Zen Pencils Comic: 98. ALAN WATTS: What if money was no object?
Gotta love Alan.
I don't own my child's body→
(CNN) — My daughter occasionally goes on a hugging and kissing strike.
She’s 4. Her parents could get a hug or a kiss, but many people who know her cannot, at least right now. And I won’t make her.
“I would like you to hug Grandma, but I won’t make you do it,” I told her recently.
“I don’t have to?” she asked, cuddling up to me at bedtime, confirming the facts to be sure.
No, she doesn’t have to. And just to be clear, there is no passive-aggressive, conditional, manipulative nonsense behind my statement. I mean what I say. She doesn’t have to hug or kiss anyone just because I say so, not even me. I will not override my own child’s currently strong instincts to back off from touching someone who she chooses not to touch.
I figure her body is actually hers, not mine.
It doesn’t belong to her parents, preschool teacher, dance teacher or soccer coach. While she must treat people with respect, she doesn’t have to offer physical affection to please them. And the earlier she learns ownership of herself and responsibility for her body, the better for her.
(More at the source.)
Look how your children grow up. Taught from their earliest infancy to curb their love natures — restrained at every turn! Your blasting lies would even blacken a child’s kiss. Little girls must not be tomboyish, must not go barefoot, must not climb trees, must not learn to swim, must not do anything they desire to do which Madame Grundy has decreed “improper.” Little boys are laughed at as effeminate, silly girl-boys if they want to make patchwork or play with a doll. Then when they grow up, “Oh! Men don’t care for home or children as women do!” Why should they, when the deliberate effort of your life has been to crush that nature out of them. “Women can’t rough it like men.” Train any animal, or any plant, as you train your girls, and it won’t be able to rough it either.
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Voltairine de Cleyre (via petitefeministe)
The best part of this essay is when she advocates for children to be brought up with no gender-role stereotyping, and gets in some not-so-subtle digs at heterocentricism and heterosexism in the process.
Did I mention this was written over a hundred years ago? Because it totally was.
(via missvoltairine)
(Source: liberationfrequency, via forrestbondurant)
- Everyone: Oh, Michelle, you're so funny.
- Baby, I know.
I’m just … I’m so beyond the point of caring about my job.
I’ve put seven years of my life into working for this company, first as a work study, then as a receptionist. That’s my entire adult life. For a year before that, I was a student, so technically, I’ve been here eight years. I’ve seen it go from a relatively small company that actually cared about its students and employees, so a shady, fucked up company that is so desperate for money, they will flat out lie to students and prospective students.
I work my ass off here. It doesn’t matter that I hate this place and all of my bosses, I can’t just sit on my ass twiddling my thumbs. It’s a thing. Yet, no matter what, it’s never enough. I very, very rarely get a “Hey, thanks, Michelle.” Even if it’s off-hand, I don’t get a thanks. I get a “Well, since you finished so much, could you take on the work of your coworker, who works twice as long during the week and gets half as much done?” There’s no appreciation for all the time and effort I’ve put into this place.
They know they have me stuck. They know that this is one of the few jobs that will let me work in the evening and give me my Fridays off so I can take classes. They think I would never quit because I could never get a job like this.
But the truth is, I’m at the point where my career (even if I am at the very beginning of it) is way more important. It’s more important to me to get a job that will allow me to swing my shifts around so I can take classes and be a part of plays. I’m at the point where a job at Starbucks or some fast food joint would benefit me ten times more than this shitty job.
I just … I don’t get it. It doesn’t matter how many times I go to them and tell them my workload is getting to be too much for a part-time position and that I am the only one up here at the front who does her work. It doesn’t matter that I have been the one constant in this department because the turn-around is so huge. No one cares because, as long as they can enroll as many students as possible, nothing else matters to them.
So yes. I’m giving up my nice office job to go work in a coffee shop. I don’t know what’s gonna happen from here, but it can’t be any worse than this.
For some reason, it’s always assumed that, once you get out of high school, you’re supposed to get a degree in something important (business, engineering, accounting, etc) so you can get a good paying job in an office. Most of the people I went to school with who were so sure in middle school and high school that they were going to become singers, actors, etc, settled down with a bachelor’s degree and went to work in a cubicle.
When I was about seven, I watched MTV for the first time. Kindly remember, I lived on base before then and the only American channel we had was AFN, so it was either German television or the Armed Forces Network.
