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Existential FOMO

I KNOW THOSE FEELS BROOOOOO

It's been exactly one year since I published a new blog post, and I didn't really intend to write one today, but hey, it seems like a good idea. I have some things to get off my chest.

Today, November 13, is my last day as a contract editor. In addition to my full-time job, I had a side gig for the last sixteen months editing work for online college classes. It was good work. I was getting editorial experience, which I desperately needed, and the money was good.

But in the last few months, I was being sent more and more work, and my day job was getting more strenuous as well. Suddenly it became the norm to work a solid 7.5 hours at my job, commute home, edit for another 3 hours, go to bed, rinse, repeat. And there was lots of editing on the weekends too. It became too much. So I put in my two weeks for the editing gig.

At first I was elated. I might miss the extra money, but I was going to have something I hadn't had consistently since who knows how long: free time.

I am a 28-year-old professional with a bachelor's degree and two master's. I got each degree one right after the other, with only a month in between each one (I just did the math and that's literally true, one month between each degree, holy shit). When I finally graduated with my final master's degree, I started my editing job a month later. I've had a full-time job for over four years. The entirety of that time I've also been going to school part-time or, more recently, working the side job.

I'm freaking out. Last night I sat balled up on the couch and cried because I didn't know what to do with an evening where I didn't have any responsibilities to take care of.

I thought that having all this extra time would free me up to do something really good with my life. Something creative! I'd get back into writing. I'd pitch stuff and get it published. I'd revamp my job search and find something more fulfilling to do with my Mondays through Fridays. I'd take up a new and exciting hobby. I might even relax a bit and enjoy down-time to do nothing productive or useful.

What I've been learning, as November 13 has crept up on me, is that I actually don't know how to relax. I've had this ache in my solar plexus for the last several days, which I get from time to time, that always tells me when something is wrong. It's useful only insofar as telling me that I'm unhappy or anxious, and then I have to do the more difficult work of figuring out why. What am I going to do with time to spend where I'm not accountable for anything? What if I spend the rest of my life working in a 9 to 5 job and spending my nights watching TV and exercising and seeing my friends and snuggling with my husband and cats?

The truth is that I'm really not happy without something to look forward to or some kind of goal that I'm working toward, and also I am incredibly afraid of death and am always thinking about how one day I'll be gone from the world and eventually no one will remember me, and things will keep going on as usual except I won't be here, and that sucks.

I have existential FOMO that pushes me to do everything I can do right now, to do something, anything that means someone might remember me when I'm dead, even if I'm exhausted and not particularly happy while I'm doing it.

But I quit the editing job for a reason, which is that I know free time to do nothing is good for me and something that all humans should have. I just don't know how to deal with it yet.

I'm going to try to avoid doing anything I think I *should* be doing this weekend. I am going to be lazy and useless and I'm not going to do anything unless it seems fun. I am not going to improve myself as a human being or cross anything off my bucket list.

Turns out I really don't know how to end this! So, the end.

Editing, diversity, and finding meaning

Yesterday Time published its fourth annual list of words to be banned in the coming year, and the internet exploded.

Typically I pay barely any attention to these lists, because A) it's all kind of silly and B) it's usually a poorly disguised reflection of whatever brand of "kids these days" BS people are complaining about right now. See Time's past winners: OMG, YOLO, and twerk, which are really just slang developed by the 13-to-25 crowd and otherwise harmless.

Okay, but now. Apparently the word "feminist" ought to be banned--and Time's measly reasoning for this is "when did it become a thing that every celebrity had to state their position on whether this word applies to them, like some politician declaring a party? Let's stick to the issues and quit throwing this label around like ticker tape at a Susan B. Anthony parade."

I don't need to talk about how ridiculous and infuriating that is--a thousand people before me have already done so, you can Google it--but yeah, I was pissed all day.  

So was Roxane Gay, incredible author of Untamed State (haven't read yet, want to/kind of scared to) and Bad Feminist (holy smokes what a wonderful book), who had a perspective on it that resonated with me in a major way:

(Also Gay said she is going to write her own essay on this whole issue which is going to be perfect and everything we need, and much better than what I am writing here, but I will write it anyway.)

So, diversity. I know it's kind of a boring buzzword ("At HerpDerp Corporation we value diversity because bleh bleh bleh"), and usually I don't care for it any more than you do. But actual diversity is important in real situations, like this fiasco, where the real question is--who let this slide? 

