Vespers (A collection of 3 poems)

I. A sentence

, which is not to say that I am lacking in that respect, but rather that my voice, a voice that relies on a pair of inherited chromosomes, the eternal promise that this air, the same air we’re sharing, will always be able to vibrate and carry those vibrations and transfer them to the hidden receptacles within your body so that you can interpret them, and not an insignificant amount of chance that my shaking voice will match to patterns you are familiar with – but of course you must be familiar with them as you are human and I am human and our humanities allow for a certain amount of innate understanding of one another unless you are, well, you know those people to whom I refer; there is a difference between talking and speaking and it lies in the fact that for one, there is no purpose, and for the other, the purpose is complex, evolving, and inviting others to eventually join a larger conversation over something that is personally meaningful and to somehow have to convey these abstract ideas and words by means of voices over which we have no control,

II.An Afterthought OR My views on the purpose of existence

(                          )

III.My Poem

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.” – Oscar Wilde

I speak with words not my own.

Who owns each syllable, each sound that drops from my lips like diamonds and diamondbacks?

Each hiss of breath,

hiss of hot lead

feverishly melting in delicate patterns on paper,

who owns this?

The writer has the fever,

infects her audience with its heat,

but the fever belongs to the disease which has come before,

and will come again,

though an age may pass in between of curséd health.

It’s the cacophony of teeth,

the smell of sweat and stale vomit,

the neatly simmered rage,

all of these things of mine,

that plagiarize the playwrights and philosophers of old,

those rulers of the Golden age of thought and reason and linguistic innovation,

who, in turn, plagiarized the divinity of the planets they could see,

somehow turning them into a mockery of a representation in the process.

But the planets are mere shadows in the background of some ancient man’s cave painting

and in the foreground is the only truth he knows:

the immediacy of his situation and,

unable to see past his need and into the future, he

like me,

speaks with words not our own.

An Open Letter to President Obama and the 113th United States Congress

Mr. President, Senators, and Representatives,

I would like to express my extreme displeasure at the way you look at your homeland.  You stare at it with greedy eyes, reminiscent of the cartoon characters we used to watch on Saturday mornings.  Your soul eats evil green paper like it is the food of the gods and your belt of morality gets tighter and tighter until you take it off and all you have left is your hunger.

This is unacceptable.

America is not a run down gas station that needs more brown oil oozing through its cracks and faults.  It is not a bank account that you can withdraw from and then, when you're overdrawn, you just get a slap on the wrist.

America is a landscape, a factory, a conversation.  It takes effort, critical thinking, and maintenance, not magic, petty grovelling, and band-aid solutions.  We are better than that.  You are better than that.  Wake up and realize this.

To my point, Representatives and Senators who have supported the Keystone XL Pipeline:
Shame on you.  You are lacking in perhaps the most important aspect of governance and that is working towards sustainability.  The founding fathers wrote the Bill of Rights knowing full well that it would have been easier to explicitly state all of the rights that individuals, state governments, and the federal government had because limitations would make working within the system easier.  However, they knew that it was not sustainable and they had to reach a compromise that allowed for ambiguity, uncertainty about the changing times, in order to maintain a thriving United States.

The bill you are pushing through has no such concessions for uncertainty and evolution of American culture.  It is a bedazzled eye-sore that you are forcing, unwanted, upon us American citizens who still believe that this crazy system is working.

Mr. Obama:
It has come out that, while you may still veto the approval of the Keystone Pipeline, you may use it as a bargaining chip in the future.  Mr. President, our country is not a bargaining chip and if you think that our country only extends to the urban environments, then you are sorely mistaken.

The facts are there: the jobs created by the Pipeline are temporary and we could be putting our construction industry to far better and more sustainable use.  The pipes are structurally strong in the middle, but the junctions are untested, which is where leaks occur.  Most of the revenue that is expected to come out of this project will not even stay in the US.  By enabling Canada's fracking, which is widely accepted as a danger process for both the human and environmental elements, the US would send a message to the world that the end, however temporary, justifies the means.

