Being Amber Rhea

I go through phases with blogging. Sometimes I want to pour my heart and soul out, and other times I’m just not feeling it. This past week has been one of the “just not feeling it” times. The only two three posts I’ve done haven’t been remotely personal, and were mostly blockquotes. I’ve been finding myself falling back into some old patterns of not taking care of myself and not speaking my needs, and I’ve been trying to focus on how to make that stop.

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House-hunting will resume possibly next weekend.

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A while ago I had a dream that my mom was trying to force me to wear make-up. I was really distressed and started crying and saying that I didn’t want to wear make-up, but she kept insisting. This kind of happened in real life when I was a teenager, though never to such an extreme. And besides, I actually did wear make-up when I was a teenager (most of the time) - I even used glitter eyeshadow! By the time I was in college, though, I’d decided it wasn’t my thing.

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Next Thursday, I turn 29. I’m trying not to have an existential crisis about it. Not only is that cliché, but I really should save it for when I turn 30. (I already had the requisite “quarter century crisis” when I turned 25.)

I decided that for my birthday, I’m going to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time - get professional photos taken. I’m getting déjà vu writing this, but I swear it’s going to happen for real this time (but that’s another story). I’ve paid the deposit, picked out my outfits… and the shoot is set for next Sunday. We’re still working on a location but I have no doubt we’ll find something great; I just hope it’s not too cold.

I don’t want to write more about it right now because I don’t want to jinx anything. But, if this goes well, I might do it again!

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I am very disturbed by this. I mean, what the fucking hell?

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Recently while looking for my DVD of Lost In Translation, I found the video I made after completing my senior project in high school. I interned at Flagpole for two weeks, and what I learned was that I didn’t want to be a journalist. I haven’t watched the video since the day I showed it to my class. As I mentioned previously, our VCR died, but fortunately thanks to Twitter I found out Jen has one she doesn’t want, so as soon as I get that from her I can watch the video and digitize it and put it on YouTube. I remember it being pretty good; we’ll see if I still feel that way 10 years later.

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Last night I was at Barnes and Noble and they had this stupid “Porno for Women” display:

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I saw chickens in front of an abandoned school on Huff Road:

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I need to write a full post with my thoughts on this. I love AV Flox’s blog, and if you aren’t reading it, you should be. This is the sort of writing that someone should be getting paid for! It blows me away. One pet peeve about the post in question: Emily Gould did not coin the term “overshare.” Dooce used it in a 2005 interview in Glamour magazine, and that’s just what I know of. Someone else probably used it before that.

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I’ve been having fun with my Tumblr (I think the actual correct terminology for an individual Tumblr blog is “Tumblog,” but I refuse to say that, because I think it sounds stupid). I should probably warn you that it’s not safe for work, but I hate that whole “NSFW” thing, so… consider this an ass-backwards non-warning, I guess.

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We should probably do a new episode of Mostly ITP soon. Who should we interview?

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Tonight on the phone, my grandmother said, “These stupid people who say they haven’t decided who to vote for! How can they be undecided at this late of a date? I think they’re just imbeciles.”

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Jenny: where are your dispatches from the Obama campaign??

From Sara:

But what bothers me even more about this whole thread is that it seems to defy the purpose of the site. Now, there’s nothing in the language of the space to suggest that it was ever meant to be free from criticism. But it’s a confessional, of sorts, the kind of place you go to admit thoughts and feelings for which you have no other outlet. That kind of catharsis is hampered if, the second you let fly those bottled emotions, you’re immediately invalidated and dismissed, and innunduated with the asinine opinions of people who think they know you, your motivations, your life based on two or three sentences you scribbled off in an effort to just get rid of them, to get them out of your system.

The more I think about it, the more I think that this is the kind of site that isn’t built for dissenting commentary. The “me too”s were a good idea - we can feel less alone by hearing that someone, somewhere, is in the same metaphorical boat. Comments were even a decent idea, to the extent that people could reach out to one another and offer advice and comfort, or maybe to even just share stories and miseries. Moms had someplace to finally be able to say “You know, infants are really boring” without having to endure chastisement and ostracization from just about everyone, to admit that they wish their husbands thanked them more often for the care work they perform - to have a forum where their complaints were actually heard and not contested.

Because sometimes we need that more than anything - not to have something fixed, or examined, but just to have it heard and understood. I know that, for me, that’s a huge part of any emotional work I do, especially regarding conflict. I can’t move on and do any kind of processing or rebuilding until I feel like I’ve been heard, until I feel like someone’s listened to what my issue is/was.

