I’ve set out (am setting out) on a quest to not hate myself so much. The first step for me is to make a list of the things I like about myself, which already I hate the sound of. Here, listen to me tell you how awesome I am! Excuse me while I vomit in my mouth, right? I would love for it to not sound like those magazine features where they stop people on the street and ask them to name something they like about them self and you want to punch them in the face cringe every time someone says how much they loooove their long legs or their voluptuous chest they inherited from their mother because all I inherited from my mother was the ability to be taller than most men, so yeah, THANKS MOM but it would be nice to have a date once in awhile. However, if I too happen to like my freckles, please excuse yourself if you need to vomit.

1. I like my common sense. Or my intellect. Or my ability to read situations and adapt. Whatever you might call it, I’ve realized that not everyone has that and I’m grateful I do.

2. I like that I can and do stand up for myself. I’m grateful for the ability and desire to recognize the innate value in people as created beings (myself included). I am sorry that I can be intimidating, but I’m glad that I have the courage to speak up.

3. I love my desire to learn and to grow. Big brains are sexy. You know what else is sexy?

4. Manners!! (Oh, did I say this was a list of things I like about myself? I meant it’s a list of how sexy I am). I’m grateful that my grown-ups taught me to use manners because now I do and I love that they’re important to me. Manners are good, please make time for them. Thanks.

5. I like my sense of humor. I think satire is brilliant. Because I also think it’s okay to not take everything too seriously all the time. Plus laughing makes me feel good. I had an elementary school teacher once write in my year book that I had a wry sense of humor and now that I’m reflecting on it I’m not sure she meant it as a compliment but I think it’s rather fitting, and like most things, I’ve grown into it contentedly.

6. Which reminds me, I like my laugh! Some times it’s loud and embarrassing and I once had a boyfriend who would call it a cackle but fuck him, because my laugh is sincere and I LIKE IT. (I am sorry though, if you ever have to sit next to me in a theatre).

7. And you know what, I like my freckles. I remember when I would complain about them as a child my aunt would always tell me that I would grow out of them, and I don’t know if she intentionally lied to me or if it’s just odd that I didn’t grow out of them but I’m glad I didn’t.

All right, that’s about all the positive self talk I can take for now. I’m going to go reward myself with a brownie. And then probably hate myself for eating it.

Life is hard. Life is hard. Life is hard.

I wish I could find a better mantra. Like, God is good. Or Christ is enough. Or live sacrificially. Or set your expectations low.

Because all of those sound more hopeful than “life is hard”. But life is hard. Things are broken and only breaking more, and yes, there are moments that are full of beauty and life, that cause you to stop and smile and know, really know that you are loved. And maybe those are the moments we’re to pursue. But those moments are largely outnumbered by all of our other moments that are begging us to find a point. A point for continuing on when it’s all so hard.

As a Christian, I’ve felt like my point needs to be something along the lines of those previous mantras. You know. . . God is good. Trust Him. He is working things out. He loves his children perfectly. I thought that those truths we’re supposed to make me feel better when things get hard. But things get hard and I reflect on those truths and they don’t make me feel better. Which originally made me start questioning where I’ve put my faith, and though yes, it is more often than I’d like to admit, in other things- such as my own sufficiency- my faith is still grounded in truth. And I still believe that truth to be from the God of the bible. He is still my God.

I’ve been confused by my God so I’ve been calling life a mess. A mess in which, one moment you could be crying with a friend because she is struggling to pay her bills as a single mom and now has to face the possibility of being diagnosed with a potentially debilitating disease, and the next moment you’re holding a sleeping infant, who, in your more tranquil moments you swear you can feel possibility emanating from; his tiny unscarred self an embodiment of hope and promise. That just sounds like a mess doesn’t it? How does one live in that tension? How does one begin to understand and trust a God who creates and sustains life, and who also doesn’t give rest to the weary when they swear, by all accounts, they truly need it?

I recently heard a pastor say that we so often act like if we have enough faith in Christ, we don’t need to be like Him. Which reminded me that Christ suffered. So much. We often cite Christ’s suffering with flippancy, as if because He is God, his human suffering wasn’t really suffering. Wasn’t suffering like ours is. But I think that faced with the same scenarios, Jesus would be sad with my friend. Frustrated along side her. Maybe even angry as she is angry. And likewise, I think He would be overjoyed to hold a newborn. Delighted even, at the hope and possibility created with new life.

My faith in Christ gives me freedom to be like Him. And like Him, I live in the tension that is life. The tension that is this in-between. Where I get to see God’s miracles manifested, and where I have to see man’s fallible ways, all while waiting to just be home. Waiting with purpose and intent, not detached or withdrawn, but present and fully human.