But clearly facts are not at play here.  Science, once picked up by the political system, becomes meaningless.  And it is for this reason, that I am imploring you on the basis of your humanity, your appreciation of beauty, and your faith in the American people to take the high road: Please do not approve of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

We are better than that.


-----
To contact your senator, visit:
http://www.senate.gov/reference/common/faq/How_to_contact_senators.htm

To get more facts about the Keystone XL Pipeline, visit:
http://www.factcheck.org/2014/03/pipeline-primer/

I'm not a "People-Person"

I have a lot of apologizing to do, I suppose.

I'm sorry to my housemate who walked in my room just a few hours after I returned from a really long road trip to try to tell me something helpful and all I wanted to do was lay in my bed and watch Game of Thrones so I came off sounding like a detached brat.

I'm sorry to all (if any) of the readers of my blog for not posting in a long time.  One thing led to another and then writing began to seem like an obligation rather than something I actually enjoyed.  My apathy got the better of me and senioritis kicked in like it never had before.  Like seriously, I thought I had it bad in high school?  Guess again, kid.  The lack of motivation is paralyzing and, worse, frustrating.  I know I can do better, but I still find myself calling it quits far too easily.

Sorry, self-deprecating ramble.

So here's something new: I'm doing awful at physics again.  How many times will it take me to realize that simple of equations of kinematics depend on where you put the damn sign.  Do you know how many times I've gotten questions wrong simply because I put a positive where I should have put a negative?  Or when I've divided where I should've subtracted?  It's mortifying.

And I think I'm losing my touch.  I'm not able to stay up as late as I used to.  I'm usually in bed by midnight/1 am and all nighters are getting harder and harder to do.  Oh well, I suppose it comes with territory of growing up, along with paying your own rent, deductibles, and taxes. Ugh.

But the amazing thing about not being a people-person is that I am allowed, by society, to retreat into my room like some sort of hermit who found a treasure that she doesn't want to share.  I don't particularly do anything in my room, but sometimes it's nice just to know that I can sit there and stare at the ceiling and hate myself in peace and quiet.  You know, like a kind of introspective opossum.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/fire_brace/

A musing that I would like to leave you with as I go quietly into my goodnight because I soooo need it if I'm going to do well on my physics test on Friday:
Given the current trend of weather (increasingly late summers and winters) and the earth's history of polar reversal, I wonder if, perhaps sometime in my grandkids' lifetimes, America's Independence Day will be held in the winter and Christmas will be held in the summer....
Just a thought.
Cheers!

An Inactive Activist

I did something horrible today.

No, I did not kill someone, but thanks for putting it into perspective for me.

Today, I stayed inside and lay on my bed and watched as my neighbor washed out his paintbrushes in his lawn.

Why is that so bad, you ask?

With all the rains the Midwest has been getting, the ground is already saturated.  I don't know whether or not he used an environmentally-friendly paint, but I will assume not because they're not typical for interior paint jobs.  Therefore, all of the unsafe chemicals in the paint will enter the top soil which, already being saturated, means that those chemicals will be the first things in our water systems next time it rains.

Not only that, but he was using a hose.  A HOSE!!!! FOR 2 MEASLY PAINT BRUSHES!!!! Thanks to the Internet, we know that a hose has an average flow rate of about 3.5 gallons per minute.  This guy was washing each brush for roughly 5 minutes.  Let's do some basic math, people:

2 brushes x 5 minutes/brush x 3.5 gallons/minute = 35 gallons of water wasted!!!!

When he could have used a 1 gallon, 5 gallon, or even 10 gallon bucket and got the same results!!!!

And I stayed inside. And laid on my bed. And watched as my neighbor washed out his paintbrushes on his lawn.

English freak. Science geek. Social Activist Wannabe.  Well, the wannabe really came out here.
I knew the science.
I'm working the English even as you read this right now.
But I didn't act.

Acting is a conscious choice that, most of the time, is very difficult.

Sometimes you think, "The situation isn't clear enough" or "I'm not close enough" or "I wasn't ready".  And sometimes, that may be the case, but that doesn't make the action any less hard.  The situation was clear, I was close enough, and I wasn't preparing for anything else and yet I still didn't act.

