LJ Idol week 30 (5/6): scared money never wins

I don't gamble. With anything. Ever.

I'm an adrenaline junkie, sure, but not a true risk taker. When I want adrenaline, I chase it in a calculated and well thought out manner. For some people that might kill the high, but for me, it's the only way I can do it. I refuse to leave that much to chance. Lady Luck does not exactly inspire confidence in me.

I have a back-up plan for everything. I have health insurance. I don't live beyond my means. I don't have credit card debt. So while most people have a plan A and maybe some have a plan B, I also have plans C-F. Maybe this makes me sound a little nuts. A little over-prepared. That's probably true. (It also probably has a lot to do with my anxiety disorder.) But it means that things rarely come out of nowhere for me. If there's even the remotest possibility of something happening, you can bet on me having thought about said possibility

Last night, I went to a friend of a friend's thirtieth birthday party. She had a Vegas-themed gambling night at a local restaurant. I'll gamble, but only when it doesn't mean anything. At the beginning of the night, we were each handed $2000 in fake money. I spent most of the night hanging out at the poker table, bluffing terribly and losing all my chips. The dealer kept handing me more chips whenever I ran out. If there's no chance of actual failure, I'll gamble like a madwoman (and usually lose spectacularly). I don't trust my own luck, so if it had been real, I would've cashed in all my chips before ever having sat down at the table, and walked away. But because we were gambling with fake money, I was able to sit and laugh and not think too much about the risks.

The only thing I take risks with is my emotional availability. I know that I fall in love easily; I'm an empath by nature. So even when I know I'd be better off not falling in love, I usually won't do much to stop it from happening.

Logically, I'm safer when I could cut off everyone in my life and still come out on top. But emotionally, that's not a healthy way to live. It's not a skill I'm proud of having honed to a fine art. It's not the way it should be. But I have trust issues, and sometimes it makes it easier if I think that I could drop everything

Only I can't, because emotional connection with other people is a necessary part of being human. That's one of the only kinds of risks I am willing to take, and it's a good one that usually has a fantastic payoff. Still, every time I take that risk, I feel like the girl in front of the dealer who has doubled-down on her cards because she's down on her luck and has everything to lose. Or gain.


Maybe you should just assume from now on that vorsaga has served as my badass beta-reader...<3


♥ pacing while praying ♥ you are beautiful ♥ digging for buried crap ♥ we should all be narcissists ♥ ˌɪnkənˈsiːvəbl̩ ♥ juicy memories ♥ relax. breathe. bupkis. ♥ a gypsy heart ♥ a month of rain ♥ up is the new down ♥ your words, her silences ♥ ground rules for a hairless housemate ♥ the smell of particleboard in the morning ♥ from an aspiring spinster ♥ scarves & sweaters & shawls ♥ on emotional idiocy ♥ fairytale-maker ♥ betrayal by choice ♥ how to age gracefully ♥ San Francisco's smile ♥ not a needle but a drink ♥ Einstein I am not ♥ searching for ballon ♥ of the earth ♥ becoming Cirsea ♥ hanky panky in the redwoods ♥ something happened ♥ an act of apparition ♥ ray guns & Rocky Horror ♥ the leviathan on my couch ♥ religious remix culture ♥ why the internet is not Vegas ♥

LJ Idol week 30 (4/6): cesspool

Urban Dictionary has a fantastic definition for the cesspool of humanity: "the comments on almost any YouTube video".

I've met too many people who think the internet is fake. Not in the sense that it doesn't exist, but in the "What you say on the internet doesn't matter [because it's not face to face]" sort of way.

O_o

Except when it does matter. What you say on the internet has the potential to stay forever. Think of it like cave paintings that have been digitized. That shit won't decay.

