My Defense of Everything Else

The main purpose of this blog is so that family and friends can keep up with my adventures when I move to South Korea this February. I have begun it this early because: a) I love to write, b) I want to get the hang of this before I move, and c) Refer to my very first post.

I hope you will still read it. Especially if you are a relative or friend, if you are not, you of course are more than welcome.

I have perused many a blog lately seeing what works and what doesn’t. I have decided that if I don’t have strict rules to abide by I could fall into blogging sin. I have resolved to create a bloggers code of honor that I will abide by under all circumstances. Here they are:

I.                    Thou shall not let a blog become word vomit or a place to vent personal, religious and political life.

II.                  Thou shall not post copious amounts of pictures of your pets (unless you are Pioneer Woman, no one cares, unless you have an exceptionally cute Basset Hound and are a professional photographer).

III.                Thou shall not make fun of anyone under any circumstances (unless it’s Keira Knightly and her awkward dinosaur posture).

IV.                Thou shall use correct grammar, syntax and punctuation.

V.                  Thou shall always have someone proofread your posts before you publish. There will always be something you didn’t catch yourself.

VI.                Thou shall write often about what interests you, unless what interests you is too boring for the public eye.

VII.              Thou shall never write in caps lock (unless you are using an acronym). Your readers are nice enough to read your posts; you should not make them feel like you are yelling at them. There are much more creative and interesting ways to get your point across. THIS JUST IS ANNOYING TO LOOK AT.

VIII.            Thou shall have the freedom to break your own rules if you can properly justify breaking them.

I really wish I had ten rules. That way I can call them The Bloggers 10 Commandments, but alas, close but no cigar. Maybe it is for the best; I don’t want to be blasphemous. Except the former sentence just made me think of 2 more:

IX.                Thou shall be free to use the vocabulary you choose (using words like alas and thou, and even use clichés) no matter how archaic, unless it is profanity.

X.                  Thou shall be yourself.

There you have it. The Bloggers 10 Commandments. If you think of anything else to add, send your suggestions my way.

A Room of My Own

“To sing of wars, of captains and of kings,

Of cities founded, commonwealths begun,

For my mean pen are too superior things:

Or how they all, or each their dates have run

Let poets and historians set these fourth,

My obscure lines shall not dim their worth.”

                -Anne Bradstreet

I have always been intrigued by feminism. There are a great deal of connotations associated with the word, “feminism”, most of them negative, so let me clarify what I mean. I am very intrigued by the feminism that asserts that women, not men, or any other animal or vegetable, need to define for themselves who they are. I do not burn my bras nor do I hold male bashing parties. I am intrigued by the movement that brought fourth literary women like Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Simone de Beauvoir and Kate Chopin to name a few.

Most of these women struggled to prove they had a voice worth hearing. I really don’t think the battle is over. Today, women are still in many ways being defined by men. Just grab a magazine or turn on your TV and you will see that you don’t make the cut, unless you have flawless skin, mile long legs, and are extra curvy, but only in all the correct areas. The only standards women are held to are their looks. If you are pretty, people will do things for you and life is easy, if you aren’t then, well that sucks for you.

There is a video I saw a while ago and it has had me thinking about it for quite sometime. It is the video to promote “Miss Conception,” a documentary addressing the issue of the media objectifying women. It has interviews with all kinds of activists, actresses, and politicians from Condoleezza Rice to Jane Fonda. What everyone is saying in the video is true and something needs to be done about it. However, as I was discussing the video with my mom we began to realize that while this documentary can stir up a passionate response that wants to fight for justice, by what methods are they going to propose to stop the media from exploiting women? Many of these women are supporters of abortion and many of the actresses interviewed have played coquettishly “loose” women in their movies, neither of which support strong feminine identity. Abortion goes against our nature, to deny the most significant thing we possess as women, to grow a life inside ourselves. And to play a woman in a film who sleeps around with her leading man is showing that her honor is less important than a good time or a passionate moment. All biblical truths aside, being pro-abortion or pro-slut does not help the value of women. It detracts.

