There are many things I am thankful for #5: Please be nice about your political responses

Today is one of the days that validates why I created this blog and why it is aptly named to refer to finding a balance between seemingly contradictory things. Actually, today it is hard to feel thankful for the issues that are weighing most heavily on my mind.

I am both a Mormon and someone who leans toward the ideals of the Democrats. To me, this makes all the sense in the world as my main focus in doing so is to ensure that government can help to assist people who are in need. Actually, I have a really hard time understanding how any Christian can feel differently about such issues, if I am really being honest. But I am not here to debate the merits of those who won and lost, truly. I need to express my immense disappointment in the response of others to the results of the election.

I  understand that Romney supporters are feeling sad, worried and discouraged, among other things. But being in the position that I am, I get to see how a handful of those people are choosing to express those feelings and it's not pretty. In fact, I'm embarrassed and ashamed on their behalf.  I am speaking mostly to the Mormons I know who supported Romney, admittedly a huge chunk of the church affiliated folks who I know. I was behind them in their excitement for someone they can relate to being on such a precipice of power in this country, even if all of his plans for the country differed from what I would like to see. But the responses I have read last night and so far today are making a population that, as this election season and research has shown, many people are uninformed about and even prejudiced against, look as bad as people expect. It was hard for me, personally, not to want to defend Romney a lot of the time even if I actually wasn't rooting for him so I can only imagine how defensive it must have made people who identify with him and were, indeed, rooting for his victory. But the anger, vitriol, fear inspiring doomsday messages and unkind words that I am reading are just not right. Comments about "uneducated idiots", "ignorant" people, and the word evil being featured prominently do not look good on you, folks. That kind of aggression makes YOU look like the bad guy, and definitely not Christ like as you say that you aim to be. And the scripture quotes and doomsday messages that I can only assume are meant to shame others are inappropriate in their intentions.

I can honestly say that I respect the different opinions and points of view that make people feel and vote in the different ways that they do. Frankly, I think some are uninformed and that if church members did more service outside of the church community they would benefit from being exposed to people who have had experiences you can't even fathom and who don't have a church welfare system to back them up, unfortunately. I really love the ideals that say we don't need government to help people because people should help each other but that's just not the way this country works at this point in time. I work for a non-profit agency. I see the overwhelming generosity of a small group of dedicated people but also the tremendous amount of energy it takes to cultivate donors. And I actually don't see a lot of church groups jumping in, I am sorry to report.

So while I can empathize with the frustrations felt by many today, I sincerely hope people can quell their emotional reactivity a bit and heed the words uttered by so many concession speeches, the official statement offered by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and many well intentioned, peace seeking citizens. Do things that work for you to release your negative emotions and then do all you can to make the world the better place you would like to see it be by the sweat of your own brow. Pray for the elected leaders. And help create as much unity in this country as we can all muster. But, most importantly, don't lose your integrity by being a hostile person in the process of standing up for the things you think are important.

Be the change you want to see in the world. I am thankful for that quote offered, I believe, by Gandi. 

There are many things I am thankful for #3

I was thankful for things yesterday; I just didn't want to type on my phone. Because I am on a computer so much during the week for work, sometimes just turning on my laptop at home is too much for me. So one thing I am thankful for (and I am sure I am not alone) is weekends!

This weekend I was thankful for a lot, actually. Saturday was a rare weekend day when I had nothing scheduled. I felt amazingly liberated and had plans with a good friend who is always down for an adventure so we kind of made up our minds as we went along. We made an outstanding, memorable day out of a road trip to Wegmans, a half hour in one direction, and a mall that is an hour away in the other direction-even though we passed two other malls en route. I am grateful for finding fun in the small things. I am also grateful to be in a financial situation that allows me to have enough gas in my car to make extraneous journeys like that. Of note, I was also pretty thankful for the free cider and pumpkin bread that I got to sample at Williams Sonoma. Yum!

