Exhaustion

Problem sets. Coffee. Having to eat. Lablablablab. Philosophy. Evolution problem sets. Mechanism problem sets. Biochemistry problem sets. Papers. Research Proposals. Viral infection. Maintaing socially appropriate conversations. Waking up. I forgot my staple. Reading. Reading. Reading. Midterm tomorrow, but I haven’t studied. Tutor. Mentor. Tutor. Tutor. Teach. OK Go.

There are days when I’m sad, days when I’m on the top of the world. Days when I’m mad and everyone grinds my gears. Days when I flow, when people are more than sufficient, they build me up, they encourage me. Days when I feel like I fail absolutely. Days when I’m overambitious. Days when my mind can’t get started. Days when my mind refuses to stop, words and ideas flying through like the sound from a radio, the stations constantly being changed. Even if you yell stop, even if you stare at a brick, nothing stops the free flow of noise.

But this week, it’s only a slow slope into exhaustion. Today. Doing school. It’s like clockwork. That’s okay, I like clocks. Part of me keeps saying, this is okay. But it’s not. At some point, I have to rest. I just don’t realistically know when that’s going to be. When I eat meals? The 6 hours of sleep I get every night (if I sleep straight through). It’s like I’ve learned how to jump through all the hoops. I’ve shown it already. But I have to keep jumping. Over and over and over and over and over. I’m exhausted, physically and mentally.

There are times when I embrace this. I know that sometimes I find I’m gutsiest when I’m near the end of a run, or in the middle of a grueling third set. I make points I would never have made totally rested. I find a fifth wind. Its the same mentally. Do you know mental exhaustion? When your brain physically feels overworked, and when you’re not doing something you’re literally blank. No words float through your head. But when you do work, suddenly your thoughts are jutted here, then there, and under platforms and into corners you didn’t know existed in your head. Your consciousness is like a drunk madman, sometimes falling off the platform when you pass out at night, sometimes creating new ideas and shifting paradigms and inventing new worldviews. This sounds amazing, but maybe it’s not. At least it’s rare. The outcome is good, but the process is painful. And it redefines what it means to be rested, to be content–that is, to be boring.

But sometimes, clockwork is okay.

Pick One: Lattes or Homos

Sometimes I can’t believe the stuff that shows up in the news. Starbucks has come out in support of gay marriage. This isn’t anything new, as last year they wrote an amicus brief to the Supreme Court asking them to overturn the DOMA. You can almost predict the reactions:

• Yay starbucks! Will be drinking you tomorrow!
• Starbucks shouldn’t be diving into political matters!
• What? They support homos? Not drinking there anymore.
• Starbucks is an international company–what will the Middle East say?!?!

For the record, if you have a problem with the gay community, I’m not really sure Starbucks is your scene in the first place.

HRC came out in support of Starbucks (no surprise). And NOM started a “Dump Starbucks” movement (lol).

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–I think the debate and controversy over gay marriage is way blown out of proportion. There are bigger things to worry about, but it is a fight that needs to be fought. So be it.

But frankly, why isn’t anyone reminding us that hey–Starbucks isn’t the ethical supergiant we’re starting to portray it as. They’re known for mistreating workers, driving out local vendors, wasting enormous amounts of water, and ruining the financial security of coffee bean farmers, among other things. Like, it’s cool if you want to start supporting Starbucks because hey–they think it’s cool if two dudes want to marry. But I don’t give two shits–Starbucks could tell me I look pretty every morning and I’m still not going to prefer their coffee because they’re the most unethical brand on the market. Yeah, I buy their coffee when it’s the cheapest at Lunds–we’re not all perfect!

Starbucks is a corporation. And honestly, while they know they might lose a few customers, they know they will likely gain  a few, and perhaps turn a few customers into regulars. Making statements about social issues isn’t remarkably political, and it’s more about branding.

Starbucks is a corporation. They do bad things. If you’re going to make decisions about where to buy your coffee off of things like this, you ought to  consider everything Starbucks does and says.

In the end, this will end up as a win for the gay community. The conservative view of marriage is dropping in popularity because people are seeing it as petty. When a major anti-same sex marriage organization starts boycotting the morning coffee over the thought of two men being granted basic civil privileges, it becomes easier and easier to redefine petty. Go and read this conservatively-biased take on the issue. Tell me you didn’t roll your eyes. For fairness, here’s the liberal HuffPo take.

I’m a cynic and this all sorts of grinds my gears, but I can’t help but smirk knowing this will inevitably help our cause.

 

See the cat? See the cradle?

When you travel around with a cheap 35 mm camera it isn’t exactly your aim to take photographs that are professional quality. You’re looking for a few things. Memories. A new look. Taking something tangible from something you love dearly.

