A cruise to the Bahamas and CocoCay with some of my best friends! (Jennifer)

A cruise to the Bahamas?

* * *

Lately I've been getting a little bit overwhelmed with 'work-mode'.  As I've been trying to save up money for a big trip in late July, I've embarked on three individual business plans, and I'm working my butt off trying to make them all work out.

I've been self-coaching twice a week, giving myself homework assignments which I complete at coffee shops between actual work shifts at my office or at the school.

In the meantime I'm still maintaining a social life, with all its accompanying planning and schedule juggling, I'm still planning to take a couple expensive classes AND go visit my father before I leave on my trip.

In short my brain is constantly in budgeting-mode, scheduling-mode, and marketing-mode.

It's exhausting.

It's also very new, because as many of you may know, I've spent much of my life being the local expert in 'kicking back my feet and being a minimalist of effort...an ethical hedonist who plays all day and works only enough to pay the bills.'

So, this muscle of consistent productivity?   What a great muscle to be developing!  I've been wanting to build it for a while.  But I'm tired.  Muscles need a rest.

They need...a cruise.  To the bahamas.  With some of my best friends.

Here's what I've started doing:

In the morning, I sip a metaphorical daiquiri before even getting out of bed.  I lay there and I ask myself, "What feels good right now?"  Maybe my left foot feels nice and warm and happy.  Maybe my chest feels loose and relaxed from a long sleep.  If I notice my mind racing towards my next appointment, I'll ask "what feels good about that?"  and enjoy the rush, the energy buzzing through my system.  Then I'll enjoy the warm left foot again.

Once I've really savored the peace of that morning daiquiri, I'll get up, and slowly, with nice full breaths, start moving.  Maybe write a blog post, maybe play some music.  Take it easy.  A morning cruise.

Eventually I'll be working again, chugging along through the day- but here and there, if I feel that intensity getting overwhelming again, I'll pause, look outside, notice the distant icebergs and the tropical trees and the dodo birds flying around me, and ask again "what feels good right now?"

Come evening time, I'll start doing the same routine.  If I'm lucky I'll have a friend to cuddle up with and watch a movie, or to grumble and vent about life.  Maybe I'll ask them to scratch my head.  Because every cruise should have a massage or two.

They Look As If They Were Painted (Nicole S)

They look as if they were painted.  The leaves on that plant were so beautiful, they couldn't be real.

* * *

About 7 years ago, I met a friend, let's call her Janine.  We hit it off at a party, and for a short minute, I thought maybe we'd end up dating.  We went on a few maybe-dates (you know what I mean, you're hanging out, and in the back of your mind, trying to figure out if it's actually a date or not), got to know each other, and then somewhere along the way, I realized, it wasn't gonna happen.

I don't remember the exact turning point:  maybe it was the fact that she was thinking of moving pretty soon, maybe it was the fact that she was a Capulet and I was a Montague (that's a recipe for disaster), but on some level my hesitation could be summed up by this:

I felt that she expected me to show interest by putting a move on her, and that she didn't want me to a put a move on her.  Like, that was the script that she was waiting for- and it wasn't a script she liked, but one that she was resigned to.  I wasn't willing to play that game: I don't want to put a move on someone who isn't into it, so I didn't.  And she started dating other people, and that was that.

We became friends, and in a world of guys who want nothing but snooky, I got to be the guy who didn't want snooky (not from her, anyway).

Somehow I thought, as she complained so often about how "all guys just want one thing" and "if they don't get it, they'll leave", that eventually she'd realize that I was a guy, that I wasn't getting (nor asking for) favors of any kind, and that I was sticking around.

If at this point you're worried I'm going to give the "but I was a nice guy" speech, don't worry.  This is a new version of that speech, because instead of saying "but I was a nice guy" I'm going to say, "but I was a nice guy"---

---because when I finally said to her, "you say all guys want is sex, but you realize, I'm a guy, and I'm not trying to get sex" she made a dismissive gesture and said "yeah, but you're you."

Which I took to mean:  "Because you haven't tried to get with me, you must not be a normal guy, and therefore you exist in a category all of your own, and men are still pigs just as I've always known."

