Hoard and Purge

Last weekend, my exercise in domesticity led me to the kitchen where I crafted a delicious meal and organized that area of my apartment.

This weekend, my focus is clothing. Last spring, my hobby was trolling the internet for cute dresses at bargain prices. Since then, I realized that I want to work on being more stylish. I want to be creative in what I wear. For the most part, being a graduate student does not require a lot of fashion sense. There are days when I do not shower or change out of sweatpants, to be honest. But twice a week, I do stand up in front of 70 people and give a lecture. I’m sure that they wouldn’t care if I showed up in jeans and a T-shirt, but I like to think of my teaching wardrobe as part of my persona and my performance. So, I use teaching to justify my shopping expenditures.

Recently, I have been feeling mildly frustrated with my wardrobe. On the one hand, I hate doing laundry and putting clothes away so I always have huge piles of clothes in my bedroom. On the other hand, I have been having that dreaded feeling of, “I don’t have anything to wear!” Of course, I have things to wear – in fact, in my 2 bedroom apartment, both bedroom closets were filled clothes- but not too many things that I want to wear. I noticed that on casual days I kept going back to the same 3 shirts and a couple pairs of old jeans that I suddenly realized that I hate. What is going on?

Then, it hit me. Unbeknownst to me, I have become a clothing hoarder. Unintentionally, out of sheer laziness. Over the past three years that I have lived here, I have been acquiring new clothes but  not getting rid of any of the old things. Last spring, I did take a bag of clothes over to Goodwill but that was really just a drop in the bucket. I looked at my overstuffed closet and I saw that it was full of stuff that I don’t like and I don’t wear and it’s just in the way of my true happiness! (Ok, I’m getting a little dramatic, but you get the idea – simplifying always leads to feeling better!)

I decided to take a drastic step.

I was going to get rid of HALF of my clothing. That’s right. One closet full of stuff had to go!

So I devoted Friday afternoon to making 3 piles (that kind of turned into 6 piles) of clothing on my bed. Here was the idea, and stop me if I sound too much like fashion magazine advice:

Pile 1.   Clothes that I have actually worn in the past 12 months and don’t hate.

Pile 2.  Clothes that I have not worn, but like.

Pile 3.  Clothes that I have not worn and/or don’t like.

The additional piles happened when I split my wardrobe between casual and professional wear.

Pile 3 was really interesting. Sometimes it was easy to put something there, and sometimes it was wrenching. Most typically, I found myself making excuses. “I should keep that red sweater in case I ever get a red and white skirt that it will match.” Um, hello, future hypothetical thinking? Anytime that I found myself either using the past (I wore that on a romantic first date…aww) or the future to justify keeping something, rather than this is something that I would want to wear today, I put it in the third pile.

One sweater, I know that I got my Junior year…of high school. In fact, I found at least 5 items that I have had since high school. If your sweater is almost old enough to hit puberty, you should get rid of it!

At the end of the day, I filled 4 garbage bags with clothes to give to charity and my closets (I’m still using both closets, one for casual, one for professional clothing) are organized and spacious.

Even though I gave up half of my clothes, I feel so much better. Now I know that when I go to get dressed in the morning, all of my options have been pre-approved. And now, when I buy new clothes, I can really know what I have and what would add variety and style to my collection.

10 Minutes on…New York

New York is a stifling place if you are poor. I spent my time there as a student and at age 18, I had nothing. Sure, there are inspirational reports from people who say that you don’t need money to have a good time, that there is so much to see for free, and maybe there is something special about being young and just trying to get by in New York.

I’m  here to tell you that was not the case for me. New York was the place that taught me about wealth in a way that I had never known in central PA. The scale for how much money people had was so very different, extremes in both directions. I realized for the first time that my family did not have all that much in the big scheme of things. So yes, I was the cliche: a working class, rural 18 year old girl who goes off to make it in the Big Apple.

But here is the thing that no one tells you about the grand, exciting city that never sleeps. It is boring. Sometimes, even New York can be boring. I can’t tell you how many times my friends and I stayed in our dorms on a Friday night because it was such a hassle to go out – the subways and the taxis and finding the place and being able to get in and there goes $50 just like that.

Even my roommates who carried around Coach bags that could store a golden retriever complained about the hassle and the  money.

New York is also incredibly isolating. There are so many people who just don’t talk to you. And the ones who do, who whistle and harass and propose marriage and threaten to slice  your throat, you mostly wish that they would shut up and leave you alone.

I could never wrap my mind around how a place that offered so much could feel so limiting. Some might say that only boring people are bored in New York, and I always felt guilty and inadequate for not having the exciting, glamorous life as seen on TV. But the truth is that poor, not boring, people are the ones who can be bored even in New York City.

Slow Down!