You're telling me that not only did a woman (yeah, I know! A woman!) concoct this embarrassingly racist/ageist/sexist list, but it got vetted by at least one editor? Who was the person who read this and said, "Yup, looks good"? 

Editing is about a whole lot more than knowing where to put your commas or what the difference between "gorilla" and "guerilla"is or when to end this run-on sentence. It is also, as Gay touched on, about being sensitive to what could sound shitty to a particular demographic.

I think about this occasionally when I'm daydreaming about my eventual full-time career in editing (it will happen! It will!), because as much as I sincerely love the itty-bitty details of editorial work, I also have this obnoxious desire to do something "meaningful" and "fulfilling" with my life, with the overall goal of one way or another "making a difference." Fixing other people's grammar sometimes does that for me--it really does--but other times I have to get all Carrie Bradshaw on myself and wonder: what does it all mean? What if I look back at the end of my life with the knowledge that I was always able to support myself financially but the work I did for 40 hours a week was pointless? 

That's perfectly fine for some folks (and a lot of people have no other option; let's be real here). I don't know if it would work for me, but I'm also 27 years old and probably could stand to give myself a break for not being the successful woman I want to be yet. Still, it's something I worry about: maintaining a steady income while managing not to have to look myself in the mirror and laugh at the robot I've become. I would like to, eventually, Be Someone.

And then Time gets totally slaughtered on the internet for letting one of its correspondents write up this dumb-ass article, and I look at that and think, okay, I never would have let that happen. And neither would a lot of really smart people in the world, people who are not necessarily middle-aged straight white men, who might have a different and more careful understanding of words and ideas, who will make your publication or your website or your book better and smarter and more nuanced and less likely to hurt or shame anyone, intentionally or not. 

The more diversity you get in a business--especially a big one, like Time--the better you're going to be at whatever it is you do, unless the thing you're doing is actually like making home furnishings for white supremacists, or what have you.

I am still far away from learning everything I need to learn about people different from me, because for all my good traits I am still a straight white woman who has been given a lot of things in her life and doesn't always realize how good she has it. Intersectional feminism is a vast and difficult field, y'all! But I would also bet my humble savings account that I have substantially more sense and empathy running through my bones than whatever sack of meat decided it'd be okay to leave "feminist" on a word-banning poll.

Things not to talk about #43: how and what I'm eating.

Let's set a simple little rule, everyone. It's easy to remember, it's easy to stick to. I'll even spell it out and add explanations. Here it is:

Unless the thing you are saying is completely positive or completely neutral, please don't comment on what I'm eating, or what it must say about me. 

Here are the things you may say about my lunch: "That looks good!" "That smells delicious!" "How's your sandwich?" And variations thereof.

Here are the things you may not say: 

"Oooh, being good, are we?" When I am having a salad or otherwise "healthy" lunch.

"I wish I could eat that!" I guess this is alright if you have a medically diagnosed food allergy and are sincerely sad that you can't partake in my gluten-based pasta or whatever, but not in any other case. 

"Is that tofu? Ugh, I HATE tofu. Disgusting." Bro, we don't have to like the same foods, but don't gag at me. It's rude.

"That'll go straight to your thighs!" Okay, thanks! I'm just going to sit here and suddenly feel shitty about this burger that one second ago I was really enjoying.

"TWO sandwiches?! That's so much! Where do you keep it?" This was literally said to my best friend in regards to her PB&J lunch recently. For what it's worth, my friend is a petite woman, but it honestly doesn't matter. You can't just go around saying things like this.

Okay, so here are the reasons why.

Food is a HUGE source of shame for a lot of people. Women in particular. We are pretty much taught that eating anything for the simple sake of pleasure is a bad thing--which, of course, is where you get phrases like "sinful brownies." If you have dessert with your dinner or you choose the fries instead of the side salad, you probably do so with a certain amount of guilt. I know I do! It's a delightful part of being a woman in a society where food is plentiful and usually rich. Welcome to shoveling food into your mouth and feeling really bad about all of it!

If you're saying nasty (even subtly nasty) things to people about what they eat, you're part of the problem.

Here's the other thing: it doesn't matter who you're saying these hurtful things to, or even if you think you're complimenting someone (which is a whole other issue I'll get to in a second). It doesn't matter. Because you never know what's going on with someone.