And so I confess my crime to be complacency and I stand before you, my readers and friends, my judge and jury.  I cannot promise that this will not happen again, only that I have recognized my mistake and will not be so ignorant to my apathy in the future.

Even the best of us fail and I certainly will lay no claim to being the best.
But, starting today, I will be better.

Today is an Ugly Day

Ok, so maybe that's a slightly misleading title for my blog.

No, today was not ugly.  It was actually a rather beautiful 70 and sunny.  I woke up at 9, got my hair cut, picked up some sanding sponges, varnish, and brushes and worked on my new coat rack for an hour.  I then completed days 3 and 4 of my 30 day Buns, Guns, & Abs challenge before going for a swim at the gym, where I found out that I'd lost 6 pounds since finals ended.

The point is, this should have been a beautiful day.  So why was it ugly?

New readers to the blog: Welcome to where Sara tries to explain depression in a way that seems all-encompassing even though she's really not trained for it.

Ugly days happen.

We all get them.

That day that those jeans don't fit right or you wake up with a major case of bed head.
Those days when the girl or guy you've been trying to get to notice you still hasn't taken the hint.
The weekend after you somehow pulled off the biggest presentation of your career and yet no one even seemed to recognize the work you did.

Just those days when you feel ugly, think ugly, can't get out of "Ugly".  When your best isn't good enough and progress is seemingly marked by dripping molasses, only you can't see where it comes from and you can't know where it goes to.

These are the days when the fight is harder, the self doubt is more suffocating, the second guessing more costly (I spent way more than I should have on that varnish...).

There is a trend going around. #100HappyDays  The idea behind it is wonderful: Focus on the good stuff to remind yourself that, when there is bad stuff, it won't last all that long.  But sometimes we're so focused on trying to be happy that we forget what contentment is.

That is the cause of Ugly Days.  I have forgotten what contentment felt like.  I had forgotten to be me enough to be proud of me for what I'd done, not what I had done in comparison to someone else.  I recently started a DIY coat rack project.  It doesn't matter that someone else has finished one and it looks freaking amazing (http://knockoffdecor.com/), but I have forgotten to be proud of my initiative.

Sometimes, in an active and all-sharing online culture such as ours, it's too easy to see other people being absolutely amazing and getting recognized for it and then fall into a pit of apathetic worthlessness.

But I'm not apathetic.
I'm not worthless.

And better yet: you are not apathetic.
You are not worthless.

We can be content in ourselves.  Maybe we're not happy with the finished product, but we can be content enough to rest and tackle the next challenge when we're ready.

And that's all I can do for today.  So friends,  I will be content with myself for the evening and tomorrow, I will face new challenges when I am ready.

It's OK to have an Ugly Day.  Just put it to bed with the sun and wake up to a new tomorrow.

Goodnight all!

Talk Nerdy To Me (Jason Derulo Parody)

I know it's been more than a month since I last posted. It's been a crazy semester, but hopefully over the summer, I will be more free to rant and vent and love on all of the views and readers I have. :)

Til then, Keep Calm and Love On the Nerds.



Cheers!

Don't "Just Do It"

Nike has done a fantastic job of branding itself as the "doers" of fitness.  People who wear their gear are go-getters who "Just Do It".  No excuse, no apologies.  They get out there and they get things done and they look damn good doing it.

I love this.  I love Nike's mission to get people up and active and taking personal responsibility for their lives and their health.  Now if they could only make shoes with an insane amount of gelled inner-arch support, that would be great...

But there is a slight misleading quality to Nike's slogan.  Just doing it doesn't always cut it.  While Nike's brand motivates and starts that fiery passion in the gut, fiery passion just isn't sustainable. Fiery passion, like its very real physical representation, burns out.  Sometimes fire burns low and you can't seem to find a single twig of motivation to keep it alive.  Sometime fire burns out completely and you have to find two brand new sticks to rub together in a desperate hope that this time, maybe, you can make it work.

I don't know how many people have actually tried to rub two sticks together to create fire, but speaking from experience, it's a lot harder than it sounds.  

