My friend Stephanie asked me to name 26 things that I love in honor of my 26th birthday. So this is for her and anyone else interested. (This is NOT in any order. Or sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't).
1.) My family
2.) My friends
3.) Books
4.) Writing
5.) Terry Pratchett
6.) Neil Gaiman
7.) France
8.) the French language
9.) the Louvre
10.) French History
11.) Tudor England
12.) Security
13.) Kids
14.) Adorable fluffy animals
15.) Dark humor
16.) Good satire
17.) Art
18.) Music
19.) Kayaking
20.) Neil Patrick Harris
21.) Ohio
22.) Bexley
23.) Denison University
24.) Libraries
25.) Jane Austen
26.) the Internet
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Love, Self Respect, and Approaching Birthday
Cheesy and I'm still too immature to handle the "learning to love yourself" line, but I admit I like this song and it's fitting to my post.
There are many bad reasons to start a relationship such as money, loneliness, green cards, and legitimizing babies. But I think the most toxic thing in any relationship is an unhealthy mentality. There are a lot of different variations of those as well but one of the most common is trying to use another person to boost your self-esteem. But that never works. Even if that person loves you more than life itself, you will never be happy until you can love yourself (ha, ha, not in that way. Though it does help...).
This ties into another thing I've been thinking about: birthday presents. I admittedly get annoyed with people who say they don't want anything. I don't judge if people don't give me anything, but it's always nice when they do. Although, if anyone's curious (hint, hint) I do prefer people doing nice things for me as opposed to most presents. The best birthday I've ever had remains the one year in college my friends threw me a surprise party and to the best of my recollection I didn't receive any presents. It just meant a lot to me that they put that much thought into me to actually plan something.
Anyway, the point of all this is I was thinking that none of the things I truly want in life can simply be handed to me. Even more than financial independence, I want to know that I am productive and accomplishing things. It's how I measure my worth. Sure, if someone told me I could have anything I'd probably ask for a billion dollars. But I'd still want to have some kind of job. True, that job wouldn't have to produce money, which would be nice. But I'd still be unhappy if I wasn't doing it. In that situation I would want to be writing.
I've been going a bit bonkers recently and feeling a bit down. Part of it's that I was I was sick for a month! I think I caught two different colds. Blah! But the other major part is just that I haven't been writing. Even just in this blog. Well...I have in the twitter novella I'm collaborating on, but that's hardly enough for me. So I need to get back into gear. My writing has been tossed aside with a whirlwind of moving, settling, getting sick, and jetting off to DC for the ALA conference. But I'm back now and I'm feeling better. I'm actually going to a picnic tonight with my French conversation group and tomorrow I'm staying at a friend's house. Both things I know mean it wouldn't work well to start my resolution now. But on FRIDAY, MAY 16th, I will pick up my writing projects. Now, I won't always be able to do word count because two of my novels just need editing. I may decide I just need to focus on that until it's done. But starting Friday I need to do something writing related every day (unless I'm going to be gone all or most the day in which case, just as with the blog, I will notify in advance). Writing related activities could be editing, sending my book to agents, writing in my novel, or just writing a long blog post like this one (long posts will be more than 3 paragraphs).
I will once again tweet what I've done. I don't put my Twitter feed on my blog because of a running challenge I have with my friend that he find my Twitter. But since I'm willing to bet he hasn't read this (and if he has, he deserves it) here's the link.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Utterly Devoted? The Psychology of Love
La Belle Dame Sans Merci - By JW Waterhouse Literally translates as The Beautiful Woman Without Mercy, Belle dame can also mean witch. All of this relates pretty well to my rant.
While listening to a book review podcast they mentioned a character telling his love "Everything I do, I do for you." Other than being cliché, this sentiment gives me the heebie jeebies. If anyone said that to me I would probably be like "OMG! You need to get a life!" Okay, maybe it sounds harsh but hear me out. I'm not saying it isn't noble to put someone else before yourself. But if your life is so centered around one person that everything you do is for them, then what happened to your personality? Who were you before you met this person? Don't you have any desires of your own? When you can't fulfill this one person's every need, do you just sit in a corner and stare?
I think love should be about a partnership. To be in an equal partnership, you both have to have to be your own separate person. I don't want a slave (well, maybe sometimes I do, but I wouldn't marry one). I want to be able to have vibrant and dynamic conversations. I want someone who can disagree with me, who has thoughts and opinions of their own. You can't have that if you define yourself entirely through another person.
This is probably why I have a low opinion of so many romances, from Romeo and Juliet to most contemporary fare. I do like romance, but I think the type of mentality that goes into a lot of these romantic stories is disturbing and unhealthy.
