Wednesday, March 13, 2024

33.

 I skipped a couple weeks here, just because life has been very busy. I actually did have things to write about both weeks, but didn't carve out the time to process and write them all out. 

But yesterday I turned 33. It's kind of wild and kind of scary and also kind of mundane at the same time. I threw myself a big Last Supper themed birthday party last weekend which was a blast but also made it feel like I'd already had my birthday so the actual day was pretty low key. I didn't really end up making any plans for it, and mostly spent the day alone, doing things that I enjoy and taking a much needed rest. The weeks leading up to my party were filled with planning, prepping, baking, and all sorts of work getting ready to host a 13 person dinner.

In my time alone, though, I kept thinking about the ways that my life is different at 33 than I ever thought it would be and the ways it is different than the lives my parents had at this age. In many ways my life is full and rich and everything I want it to be. I get to spend my free time doing exactly what I want. I spend time on crafts, reading books and attending entirely too many book clubs, I hang out at the springfed pool regularly in the summers here and get to sleep in on the weekends. Very little beyond my own whims and fancies dictates how I spend my free time and I love that. But there are other things about my life that still don't feel realized. There are still parts of "being an adult" that feel beyond my capabilities and I'm not really sure why because I look around me and see other people navigating similar situations with seeming ease. 

I was talking with a friend recently about how interesting I find the word "bravery" because it is so extremely up to interpretation. My mother has told me that she thinks I'm brave, and many other people have said the same over the years. I also willingly admit that what I might be is stupid; I am perfectly willing to go for a walk alone at night, which is something I know scares many people, especially many women. I think mostly I've been lucky enough to never be personally traumatised by any terrible outcomes from my brave/stupid decisions because surely if I'd ever been attacked or something equally untoward I would be far less willing to risk my bodily safety on the regular. But as it is, nothing has ever really gone wrong for me and I refuse to let the possibility of something bad happening someday determine how I live my life. But like I said, I don't think that's brave...probably just stupid. And I don't feel brave. I don't think most people feel brave. Which brings me back to my original point on this topic, which is that we assess bravery on a deeply personal level. We see others as brave when they are able to do things that seem scary or intimidating to us regardless of how those people feel about the things they are doing. One of my mother's examples for my bravery was moving across the country alone a couple of times. And for my mom, who has lived in Maine for her whole life, I can see how that would come across as bravery. But it didn't feel like something that required bravery of me; it just felt like the next right step in my life each time I did it. And yes, uprooting my life multiple times has been challenging, but not in a way that felt insurmountable. There are plenty of mundane things that feel completely beyond my comfort level and I avoid those things. There are things that are a breeze to others that fill me with existential dread to the point where I just never deal with them. And I think everybody has things that feel completely beyond their capacity. We've all got boundaries for things that are scary or too hard or too tedious and we all have things that feel routine and easily achievable. The specifics are just different for each person, yet we perceive the ability to face our insurmountable challenges as bravery in others. Which makes sense! I just find it really interesting. 

One of the things I decided while I spent time alone reflecting on my birthday is that this year I want to start tackling more of the obstacles that have felt overwhelming to me. Getting things done that feel scary or hard and that I've simply avoided because of that. It feels like time to face those demons. Maybe that's just because it's fully spring here and I'm slowly emerging from my troll-like winter state. Maybe 33 is the year I finally turn into a real adult? I guess we'll see.




Sunday, February 18, 2024

Checks and balances, motherfuckers!

This week I have been listening to the audiobook "We Were Eight Years In Power" by Ta-Nehisi Coates and it's had me thinking extensively about the systemic injustice cooked into the very foundation of America. Very little of it was new information, but it was freshly upsetting to hear about the different racial inequities that have been very intentionally orchestrated at all levels of government, from municipal to state to national levels. 

I listened on my drive to work one morning I thought about how the three branches of government were created to limit absolute power. I think I literally said aloud "Checks! And! Balances! Motherfuckers!" because I was feeling really spicy about the fact that despite the good intentions of this system, our government it pretty warped 250 years down the line. Because while we theoretically have checks and balances between branches of government to cover creation of laws, execution of laws, and evaluation of laws, what we really have is a ruling class of very wealthy people who are generally not interested in protecting the masses. I do think many elected officials are doing their best. But I don't think the majority of them care deeply about much more than appeasing the electorate enough to retain their status and power. And it's just really fucked up.