I’ve been reading too much Don Miller lately. I know this because I read his books while sitting up in bed, leaning forward. And leaning forward- no matter who is doing it- makes me nervous. Makes me feel like someone is about to bolt. I feel the same way about people who never take off their shoes. And then I end up tuning out everything they say so that I can hear my own thoughts repeating in my head “look, if you want to leave why don’t you just do it?”. But maybe they don’t want to leave and I just have abandonment issues.

I also know I’ve been reading too much Don Miller lately because I feel like telling all the bits of my life as if they’re charming details. Maybe because I want them to be charming details. Like the way I smell all of my clean clothes before I put them on because for the half a second or however long I allow myself to inhale, I close my eyes and flash back to doing laundry with my mom in the summer, in a house she rented on a street called Pine. I still buy the same laundry detergent because, for whatever reason, I like that memory.

Those are the things I want to write about. Because those are the things I want people to fall in love with about me. But no one wants to hear about how I smell my clothes, or how I wish I was the keeper of bookmarks because I want to be the keeper of books but I’m always losing bookmarks and it drives me crazy. No one wants to hear how I sometimes smell books too, because some of them smell like old pickles and it reminds me of the time I spent as a child with my cousins playing at our grandparents’ house. I don’t even think we had old pickles there so that memory barely makes sense.

I wish I had real things to write about. Things that were interesting and exciting and defining. I don’t want to make things up; I’ve never wanted to make things up. I want to write about things that are real and find a way to show everyone how beautiful the real and overlooked things are. Maybe that’s why I want to write about the details. Maybe it has nothing to do with Don Miller other than the fact that I love his details and I’m jealous that he finds a way to get other people to love his details too.

I think I might be insecure about my details. Probably because I’m insecure about my non-details. My big things, my visible, important, and shaping components. Because most of those parts aren’t charming and not too seldom does the devil convince me that I’m unlovable. That I’m a selfish, damaged, stubborn mule of a woman whose details are not redemptive. Whose details don’t pull enough weight to cover all the ugly with charming. But, lucky for me, the way I eat my bananas or the way I want to pet every animal I see isn’t suppose to redeem my selfishness. (It wouldn’t hurt if it detracted from it though). Nonetheless, I’m sure I’ll continue to desire that all my idiosyncrasies find a home in someone’s heart. And until then maybe I’ll just wrap them up in words, tie cutesie adverbs around them, and tell people they taste like fine chocolate.

I read a fantastic satirical article the other day about writing. Except at first I didn’t realize it was satire. Or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention to the title “How Not to Write”. So as I’m reading along about waiting until you’re inspired, sipping your coffee slowly, staring out the window, looking pensive and worldly as other patrons bustle about in your favorite local cafe, and I’m thinking uh yeah, I GOT THIS- I get the joke.

The article goes on to quote Jack London referring to finishing Call of the Wild “with a club”, rather than inspiration. I’m realizing that writing, like most other trades, is work. Not that I ever thought writing was simply having a time share in Alaska, sleeping in till noon, and waiting until you’ve conjured up every detail of a magical land seven books long, but maybe I wasn’t aware of how much writing writing requires. Good writing, at least.

Writing isn’t about left brain or right brain, innate talent, or divine inspiration (okay, maybe sometimes it’s about those things) but it’s about pursuing this thing that you want to pursue. And a really risky thing if you hope to make any money at it. And like carpentry, or acting, or any other finely tuned skill, some days you have no desire to clock in but the more you do the better you get. Likely not all of your work will be praise-worthy, criticism will feel personal, and you’ll need to get over it and muscle your way through the tough spots. Because life doesn’t wait for you to feel like it.

So here I am. Writing about trivial things to be minimally read. Not entirely void of inspiration, but forcing myself to be inspired with what I already have. And what I have is a desire to write, hopefully well some day. My life doesn’t need ethereal sunsets and charming bird songs in four part harmonies in order to be inspirational, nor does it require that I ban all distractive media in order to pursue creative integrity. It just requires some self awareness.

We’ve allowed ourselves to become jaded with life, with it’s magnitude, with it’s possibility, and we’ve settled for affirmation by posting pictures of what we ate for lunch online and letting all of our friends tell us how good it must taste. Though we likely spend little time actually tasting it. If we could but step back and taste life, I think we might be surprised at how much inspiration really is available. And if we wanted to tell a story we might have something to say.

I’m twenty five and I don’t have a college degree.

This is something I’ve been struggling with for years. And the older I get, the worse that struggle seems to be. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to go to college, quite the contrary- I love learning and I’m a respectable student. Originally, it was that I didn’t want to enroll until I was sure what I wanted schooling for. Then, it was a question of whether or not it was mature and/or responsible to accrue that kind of debt. And now, the more and more graduates I know with Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degrees, who themselves aren’t sure what college taught them other than how to own a really expensive piece of paper, the more I question what college will do for me. Clearly, it isn’t securing a spectacular career. In fact, I’m not sure I know of anyone who even has a job in the field of their major.