As far as my friend's experience from earlier, I'm going to guess--because I know her life--that she felt like having two PB&J sandwiches, so that's what she made. But there could have been a hundred reasons. Maybe she's getting over an illness and needs the extra energy. Maybe she's training for an athletic event and is burning a zillion calories. Maybe her doctor wants her to gain weight. Or, again, MAYBE SHE JUST FELT LIKE TWO SANDWICHES.

You don't know and it's none of your business.

And stop it with the backhanded compliments towards skinny women. The following are no longer allowed:

"Oh, I wish I could eat like you!" No one's stopping you, as far as I can tell. Do what you want.

"I hate how skinny you are!" How do people think this is okay to say?

"What, do you have an eating disorder or something? Haha, you must be bulimic!" Honestly, so many people deal with some type of disordered eating that you could easily be right on this last one. Not because skinny people always have eating disorders, but because it's an epidemic, for people of every size.

Thin people are put on a pedestal of sorts, to the point where some think it's perfectly okay to give them shit for their body type, out of some kind of misguided envy. But that really needs to stop.

I also want to point out that none of what I have said so far is different when it comes to anyone who is actively working on losing weight or getting healthier or anything like that. The same rules apply. If your coworker has told you that he's trying to shed a few pounds, don't read the label on his container of full-fat yogurt and be like "Hmmm, cheating today, huh?" You. Don't. Know. For one thing, maybe that's something he fully allows himself on whatever diet plan he's doing, and for another thing you are not the diet police and your coworker is an adult who can take care of himself.

Everybody just shut up already. 

By request: a few thoughts about anti-date rape nail polish

Several days ago, I (along with the rest of the world, apparently) heard about a group of North Carolina State University students who had developed a nail polish that would detect date rape drugs. With a swirl of your manicured finger in a cranberry vodka handed to you by some new guy you met, you'd be able to tell--based on whether or not the polish changed color--if it'd been laced with something.

My first thought was: Hey, that's kinda cool. My second (slightly embarrassing) thought was: Does it come in different colors?

Here's the thing--I'm not as outraged by the invention of this nail polish as many of my feminist peers seem to be. And I'll say up front that they have made some excellent points, many of which I agree with.

I am just as angry about the expectation that women do all the work of preventing rape and sexual violence, about the idea that if you'd just worn less revealing clothing/not gotten drunk/stayed at home like a good little lady this horrible thing would not have happened to you.

I am just as angry about the idea that rape happens, and that there's not much you can do about it except stay away from rapists, who conveniently wear badges that say "RAPIST" on them and are never someone you personally know, like your boyfriend or your classmate or your coworker you thought was cool.

It's just that I don't really see a nail polish that can detect some date-rape drugs as part of the problem. I see it as a tool: just one tool in the entire war against sexual violence.

My freshman year of college, I was threatened by a guy who lived in the same dorm building as me after I told him (following one date and a few make-out sessions) that I didn't really feel like seeing him anymore. There'd been more than a few signs that told me he was a little unstable, a tad insecure, and I was starting to get grossed out. ("If you wanted fries from McDonald's right now, I would walk there and get them for you," he sobbed at me in the middle of a frigid February night, and I was like, "okay...thanks, I guess," silently wishing he would go away so I could get some sleep.)

Some time after I ended things, he came by my dorm room and showed me his poorly slashed wrists, a tribute to his affection for me--evidently it was my fault he'd decided to cut himself. I showed him out. After that came the phone calls, which I didn't pick up. Then there were the voicemails in which he informed me that I deserved to die, stupid, cold-hearted bitch that I was.

At that point the police got involved. The dude quit bothering me, though we continued to live in the same dorm building for the rest of the school year and I'd see him wandering campus or standing outside in his pajamas during a fire drill. My heart raced every time I saw him. I was nineteen and I didn't know what to do. I did, however, buy a small canister of pepper spray to keep on my keychain.

I never had to use it. I think it was only in the last year that the thing finally got chucked it out. But having that little weapon on hand, closing my fingers around it inside my coat as I went from class to class, made me feel a little safer.

Date-rape nail polish is hardly the answer to the problem of rape. But if it lends any sense of control or empowerment to the person wearing it--if it means she feels comfortable going out among strangers--I cannot begin to tell anyone that this is a bad thing.

All that said, however, we all need to be clear on a couple of very important points:

1. Drug-detection nail polish is NOT anti-rape polish. It will detect a few common types of drugs used for the purpose of date rape (we'll get to that in a second). Never, under ANY circumstances, should a woman be blamed for not wearing the damn nail polish if she's raped or assaulted after being drugged. The victim-blaming BS has to stop.