A meme is a vehicle to spread cultural ideas. Once those ideas shift offline, they become an active part of everyday life in the physical world. Those lolcats you love? I see that kind of grammar in my students' papers. Go out to any bar on Friday night, particularly in Silicon Valley, and you'll hear at least three references to Rage Comics. I'm not saying this infiltration is a bad thing. Actually, I think it's really funny and I'm an enthusiastic participant. But remember that what you say on the internet doesn't stay on the internet; cyberspace bleeds over into meatspace.

When you're on the job market, count on the fact that your employer is checking out your Facebook page. I've known people who have gotten fired over their photos, or people who didn't get called back for the interview because their blog is just a little too inflammatory. The internet is a place where the worst of people comes out. You've all seen it, in flame wars and spates of trolling.

[We interrupt this post to bring you a brief PSA from a paranoid interwebber: check your privacy settings. Filter aggressively. That stupid joke between you and the friend you like to get roaring drunk with every other weekend could be the thing that stands between you and your future dream job.]

Fortunately, the internet is not a total waste of pixels. The best of people can also make an appearance from time to time. The internet has inspired social change, as well as giving people access to a way of making that change happen (e.g. the protests about SOPA/PIPA and the Arab spring phenomenon that spread across the Middle East last year). The internet has also inspired great beauty, like a lot of Tumblr culture, and has made it possible to fund impossible dreams via Kickstarter and Kiva.

We're not unavoidably doomed to the cesspool of humanity; we have a chance to climb out. The first step, though, is to understand the power of our words on the internet. Virtual reality is still real. It'll kick your ass if you're not paying attention, but when you are, you can change the world.


Thank you vorsaga for being an unfailingly patient beta-reader.


♥ pacing while praying ♥ you are beautiful ♥ digging for buried crap ♥ we should all be narcissists ♥ ˌɪnkənˈsiːvəbl̩ ♥ juicy memories ♥ relax. breathe. bupkis. ♥ a gypsy heart ♥ a month of rain ♥ up is the new down ♥ your words, her silences ♥ ground rules for a hairless housemate ♥ the smell of particleboard in the morning ♥ from an aspiring spinster ♥ scarves & sweaters & shawls ♥ on emotional idiocy ♥ fairytale-maker ♥ betrayal by choice ♥ how to age gracefully ♥ San Francisco's smile ♥ not a needle but a drink ♥ Einstein I am not ♥ searching for ballon ♥ of the earth ♥ becoming Cirsea ♥ hanky panky in the redwoods ♥ something happened ♥ an act of apparition ♥ ray guns & Rocky Horror ♥ the leviathan on my couch ♥ religious remix culture ♥

LJ Idol week 30 (2/6): leviathan

There's a leviathan in my living room.

No, I am not hosting a couch-surfing cross-country-traveling cowboy-hat-wearing backpacking-toting sea monster. I'm talking about my first knitting project. The Big One. My mom's now-belated Christmas present.

So I'm running about six months behind. My mother did get to open it on Christmas morning in its' half-finished state, knitting needles still attached to the end. She was excited then. Now she just keeps asking me when I'm going to be done.

Never mind that this was my first knitting project ever. Or that it's as long as I am tall (about 64 inches or 162 centimeters). Or that it's nearly the width of a baby blanket. Never mind that I knit far tighter than anyone ever expected, so it has consumed three good-sized skeins of yarn. Or that, since she lives in California, she only needs a wool scarf about three months out of the year. She wants it now, Veruca-Salt-style. The impatience in her voice is palpable.

Sometimes it feels like this scarf will never be done. Except that it will. Once I bribe a friend to reinsert the needles for me because I can't get them back in without dropping every third stitch. I also got ambitious and decided to learn how to do a scalloped edge, which will make for pretty ends that look finished, but the learning curve was definitely a time-consuming one. Once I get those needles back in, all that's left is sixteen more rows of a hundred stitches each and I'm done. I can almost taste the relief in that word. Done.

