Jump to content

Author, Historian, Storyteller

Archives for November 2013

Kat: Unplugged

Life, Live and LearnView all 4 comments

Okay, so not completely unplugged.  I’ve spent the week sitting in front of a computer all day, but I have been without my phone.  It broke on Monday morning and my replacement doesn’t arrive until tomorrow . . . I’m hoping.  I’m not gonna hold my breath on that one, but my fingers are definitely crossed.  Surprisingly, being without a phone for a week hasn’t bothered me nearly as much as I thought that it would.  I learned a couple of things though.

  1. Contrary to popular belief, there have been no dire emergencies and the world did not end when I was without a computer to stay connected. Crazy I know!
  2. When I’m by myself in a public place, I use my phone to avoid interacting with the world around me. Instead of enjoying the breeze or watching the shadows play on the side of a building I recheck my email for the tenth time that hour. I kind of wonder how much of life I’ve missed out on?
  3. I obsessively check my texts, email, Facebook and Twitter accounts. I’ve almost given myself whiplash from constantly reaching for my phone to check . . . yet again.
  4. Despite that, not once I have I had something to say to someone, that it couldn’t wait until I got home or back to my desk at work.
  5. Nobody gives a crap that I haven’t “Checked-In” anywhere in the past week.
  6. I can get places and meet up with people without GPS or texting.  We kicked it old school and showed up at the appointed time and looked for each other!
  7. I’m more relaxed. Since there is no way for me to respond to anyone immediately, I don’t stress about needing to respond to someone immediately.
  8. It is kind of liberating not being available every second of every day.
  9. A small part of me hopes that my phone gets delayed for another day or two.
  10. Once it does arrive, I think I’m going to start turning it off instead of just putting it on silent when I arrive places. Life exists outside of my smart phone.

shoesgrass

To Young Women – Cultivate Goals, Not Dreams

Inspiration, Life, Live and LearnLeave a comment

In my quest to build a platform for my work I have found myself chatting with a cornucopia of people from across the globe. More than a handful of those people that I have chatted with have been young woman – late teens into their early twenties.  Quite a bit of my work speaks to them, especially Heroines of History. So we chat about that, we chat about literature, we chat about what they’re studying in school and what they want to do once they’re out of school.  Without fail these young women open up and tell me the career that they long for and then type something along the lines of, “Well, that’s the dream.” I can feel the longing dripping from the screen.  It’s not like they are saying that they want to be a princess, bring peace to the Middle East or eradicate world hunger. Instead their dreams are to own their own business, or be a publisher. To these women I always have the same response, “You are using the wrong word.” I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, words are incredibly powerful. Make sure you choose the correct one.  To these women I say that that is not a dream. That is a goal and the first is much different than the second.

Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream, a dream that one day America would live up to those sacred words put down by our forefathers that this nation was founded on the belief that all men are created equal. MLK Jr. knew words.  He knew the power behind them and he chose carefully.  He did indeed have a dream, not a goal.  A dream implies that something is unrealistic; something that you hope for even though you know it is unattainable.  A goal implies something that you work toward, something that can be achieved. Martin Luther King Jr. did not have a goal because he knew that what he wished for was not attainable in his lifetime.  He knew that it was unrealistic to think that he would cross that finish line himself. But that didn’t stop him from dreaming; didn’t stop him from acting and moving forward so that one day his dream would become someone else’s goal and the race would finally be run. That is a dream. An admirable dream, and one that I hope we can achieve some day.

When a young woman tells me that her dream is to publish young adult novels I can’t help but tell her that she is using the wrong word.  That is not a dream.  That is an attainable goal. A goal that she can work towards and achieve in her lifetime, and she doesn’t need luck or well wishes from me. Instead, I wish her patience to stay the course, because any goal that is truly worth achieving takes time. I wish her perseverance to push through the hard times and never give up. I wish her the insight to recognize opportunities when they appear and most of all I wish her the courage to go after those opportunities, or create her own, with all of her heart.

