Life Part 2 and Shit

So Jocelyn told me I should start a blog, and now I am revisiting this one. I remember having Xanga and writing for my friends and acquaintances, but since I've been journaling as well these days, I usually end up being half-committed to both. It's interesting how I react to the two when I re-read them. With journaling, I'm not as hard on myself or my writing, and more empathetic to the emotions and attitudes I had in the past. With blogging, I become a super critical voyeur, most likely because I can see myself purposely censoring myself or saying something I don't mean or exaggerating--essentially not being honest, although I don't consciously mean to be like that.

Anyway, I am writing here again to chronicle life in grad school and in a new state, across the country and without any support system. Almost nothing is familiar, and I must make friends again from scratch. I've always wondered what it would be like to start over, perhaps in a new country, where nobody knows me, sort of like ending up in a witness-protection program. I imagine myself being someone completely different, just because I felt like it. For some reason, I see me dying my hair a radical color, cutting it pixie-styled like Winona. I would have no inhibitions, as in I wouldn't stifle anything, no reservations, no prejudices. Who would I be? Would I finally be truly happy, with no regrets? Still, I know my personality. While I can be shy, I am also reserved, as in I like and choose to be alone and quiet and listen to other people talk. My happy days are never interminable. I have cycles that seem to be more a part of my nature than my circumstances.

But while I have somewhat come to accept this part of myself, there are negative which I would like to exorcise. Laziness, fear, insecurity, apathy and indifference...I guess faults that all humans have, but mine are to a degree with which I'm not happy. I don't want to look back on my life and regret things. I think a common thread on this blog has been me not liking the fact that I don't take advantage of certain things, that I don't live life to the fullest, or to my fullest. I feel like I'm in the passenger seat most of the time, with my emotions and circumstances dictating where I go. I want to always remember that life is short, that there are no guaranteed second chances. I forget that I need to cultivate such an attitude and way of life, and that no one and nothing else can do that for me.

I could probably write forever on this subject, but I would rather chronicle the actions I take to get to this point of self-actualization. Sometimes true change requires a revolution of some kind, but it must also be incremental. I'm going through both processes right now, and they are both difficult. Hopefully I can incorporate the latter into my day-to-day, while appreciating the former rather than despairing over its difficulties.

I wouldn't mind living here

I wouldn't mind living here in a dream house made of fog and inside it is warm like the pits of my stomach in the fall by a fire and every morning I can sit outside and write stories and then as I grow old I can reread them and think back on the life I have lived. At night I will dream about sailing into the valley below my home on clouds that form in the early dawn towards the rising sun. Vines will grow on my yellow happy home and the earth will let this home settle in like its friend and in the backyard I will plant flowers and vegetables and pick them in the weekend to eat, and sometimes I will find frogs and roly polies and little rabbits and my friends shall come for breakfast lunch and dinner and we will laugh and reminisce and love each other because that is what life is and all there is.

Bebehs and Stuff

So Jezebel just posted an article on women who abstain from having kids. How fortuitous because I just had a conversation with my mom about my ~future~ and getting a successful Indian husband and getting married and not having sex before said marriage...I felt so weird during that whole conversation, and also angry and disappointed and sad.

My parents' friend, Ajeeta, has a beautiful daughter who is currently pregnant with her first child. She got married at 23 to a man who is involved with hedge funds and makes a boatload of $$$. I knew I was constantly getting compared to her, so when she and her husband came to visit, I had an inkling that I would be getting some kind of "talk."

Well, it happened just an hour ago. My mom asked me where I was applying. She said I should apply to places that had a lot of Indian people. We went into her bedroom because someone came over to talk to my dad. She began talking about Natasha (I was almost named that), Ajeeta's daughter. She was sort of rambling at this point, I think because she was a bit uncomfortable. She began talking about how Natasha went to a nurse because of something to do with a pre-nup. Her and her boyfriend at the time, Antal, had gone traveling. Ajeeta was afraid they had had sex, but the nurse informed her she was still a virgin.

At this point I was getting angry. My sex life (or lack thereof, at this point) is nobody's business. I will have sex when I want to. I hate the double standard imposed on my brother and I. They are okay if he has sex, as long as he is safe about it. I cannot have sex, because that's not what good girls do. What is the logic behind that?

So my mom rambled on about finding a good husband and whatnot, and then she flipped on the TV and began watching her soaps. She's never been good at talking about, really bringing up, important topics. I sat there awkwardly, and then left. I wanted to yell at her, ask her about Milap and his sex life and how it's okay for him to have sex. I stopped myself because it's none of her business and because she wouldn't understand.

And so I read this article on Jezebel about not having kids and I wrote a reply about how the decision is not based in biology (theories have included too much testosterone. Seriously, if a woman does anything "unladylike" is it always because she has too much testosterone?)

...

I think culture definitely plays a role in the decision-making. Making babies isn't a prerogative anymore, it isn't the goal, the reason for existing for women. We have more freedom to choose, to do the things we want, like work, make art, whatever.

