Grit your teeth and trust your gut.

Yesterday, I felt unsure about my choices. Was I giving up on my dreams, taking the easy route, going for something that was secure financially but might leave me wanting something more for the rest of my life? Today, I found the answer within myself.

Somehow, through the course of my internet browsing, I came across a website called "Fed Up With Lunch." An elementary school teacher has chronicled a year of photographs, consuming the same high-calorie, high-carb, low-in-nutrient lunches as her students. She intended this project as a promotion of awareness, and I was absolutely floored by what I saw. As a kid, I had a wonderful mother who was pretty health conscious- I never once consumed a school lunch. I had never seen those weird frozen fruit cups or square bricks of oily "pizza"; in fact, I had to ask my roommate what the former was. (Yes, the orange mush was that unidentifiable.) Seeing that these are the meals our kids are provided- at best! this is a decently funded school where meals are not government subsidized. That's a whole new horror story.- is a nightmare. It sends shivers up my spine and resolve into my heart.

I know I'm taking a round-about route changing my major to hospitality, but I have a plan. Through this program, I am gaining an understanding of the preparation of food and the running of a commercial kitchen. Next year, I will be taking culinary classes alongside my full university course load. After graduation, it's immediately on to graduate school, during which time I will be pursuing a degree in nutrition and getting my certification as a registered dietitian. In six years, with all of this information and reputability under my belt, I can begin my fight to change this. I've never really felt that I had a calling, just something I really wanted to do---but it turns out, I think this is it. The thing that I'm meant to do. To educate children and families, whether it be in their homes or in schools, how to provide themselves with good quality food at affordable prices, to make good choices outside of the home, consume in moderation, know what their body needs and what's just extra. I want to give people the skills to improve the most basic, important function of their lives- eating. None of us realize how terrible we feel eating the way that it is easy to eat, but if you take yourself off of convenience food, you start to realize- less stomach discomfort, more energy, easier and deeper sleep, regular periods, more mental clarity.... Hey! I'm really doing myself a favor cutting out the junk!

In short, I feel good today, and not just because of what I ate for dinner. I feel like I know who I am and what I want from my life, and I'm ready to make the choices to get my ultimate goal accomplished. I just want to save the world, or at least get them eating fewer Cheetos.

Second Grade Sexism

So today, after a fabulous evening of gingerbread cookie baking and Pokemon movie watching with one of my best friends, I came to a little realization. We were discussing the "science" behind Pokemon and how that topic never really seems to crop up for the characters when it hit me... why not? Where else does science come into play in children's entertainment?


For boys, comic books are filled to the brim with pseudo-science; it may be absolute bullshit, but attempts at reasonable explanations are taken, although they often involve crazy radioactive asteroids and giant mutant spiders. But the point is, they get them. Animators and writers decide that these forms of entertainment, vehicles geared solely towards prepubescent boys, are worthy of having a back-story that is based at least a little bit in reason, that allow the reader to accept something through logic and explanation. Nothing just IS, everything has a rhyme and reason, even if said rhyme and reason is dictated by pink intergalactic space police with giant heads.

But what about girls? Do we not deserve that same sort of explanation? Apparently not. Think back to every Disney movie you've ever seen. Specifically the Disney princess type film you were probably in love with as a kid. (I realize that this same pseudo-science can be found in movies like Treasure Island and Atlantis, but those are gender-neutral, leaning towards the male audience type films.) Can you think of a single instance in which an explanation of an event in a female geared Disney movie does not involve magic, the absolute anti-thesis of reason? Me neither. Because they don't exist. Outside of the gender neutral films like Nemo, Wall-E, and other newer additions to the Disney canon, magic is present in every single film. Even in Mulan, the most feminist of Disney tales I grew up on, she's watched over by a magic dragon and a lucky cricket. Sure, she does most of the stuff herself, but they're still there. For the most part, from Cinderella's fairy godmother to Pocahontas's crazy talking tree, things just are. If the question comes up, it's answered by a wave of some random chick's magic wand, and things are back to the happy-go-lucky, ask-no-questions, just-keep-swirling-your-skirt-around-and-cleaning-and-singing-like-an-adolescent-chickadee sort of thing that existed in the beginning. 

