Day 312: Letter to Somewhere is Going Nowhere

Isn’t it amazing how something we believe we have a strong handle on can suddenly become the most difficult thing to articulate. Tonight I took my first stab at writing my statement of purpose for grad school. It turns out that I am an idiot incapable of coherent thoughts regarding my career goals and degree objectives. I thought the GRE was the hard part, but now I’m not so sure. The concept is fairly simple, they want an essay that lays out a career objective and how your desired degree program fits with said objective. So far, I’ve got something like “I really want a job that will pay me and will let me do good.” It’s not exactly poetry.

One of the obstacles are the mixed messages these programs send. They don’t want you to use clichés, but there are also only a few reasons to actually go into an MPA program. I want to help people. I want to make a difference. I want to contribute to the world. This is the reality of the program and what they want to hear, but you have to figure out a way to spin it so it sounds completely different, but sends the same message.

I consider myself to be an above average writer and I’ve never had difficulty articulating myself, but when you know that your entire future depends largely on a two-page essay the pressure really starts to screw with you. My grades aren’t awful from my undergrad, my recommendation letters are glowing, and my GRE scores are quite a bit above their desired score mark, so it all comes down to this. Sadly, now that it’s the bottom of the ninth with two outs I’m a bloody idiot. I did not see this obstacle coming.

I suppose there is a big difference between knowing something and making it known and that is where I am at the moment. How do I convey to this nameless, faceless group who I really am and what I want out of life, career and academia? It is occasions like this that we are truly forced to evaluate our lives and goals, both as they now are and how we see them in the future. Sometimes we don’t like what we see and sometimes the picture is murky. Right now, I’m not sure where I want this path to take me. I can see the fuzzy outline of a better way, but it’s not clearly defined. How can I convince others of what I want if I’m not even sure myself and for that matter, are any of us ever one hundred percent about anything. Maybe in the end we just pick a path, cross our fingers and dive in. Now if you could kindly direct me to the high board . . .

Day 311: Step Away From the Herd, Crazy and Honest Isn't so Bad

Life is wasted on people. That is a line in the movie Greenberg with Ben Stiller in the lead. I love this movie. Stiller players Roger Greenberg, a compulsively fucked up, self-absorbed recently sanatorium housed man trying to get his shit together. It’s an awkward film filled with awkward and flawed characters and it’s a bit hard to watch. Imagine Curb Your Enthusiasm without the humor and all the awkwardness. Still, something about this film made me think about people and the way we all interact with one another.

It’s always the crazy one or the bluntly honest one that gets criticism. They stand out from the herd and the others band together to deflect any negative attention they might otherwise garner for themselves. To me, the crazy and honest one however only serves to highlight the flaws in the others. The masses strive to fit in, to not get noticed, because any attention, even positive attention could just as easily go the other way. It is human nature to, in fact, animal nature to single out the weak. I understand this, but I disagree with what makes one weak.

We talk a lot about differences being tolerated, but that never seems to extend to what we believe should be “normal.” We will tolerate different races, religions, genders, disabilities, and sexual orientations. A variance from our definition of normal however enjoys no such protection or tolerance. The crazy and honest are too bold, too intense, too confrontational, too . . . something. What many do not see, however, is that we crazy and honest types see you and we don’t care. We know you’ll judge us, mock us, and unfriend us, but it changes nothing. People talk so much of morality and family values, but so few people have ethics these days and no, they are not the same.

An ethical person does not need people to like them and is spared the soul-crushing burden of playing the two-faced games so many people cannot get away from. Life is too short to spend it unhappily acting your way through or saying what you should say. Greenberg did not intentionally become an iconoclast, but his inherent inability to play the games created a background for the starkly contrasted “normalcy” of the world. I guess I’m not in that category, because I spent most of the movie not focused on the flawed lead character, but on those of everyone else around him. I don’t know if the movie made me feel better about my life, or worse, but it definitely made me feel better about being crazy and honest.

Day 310: If You Tell Me it's Thin Ice, I'll Skate on it Everytime

I had my entire blog written for today and was ready to hit send when I was distracted. There was a part of me that was hesitant to publish it because it dealt with the husband and an issue he’s slightly sensitive about. I was still going to use it, but I did feel a little guilty about it. Then he came home. Within ten minutes of him walking in the door and five work emails on his Blackberry, we were involved in what I would describe as a gently simmering discussion about his obsessive need to constantly work. So I’ve decided to forego the blog I thought might upset him and piss him off with this one instead. It’s hell being married to a blogger.