Sundays are for church and spending time at home. I was thankful that my husband helped me with some tasks around the house that would have been insurmountable without his assistance. I was thankful for the fabulous shoes I wore with my church dress. And, most of all, I was thankful for having a faith community. I can honestly get why "religion" can turn some people off-I can see where they are coming from on some of their points. But, for me, there is such a great benefit to the group of people that comes with the religion. It's such a joy to me to see people each week who have known me my whole life; people I really enjoy knowing.

Finally, I was extremely thankful for last night's episode of The Walking Dead. Laugh if you must but watching tv is one of my favorite escapes and a good episode of a good show is kind of like getting a present when it's  not a holiday. That show rocked my socks off last night. I would go so far as to say it was the best episode of the show, period. I don't want to give any spoilers for people who haven't watched yet but WOW.

What are you thankful for today?

Friday Thoughts

I'd like to start one of those "Thankful Thursday" or "Favorites Fridays" kinds of posts but I know as soon as I did, I would forget to post the following week and would feel too guilty and it would never work. Therefore, today you will get a jumble of list like items that I might have wanted to tell you about if I were able to gather all my thoughts consistently on one day of the week.

Also, I'd like to express my shame and sorrow at being the worst about posting travel pictures. When I am traveling, I am often thinking of how great it will be to blog about x,y, or z. But then I get home and life happens and it sweeps away all my good intentions. At least I have all these fun pictures, cool experiences, and totally accurate opinions to one day share with the world.

My most recent adventure was NYC last weekend. I firmly believe that it takes your next trip to make you fully appreciate your last trip and that was 100% the case for me. Being in New York made me able to complete some thoughts I had about Paris and fully form my experience of it. The two cities are similar in many ways so it was easy to draw comparisons. One area that NY wins, hands down? Pizza! I've been in search of the perfect fresh mozzarella Neapolitan in the Boston area since my return. (To be fair and give Paris an area in which it deserves a gold star, their Metro system is the most user friendly public transportation I have ever met. I kind of miss it.)

So I have been home recuperating from a little minor surgery this week and when I am not dozing from the meds, I have watched about a zillion episodes of Storage Wars, finished another YA novel, and discovered an amazing new website I need to share with you. It's called Forever Young Adult and it's for readers who are "a little more A and a little less Y". Perfect! They review all sorts of YA novels in a very cute way, rating whether the lead character is bff worthy, how swoonworthy the romance is and how intense of a relationship they want to have with this book. For example, they want to be buried with the Hunger Games while they just have summer flings with other books. Meanwhile, the book I finished was Birthmarked and I kind of wanted to leave it out in the rain when I was done. Too bad it the sky was clear.

In a final thought before I go consume a good portion of a pint of Ben and Jerry's Late Night Snack, I want to just express gratitude for my faith community. I really wish everyone had one because they are so helpful! Not only have they brought lots of great meals and daily homemade bread but daily visits and check ins have made what could have been a boring week much more pleasant. I love that an experience that most people view as negative such as surgery can turn into a great week for me!

Blogger Identity Crisis

The blog has been quiet for a few days because I'm having a blogger identity crisis.

Do I write about whatever I want to on a given day or do I need more of a theme? Is there anyone out there who would be interested in the same things I am? At the moment, I'm addicted to reading other people's travel blogs but I don't think I travel enough yet to warrant that being my only focus. (I'm working on it, though!) A couple months ago, I was all about home decorating blogs (but then I ran out of rooms to keep playing with).

A friend who runs a writing group told me that some of the unique categories I fit into would be interesting fodder for a blog: domestic violence victim advocate, religious minority, triathlete. But here are some problems with that:
1. I am pretty sure I am the only not-great-at-practicing Mormon who is passionate about social justice and is a mediocre multi sport athlete.
2. Which gets to my next problem of not being great or conventional at most of those unique categories.... Religiously, I practice in a way most others don't and hold some beliefs and behaviors that are clearly outside the norm. Athletically, while I love to swim, and like to bike, I don't have very warm feelings or strong skill sets around running and am only doing one race this summer.
3. On the work front, I usually can't write about specifics because of confidentiality and safety and, let's be honest, it's not what I look forward to coming home and expounding on after a long, hard day.

