In Which I Realize I'm Basically a Cactus

*she's

Man, last year was great. Remember last year? I started Becoming Me. I was feeling more alive and connected—to myself, my friends, the Earth, the Lord—than ever before. I felt like a garden beginning to become lush and beautiful and ready to bear fruit. I felt joyful. I felt all the fruits of the spirit, really.

Summer has always been my season. I love hot weather. I love lakes and pools and summer clothes. I love dusty, red, Southern dirt. I love those really loud frogs at night. For some reason I love that intense, hot, tingly, tummy-tightening feeling of the sun hitting you and just, like, frying into you. I love thunderstorms.

Summer is intense, and I love intense. It ignites my imagination. It makes me write and grow.

I'm basically a cactus, I guess? Some people find me cute and cool; some people are like "why would you want that in your house"; definitely don't touch me; loves heat and the sun; has very specific needs, but the main one is To Be Left Alone; sometimes produces pretty flowers but they look kind of unnatural and out of character.

Long story short: I am a cactus and apparently summertime is when I do my most growing and thinking and Becoming. However, lately, in sharp contrast to this time last year, I have not been feeling "one hundred," as the kids say. I've been feeling decidedly worse.

I don't think I lost any quantifiable "progress" I may have made last year. I'm still a quasi-minimalist, I still use reusable bags, I'm still mega into the Enneagram, etc. I just feel worse.

I have too much going on inside, and I can't sort it out until I organize it on the outside. About forty seconds ago, I thought this was going to be one colossal, disorganized post. However, in simply siting down to write, my brain was able to get its crap together long enough to tell me what seven or so things are festering inside me, and each thing is definitely a post on its own.

I know that personal growth isn't ever linear, so I'm not worried and I don't feel like I'm regressing as a human. It's just ironic that this time last year, I was feeling so good and so new, and a year later I'm sitting here feeling so cluttered and so stressed.

But I know of two things will help:

1) Jesus

2) Writing it down

So brace yourself for Season 2 of Becoming Me:

- Core Beliefs

- Centering Prayer

- Anxiety as a Body Type

- Vulnerability Thoughts Part...4?

- How DnD Might Be Helping Me Grow

- Southern Pride

- Politics and Christianity

~Stephanie

Things I "Hate"

These are the items that I had a visceral reaction against putting on the Things I Don't Like list because I feel like I more than "dislike" them.

Things I "Hate"
1) When people stop at parking lot intersections when they aren't the ones who have the stop sign

2) Physical touch when I'm frustrated. If I'm in pain or mad, the WORST thing you can do is put a "reassuring" hand on my arm.

3) When people try to "type" other people with the Enneagram. That's like the #1 Enneagram faux pas. You do not type other people. You tell them that the Enneagram exists and point them to resources if they're interested and THEY figure out their type for themselves.

4) When people take an online quiz and think they know their Enneagram type. Nope. It takes some research and reading and soul-searching. For the people I know who already know their Enneagram type, online quizzes guess wrong like 95% of the time.

5) Spoilers. I don't care how long the movie/show/book has been out. Spoilers are never okay. I can tell you the names of people who have spoiled things for me. I don't care for them a whole lot.

6) When people say "the reason being is." You don't use both forms of the verb "to be." The whole point of using the first is to avoid the second (e.g., "reason being, he was late").

7) The word "utilize." About 1% of the time is this what you mean. Ninety-nine percent of the time you mean "use" and you are trying to sound smarter. You know what you actually sound like? Someone who is worried he needs to sound smarter.

8) Having to repeat myself

9) Spelling and pronouncing the word for determination as "perseRverance." There are only two Rs, people. Stop slipping in a third.

10) The word "mansplain." There was already a word for that. It's "patronize," and it even comes from the masculine word "pater" for all the feminists.

11) "So-and-so and I's." You do realize that there's a possessive form of "I," right? IT'S "MY."

~Stephanie

10 Things I Don't Like

a lighthearted post inspired by the Facebook "challenge" asking friends to comment with something I don't like

Things I Don't Like (in no particular order)*

1) Pesto

2) Quotes from other things at the beginning of book chapters

3) When people don't understand when to "answer like Jeopardy." If you're playing a question-and-answer game and you're asked a question, like "What is 2 + 2?" you don't say, "What is 4!" The only reason you have to give the answer backwards in Jeopardy is because they are giving you the answer  and you're giving the question: "This simple addition problem feature two of the same number to equal four." Response: "What is 2 + 2?"