After working on something for nearly seven months, handling it almost daily, I'm beginning to wonder how much of myself I've poured into that yarn. How many stories have I transferred from my heart to my fingertips and out the ends of the knitting needles? Will this sea monster of a scarf will whisper to my mother, telling her some of the things I couldn't say over the phone? Will she see the knots and wrong stitches in it and know that that's when I was knitting while sobbing? Will the scarf betray the fact that I'm not taking care of myself because the needles that I used were so discolored and scuffed? Or will my mother read only contentment in that blue ombre checkerboard? I hope my mom sees the beauty in it, because the calluses and curses were well worth it. At the end of the day, my mother will have this scarf that is made of her daughter's stories forever.


Very grateful to vorsaga* for beta-reading/editing plus rearranging so this sea monster gained a great deal more coherence than it had in its' original iteration.


♥ pacing while praying ♥ you are beautiful ♥ digging for buried crap ♥ we should all be narcissists ♥ ˌɪnkənˈsiːvəbl̩ ♥ juicy memories ♥ relax. breathe. bupkis. ♥ a gypsy heart ♥ a month of rain ♥ up is the new down ♥ your words, her silences ♥ ground rules for a hairless housemate ♥ the smell of particleboard in the morning ♥ from an aspiring spinster ♥ scarves & sweaters & shawls ♥ on emotional idiocy ♥ fairytale-maker ♥ betrayal by choice ♥ how to age gracefully ♥ San Francisco's smile ♥ not a needle but a drink ♥ Einstein I am not ♥ searching for ballon ♥ of the earth ♥ becoming Cirsea ♥ hanky panky in the redwoods ♥ something        happened ♥ an act of apparition ♥ ray guns & Rocky Horror ♥

LJ idol week 30 (1/6): gobsmacked

Shortly before my 21st birthday I shaved my head. This wouldn't have been particularly notable except for the facts that I: a) am a girl, and b) decided to do it on a whim.

You might have heard of a pop culture phenomenon called Rocky Horror, affectionately known as Rocky. Since the last 1970s, this midnight abomination has been home to freaks and weirdos who prefer to spend their evenings dancing around in tatty lingerie and gifting virgins with red lipstick prints on their cheeks. In college I was part of a shadow cast, which means we acted out the movie while it also played on the screen behind us.

For my last show, I got cast as Magenta. It was probably the role I resembled the most, even though she's an alien maid with a crazy poof of brown hair and a gaunt blond brother named Riff Raff. However, given that I had previously played the Criminologist (the narrator who's an old jowly man with very little neck) and Dr. Scott (another old man with a checkered suit and a wheelchair), this isn't saying much. In the final scenes of the show, Magenta's hair evolves from a poof into a beehive with lightning bolts down the sides. Instead of wearing another wig for the beehive, for the final scene the director decided to shave my hair into a mohawk.

The best part was that we neglected to tell the rest of the cast what was about to happen. Shortly before I had to go onstage, the director and I sneaked up to the bathroom and shaved off most of my hair. At the time, I had a pixie cut so it was already about the right length for a mohawk. When I came onstage, it was such a shock to both cast and audience that they almost missed the fact that Riff's ray gun was actually a giant lavender double-ended dildo. After the collective intake of breath, there was a brief burst of applause, and then everything continued as planned. Riff and I menaced everyone with the aforementioned ray gun dildo. Frank and Rocky tried to escape. Surprise glittery musical numbers happened. We took our final bows.

Afterwards, the strangest thing happened: people could still recognize me when I went from pixie cut to mohawk. But when I shaved off the mohawk after about two weeks, almost no one recognized me anymore. People, particularly women, have asked incredulously why I decided to shave it. Honestly, I didn't put too much thought into it: it's just hair, it'll grow back. When I give this response, most people are gobsmacked. They can't imagine a woman who isn't deeply invested in how her hair looks.


[Image: four images in a row demonstrating how my hair has gone from just about chin length to a buzz cut]

I do care how it looks, just not in a traditional way. I wanted something that is incredibly low maintenance, something that I can trim myself, and something that flatters me. Apparently the buzz cut fulfilled all of these requirements, because I kept getting compliments. Now I'm going back to the mohawk, albeit one that's more cleanly styled than the one I had after shaving it in a college bathroom during a time crunch. I like the idea of shocking people with my appearance in a way that doesn't involve stretched nostrils or neck tattoos. I like best to shock you with what you'd least expect.


Deeply grateful to vorsaga for beta-reading/editing and not laughing at how I look with long hair.


♥ pacing while praying ♥ you are beautiful ♥ digging for buried crap ♥ we should all be narcissists ♥ ˌɪnkənˈsiːvəbl̩ ♥ juicy memories ♥ relax. breathe. bupkis. ♥ a gypsy heart ♥ a month of rain ♥ up is the new down ♥ your words, her silences ♥ ground rules for a hairless housemate ♥ the smell of particleboard in the morning ♥ from an aspiring spinster ♥ scarves & sweaters & shawls ♥ on emotional idiocy ♥ fairytale-maker ♥ betrayal by choice ♥ how to age gracefully ♥ San Francisco's smile ♥ not a needle but a drink ♥ Einstein I am not ♥ searching for ballon ♥ of the earth ♥ becoming Cirsea ♥ hanky panky in the redwoods ♥ something        happened ♥ an act of apparition ♥

LJ idol week 29: disappear

Like every little kid, I dreamed of being invisible. Other kids wanted to be invisible to steal cookies or stay up past their bedtime. But I wanted to be invisible so I could sneak out of the house to explore what a desert night was like without my parents, or so I could live in the natural history museum to hang out with the dinosaurs. I did not want this confusion of bone and skin, did not want what was on the inside of me to shift and show up on the outside. I did not want to be a walking skeleton.

When I was eleven years old, I began to disappear. I had this idea that starvation could save me because the more I disappeared, the less I could be found. And the less I weighed, the more I disappeared. Circular logic, my therapists told me. But circles made a lot more sense and lacked the sharp edges that so intimidated me in math class. The thing that no one tells you is that eating disorders devour you. You're not in charge anymore. At first, that kind of freedom is reassuring, but later it becomes terrifying.

When an eating disorder hits the five year mark, doctors will tell you that it is chronic. I am at the fifteen year mark now. This thing has grown in tandem with me, and I with it. My adolescence was a frenzy of avoiding family dinners and punishing myself when I took what I perceived to be more than my share. Over time, anorexia has become a parasite that I am no longer willing to host. The symbiosis has lost its' appeal.

I don't want to disappear anymore - I want to be seen.

Not the me that I am when I am starving, nor the woman from the panic attack that landed me in the emergency room last week, but whoever is underneath all of that. I've often wondered who I would be if I am not starving, and that is a thought that simultaneously thrills and terrifies me. Thrills because if I was not starving, I could stop chasing skeletons. Terrifies because I don't know who I would be without it. After twenty-seven years of familiarity, I might not recognize the healthy version of me. Taking that big of a risk is like walking off a cliff and hoping the wind will catch you. A full recovery requires faith that you will still be someone you like once you get better.


♥ pacing while praying ♥ you are beautiful ♥ digging for buried crap ♥ we should all be narcissists ♥ ˌɪnkənˈsiːvəbl̩ ♥ juicy memories ♥ relax. breathe. bupkis. ♥ a gypsy heart ♥ a month of rain ♥ up is the new down ♥ your words, her silences ♥ ground rules for a hairless housemate ♥ the smell of particleboard in the morning ♥ from an aspiring spinster ♥ scarves & sweaters & shawls ♥ on emotional idiocy ♥ fairytale-maker ♥ betrayal by choice ♥ how to age gracefully ♥ San Francisco's smile ♥ not a needle but a drink ♥ Einstein I am not ♥ searching for ballon ♥ of the earth ♥ becoming Cirsea ♥ hanky panky in the redwoods ♥ something        happened ♥