Why 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

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.

5 Thoughts on Pan(ic)demic Homeschooling from a Homeschooled Kid

This post started because I wanted to share the video at the end and couldn't come up with a succinct caption. I had too many thoughts vying for center stage. I expect the result is going to be something far too long for a Facebook caption, but unusually short for a Reason in the Rhyme post.*

If you don't want to read all this, at least watch the video at the end XD It's less than five minutes long.

Thought #1: On one hand, I don't have kids, so I don't feel that it's my place to philosophize on the merits of homeschooling.

I always worry that if I make a pro-homeschooling post, parents are going to roll their eyes, curl their lips, or (EVEN WORSE) just keep scrolling because what could I know? I'm a millennial idealist without children. I should JUST WAIT til I actually have kids.

On the other hand, I was homeschooled. I don't know how hard it is from a parent standpoint, but I know how beneficial it was in the long run as a student. Did I go through phases of wanting to go to "real school"? Of course I did. Thankfully, my parents didn't let a hormonal fourteen-year-old call the shots in the family. I wanted to go to "real school" so that I could test if I would be "popular," have a locker, complain about homework, and go to a really scandalous, raunchy prom.

Instead, I was forced to make deep, meaningful friendships based around timeless, identity-shaping ideas; keep my books fifty feet from my bedroom; not have any homework ever (because you get all your work done in the normal school hours); and go to both a cute, slightly boring prom AND a really scandalous, raunchy prom (for better or worse, homeschoolers can actually go to regular high school proms as guests of students there).

I also learned how to pace myself, self-motivate, juggle deadlines and big projects, think logically, read difficult literature, break down subjects I found challenging, blah, blah, blah, now I have the skills to learn anything—different post ;)

Thought #2: I know homeschooling doesn't sound feasible for families where both parents work.

Again, I don't have kids. However, it is possible to homeschool even when both parents work. I bet if I Googled "homeschooling both parents work" I would get tons of advice and plans and suggestions.

Yep. Just did, and I did.

Also, *ahem*: YOU'RE MAKING IT WORK RIGHT NOW, AREN'T YOU? :)

Thought #3: I hope that parents who are hating public school homeschooling realize that if they did regular homeschooling, it might not be as terrible.

When you homeschool, you don't have to follow someone else's lesson plan. You CAN; if you don't WANT to write a lesson plan, there are HUNDREDS out there, and you can do them at your own pace. There are plans that involve videos. There are plans that don't involve videos. There are plans that involve lots of worksheets. There are plans that involve no worksheets. There are expensive plans, and free plans.

Thought #4: There really are lots of options.

You can even combine some plans that involve videos AND some that don't, AND some worksheets but not others. You can make school work for your family in a way that a public school teacher can't. (Even though he or she might genuinely want to, the plan that helps Johnny thrive is going to drive Susan insane, and some kind of compromise must be implemented for everyone.)

Who knows your kids better than you do? Who loves them more than you do? Who has their best interest at heart more than you do?

There are hundreds of cheap or free co-ops where your kids can mingle with other kids and learn about whatever subjects the parents feel like teaching.

There are also programs like the one I work for, Classical Conversations, where your kids actually meet in "classes" and are "taught" one day a week, given their assignments for the other four days, and do them with their families (with tons of online and in-person support).

(Thought #4.5: Public schools may have to cut down on class sizes post-pandemic? Classical Conversations' class sizes aren't supposed to exceed 8 for the younger elementary grades, 16 for the upper elementary grades, and 12 for middle and high school.)

Thought #5: There are solutions for the problem that arises when "THERE ARE LOTS OF OPTIONS."

In this day and age, you can find blog reviews and watch YouTube videos and get word-of-mouth advice as easy as breathing. Do a bit of research, then just pick something and try it for a year. Again again, I know I don't have kids, but my hunch is that one year of ANY curriculum is not going to ruin your child beyond repair. If it doesn't work, you can change it for next year.

Alrighty. *cough* Well. Here is the video I wanted to post.




