Earth

You know it’ll be a good day when you roll out of bed with a rant in your heart.

As you know, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that gay marriage is constitutional in all fifty states. Which immediately sparked a good amount of contradiction on my Facebook newsfeed from people on both sides. I’ve seen unmistakable joy: “we’re finally able to practice our freedom to love and marry who we choose.” And I’ve seen disgust. I’ve seen flat-out anger.

And of course I’ve seen the threats to move to Canada.

But the best one – oh my Lord, this is better than I could have imagined – was when a lady put up an article on Facebook about how homosexuality is considered different from other sins (in that it is more accepted by society than others) and someone commented, “Here’s the thing, though: it doesn’t affect you. So why does it matter?”

Um, what?

Number one: perhaps if you had read the article, sir, you may have seen that it was an article written to Christ-followers on how to approach homosexuality in a world that accepts this sin that is still considered in the realm of God to be just that: sin. Just as lying and adultery and theft and hate are sins. And there’s nothing in the Bible to say to detest one sin more than the other; but as followers of Christ, we are expected to lean away from those things that have been, are now, and forever will be detested by our God. But that article wasn’t written by someone trying to sway the homosexual community away from sin: it was written by a Christ-follower to Christ-followers as a guideline for how to approach homosexuality when we and our ideals are slowly becoming the vast minority in our nation. Just as homosexuals were shunned for so long, Christ-like morals and beliefs are slowly being elbowed out of sight, and comments like this gentleman’s are forcing us into silence about the foundational beliefs that we cling to.

You know what, the ruling doesn’t directly affect me. I am a straight woman with heterosexual inclinations, and I don’t know what it’s like to be told that I can’t marry in the way that I feel drawn. And honestly, I don’t care. Marry who you like, be with who makes you happy – I don’t give a rat’s ass. But it kills me when the motivation behind all this is equality, and while you can start planning your two-tux wedding, I’m supposed to keep my mouth shut when I think that it’s flat-out wrong (in the unbiblical sense) for fear of being called “small-minded” or “prejudiced.”

Oh, so you’re allowed to take part in that equality by the way you live and throw that in my face, but when I try to present my perspective or (God-forbid) reveal that my opinion is different than yours, I’m the one expected to change my mentality or keep my mouth shut.

What the hell is equal about that?

And this doesn’t just stop at homosexuality, it’s everywhere. The minute you open your mouth supporting a belief that has been traditionally upheld in this great nation, you’re suddenly twisted into the closed-minded, needs-to-be-shown-the-light bigot who has no tolerance for anybody else and their beliefs.

Is that not the same thing you’re doing to me?

This post is not a cry against homosexuality. I’m against it, I think it’s wrong, but that’s not the point of this post. Because my job is not to sway people on what they believe, just as I don’t want to be criticized on what I believe. But I am sick and tired of watching others arguing about “well, you shouldn’t think like that” and “well, maybe you should take a different perspective” and – like my new favorite comment – “it doesn’t affect you, so why does it matter?” Why state an opinion on something that doesn’t influence you directly?

The hell it doesn’t affect me. This decision does affect me, thank you very much. It affects me because now I have to figure out how to say what I think without “being offensive.” In the country that says “In God We Trust” and historically puts so much faith in God when the shit hits the fan, now His followers are having to curb their opinions and hold their tongues when the foundational things that they believe are wrong are not only being upheld by that country’s highest court, but also being thrown in their faces as “right.” And I tell you what, it matters because of comments like yours, sir. I could totally stay in the dark and keep my mouth shut on matters that won’t directly influence me.

But is that not how your landmark decision was passed yesterday? Did it not start with people tired of staying quiet in their closets for decades?

Or are only the supposedly-innovative thinkers allowed to have their say anymore?

While you’re looking at old documents trying to figure out what’s constitutional, why don’t you run on over to the Bill of Rights – the tip-damn-top of that little text – and check out that “freedom of speech” amendment.

It’s constitutional for me to say what I think, and you don’t have to like it. Just like it’s constitutional for you to marry who you like, and I don’t have to pretend that I support it.

Son

The other day a coworker asked me if I am "burned out."

I'll be twenty-three in less than two weeks. My college degree is barely six months old. Everybody tells me that I "have my whole life ahead of me." I am about to marry the love of my life in a little over nine months. I had to explain to a loan officer recently that my grown-up life has only just begun in January, that's why I don't have any credit built it.

And yet people are already asking me if I'm "burned out."

I am too young to be this tired, this achy, this weary of body and soul. And yet I fall asleep on the couch at nine o'clock at night and dread getting up to go to work the next morning.

Am I ungrateful? No - I am blessed to have a job where I'm inside out of the rain and the summer heat, and I don't have to pick heads of lettuce or strawberries for my step-above-minimum-wage paycheck. But you know how you get tired of eating Raisin Bran if you eat Raisin Bran for four years straight? It doesn't mean you're not grateful for the breakfast all those boxes of Raisin Bran afforded you, but you're just ready for a change.

Yeah. It's kinda like that.

My problem these days is that I'm starting to care too much about what goes on between time clock punches. For a while I was able to see this as "just a job" - something I could leave at work and not take home ulcers at the end of the day. But I'm starting to care a little too much these days. I spend my shifts cleaning up after people who don't care to do things the right way and who don't mind that I'm following behind them to correct what they just did, and when I leave at the end of the day, all I see is what I could have done. Or, even more depressing, what still needs to be done. And while we focus on the little details and create new departments that are a sure-fire way to gather more business and more money, the basics are going by the wayside and the old departments are falling apart.