Which to be honest was sort of emasculating, and pretty darn frustrating, because I am a sexual person, I am interested in 'getting with' ladies, and I do make moves.  Just not on people who don't want it!

It's almost as if after a lifetime of seeing plants with ugly leaves, she saw a plant with beautiful leaves
and said, "those leaves are so beautiful!  They look as if they were painted!  They must not be an actual part of that plant."

"Aaron is such a cool guy, he's never made unwanted moves.  He must not be a real guy."

I wanted to be at least one counter-example in a sea of shitty dudes, but instead I became my own nation:  The women, the men, and the Aaron.

This was a good reminder that trying to fix people without them asking for it really isn't going to work so well.

I can only hope she took a picture of me and posted it on Facebook, so that people could then write in their blogs about me.

Metaphorically.


((edit:  this post has so many parallels to the "I was so good to her, why didn't she sleep with me" trope out there, that I want to be very clear:  I never intended to sleep with this person.  I was not being nice with an agenda, not even to 'fix' anything.  I was just being myself.  My frustration was not from horniness but from being excised from my gender due to my lack of disrespectful horniness!))

Mother's day celebration: Ethiopian style. (Denise)

Mother's day:

1. a day of the year (in the US, the second Sunday in May) on which mothers are honored by their children.

Ethiopian:

    a native or inhabitant of Ethiopia, or a person of Ethiopian descent.

When I was thinking about going to college, I ended up choosing between two very different paths:  To the north, there was Western Washington University, and to the south was the Evergreen State College.

Western was this beautiful, art-filled campus in Bellingham, an incredibly cozy little town. The dorms were classy, the buildings modernly tasteful, and the girls distracting.  It was everything I could hope for in a college experience.  Had I gone there, I probably would have majored in Physics, which would have required me being in school for 4 years, and accruing that much debt.

Evergreen, on the other hand, was a cement oasis in an otherwise lush forest of green.  Old, blocky buildings added definition to the paved pathways winding around campus, and the only art piece I remember offhand was a giant 'swinging bench' attached to a big A-frame of metal.  It didn't swing.

The appeal to Evergreen was the freedom:  As I already had two years worth of college credits under my belt from going to community college during high school, there were no required classes to take.  Evergreen has no majors, so there was no need to declare one.  Each quarter, I could take any class I wanted, following my evolving passions to my hearts content.  And, I'd graduate in only two years.

What would an American do?

Well, that question can be answered with a metaphor:  It's mother's day, and you're deciding what to do to celebrate.  Conventional tradition would say "waffles and orange juice in bed."  But maybe you don't want waffles in bed.  Maybe you want to eat with your family.  Maybe you're in the mood for something savory, not sweet.  And maybe you want to actually go out, do something new.

So you don't look to "American Convention", you look to reality: the whole barrage of options and opportunities available to all the people of the world, all the cultures, traditions, and creative expressions of the 7 billion neighbors we currently enjoy.

And you decide to celebrate Mother's Day Ethiopian style.  Because it fits, and because it sounds delicious.

They say that America is a melting pot, but that's their metaphor.  I say that the world offers us a richness of options available for delightful consumption, if we just look.  

Let's have Mother's Day, Ethiopian style.

The fact is, I'd already gone to massage school:  I'd taken a 6-month program that qualified me to make $30-$60+/hour once I really dived into it.  I'd taken that program because I didn't know if I'd have a job waiting for me when I graduated.  And the cost of that 6-month program was negligible compared to even the cheapness of a state school.

I'd eaten Ethiopian without even realizing it.

And because I was so satiated, I didn't need to gorge myself on 4 more years of physics study, hoping that it would make me big and strong for the rough and tough world out there.

Instead I opted for the tapas bar:  I went to Evergreen, with its ugly, plain, cement canvas, and painted my own ideas, studying physics, calculus, literature, ethics, language, sociolinguistics, and creative writing.

Sometimes I wish that I'd had the waffles.  Waffles are sweet, crunchy, and they leave you in a happy food coma, still in the comfort of your bed.

But regardless of what the right choice was, I love that I live in a world where I can eat Ethiopian.