Halloween Approaches!

Yay! I love Halloween… Even if being in Hawaii makes it feel completely unlike autumn to this North Idaho-raised Geek Girl…

So far this month I’ve been busy trying to recover from the complications that happened due to the oral surgery, including an IV totally unnecessarily put into MY NECK, a second infection, and NERVE DAMAGE TO MY TONGUE that could take up to three month to heal, if at all.

You may be picking up on the fact that I’m still a bit upset. This is due to the oral surgeon being a horrible, lazy, trauma-causing person with an awful bed-side manner. Other than that, I’ve been healing quite nicely, and the holes where my wisdom teeth used to be are already down to just slits in the gum.

I’ve also been busy planning my Halloween outfit: 1920’s flapper girl. This is an outfit I’ve been coveting a proper good-quality version of for YEARS. I finally decided to go for it, and am putting it together the funnest and best way I know how: custom handmade myself, crafted from whatever I can hunt down.

It’s going to be totally fantastic! I’ve already got a gorgeous feather headpiece made, and have been practicing the makeup. Other components have been gathered, and all I’m waiting for is my order of black fringe to arrive so I can sew it on. I’m gonna look so cute!

 

Isn’t it pretty?

 

Having gotten in a sewing mood, and having recently come across a very inspiring website called Trash To Couture, I’ve also decided to start modifying a bunch of my clothes into a more personal and stylish wardrobe. It’s not the first time I’ve done something like this, but it is the first time I’ve done it with something resembling a plan…

And on a professional front, I’ve been settling back into my new job. I started working at a Recycle Redemption Center in town, and it’s been an interesting experience. Most of my co-workers are Philippine or locals — I stand out as the only white girl there. I’ve discovered I can lift (high enough to get onto the scales, anyway) a little over 70 pounds of glass bottles. It’s constant physical labor, constant activity, and hard work.

But I actually enjoy it. It makes sense that I’ve been good at a job like this, given my background of growing up on a farm in the country, in the land of “Work Hard, Play Hard” lifestyles. I come from a different culture than my co-workers, and they find my attitudes and approach bemusing to say the least, but we get along and I’m already called “sistah” by everyone. I’ve been accepted, obvious outsider though I am. It’s a nice feeling.

And while I would never want this as a full-time job, or even long-term employment, because it’s too much wear-and-tear on my body, I’m still really happy I get a chance to do this for a while. I would never have thought to try it, but it fell into my lap when I was job-hunting. It’s one of the most satisfying jobs I’ve had, and it fulfills the piece of me that was always unhappy with my old jobs because they all added to waste and consumption. Working in the food industry will kill your soul if you care about waste, and taking care of sickly indoor plants is gets futile and depressing when you love seeing green living things thrive instead of die.

Recycling is a great counter-balance to that, and working for a recycle center means I get to be part of the solution instead of adding to the problem. It feels good, and it keeps me smiling at costumers even at the end of a ten-hour day. I feel genuinely happy to help someone sort their recycling or give them information about our free e-waste program, because I truly believe that every little bit counts, and I’m keeping a little bit more from becoming trash in the earth.

Young People Push Back Against Gender Categories

Young People Push Back Against Gender Categories

My Mum sent me this link a while back, following a conversation we had about same topic. I finally got around to listening to it (I know, I know, I’m a terrible procrastinator), and was really impressed with the positive way they handled this subject for such a short segment.
As a self-identified queer and fluid person myself, I really loved hearing this on NPR, and wanted to share it.

Macklemore – Same Love

This song came on the radio as I was driving home today. I was about to change the station, when the first line caught my attention.

I kept listening, and about halfway through realized I was crying because I couldn’t believe a song this amazing and important was on a main-stream top hits station.

I knew I had to find it and share it.
Please listen.

Why I Quit Facebook; or, The First Step in Turning My Life Around.

Since I don’t have any current travels to blog about, I thought I’d do some back-story posts. So here it goes…

I quit Facebook about a year and a half ago.

I’d been on it for years, and most of my friends and family used it to keep in touch with each other. I had a large group of extended circles of friends, and with many of them this was my only means of contact. I had family I was very close to, who at that point lived very far away, and who posted so constantly that it was almost like living with them again.

I had a lot of reasons to stay.

But I was also in a relationship that had long-since stopped giving back as much as I put into it. And I had a full-time job which required a very time-consuming commute to and from, and didn’t have any potential reward or advancement.

I was unhappy, and focused on not letting anyone — including myself — know just how desperately miserable I was quietly becoming. I had almost no free time thanks to the commute, was not making much money thanks to my living arrangement, and my relationship was steadily growing more strained as I grew more desperate to hold on to it, despite how unhappy and unhealthy the dynamics of it had become.

My only positive moments were the few times I dragged myself to spend time away in the company of a few closer friends.

Because I refused to acknowledging to myself just how bad things had gotten in my personal life, I wasn’t asking for help or spending enough time with the few positives. I was solely focused on the failing relationship and the peculiar circumstances in which it existed and which slowly drove me mad.

Add to this mix Facebook: with all the inherently out-of-context information snippets of other people’s lives, the drama and angst on display for the world, the false sense of intimate knowledge… Everything about it heightened my insecurities and fears and doubts. Everything would make the feeling of isolation grow worse. I would spend precious hours before and after my commute reading everything I’d missed since the last time I was on Facebook. And after every time, I would feel worse than when I’d logged on.

Something had to change — many somethings — before I could fight my way out of the depression I had been living in. So I did the easiest thing first: I made the announcement to all my contacts that I was leaving Facebook, set the date, and did nothing else on it until I deactivated my account.

People’s reactions when I tell them I’m not on Facebook anymore:

• They make all the arguments why I should be.
• I counter with sensible and logical points, none of which are overly personal as to the real reasons.
• They admit my counterargument sound, and proceed to congratulate me and tell me that they could never do it.

Once I got over the initial adjustment, I felt only relief about my decision. I have not regretted it in the least. Nor do I regret my eventual decision to leave the relationship, the job, and the living situation, but that’s a story for another day…