And now that I’m trying to navigate the realm of volunteering overseas, you know, the realm where I buy a really expensive plane ticket and then pay an organization to allow me to work for free, I’m coming up against the desire these organizations have for their volunteers to possess a four year degree. In anything.

Have a degree in interior design? Want to cultivate a farm?
Have a degree in marketing? Cool, want to teach English to small children?

Which leads me to wonder what it is exactly that people think a college degree does. Obviously employers aren’t looking for a specific skill set (lest your major actually matter) but I’m beginning to think that the mass public believes either:
A) going through four years of college teaches you some skill you cannot acquire any other way (perhaps that skill is work ethic??).
B) someone who hasn’t gone to college is just blatantly unintelligent.
or C) our system is flawed and higher education has received a reputation it hasn’t actually earned.

I continue to want to go to college, but that desire is consistently being challenged with the high probability that at graduation I might look back on the last four years of my education and not be able to identify what valuable skill college equipped me with that I didn’t obtain before hand or couldn’t obtain any other way. And if that skill was something I could have obtained otherwise (or doesn’t have a monetary value of tens of thousands of dollars), me and my student loan are going to HAVE WORDS.

I have good work ethic. I have intense life and job experience. I like, and understand how to use(!), big words. Unfortunately “do you have a four year degree OR equivalent life experience” isn’t usually an option on an application. Reminding myself of the many very successful (and often famous) entrepreneurs before me who have managed to pursue their dreams without being stopped by their lack of college education is helpful, but then also leaves me insecure by comparison. Am I that driven? Am I that talented? And then I begin to wonder if my desire to obtain a college degree isn’t born from a lack of belief in myself. I want to write, but am I the Zuckerberg or the Rachel Ray of writing? I know we are never our own best critic, but I’m going to go with no, I’m not on the cusp of inventing the latest writing phenomenon or teaching people how to write anything in 30 minutes or less.

I want to serve, I want to travel, and I want to write. Preferably in that order. I’m not asking anyone to pay me to hold orphaned African babies all day, but I am asking why I would need a college degree for that.

-the Monster Queen

Every time I get on here lately I feel like my post turns into some hodge podge pseudo inspirational self-help lecture, the words leaving the bitter taste of bile soaking into my soft pallet. Which, wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t constantly tasting bile any way. Oh I never told you I have chronic heartburn? Yeah well now I expect you to bring flowers to my hospital room when I get a perforated ulcer NOT TOO MANY MOONS FROM NOW.

Every post starts with “feelings”, moves on to “sad”, then “really sad”, then somewhere in there I usually include “fuck everything” and “I hate men”.
The last two were jokes.
Everyone knows I don’t use the f word OR hate men.

But really, I’ve been sad lately. First I admitted it, which was tough, then I started to allow the idea that it’s okay to be sad permeate the part of my brain that continues the daily emotional assault of screaming WHY CAN’T I JUST BE OKAY?! And since then, I’ve been trying to blog about being sad and being okay with it until I realized that blogging about it is just an attempt to BE okay with it, when really I’m not.

I feel pointless. Like. . .why am alive and do I have enough narcotics to casually not wake up in the morning pointless.

And then someone said it.
Maybe you are pointless.

And then that pointlessness I’ve been wielding like a 2×4 and relentlessly beating myself up with transformed into something else. It became less of a weapon and more of a swift kick in the pants. Or a hand-up if that sounds more motivating. Because that’s what my feeling pointless is now- motivating me to find a point. Motivating me to find what makes me happy.

I’ve realized that I can’t expect happiness to just curl up in my lap like a cat I’ll never have because all my friends are “allergic” or filled with hatred and evil and WHY CAN’T PEOPLE JUST LIKE SOFT CUDDLY THINGS?! Yeah, I get that some cats are crazy but SO ARE SOME KIDS. You don’t hear me talking about how much I hate children just because some of them need to be kenneled.

I’m not getting all power-positive-thinking. That sounds stressful and overwhelming and in case I haven’t already mentioned my pending ulcer, I’m gonna go ahead and pass on being more stressed. What I am saying though, is that I’m a believer of dreams. Of dreaming. I am free to pursue happiness. To give all of myself in order to fulfill a purpose. If feeling useful makes me happy, I am free to be of use.

In the same way that YES, it’s okay to be sad, it’s also okay to be happy.

So that was it. My motivational speech. If you’re sad, BE SAD. (Probably best if there isn’t too much wine around). And if you want to be happy, FUCKING PURSUE YOUR DREAMS.

Yet I cannot tarry longer.
The sea that calls all things unto her calls me, and I must embark.
For, to stay, though the hours burn in the night, is to freeze and crystallize and be
bound in a mould.
Fain would I take with me all that is here. But how shall I?
A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that give it wings. Alone must it seek the
ether.
And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.

-The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran