Category Archives: Writing

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No, Racism Isn’t Dead

Do you know who thinks racism is dead? People who have never experienced racism. Sure, I’m a white Irish girl from a middle class family so of course I haven’t experienced racism towards me. I wasn’t raised to be a racist. I had friends across the spectrum because I didn’t care what you were. I just made friends with people. I may have thought that racism was dead back then because I never saw it. My parents welcomed all of my friends because they trusted my judgement. I couldn’t even fathom that there were racist people out there.

Until I saw it. My first experiences with it happened when I started dating my now husband ages ago. People stared a little as we held hands walking around. I heard him get called some pretty awful names for both Asian people and Hispanic people. Which was hilarious, because he’s not Hispanic at all. But it wasn’t hilarious, because WTF people. He was annoyed, but brushed it off. You could tell this was something he’s definitely dealt with before.

After some time that faded away and I forgot about those incidences. Until this one time when we went voting together after we got married. I was looking around a the line and people walked up, got their ballots, and went on their way. Then my husband walked up and I heard something that I had never heard before. “Can I see your ID please?” I looked around him at the person, trying to figure out if I needed to run back to the car to get my ID because I didn’t have it on me. He was stunned, but pulled out his card and showed them his ID. He got his ballot and walked towards the booth area. I walked up, hesitantly. I gave my address and something strange happened: I didn’t need to show my ID. I didn’t see anyone else pull out their ID in a sea of other people that “looked like me”. I don’t believe in coincidences.

Then, the incident that really shook me. The one where some little girl refused to play with my son because he was a little Chinese boy. That wasn’t the last time that he was referred to as a Chinese boy in a negative way. It probably won’t be the last time he experiences racism because he happens to be part Korean. When I married my husband, I didn’t care about that. I cared that this was someone who treated me well and loved me and my son. I cared that he was my better half. I didn’t think “oh maybe I shouldn’t marry him because he’s different from me and I’m going to birth children who were different”.

So no, racism isn’t dead. Just because you’ve never dealt with it or witnessed it for yourself, doesn’t mean that it isn’t real. Just because you’ve never met a white supremacist, doesn’t mean that there aren’t white supremacists out there. The idea of that is insane to me. Just because they aren’t walking around in white sheets, doesn’t mean that it’s some tin foil conspiracy. It’s dangerous to say things like that, especially when you have such a massive following of people that mistake you for news instead of an opinion guy speaking out of his butt.

In short, racism exists and it’s dangerous to ignore that. As parents, it’s our job to raise our kids not to hate by showing them not to hate. That little girl that was ignoring my boy because he was “Chinese” was too young to become a racist on her own. At that age, she learned that behavior. We can easily stop this problem by teaching our children to be better.

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You Guys Had it All Wrong… It Was the Video Games!

It was only a matter of time before the conversation came back to the favorite scapegoat: video games. Of course it isn’t the fact that these psychotic people shouldn’t have been able to legally purchase those guns to begin with. That isn’t the problem. The problem isn’t the fact that society has become more emboldened again to show off their racist and hatred-filled rhetoric to those youth that are vulnerable to those things. No, it’s the fact that a kid likes to play Fortnite or Overwatch that’s the problem.

For the people who are all about “guns don’t cause violence, people do” to turn around to go “guns don’t cause violence, but people do because they play video games” is a ridiculous argument. Look at the eSports community across the globe. Last I checked, Korea and Japan don’t have a mass shooting problem in their countries and those are probably the biggest countries for gaming. But please, tell me how I’m a terrible person because I enjoy games that may or may not be considered “violent” and allow my kids to play video games. Spoiler: I allow them to play video games because video games don’t cause violence. People cause violence, if you want to use that same line to protect your precious guns. I will fight for my right to play harmless video games more than I will fight for yours to have a gun that can shoot off 100 rounds too many per minute.

There have been the same amount of legit studies that show that vaccines are harmful as there are legit studies to show that video games cause violence. Spoiler #2: There are none. But science doesn’t matter when you want a scapegoat that doesn’t make you lose millions in lobbying money from the NRA. If video games had lobbyists that spent as much as the NRA does, this wouldn’t even be a conversation right now. But politicians don’t care about people; they care about money.

I’m not sure if they don’t care to find a solution, because as long as they are making millions it doesn’t matter if people they don’t know are getting shot and killed at these mass shootings. There has to be a solution, but politicians are too dumb, lazy, and greedy to figure it out. Maybe if there was more God in the culture they say. What they mean to say “If there was more Christian God in the culture”. Sure, you can vote new people in, but people can be easily bought to trade in their morals and integrity. They can make big promises but they won’t deliver. Our kids will continue dying. One day it will be someone in our family, maybe yours. Maybe even some day a politician’s family will be affected by these tragedies. Will it matter then?

The fact is that there is a solution, somewhere, that’s a compromise. Asking for stricter background checks before you let people buy guns that shoot multiple rounds at once is reasonable. Making laws that have people convicted of violent crimes or have proven to be a danger to others have their legal guns taking away is a reasonable answer. There are reasonable solutions that don’t interfere with your right to have guns and for other people to have the right to live. But it won’t happen, because no one wants to come to the middle since this whole damn country is a divided place where people hate just because. Where they won’t open their minds to hear another side. Where if you’re a Republican or a Democrat, you’re automatically enemies. I used to think we were better than this. I try to teach my kids that we are better than this. I’m really starting to doubt if we are as we slide further down this path of disregard for other people. And that isn’t the fault of guns or video games or a lack of God. It’s our fault.

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When Hiring Your Commander in Chief

If you are going to be the boss, I think that you should have a general idea of the inner workings of the company you are in charge of. For instance, if you’ve never cooked or worked in a kitchen in any capacity, what makes you think that you can run a restaurant? That can only lead to disaster. Why should we hold the President of the United States to a lower standard than what we would expect in any other business? They need to be qualified.

My issue with past presidents include the simple fact that they never served any time in the military. Presidents Trump, Obama, and Clinton never served their country. Here are 3 people, two of which at least had experience with governing and that silly little paper known as “The Constitution”, but never had the experience of boot camp. They never had to sit in the desert, wondering if the enemy, a spider, or the heat was going to kill them. They were qualified for half of the job of President, not the whole thing.

But the President is our Commander in Chief, the head of our armed services. You want to put someone in there who has served his country proudly. Who will be less hesitant to “just send troops wherever” because they have been there. They know that strategically it may not be the best call. Because of experience. Experience in the military should be a minimum requirement of the President. The ideal candidate will have both legislative and military experience. Maybe if we expect more, we will stop settling for… well, you know.

I’m on the fence of requiring military service for all citizens, mostly because my “mom” fears overrule my logic here. But at a minimum, a person who hopes to be president some day should perform military duty. I’d trust my country’s military better in the hands of someone who has experienced what every other soldier has. I want a leader who is an excellent role model, who can empathize with the military and their families. This will give them more compassion when they are handling things like improving the VA programs. The President should be a proud veteran of the United States Armed Forces. In fact, maybe we should be sure to hire only people with experience for their roles. Maybe the Secretary of Education should have a degree and work experience in, oh I don’t know… education. Maybe the head of the intelligence community or the Secretary of Defense should be decorated individuals of their fields. I have this silly idea of hiring people for jobs who have at least some experience in what they are doing, not just because they had the money to win.

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It’s All So Sad

By now, the outrage seems to disappear anytime there is major gun violence. It’s just a thing that happens now, not some rare tragedy. Some thing that we are seemingly helpless to stop. Thoughts and prayers mean nothing to those who are dead, who are mourning. It’s just all so sad. This time it was another “mentally ill, lone wolf”. Code words for “an insane white guy with a gun, who may or may not actually be an alt-right or white supremacist or something but we really don’t want to talk about it”. If it were a Muslim or an illegal immigrant, we’d hear outrage of how liberal policies caused this to happen. But it wasn’t. So you just hear all about how it was some crazy guy, who doesn’t reflect the majority of legal gun owners.