2. Here are the drugs that the nail polish can detect: Rohypnol, Xanax, GHB. These are NOT the only drugs used for date rape. (I mean, usually it's just as simple as getting someone really drunk on plain old alcohol.) Trust your instincts. Don't drink anything you don't feel is safe.

3. That last point might have a few folks bristling, because again--why should it be a woman's job to keep herself safe from rape and sexual violence? I know. I agree. But please don't tell me not to look out for myself. It sucks, it absolutely does, but we are not yet at the point where everyone gets that rape is horrible and no one should do it, ever. Until we get there--and it's not going to happen in my lifetime--I'm never going to fault a woman for doing whatever she thinks is best for her own safety.

4. This is the hardest one, for me: talk about this shit. Out loud, with people who possibly don't agree or don't understand. The pushback against date-rape nail polish has primarily been about the fact that a fashion accessory isn't going to solve the problem; only educating people about the reality and the horror of rape, about the concept of consent, will get us there. So do it. It would be great if there was, like, a high school class that you had to take in order to graduate that was all about various forms of sexual violence and how none of it is ever okay. But until that happens: call people out for their gross jokes and their misogyny. Share your experiences, if you're comfortable. If you get drugged and/or assaulted and/or raped, report it.

And believe women who tell you they've been raped. It happens more often than you think.

A rebuttal to my free Lululemon tote bag

I'm not the only one who has one of these, right? The Lululemon tote that came with your $1.2 million purchase of one pair of yoga pants? Here's the thing: this is a nice tote bag. It's sturdy, and it's just the right size for my workout clothes and a water bottle.

But I'm a little ashamed of all the pithy sayings printed on this bag. So-called "inspirational quotes" usually inspire me to do little more than roll my eyes. Last year, a coworker passed around little badges that we could write an "inspiring word" on for a visual reminder at our desk, and I promptly wrote "FAIL" on mine, because EFF THAT NOISE.

And now, I take this little bag on the train to work with me, and I find myself wrapping my arms around it to keep all the inspiration from offending my co-riders. Maybe it doesn't matter--I see other women with this same damn bag all the time. Still! I need, in my small, simple way, to fight back a little bit. So, here are all the quotes on my tote bag, and my response to each.

"Friends are more important than money."

In what instance would I have to choose between my friends and my money? There's kind of a false dichotomy. Sure, I can see how maybe you don't want to work 80 hours a week and lose track of all your family and friends because you are too busy climbing the corporate ladder. But there are also many people who don't make nearly enough money at all, and yeah, they're gonna take that extra shift if it means being able to pay their bills. Their friends will understand--they better, if they're decent friends at all. And for those of us kind of in the middle...I don't know what to tell you. I can't think of a single instance in which I actually had to prioritize one over the other. This makes no sense.

"Don't trust that an old age pension will be sufficient."

Sufficient for WHAT? You just told me to value my friends over my money and now you're telling me that none of it matters anyway, we're all going to die broke and alone?

"Sunscreen absorbed into the skin might be worse for you than sunshine. Get the right amount of sunshine."

NOOOO. We have strayed away from inspiration directly into bad science. Do not believe this hocus-pocus. Wear your damn sunscreen. My god, for a company that's purportedly all about health, this is horrifying. On that note...

"Write down two personal, two business and two health goals for the next 1, 5 and 10 years. Do this four times a year. Goal setting triggers your subconscious computer."

I don't know what it means when someone tells me to trigger my subconscious computer. Also, based on Lululemon's track record, I would assume a health goal is essentially "be skinny enough to keep wearing Lululemon clothes."

"Creativity is maximized when you are living in the moment."

Boring and cliche. Also untrue for most people.

"Visualize your eventual demise. It can have an amazing effect on how you live in the moment."

The thing that gets me here is the word "demise." Not "death," which leads me to imagine being very old and slipping away quietly in my comfortable old-lady canopy bed, but "demise," which makes me think I'm going to get run over by a bulldozer. Also, why is Lululemon so obsessed with mortality?

 "A daily hit of athletic-induced endorphins gives you the power to make better decisions, helps you be at peace with yourself, and offsets stress."

I was okay with this one at first, but "athletic-induced" is giving me hives.

"Effectiveness is predicated by replacing the words "wish", "should" and "try" with "I will."

Ugh, so many things. First: EFFECTIVENESS? PREDICATED? Whose stuffy boardroom are we in? Also, I left that typo after "wish" there because that's literally what's printed on the bag. Commas go INSIDE the quotation marks, people. Even in Canada!