4) Wearing "real pants" (i.e., any pants that aren't athletic or sweatpants)

5) Most female characters**

6) When people pronounce the plural of process as "processeez." To me, that is only the correct pronunciation when the "eez" is the only indication of the word's being plural. Thesis/theses. Parenthesis/parentheses. Hypothesis/hypotheses. You can add "es" to the word "process" and we know it's plural because it already sounds like it's plural. Stop it with your pretentious eez.***

7) When drivers slow down before putting their turn signals on. It goes signal, slow down, turn.

8) The smell of flowers

9) Stepping in water when I'm wearing socks

10) Lists with a number of items that is one away from a multiple of 5

~Stephanie

* This list is NOT to be confused with the list of Things I Hate, which is far, far longer and more impassioned.

** Recently realized that what I might actually dislike is "poorly written female characters," which is, unfortunately, most of them these days.

*** There's a chance this should've been moved to the Things I Hate list, but see #10.

Racism: The First Step

For some reason I've been attempting to process all that has been happening in my head instead of in writing, which we all know doesn't work for me.

I care deeply and I've been wanting to say more, but I'm exhausted. I only know two ways to feel: all or nothing. The "all" was keeping me awake at night, giving me chest pains, and making me shaky. Every day is something new. Every day is some difference injustice, some other constitutional violation, some new threat to freedom.

But this morning, a couple of things hit me:

1) This may be how people of color feel 100% of the time.
2) If God gave me a love and ability for writing, then the worst thing I can do is sit on it when real things come up.

I'm not here to defend my character or be sure that you know my opinions on every facet of this issue. >deleted sentences that amounted to exactly that< If you want to go in-depth, let's get coffee and chat sometime. You know discussion is my love language.

It has taken me an embarrassingly long time to begin to see the racism situation for what it might be.

Do you remember Formspring? It was around when I was like a freshman and sophomore in high school, and it was a platform where your Facebook friends could anonymously ask you questions, you'd answer them, and they'd appear on like a rolling profile page. It was mostly used for trying to get your crush to think about you Differently, but one question and answer by a white "friend" has stuck with me for a decade:

Q: Would you ever date a black guy?
A: No, sorry, I'm not racist, it's just the way I was raised.

I remember thinking, "Wait, that is absolutely racist. What does that even mean? How can you think that's not racist? Are people raising their children not to date black people?!"

That, at age fifteen, was my first recognized brush with racism. A decade and a half on the earth, and the first time I experienced racism was as the most passive of passive observers.

And somehow I still didn't think racism was a real problem.

Some people have said that while personal racism, like the above, is disgusting and may exist, institutional racism is a myth. I can't speak to this from experience, but I think that on paper, that may be true; there may be no racist laws anymore.

Here's the thing though: as long as there is personal racism, there will be institutional racism, because people run the institutions. There ARE racist teachers. There ARE racist politicians. There ARE racist cops. It's not so much that we need to work on racist laws anymore, but racist people.

I can tell you the real turning point in my opinion of racism, and it is both ridiculous and profound.

It was walking in on Gabe watching the TV show Luke Cage a couple of years ago. I remember passing through the living room and watching for a few minutes. I kind of frowned and an absentminded thought floated through my head:

Why is everyone black?

The thought exploded into my consciousness and I made Gabe pause the show.

"They're all black," I said to him. He stared at me.

"Yeah?"

"And it struck me as weird," I continued. "My knee jerk reaction was, 'Why aren't there some white characters?'" I couldn't believe was was unfolding inside my head. "Do you know how many TV shows I've watched where everyone was white and it never even occurred to me? It didn't seem weird. It didn't seem anything. It was just the default. I see ten minutes of Luke Cage and..."

That was when it started to make sense.

The world IS different for me because I'm white. That's not my fault and I don't need to feel personal guilt for being born into this skin or what my ancestors may have done. However it IS my fault that I refused to see this sooner, and I SHOULD feel guilty if I don't fight for real equality.

I said REAL equality. Not just equality under the law, but equality that extends to dating, media, institutions, and everything in between.

Was the murder of George Floyd "racist," or just cruel? We can all have opinions on that, and the truth is, we will probably never know. But I think that might be just the disgusting, tragic tip of the iceberg.

There IS a problem. You might disagree about what it is exactly, but there IS a problem.

I'm sorry it took me so long to admit it, but I'm really glad that first step is over.

~ Stephanie

P.S. I know this can be really obnoxious and I AM trying to work on it, but the way I naturally understand things better is to challenge them and play devil's advocate. If we end up talking and I push on your ideas in a way that seems "wrong," just push back (logically). I want to understand.

