Getting Old

Beastocity: 5.5

(Refresher: Beastocity refers to the rate of change of something in my life over a certain period of time. In this example I gave myself a 5.5 because while I’ve noticed myself getting older (duh) I’ve been slowly realizing the effects of aging. If I woke up and was suddenly 45 then I would give myself a Beastocity rating of 347. Make sense?)

So back to me getting old… Let me explain before you write off my 23 year old self. I’ve always had this adventurous mentality where I think I can physically do just about anything. When I was growing up I would run around and climb trees barefoot, race friends until I was dangerously wheezing, and dive off the tops of boats. When I was only a year old I even hijacked my sister’s tricycle and went zooming down the face of a hill. What’s the worst that could happen? (Well in that last scenario I ended up with stitches…) As I’ve gotten older this has usually manifest itself in lifting things. I have this idea that I could lift just about anything within reason. In high school I used to entertain my friends by picking them up and spinning them around. Although I realized that this didn’t always work when I tried picking up one of my friends on the football team.

However, recently I’ve noticed that those kinds of stunts don’t really work anymore. At first it started with a sore back here and there after lifting things incorrectly and more recently it’s evolved into bruises. A few months ago I squeezed my arm through a tiny little crevice in our office copy machine to retrieve a paint brush (long story…) and my reasoning went something along the lines of “If my arm can squeeze through here than it will fit and if it doesn’t fit then it just won’t! What’s the worst that could happen? It’s just my arm…” Needless to say an hour later after the paint brush had been returned safely to its home my forearm was bright red and sore for about a week.

You thought I would have learned my lesson then but just yesterday I found myself with my arm squeezed into a post office mailbox on the side of Wilshire Boulevard trying to retrieve a stuck envelope. It must have been quite a sight to the hundreds driving by to see a girl with her arm halfway into the blue metal mailbox in the middle of the day. After smashing both arms into the mailbox and having no luck getting the envelope I returned to my desk with fresh bruises on each arm.

Now only if I could blame my lack of postings on my blog from old age…

On Feminism

Beastocity: 3
(no, I didn't become a creepy old guy. that would be qualify for 3 to the millionth power)

“Yes.”
Apparently the question had gone around to all the women in the room and I had just pulled out of a side conversation in time to hear “Jenn, are you a feminist?” Without pausing to think, I simply replied “Yes.” Although there are a million definitions and ideas of what a feminist looks like (see popular t-shirt above) I felt pretty confident that I was one of them. I was surprised to hear that I was the only woman in the room that said that they were a feminist. The other women seemed uncertain about identifying themselves as ‘a feminist’ and felt more comfortable describing what was feminist-y about them and some coming to the conclusion of “I guess so…” I don’t blame them! So often feminists are thought of as bra-burning-angry-unshowered-unshaven-she-woman-man-haters. Who would want to identify themselves with that and make all the men in the room break out in a cold sweat and locate the nearest exit? Not me. So recently (since this happened just last week) I’ve been thinking about why I would call myself a feminist.

From an early age I felt a strong desire to break out of traditional gender roles. I refused to wear dresses for a period of time in elementary school. I insisted on running around and climbing trees barefoot. In high school I had one of my guy friends show me how to lift weights because I was so tired of people not allowing me to carry heavy things. Coming into college I gladly told people that I didn’t know how to cook (which I think I avoided learning on purpose) and would find many an occasion to flex so that I could enjoy the surprised looks on people’s faces.

But feminism isn’t just about defying gender roles, especially if most of that comes out of bitterness and angst. My kind of feminism comes from a longing and desire to see everyone become the person that God created them to be without the barriers of gender roles. I desire to see both men and women encouraging each other and fighting the “roles” of society to fulfill their God given purposes. That sounds amazing! I think that (along with processing my own angst!) is why I’m a feminist.
So, yes, I do also have my own angst (which my friends and boyfriend lovingly and patiently help me to work through) which has often given me a little attitude around my office. It’s getting better (although this afternoon I did try to scarily brandish a knife in the kitchen because I was getting annoyed…tee hee) and I was able to keep a level head when I had a particularly interesting conversation with one of the principal architects in our office today.

