My Thousand Year Old Vampire Self

I mentioned in my 2015 review post that I’d talk about what this whole thousand year old vampire business is.

The idea came vaguely from the Vancouver Less Wrong community – or at least it was at a VanLW meetup that I had first heard the term. I’m not entirely sure where it first originated from or what it originally meant, (Mostly because I’m not sure if I even really paid attention to the actual conversation…I was too distracted by my own thoughts about it😛 Sorry to whoever originally mentioned it!) but over the years I’ve made it to mean being the person I want to be. Which I think is similar to thinking about one’s Coherent Extrapolated Volition if one were to think about it in LessWrong terms😛

That is – if I were an immortal vampire who has a thousand years of experience behind them and could be anything, and do anything, who would I be – what would I do? What would the best version of me do, act like, think like, etc.?

And I’ve talked a bit about this on my other blog and on here. That I want to be a mama to the community that I’m apart of because I enjoy taking care of people. That I want to be able to do that and take care of myself too. That I’d also want to be youthful, and outgoing, and fun, and organize all the fun things that helped the community grow and be more connected.

In a nutshell (or snailshell for those of you allergic to nuts ;P ), my thousand year vampire self is beautiful, powerful, compassionate, passionate about life, passionate about her relationships, and passionate about learning! The key parts to my thousand year vampire self? That she’s compassionate and powerful!

In this case, powerful doesn’t mean manipulative or mean or controlling. In this sense powerful people are people who accept reality as it is and as it isn’t – and don’t let their interpretation of reality define who they are, because often our interpretations can be a little skewed as they’re made of and affected by our past experiences which may or may not accurately reflect reality anymore. It’s hard for me to explain properly but for example, if someone were to tell me that I’m an awful human being – as a powerful person I could accept that that is what they said and that they didn’t say anything else, and not let that define who I am – but use it as information that there’s something that person is unhappy about and really listen to what that is. Now this doesn’t mean that I’ll stand for things that are wrong. Like people being abused, or used, or people being manipulative to others. But being able to do accept reality as it is and not have your past experience define you gives the affordance for shedding one’s baggage and hang ups and be able to focus on what’s going on right now and be present with people. And when one is present with people it’s amazing to find just how much you actually hear about what people are saying and how much you find that the need and desire to manipulate and control a situation just minimizes to near nothingness. It’s a lot easier to meet people at a happy midway where everyone’s needs can be met when you know what they’re actually asking for.

 

I’m still having a hard time with this powerful business – everywhere I turn I find something else that I’m hung up on. Like whether or not I can find a life-partner, or whether or not I’ll graduate with my BA, or even whether or not I’ll ever make it out of the Novice division in West Coast Swing😛

And it’s been amazing to see just how much my Weak Act (as I’ve been calling it recently: Areas of my life where I continue to behave like I’m this weak pitiable little fragile thing, when I know I’m not) gets in the way of all the other aspects of my 1kVamp self. It’s hard to live life with passion and be compassionate when I’m constantly believing that and behaving as though I’m weak and in need of help and protection.

 

Fortunately I have friends around me that have been helping me to see where I continue to live in my Weak Act. They might not always be directly telling when I’m in my Weak Act but when I talk to them and ask them how I’m coming across or how they’re experiencing hanging out with me and they tell me things like “sometimes I feel like you’re making things about you and not really listening to what I have to say” – that’s a pretty good sign to me that I’m not living as powerfully as I want to be.

And I think that it will be something that I’ll be constantly working on – because that Weak Act, it’s just another part of me. It’s the part of me that doubts, that worries, that is concerned with what other people think of me, that is desperately seeking acceptance and love, but also is adamant that it doesn’t deserve either of those things. And it doesn’t make it a bad thing. But it’s not workable for the person that I want to be or for the goals that I have for my life. And how I’ll stop it from getting in my way is by acknowledging it, accepting that that’s what I did and how I behaved and accepting the consequences of my behaviour, and moving past it and not making it mean anything about who I am as a person.

 

As I said a few paragraphs ago, a huge part of my 1kVamp self is the compassion; not just towards others but also being compassionate towards myself: learning to be okay with not being okay when I’m not actually okay (which has been really hard lately), and learning to accept my mistakes and accept the consequences of my mistakes, learning to accept when I’ve behaved in my Weak Act and the consequences of that as well, and still showing myself love.

Sometimes I find it kind of hilarious how I will give an abundance of compassion towards others but not myself. I often find myself showing tons of compassion towards even those whose behaviours have phenomenally hurt me, but towards myself I will beat myself up to no end over things that I did years ago.

 

 

So those are the two things that I’ve been really working on recently, regarding my 1kVamp self that is: showing compassion towards myself and living life as powerfully as I can.