The problem is that there are no real solutions. You can ban guns, but bad guys tend to not listen to silly things like laws. You could make stronger laws and spend more time enforcing those than arresting people who have a dime bag of pot on them. But ultimately, bad guys are going to find ways to do bad things. That’s kinda what they do. That doesn’t mean we can’t cut out a lot of it by making rules like stricter wait periods or allowing laws that take guns away from people who could potentially do harm to others. As they tried to do with the Parkland Shooter, a person who should never have been able to legally obtain the gun with his long list of issues. However, infringement of rights or whatever people are going to argue. The point is, these are things that will never, ever change.

Then you can focus on better mental health care. Look at ways to make mental illness less of a “taboo” and more of a “normal” illness. Maybe even make mental health care more accessible to everyone, and not just the rich people. State funding is always short for everything and private hospitals are just businesses. Again, this is a great idea but no one wants to actually put in the time to make these changes. Insurance companies and hospitals get to rake in the cash, and the people who need help can just suck it up and deal with it. It’s all so sad.

The problem comes down to money. Gun laws won’t change because of the substantial amount of money gun lobbyists toss towards politicians to ensure these laws don’t change. The health industry won’t change because of all of the money that insurance companies throw at politicians. (Notice a pattern here?) Money talks and the rest of the American people can just follow blindly because they don’t know any better. Not that what’s best for the American people has ever been a concern for politicians aside from talking points that end up being bought off anyways.

Actually, the problem comes down to the politicians that take the money. The ones who understand that American’s have a short attention span. By the time they forget about the outrage of tragic events like the one at the Garlic Festival, they are already posting selfies and live video of themselves as they do the most mundane thing while the masses are more concerned about that than what is going on around them. Politicians know that they can ride the wave while it’s there, but they don’t have to do anything about it. Because unfortunately, no one cares until it happens again. It’s all so sad.

There are no great solutions. That doesn’t mean that people don’t have to try.

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My (Mis?)Adventures at a Neighborhood Meeting

I’ve written a few blogs about my issues with my neighborhood. I did end up getting the attention of the city councilman, who actually cares about doing the right thing. He listened. He was responsive and not sure how he missed my email. He immediately took a look at the street and determined there was an issue with parking. While I simply wanted the curve to be a “No Parking” zone because fire trucks couldn’t make it through the bend the way it was, it turns out there was a bigger issue.

Out of the people who attended the meeting, 90% of them were residents of the apartments, 7% were city officials, and then only 2 homeowners on the street: myself and my husband. The ones that they blamed for the horrible situation they are in now: they can’t park all along both sides of a curved street. I was prepared. Public safety was a major concern, which should trump any convenience that they felt they were entitled to. It does suck that good people have to suffer because some people want to be inconsiderate. I felt like offering up a suggestion of permit parking in the apartment parking lot would be a great idea.

Was I pissed that my property was not just damaged once but 4 times in the 4 years I had lived there up until that point? Absolutely. But there was a bigger issue. There were ambulances that had to park in my driveway because they couldn’t park close enough to the apartments. That’s time that could matter in life and death situations. What if a house catches fire and the fire truck can’t make it around the bend to save people? That should be a concern. Not “but it’s too far to walk”, despite the fact that the people who complained at the meeting either a) didn’t have a car or b) already parked where the “No Parking” spaces end. They should be happy the fire trucks and ambulances can better reach them. That their public transportation can get to them easier.

But no. I’m an evil, horrible human being that is targeting the apartment people because I hate poor people. Because I have an in with the government because obviously I’m rich since I’m a homeowner. First of all, I was a single, teen mom who worked long hours to make ends meet and still failed and needed public assistance. I know what it’s like to be poor and I never forget sacrificing my own meals so my son never starved. Second of all, if I were rich I would be living on the other side of the school where the houses are bigger and have better lawns. I didn’t know that my complaint would get “No Parking” signs along half the street on both sides. The thing is… it wasn’t just me.

Sure, my complaint may have started the snowball effect but it was them who turned it into a snowman. The fire department said that they had issues and wanted the “No Parking” signs. But still, it was my fault. Somehow a nobody like me can apparently influence an entire city government. I can’t. If I could, my blog would be a lot bigger and I’d be much more famous. And rich. And living on the other side of the school.

