Saturday morning

5:30 am. Tossing in the sheets. His back is turned away from me, relishing the airconditioning. I fell asleep just a few hours ago, and now here I am, wide awake. I promised myself I would get up early today, but I was aiming for a normal hour. Oh well.

6:06 AM. I’m on tunblr, attempting to make my blog of borrowed jokes and pretty things slightly more enjoyable. A mural of Frida Kahlo. Some puppies. Self-deprecating humor. None of it my own.

7:07. I can’t lay here anymore. I sit up too quickly. Gather some clothing quietly. Slip into my robe. Start the shower. The water pools at me feet. I borrow his brush, mine lays forgotten in a different bathroom. Shampoo, conditioner, brush, shave, step out. I blink contacts into my eyes, my glasses still irreparably broken. Toothpaste. Spit. Dress.

8:14 am. Laying belly- down on the rainbow carpet. Gilmore girls prattles on in the background. I write, then doodle. The birds are awake, the sun is awake, this , too,is the first time I’m really awake. I’ve been sleeping in until 2pm all week. Funny that this changes on a Saturday. I ink in thin lines and call it art. My pen bleeds.

9ish. Frosted mini wheats and a banana in a bowl of almond milk. I pull apart the banana with my fingers and place it alongside the cereal, I like the peices to be big and well-spaced. Gilmore girls, the great-grandmother dies in this episode. I like the way the squares get soggy. I don’t drink all the milk.

10:00 am. I count down the minutes until the episode ends. Pause autoplay. Close my journal. Find Facebook. I am upside down, feet on the couch, skirt slipping towards my belly. No one else is around, modesty be damned. I read some blog posts and wallow in self pity. Why don’t I ever write? Why do I feel so dull, like everything happeneing to me is boring and unecessary to write about. I still feel shit, but I write anyway.

10:25 am. I write these sentences. Cars zoom by the open window. The birds are getting louder, but it is still quiet in this house.

 

 

How do people deal with having nothing to do?

I find myself in this conundrum often. I have either waaaayyyy too much stuff going on all at once, or there is a period of nothing, absolutely nothing happening. I don’t think I’ve ever found that happy medium for myself.

I’m restless when I have no plans. I sleep in super late after hours of snoozing my alarm.

maybe I go to Starbucks all day and doodle in my journal, plugged into Netflix. Episode after episode, doodle after doodle. Rinse and repeat. Sometimes I mix it up by not going to Starbucks, and instead stay in bed all day, doing the exact same thing. Doyle gets home at about 9:50 ish, we hang out a little, watch more Netflix, and I fall asleep well before he does. We both wake up anywhere from 10 Am- 2pm. Half my day is spent wandering dreams.

I swallow my pill. I hop in the shower. I dress. I put in contacts. I brush my teeth. I pack my bag. I go to Starbucks. I sit at the table I’m currently typing from. I doodle. I read a little. I watch Netflix. I stand up and stretch. I order coffee. I walk around the block.

It becomes night. Doyle gets a break and we spend short moments together, talking about his shift, his sore feet, the customers frustrating him, his hijinks behind the counter. I ask questions. I show him what I’m working on. We laugh together. He rests. He’s back on the clock. I’m back to my headphones.

It’s not a bad time. Sometimes I need to make space for myself to do nothing of substance in order to actually create something. My best art comes out of boredom. I get to hang out with other coffeehouse patrons. There’s this one kindly old man named Ted who can tell you stories for hours. Linda always has a kind word. Ricky hangs around on his days off. It’s kind of like a strange family here. So I’m not really sad to come to a space and do basically nothing. At least not all the time.

 

 

 

 

Time for a break, but not from bloging

Hi everyone

I guess this is the other side.

The semester is finally over. I scrambled around today trying to finish things that I forgot were due yesterday. I actually thought that I finished last Friday, but I missed some important things and now have to deal with my incompetence when it comes to deadlines. I usually am pretty clear with those, so it feels extra sucky to mess up on something so trivial that I usually take great care to meet.

Anyway, good or bad, the semester is over. I already have two grades in and they aren’t terrible. I’m really just happy to be done with this hellish year. being a  Junior was incredibly taxing; you’re so close to being done, but you still have a full year of work ahead of you.

For a great deal of this year I have been spiraling depression wise, so getting a real break feels fantastic. I was so isolated for a while there. I realize that I have become very attached to background noise, as I have a difficult time dealing with silence. being alone with myself was really difficult for me. I know that I wasn’t actually alone. I have a few friends, a partner, all that good stuff. It was still rough, though. Single dorm rooms are great for privacy, not so great for making friends. I don’t think my suite mate and I exchanged more than a few sentences all year long. I used to have the company of my partner, but since his journey has led him to leave school, I was very, scarily alone.

I’m back in a safe, noisy, loving home now. I am surrounded by loud, beautiful people. The silence isn’t nearly as much of a problem as it has been this past semester. Still, I find myself needing to turn on Netflix in those brief moments of solitude. I’ll work on that.

I have some really awesome news, though! My Jewish Identity Reader is all done! There are a few typos here and there, but I’m not worrying myself over that too much. I’m just glad this actually happened.

I’ll be spending the summer working in a lab, learning to drive ( I know I’m 20, please don’t judge), and hopefully seeing a therapist. More than anything, I’m going to try to relax a little bit. I think I really need this down time to get back to myself. I have a list of books that I want to read, a few shows to catch up on, a new journal to break in. I know that I can make the most of this summer by just letting myself be. No real pressures, no intense obligations. Just experiencing life at a slower pace, and enjoying my long neglected hobbies. I’ll also be writing here, semi- often, as a challenge to myself, but also as a way to grow. Thank you all for sticking with me through this rough bit of year. I hope you all have a wonderful summer, and I’ll be popping in to talk throughout it!