I delivered this huge box to him the other day and he came up to my desk with it this afternoon excitedly telling me that it was a grill. He was so excited because apparently one of our consultants had sent us a small grill last year and it was stolen (I had never heard about any such story). So he was saying that he wanted a safe place to store it and I assumed that was why he was involving me in this. Ha. Next thing I know someone else asked him what he was going to do with a grill and he looked right at me and he said “No, it’s for YOU. It’s for balcony hour!” Cringe. Poor guy. He was smiling so big and looked so happy and I must have looked like I was in severe pain. Half of me had my mouth open trying to smile and the other half of me was trying to figure out how to look as disinterested as possible so that I could break it to him I wasn’t about ‘fire up the barbie’ on a weekly basis. It’s enough that I slice bread and wash fruit for them every Thursday afternoon for our office happy hour on the balcony but… grilling? No way. I think the only thing that saved me was that I was still slightly amused at situation (who sends grills for holiday presents? Aren’t we in a recession?) Luckily I kept my mouth shut (although statements like “yeah, right” and “YOU can grill, I’m not grilling” were close to surfacing) because after we opened it, it turned out to just be frozen meat from a famous bbq place in Texas (apparently he had just opened a corner and saw the words BBQ). Needless to say, I was spared from becoming “Jennifer the Grill Master” and now I only have to figure out how we’re going to heat and serve several pounds of ribs, sausage, and brisket.

Lucky me :)

Turtles, Porkupines... and Jenn?

Beastocity: - 5

I highly value social situations that are not awkward. If I have a conversation with someone that is not awkward, I feel deeply loved and served by that person. Growing up I saw how my mom would smooth over strange social situations – be it a blunder of a close friend or family member or sitting next to someone at the airport – she would always have something funny and friendly to say to just put everybody at ease. So I grew up and went off to college with the same value and loved meeting new people and helping them feel at ease and making potentially awkward situations as least awkward as possible.

Maybe I’ve become too hypersensitive but I think I’ve been starting to regress in my smooth social skills. Recently I’ve been having a lot of awkward social interactions with people, usually at work. And it really bothers me. Usually after each one I’m internally reprimanding myself for my own awkwardness. Usually it goes something like this “One: why am I so awkward? Two: why am I so awkward? Three: why am I so awkward? …” and so on (no joke about the numbering, I think that is my internal J-ness coming out).

Here are my least favorite that I’ve been stumbling upon:

The hallway stare: What to do when you’re walking down a long hallway and you actually make eye contact before you’re within speaking distance? Look away and then look back and say hi or something? Smile and keep staring at the other person until you can say hi? Yuck!

The mumble fumble: What to do when you’re talking with someone and they mumble something you can’t quite understand but you either laugh or say something like “yeah” anyway. Then there’s that awkward silence where you’re like wow. I guess now’s the time where I could have responded to whatever that last thing that they said was, if only I knew what it was that they said last…. Yikes!

And many, many more… I think I’m finding that the more I try to be a social tinkerbell and try and cover everything with pixie dust the more I’m just appearing awkward and nervous. Crap. What to do? Embrace awkward conversations? Laugh at yourself? Blame it all on the other person?

Suggestions, anyone?

the full life

That’s how life seems right now (full, that is, and not with penguins... you'll see later). But don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a post to try and make myself seem really important or anything. It’s just that I’ve been thinking about how dense things have felt right now. By dense, I mean spending a lot of time thinking about things like ‘how God is at work in this person’s life and what you could do to lead them well’ or ‘create a birthday present for your little brother that will make up for the ways you haven’t loved him enough this year’ or ‘ponder the topic of patience in the kingdom of God and produce something that will speak to students’ or ‘what would God have for me in this next season of my life?’

It’s just not the kind of things that you can bs without some nasty serious consequences (‘I dunno, it just kinda sounded cool to spend this next season of my life trying to start the first penguin synchronized swimming colony…’). So you can imagine it sounds a little strange when one of my coworkers asks me when I want to go to lunch with her to talk about graduate school and I tell her ‘how about the week after next?’ and then she laughs at me because no one, not even architects and surely not the office mule, plan casual lunches two weeks in advance. My bad.

But what happens when you start operating at a high level of ‘density’ in your life and then you go through seasons where things are less ‘dense’? What if you’ve based how you function in relationships on your ‘denser’ seasons? What if you’ve started to have your identity rooted in how you function in your ‘denser’ seasons? What if you start believe that people love you only because of what you do and accomplish?

Then what?

I guess that’s why it’s so important to keep a Sabbath, or a day when you yell a loud ‘NO!’ to those thoughts that tell you that doing equals being and you whisper a quiet ‘yes’ to a God who says that you are loved before and after you accomplish anything. Where all you do is ask God how you should be in his presence and his love for a day.