So the point is that I don't know what my point is. Most days I want to write about what I am most excited about, which, at the moment is traveling. But some days I just want to write about the wacky story in the news, a good book I read, a great movie I saw, or the fun I have found in every day life that week. Most of my friends write Mommy Blogs so may not have run into this existential crisis:)
I am open to ideas, here, folks!

Thoughts on Marching to her Own Drum

http://www.mormonwomen.com/2011/02/09/marching-to-her-own-drum/

I really enjoyed reading about the drummer from Neon Trees and her journey to unite her religion with her musical life...until she realized that they didn't have to be two separate things. For me, it ties back to my first blog post in which I talked about aligning my own work with  my religion. In contrast, my work life seems much easier to meld in since my church life focuses on service, as does my work life. But maybe I need to make more peace with them being less distinct. Of course it's more than that, though. It's lifestyle and belief system, not just work.

Elaine Bradley talks about feeling like God didn't want her to be happy, which, in part, I believe has to do with feeling this dichotomy is necessary. When I think about something as small as my nose ring, I really don't believe it's God that takes issue with it; it's the woman sitting in front of me at church. And like Elaine, I like to think honesty is an overriding theme in my life. I am a lot of things but I am not fake. (I will admit this has led me to some trouble at times!!) While some wear their hearts on their sleeves-good fit for nearing Valentine's Day?- I wear my social justice in my nose. I can't make myself feel that my Heavenly Father dislikes that about me, as much as the collective "you" may want me to.

This woman really gives me pause and inspiration. I hope she will for you, too.

Gratitude

"Selfless and noble acts are the most radiant in the biography of souls"-David Thomas

Yesterday in church we talked about gratitude.

Before I even got there, in my car I had been thinking about ways to verbalize my appreciation for a family who was moving across the country and giving their goodbye talks that day. Oddly, the word "glowing" kept coming to mind. I thought it was just my non-morning-person brain functioning at a low level, able only to think of how shiny all their blond hair is. It turned into a metaphor, though. Glowing also relates to being a "shining example" and not hiding your proverbial light under a bushel. What I wanted to express gratitude for was service, fellowship, and example that was offered to me. Later that day, when I sat down to write out a card, I looked up quotes to aptly say thank you and the one above was the first one I read. Pretty amazing that it would follow the visual lighting theme of the day.

Part of the lesson about gratitude posed the question, "Are you thankful for your challenges?". Obviously, that is a harder task than being grateful for the wonderful things in the world like tulips, Nutella, and indoor plumbing. I will spare you my launch into the woes of my life and the requisite lessons I have learned from them, which are the silver linings for which I am grateful. I encourage you to give pause to this thought, though.

Both Oprah and a former clinical supervisor of mine recommended keeping a gratitude journal. There's plenty of research that shows that people who focus on the things they are grateful for each day are happier people. This is often a tool used in couple's therapy, too. I have a palm sized notebook that I can carry with me or easily keep next to my bed, and I try to list at least three things from that day I appreciated. I try not to duplicate these items from day to day but to find new things to be grateful for each day. It's pretty cool how this opens your eyes to see the good in the world, certainly not what we are used to hearing about!

I am by no means Pollyanna. Complaining is a favorite past time, in fact. Curmudgeon comments are a favorite quirk of mine. I guess I have to have something to balance that out, though.

So, in an effort to do so today, I will share my list with you and encourage you to share yours with me or someone else or just to write it down someplace. I always start the same way.

1/24/11
I am grateful for...
1. The turquoise sweatshirt I bought this afternoon
2. The sudoku book a client brought me today to keep me happy at court
3. A warm coat (It was negative two this morning!! Oh, and I still saw a man wearing just a t-shirt; we are hearty folk here in New England!)

Commenting on comments

So another snowy day on the East Coast has me stuck inside and on a personal day from work, thus giving me way more time than usual to do whatever I want. Just as I was enthralled when I first joined facebook and posted and commented far too frequently before coming back to my senses, I am a bit too focused on the potential of this blog so have been coming back and toying with it all day. Looking for ideas on how other people design their pages and what they muse about, I have been reading interesting commentaries all day.