Lists with Asterisks: Lent Life So Far

I'm not sure if this post belongs on Becoming Me or Reason in the Rhyme.

It's about lifestyle changes, which puts it here, but it's also about wrestling with what I think, which would put it over there. Maybe I'll post it in both places.

It is Day 9 of Lent. It is also Day 19 of an unrelated health "challenge" I made up for myself. Present Me is now suffering at the hands of overachieving, all-or-nothing Past Me. I'm beginning to be slightly miserable. I will either break soon, or have a breakthrough soon. Here's what's going on.

What I Gave Up for My Own Eight-Week Challenge:
- "white" grain
- candy
- dessert
- unnecessary/excessive processed food
- eating directly from containers

Now, true to my tattoo, this challenge is riddled with asterisks. These are general principles I'm sticking to as much as I can. Will I have an Appalachian Cookie Company cookie when Gabe and I go to Boone for the weekend? Absolutely. Have I been eating white rice? Yes. These are "more like guidelines than actual rules," but I've been sticking to them very well on the whole and I'm proud of myself. It is getting easier and easier.

What I've Given Up for Lent:
- Facebook
- Instagram
- YouTube
- non-Christian music
- non-Christian podcasts
- solo Netflixing
- Poshmark/Mercari

The big asterisk to this list is different: In no way do I think these things are "bad" or "wrong" or "sinful." I don't intend to give these things up for life, and I don't think that I should. I have just been feeling called for a long time to strip my life of distractions so that I can get my focus back on my relationship with God.

I am one of the most distracted people I know. The mental habit of being distracted has started to feel almost like an addiction. I can't stop being distracted. If I'm watching TV, I'm also on Facebook. If I'm making dinner, I'm also listening to a podcast. If I'm having my quiet time, I'm also making a to-do list on my phone. If I'm in a meeting, I'm also sending an email.

It's not just that I like to multitask. I do, but lately the feeling has been more akin to an addiction, a compulsion. I can't just do one thing at time. It makes me restless. My mind cannot settle.

When that started to happen in my quiet time and I could not make it stop, I knew I needed some kind of mental reset. I decided to strip my life down to the basics and then add in only the things I intentionally wanted to keep. I ended up with a list of ten things that I then ranked/prioritized. If #7 is going to prevent me from being able to do #5, I try not to do it.

The things that didn't make it onto the priorities list—because they didn't come to mind when I put on the lens of "basics + things I definitely want to keep"—are the things I'm giving up for Lent.

(I modified the music and podcasts thing. I didn't think to put "music" or "podcasts" on the list of priorities at all because those aren't things I sit down and do for their own sake; they're things I do while doing other things. Since Lent is supposed to be about refocusing on God, I added Christian music and podcasts back in.)

The results have not been what I expected.

Since I'd have no other options, I expected to gladly fill the voids with prayer, reading the Bible, and journaling.

Looking back, I don't know why I expected this. Humans have never been ones to think, "Hey, you know what, let's do something hard instead of something mindless."

My quiet times have not deepened or lengthened. I do not know that I pray a ton more than I did. I do think that listening to Christian music has done a lot for my mood and mindset; that one has actually worked the way I'd hoped it would.

I dunno. It's kind of what Pastor Matthew talked about a few months ago: It's not enough to uproot your weeds; you have to plant Jesus in their place, otherwise 1) the soil erodes, or 2) more weeds grow.

For some reason—some weird form of stubbornness—I have so far chosen to uproot the weeds in my life, but refused to plant Jesus in their place. The result has been voids of bad attitude, boredom, and real sin that happens to fall technically in the realm of fair game during Lent.

I've been told that my Lent list is too extreme, like an overly restrictive diet doomed to fail. I get that. Maybe that's true. I just have trouble seeing how there is a bad way to replace things with Jesus. I have trouble seeing how any amount of sacrifice is too much when Jesus literally gave it all.

My thought process is not holier-than-thou. I wish you could hear my head-tone. It's just simple, sarcastic math in my head. There is nothing I could do that would be more than God deserves. (Again, I want to stress that I don't think it's sinful to have "non-Christian" hobbies or elements in your life. This is something that has been on my heart and that I'm doing for a season to try to rewire my chronically distracted brain.)

Even as I wrap up this post, I don't know what I'm going to do afterwards. I would like to do something healthy like pray, journal, read the Bible, read books, go for a walk. But what I really want to do is goof around on my phone in the ways I still can, like sifting through photos, reading through Notes, checking email, etc.

I honestly don't know what I'll do.

~Stephanie