 

How do you deal with trolls?

So here at UMBC, there was a recent scandal involving some sexist stuff that went down at URCAD, the annual Undergraduate Research thingy that happens here. A really cool student was censored for having a diagram of female anatomy on her poster, and people got rightfully upset about it. If you want to learn more about the incident, read this awesome post.

Anyway, the administration, including the president (!) of the university, has apologized and faculty/staff has written a letter to show solidarity to the student who’s work was unnecessarily censored. Things aren’t perfect, but It all seemed like at least some resolution was worked out.

Than this *bleep* had to come and write they’re little “SATIRE” piece…

I’m just really mad. I don’t get trolls. I know that if I comment on the blog, they’ll retort in a demeaning and frustrating fashion. I know keeping silent is just feeding into they’re sense of smugness. I honestly don’t know what to do about this kind of stuff.

You’d think after spending some time on the feminist scene, I would be accustomed to figuring out comebacks, but I’m really not. I just never know what to say. so I’m going to deconstruct this ass****’s funny little article and kind of figure it out for myself.

The article began with an advisory note. That part seemed pretty tame, so I kept on perusing.

Seriously? A Cunt joke? The only reason that I’m typing the word itself is because it seems relevant to address this head-on. It is totally not okay to make this kind of joke at the expense of the affected party. Sure, the author sidestepped with the last line, but for comedic effect, not because they didn’t mean such hurtful things about the student who took it upon herself to stand up for her peer and combat blatant sexism in our community.

I want to begin with this huge chunk over here started at ” in addition”, and ending at “oppression”

How are student’s possibly capitalizing off of an infringement of their rights? Off of speaking up when sexist shit is happening to their friends? This is the kind of person posting that prides themselves on loving free speech and is anti-censorship, but when it becomes a feminist issue, they are willing to say that censorship is A-OKAY!

Dude, here’s the thing. People legitimately felt oppressed. They were silenced and humiliated at an event that was supposed to be a capstone of their achievement. People are actually angry ( I mean, here I am, angry as hell! And check the Ancient Studies Facebook page, you’ll see some very angry people there, too!). They are in the right to be angry. You’re thinking in binarism and you are belittling competent, brilliant students who spent countless hours on their research.

And that’s just the first paragraph.

I’m sorry that you think vaginas and Gynecology are completely and inherently sexual. You obviously have never heard of menstruation/childbirth/PCOS/ anything else that gynecology, a huge medical field, is important for. I’m sorry that  a human body part, in a completely academic setting, is still just a sexual object to you. You can continue to think whatever you want, but it’s not going to make it true.

There is so much more that I can pick apart about the post itself, but  I want to move on to the comments, because oh man are they a doosy.

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UGGGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGGGGGGGG

how can people be so gross? this is literally an academic platform,  and someone jokingly sexualized nipples in a super skeevy way.

I agree, the author is too shitlordy to be an SJW. Shitlordy is a really good term.

I’m pissed. It’s not funny when it’s at the expense of a student researcher who has already gone through hell over her project. It’s not funny when you demean a bunch of good-hearted people who were  just trying to do whats best and take a stand.

It’s not.

Maybe someone else could have chuckled at this, but I don’t think it’s possible for me to find this even remotely funny anymore. Maybe if the author hadn’t stooped to picking on student activists, and instead stuck with discussing administrative corruption. But no, the author continues to blame the oppressed party for getting upset that they were oppressed.

I am so not feeling UMBC pride right now.

 

Hi again, and end-of semester ramblings

I haven’t really been feeling like writing for a while. Its been about two weeks since tending to this blog. I know that if I don’t keep it up, it will get forgotten and die out, just as so many projects before have.

So here it is, the blog post. The semester is finally almost over, though there are many grades that still hang in the balance. There’s so much left to do and only 10 days left to get anything done. I’ve been trying to be productive, with limited success. I finished this one project a couple of hours ago, and was going to start studying for (two) tests in this one class, but I got distracted with autostraddle (and then for some odd reason choreography videos?)

Anyway, I’m in workout clothes after a halfhearted attempt to learn this routine to a Justin Bieber song ( it would be a fun, ironic party trick to have…..right? Right!). I haven’t really gone back to studying, but at least I got something done before the procrastination set in. I’ve made lists in the handy-dandy journal about my TO-DOS, so now I guess I get to scratch one thing off.

The LGBTQIA+ Jewish Identity reader is actually coming together. I think I got all of the submissions that I’m going to get, so now it’s just a matter of editing and writing my own stuff. It’s turning out to be more of a “Some L kinda G bit of T mostly Q where’s the IA?” reader, but it’ll do for now.

I have a lab position for the summer all lined up, which is actually really weird because I’ve never done research before. At about 1:00 am last Friday I had the grand idea that I must apply for a research position and that it was the smartest thing to do ever, so I got all of my stuff together in one sitting and applied. I interviewed and got the job yesterday, so now my fevered proactive decision-making is paying off. I think it was Ted Mosbey on HIMYM that said nothing good ever happens after 2 am. Luckily for me it was 1 am, and also  Ted Mosbey is the quintessential “nice guy”, so I can’t take him seriously.

Am I rambling? I think I’m rambling. Whatever keeps this blog alive.

Anyway, it’s about to be dinner time ( I’m not going to miss my meal plan next semester, that’s for sure), so I’ll come back to this blog later. I owe this space some actual time, so look out for future happenings!

Anywho, good luck on all of your finals!

I’ll see you on the other side.