 

It’s not easy living up to my 1Kvamp self when I’ve only got 25/26 years of experience on my back and she’s got a thousand but hey – I’ll get there😉

 

Later days!

Dee❤

My 2015 in review

Figured I should do this.😛

It’s funny, I was looking at my drafts, and I actually had one for last year that I never posted for some reason? Oh well.

So where do I start?

Well, I moved in with my brother at the beginning of the year. Flunked out school for a second time. Avoiding dealing with that while working at an organization that has been giving me experience in the field I want to work in when I finally finish my degree. Was in a car accident at the end of June. Went down to the Bay area again for 2 and a half weeks. Came back and have been working as an on-call/casual support worker at the same organization, while dealing with physiotherapy and trying to heal as fast as possible from the whiplash and muscle injuries from the car accident. Working hard on improving my dance. Broke up with my partner of almost 3 years. Oh! And I can’t forget – finishing off the Landmark curriculum.

That’s the tl;dr of my year.

 

 

The big things from this year that I really want to get into:

Getting a job in the field of work that I want to be working in when I graduate! As I mentioned in a previous post, I can’t talk about it too much because confidentiality is super key and important. But the biggest thing is just the experience of it all. It really helped me to confirm that I really love helping people and that being a support worker in any capacity is what I really want to be doing. It’s also taught me a lot about self-care and boundaries, and just how important these two things are when working with people. Creating effective boundaries while still being supportive has been the biggest thing, that and learning to accept other peoples choices – and their personal power and independence, and still being supportive even if I don’t agree with the choices.  (I’ll make that a topic for another blog post as there won’t be enough time here😛 )

 

The car accident. Man that has brought about a lot of growth for me. Learning to function while being in constant pain, and learning when to take some time for myself and to take care of my body. Really nailed home the importance of self-care. If I don’t take time for self-care, I get days where I can’t really even get out of bed or focus on anything.

 

Landmark! This I did at the end of the year, and I think that it’s had the biggest impact. See, I broke up with my partner of almost 3 years, 2 days before taking the final communication course. The funniest part about that for me? A huge reason for the breakup? Lack of effective and powerful communication. And that’s really what I realized during this last course. That for the last year and a half, I had let myself forget just how powerful and amazing I am. And that all of my interactions and all of the areas in my life where I was unhappy – were completely due to my playing the “weak, poor, little, helpless me” act. School, work, family, relationship, friendships, everything. I looked back at my life over the last year and a half and I hated myself – because everything that went wrong was because I allowed myself to be small and weak. I mean, the last year and a half has had a lot of ups and a lot of great things – but there were many areas where I just felt completely unhappy and completely powerless and helpless.

Realizing this has definitely helped me make a lot of changes in my life since. The breakup – has had its up and downs, but I definitely feel that the person I was being before I took the course, would have dealt with the breakup in a much different and arguably worse way than how I’ve been dealing with it recently. School! I stopped avoiding it and found out that the effort that it will take to get back on track is so minimal compared to what I had it being in my mind. Friendships! I have more to say on this in another post – but basically I’ve been more powerful and interactive in these as well compared to how I’ve been in the past. Family! I’ve been spending a lot more time with them and being more attentive than I have been in the past. I intend on doing so more as well🙂

 

 

All in all, peak-end rule is playing very strongly here😛 Where I feel that this year has been a good one, because I had such a good last month of the year😛

 

 

In terms of overall goals of this year:

Well there are a lot😛 But the main one is getting back to school again. And finding a balance between my current passion, which is dance, and my career, and my friends, family, and self-care.

Essentially this is the year where I really start going down the road to being a thousand year old vampire. (I’ll explain more on that in another post).😛

 

 

Oooh I guess I should also mention a little bit about what I use to keep myself on track with my goals.

My current system is a little convoluted but I’ve been finding that it mostly works for me: Main products that I use: Habitica, Complice, Beeminder, Inbox, Passion Planner.

• So I use Habitica and Beeminder to give me incentives to actually do what I say/want/should do.
  • Beeminder I use for things that I reaaaalllly don’t want to do but should be doing or that I just have a hard time remembering to do – essentially anything that I procrastinate.
  • Habitica I use for, surprise surprise, helping me create and maintain habits – the quests and party aspects of it are when help me the most, because I’m accountable to other people, and if I don’t do my habits then I hurt my party which I don’t like doing.
• Inbox, well I like their reminder system and just generally love using Google products whenever I can😛 Mostly because it syncs well with my phone and other devices so it’s easy to use on the go.
• Passion Planner! I love my passion planner. For 2016 I bought the #Staygoalden planner and it’s so pretty and I love it. It really helps me to break down my long term goals that I have on Complice, and helps me organize my weeks and months.
• Complice has been awesome for day-to-day organization. I write down what I intend to do for the day, and then I write down what actually did. It’s also been super helpful for reviewing what in my system is working and what isn’t – because where I’m not doing stuff, my system is obviously not working, and needs some tweaking.