The meeting itself was a mess. They were yelling over each other. They pointed in my direction, saying “just because some flower pots got destroyed” as if that mattered. It didn’t. It was the catalyst; not the cause. The government officials there explained the case and I understood. I didn’t like that I can’t have guests parked outside of my house but it was a logical choice from the city engineer standpoint. As the councilor said, “It may not have been the popular choice, but it was the right choice.” I agree with the signs even more today than I did before. Plus, they should be happy now that they have have more room to sprawl out their lawn chairs and grills in the street. It really is a win/win.

We explained that we wanted a safer neighborhood for everyone to enjoy. Some understood. Others stormed out of the meeting feeling like they were ignored. Again, those were the people that were unaffected by this. They felt as though they were entitled to park in the street and didn’t like it when our councilor told them that they aren’t. That the street isn’t a parking lot, it’s a public street that the city dictates what can and cannot happen. He made sense. He listened. He tried to explain the point repeatedly of how the signs were really fixing a mistake of the past. He was kind to them, only to have them disrespect him and the very kind head of the DPW.

I admit that I’m a misanthrope, but my intentions were good. I didn’t ask for parking to be banned outside of my house. I suggested that there should be no parking around the curb and that people blocking the sidewalk to the school should be dealt with. I didn’t know that the other city departments complained about the issue. When I complained, he did what he had to do and he found out there were a lot of complaints and concerns. He was just the only person who cared enough to fix it.

They are planning to re-address this at a meeting in August. What do I think will happen then? I think they will make things worse for themselves. I predict that they think the street will become a one-way street and it will fix the problem, not acknowledging the fact that the fire department said they wanted that side to be “No Parking”. They will get permits for their cars, but then they have to worry about the legal repercussions of that. That’s assuming anything will change, which it probably won’t. As much as this inconveniences me, it’s the right call. I’m okay with the sacrifice for the greater good of the neighborhood. There are a lot of elderly people on this street and having access to emergency vehicles should be the top priority, not what’s convenient.

I don’t want to go in August, so I can have the evil stares and people actually attack me as if I’m the cause of their problems. But it’s all about making a change when you feel one is needed to make things better. And I can go to sleep very comfortably knowing that I did just that. My conscience is clear. I saw an issue, I took the steps to resolve the issue, and the issue was resolved. That really should have been the end of it. And that is the end of my experience with participating in the local government.

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“Man it Takes a Silly Girl to Lie about the Dreams She had…”

“Lord it takes a lonely one to wish that she had never dreamt at all.”-“Carve Your Heart Out Yourself”, Dashboard Confessional

Ever since I first heard that song, it spoke to me. I’m a huge music lover, particularly emo music of my youth. I admit it and I’m okay with this love. The reason is because there are so many songs that speak to me. This one included. Here are some other songs that I directly relate to on a level that gets into my brain.

  • “Freakish”- Saves the Day
  • “Bend and Not Break”- Dashboard Confessional
  • “Several Ways to Die Trying”- Dashboard Confessional
  • “Stare at the Sun” – Thrice
  • “Lucky” – Seven Mary Three
  • “Extraordinary Machine” – Fiona Apple

In fact, I would say that “Carve Your Heart Out Yourself” one of the songs that has spoken to me the most. A reminder of my greatest weakness: myself.

I like to think of myself as a relatively confident person. I like to think of myself as reasonably smart, somewhat talented at what I do. I even sometimes dare to think that I’m an okay mother. I talk about acceptance. I talk about how we should be comfortable with ourselves and how we should take solace of “At least I’m trying my best”. But most days, I don’t think any of that. Most days, I’m a failure. And I either decide that I’m going to make the next day better. That I’m going to try to be a better mother. A better writer. A better anything than I was the day before. It’s those moments that I realize that I’m not confident or talented or smart or even worthy. It’s those days that I struggle.

It’s easy for other people to pass judgement on how you live your life. That if you don’t live up to their ideal, that you are nothing. You are insignificant. That you are making excuses for your laziness or how you’re a failure at everything. How you’re not a real writer. You’re barely a good mother. You don’t deserve anything in life because you didn’t earn it. Those ideals that get forced on you cut more than anything you can possibly imagine, especially when you make the choice that staying home with your children is the best choice for your family. Those moments shake me, realizing that someone else’s words are more powerful than mine. That I should give up on my goals and the things that I have tied to my identity. That I should give up power and accept my fate that maybe I was bound to fail all along, no matter how hard I try.

Who doesn’t feel that? Who doesn’t get put down to a point that you wonder if you should even get back up and fight? I’ve always prided myself in being a scrappy fighter. But even the scrappiest of fighters wonder if the fight is even worth it anymore. Because someone else judged your life. Because you gave someone that power to judge your life. And you look in your corner, realizing that maybe you have someone there willing to fight with you. Fight for you. But… what if you don’t? That’s not something that anyone wants to face: fighting for yourself.

I’d like to say that you shouldn’t give anyone that power to make you feel like that. I’d like to say that even someone who once prided myself in my mental fortitude is weak to this. Maybe I’m not as strong as I’ve always led myself to believe. Maybe by admitting this weakness, I’m showing strength. Maybe by pouring out these thoughts, someone else who has felt this way can take solace in the fact that they aren’t alone. Because in times like this it helps to know that you have someone, even someone miles away, there fighting alongside you.

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It’s Different… Except It’s the Same

I remember when Tim Thomas stood up for his beliefs, taking a stand that he could not meet President Obama because they simply didn’t share the same beliefs. He felt that he would be betraying his belief system. The right, lauded him as a hero. Standing up for his beliefs. The left, they denounced this. He should stick to hockey, not politics. That’s a slap to the face to his country. Was he a hero to stand up for what he believed in? Sure, I think so. I won’t fault the guy for not compromising his morals. I refuse to do so in my art; why would I admonish a person for doing the same.

Fast forward to now, with President Trump. When an athlete says “I just don’t share the same moral ideals as the president, so I won’t meet him.” The left laud them as a hero. Good for them, standing up for what they believe in. The right? Stick to kicking soccer balls, you are disrespecting your country. I stand by the same position here: you cannot go against your morals, and you need to do what you need to do to go to sleep fine at night. What makes one person a snowflake for this and what makes them a hero for morals? You can’t have it both ways.

For a society that moans and complains about the lack of morality, they seem to only talk about people who share the same morals and belief systems as they do. That’s the difference. The difference in both cases is that they are doing the same thing, but when one person does it they agree with the morals and not in the other case. Does that make the act different? No. It’s just people blindly following like good little supporters. People need to follow their beliefs and have the freedom to do so. As long as they aren’t being hateful and violent to another human being, that’s their right. That’s what it is to be American: Acceptance. You don’t have to agree with them; you just have to accept them.

The same applies to actors and comedians. Why do people like James Woods, Tim Allen, and Jon Voight get to say their opinions to be applauded by the right, but other celebrities are ridiculed by the right for talking about their political ideas? It’s the same thing. You can’t applaud one person while telling the other to “stay in their lane and pretend to act”. It doesn’t work that way. It really doesn’t, I promise. Do I think celebrities have the right to discuss their political beliefs? Sure. I also have the right to not care what they say and just enjoy watching entertainment, as long as it isn’t completely propagandized in any direction. I can handle a little doctrine, but please don’t force feed it. I can’t be bothered if you’re just going to force your beliefs on me.

I have this crazy little philosophy on life of: “If it doesn’t affect me, I don’t care.” When I say this, I don’t mean this from a charity standpoint. I don’t mean that I don’t care about the plight of homelessness because it doesn’t affect me. I’m referring to the choices people make. If someone else wants to have an abortion, that doesn’t affect my life. If two men are in love and want to get married, that doesn’t affect me. That’s their business, not mine. I just have this crazy notion that if people aren’t harming other people or animals in any way, then let them be. Let them think that Fox News is the second coming of Jesus. Let them think that Rachel Maddow is a real journalist. Let a man (or woman) have a sister wives/brother husband situation if they are truly consenting this lifestyle choice. It doesn’t affect your life.