1) Find the right sticks, one preferably bowed and the other long and straight.

2) Find dry kindling, small twigs, dried grasses, that won't take much heat and friction to spontaneously combust

3) If you thought collecting kindling was enough, then think again. Now find enough firewood to keep the fire going long enough for you to go out and find more later.

4) Take that bowed stick you found earlier, tie a string (that magically appeared?) to it, and wrap it once around the bigger stick.

5) Realize that you've forgotten to make a nest, find a coal catcher, sharpen the long stick, cut a chimney, etc.

6) Give up because there is so much to do and to remember that, honestly, it probably isn't worth your time and effort.  You won't use this in the future.  This is stupid.

There are so many opportunities that we are given the chance to be a part of.  We can become a founding member of an organization, we can take this job in a field that has always interested us but that we've never had experience in, we can start a kitchen renovation.  We can say, "Yeah.  I'm just gonna do it." and then we think that we will and it will be over and then we'll go back to our regular lives. Wrong.

When you allocate time for something, you invest in it.  When that passion-fire dies down, so many people are prone to give up.  We give into the headaches.  We make those excuses we promised ourselves we wouldn't make.  We procrastinate hoping that new motivation will re-spark our passion.  And, worst of all, when a huge and daunting challenge confronts us and directly opposes our progress, we feel powerless and are more likely to relinquish our power.  During these dark moments, none of the inspirational quotes make sense and it seems like the fear will never go away.  You doubt yourself.  You doubt your purpose.  You doubt.

And here is where Nike gets it wrong.  You can't "Just Do It".  You have to "Just Keep Doing It".  It sucks.  There really is no point denying that. But starting a project is just that: a start.  It is not the most important part of the project.  Anyone who's ever kept a New Year's Resolution will tell you that the first couple of weeks were easy.  You were super excited about the "New Year, New You" plan, going to the gym, eating healthy but, somewhere, the temptation to quit weighed heavy on your overwhelmed mind.

It's the middle bit where it gets hard.

You've realized that this project you've started, this position you've accepted, is not the glamorous ideal you once thought it would be.

Just Keep Doing It.

The end is not in sight.

There doesn't seem to be anything but the pressure to persist and the guilt and shame and powerlessness that comes along with failing for the first time some aspect of the goal you set for yourself.

Just Keep Doing It.

10 hours of sleep in 72 hours.

You can't remember when you last ate a meal that wasn't just a granola bar or drank something that wasn't packed with caffeine.

Just Keep Doing It.

Because guess what?  Those are the moments you remember later when you can finally say, "I did it."  You remember what you sacrificed and you remember those who sacrificed for your achievement.  And those are the memories that you can take with you to the next project you are asked to make sacrifices for.  Those are the same memories that you can take with you to support the next person who finds themselves questioning the sacrifices they've made in the passionate hope to be a part of something bigger than themselves.

Speaking as one who has the tendency to over-commit: I do not regret pushing through my panic and uncertainty and feelings of powerlessness.  I regret, instead, those times that I was unwilling to sacrifice a little sleep and free-time to complete a project.  I also regret those times that I was unwilling to sacrifice my time, my preconceptions, my shoulder to cry on, and my listening ear for those who were struggling with their personal sacrifices and wanted to give up.

And I've gained an understanding.  The panic, the fear of powerlessness, the uncertainty never really goes away.  It's a cliche to state that no one actually knows what they're doing, they just all sort of stumble along hoping they'll figure it out as they go.  But the the ones who grow the most and who learn the most and who are the most effective leaders are the ones with a life long goal of stumbling and learning and stumbling again through all challenges.

Humble enough to admit that they have forgotten to make a nest, find a coal catcher, sharpen the longer stick, and cut a chimney, they are the ones who go back, as many times as needed, so that they can eventually enjoy and share the warmth that their passion and persistence created.

Sea Sickness

I haven't put up any poetry in a while.  Here's a piece I wrote while in the Galapagos Islands.  Enjoy!
                               ~                 ~               ~                ~                    ~

Sea Sickness

A forty foot yacht plows through the broken gray sea while I, inside, contemplate the contents of my stomach.

