-ago friends and crushes and no writing to back up why I have these photos or who these people are.  And that kind of sucks.  But it was the right choice at the time, and I don't regret making it.

This holiday season, I planned to toss all the cards.  Then my mother's parents and my dad's mother sent cards so touching and meaningful that I set them aside.  The other cards were still gone, but these two mean a lot to me.  The support and pride in them shines right off the paper, and it is greatly appreciated.

So I have a new plan.  I'll keep the meaningful ones, and I'll toss (recycle!) the others.  And I'll teach myself to know the difference.

What are five words you really like? 
Submitted by purplesque.

Unctuous.  Cadge.  Sesquipedalian.  Pithy. Dude.