It is not lost on me that I truly have no idea what this man does in his job. I know there’s the war, jumping out of planes, lots of planning, strategy and meetings, but the intricacies of his days are lost on me. Truth be told, I don’t care. It’s his job and I care as much about it as any spouse cares about their partner’s job. You’ll listen, but you don’t want a blow by blow of ever meeting. This would not ordinarily cause a problem, except that he’s never off duty. In the military you are either active duty or inactive duty and when something is happening you get calls and emails all night and all weekend. I get that.

Jeff is lucky and talented enough to be near the top of the food chain in his brigade and that means he doesn’t have to go bail guys out of jail or spend all night in the woods guarding some stockpile of ammo that someone else mistakenly thought they needed. He does get all the emails though and he never lets anything wait. It is nonstop and while yes, I get that it is an important job and as the leader he cannot ignore things, I also think I understand when micromanaging is happening. Okay, that’s unfair, he actually delegates very well, but when there is a storm in Ft. Bragg at 10:30 at night and he is in Charlotte, NC I’m pretty sure there isn’t anything he can do to help the guys who might need to come in from the field training to avoid a tornado.

I made the silly little mistake of telling him he’s on a power trip and things didn’t go so well from that point. I just want to spend some time with the husband without the Blackberry coming between us. If they need him, they will call – trust me, they are not shy about interrupting a night or weekend when necessary. Is it so wrong to want to spend a few minutes with my partner when we’re apart all week? This is a three-day weekend for him, so as luck would have it, we have an extra day to discuss the Blackberry and my incessant need to make our every disagreement public. (I’m not kidding myself, I know where this blog is going to lead.)

No matter what discussions we have, I am lucky to be with someone who does not like to yell or fight. We do very little of that and usually only when excessively drunk. What does happen fairly often however, is that I say what I’m thinking and he doesn’t like it. I suppose I need to learn to finesse my comments a bit, but I really do feel like he runs on the feeling of being needed that the Army gives him. Ah, hell, I just did it again. Sadly, my delete and backspace keys are not working, so I’ll have to leave that little parting shot in, he’ll get me back anyway. I know when my mouth has gotten me into a multiple day hot water situation. Tomorrow I will stroke that Army built ego and admit he’s right and that will solve everything – fuck, I did it again. What can I say, I’m a pot stirrer.

Day 309: What Defines Your Self Image?

It’s no secret that I am applying for grad school and that the GRE was a subject of much concern and distress for me. Now that it’s over and the results proved more positive than expected I feel it’s okay to confess that I was really worried that I would do poorly and be forced to acknowledge that I’m not as smart as I thought I was. Standardized tests are never fun, but it’s the implication that they can somehow measure our actual intelligence that makes them horrendously fearsome. Leading up to the test countless friends reassured me that I would do fine, that I am smart, but I didn’t feel smart after I started studying.

The GRE is tough, but not nearly as tough as the prep books make it seem. After I first began studying the math workbook I was not entirely concerned that I would pass the test. I did not remember even the most basic concepts and there was so much that the book insisted I needed to know. It seemed an insurmountable task and I spent the better part of the last month and an entire notebook working out equations, relearning theorems, and memorizing shortcuts. The test itself seemed even harder than I expected and I swear I guessed at nearly half the answers. Luckily, there were only 30 questions and not the 60 I was expecting and despite my feeling woefully underprepared the test barely touched on many of the things I’d been studying. Somehow I scored what for me seemed an unattainably high score, nearly as high as my verbal.

I left the test feeling incredibly buoyed by the results. All the studying paid off and I was vindicated as a smart woman after all, or so I thought. The truth is, the test doesn’t measure intelligence and should my guesses have gone the wrong way producing a low score I would have left that exam feeling humiliated and reevaluating everything I know about myself. I almost let a test dictate who I believe myself to be and that is what’s really scary. I’m no less smart or stupid because of how I did on a test. My verbal score was not what I wanted it to be, barely above that of my quantitative, and it does hurt the ego a bit when that is what I counted on as my dominant strength, but I’m not going to curtail my love of literature because I didn’t get a 750 on verbal.