It’s interesting,

I think through my increasing discomfort,

how unpredictable the sea is.

She is like a Goddess.

Her depths are unknowable

but just as we forget about them she reveals evidence

of Her wonder,

            a dolphin springing playfully up to say hello to the sun;

of Her wrath,

            half of a ship, its masts catching the deep currents, sails on eternally with its skeleton crew tangled in the rigging;

of Her mercy,

            feeding the birds of the sky, the hunters of the ocean, the people of the land with Her bounty.

How is it possible for me to feel so sick upon the sea that God made;

where He loves Her so much that He bends down

uninterrupted

at every horizon to kiss Her?

The absence of wind has turned the whole ocean into a mirror

and the Goddess now reflects upon me and my tiny boat.

Her curiosity springs forth in the form of hundreds of flying fish,

the school skittering across the water in swift silver flashes.

My presence is permitted and a brisk breeze sends me on my way.

In my gratitude, I vomit over the stern and,

In a sort of sardonic salute,

Wipe my mouth and send a prayer ahead towards my horizon,

Where God meets Goddess,

Where I meet my future.

The "Colleague" Zone

A couple months ago, I reblogged an comic from Imgur on The Friend Zoner vs The Nice Guy.  I highly recommend you check it out.  It's cute, it's funny, and it's pretty accurate.  In fact, I agree with it....in its implied context.

You see, men should not be nice to a woman (and please feel free to switch these genders around. "women should not be nice to a man"..."women should not be nice to a woman"..."men should not be nice to a man"...etc.) just because they want to have sex or think that they deserve sex for being a nice guy and treating these women like human beings.  And if you stop being nice to me because I won't "give it up" to you or take our relationship to the next level or anything, then I will almost certainly think you are an asshole.  Thank you. Bye. Don't ever come back.

The Friend Zone

But there is such a thing as the friend-zone.  The friend zone is NOT when you want something and don't get it and then you feel sad and rejected and then the entire dynamic of the relationship changes.  But the friend zone IS when you are so afraid of ruining a friendship that you don't act on any romantic feelings or when conversations have taken place where it has been made clear that there are no reciprocation of those feelings from his behalf.  The latter option is almost always followed by an extreme effort on both of your parts to keep up the appearances of normalcy and maintain the friendship even though you both feel extremely awkward.  This can last up to 6 months, but you will eventually develop another crush and then you can go back to being regular bffs who gossip about each other's relationships and talk about futures and the relative sketchy-ness ratings of local fast food restaurants.

But as bad as the friend zone is, at least you are still friends. There are far worse zones, such as...
The Bad: The Sister Zone (better known for men as The Brother Zone).  He tells you everything.  You might even fall asleep together.  But it's never gonna happen.

The Worse: The Family Zone. He tells you things.  Sometimes you feel like you're not being told everything.  Sometimes you wonder if he even likes you.  But he'll always invite you to things and you are totally on good terms with his mom, his dad, his dog, and probably his cousins. It's still never gonna happen.

The Worst: The Colleague Zone. Given the title of this post, this rant calls for another paragraph.  But it's still never gonna happen.

Oh, the Colleague Zone.  Something with which I am all too familiar.  I am very involved in clubs and organizations and all of the extracurricular college things that could be real world jobs but aren't because they want you to at least say that you're focusing on school.  And I meet a lot of people that way.  And some of these people happen to be men. And some of these men happen to be attractive. I think you get where I'm going.

Ordinarily, this would be great! I can show how involved, dedicated, compassionate, loyal, competitive, adventurous, and intelligent I am.  These are some of my best qualities and, with no extra effort on my part, I can show them off to the people I'm interested in simply by doing my job.  And then, the dream goes, one of these men would be enamored with my strength and activism for service and social justice and they'd think "Hey, she's a cool girl.  Maybe I should get to know her better."  These colleagues would be come friends and these friends might morph into something....else.  So goes the dream.

The problem lies in the fact that I can't even breach the boundary between colleague and friend.  I am stuck forever in conversations revolving around future plans for the club, homework for the class, and the next service project.  I mean, how do you progress a relationship when, every time you suggest something non-work related, you get shot down with a "Yeah.  And we could tie this into this program and invite the rest of the group and fulfill this requirement and market ourselves in that way"?