Some of our leads are working six and seven days a week because we won't hire new help, but let's go ahead and create another department where the employees sit around for 80% of their shifts.

The name of this game is not to take it too seriously. And that's what I've been told since I first started. I've had fluxes of frustration with this place before, and I've gotten over them because there's always been a light at the end of that tunnel. But not this time. Not as I near the end of the tunnel and the light is bigger and blinding and I still have no idea what to do instead. And the urge to care more and try my best to fix things and do my job 140% because that's how I was trained and I can't help that, is overwhelming my underlying thoughts of "almost done, almost done." My countdown is less than 300 days, and yet I still leave home four out of my five shifts frustrated because I feel like I didn't do anything to help further our department for the past eight hours - I was merely fixing what someone else spent their shift destroying.

I can't stay. My mom asked me why I wouldn't continue to move higher in the company, and I said I couldn't justify doing that. I wouldn't be someone who operated out of pettiness and spite to get ahead, but I've seen how "honest" workers survive. 

Or, should I say, don't.

The original game plan was for me to wait until after the wedding to find another job, but dear friends, I don't think I'll make it. I'm on the verge of opening my mouth when I should be biding my time, and I cannot justify going back to the blind following of orders now that I've seen what's wrong. I need something else - anything else. At this point I don't care what it is.

I'm too young to be this tired. And I'm too young to be stuck.

If anyone has leads on anyone who's hiring, please let me know. I would really appreciate it.

Mug

The idea of writing a book about me and my life and what I’ve learned and what I’ve done seems a little…arrogant? Narcissistic? Self-righteous? All of the above, really, because I’ve done nothing worth writing a whole book about. Only people who live differently are allowed to write about themselves. You go into any bookstore and look at the memoir section and I guarantee you won’t see Betty Housewife’s How I Life: A Day in the Life of a Normal Person. Not only is this offensive in this day and age (welcome to the post-feminist era), but it’s also flat-out, nuts-and-bolts, get-right-down-to-it boring. No one – and I mean NO ONE – gives a rat’s ass about how you carried out your routine, day in and day out, for weeks and months and years on end until you meet that end that we all – normal or otherwise – must meet.

“Nobody gives a damn about the uniforms, they just want to hear about touchdowns and injuries.”

Let me be up-front with you: I am fairly normal. One might dare to say “average.” I was an average student in high school – thirty-fifth out of ninety-two – which got me into an average university, which got me a decent education for a shit-ton of money. I have traveled extensively but not exotically (I’ve never been anywhere near an elephant), and the stories I brought back with me never got more adventurous than “we were locked in a train station for ten minutes.”

I have spent the night on the floor of a French train station, but that was only because our leader of that particular “mission trip” (used very loosely and almost laughably) didn’t see the gap between our 1 a.m. arrival and our 6 a.m. departure.

By all accounts I have no reason to write a memoir that people will want to read. And that, I think, is where the wind is let loose from my sails. I don’t think so much in regard to what I want to write so much as what people will want to read. You can’t sell a book without readers, and you’re an idiot to think about only yourself as the writer when you write a book.

Unless, of course, you don’t mind being the only one to read it, in which case you should probably just write a diary instead.

Do people really care? Are people interested enough in what I’m presenting to drop $12.99 at a Barnes and Noble and sit down for an afternoon to read what I have to say? What I am writing is terribly important to me: my journals over the last few years are the chronicles of a girl who has no idea what the hell she wants while revealing exactly what she wants to do. In my words I see the transformation of a child of wild imagination and wishful thinking into a woman with thoughts and ideals and dreams that are well within her grasp. I am proud of the person I am, I am beyond excited at the path my life is carving out, and I am thankful to the many experiences I’ve already had at almost-twenty-three years old that have shaped the person who stands before you.

But does it matter to anyone else?

While I’m not sure of that, I am positive that nobody will care one way or the other until I sit down and crank out a few hundred pages. After all, you can’t test a hypothetical question until you take out the “hypothetical” and make it a reality.

And so, dear friends, I begin.

I am going to write a book.

I’ve been journaling/blogging for the past few months about the “quarter-life crisis,” described as the feeling of doubt about what being an “adult” entails. For me, I thought that by this point I would have a teaching job and probably an apartment and most likely not a boyfriend. Instead, I’m planning a wedding while working at a grocery store with no desire whatsoever to teach. And the realization of that, combined with the epiphany that “if you don’t teach, you have to do something – anything – else,” has been bumpy.

Correction: rocky.

Correction: frustrating beyond belief.

After doing some research, I’m finding that I’m not alone in this ballgame: if I were the only one, there wouldn’t be a name for it. And while at the moment that story doesn’t have a resolution, I want to share the journey that I’ve been on so far. I love to hear the stories of others who have gone through such an experience and come out on the other side wiser but unbroken. And the goal here is not to write a bestseller and chill in those comfy chairs on “Ellen.” The goal is to be read by one college grad, one twenty-something who feels that their plans and dreams are garbage. It is to enlighten, to entertain, and to encourage.

I have something to say that I would have liked to hear. And so, regardless of who hears, I will say it.