I understand why they use such exams, but having let my life revolve around studying and knowing that there were days this last month that I felt like a piece of crap because I couldn’t do a damn word problem really upsets me. Mathematics might be the universal language, but I am not fluent and I’m going to have to learn to be okay with that. What angers me most is how much the books cover when so little is actually on the exam. I lost a month studying for that damn test and while I do not regret it and the results speak for themselves, I still feel cheated. How much will I really need to use analogies or geometry in grad school? Was it worth the stress and self-doubts and possible re-evaluation of who I thought I was? I’m not sure. I want to go to school, but I resent that despite all the studying, in the end I felt it was up to luck and not me. Even with good scores in hand, I think I’m a little worse for wear. The GRE hurts.

Day 308: Women vs. Men: In the Time it Takes Them to do One Thing, We've Done Eight

I often say that the difference between the way men and women think is their focus. Women seem to concentrate equally on any number of tasks or problems. Work, kids, bills, cleaning, diet, errands, friends and family are just a few of the things running through your average woman’s mind at any particular moment. Men on the other hand, prefer a streamlined approach and by streamlined, I mean that they pretty much only think about one thing at a time. If a man is at work, he’s thinking about work. When the same man is driving, he’s thinking about driving. A man has a gift, but it’s not multi-tasking.

If you want to know the real reason most office managers and executive assistants are women, it’s not because they aren’t ambitious, it’s because men could never do that job. One patient at a time, one meeting at a time, one girl at a . . . oh, well, that might be the exception. Anyway, I’ve been in several relationships and befriended more men than women and I keep coming to the same conclusion. What I envy, about these limited creatures, is their ability to focus so intently on a single thing. I have never been able to that. My mind moves a million miles a minute, which is great for the big picture, but often precludes me from the ability to delve deep into one thing for extended periods of time.

I admit, I sometimes hate that Jeff is not more detail oriented. The little things slide a lot with him and I come off looking like a nag, simply because I know if I don’t follow up, he will not remember to follow through. They say marriage is about communication, but I’d posit it is just as much about understanding what is not communicated. The husband will never be one of those people who tell me everything that happened with his day, that he remembered to call the doctor, and that he sent the rent check. I might get one of the three, but never all. At the same time, two days after I’ve mentioned some problem with him in passing he will have a solution. He may not have done anything else in the meantime, but that one thing he will have solved. I kinda love that about him.

I still think it’s better to be a woman. I mean there are so many things that need to get done. Can you imagine if we left them up to the men? Two, maybe three things would find their way to being accomplished and that’s not going to cut it. My feminist friends would surely criticize me for saying there are any differences between men and women aside from the obvious, but I’m more of a humanist and let’s be honest there are some very real distinctions. Any woman who’s been witness to a man turning something over in his mind can testify to my theory that it is the only thing going on in his mind. We love them, but that “to do” list is only getting longer and we all know who’s doing the majority of the tasks.

Day 307: Doctor No

Sometimes medical professionals are idiots and they get in the way of maintaining the good health they are supposed to advocate. Now that I’m over 35, I worry more and more about things like breast cancer or prostate cancer for the husband, not to mention the countless other diseases that can spring up on us as we age. A few years back I finally managed to force myself to do self breast exams. I know I should have been doing them all along, but it’s lumpy in there and it weirds me out. It was so much better when I’d just make Jeff do them for me, but at some point he told me it kind of made him lose the thrill when we made sexy time so I took that chore back.

They say to do this once a month and quite honestly, being the all or nothing kind of girl I am, that doesn’t work for me. I’m sure if you told most people they only had to do something once a month they’d manage to remember, but not me. Nope, too easy to put it off. So I started doing them every morning and I religiously spent a couple of minutes a day getting to know each and every lump in there so that should anything new pop up, I would recognize it.

About six months into this process I had my annual exam and the doctor asked if I were doing self-exams. Yes, I said rather proudly, I do them every morning. The doc told me not I didn’t need to do them so often, just once a month. I responded that this way was better for me and was helping me to get to know the terrain, so to speak, but she practically ordered me to stop. It was so strange. She was quite vehement that I should only do them once each month and acted like what I was doing was actually harmful rather than positive. No matter how I tried to convince her this was better, both for me and for the ability to discern what’s a normal bump, and what’s an actual lump, the doc just wouldn’t give in.