And I wish I could say that this was a one-time occurrence.  That this was a fluke.  That he was the one who was just unresponsive and oblivious or uninterested and so tried to let me down in the nicest way possible that turned into the longest way possible.

But no.
Of course not.

I am the one who is socially awkward and incapable of making friends outside of structured organizations with clearly defined hierarchies and duties and positions.
I am the one who can't navigate the political niceties of social gatherings.
I am the one who makes awkward silences awkward. If I feel that there hasn't been enough awkwardness in the actual conversation, then I will make the conversations awkward.
In short: I am awkward.

Socially Awkward Sara-Penguin? I think so...

In the Colleague Zone, you're not even friends.  You're definitely not even that one weird family member that everyone loves but no one is really sure how to respond to.  You are simply the good acquaintance who constantly emails/texts/meets up with this other person about work/organization/school related issues.  My advice?  Get out. Fast.  Read a self help book.  Ask your socially graceful friends for tips.  Ask the readers of your blog for tips.  Readers of my blog: Do you have any tips?

No.
Seriously.
I will accept and try anything at this point (and even blog about it if you'd like).
This has to stop.
Maybe now you see my problem.
OK.
I'll stop now.
...
Bye.

This is a much bigger problem than I originally thought.

A Warm Thought for a Cold Winter

It has been absolutely frigid out these past couple of days.  I mean,  holy moly kiddo, this weather seriously hurts!  I wear contacts most of the time and I hate this weather because, when I go outside, I immediately start to leak from all of the holes in my face.  This is the process:

1) My contacts get dried out by the wind which causes my eyes to water.

2) My eyes over-compensate and tears roll down my face and promptly freeze on my cheeks.  This both ruins my make up and hurts to wipe/rip off.

3) Because my eyes are over-compensating and because of the cursed (with 2 syllables for emphasis) existence of the nasolacrimal duct, my nose starts running and I have this watered-down version of snot all over my upper lip.

4) Because it's below freezing, even my watered-down snot freezes and breaks off my nose hairs inside my nostrils causing pain and more pain.

5) I can't breathe through my nose so I breathe through my mouth.

6) The dry air I'm breathing through my mouth dries out my mouth, my throat, and my lungs.

7) To compensate for this dryness in my upper respiratory tract, I start salivating and forming extra mucus which admittedly does coat my throat and lungs and protects it but also makes it much harder to breathe and now I'm coughing and spitting every couple of minutes.

In short, this winter is making me a gross, liquid-y mess.  Thank goodness I really, really, really love anatomy and physiology or I would be miserable...well. More miserable than I already am.

But clearly I digress.  An in-depth discussion of my awkward grossness on my morning trek to class does not, I should think, classify as a "warm thought" to anyone. Ever.  SO!  I present to you for your intellectual pleasure this evening, a fun thought experiment.

You may have heard of it before.  It is a delightful little thought experiment involving infinite probabilities (a quite popular phrase now that The Fault in Our Stars is coming out) and monkeys and typewriters.  The thought experiment goes that, given an infinite amount of monkeys were pressing truly random keys on an infinite amount of typewriters for an infinite amount of time, the monkeys will "almost surely" produce the complete works of Shakespeare.

Think about it.  Think about what you're reading right now.  These markings have no significant meaning except for what we ascribe them.  I could easily type gibberish (asd fapowieghap aejpora qhpaig) but of course you wouldn't understand that because we haven't assigned those gibberish "words" any meaning.  But look inside of the gibberish I typed and you can see actual words with actual meaning that I typed merely through probable chance.  I typed "as" and "fap" and "pow" and "ow" and "hap" and "por" (which admittedly is Spanish, but you take my point). Given an infinite amount of time, math concludes that I would eventually randomly type letters into an order that is the exact same as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

I personally am a huge fan of thought experiments.  If you enjoyed this brief introduction to them, I highly suggest you go searching for more.  To aid you in your quest, however, I have linked to a site that lists their top 10 favorite thought experiments here.