 

 

Anyhoo, I think that’s about it in terms of reviewing what I did in 2015, and declaring my plan for 2016. I’ll post a couple more entries in a little while (probably the next one will be on the thousand year vampire thing).

Loves,

Dee❤

On discovering what it means to me to be polyamorous

So a little while ago I shared someone’s blog post on being poly on my Facebook feed saying that while I have some personal differences, I found that it paints a good picture on what being poly means to me.

I also announced on my facebook feed that my partner of almost 3 years and I had broken up early December, making me effectively single for the first time since I started identifying as polyamorous, and the first time since I graduated high school too, now that I think about it. And it’s been making me think a lot.

A friend asked me shortly after the breakup if being polyamorous was an identifier of myself or a descriptor of my relationships, and when I realized that I was polyamorous.

I find it a bit of a funny story – basically, I had been practicing polyamory in my relationships for about a year/a year and a half before I really started identifying as polyamorous. I took being in a relationship with people who were more monogamously oriented than polyamorously oriented to make me realized that I identified as polyamorous. Essentially I had gotten to a point where I found that I needed more freedom be myself with people. I’m naturally a very cuddly and physically affectionate person. I love giving hugs and cuddles, I enjoy holding hands with people, and I love giving head scratches and massages. A lot of these things are things that cross the line for a lot of people, particularly those who are more monogamously oriented.

I think another thing for me is that I enjoy bringing love and joy to other people’s lives wherever I can. This includes not just those physically affectionate gestures, but also other gestures, like being aware of things that make them comfortable or uncomfortable and trying my best to make things that make them comfortable happen more and the things that make them feel uncomfortable happen less. I can definitely think of a few friendships that I’ve had with people that in an outside view may have appeared like a romantic relationship, just because of the way we interacted with one another.

Someone mentioned somewhere that the above post that started this whole conversation, sounded a lot like relationship anarchy to them. I can see that. But I have my own issues with calling it relationship anarchy – mostly because a lot of posts and blogs and things that talk about relationship anarchy and explain it, have a lot of hate on the “relationship escalator”. So much so that after a few hours of researching relationship anarchy and the relationship escalator I ended up feeling really bad for kind of liking it…I like that it provides a framework for me to start from when I’m building relationships. Not follow to a tee of course, but have an idea of where to go from or what to expect when I’m still figuring out a person and how to best communicate with them. But I can understand the hate on the relationship escalator. It’s a common relationship framework, like monogamy, that is widespread and one that most people presume works for everyone – if they only “worked hard enough” or “cared enough” to make work. It makes it hard for people to understand alternative relationship styles and preferences, or to understand that it might not actually work well for some people.

So that’s something I’ve been mulling over and wrapping my head around for the last little while. Ever since my former partner first brought it up just a little under a year ago. I’ve been slowly warming up to the concept of relationship anarchy – but I think I still prefer polyamory over relationship anarchy at the moment – at least until I understand it fully or get over my connotations and baggage on it :P

Now this most recent breakup has definitely made me question whether or not I want to identify as polyamorous. Mostly because I’ve realized that what I really want out of a relationship is a life-partnership, not just a flover or a friendtimate (see: http://polysingleish.com/poly-glossary/). Not that I have anything against having flovers and friendtimates – I’d love to have lots of those, but I know that one thing I truly desire right now is a life-partnership – someone with whom I can plan my future with, who will be there to support and love me through thick and thin, and who welcomes my love and support as well. It’s been funny, I’ve found relationships that have aspects of these but nothing that has all of these in one package😛  and the monogamous and relationship escalator framework would very easily fill this desire, at least in comparison to the polyamorous and relationship anarchist framework. I feel that I would be more likely to get a lot of flovers and friendtimates out of being polyamorous but maybe not as many life-partners? But maybe that’s just the mindset I’m in now (gee, thanks breakup-brain).

In any case, what I’ve decided to work on for now is discovering what it means to a single-poly😛 Basically, thinking about what being a “me” is rather than a being a “we” – and learning to be comfortable with that. I’ve been apart of so many “we”s that I feel that I really know how to be an effective “we”…but it’s been so long since I’ve been completely independent and on my own that I’m struggling a bit with being a “me”.  I figure relearning how to be completely independent again would probably be healthier for me and better for any future relationships I’ll have in the long run. And I’m still interested in maintaining and creating floverships or friendtimacies, but I kind of want to learn what it means to focus on just me for once😛

New blog

Hi hi!