I was also thinking a lot about a tiktok video I saw many months ago where someone was reminding the viewers that it's OKAY to scrutinize the politicians who represent you, even when they belong to the party that you identify with. It is okay to hold them accountable for the decisions they make on behalf of their constituents while in office. And in fact as part of the public who has elected and employed them to represent us, it is actually our job to hold them accountable because if we don't nobody is. Again, as it turns out the checks and balances thing is deeply questionable at best.

So I was thinking about how fucked up it is that our government can just decide to send billions of our dollars to the Middle East to fund a genocide and there's essentially nothing we can do to stop them. Like, that's kind of insane? That we're just being held hostage in complicity on this one with our own money and by the people we have chosen to give power to. And it's not like this is the first time this has happened; there's so many instances from the Vietnam war, to various US-backed coups and governmental ploys in Latin America and the Middle East throughout what can reasonably considered recent history (I'm not sure where the line gets drawn on recent history, and arguably very little of American history would be disqualified, but within the lifetime of people currently alive feels pretty recent, ya know?). 

I don't have much else to add here. I guess this is more of a rant than anything productive or insightful. But it's what has been roiling around in my brain all week and I am reminded anew of the centuries of disenfranchisement that Black people in America have endured, of the myriad hurdles the white majority have placed on a group of people who have never had a reasonable chance to get ahead or honestly to draw even with their oppressors. 

Sunday, February 11, 2024

Just A Few Books.


 Yesterday I participated in a book holiday called Novellus that a friend of mine created last year as a way to ease the drear of post-holiday winter. Eight of us participated and were secretly assigned gift book recipients. Then, we could go onto the website and add our personal book preferences and what we already own lots of etc. We could also send anonymous questions to our assigned recipient to further clarify what they might be interested in. 

I tend to get ridiculously excited for whatever holiday is coming up next. I don't think I really have a favorite holiday, I just like holidays in general. I love a theme and I love having something to look forward to. And it turns out this applies just as much to made up holidays- I was so invested in refreshing the page everyday because, as it turned out, the questions people anonymously asked were answered non-anonymously and publicly visible on our gift exchange page. It was so fun to see what people were asking and answering! And then, about a week after our exchange assignments were made, the questions petered off. I assume this was because people already knew what books they were getting each other, but there were still two weeks left of anticipation and I needed more continuous dopamine hits. Which was when I discovered that anyone could ask anonymous questions of anyone else! So I took it upon myself to become and agent of chaos and ask a question of a different person each day for the two weeks leading up to the exchange. 

I got a lot of good info about what books people were interested in. With all this good information, I took my role as Master of Book Pandemonium to the next level and picked what books I would have gotten for each of them if I had been their assigned gift giver. Then I drew the covers of my book recommendations onto cards for each person (and listed some additional recs inside the cards, too). I thought they came out pretty good, and people seemed excited to receive the additional book recs based on their interests. Only one of my recommendations (The Red Tent) had previously been read by the person I gave it to, and it was one that I had kind of guessed, but on the smallest chance that she hadn't read it, I thought she should because I knew she'd love it. 


In addition to the book recs depicted by the covers, I suggested: The Family Outing by Jessi Hempel, Leg bu Greg Marshall, The Library of Broken Worlds by Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Long Way to A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, Honey & Spice by Bolu Babalola, Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez, Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson, Forty Autumns by Nina Willner, Sourdough by Robin Sloan, and Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory. And the books I actually brought to the swap were The Book of M by Peng Shepherd (for my specific recipient) and Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke, which I put in the yankee swap because it's a hilarious and absurd quick read and I thought pretty much everyone would enjoy it.

Two days before we met I sent a reminder into the group chat that people should make sure they answered any questions and it was when some of the people realized questions they hadn't asked were being answered by their assigned recipient. A comment went up asking if someone was asking additional questions for "general interest" or if something could have gone wrong and assigned multiple people the same recipient (whoops!). My favorite part of the whole ordeal is that one of my friends was like "We all knew that was Aleena, right? I saw someone was asking people extra questions and was immediately like this is clearly Aleena." While I'm usually a big rule follower, I have to say I am also a fan of lighthearted mischief- especially when it involves books!

In addition to the specifically assigned book swap, we had a yankee-swap style exchange, so everybody brought two books and left with two! It was super fun.

All in all, a really wholesome day and one well spent gathering with friends who share a love of reading.