Hello You, It’s Me (version 1)

I’ve always wanted to be a story teller. It is at the base of my childhood memories, tucked in with all the times I spent using books to self-soothe and release emotion. I’ve always been in love with words and language and books and creative expression.

I’ve started a number of blogs. One that was focused on book reviews lasted for a couple of years. That was the longest I could stay focused. They lost their appeal because I started trying to appeal to some “audience.” Instead of just writing; writing because it’s the way I express myself and the way I learn. I don’t want to have a “theme” or be some kind of “expert”…I just want to share things of interest to me. Like having a conversation with you (but-one-sided).

While I love to write educational material I also love to do creative writing. I don’t usually share any of my personal writing. I don’t want to edit, I don’t want to outline, I just want to write.

Hello You

Today, I’m changing. I’m going to start putting more of my personal writing here. The raw writing behind what I write for other purposes. The hundreds of pages of journal paper I have in boxes around here will stop growing and my thoughts will be out of my head.

I started this blog and I’ve been pretty consistently posting things I’ve been working on. However, I’ve been trying really hard to create useful articles around the information I am studying myself. It is feeling less like a “personal blog” and more like a “informative blog.” Or something. Doesn’t matter. Anyway, I’ve posted over 100 articles here and I’ve now proven to myself that really, no one is finding anything I post here, unless they come here looking for something pretty specific.

So, if you are here, there must be a reason and if my words resonate with you, I’m happy to have connected with you and I hope you find a thought seed.

Hello you!

Mental Health Spiral

My mental health has taken a big hit over the last few weeks. I try to be a very self-aware person, as you can see from the areas I choose to study–neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, history–I love to learn. It’s kinda my super power. And with every superpower comes challenges.

One of my challenges is that I anxiety learn. I will read, do crossword puzzles, do logic problems, play a phone game or anything else that will engage my brain in an effort to slow it down. My current anxiety activity is learning German. Having to concentrate on learning an entirely new language is able to keep my brain focused and under control. And there are enough languages on DuoLingo that I could use this coping mechanism for the rest of my life and not run out of languages.

Neurodivergency: A Not Great Metaphor

My brain wants to be a race horse but it’s just…not bred for that dream. It’s like, a mule, in a painted barn with grand illusions. Or just an organ that does not like to play by the “rules” created by neurotypical people. Whatever.

So someone might say…really? You are upset that you anxiety-learn? Isn’t that something that could really be a worse problem? And, of course, I realize that I could be like a meth addict or an alcoholic or a nice middle aged lady that needs xanax to sleep. Obviously I realize that it’s not a real problem. It is the manifestation of a problem. And that problem is that I am not neurotypical, have never been neurotypical and at 45-years old I’m just coming to accept so many things about myself that I’ve just been blind to.

Trying to conform in a society of brains that accept they are a mule in the barn can be exhausting. It is so incredibly boring. And people are not real enough about this struggle.

Subject shift

My guy knows me incredibly well. It surprises me, always, how he cares enough to pay attention to me. And that, even with all my chaos, he loves me. This is a grateful aside, not part of this article. If you like my ramblings there will always be a lot about love . And some of you will be annoyed; I get that, I used to be you. I thought having a truly loving partnership was a lie. Or at least a very rare situation. Then I found my guy and realized that it’s real. I love to talk about it…because everyone deserves this in their life.

So he says to me the other night, that he watched the Barbie movie. He has really good taste in movies and I was surprised when he said he enjoyed it.

Barbie Bias

I had this unconscious bias against the Barbie movie from the minute I heard it was a movie. I hadn’t really thought about why, but I immediately felt that any movie produced around the Barbie mania wouldn’t be genuine. It was likely to be positivity on steroids (I hate the words toxic positivity, but kinda like that).

This coming from a child who was OBSESSED with Barbies as a child. I had a Barbie Kingdom, really. Or I was like some Barbie God that created all these personalities for the dolls. It was a serious business for me. I had a planner and I noted each and every barbie’s birthday on the calendar. I listed their anniversaries, doctors appointments, parties, graduations, surgeries…literally any life event was put into the calendar. And the Barbie families celebrated each other. I had something like 80 female barbies and 11 men. So I ended up making the men all brothers so that it made more sense why these people all hung out together. All this to say I was pretty imaginative.

But then the magic of playing Barbies ends. Usually around puberty, if not some time before. For me as a child, role play ended as I began to have more experiences. Many of my Barbies were divorced, some had been abused, some were handicapped. I dreamed up all of these scenarios for them, realizing that the world has unpredictable bumps. But even in role-play I wanted to be in full control of even the bumps. As I grew and experienced real relationships and learned about intention and behavior styles, that illusion of control was shattered.

So, back to Barbie. I spouted off several reasons that I wouldn’t like the movie. It went something like this in my head, but was likely disjointed when I was telling him about it. “The entire Barbie thing is bull shenanigans. It’s all about this girl power and then it just makes you feel bad. As a biracial girl, I had to wait years to get a black barbie doll. (Her name was DD and she definitely had a brazilian blowout and blue eyes). I actually hated the image of the perfect blonde barbie. I always had to find “Barbie’s friend” so I could NOT be the blonde barbie with her unrealistic beauty standards….”

Barbie and Existentialism…What?

My guy is smart. As always, and he just turned the movie on, knowing I would like it.

As I am often, I was determined not to like it because I was annoyed by the marketing of it, playing off a nostalgic toy…but I got so absorbed. I pretty immediately settled in and changed my mind. They addressed each one of the thoughts I had about why Barbie shouldn’t be held up as some role model for anyone.

Margot Robbie is Beautiful

I mean…you want to tell me Margo Robbie as a “stereotypical Barbie” isn’t part of the overall problem with Barbie?? But what an amazing actress. She rocked the roll and I could see past her prettiness. Like her character in the movie, as a child I looked past the “out of the box” beauty of Barbie and created these interesting characters. I didn’t want their lives to be boring. They needed sailboats and campers and the rocking chair for the dream house. They needed the pool and a bath tub.

She ended up being perfect in the role. The scene where she is at the bus stop and she tells the older woman “You’re so beautiful.” That scene melted me. As women we need to lift each other up more often. Every woman is beautiful.

From Barbie to Kierkegaard

I’ve been studying existentialism. I have created a 6 year plan, basically my home-school version of a doctorate degree, and I’m loving every second of it.

When people described the Barbie movie as existentialist, even nihilistic, I couldn’t believe it. What about Barbie could possibly induce existentialist thought?

But wow. It really did. There were shades of ever tenet of existentialism. The entire movie made me think of things that happened in my childhood, how culture has changed, and of the things I am studying in my adult life. And all of these versions of myself exist within my present self typing to you now.

I’m now working on an essay explaining how this movie fits into all of the existential themes. I’ll share it if I ever finish it. Tonight I feel passionate about it, but read above for the referenced struggles with mental health.

So…bottom line of today’s personal post–Give the Barbie movie a try! I’m dying to talk to others about it. And be nice to yourself. Even if you feel like you are sucking at life (and you have many examples that want to point to this as a fact) you are not. By being alive you are doing exactly what you were born to do. Just survive.