The first video I saw was an early 90s grunge video and I remember being so fascinated by the actors in it. I started to emulate them, to pretend I was an actor in a music video, staring longingly at things, creating these little scenarios in my head and acting them out. Before that day, I would tell people I wanted to be a horse trainer or something to do with horses. After that day, I was sure I would become an actress. And that never really went away.
When I graduated high school, I took about nine months off. Then I was given a choice: either get a full-time job or go to school. I had been accepted during my senior year to the University of Northern Colorado for performing arts, but I never went, so I settled for a technical university because, by the time I was eighteen, it was just expected that I would get an office job.
I spent five years going back and forth between different technical degrees before I finally achieved my Associates in eBusiness Management, aka one of the most useless degrees this school offers.
I’m going to school for theatre now, but because of it, I have to work part-time in the evening. The amount of people who urge me to take full-time positions as an office worker is ridiculous. Most of them try and convince me how useless my theatre degree will be, to which I have to ask them, what use is an Associates in eBus, other than to wipe my ass with should I find myself out of toilet paper?
I’ve never been able to handle full-time jobs. I had one for a grand total of three months when I was 24 and for the first time since I was 15, I became depressed. Now, I’m generally a happy, shiny person who very rarely gets down for longer than 15/20 minutes at a time. But sitting at a desk for eight hours a day doing the same thing day in and day out made me stir crazy. I couldn’t handle it, so I quit.
And maybe that’s just the way I am. Maybe I’m just the kind of person who shouldn’t have a desk job. But I feel like we, as a society, content ourselves with settling for the easiest way through life. We learn to be happy with money, rather than do what we really want because we’re supposed to be successful, not fulfilled. And I think that’s what depresses me the most.
So I’ll continue to work at my part-time job and I’ll continue to never settle for something that makes me unhappy because what’s the point in living if you’re always working towards the future and never enjoying the present?
Stole You Away - Benjamin Francis Leftwich
(Source: gbjv)
Who’s dressed kind of hipster!professional and classy today? This girl. (Taken with instagram)
I just realised I have followers who don’t know who I am. So here’s my face! Hello!
I wanna fall in love.
And have it reciprocated.
I guess I should probably add that little bit in there.
Because I’ve been in love before, but the other party didn’t feel the same. So yes. I want to fall in love with someone who is falling in love with me.
You know, I noticed something. I tell people I’m picky and I think that automatically puts in mind the idea that I’m picky about looks. And that’s not it at all. I actually pride myself in the fact that I really do fall for people’s personalities. Like any hot-blooded human, I have looked at someone and felt attracted to their looks, but more often than not, I don’t feel anything for someone until I really know them.
Which would explain why it’s so hard for me to fall for people. Like I’ve said before, I’ve only reallyfallenfor people who I knew first, and I think the total comes to four. And that’s not a lot for twenty-seven years of life.
I used to say things like “I want the person I’m with to be taller than me, I want them to have scruff, I want them to have brown hair” and a myriad of trite, superficial requirements, but honestly, I don’t care. I don’t care if no one else in the world finds the person I fall in love with beautiful. I don’t care if they’re shorter, I don’t care if they’re taller, I don’t care if they’re awkward, I don’t care if they’re nerdy. All that I want is to fall in love with someone and if I find them beautiful, inside and out, nothing else in this world matters.
Okay. I have a confession to make.
I’ve never been kissed.
That’s weird, isn’t it? I probably shouldn’t admit to that, should I?
Oh, well. It’s out there now.
It’s not that I’ve never had the opportunity. I’m not hideous, I like to think I’m personable, and I’ve had people who were interested in me. The problem, I think, is that I’m very introverted. Very introverted. To the point where my persona as a receptionist at work and the person I am the minute I clock out are two completely different people.
People confuse me. Social situations drain me. Strange situations terrify me. These are all things I’ve come to terms with and learned to live with.
I’m not necessarily embarrassed by my lack of romance. I have no problem telling people that I have never been in a relationship. And maybe it’s easier for me because I am confident in who I am. I know that it’s not because I’m revolting, it’s not because no one wants to be with me. It’s a combination of social ineptitude and my being rather picky concerning partners. I can count on one hand the people who I’ve been willing to fully be with and most of them were in high school (which was, undoubtedly a very, very awkward time period for me), the other two being strange circumstances that didn’t allow for anything beyond a casual friendship.
I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. My age doesn’t seem to terrify me as much as it does others (“Aren’t you worried about hitting thirty in a few years?” “Don’t you want kids and a husband before you’re thirty?”) and I’m content for the time being.
