Waiting For That Rocket

So, some of you may not know this (chances are, you know me, so you probably do know this), but I have a bit of a book problem.

I’m addicted to books.

I can’t stop buying them, I can’t stop reading them.

Luckily, I have a lot of really smart people in my life who are more than willing to enable me in this addiction. Among them Josh (who I affectionately call my “dealer”) who works at a book store near me. Josh, bless his ever enabling heart, has a podcast with two delightful ladies, Jenn and Rebecca. Their podcast, Bookrageous, is dangerous in that, inevitably, by the end of it I’ve messaged Josh fifteen times over about books that he, Rebecca or Jenn have mentioned throughout. However, it often gets me thinking at the same time.

This week’s episodes centered on “Subversive Books”, books that turn on end how you previously thought of the world. Hearing these guys talking about their books made me wonder what books might fall on my list.

Books like The Giver, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and The Odyssey certainly gave me a much broader understanding of the world than I had before. But I was thinking, what books might have had the same effect on me since I was in school?

I couldn’t think of any.

Which made me wonder what the hell I’d been reading for the past five years. My answer was a WHOLE lot of Young Adult fiction. So how has that affected me? Other than being a whole lot of fun to escape into?

And it occurred to me, since starting to really read YA, I see so many more possibilities around me than ever before. I commented to my parents once that YA isn’t necessarily about creating a whole new world to live in, just about changing one or two things so that it’s different. It’s not necessarily just seeing faces in the brambles, but about seeing…more. I can’t think of any clearer way to say it than that.

I love YA for the power it has to stretch my imagination on a near daily basis.

As adults, we all get so tunnel visioned into our lives. We have to get to work, get home, go grocery shopping, sleep and do it all again. YA ensures that we never get too comfortable in our ruts.

I love that :)

Regardless, I can’t find the words to sum up all the reasons I love fall, but here’s a picture representation of a large reason why :)

Have you ever noticed that sometimes not being stressed about an event is as much, if not more, stressful than being actually stressed about an event?

We have a warehouse sale next week. Which is fine. Based on my experience with our previous sale, I was anticipating a heck of a lot of work, a heck of a lot of stress. The former is certainly there, but the latter is not.* Surprisingly, not being stressed is stressing me out more than actually stressing would.

It’s the most confounding of situations.

This all results in me feeling like an uber goober.

Seriously. Who gets stressed over not being stressed? Evidently this kid. What do you do in these situations?

*That is to say, the stress isn’t here YET. I fully acknowledge it may be there by week’s end…

It’s incredible how secure we can fool ourselves into thinking we feel. Last night after improv class, my friend K and I sat on our cars talking for an hour. We talked a little about this, a little about that and then a little more about this and that.

As we were talking, it occurred to me: I still don’t know what the root of my “shit” is. There are certainly significant events, some of which I’ve written about in this space, some of which I haven’t, which have me all turned around inside. And that’s…fine…I guess…But…

The feelings that do, and don’t, go through my deepest subconscious and conscious have GOT to be tied to something more than “just” a chemical imbalance.

Right?

I didn’t want to  buy into the whole “9/11 anniversary” thing. Or, as I recently called it, “That Day That Shall Not Be Named, But Was Kind Of A Big Deal.” The mainstream media, a grouping that I tend to be ambivalent about, made a HUGE deal out of it. Perhaps rightly. It was certainly a definitive moment in our nation’s, our world’s, history. The falling of the Twin Towers, the craters left in the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, were certainly a tangible representation of the tear that would happen in the world of international relations.

On the other hand, That Day That Shall Not Be Named, But Was Kind Of A Big Deal was, and continues to be, something that touches all of us in a way far deeper than any surface reflection can touch. We remember with horror film of the first, and then seeing live the second, plane flying into the towers. Those of you who were in New York or DC at the time may remember seeing both with your own eyes. None of these feelings have faded. We don’t need incessant coverage of the coverage to remind us of that day. Nor does it feel right to have a flashback to that day on the news, and then “well, it’s going to be a gorgeous day let’s check in with the weather.” Instead of being touching, the Mainstream Media’s coverage seemed to be taking advantage of a horrific time in order to boost ratings. Worse, there were times it felt like Sunday was nothing more than a patriotic penis contest, “Which network/football/baseball team is more patriotic; quick flash your stars and stripes.”

That Day That Shall Not Be Named, But Was Kind Of A Big Deal, more than the global implications, was SO personal. Nobody was unaffected by it, nobody IS unaffected by it. It should not be, it cannot be, monetized. Additionally, so many traumatic events have happened in the rest of the world before, and since, then. There is absolutely NO DOUBT this was a MAJOR event, again, with global implications. But this was not the only terrorist attack with major casualties. But to put things in perspective: since March, there have been more than 2,500 casualties in Syria. Not at the hands of “terrorists”, but at the hands of the Syrian government.