I don’t care that Megan Rapinoe or Tim Thomas doesn’t want to visit a sitting president because they don’t share the same beliefs and morals. I don’t care that Taylor Swift encouraged people to go to the polls and support gay rights. These are small moments in the grand scheme of life. You do you and they will do them. The sooner we get over ourselves, thinking that our way of thinking is the only way to be, the sooner this world can be a little less craptastic.

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The Cautions of Censorship

I’m a writer, which means I’m very much pro the concept of “freedom of the press”. I’m aware that this freedom only goes so far. For instance, generally speaking private organizations can do whatever the hell they want and there’s nothing you can do about it from a freedom of speech point of view. This freedom really only applies on a governmental level. The government isn’t shouldn’t be policing citizens on their opinions. The idea that governmental officials can get the false narrative of “fake news” out there is appalling to me. This should be more appropriately titled “opinion news” or “biased news”, and both sides are guilty of only showing the cards that best fits the narrative that they want to put out there.

The notion of censorship bothers me. I write because I want to share my thoughts and opinions. I’m always careful to let people know that what I’m saying is opinions, not necessarily fact. I’m a blogger; I’m here to write opinions based on the facts as I see them. When faced with a real possibility of a slide away from my freedom to write as I wish, I do get scared. I see this shift happening, and it really scares me. When the press is deemed “the enemy of the state”, bloggers and writers are probably not that far behind so long as they don’t “fall in line” as they should. I wasn’t cut out for following blindly; my parents made me that way.

Social media is getting more and more… loose… with their ban hammers. I don’t like the thought that you’re one wrong meme away from Facebook jail. Do I find some things on social media offensive? Sometimes things cross a line that I don’t feel comfortable with. Do I report it or even do more than just scrolling on past it? No. Because whether or not I find it offensive or agree with it, they still have the right to post it. As long as they aren’t specifically calling for mass murders on people or specific groups of people, I don’t see a problem with it. If people want to post racist, homophobic things, then that just lets me see the people I don’t want to associate with. It isn’t anyone’s job to police them. If people want to post awful things on social media, let the real world deal with it.

For instance, a person posts a racist thing on social media and then gets fired. If you were dumb enough to post the thing to begin with, you deserve the real life consequences of your actions. I think the moment you start censoring social media this way, you make it harder for us to let social Darwinism sort itself out. People are going to be racist homophobes; banning their content on social media just emboldens them. It makes them a martyr of their hateful causes. I want to see who people really are, which is the benefit of the cesspool we know as social media.

Let’s ease up on talking about what offends us and work towards teaching the next generations to be better than us. That’s the only real way that we are going to change the world. Not by being anonymous keyboard warriors that hide behind a false sense of security in our blanket forts.

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Lessons Learned from the First Debate

I’m not going to lie. I tried really hard to watch the debate. At some point after making a crack about how Corey Booker looked confused on stage and Beto reminded me of an old Napoleon Dynamite, I realized that suddenly Rachel Maddow was on stage. Apparently memes on Reddit were far more interesting than what was going on stage. Why? First of all, I didn’t know half of the people up there anyways and honestly even after the debate I couldn’t tell you who they were. And that is the biggest problem the Democrats are going to have right now. I’m a prime target for both of these parties: An independent. If I have no clue who you are putting in front of me, I’m not going to see why I should vote for them. Then, you are going to lose because most true independents are going to have that same struggle.

Problem #2 that the Democrats are going to have? They are going to end up forcing Elizabeth Warren on us as the candidate, because they learned absolutely nothing from the Clinton/Trump election. I don’t care how progressive you want to look, she is going to be one of the worst people to put up there. She tries too hard to be “average” while also showboating. She’s not likeable. The whole “Native American” thing will be the only thing people talk about. Trump will win against Warren, I have no doubt in my mind about that. And part of that may be because she’s a woman, but it’s mostly because she’s not a very likeable one.