~Stephanie

* It is not. It is a regular post size XD

Venting

I feel so bitter these days. Not every second of every day, to be sure. I have moments where I feel joyful or make someone laugh. But on the whole, all the things that have always annoyed me about the world seem to be increasing—in frequency and intensity.

I don't know how to explain it. It makes me want to stop being friends with a lot of people. It makes me want to stay off the internet forever. It makes me want to snap pencils in half. It makes me want to throw open my mind and spew things and watch people be taken aback (which, really, is probably just a restatement of that first desire.)

I feel angry a lot. The body-center kind of angry, where your heart beats faster and your hands tingle. The kind of anger that literally keeps me up at night. The kind of anger that can make a difference—for good OR evil, but mostly I feel the evil.

Lately I've had people complain to me about things that they're brought on themselves—I mean, just hand-over-fist, dragged those things off shelves directly above their heads and stood underneath them to watch them fall. As hypocritical as it is, I have a lot of trouble feeling sorry for people who have brought their troubles on themselves. For a person who brings many things upon herself, I have shockingly little sympathy. (Maybe that's why? Not that it makes it any less hypocritical, but maybe I lack sympathy due to the "takes one to know one" effect.)

I have trouble talking to people who complain about things they've brought on themselves. In these situations I feel physically incapable of speaking insincerely, so that leaves me saying a lot of non-committal half-truths punctuated with "LOLs." I don't want to be mean. I don't want to be ungracious. I think about all the things I've brought on myself that Jesus has loved me through and taken me back after. But somehow I still can't think of anything to say to these people that feels kind and gracious AND true.

I've also recently been the recipient of the ol' high school trick where someone passive aggressively calls you out in a disparaging Facebook status. As an Eight, I have a complicated relationship with other people's opinion of me. In one very true way, I do not care what people think of me. It is not important to me to be liked by everyone. But on the other hand, injustice makes me seethe. Unfair, disrespectful assumptions bother me, not because I care what people think, per se, but because it's WRONG; in this case, it reflects something wrong about the person who posted it, not me, and yet the person doesn't see that irony. I find this maddening.

I've also seen posts berating people for occasionally breaking the six-feet-apart guideline. The posts demand that people stop being so selfish and take initiative by always staying six feet apart. On the surface, that doesn't sound like an unreasonable request. However, when you think about it playing out in reality, it just doesn't work.

Say I'm on a bicycle and I see someone ahead of me on the sidewalk. I can't pass them because I'd be closer than six feet, so I cross the street to pass—oh wait, there are people walking on that sidewalk too, and, in THEIR effort to stay six feet away from ME, they panic/stop in their tracks/cross the street, where—uh-oh, they're in danger of being too close to the person I was trying to avoid, and the person I was trying to avoid has to run ahead to give these new people room, but then she gets too close to the person ahead of her on the sidewalk—

It is a nice thought. But in reality, you cannot expect people never to break the six-feet-apart rule. If you are so concerned about your personal safety, definitely wear a mask, stay home, precautions. But if every individual person is supposed to rearrange himself for every individual person, we're just gonna collide even worse—and no one will reach their destination.

Although it doesn't feel directly related, I wouldn't be surprised if this bitter, pent-up feeling is a side effect of quarantine. With two or three exceptions, I haven't seen anyone but Gabe in about eight weeks. I'm beginning to feel permanently disconnected from the aspects of humanity that I actually like. I'm watching as Americans become brainwashed into believing that anyone who stands up for his or her freedom is selfish. There is no other way to put that. We are being brainwashed into believing that standing up for your freedom is selfish. If your reaction to that statement is any form of, "Well, YEAH, wanting to go out in the middle of a pandemic/wanting businesses to be allowed to stay open/etc. IS selfish," then it sounds like you've already drunk the Kool-Aid.

Loving your neighbor by choosing to stay home, wear a mask, and keep your distance is a beautiful, godly decision. Embracing the government's authority to FORCE you to do those things is frightening, un-American, and dangerous. It is not selfish to want to make your own decisions.

I'm going to try to do a better job of giving this all to God. Clearly I'm currently doing a horrible job. I hope getting this out has been in some way therapeutic for me as well. It's been a long time coming.

~Stephanie