So, I recently got a job where confidentiality is extremely important, and it really got me thinking about what I say on this blog, and how it might affect different areas of my life.

Basically I decided – I’ll keep this blog, to give various updates on my life and thoughts, but it will probably be edited and censored like crazy😛

If you’d like to keep up to date on some of my more uninhibited thoughts, I’ve made a new blog that does just that, and I’ve found myself posting more to that than to this recently. If you’d like the new blog address send me a message and I’ll give you the URL but for the most part I’m trying to keep it completely separate from my current online persona.

I’ll post something on here later that something more relevant to what’s going on🙂

Cheers!
Dee❤

Age, growing pains, forgiveness, and other little things

The last year or so the concept of age has been an interesting concept to consider. My current social sphere is wildly diverse and often age doesn’t really seem to matter, but every once in a while something will come up that will remind me of my age. Whether it’s that I still have 10 years to go before I can even consider competing in the Sophisticated division at West Coast Swing conventions, or that I’ve been living on my own for 5 years already and in that time have already experienced a lot of different things.

In a lot of ways I still don’t feel like an adult, even though I’ve been technically and adult for a number of years and have even done a lot of adult-type things, like searching for apartments and work, being in a long term committed relationship and ending it, managing income and bills, travelling out of town by myself, etc. But even with all those things I often feel uncertain and lost doing them.

And yet in a lot of other ways I feel old and acutely aware of how short life is. Usually when I see someone much younger than me doing something insanely amazing and then think about how much more awesome they’ll be when they’re my age. I become very aware of all the things that I’ve missed out on, like if I had had my crap together I could have already had my BA in Psychology by now and be working on Graduate school or something.

I get that feeling old at 24 is more than a little silly, considering that it’s still really early in my life, but with a lot of my resources becoming further out my reach due to age, I can’t help it. Growing up in foster care has provided me with a lot of valuable resources, and now that I’m getting closer to the cut off age for those resources I really get the sense of Fear of Missing Out, or rather Guilt of Missing Out. I kind of feel like I’ve squandered my chances of being more, being better than I am.

And I guess in a sense, I have. There were a lot of resources that I could have used for school if I had just put my shoulder to the wheel and put in the work, and even if I had taken a break to try and figure stuff out, I still could have used the resources to give myself an extra leg up.

I could have done better. I could have done more. I could have listened better. But I didn’t and I suppose that’s alright, because each time I mess up, I learn something new. Even if it took the making the same mistake twice, each time I learn something a little bit different.

This time around, I’m learning to forgive myself and move on. It’s not easy, because I tend to beat myself and stew over even the tiniest mistakes that I make, but I’m doing it.

Becoming the New Old New Me

As confusing as that title is – I swear that it makes sense… sorta.

Basically, I’ve been thinking about the Me (in this post this is “Old New Me”, you’ll see  why later) I created while I was on my FBA (see old posts) in the Bay Area. She was fun, adventurous, curious, loving, mature, confident, and childlike all in one go. I loved her – but somewhere in the last year or so, I lost sight of her.

I got caught up in all the worries of what people here at home might think of her, and if they’d be able to accept her. Because she was an infinitely different person. Or at the very least – I feel like she is an infinitely different person. And something about being back in Vancouver has gotten me falling back into old habits – not staying in contact with people, escaping into my favourite TV shows, procrastinating on my goals. But the problem is that I’m not entirely sure what it is.

One theory is that it could be because I was technically on “Vacation” when I was in the Bay Area, I felt free and like I had nothing to lose – so I was less afraid to try things, and be curious.

Here I feel like I have everything to lose, my family, my education, my relationship with my partner, my friends, my home, and me.

It kind of feels like I went to a magical land where I could be anything that I wanted to be, and I came home and that person I wanted to be, no longer fitted the responsibilities that I held.

Which is kind of silly when I think about it. My responsibilities here are: be a good sister/daughter/friend/student, and my actions while in the Bay Area corresponded with those responsibilities – I made more of an effort to stay in contact with my family, and friends, I was more interested in trying to coordinate events/hangouts, I was more interested in learning and generally becoming better. So where did I go wrong?

I haven’t a clue. Maybe it was because I did get a bit of a surprised reaction from the people here when I was the Old New Me from the Bay Area. Because she did stick around for a tiny bit when I got home. But I think it was mostly because I was super anxious – I wanted people to really like who I wanted to be. And I think that was the main problem. Old New Me’s main defining aspect was confidence. She had the confidence to do everything that Old Me wanted to do, but was too afraid of doing in case the consequences turned out to be really really bad. And the fear and anxiety that Old New Me might not be good enough for the people here at home, kind of killed her. And of course, being Old Me was super easy to fall back into, because I knew where she stood. I knew what her role was, and I knew how people generally reacted to her.