As you could probably tell from my posts over the last few weeks, I have been going about life at a pretty frenetic pace. I always dive into September and then back off. I have learned over the years that if I try to do too many things without taking time to unwind, sleep, and spend time alone, my body will revolt.  It seems that this particular lesson is one that I must re-learn over and over.

I put in a good 3 weeks, and then I crashed. I had some combination of allergies and a head cold that completely sidelined me. I slept for 11 hours straight and took lots of naps throughout the weekend. My body was telling me to rest, so I did and now I feel a lot better, although still a tad stuffy.

Today, I was in a rather domestic mood. I have caught the Fall spirit, so I wanted to do things around the house to celebrate that. I did my version of “Fall Cleaning” which means that I actually mopped my kitchen floor and organized the cupboards. Then, I went all out and cooked a brilliant fall roast. The colors were lovely and made me so happy that I took some pictures of it.

There is something about pot roast that makes me feel like Suzy Homemaker. Not only being a dish that Cultural Mom used to make, but also the fact that it takes 3.5 hours to cook when I’m used to a 3.5 minute Lean Cuisine. With the smells of pot roast and Pine Sol overtaking my apartment, it felt like  home. And that felt good. I am definitely not the homemaker type of woman, but every once in awhile, I do find it pleasurable to cook and clean. I know that the pleasure comes from the fact that it was my choice to do this (and given that I have only done this once in the past 3 years, it’s not a mood that often strikes me!) and I also thought about how wonderful it is that I was doing this just for myself. The homemaker is forced to cook and clean because her husband and kids expect and/or demand it. I took great pleasure in doing domestic things that would benefit no family and was of my own volition. I like it. Maybe I’ll do it again next Sunday.

10 minutes on…Eggs

Here is my second installment of 10 minute free writing:

I ate eggs for breakfast this morning. Two eggs, over easy. Brown eggs whose mothers were grain fed and allowed to roam around the farm. The first egg was a mistake. The yolk broke and as it was spreading across the white, I hoped that somehow it would not cook. But it did. The second egg was fine and I ate it second because I always save the best for last.

The eggs made me think about Denny’s. I went to Denny’s this summer when I was in Baraboo, Wisconsin. I wanted breakfast food and I was so hungry. The Denny’s was crowded and I was alone. I sat at the counter and ordered something like a traditional breakfast. I watched the cooks through the opening that separated the kitchen from the counter. I heard the sizzle of the grill and the crack of the eggs. I wonder what it would be like to be the cook at Denny’s and how many eggs they touch in a day and how I would feel about eggs if I had to be in such close contact with them for so many hours. Would I like eggs more? Would I hate them? Would I not even notice? I bet the cooks at Denny’s never break a yolk.

I can see why some people would think that eggs are disgusting. They are slimy and wiggle. They have more motion than meat, so it feels like you are actually eating something that was alive, or more accurately, potentially alive. I wonder if anti-abortionists eat eggs.

That is funny to me. One of my favorite sayings from the Bible, and trust me, I don’t quote the Bible often, is something from the New Testament when Jesus says, “They know not what they do.” I’m not exactly sure what he was referring to, probably his impending crucifixion, but I’ve always liked that. They know not what they do. I think to eat eggs, you have to know not what you do. Maybe that goes for a lot of food, we have to suspend thinking about what it is or how it came to be in order to ingest it and make it part of us. We know not what we do because we do not know who we are, what composes us. And if we did, would it be different?

Writing Comfort

This afternoon, I got bowled over with exhaustion and allergies. I decided to curl up in bed at 4pm and read a book that was assigned as an optional guide in my Gender Studies class. Since it just came in the mail and I love reading books by writers about writing, I thought it was perfect for my mood. The book is called Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life. Her suggestions are Zen-influenced and she gives little writing exercises for people to do. In the end, though, any writing manual basically comes down to this: If you want to be a writer, write.

With that being said, it is a very soothing book, and there were at least three points so far where I went, “Whoa!”  I love it when you are reading along, and a writer hits you with something unexpected, either funny or wise. She’s good. Early in the book, she writes that all readers want to know the author better. Even if it’s a novel, they want to know the author. I felt that sense of knowing, relating to, and liking her. To me, I know a book is good if I want to slow down and enjoy it.  Even though it is a writing advice book, I don’t want it to end because it feels like more, it feels like a meditation on life, too.

I am not sure if this type of style is useful for academic writing, but my professor must have thought so when she assigned it for us. Goldberg advocates doing 10 minute freestyle writing where the whole point is to only have “first thoughts” (do not think or judge the original thought with more thoughts) and to “keep the hand moving.” You are not supposed to read anything back or pause at all – just put it all down immediately.

So I tried it, and the funny thing is that the entire time that I was free writing, I was thinking about this blog. I realized that the only time I write freely or for fun these days is on here. Even though I was trying to be in the moment and flow, I kept wondering if I would post about this or share my freewriting.