This is what I tell young women. Learn the difference between a dream and a goal.  Dreams are to be enjoyed, never stop dreaming.  But goals are to be achieved, and the only way to do that is to work like you’ve never worked before.

Stairway to the sky

Are There Degrees of Loss?

Life, Love, MothersView all 2 comments

Losing a loved one is never easy.  But a conversation that I had the other day has really gotten me thinking about whether or not there are degrees of loss.  Are there circumstances that make a loss easier or harder to bear?  I know that past experiences can make a big difference.  The loss of a dear pet, if that is the first death a person has encountered, can be devastating and debilitating.  On the other hand I had lost all four of my grandparents, a couple of great aunts and my mother by the time that I graduated from college.  When my childhood dog died I was sad, but since I had been through worse several times before, I was able to grieve the loss while remaining fully functional.  In essence it’s the same loss, but received very differently.  It doesn’t mean that I loved my dog any less, I was simply more accustomed to the processes involved in loss and I knew first hand that the profound ache deep inside does eventually lesson and in some cases fades into the background.

grief

But back to this conversation that I had. A friend told me of her aunt who suddenly passed away due to an aortic rupture, leaving behind college aged children. My heart immediately went out to not only her, but her cousins whom I have never met.  Especially her cousins who found themselves in the same shoes that I walked in ten years ago.  However, I feel like their path is even harder than the one I took. When I said this to my friend, who knows my history, she assumed that I meant that it is easier when you can see the loss coming instead of having someone ripped away from you with no notice.  I was taken aback by this, because that hadn’t even crossed my mind, although there may be something to be said for that.  What was in my mind was that these girls had known their mother, had sought her advice and counsel. They lost the person that comforted them when they were sick and celebrated with them when they had victories.  My mother had not been any of those things to me, she’d been too sick.  So in essence I lost the construct in my mind of what a mother is, not the physical embodiment of a mother.

To me, this seems like an easier loss to bear.  Yes, it comes with its own complications and heart aches.  I’ve had more than one person look at me with grief-wracked eyes while uttering that “I lost something that I never had.” Which is true.  When I was home sick from school I not only took care of myself, but my mother as well.  I never confided in her, I never sought her advice.  When something in my life goes horribly wrong, I don’t wish that my mother was with me, because the last time that she provided me with comfort and security was so long ago that I can’t remember.  So when she died, I didn’t lose these things.  I lost the dream of what I had always wanted her to be, but deep down I had always known that that was never possible anyway, so I don’t know that I can even count it as a loss.

These girls did lose all of that.  My best friend who lost her mother several years ago lost all of this.  She lost her best friend and her soul mate.  They stuck together through thick and thin and when her mother died, a piece of her died with her.  This kind of loss seems to me much harder to bear than the loss I experienced.  The same loss, yet different degrees of loss.  I’m still trying to wrap my head around it, maybe it makes sense to you.

10 Things My Puggles Have Taught Me

Happiness, Life, LoveLeave a comment

1. Take time for snuggles.

Puppy Z on Jo's Lap 4

2. A cold wet nose first thing in the morning is more effective than any alarm clock.

IMG_20131109_075402_215

3. Patience is a virtue.

DSCN1287

4. Where there is a will, there is a way.

IMG_20131109_103559_029

5. One should always put their best face forward.

Photo by Lori Fusaro

Photo by Lori Fusaro

6. Chores are more fun when you have help.

2012-03-20_14-01-41_460

7. If all else fails take a nap.

DSCN0930

8. Sometimes you have to get away from it all.

ResizedImage_1384140431827

9. Take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way.

DSCN0978

10. Best friends are priceless.

Puppies Heart Tails

Embarrassment vs. Humiliation

Humor, LifeLeave a comment

I love comedy, and I like to think that I have a good sense of humor.  I take pride in the fact that I can generally make the people around me laugh.  It is my defense mechanism.  My particular brand of comedy falls into self-deprecating humor.  I will make fun of myself to get a laugh more often than I will make fun of somebody else.  Probably because of this I don’t embarrass easily. This being said, there seems to be a branch of comedy that has infiltrated the main stream that no matter how open I try to be, I can’t enjoy. It’s the comedy that goes a step beyond embarrassment and into humiliation. I will go from loving a movie to wanting nothing to do with it as soon as that line is crossed.