I don’t understand the need for the type of perfection most people strive for. Maybe it’s because I went through the gauntlet of my teenage years trying to succeed, and I failed anyway. I failed because of something I had no choice over, and yet that failure led to immense happiness. So I’ve come to terms with redefining failure, with not seeing binaries everywhere I look. And that wasn’t a hard mental leap. My youth brought me to the Porcupine Mountains, the reefs in the Bahamas, the hills of Colorado. It showed me nights in tents in -20 degree weather and hours on the pavement. Being able to unearth the entire gamut of human emotion from the huge variability given to us by nature, it takes a pathetic whisper to drive away the old heuristics of a simple worldview.

Somehow people take health for granted. They understand that we know what it means to be in good health. It is granted that being in good health is a good thing. But then they balk at moral systems derived from non-faith based systems. Do we really have to question whether group and individual happiness is good, and should be striven for? In fact, I know deep down that I could try to derive a moral system from the basic premise that there are mental states preferred to others, and we should strive for those. In reality I know my morality derives itself from my gut, educated by my mother. It’s not rational in any sense, but it is what it is.

Usually when I see people striving to technical perfection as opposed to pragmatic (use-in-real-world) perfection, I realize they just don’t get it. And I’m not even sure what pragmatic perfection is, since I am okay with failure and even embrace it time to time. But failure isn’t a goal, it’s a tool. I imagine pragmatic perfection as the complete agreement of humanity with itself. (No cat. No cradle).

Vonnegut’s cat’s cradle has been strung in my head for a few weeks, interlaced with numerous discussions about intelligence and creativity. The cradle seems to be a convenient tool for nihilistic dismissal. Even so, Dr. Hoenniker saw that cultural constructions were empty, mostly lies, yet he pursued science and truth regardless. I think that’s a quanta of foma. Maybe the lesson is that there can be no truth in the things we say.

Any model on how to live a good life necessarily regards those models that have clearly failed. Is there really anything new to bring to the table? My 35mm camera sits on my kitchen table day in, day out. I think it’s telling me the answer.

Staycation Samwise! Lessons from Spring Break, Part 1a

Dear Travel Journal,

Just two days into my Spring Break 2012: Staycation Paradise and I have already learned so much! While my boyfriend has decided to spend these 5 days shredding the slopes of some hill in backwater Colorado (hippie…), I’ve taken it upon myself to go through Staycation Paradise alone! As he’s spending his time diving between trees (boring!), I’ll be logging hours looking into the heart of herpes simplex virus, taking that same running route for the 70th time, trying to not attract attention from crazy people at the public library, and  completing my lifelong goal of eating 8 boxes of spaghetti in one week. It’s a crazy time right now!

Here are a few of the things I’ve learned!

• The Henn. Co public library in downtown Minneapolis has sheet music. I think this has been a long kept secret, and I wonder how they’ve successfully been able to keep the music hidden in plain sight from me for so long. So successful at hiding materials, one library worker pondered if I was “aloud to be browsing these…things“, and the barcode on the music wasn’t updated for the automatic scanning machine.
• The city does not want you.  Getting on route 16 on campus, I was pestered by questions from the bus patrons. Such as:

1. Aren’t you on spring break?
2. Ainchoo on break?
3. I thought break is this week?
4. You a student? It’s break!

I told one patron sitting next to me that as a matter-of-fact, I was still doing research this break. Here’s how that conversation went:

Me: Well, actually, I’m still doing research this week.

Him: But you’re on break!

Me: Yes. Well, herpes doesn’t take spring break!

Him: Are you looking for a cure for herpes???

Me: Well….Not exactly…

Him: Then why the hell do you research it! All you gotta know is that it’s bad!

Indeed.

• Passing out at 6:30 pm while watching Netflix is more than likely a sign that you’re Staycation-ing too hard, and certainly not because you’re Lamesauce McGee.
• Reading one of George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire novels almost entirely on your laptop probably does qualify you for both most awesome person of the year (for not being distracted despite 1,000 pages of pure asinine-BS) and the biggest Lamesauce McGee of the year (for reading an entire 1,000 pagebook of asinine “fantasy” where most of the time is spent of people walking from one place to the next and thinking about their enemies. Suspenseful!)
  

  1,000 pages and this is about as exciting as it gets...

• I went in to a government office and applied for a state ID. They spent quite some time with my transcript (taking photocopies, etc…) and I’m positive they didn’t even crack open my passport. I understand none of the things.

That’s it for Staycation Paradise Part 1a! I’m sure you’re just as anxious as I am to see what the rest of this week holds for me!

I Sing The Body Political

[Youtube link refuses to embed! Argh. Foiled.]

I was quoted in the Daily. Oops.

So there’s a lot of noise about this marriage amendment. As there has been. And as there will be, even after the vote is tallied. And my exhaustion will carry on with it.