A few things have me thinking lately about self-perception vs. the perceptions of others. Arguably, self-perception is all that really matters - if you are happy with yourself and your life, then who cares what anyone else thinks? On the other hand, if you find yourself in a negative self-perception loop, being able to take a look through others’ eyes can be helpful in offering some perspective. -Assuming, of course, that those “others” aren’t the same j-holes who contributed to you having a negative self-image to begin with.

What in God’s holy name am I blathering about? Well, maybe it’ll work better if I speak in personal specifics instead of obtuse generalities.

I wrote here about finding some old pictures of myself and realizing that I was a lot better looking back then than I gave myself credit for. That remark might come off as flippant at best, self-gratifying at worst. But for me it was a real revelation. You see, I had been pegged - I was The Ugly Girl. It started in 7th grade and followed me into high school. It started to subside slightly in 10th grade - but not enough to make my typical days any less difficult.* It probably would have followed me all the way to senior year if I hadn’t transferred to Augusta Prep. (Those pictures were taken during junior year, by which time my self-image had improved significantly - but the scars from a few years prior were still fresh. [Pardon the agonizingly stereotypical metaphor - it's late and I couldn't think of anything better.])

Seriously, though - some pretty whack shit went down during middle school and the first two years of high school. Trying to pretend it didn’t affect me deeply would be an outright lie. Transferring to Augusta Prep was like a breath of fresh air - these people didn’t know me, and thus didn’t know that I was The Ugly Girl. I could start fresh. Leaving Georgia altogether to attend NYU was another huge step. Now I was free of the possibility of running into people from my past while out and about. I’m glad I decided to transfer to UGA during my sophomore year - but those 3 semesters at NYU were hugely important on a personal level. I think things would have been very different if I had gone directly to UGA as a freshman from Augusta.

I like to think I’m mostly over all that shit now, at 25. But there are still times when the deeply ingrained self-doubt and fear creep up on me unexpectedly. It’s usually at particularly vulnerable moments (not surprisingly). And when that happens, I have to do my best to push it away and not let myself slip into the old familiar pattern of believing it. It also sometimes manifests itself at seemingly banal moments; for example, if I am given a compliment based on outward appearance - it could be something as simple as “You look nice today” - my knee-jerk internal reaction might be (and I know it’s going to sound like I’m fishing for a compliment here, but that’s NOT THE CASE, so don’t start with that), “Wow, really? They really think I’m attractive? Shock! Disbelief!”

Anyway. So that’s some shit I’ve been thinking about and dealing with. At times I tend to get caught up with this stuff, and I just go in circles thinking about it on an annoying, philosophical level. But it’s important not to let the past just sit around and fester.

* Ed. Note: Becoming closer friends with Jenny and Niki in 10th grade also helped immensely. Credit where credit’s due - I love you ladies. :)

You know, I give myself a lot of crap. And unnecessarily so. Recently, I was reading some of my old blog entries from ~2 years ago - they are fraught with second-guessing and self-doubt (the bane of my existence). But I realized something, reading them from this perspective/distance/what-have-you. I didn’t give myself nearly enough credit. All the shit I was going through then… Jesus H., I did a damn good job of handling it, and I was am a really strong person. There have been several points in my life where I’ve had this revelation after the fact. I’ve certainly gotten a lot better about trusting myself and not letting other people’s noise drown out what my intuition is telling me. But it’s something I still struggle with at times.

Anyway… why did I feel like I needed to “rush” the process I was going through, back then? (And I recognize that I am still dealing with and coming out of everything that’s happened.) I just felt so much pressure from all sides. But you know, realistically… finding out that your husband wants to become a woman is a big damn deal, and I should be able to take my sweet time in “getting over” it. And looking back, I can hardly believe the grace with which I handled everything (though of course it didn’t feel like it at the time).

So, in summation: I rock, dammit. And I should be able to say that without feeling that little pang of, “Shut up you selfish bitch!” inside.

…why am I living in Bizarro World?

I don’t have to prove anything to anybody, or impress anybody, or live up to some nebulous outside standard. A lot of people pay a lot of lip service to the idea of self-fulfillment and finding happiness within oneself, but they don’t actually put it into practice. Probably because it’s not as easy as it sounds. There’s always pressure and negative energy coming from other places. Yet, I am determined to continue with this as my mantra.

Basically the reason why I’m rambling like this is because somebody made a comment at work this morning that implied that writing HTML is “beneath” a “real developer,” which also implied that we here in Web Services (or perhaps just me) are not “real” developers. Hmph. As if a person is totally defined by what they do in the office between the hours of 9 to 5. Perhaps I’m too sensitive, but the comment hurt my feelings. -And if I am in fact too sensitive, then again, that’s part of who I am and anyone who doesn’t like it can kiss my ass! :-P