One of the blogs I read mentioned all of the comments people posted in response to the article I cited as the inspiration for my first blog post. At first, when I started to read them I got irritated, as I usually do when I read any kind of comments sections. I added the "addendum" to my first post and carried on. Lack of motivation to trek through the snow to get the gym and a multiple handfuls of Goldfish crackers found me reading more of the comments. I just can't help but make my own comments in response.

Some people, probably the same who like conspiracy theories, guess that the women in the blogs are not real. At least a couple residents of Utah, aka Mormon home base, chided in to say life there isn't that peachy keen. I feel I can attest to the reality of those women. Even if I don't know them personally, I know plenty of similar women who could have been in the featured blogs. I would also argue that they really are that happy. Furthermore, having lived in Utah briefly, particularly Provo, I think it's fair to say that it's a little more cushiony than the outside world. While not everything is as it seems behind closed doors and blogs are meant to showcase the good times, not to air out family feuds, I think people living in a tight knit community with a belief system that focuses on kindness and service have the happiness odds swinging in their favor. And though Utah was not a good fit for me, the square peg, I don't think the happiness of the people there is at all insincere. Furthermore, most of the young hipster blogs featured were coming from cities like DC and NYC, not SLC.

Part of what drew my attention is not the focus on religion or even the contrast with the societal focus on work and education and worldly success but the point the author makes about women of my generation (I clock in at a whopping 30, for a point of reference), trying to forge our own path. Our parents generation, having babies in the 80's, when our culture shifted toward white collar, Wall Street, Alex P. Keaton mentality, did so at the expense of marriage success rates and fulfilling personal time. Fast forward to today, with a failing economy and a focus on all things "green" and it's no wonder that self-reliance and personal industry are coming back into fashion, even among people outside of the Mormon community, which has never given up promoting it.

So here we are. We are a generation of (not only) women who want to find some way to live in between the extremes of the 60's housewife and the 80's business woman. Therein lies the dilemma but I don't think it's an insurmountable challenge. Lots of people have overcome much greater obstacles.

Why I can't stop reading Mormon housewife blogs

Why I can't stop reading Mormon housewife blogs

I highly recommend you read this link as it is the inspiration for this blog. Maybe that is only partially true. I have thought about starting a blog for a long time, perhaps for some of the same reasons this article sites: I have kept a journal since I was 12, I'd like a creative outlet, etc. I never knew where to start, to be honest, or what to say. This article provided a focus, a jumping off point. While celebrating Betty White's birthday,  watching a Golden Girls marathon and dyeing our hair, one of my best friends set me on this path (and started her own, I might note).

The link, above, basically says that young, educated professional feminists with no children find themselves drawn to reading the blogs of young Morman housewives who cook and sew and can things, happily. I am caught between these two worlds and it can be perplexing. By day, I work in a field stemming from the feminist movement and advocate for the equality and rights of those who are victimized. On Sunday, I go to church for three hours with my mother. My husband doesn't attend my church and I have no kids to tote with me, an anomaly for my age in Morman culture. I have a nose ring (deemed naughty) but I love my food storage and yearn to bake my own bread. In short, I'm the square peg.

I called the blog "Aspiring to the Middle" because it sums up my goal of balancing my two complicated philosophies. It also speaks to the balance of finding a middle ground between working, being a good wife, trying to be spiritual, and to do all the other things we need to do to find balance, health and happiness in our lives: exercise, clean, socialize, learn to grow up. Finally, the middle ground is kind of where I aim to land. I'm not the fastest runner (far from it!) or the best singer or anything of the sort. Despite my lack of specialization of skill, I do a lot of diverse things to varying degrees of success and think that makes life interesting.

So while I try to cook and feel like a phony, making a meal that only I will eat, I can now type about it and air it to the world.....


Addendum: Don't read the comments if you are trying to keep your blood pressure within a healthy range. I should know this as I bump into this problem all over the place in local newspapers and such but I guess I just don't learn! Surely everyone is as entitled to their opinions as I am in my own response to this article but I'm not sure why we can't just make meaning of things for ourselves and keep the aggression to a minimum.