Obviously this isn't some crazy life changing revelation, but it was something that really struck me because I'd never noticed it before. As someone who grew up an odd mix of girly girl and quasi-boyish (I adored Snow White and Hal Jordan just the same, but for different reasons. She had a glorious singing voice and he had a ring that could create anything he imagined... Notice the imbalance?) It's never something I really had to deal with, but it really got me thinking... what kind of lesson is this continuing to teach our children? That it's okay for girls to just sit back and let things happen to them because Prince Charming or a fairy is going to come along and save them without worrying whether or not they know a thing for themselves? Clearly that's not the intention, but still... How young is too young to indoctrinate children to the ideas of these antiquated gender roles? And can they ever truly stop existing if we keep implanting them so early? 

An Exercise in Procrastination

Most days, I have all the time in the world to fill, and I can't think of a single thing. I waste hours on the internet, watch too much television, take walks to get things I don't want or need, and none of it matters. Nothing is produced, nothing used, nothing changes. But on days like this, I can find a whole world of things that are more pressing than what I really need.

I should be studying for a final exam that's forty percent of my grade. I barely have a B in this class. I've never gotten a B in my life, and I don't think I can pass this test. I have never known what this feels like, and let me just say, it's terrible. But the funny thing is, I don't give a shit. I don't feel a thing. Not even a little bit. No regret, no remorse, no fear. Just this hungry, gnawing thing that worms it's way through my intestines, telling me to just bide this time, to not waste it studying something I won't ever be able to understand. A month ago, a year ago, maybe even a day ago, I wouldn't have stopped to write, to eat, to sleep, to talk to my mother... Nothing would have mattered but the work, the getting the grade. Being the best at something, not failing. (In my mind, a B is failing. I know that sounds stupid, but I fail myself. I know I can do better, and yet, here I am. Underachieving. I never underachieve.) In the past, not succeeding in this would have been my absolute undoing. But somehow, without my noticing, the pieces in me shifted. What used to be important just doesn't seem to matter anymore.

I'm at a point in my life where I can't tell if I'm growing up or giving up. I've never been the kind of person to give up on something I wanted. I will throw myself in front of a train if that train is headed to the station where I need to be. (Bear with me. I am awful with metaphors.) I have had this vision of myself since I was about seven, the first time I stayed up in secret and watched Saturday Night Live, that I would be a writer. A female comedy writer, breaking barriers and giving people the single greatest thing you can share with someone else: laughter. Even going to this college, without a developed program for it, I chose the closest major to screenwriting, to achieving and living out this dream that I've had for so long. This goal is so intertwined with my identity that I can't say where I end and it begins, and last week, I gave it up. I quit my major, changed to something that I'm too ashamed to share because I know everyone considers it softer and easier.

Maybe I'm living out another dream of mine, or maybe I'm just scared. I've told myself a million different ways I'm not good enough to do what I wanted to do. I can't write that well, I'm not that funny, I don't have the stomach to take when people say my work is bad. It's all for the best, and besides, at least this way, I know I can support myself. A wannabe writer is the same as a part-time bartender in this economy. I can't tell if it's the right decision. I haven't felt my feet touch the ground since I did it. I feel as if I cut away a half of myself, and the piece that's missing won't grow back. How will I ever know that what I am doing is the right thing? Will some magic ghost come to me at the end of my life, a la the Ghost of Christmas Past, and make me regret, teach me that my world would have been something better if I had just had the strength to believe I could do it? It's not a dream that fades easily. I've been talking myself up to quitting, to throwing it, like so many others, into that deep old well of could-have-beens in the dusky forest of my thoughts. I never thought I would actually follow through with it, but here I am. And I don't feel regret. I just feel lost. Everything seems dark. Not black, but gray, just enough that I can't see through it, and I'm stumbling, tripping over my own feet and thoughts and fears and piles of notebooks of things that I should be learning.

I know this little period of ennui will end soon, that I'll wind up chugging Red Bull and staying up into the night, trying to cram diagrams of foreign proteins into my head last minute. I trust myself to stay responsible, but it's nice to stop and understand what's going inside me, that things are changing, even though I can't feel it every second. That soon, I'll be different. Maybe that I am even now and just don't know it. Some moments, I'm filled with hope for the coming semester. The world seems nicer in this new place. The people are warmer and kinder; there's more promise of a job coming out of it, and you still get to do something you'll be happy with. But I'm afraid that this niggling sense of regret will stick around for longer than I can deal with, that I'll spend weeks or months or years feeling hungry for something that I can't get my hands on.