Question is, when is my next Sabbath?

Sorry

Beastocity: 17 (or something like that)

So my post-college years so far (all one and a half of them) have also provided me with some of the most emotional years of my life. Don't worry, men, I won't go into all the feminine details but let's just say hello monthly mood swings. So my point is I was really excited about posting something this week but I'm not so much in the mood anymore. It's been a long day. My apologies.

Where Art Thou, Family??

Note: I'm not actually related to these people although I'm sure my distant relatives did look something like them...

Beastocity: 15 (how many months I’ve officially lived on my own)

It’s been a while since I have lived at home, like full-time lived at home. I think fall always makes me think of home. Something about the leaves flying about takes me back to my childhood (which, in reality, wasn’t that long ago…). But lately I’ve been thinking of home a lot. There are a lot of things that I have missed that are pretty important like my brother just turning 18 and becoming an eagle scout, my mom’s birthday coming up, and some other family happenings. Seeing all my family in the same location right now and how much they get to be around one another causes me to wonder how much longer I will be so far away from them (or how much longer before I make most of them move out here… hmm).

But I think I’m starting to get used to this whole living on your own thing. I’m starting to regularly do my chores, I pay bills, keep somewhat healthy plants, cook decent food, make necessary doctor appointments (man, I never realized how much stuff my parents did for me growing up…), make somewhat regular blog posts, etc. And I’ve been so grateful for my house family! In many ways we’re becoming more of a family by being more responsible about our home, being more willing to talk about our lives, being more available to listen about each other’s lives, sharing food with each other, doing fun things together, and overall getting to know each other better. We even have little plant babies named after Harry Potter characters! Never mind, I won’t take the metaphor that far (plus our plant babies sometimes get neglected… whoops). But we’re becoming more of a family.

But that does bring me to another family that has been missing lately. My blog family! What has happened to all you bloggers whose posts I count on to give me a smile and a chuckle during dull parts of my day? To feed me with intellectual nuggets on which I can chew on throughout my week? To encourage me to seek good things? Where have you gone? I know I’m not the best example, but I hope that this post inspires you to WRITE ON, FAMILY!!!

Happy anniversary to me...

Beastocity: 1 year

At the beginning of this month I celebrated my one year anniversary at my job. Hooray. I still feel like I’m learning new things, although maybe not every day, at least once a week. I feel like I’ve finally warmed up to most of the people who I automatically branded as “scary.” Overall, it doesn’t really feel like a year has passed. Sure, tons has happened and college feels like at least a year ago, but I never imagined that being in one place for a year could feel short. When I first came here, I’ll admit, I was like psshhhh there’s no way I could see myself here for a year… puhleez and as I asked some of the folks how long they’d been here and heard the responses of 2 years, 5 years, 15 years… I couldn’t help but think woa… looser. And I think my one-year-ago-self would have said the same words to my present-day-self. Wow, one year. Maybe that doesn’t seem like a big deal to you and maybe I have vocational commitment issues or it could be that my gut is telling me that I haven’t arrived at my dream job yet (duh, gut, but these things take time…).

Which has also led to my recent sentiments of urrgggg, [sigh], and uhhh as I think about the next year which I will most likely be here (by the grace of God). But instead of running through my list of reasons why I should bash my job, I’d like to express my gratitude to my job and to God for providing me with this job.

Thank you God and job for growing me in my confidence to do maintenance and use tools. I feel empowered that people would come to me to help them fix broken paper shredders, jammed copiers, loose keyboard trays, lift heavy boxes, and other mysterious electronic malfunctions.

Thank you God and job for teaching me humility as I disappoint people and realizing that my knowledge in good wines is actually pretty poor and that my worth does not come from approval from others.

Thank you God and job for helping me grow slowly in my integrity by becoming a person who would interact with the boss and the building janitor in the same manner.

Thank you God and job for helping me take myself less seriously. While I used to cringe inside whenever I had to wheel the noisy cart full of groceries or beer past a conference room full of important people, thinking about how ridiculous I looked and instead trying to pull the cart in all manner of ways that would make it look least like a grocery cart and more like um.. something more graceful than a grocery cart, I now could care less as heads turn and I just push the darn cart in all of its grocery-and-beer-exploding-grocery-cart-looking-glory.

One more year, here I come!!!

But, honestly, after that it’s quits. Seriously. If you hear talk of a year three I give you permission to call up, pretend like you’re me and quit for me. Friends don’t let friends… you know.