I never did figure out what the hell it was to her, but it was enough to just turn me off from doing them at all. I know it’s stupid and every month I try to remember, but I never do. I realize this only hurts me, I mean it’s my bosom and my potential for cancer, but still, I just cannot get back that discipline and enthusiasm. So why would a physician criticize about actively being involved in our own health. Are we not always for the better when we take responsibility for our own bodies and health? Who the hell was she to tell me not to do something that could only help? It is so frustrating when doctors refuse to progress and adapt and instead stick to whatever training they were taught. If it doesn’t hurt, then shut the hell up. As patients we look to our medical professionals for guidance and when one of them disregards something it could be the thing that discourages us from being as proactive as we need to be.  

Day 306: Stop Asking God for More Shit

I have been thinking about the theory of God today. It is my understanding from religions, at least Christianity, that the widely accepted opinion is that God gave us everything we need to survive and succeed when It – sorry She, no, I mean HE – created the Earth. No one is expected magical objects to suddenly appear and make their lives better, correct? I also think that most Christians, but not all, believe God gave us free will to make our own decisions. Although, there seems to be a subgroup that believes that while your chosen path is up to you, once you choose that path, the outcome is pre-destined. Either way, it occurred to me that there doesn’t seem to be any point in your praying for things when either you have total free will or else once your decisions are made, your path is determined.

This sounds more complex than it is, so let me try to simplify. If God knows all, and that includes the particular ending to your personal path in life then everything that happens to you is supposed to happen and asking for alternatives (ie. Praying your teen stops going down a dangerous path, praying your house does not go into foreclosure, etc.) is pointless. Your path is set and God has already given you everything you’re going to get in life, so don’t expect personal miracles, if something fortuitous does happen and your teen becomes an honor roll that was not God, but hard work, choice, and luck on the part of your teen because he or she also has a path to choose.

Similarly, if there is no end result fated for every path and life is indeed a series of choices made by the free will God gave you, then to truly be among the faithful you must believe that you have the necessary tools in your toolbox. Think of it like this,  God created the Earth, made man and woman, gave us the ability to reproduce, provided food to eat (animals, vegetables, and fruits), planted the resources to clothe ourselves and to build shelter, and instilled within us the ability to choose. So if this is true and most Christians believe this from what I remember and researched, then why are we still asking for more?

Can you imagine what God would say if either of the above scenarios are true? I suspect the conversation would go a little something like this: “Why do you keep asking me for shit? I gave you everything you need. This is a perfect self-sustaining planet loaded with opportunities to utilize renewable resources. You have more food than you can ever eat and the ability to create shelter to protect you from any of my natural elements (wind, flood, fire, storms, etc.). You have brilliant minds that you use very little of, but are capable of the type of logic, strategy, and analysis necessary to survive. Most of all, I gave you the free will to choose your own paths in life including who to love, if you want to have children, what you want to eat, and how you want to live. I gave you everything you need to thrive SO STOP ASKING ME FOR MORE SHIT!!!”

God may not be the swearing type, but any version of a God my mind is capable of creating is going to know how to knock around a few four letter words. The big picture here, is that with this wondrous and ever-bountiful world  and the amazingly self-sufficient human body (strong and self-sustaining until we ruin it with poor nutrition and no exercise) how can we still think God is holding something back? Why give us the ability to choose our paths and make decisions for ourselves if we’re only to ask for divine intervention each time something in our life doesn’t go as we’d like. God is not responsible for saving you from that plane crash. That was luck, where you were sitting, and physics. God did not intervene to save you loved one from dying. That was medicine (which God innately gave us the ability to refine and practice), the human body (perfect machine), and the specific course of the disease or injury. So in a way, God already gave us what we need for those things to happen and whether or not we experience success rather than failure is solely due to a combination of effects put into play with the dawn of time and man (for you creationists.)

Stop asking your God for shit. He/She/It already gave you what you need, it is up to you to use it to the best possible outcome. Don’t go into a restaurant, order a steak rare then complain it’s too bloody. You made a choice, exerted you free will and then want some sort of intervention to change the outcome you put into play with the choices you were gifted to make. Religious types want to blame God for all the good and bad in life and I’m not saying that is wrong. If your God exists and is responsible for everything we see around us then I think yes, God is responsible, but only because of what God put into play with creation, not because today the deity decided the New Orleans Saints should win the Superbowl or that chick from the movie “Precious” should win an Oscar. You have the tools you need as bestowed upon you by your God, now go out and use them properly and stop whining about needing or wanting more.