I’m going to try to do this for 10 minutes a day for the next 10 days. Maybe I will share it on here each day, maybe not. I guess today I will since I was so preoccupied with it.

Here is my 10 minute free writing, completely unedited and exactly as the words came out through the pen. The prompt was “I remember…”

The Simple Days

Today was absolutely gorgeous. The weather was perfect. Sun, blue skies, warm with a slight breeze, the air had a fresh smell, and campus almost seemed to be sparkling.

It was one of those days that just slaps you across the face with its beauty and makes you actually pay attention to your surroundings.

I appreciate that my office is so far away from everything else because I have been doing a lot more walking around campus, sometimes choosing different routes on purpose just to shake it up. I’m sure that I will not feel as great about it when the weather turns cold and the campus is icy, but for now, I like having those 15 minute walks to really take in the campus.

Walking around campus today, I was reminded of how lucky I am to have the job that I do, and how content I am that for the rest of my life, I will be walking around campuses. It’s not a bad life at all.

I wish that every day could be like this – not necessarily the weather, but just feeling aware and grateful in a non-forced way. I know that these are the last days of summer, so I want to soak it all in before things get cold and gray again. But I’m sure that there will be beauty in that as well. It’s the simple things.

All Over the Map

The transition to Fall semester is always overwhelming. After several months of scheduling life at my own discretion, I feel like there are suddenly so many demands. The new school year brings new people to town and opportunities to meet those who I have not crossed paths with yet.  To top it off, I have a new class that I am teaching which is challenging me on this whole other level.

I guess you could say that this is the opposite of a rut. And thank God for that!!

The downside is that there is a lot of stress involved in the constant motion and the newness of all of these things. I have been beating myself about the class because I feel like I am not doing a good enough job at engaging the students and sometimes they ask really difficult questions that I cannot answer. I know that I shouldn’t feel stupid, but it’s hard not to feel embarrassed when  you flub something after being put on the spot. But then there are days, like today, for instance, when class goes so well that I kind of wish I could be a student in my own class. I actually had a student come up to me after class and praise me on responding to his question so well.

It’s such a toss up. Sometimes, I’m a blathering idiot and sometimes I am a compelling lecturer. What is the difference? The truth is that I have noticed an enormous difference in my ability to lecture based on whether I practice or not. It’s a pain in the ass to go through my entire 75 minute lecture at home in advance, but it makes a world of difference in the classroom. I don’t need my notes as much, I ask more questions of the students, and I’m not surprised by what comes up next on the powerpoint. So, even though it is already time consuming to write the lectures, I also need to carve time out to practice/memorize them. Otherwise, I suck and feel bad about myself all weekend.

My personal life is just as erratic. I’ve met a lot of new male people who want to hang out, but I just don’t care. As Tegan and Sara sing, “there’s not a lot for you to feel if you’re not feeling it.”  I feel bad for not giving them a chance, but I don’t want to waste time anymore. I know what I want, and that is pretty much all there is to it.

And the last update, which I know you are all dying to hear about, is that I did get my first ever cavities filled yesterday. It was terrible! I was shaking like a leaf and I hated having one whole side of my face paralyzed. I vow to never get cavities again!!!

This About Sums Up My Life Right Now

Wednesday + 600 calories all day + accidentally drinking an entire bottle of wine = Drunk + Waking up on someone’s couch at 6am on Thursday + First Thought of the Day: “Fuuuck”

The Years Go By

Even though it is only the second week of the semester, things feel different. Now that I am in my 4th year and at the midpoint of my graduate studies, the reality is starting to set in. Yes, folks, things are starting to get really real.

When I first entered grad school, I thought that it would be like it is now right away in terms of faculty attention and working out my research agenda. Instead, I spent the first two years doing a ton of course work and it felt like the Continuing Undergad Studies in All  Sociology, All the Time. At the end of those two years, I wrote a Masters thesis that nobody cared about, including me. And then third year came at me like a hurricane as I taught a class of 70 undergrads while still taking several grad level courses per semester. I was busier than ever, but still  not doing what I had envisioned grad school to be about.

This year is the first that being a student is not my number one priority. I have one class and a writing seminar to complete my requirements. I’m still teaching, but it’s not that big of a deal anymore. So now, I have so much more room in my schedule to do all of those things that I wanted to do three years ago. I’m reading for quals, writing research papers, making concrete plans for my dissertation on a timetable that is actually using, gasp, the foreseeable future!