Stay warm!

An Introvert's Guide to Being Extroverted

According to Myers-Briggs, StrengthsFinder, VisualDNA, and Quizilla, I am an introvert.  The classic response to this is, "So, you don't like people?" to which I reply, "Um....".

There really is no correct response to that question.  Sometimes, I crave human interaction, conversation, intellection, and other times I would rather be by myself, eat a bowl of cookie dough ice cream, and read a book or watch a movie or write rant-y blog posts.  So I've dedicated time to finding out what a true introvert is.  Stereotypically, you are an introvert if you make up excuses to not hang out with people, if you'd rather have a good Friday night in, or if you prefer green over purple.

But so far, the best definition of introversion and extroversion I've found was from my own parents.  They say, "The only real difference between introverts and extroverts is their chosen method of recovery.  At the end of a long day, extroverts are more likely to restore their energy by hanging out with a group of people.  Introverts are more likely to recover by spending their time by themselves."  And to be honest, I like this definition.  I love my friends, my family, and even social situations that require grace, skill, and intellect to navigate.  But at the end of the day, I want to be alone to internalize, process, and reflect.

But I am in college and I live in my sorority house with 14 other women, not to mention my other sisters who can drop by any time between about 7 am and midnight (1 am on weekends), and as much as I love them, I am often frustrated that I don't get as much alone time as I'd like.  Which brings me back to my original purpose: how to appear extroverted when you haven't had time to fully recover.

Never fear! Over-involved Sara is here!  In a few easy steps, I will help your exhausted, introverted self fight your way minute by minute, day by day, through the drudgery of social and professional interaction until you can finally find some quality recovery time.

1) Drink caffeine.  Lots of caffeine.

-- Caffeine is basically the legal version of adderall.  It's kind of bad for you, but it will give you the energy you need to focus on the task at hand.  The trick to using caffeine effectively is to start small.  Get used to tea before you graduate to coffee.  Dr. Pepper before Mountain Dew.  Red bull before Monster.  This way, you will still be affected by the caffeine and you won't build up a high tolerance too early in the game.  Drink Responsibly.

2) Prepare for battle.
--Insert bizarre warrior metaphor here.  Ladies, take 10 minutes before you leave and put on your war paint...I mean, make-up.  That foundation lays the foundation of your day: smooth, resistant, enduring.  Your cover-up?  Camouflage in the jungle that is the office, classroom, etc. Mascara and/or eyeliner brightens your eyes so that you can effortlessly pretend to be paying attention to someone.  Gentleman, your tie and blazer are your shining breast plate and chain mail.  Make sure they're clean and unwrinkled and then your polished look will reflect the light of authority into the eyes of the competition, giving you the advantage.

3) Write things down.
-- Seems simple enough.  When you write down what others are saying, you instantly appear reflective and introspective.  This will also show your intellectual side for any potential romantic interests nearby.

4) Ask open-ended questions.
-- These types of questions require long, extensive answers.  Even if you don't necessarily want to listen, you can at least avoid putting any actual effort into the conversation.  Examples include: "What do you plan to do immediately following graduation?", "What sites to you expect to see on vacation?", "What makes the leaves change color?", and my personal favorite, "Why is it that, every time I talk to you, you seem irritated?"
BONUS: Try incorporating noncommittal words and phrases to draw out their answer.  These are, "Really?", "Is that so?", "Why is that?", and "I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention.  What did you say?"

5) Pre-plan your escape routes.
-- When you first walk into a room, what do you do?  Do you notice all the people there and freak out? No! That'd be stupid.  You find all the ways out of the room, notice where the clumps of chairs and tables are that you'll have to navigate around, look for the mail cart in the hall and map its route so that you can avoid it to minimize your escape time.  You never know when someone will want to engage you in meaningful conversation and you'll have to whip out the "I have diarrhea" card and speed walk out of there.

6) Carry around snacks to share.
--They can't talk if they've got their mouths full.  Plus, it's an easy way to earn brownie points with your friends or colleagues. (Get it? Brownie points?  As in brownies? I'm so funny.)