Self-deprecating humor doesn’t bother me, if Jim Carey wants to make as ass out of himself to get a laugh, more power to him. I don’t necessarily find it funny, but it doesn’t bother me.  Everything that he does is his choice.  There is no loss of control. He is not being forced to do anything. In contrast, the scene in BRIDESMAIDS where everybody gets sick and there aren’t enough bathrooms to go around, so one woman uses a sink and another winds up taking a crap in the middle of the street, I don’t find that the least bit funny.  In fact I find it in very poor taste.

I know what you’re thinking; you think I don’t like it because the whole scene is about poop. Nope, I have nothing against poop jokes.  Poop jokes abound in Shakespeare and I love his work.  I don’t like it because that situation isn’t embarrassing, it’s humiliating.  The so-called comedy is derived from a situation, that if it happened in real life, the person would be absolutely mortified. They might shrug it off and slink away, or even try to make a joke out of it, but if you looked into their eyes, you would see that a part of them had just died inside. It is a degradation of the human spirit so cleverly disguised, that people no longer see it as such and it becomes acceptable.

In general, I am not an overly empathetic person. I have never lost sleep because of the starving children in Africa or because of the atrocious conditions of our inner cities. Some people are made to be humanitarians. I am not. So why does this bother me so much?  It isn’t somebody I know or me being humiliated after all. I think it is because laughter is one of the most powerful forces in our arsenal, and using the humiliation or degradation of others for comedy, for laughter, is one of the lowest forms of entertainment.

I don’t find that funny.

Embarrassing situations on the other hand I find very funny. I love slapstick, or situational comedy. Give me a guy stepping on a rake and getting smacked in the face and I will laugh until my sides ache.

Garfield - Rake

The kid on the bike delivering papers in WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING makes me laugh so hard I cry every time I watch the movie. For me the difference lies in the semantics. These are embarrassing, not humiliating. If no one were around to be witness you would either continue on with your day and forget that it ever happened or find the humor in it and tell a friend later to share the laugh. If no one is around to witness something humiliating, you thank God up above for your good luck and never tell anyone that it happened, but you will always remember. To me that’s the difference. Humiliation requires judgment from others. Embarrassment can be a solo activity.

And yes, that is very subjective.  I am quite sure that there are things that I would only find mildly embarrassing, while somebody who is more sensitive might find the same thing humiliating.  But my general rule of thumb is that if it is something that you will look back on in ten years and feel ashamed then it belongs in a tragedy.  If no, then it’s fodder for comedy.

Odd Man Out

Happiness, LifeLeave a comment

For the better part of my life I have felt like I didn’t fit in.  Like I was on the outside looking in.  Even in my family I was the odd man out – mom had black hair, dad had black hair, sister had black hair, I was practically blonde.  On vacations people would always comment to my sister that it was so nice of her to bring her friend on vacation.  To which she would always reply, “She’s not my friend, she’s my sister!”  Kids are cute. I didn’t fit in at school either.  I was a very serious, introspective kid.  It was hard for me to cut loose and just have fun.  Carefree was rarely a part of my vocabulary.  But I had a couple of good friends, and thirteen excruciatingly long years later I graduated and was off to college.

One-Of-These-Things-6

Where I also didn’t fit in.  I was at the number one party school, and I didn’t really like to party.  Awkward!  I auditioned and was accepted into the BFA program where I would intensively study acting for three years with the same group of people . . . whom I didn’t fit in with.  It was an ongoing theme in my life and I had come to accept my place on the outskirts.  People tolerated my presence, and for their tolerance I made sure that I never over stayed my welcome.  I accepted that they didn’t necessarily want me around, but weren’t going to complain about it while I was there.  Here also I made a couple of close friends, and four rather quick years later (I kept myself so busy with productions the time flew) I graduated.