We, as Americans, can no longer afford to think of ourselves as the center of the world. That Day That Shall Not Be Named, But Was Kind Of A Big Deal brought us together (temporarily, at least) as a nation and as a world. We need to reclaim that feeling.

The other night I asked a question of Twitter, and here I’ll ask it again: would you rather be completely unfeeling or so empathetic it hurts?

This came up as I sat in the dark watching the DVD of the  final performance of RENT, bawling my eyes out. If you’re not familiar with RENT (and if you aren’t, you and I seriously need to have a talk), it’s about a group of 20-somethings dealing with AIDS and living in Alphabet City, New York, on a limited income.

As I sat in my room, bawling over the pain of fictional characters, I came to a conclusion: it is freaking exhausting going through life feeling everyone else’s pain. There are days I dream of turning off my emotions. How much better if I don’t have to think about what so-and-so might be going through facing this-that-or-the-other situation. If I don’t have to think about what I can do to make someone’s life easier, better, less painful.

I do realize that if I was granted the ability to not care, it would fundamentally change who I am as a person. On the other hand, there are days I don’t think that would be a bad thing. Maybe it’s a “grass is greener” thing, but I sometimes find myself daydreaming about not caring, about being able to cut corners guilt free, about half-assing things I know other people would.

Why do I have to think about how my actions impact others? Why do I have to worry about how what I do will affect how others see me? Why do I have to be SO tense when I think about other people in my life and what they may be going through? Between these things and crying over other people’s pain, there’s so little time left for me. For my own thoughts, to work through my own issues.

Among the people I talked to today about this was my friend, Eric. Eric is an incredible human being in every sense of the word. I told him about my thoughts last night and he comforted me by saying, “I often feel that way. And it’s fine, because some day there’s going to come a time when we’re all going to have to be one. Where the world is going to have to come together and stop being so insular. And that’s when we’re going to effect the most good.” (In the interest of full disclosure, this is not a direct quote, more an approximate bastardization of the most important points I gathered from his conversation.)  This echoed an equally reassuring tweet from a friend there, @FlotsamDiaries wrote, “Most good done in the world happens because somebody hurt for something/someone.”  I guess neither of these really help in the short term of “dear god make it stop hurting,” but it is nice to think that in the long run, I can make a real difference just by doing what I do.

My thoughts are so varied on this. As I sit here typing this, I feel better about being empathetic. On the other hand, if I choose the wrong movie to watch tonight things might change rapidly. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery? Which would you choose?

As I’ve talked about many a time, depression is something that I’ve struggled with a lot. Chemically, straight up emotionally, situationally. Depression is something that I’ve never been without. This is why I feel confident calling bullshit on people who say “look around you. You live in a beautiful place, have things, have people, you have no cause to be depressed or discontent.”

Newsflash: This. Is. Not. Helpful.

Especially not if there is any sort of chemical depression. In fact, saying this can actually make depression worse. It does for me, even when I’m just saying it to myself. I have the most supportive family, a fairly decent job and a whole heck of a lot of stability in a world without much of any. I know I shouldn’t be depressed. You telling me I shouldn’t be depressed? Well. That just makes me feel guilty for being depressed which in turn pushes the depression deeper and…well…you get the point.

Dealing with societal, internal, and external pressures to perform and/or succeed are that much harder when there’s chemical depression involved. Also? Sometimes people just need to kvetch. Need to hash out that they’re scared/worried/elated. They don’t necessarily need a solution to their problem, they just need someone to be there. Just remember this next time you tell someone they have no real reason to feel down about their circumstances. As my friend Elisa once said, “Sometimes you just need someone to say ‘that sucks’.”

I feel like I should put out this disclaimer.

I was thinking about my tourist rant over the weekend and I realized: if you don’t know me, then you may not realize that I really don’t hate tourists.

I don’t hate tourists. They do a lot to support our state in general and me in particular. I work in a community that needs tourists to subsist. Even if I didn’t like tourists at all, I would be grateful to them for that.

Also, some of the offenders of my previous rant are locals/people from in-state. We Mainers are not exempt from acting stupid in an outlet town.

Finally, it is the unfortunate burden of all tourists to be judged based on the stupid actions of a few. Just like many out of staters make generalizations about Mainers based on things like the Redneck Olympics and Wife-Carrying Competitions, when we see some tourists do something dumb that brush applies to all tourists.

So. Ultimately. I’m sorry for being so judgmental towards one of the State of Maine’s greatest revenue sources. Rest assured I don’t actually mean it. (Heck. Some tourists are even nice!)

Just remember – just because I said I’m sorry doesn’t mean you’re absolved from being a jerk!