She was within my Comfort Zone one could say.

 

 

See what I did there?😀😀

Yeah…okay… that was totally corny😛 But I swear it wasn’t planned! Most of my blog posts aren’t really planned out at first. I kind of come up with things as I go and then read through it all afterwards to see if they make any kind of sense. But mostly, it goes pretty unfiltered. And I kind of like it that way; it helps me figure out what my thoughts are on things. It helps me to know that what I’m saying is real, and not just something that I want to say to look good to a particular crowd. (Although, I do find myself doing that to some extent – I don’t think it’s very easy to complete get rid of that kind of urge😛 )

 

 

Anyhoo, back on topic.

 

I had a conversation with my partner about all this earlier today – about who I was in the Bay Area and how do I get back to being her – and I found myself feeling really really sad, but I couldn’t really figure out why during our conversation but while writing this post, it came to me. It’s because I let Old New Me die. I mean, she’s still here of course, she’s me. But the incarnation of her that was – is no more. I could never be HER again. Because she’s in the past and trying to be her is just playing dress up – it’s not being ME. But because I liked loved her, it was like losing an old friend that made you feel more alive than you had ever felt before.

But here’s where the hopeful/happy part comes. While I can’t ever be “Old New Me” again, I can give birth to a New Old New Me…. or to put it in a less confusing manner, I can become a New Me. Who’s still me, but this time around, she’s taking into account Old Me’s insecurities, fears, and anxieties, while still being the adventurous, fun, loving Old New Me with all her childlike confidence.

First step is trying something new – in short: I’m going on another CoZE adventure, but this time – I’m starting at home.

Differences, Privilege, and Stereotype Threat

So this summer semester I’m taking a psychology course that’s really gotten me thinking about my behaviour and the behaviour of those around me. It’s called Intergroup Relations and is turning out to be mostly about discrimination and the psychology behind those thoughts and behaviours associated with it.

One of the most interesting things that I’ve been getting from it is stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is basically where people who are reminded that they are apart of a group that is usually stereotyped and/or discriminated against, tend to perform worse than if they weren’t reminded, particularly in areas where said stereotype would be apparent. Why this happens is due to the fact that it takes effort to think about and avoid fulfilling a particular stereotype, which makes it harder for one to perform well at tasks that take a lot of cognitive power.

Since taking this course, I’ve been noticing things that I hadn’t before. I’ve been noticing my gender, my race, and all the various things about me that could be discriminated against. I’ve been noticing the ways that I behave and they ways the people around me behave because of these things as well.

I’ve never really put much thought into privilege, and how that plays a role in discrimination and stereotypes until this course. For example, I never really thought about how I behave when I’m out after dark versus how my male friends behave. My habit is to take the most brightly lit route with the least amount of bushes or parked cars or other obstacles that could potentially be hiding someone who could harm me. My male friends’ habits appear to be just take whatever route they feel like or is the most efficient, regardless of these concerns. Or that I’m more likely to avoid going out to an event because there’s a chance that I’ll have to go through an unsafe place to get there or back, rather than because I just don’t feel like going out. Not that any of this is wrong. I just never noticed this difference before. That I feel the need to take more consideration into what I do, where I do it, when I do it, and who with. While my male friends often haven’t even thought about these things at all. It’s a very passive type of privilege that I didn’t even realize that I didn’t have.

I tend to spend the majority of my time with males; I have a few female friends that I spend time with, but most of the people I interact with on a regular basis are male. So perhaps this is a reason I never noticed the differences before. There’s never been a need or feel to differentiate myself from my friends in a way that I felt left me at a disadvantage, so the differences never really mattered to me. The only times where I really noticed them were for things that I felt weren’t all that important, like how well I did at video games, or how fast I could run compared to my taller, stronger, male friends.  I never really felt that these differences affected my behaviour that all much. But since being aware of my gender I have noticed how I behave differently: I’m less likely to play video games because I think I’ll suck and I’m a little bit competitive, so if I take the game seriously and try to win and end up losing, I’ll get upset and it will ruin my night. So I don’t play, and if I do, I don’t try very hard and don’t take it seriously. Same with the running thing or anything strength related, I don’t bother, and if I do, I don’t put too much energy in doing it well. (By the way, this is a perfect example of stereotype threat).

In addition to all this, I’ve been noticing more discussions on all the different forms of discrimination – gender, sexuality, race, socioeconomic status, age, cultural/religious, etc. I’ve taken more of an interest in the effects of these things, and the discussions surrounding them.