The problem is that most of these movies and TV shows are extremely entertaining. You don’t need to be explicitly graphic in the degradation of women. It slays us with its subtlety. For example I enjoy the ever popular TV show, FRIENDS. Joey is one of the most likable characters with his boyish charm and Italian attitude. But what is one of his most prominent character traits? He’s a ladies man. He seduces women and then drops them like a hot cannoli. And we are ok with it because it’s Joey and that is just how men act right?

There are many other examples I could give but I don’t think this post needs to be an exhaustive list. You probably have thought of some others yourself. I also really wish I had a solution for all of this especially for those Jr. High and High School girls out there who want so badly to feel valued that they degrade themselves because they think that is the only way a guy will notice them. Like remembering what our forefathers  sacrificed so we could live freely in this land, I feel, as women, we owe those who fought before us for to be considered socially, politically and economically equal, to cultivate our minds and souls so that we do not disgrace them.

I’m not saying we march over to Hollywood throw our stilettos at the mean media men who degrade us. I don’t really know what the answer is. I do know that a valuable step is to come to the Becoming Girls Conference, an entire weekend designed for Jr. High and High School girls and their mothers. I am honored to be a part of the team of amazing women who are putting this together and it is something that you really don’t want to miss.

And now I leave it to people who can say it much better than me:

                “To be queen Elizabeth within a definite era, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain era, providing toys, boots, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a certain era, teaching morals, manners, theology and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute.”

                                -G.K. Chesterton

“It’s tough being a woman.”

                                -Beth Moore

“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.”

                                -Cheris Karamarae and Paula Trecichler

THE OTHER SIDE OF SOMEDAY

Living life right NOW.

“Once upon a time…” Was a long time ago.

“Someday my prince will come.” Is a very nice sentiment but he’s not here yet so there is no use pining over him.

Lately my life has been a heterogeneous mixture of living in the past and anticipating the future.

As a single, 22-year-old recent college graduate, whose real “big girl job” doesn’t start till February such a concoction is completely expected. I’m young, educated, about to travel across the world and pursue my dreams, I’m at the top of my prime, right?

You would think that, but no, no and another emphatic no.

Truth is I have just been through some of the most depressing couple months of my short life in which I found myself victim of my own self-pity, self-loathing, self-doubt and, well, laziness. To sum it up, I had a series of events and failures that all added up together to equal one unpleasant, blonde, 5’3 and a quarter, 22-year-old. Of course, on the outside it would have been difficult to tell, since like most humans, I have learned to art of canvassing my emotions. My soul was starting to deteriorate and if it weren’t for divine intervention, through a series of unconventional ways, Jesus got a hold of my heart once again, dragged me up from the mire and set me on the right path. Just like he promised. I sure do love him.

I use the term unconventional because Jesus got a hold of me through a pop song which is something Paul of Tarsus and St. Augustine never experienced. Conventional would be through dreams or visions or even an angelic visitation. A pop song is definitely venturing out of that genre but is still effective.

I enjoy the music of Sara Bareilles and I had just put a few of her songs on my iPod and began to listen to them on one of my long commutes to work. The song is “Gonna Get Over You” which, as you can guess from the title, is a song about the aftermath of a break up. My divine revelation didn’t occur until the bridge of the song when I heard the line, “I’ll be alright, once I’ve found the other side of someday.”

And then it hit me, I have been expecting someday all my life. We all do it. You know, “Someday when I graduate…” and “Someday when I get married…” and Someday when I have kids…” and Someday when the kids are out of the house…” it doesn’t end until we die.

It may not be very profound but I am going to stop living in “Someday” because right now, more than ever, is all we have. It is all that we’ve been given to make the most of. I believe that Jesus didn’t just die so we could be with him in heaven, but to be with him right now. He came to give us life to the full and told us not to worry. But what do most of us do? Fill our lives with busyness and deadlines that we are worried about.

This is of course not to say that we shouldn’t care about our deadlines or the future, but I am going to seriously examine the stock I put my time into.

I also have always loved to write and have always said that someday I would give it a try. Well that someday is today.

Yes, that last sentence was cheesy.

But it’s true.

And I love cheese. But that’s beside the point.

Herein and hence fourth I begin my blog. It is the story of me and of my revelations, simple though they may be. This will hopefully get a whole lot more interesting starting in February when I start a new life on a different corner of the globe. But I don’t have February yet, I have today.

What are you going to do?