There are others, but most of them are cut off on one end so that you don't get the full quote, leading to tantalizing bits such as "...orgasm of life." For real.

Books don't have to be everything

This is awesome but not THAT awesome.

A while back, as part of my graduate studies, I took a class on the publishing industry and its rather uncertain future. We spent one evening talking about the different ways that writing is getting published these days--e-publishing, blogging, fan fiction--and inevitably, talk turned to the 50 Shades of Grey series.

Someone mentioned a book club in her hometown where little old ladies and housewives would get together and read (you guessed it) 50 Shades of Grey. We all tittered at her description. Not only is the series pretty heavily S&M-based erotica, but the writing is poor quality. (Disclaimer: I have nothing particularly against erotica, but the otherwise conservative people I know who kept posting on Facebook about how much they loved 50 Shades always amused me.) And even if you've read the books and enjoyed them--and I don't care if you did--you can probably concede that, well, they aren't exactly great writing.

But one of my classmates drew us back as we laughed. "At least they're reading," she said. "We talk all the time about how people don't read anymore, and then we make fun of them for reading 50 Shades of Grey? It's still a book and we don't need to make fun of it."

At the time, I thought she was right. We were silent after that, put in our place as graduate students in writing who ought to be happy that, for any of its flaws or ironies, a book was bringing people together.

But I'm not sure I agree anymore. Now, here's the obvious part of the post. I love books. I love reading. I have a handful of degrees focused on the creation, digestion, and analysis of the written word (that's a fancy way of saying I was an English major). Books are amazing and literacy allows for creativity and mind adventures and reading rainbows etc. to infinity. When I meet someone who says they don't read, I'm disappointed; anyone with a full bookcase is extremely sexy in my eyes.

But not ALL books are equal. Some are just plain bad. The existence of words on a page does not automatically make a certain story superior to one told in, say, a TV show. For example: for Christmas this year, my mother bought my fiance and me a book called 1001 Questions to Ask Before Getting Married. When we started reading it, we quickly realized that the book was a joke. And not even an intentional joke, just a poorly thought-out bunch of words on paper. There were questions in this book so basic that any reasonable couple would have talked about these things well before any idea of marriage--like what kind of career you want, or if you want children. There was an entire section devoted to making sure you weren't secretly gay--obviously the whole book catered to straight/heteronormative couples. A section on pets had a question about what you'd do with your partner's pet if you hated it: try and get it to run away and lie about it later, maybe? Hmm? Would you do that? Better find out if your partner is a psychopathic kitten-killer before it's too late!

We were in hysterics, reading this horrible book. (In my poor mom's defense, she thought she'd bought us something else--some other, way more legit couples book--and agreed with us that this book was totally ridiculous. We all had a good laugh.)

For what it's worth, I don't really care for used bookstores. At least not the ones where the books are piled high and you can barely move and everything is $2 and mildew hangs in the air. These places are the holy grail for some bibliophiles, I know, but they're plain gross to me.

Now, I don't care what you read--if you read Twilight for fun, that's all good by me, though we ought to be able to at least agree that there are some rather problematic themes in that series and that maybe the writing quality isn't the best. Harlequin romance novels? Why not? Again, they can be formulaic and silly and often rather sexist--but also fun and frothy and totally fine. Graphic novels? Actually, a lot of these are better than you might be aware and I really want everyone to read Persepolis.

I also don't read as much as I think I should. A so-called writer like me ought to be tearing through a novel a week at least, right? Yeah, that doesn't happen. I do read, and I'm slowly getting back into the luxury of diving into something really wonderful and not coming up for air until much later, blinking slowly as I remember my own reality. It just doesn't happen every week, or even every month. Because a lot of the time, reading feels like a lot of work, and I'd rather turn on Netflix and scroll through Twitter.

I've decided that I should work on my reading habits, but I should also work on my unnecessary guilt about how much reading I'm doing. Reading a so-so book isn't necessarily praiseworthy, and it certainly isn't better than watching your favorite movie or listening to a podcast. Books are not the holiest of media.

And reading should not ever ever be something you do because you don't want to feel like you haven't done it enough. Read whatever you want, but read it because you want to. (Or because you're paid to be a lawyer and read legal briefs or because you're paid to read someone's biography and review it.)

And those women in their 50 Shades book club? I mean, I'll never fully get it, but I'm fine with it. You do you.