I don’t have a particular stance one way or another, because there are too many arguments out there that contradict each other and too much heat coming from different sides. It’s hard for me to “pick a side” when both “sides” have both sound arguments and flawed arguments. All I really know here, is there’s something that needs to be changed about our attitudes and resulting behaviours towards each other, because it’s causing a significant number of people a significant amount of pain, no matter what “side” you’re on. Men get affected by sexism just as much as women do. Racism happens all over the world, no matter what race you are. No matter what the topic of discrimination is, both the privileged side and the disadvantaged side are significantly affected in some way.

Now I know from all the different articles and blog posts and videos or what have you, the above paragraph might ruffle a few feathers. How can the privileged side be just as affected by discrimination as the disadvantaged side? Well from what I’ve gathered, like this: If you’re on the privileged side, you can’t have any associating traits with the disadvantages side, good or bad, because then you are connected to the disadvantaged side – which makes you somehow less of a person. Which basically says that the people in the disadvantaged group aren’t people.

Men can’t cry, or display any sort of emotion other than anger, or enjoy “chick flicks” or boybands, or talk about being raped/sexually harassed/assaulted, because those are all associated with women, and you can’t be a “real man” if you have those traits. And if you’re not a “real man” then what are you? A straight person can’t display any sort of homosexual or otherwise non-heterosexual behaviours, because that’s “not right” or “immoral” and you could lose your job, your family, your friends. Because people who aren’t straight don’t deserve those kinds of things, because they’re “wrong”.

Now, these things are all changing and have changed. Things aren’t the same as they were 50 years ago, or even 20 years ago. It’s more acceptable now to be gay or lesbian; women have been more prominent in big CEO positions; there are men who are stay-at-home dads; open displays of racism and discrimination has become illegal in a lot of places. We’ve gotten better at accepting each other for who we are, but just because it’s gotten better doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist any more. And part of me wonders if it will ever not exist. The human race has been around for hundreds of years, and yet we still have all these problems accepting each other. Maybe all we can hope for is to slowly get better and better acceptance and equality; maybe discrimination will never be completely gone?

 

 

My boyfriend – who I got to proofread what I wrote today, because nothing’s more annoying to me than noticing my own mistakes after the fact😛 – pointed out that this post sounds very passive. To some extent, that’s deliberate. I don’t want a flamewar to start over my thoughts, because that’s the exact thing that keeps me away from considering these topics. It’s annoying, stress-inducing, and just flat-out exhausting to even read those discussions, let alone be a part of one. I don’t want people to get stuck on the semantics or individual examples of what I’m saying. So I’m going to attempt to reiterate what I’ve just said in a more assertive way that captures my feelings on the issues of discrimination:

 

This world is big and complicated, often because we make it so.

We often fail to empathize with each other and see that another’s problems are just as important and valid to them as ours are to us, and that just because their problems are important and valid doesn’t mean that our own problems are any less important or valid.

And this is not to say that we don’t or can’t empathize, this is to say that we don’t do it as often as we probably could and this leads to people being hurt, used, abused, and/or humiliated. And when these injustices are pointed out to us, we get upset and defensive, and take it personally, and fail to actually listen and see the real issue at hand.

When we’re in defensive mode we make what we’re hearing about us, and miss the point that another person is hurting. We also often fail to see that there’s something we can do to ease or put an end to the pain of others. If we got out of defensive mode, we could look at them and see them as actual people; that who they are – when it comes down to the brass tacks – is no different from ourselves, and that whatever differences there are, are probably not as big or disastrous as we’re making them out to be. We could accept that something they’ve experienced bothered them and help them through that and help prevent it from happening again, and realize that in turn, more often than not, they’ll help us out when we’re the ones being hurt, used, abused, and/or humiliated.

I doubt that the world will ever be “perfect”, and that we’ll ever be completely be devoid of some kind of discrimination or pain, but we can at the very least work our way in that direction. And we have; we’re a whole lot better than we used to be, but we’ve still got a ways to go.

 

This is as close as I can get to expressing my current thoughts and feelings on this topic for now I think. I don’t doubt that I’ll learn something new or remember something later that I’ll want to add or edit. I don’t pretend to know everything on the topic of discrimination, because I’ve only really just started to open my eyes to it and the discussions that surround it. To be honest, I find it a little bit of a scary topic; I know there’s a lot of pain involved in it, and thus a lot of heat, and not to mention that this isn’t a new topic and there are lots of perceptions, and opinions, and data involved that I’m sure that I haven’t read or been exposed to yet.