I do hope that tonight’s debate ends up less like a battle to talk over each other and avoid questions and more about learning who these candidates are. Yes, I’m particularly interested because from what I’ve seen there are 2 potential candidates up to debate tonight that I would actually consider voting for. Which is big news because I’ve never voted for a Democrat in a presidential election. Though, to be honest I’ve never voted for a Republican either. (I told you, true independent.) I hope that the candidates I’m rooting for tonight show me something good, something that will make me look closer at them. If not, I’ll have a hard decision to make next year. Because I can tell you right now that I still refuse to vote for Trump. In fact, everything that I’ve seen during his presidency makes me even more unlikely to vote for him. But I struggle with the idea of voting for someone because of their party. I’m an idealist; I want to vote for someone I can believe in, someone that doesn’t make me regret that decision.

Why not Trump? My thoughts on him don’t come from the news or are based in the Russian investigation. Just reading his Twitter account makes me want to have nothing to do with him. Then the fact that everyone kept talking about how “Obama was an embarrassment to the country and no one respects us because of him”, but yet (unless someone has evidence otherwise) no foreign leader publicly said that Obama was suffering from “mental retardation” either. Does the foreign leader actually think that? Maybe, but he most likely did it to get a rise out of Trump… which shouldn’t have worked but it did. That’s not a president; that’s a celebrity running their mouth on social media. Something that apparently the far right hate unless it’s one of them. Then it’s “He’s not afraid to say what he’s thinking”.

In an ideal world, a (good) Republican would stand up and run against Trump. We’d see the debate. I’d vote in the Republican primary if that happened. I want to see someone run that has experience, who doesn’t tweet out his every (and often infantile) thought. I don’t normally buy into expressions like “we’re one tweet away from war”, but I think that’s an irrational fear that’s growing more realistic every day. I want to have a candidate that actually makes me excited to go out and vote, not just go through the motions because of “civic duty, blah blah blah”. Especially as a woman, when people guilt you into it by saying “they fought so hard for your right to vote…” I want someone that I can believe in, that will make a positive difference in the world. Someone who’s a good role model for my kids, because the president is someone who represents us as a country. And we want that to be a positive, strong representation.

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Being the Ideal You

Among the many lessons I learned growing up, one major one was about being “perfect”. Whenever teenage me complained about things like “my mildly gap teeth” or being teased for my freckles but there’s no makeup that covers them for me, my parent’s would always say the same line: “That’s the way God made you.” That was their way of saying deal with it; I thought anyways. They really just wanted to instill an acceptance of these are things that I couldn’t change, or rather I’d spend a lot of money trying to change. That it was better to accept them as part of my character, as something that made me unique. And they certainly always accepted my unique self. (Except my freckles. Me and my freckles were never friends. And Bare Minerals works wonders on them.)

This made me to accept that this idea of “perfection” is really a state of mind. Everyone can probably think of one person that they think is perfect, but another person can easily point out every single flaw that you may be oblivious to. That’s because there’s really no such thing as “perfect”. There’s no such thing as a perfect mom; only great moms. There’s no such thing as a perfect partner; their imperfections are what become perfect to you. Everyone is different and you have to the choice to accept that about yourself and others, or you can just be a miserable human being. You do you.

For example, my husband has this birthmark on his cheek that looks like a bruise. When I first met him, I considered asking him about the fight he got into because of the bruise, but I figured I’d let that come up naturally. After a month or so, it was still there and that was that. I never mentioned it. It never made him less attractive. It was just a unique feature he had. Other people point it out, saying he should get it laser removed. Because there’s this ideal of perfect that they have for him. He doesn’t seem bothered by it, so there it is. If it was something that bothered him, I would encourage him to do something about it. But it doesn’t bother either of us, so there it is.

Which brings me to the next point of this: just because you think people should stay “The way God made them”, that doesn’t mean everyone else feels that way. If one of my friends felt like plastic surgery was something that they needed to feel good about themselves, that’s their life. They should do what they need to so that they can be happy and confident. However, if they’re doing it because a boyfriend got in their head and convinced them to do it, I would fight them tooth and nail about how the only thing that needs to be removed is the boyfriend.

It’s all about your state of mind. If you are confident and happy with yourself, there’s no reason to change it. If you feel like you need changes to be happy, you shouldn’t be judged by that. You have to live up to your own ideal, ignoring everyone else’s fight for the ultimate perfection. Because it’s a losing battle. No one is perfect.