I have always looked ahead to 4th year as the year that I would be done with course work and so thinking of myself as a 4th year is not weird. What did freak me out was talking about “the summer after 5th year” and nearly choking when I realized that it would be occurring next year. Five years is a substantial amount of time to spend one’s life doing something. Being an advanced graduate student means that I only have a couple years left, and then I will be legit.  I will make that move from consumer to producer of knowledge, I will never enter the classroom as a student again, only as the professor, and I will be arranging my work days around scholarship, not assigned readings. It is daunting and exciting at the same time. I feel like finally I am seeing the light at the end of this graduate school tunnel. But of course, that is scary because I am also walking toward the death of my student life and heading to more grown up responsibilities, perhaps even being able to answer the “What are you doing with your life?” question with a reply that involves an actual career. Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’ve got to leave something for my 30’s.

Guilt by Association?

I had the students in my Deviance class fill out an index card with their contact information. At the end of the list of background questions, I asked them to tell me something deviant about themselves. Not surprisingly, I found out that I have a classroom full of promiscuous, underage drinking, reckless driving shoplifters. Some of their responses were pretty amusing, so I was glad that I posed that question as an icebreaker.

UNTIL….last night.

Last night, I had the strangest nightmare. In my dream, I shoplifted an entire shopping cart worth of merchandise from Wal-Mart. My evil plan was to take the items to Target and pay for them there. Now, this makes absolutely no sense, although it is a rather funny experiment to see if one chain box store would even be able to recognize that the same mass produced items were not its own.

Apparently, in the dream, I had done this before on a much smaller scale. I had taken 3 items from Wal-Mart, drove to Target and had gotten away with it. I’m not sure if my motivation was to get a better deal or what. But this massive haul was taking it to another level, and my anxiety level was through the roof.  I managed to make it into the store with my cart of contraband but I soon knew that I was being followed by store security. I started to panic as I knew that I would have to explain my strange behavior and would probably get arrested. I tried to ditch the cart and nonchalantly walk out of the store, but the guard grabbed me and took me to the back room for questioning. I explained to him that I was going to pay for these things at his store so he shouldn’t punish me. Then, a trail of people I know started walking past the room, gawking at me and I hung my head in shame.

I woke up in a cold sweat.

I have done many deviant things in my life, but I have never really seen the appeal of shoplifting. I am always very conscious of paying for my items, keeping the merchandise in sight of all clerks, and I go out of my way to accurately count the pieces of clothing that I am taking into the dressing room just so they don’t think I’m trying to get away with anything.

I think that this probably stems from a very early experience that left a lasting impression on me. I must have been only 4 or 5 years old and I was at the mall with my Nan. It was at the end of a long day of shopping and our last stop was one of those dollar type stores that carried a variety of things. My Nan was always one of those people who looked at receipts to make sure that she was not overcharged. On this particular occasion, we had left the store and had walked what seemed like miles before she looked at the receipt. She realized that the cashier had not charged her for an item. And you know what she did? She dragged poor, little four year old me all those miles back to the store to tell the cashier of her mistake and ring up the item. I just remember this being a laborious process of walking back and going through the whole hoopla of paying.

To be honest, grown up me never checks receipts, but if I were to notice such an error, particularly of something that was probably of very small value, I would have just counted myself lucky and called it a day.

But I think having an honest example like that taught me that intentional shoplifting was wrong and perhaps even unintentional shoplifting is something that should be rectified.

The only time that I “shoplifted” was precisely the scenario that I outlined above, only I was being a total saint in my motivation for getting the item. One year in high school, my best friend, who always told stories of bike riding, was crushed when her father accidentally ran over her bicycle in the driveway. I knew that she or her family probably didn’t have the money to replace the bike, so I decided to use some of the money that I had saved to go all grand gesture and buy her a new bike from Target for Christmas. Procuring the bike was an ordeal because they had to bring it up to the service desk and it was the holiday season, so my mom and I took our cart to that area and the lady rang everything up. Now, my mother is one of those people who never has left Target without spending hundreds of dollars. Somehow, in all of the hustle and bustle of getting the bike to us and ringing up my mom’s items, no one bothered to charge us for the bike. We didn’t even realize it until we got home, and we looked at the receipt to see how much I would have to pay my mom back.

So, I was faced with a moral dilemma. I had intended to pay. The item that I didn’t pay for was meant to be a gift for a friend in need. A Christmas gift at that. Since I was not rhe one who was going to benefit from the item that I acquired due to my accidental thievery, I justified it as the universe rewarding me for being a good person, and I figured that Target, with their billions of dollars, could chalk up a measly 75 dollar bike as a charitable donation to a close, personal friend of mine. Besides, it wasn’t my fault that the service desk didn’t do their job properly. Alas, I did not live up to the stellar example of my Nan, but not all of us can be at the benevolent grandmother level at age 16.

And that is the story of how I stole a bike for a friend in front of my own mother and right under the noses of several incompetent Target cashiers.

I have a feeling that this is going to be a semester in which I examine every bad deed I have ever done. I just  hope the crazy nightmares stop. If index cards can produce such a reaction in my subconscious, it is going to be a long semester of taking on all of the guilt and shame of what society judges as wrongdoing.