On My Disconnection To The Aboriginal Community

So. Hello again, it’s been a while since I posted. I’ve had a number of thoughts that I wanted to post on recently. And I think I’ll start of with probably the most controversial of my thoughts.

 

I don’t really feel connected to my aboriginal community.

And it’s not their fault; really it’s no one’s. It’s just a very sad fact. Some people may think that it’s the fact that I grew up in foster care that I feel disconnected to the aboriginal community. But I don’t think that’s it. My foster-mother is an aboriginal woman, and is quite active in the aboriginal community. In fact, in both my foster family and my biological family, many people are very active in the aboriginal community, and at one point so was I.

So where did the change happen? When I moved out on my own, and started going to college. And here are what I think are factors that lead me to feel disconnected to the aboriginal community.

 

A) Lack of exposure and a change of priorities

While I grew up with predominantly active aboriginal community members, when I first moved out on my own, the new responsibilities and freedoms that I obtained kind of took me away from the previous activities I had that kept me connected to the aboriginal community. I had a full-time job; had to learn how to navigate budgets and shopping; had to learn how to interact with roommates; had to learn how to navigate applying for post-secondary education and all the things that come with that; and last but definitely not least, had to learn how to manage my time in a completely different way. Work came first, school came second, Relaxation and Fun came third, and Family and community came fourth. It wasn’t an intentional thing – it wasn’t like I said “Hey, this family and community thing isn’t very important anymore, I’ll bump it down the list a bit.” It was just, along the lines of things that were important and urgent Work came first, because it gave me money for food, rent, and bills; School came second because Lord knows that I didn’t want to be a deli worker for the rest of my life; and relaxation and fun came third because between the first two I was gonna burst if I didn’t give myself sometime to wind down. Wind down time often ended up being “friend time” because I found they relaxed me more than spending time with family, which brings me to my next point.

 

B) Change in values and knowledge

Going to college, and spending time with my friends, radically changed the way I saw the world. At first I still hung out with people who were similar to the community my family was generally a part of, the activist community. They believed in similar things: human rights, and environmental rights, and were very sympathetic to the aboriginal community. But as I went to college I grew to see things in a different way. I was a Business Major at the time (I wanted to open my own community café – more on that a later time) and the way Business Major students saw the world was very different from what I was used to… to be honest, I couldn’t stomach it. I found that most of them were very self-centred and not at all empathetic, and I slowly ended up changing my major to psychology. But I gained some valuable insight on the impact that protests – ahem, excuse me, demonstrations – and the like had on the general public. That is – none, if not negative. Most demonstrations happen in the heart of the city, where the most people go through. Now most of these people are business professionals. And while yes, a lot of them care a lot about human rights, animal rights, environmental rights and the like, for most, these demonstrations were nothing more than a nuisance. As disheartening and disappointing as this was at the time, I could see why they felt this way, even if I didn’t agree with it. It began to change the way I thought about activism.

It was around then that I really got into the Zeitgeist movement; it seemed like the ultimate movement to me (which really, should have sent warning bells to my brain). They proposed a system that put people first, not politics, not religions, but the well-being of the people who made it up. And people use resources, so how do we manage resources in a way that works for if not everyone than most people. Why the Resourced-Based Economy of course. While I’m uncertain of whether this is attainable, it did give me a new way of thinking about the world. A scientific holistic view, if you will. Seeing the world as an entire system and that everything is interconnected somehow, and that there were scientific, evidence-based solutions to a lot of the problems we have.

This has made it difficult to interact with a lot of people in the activist community, and tangentially, the aboriginal community. While both communities might agree that we’re apart of a system that’s intricately connected, it’s hard to sell that therefore, some issues may be more important to focus on than others, namely issues that affect many other issues in turn. Especially since I don’t really know which issues these are. Of course, each community is going to want to think that their own issues are the most important. Perhaps this is why I ended up mostly in the rationality and effective altruist communities. They both have a tendency of meta-analyzing themselves and understanding that there are things that can affect their judgement of what they think is important and what they stand for. They are more receptive to criticisms and generally less defensive, and more open-minded, I find. Which makes them much easier for me to talk to and connect to. However, on the flip side, they also tend to have an increased intelligence, which makes them more intimidating to first strike up a conversation with.

 

Really, I’m not sure if this disconnect is something I want to fix at this moment. I mean, I greatly value family and community, but I also want to be apart of a community that I can contribute to and thrive in, and I’m not entirely sure that I could contribute to and thrive in the aboriginal community.

 

 

Although… it has already been kind of fixing itself.