My mom, who was born and grew up in India, once said to me that women were meant to have kids. I was kind of appalled, to say the least. While I wouldn't mind having my own kids and/or adopting, I still can't stand the idea that it's in our biology to procreate and have that be the only thing we ever do that's worthwhile. Especially in the year 2010.

This evening we had a talk about finding husbands and marriage. She said I should go to school where there were a lot of nice young Indian men. I was appalled again. I said that I don't want to pick a school just for that reason. I could have gone off on a rant about how I want to make something of myself and change the world for the better, but I had to remind myself of the cultural divide. I can't change her mind. My mom lives in a different world, a different era where women are meant to have babies and find good husbands as a way to be happy in life. I know better. I can find happiness in other ways. I know I don't need to have and raise kids to define my existence because I have other things to do that for me.

And I think that's what it comes back to. Whereas in the past, women had a narrow, limited way of defining and attaining happiness, we can now find it in a multitude of ways. I'm applying to public health schools this winter and I want to get involved in environmental health. I want to change how we look at the environment, and use my knowledge to help those who are most affected by pollutants and other chemicals. I want to write stories and publish them, I want to create art and sell my work. These are things that will make me proud of who I am and make me happy and content.

To me, there is no question as to why many women want to remain childless. If we have other ways to find happiness, if we don't have to accept the antiquated cultural mindset that bearing children is the only road to self-pride, love, and societal contribution, then why not?

Read more: http://jezebel.com/5643210/shockingly-not-every-woman-wants-to-procreate#ixzz107dVUioK

Post-College Depression, a Crisis of the Quarter Life

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This is how I feel right now, a long trail of ellipses, unfinished, in limbo. After my year off, now turning into two years off, I haven't accomplished a thing in terms of figuring out what I want to do with my life. I haven't come any closer to deciding whether or not med school is right for me, although I had fooled myself into pretending I had given up that path earlier this year. I am resenting myself for not being strong enough to commit to one decision, for not knowing myself better, and I am resenting my parents for not supporting alternative decisions. I hate myself for not taking advantage of my time off and doing the things I love--drawing, writing, reading, playing music--with passion and full commitment. I am making excuses for myself, feeling pathetic and wallowing in self-pity.

Liiiifeee

So here I am, at a point in my life, where everything is the same yet change is imminent. What the change is, I do not know quite yet. I am, however, trying to figure out my life, who I am, what career I want, and gather the courage to do all of the above while trying to defeat that little troll called Fear and Doubt.

Yesterday I rearranged my room. Why is this so significant? Well, I am hoping the rearrangement will mirror the change in my brain and in my life. I am trying to affect a mental revolution. I have been taking tennis and piano lessons, exercising, dating, cooking, reading, become more social; this whole idea of doing shit is a mirror image, an opposite, of the months leading up to my India trip in which I had been sitting around playing games and reading Ohnotheydidnt! online (which I have also stopped, I can't quite believe it). I am itching to change, to become more me because I know I am only half-me. I have a potential I am not fulfilling because I feel too safe and secure, too lazy, to scared of failing to even try. And isn't the something that plagues all of humanity? I don't want to regret, I don't want to betray myself by not taking advantage of what the universe has given me.

So here are my goals for this year:

-Read more
-Learn more
-Get a job
-Get a journalism internship
-Date more
-Make new friends
-Fear less
-Understand more
-Answer that creative itch
-Write more
-Take the GRE
-Travel
-Discover the links that bond humanity together (way too conceptual, I know, but whateva)

My muses will be the wise owl, the goddess Sarasvati, and Sarika, who always works hard.

Sir Nigel

I've never had to experience a death in the family or in my circle of friends. I've been lucky, so far, in that respect.
So it is strange waiting for Nigel to die at any moment. Yes, he is a cat and...this seems kind of frivolous, but the whole family treats him like another person. We coddle him constantly. The rapid growth and spread of the tumor caught us by surprise and now we're preparing for something that I thought wouldn't come for another 10 years.
So far I've had little trouble in compartmentalizing my surprise and sadness. I hate crying because it hurts to think about the fact that his time is approaching. I am trying to focus on him now and not as he won't be in the future.
Sometimes I wonder what I am getting upset about. I am definitely upset that he will soon be gone from my life. I am sad that he may be suffering. But I am also sad that life is going so fast that when I look back on my existence so far, it happened in the blink of an eye. There were times where I would sit with my cat and think, "He won't live forever. I should enjoy his company." And now that time is approaching rapidly and it is so strange. I guess I can also see my own ephemeral life and how things are constantly changing and that it is absolutely futile to expect things to last forever.
I am trying to take a Buddhist outlook on all of this, trying to detach myself so that it doesn't hurt as much. I am slicing off parts of my brain, myself, so that I can accept life and its lack of permanence.

Argument

"No tree has branches so foolish as to fight among themselves."--Ojibway saying.


I was thinking about how people argue. What are we really arguing about? I feel like most of the time, we are arguing about the same thing, maybe from an egotistical bias that acts as an obstacle to finding a real solution.