7) When possible, avoid eye contact.
-- Eye contact establishes a connection with another person.  No eye contact. No connection.  Easily accomplished if you're "too busy" to establish eye contact by writing things down.  See #3.

8) Construct, edit, and practice your sentences in your head.
-- This will help ensure that you can fit all of your points into one concise moment of speech, saving you from the effort of having to explain or elaborate later.  The only downside to this is that sometimes a discussion will move quickly from point to point and so just when you've finally got down what you want to say, the group will have moved on to a completely different point and you've missed your chance.

9) Say "yes" to say "no".
-- By this, I mean commit yourself to projects and activities that you are passionate about so that you can fill your time enough to justify you saying no to going to your co-worker's boyfriend's dog's birthday party on Friday night.  Unless there's cake, in which case it's up to you.
  (Side note: You should always make time for cake.  It was there for you when your ex broke up with you, when you graduated,when your grandma died, and when your best friend got married.  You owe it big time.)


10) Say "No".
-- In all seriousness, social and professional interactions are exhausting.  Instead of making jokes or excuses, sometimes you just need to say, "I'm sorry.  I'm really tired.  I just need to decompress by myself for a little while".  And if your friends are your friends, they'll understand.  If your boss or co-workers value you, they'll understand.  I am a firm believer in one's obligation to complete a task they said they'd do and I hold myself to that same standard.  But if I need some help or a deadline extension, I am not ashamed to ask.  Then I finish whatever project I started and I say "no" to the next few until I feel like I've recovered enough to tackle the next challenge.  And that's perfectly fine.

The Friendzoner vs The Nice Guy - Imgur

A very funny comic that accurately articulates my view on the dreaded "Friend-Zone".  Feminist and funny.  Not mutually exclusive. ;) Enjoy!



The Friendzoner vs The Nice Guy - Imgur

Back from Ecuador...and I neglected to post. That's my bad.

So. I'm back from Ecuador....and I forgot to post.  In my defense, the internet is really spotty in the Galapagos.  So, I leave you an odd assortment of pictures for you to make your own story out of and I apologize on behalf of Blogger's inability to create a photo gallery, so the post is really looooooooooooooong.

Much love,

Sara

Estoy en Ecuador!!!

Hello from Quito!  While the entire United States is engulfed in a polar vortex (dude. That doesn't even sound good), I'm blissfully enjoying a typical daily temp of 70 F, sometimes cloudy or raining, but beautiful none-the-less.  I get to see mountains upon mountains that seem to rise up from no where and I have met so many people, indigenous, mestizo, Afro-Ecuadorians. So many.

I love my host sister's friends.  Parts of Quito can be a little etch-a-sketch (yes? no? I appreciate feedback when trying out new words or phrases.) but the environment that she and her friends create is one of comfort, safety, and a helluva lot of fun.  It probably doesn't hurt that they all speak English (in fact, one of her friends was a guy who moved to Ecuador from Indiana to teach.  How amazing is that?!) and can translate for me when my meager Spanish, mostly forgotten in the 3 years I've been absent from it, fails me.

I also love my host family, of course.  My mom speaks no English what-so-ever, so communicating is sometimes hard.  I love the challenge, though.  And my host sister is simply gorgeous.  So far, I don't have any good pictures of us, but maybe I'll get one up soon. :)

I'm also staying with a girl from my program.  Her name is Faith and she speaks Punjabi and Hindu fluently.  Her Spanish, however, is a little rusty.  Enter my..."talents", for lack of better word, as a translator.  Clearly, I chose the right career path in biology and literature.  Languages are hard!

Anyway, I hope to update this blog a little bit more often, now that I'm actually doing stuff and not just waiting around for the next news article to rub me the wrong way. Expect maybe 3 or 4 posts this January. On Wednesday, I'm headed to the Galapagos Island! Super psyched!

The view from my window. Que bonita!

One last thing of note: I'm here with a class from my school doing a January term (basically 3 weeks of intensive classes...for those who don't get to travel!!!!), and part of our grade is a collaborative blog.  You can follow our class blog at andestoislands.com.