Enter the real world, and I found that I kept finding myself feeling the same way.  Different day, different scenario, same shit.  Until one day I realized that through out everything there was only one constant – me. Through all of these varied experiences and drastically different people the only thing that had stayed the same was my opinion of myself.  I felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere and therefore everywhere I went I didn’t fit in.  It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. A really crappy prophecy.

So I decided that since I had tried changing everything else, the only thing left to change was myself.  Which is harder than it sounds, let me tell ya!  But slowly, over many years I convinced myself that people did want me around.  And they wanted me around for me.  It also helped that I started to be able to recognize the people that didn’t actually want me around and I accepted that and moved on to find other people.  Problem solved, right?  Wrong.

I was out the other night with friends, and for whatever reason the next thing I knew my head was filled with all of those old thoughts.  They’re talking with each other not me, therefore they must not want me around.  We’re doing pictures and everyone has their arms around each other except me, so clearly they don’t want me around.  I was tacked on to the experience instead of being a part of the experience and I felt like crap. It was horrible!

And then I realized, that once more I was getting in the way of my own happiness.  I know for a fact that these friends like having me around, they’ve told me.  One of them expressed that exact feeling while we were out that night. And perhaps they were talking amongst themselves because I was reading my menu and not paying attention.  Perhaps nobody put their arm around me for the picture because I was hesitating on the outskirts like I wasn’t going to be in the picture and then tacked myself on last minute.  Maybe, just maybe, everybody else was wondering what was up with me and why I was being so sullen. Maybe I didn’t fit in, because I didn’t let myself.

Where did that come from?  Why did I all of a sudden transport myself back to the old Kat who hated her self? I don’t even know what caused the flashback, but there it was. I find it truly amazing how our bodies and our minds will hold on to things like that and all it takes is one trigger to open the door and transport you back.  Weird!  Too bad you can’t flip back to your present self as quickly.  Therefore for the foreseeable future I will be reminding myself on a regular basis that I’m pretty cool and people want me around – ala Stuart Smalley cause that makes me giggle.  So if you see me muttering to myself, never fear.  I’m no crazier than usual!

The Solution is Simple

Live and LearnLeave a comment

Is it just me, or do you find that sometimes you completely ignore an obvious solution? I am a writer.  I enjoy the act of putting words on a page even if they aren’t intended for anybody to ever read them. It makes me feel better.  Writing helps me figure things out and clarify my thoughts. Yet during the times that I am the most upset, or frustrated, or confused I do the least amount of writing. I choose instead to stew in my thoughts. How does that even remotely make sense?

I used to be a tutor and whenever one of my kids would come in clearly upset about something, but they didn’t want to talk about, I would have them do a free write.  I would tell them that for ten minutes they had to have their pen to the paper writing.  I wouldn’t be reading it and I didn’t care if they started off by writing, “This is stupid, I have nothing to write about” over and over again.  Because eventually they would get bored with that and they would wind up writing about whatever was bothering them.  After the ten minutes was up, I would have them rip up the page, throw it away and then we’d work on homework.  You know what, it worked every time.  Without fail they would feel better.

Despite the fact that I watched this happen over and over again, do I do the same thing for myself?  No!  Why is it easier to take care of someone else, than it is to take care of our selves? Why don’t we follow the brilliant advice that we give to others? I am genuinely curious about this phenomenon.  It’s like I can’t see the forest for the trees.  Since it is my own problem, I’m too close to it to have any sort of perspective. So it’s not that I ignore the obvious solution, it’s that I can’t recognize that the solution is that simple.  But it is.  The solution is simple.  It is now your job to tell me to go free write for ten minutes whenever I get surly!

Simple Solution