This semester I’ve hung out a lot in the Indigenous and First Nations student centres on campus, and have found people who I could talk to, and debate with, which has been awesome. Finding people I can have important and connecting conversations with, especially on aboriginal issues, has made me really want to spend more time with people in the aboriginal community.The Elder’s Luncheons have also been great for this, for the first time in a long time I’ve had aboriginal elders take my insights on the world, and current events seriously and not just look at me like I’m an idealistic young’un who’s going through a phase and doesn’t know what they’re talking about. It’s made me want to look deeper into the current events that are affecting the aboriginal community more so I can talk more about them with people.

In addition, when I applied to an internship at a local aboriginal centre, and got it – I realize that I actually had more to contribute to than I initially thought. Hope,inspiration, and guidance, for example. Here I am, an aboriginal person who grew up in foster care – one might say that the odds were not in my favor, but look! I’m in post-secondary, has had a number of amazing internships, an opportunity to travel to San Francisco to meet a lot of awesome people and experience a lot of incredible things. Sure, my GPA may not be great right now, but I’m making every effort to change that around. And I’ve had a lot of ups and downs, but those have just given me the skills to help those who are going through the same thing.

 

 

Huh… Well. Would you look at that. I’ve just managed to talk myself into realizing that I am more connected to the aboriginal community than I thought. Well, I feel better now.🙂

 

Deliberations of Parenthood

Okay so this is mostly a blurb that I really just needed to get off my mind. So it’s not really my best written piece; please forgive any grammar or spelling errors🙂

So lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to have and raise a child. Perhaps it’s because I’m at an age where it wouldn’t exactly be surprising if I started a family. Perhaps it’s due to the conversations I overhear from other women my age. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been asked recently if I wanted to take custody of a younger sibling who’s in foster care. Perhaps it’s because of the abortion debate that often comes up in conversations. Or perhaps it’s because I’ve been around young children lately. Most likely it’s mixture all of those and probably some other factors that I’m not yet aware of.

Throughout my life I’ve always gone back and forth between feeling like I’d want to have children someday or not wanting to have children. In the moments where I feel like I wouldn’t want to have children, it’s usually when I’m faced with the reality of being responsible for another human being. Being reminded that the world out here isn’t always fun or compassionate, and that often it is in fact a very cruel and unyielding environment, especially if you do not fit into the ideal mould of whatever culture you are living in. The idea of any child of mine being bullied or ostracized fills me with such dread – I think it is highly possible that I could become a very overprotective mother. In fact I find myself getting that way with my younger siblings sometimes, more so when I was younger than I am now, but still, I think it’s a little indicative of what I might be like as an actual mother. I think that the amount of stress that it would cause me and, in turn, my child would be harmful enough that it would be probably best for me not to have a child.

Usually when I’m in the phase of wanting to have children, it’s because I’m thinking about how cool it would be to raise little humans and to watch them gain awareness of themselves and their environment, watch them learn how to interact with the environment and the people around them. I think it would be an extremely profound feeling. More so than what I currently feel when I’m around my nieces and nephews, or any other child that I have the privilege of watching grow.

Just being around for that experience inspires me to be a better person; to say what I mean and mean what I say; to live a life of love and compassion, of joy and adventure; because those are all things that I want them to do and I want to be that role model that they gain inspiration from.

I feel that the gift and responsibility of having a child is just so amazing and huge, that’s definitely not something that I would want to do on an impulse, which is why I’ve taken whatever precautions I can, even putting up with stupid side effects like migraines and wicked cramps, to make sure that I won’t have children until I’m absolutely sure that I’m ready and willing to have them.

Being Self-conscious and Not Posting

So I have 4 draft blog posts written up, but I just haven’t been able to get myself to upload them.

I’ve checked and rechecked for grammar and spelling. I’ve gone over the content to check if what I’m saying makes sense. Usually I’ll find some tiny thing that needs editing. Maybe I can make that idea more coherent by wording this way instead, or I’ll find a small grammar error that upon re-reading – bugs the hell out of me. Or, heaven forbid, I find a simple spelling error. Each time I’ll find it – I’ll change it – and then re-read it again until I think it’s fine. But each time I get happy with it, I just can’t get myself to press the “Publish Post” button.

Really I know that the best way to get over this is to just publish the post, and if it’s not my best then it’s okay – I’m creating an affordance for posting on my blog. And I’m pretty sure that posting is a good thing for me, because I don’t talk much normally during discussions – so people don’t often hear my opinions or insights on a topic.

Normally I don’t talk during a conversation because I feel that what I have to say is incomplete and it’s just better for me to listen and learn than say some incomplete and likely ignorant thought. And now I’m finding myself doing the same thing here, I don’t post entries because I feel that they’re probably incomplete somehow, and don’t deserve to be put on the web until they are complete.

So starting today, I’m taking away that filter. This is me posting a blog entry to create an affordance for myself posting blog entries.