Honestly, I have an enormous amount of respect for every activist who has been fighting, battle after battle, lawsuit after lawsuit, vote after vote. At the same time, I have to blame them as well for my exhaustion with this issue.

And it is because my body is political. It is not even a choice!

I am gay, and therefore the conservative right deems me damnable.

I am gay, and therefore the liberal left expects me to be an activist. An activist for marriage equality! The rallying banner of the gay world!

I have about as much interest in getting legally married as I do in the stock market. I hope to do it one day, and my life will probably be better off for it, but I know I’ll likely be just fine as I am. I am exhausted of making the marriage argument, and I am exhausted of being expected to parrot it!

I’m sorry for not being sorry. Kids are being harassed in the schools and some of them are dying. And we are forced to spend millions of hours and dollars fighting an amendment that will change very little! If the amendment doesn’t pass, my life goes on as normal. If it does, it makes the future a little bleaker. Kids are still dying.

And no, I won’t buy the nonsense that marriage is a stepping stone, and that bullying will come later. Who the hell decided marriage is a more important stepping stone? Frankly, if we were to better address attitudes towards queer communities, we’d probably lower the numbers of kids being harassed and we’d likely get more votes for marriage equality.

But I mean, I get it. Marriage equality is something you can fight for, something you can write down in the law and see the courts and government dole out your privileges. Tackling the issues of homophobia and transphobia are hard and abstract. And frankly, I’m enormously skeptical that marriage equality will help much. Sure, we may win some over in the fight, but we’re probably digging the trenches between us and them even deeper.

Spending my childhood growing up being incubated with the gross reasonings of why gay people deserve to be a second class of citizens, and then being classed in scientific and critical thinking, has brought me to be even more passionate about wanting to be a teacher and wanting to teach critical thinking to our youth. The freedom that we find when we are rightfully given the tools to search for knowledge is as sweet a drink as we may ever find. For some reason, our schools and our parents have been failing to teach our children that harassment and marginalization of people hardly different from themselves actually drags society down. That these are actually immoral things to do. Perhaps it is because we are too busy telling children to play nice, instead of showing them why.

Voltaire once said “Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.” We need to start reminding people that neglect is just as painful as any other form of abuse. It does no good if you point the finger and say “that’s wrong” while some kid gets his face punched in.

So, when it comes to you, what will you do? Will you do you part and point your finger, vote “no” on the amendment, and move along your way? Or will you go beyond just voting no?

Spread the word. Smile at all. Make a new friend each day.  Step up.

E-Readers and Distraction: Who’s to Blame, subtitle: You or the Internet? A thesis on attention in the post-socialized internet world.

NYTimes article on E-books and whether reading them on a tablet like the iPad, Kindle Fire, or Nook (Color or otherwise) makes the experience too daunting for modern readers who have chosen to take up the LED pages.

To be sure: I’ve read books in the raw and in the pulp, on an eInk screen, on a tablet screen, on my computer, and on an iPod. Nearly all academic papers I read are on my computer screen, and those have ranged from basic psychological studies to virology theses. I am positive that any issue I have with distraction is independent of the medium.

I mean, if you’re sitting down to read a book about a rags to riches story (if you consider Harvard to be “riches”, and most do) that you really want to read, and it takes being on an airplane to not be distracted by Facebook, you have other issues and you shouldn’t blame the device because it contains the potential for distraction. It’d be like blaming my boyfriend for distracting me while I was doing homework because he’s too cute. While I do use this excuse, it’s not very legitimate.

The most telling was this last quote

“With so many distractions, my taste in books has really leveled up,” Ms. Faulk said. “Recently, I gravitate to books that make me forget I have a world of entertainment at my fingertips. If the book’s not good enough to do that, I guess my time is better spent.”

On what? Watching CSI Miami or cat/baby/puppy videos on Youtbe? Reading Kanye West’s twitter? Catching up on the latest reality shows?

I think the best part of going to school in Minneapolis was realizing that the world of entertainment in all isn’t that entertaining (not when going to the MN Orch or Guthrie is infinitely more satisfying). And I’m sorry, but a book like The Brother’s Karamazov isn’t going to catch and hold your attention like an episode of Glee, but it’s still worth your time.

I’m referencing this because I’m writing an introduction to a manifesto concerning the means we use, and it is largely derived on how  Facebook, etc are ends during our pedestrian days. [@Jill, mayhaps you'd like to write one as well. Like running a marathon together, but we finish our theses on life by July 1. Mine's guaranteed to be optimistic as it decries apathetic moieties in our culture while prescribing more arts to generate more science. I have a title, but the subtitle is The Ballad of Jill Goslinga. More importantly we actually need to read the Karamazov. All are welcome to join us starting May 12].

All in all, I support reading books in any form. Like pulp?–that’s great. Like the screen?–that’s great too. Most importantly, have you actually read a good book lately? Do you even want to?