The Waiting Game

I wait. I wait for a change, a dream, a hope. And why do I wait? Why do I assume that good things will come to me regardless of my own actions? Because that’s how I was raised.

I was raised to assume that as a female, if I waited, good things would come to me.  The fairy godmother would come and surprise me with a beautiful dress and a beautiful opportunity. The prince would fight to find me even though he didn't know me. And I would have a happily ever after with zero effort put in.

Amazingly enough, none of those things has happened to me yet (then again I’m only young so it could happen if I wish upon a star). The only thing I really share with the fairy tales is my super sensitive skin that would most definitely feel the pea under a hundred mattresses. So now all I have to do is find a man with a sensitive skin fetish. I’m sure he exists somewhere.

I know it’s fashionable to criticize fairy tales for teaching young girls terrible, terrible messages. But you know what? Also every dating article/advice piece I've ever read or heard about has supported the waiting game! They say men are hunters and have to do the chasing so women should simply twiddle their thumbs and assume that the right guy will come along.

And maybe that’s true, hell I can vouch for it. Whenever I've pursued a man it’s never ended well. And when I played the game I managed to get a boyfriend (he didn't last long but it still worked). So I can’t exactly criticize the advice if it turns out to be true.

What I will say instead is that it is time for women, young and old, to simply ignore the advice and the articles and the fairy tales. Don’t wait for a guy to improve your life. Don’t even wait for a guy. Get on with your own life, sort yourself out first. Control what is within your control.

Until they perfect mind control devices, you can’t force someone to like you or date you (and believe me, I've tried). So instead of viewing men as the be all and end all of your happiness; view them as a pleasant addition to your life but not a necessity.  That may seem harsh but chances are it’ll save you a lot of time and stress in the long run.

For the past twenty years (and notably the last year and a half) I have focused almost exclusively on trying to get men to like me. And for the most part, those men have not made my life better or made me happier. For the past month I've been focusing on myself, getting fit, and learning to like being single and live without men.

This doesn't mean I don’t miss being in a relationship, I definitely do, but it means that I’m beginning to understand that a man will never define who I am and I shouldn't let a man control my own happiness.

So don’t wait for a guy to come along and fix you, he never will. Don’t wait for a man to become more mature and finally look beyond superficiality because chances are he won’t. Instead learn to live without them and learn to live with yourself.

My mother has been giving this advice to me since I hit puberty and started to cry every single time a guy didn't like me/didn't call me/didn't do what I wanted him to. And to be honest, I've never listened. But after my ex and I broke up I realized that, for the most part, men certainly weren't worth the hassle.

This may not be new or revolutionary advice, but sometimes it helps to read what your mother/family/friends keep telling you and you keep ignoring.

Don’t play the waiting game when it comes to men, chances are they’re not waiting for you.

How to: pain and other feelings

How to get over pain
1. Cut out your heart. It wasn't helping you anyway.

2. Ignore all your friends - they don't know squat about what you're going through.

3. Eat. Eat a lot because food never hurt your feelings.

4. Spend all your time thinking about you and all your flaws.

5. Just say no. Say no to going out. Say no to giving or getting help. Say no the being an active member of society

How to get over getting over pain
1. Patch your heart back up. It might not be the same and it might still ache but it'll heal. Eventually.

2. Listen to your friends. Some might know how you feel and could help, others won't know a damn but they're still trying.

3. Work out. Eat well. Get fit. Do it for yourself, no one else, and you might just feel better (especially with the release of some wonderful hormones such as endorphins).

4. Spend time thinking about you. Both your strengths and your weaknesses. When you truly know yourself you might understand what went wrong or be able to approach new situations differently.

5. Just say yes. Get involved and get active. Meet new people and learn new things. It'll keep you busy so time will fly. And we all know that only time will really help you get over time. That and having new experiences so you can focus all your energy thinking about new emotions such as happiness and curiosity and yes, probably more sadness but it'll be different this time around. This time you'll be better equipped to deal with it, I promise. 

The Boys are Back in Town

Scrap the original blog idea (oh I am so predictable in my lack of dedication), this will essentially just be like every other blog out there that is basically just a diary on the internet. For all to read. One would think that would be a bit too public about something private, but as I am essentially an open book, I don't have that many secrets to keep (also I doubt that many people are actually reading this blog in the first place).

Anywho..... Now I've decided that this blog will just be about whatever I think about on a day to day basis. So I might update about fashion, anthropology, books, movies or just your general "What Grinds My Gears". This gives me more of an incentive to write when I'm trying to procrastinate from doing something productive.

Today I will be talking about boys. Or rather, talking about talking about boys. Now, it's hardly a new concept that women talk about men. Nor would it be new that women probably do this more than they should and I'm sure many other women have gotten up in arms about this. And fair enough too, I think we give men far too much attention in the respect that we agonise over every little detail, every facial expression, text or one word response they might give us women.

And think about all the different ways they can ignore us now! Not only is there face-to-face avoidance (I have literally had a guy do a 180 on me on the street just to avoid saying hi) there's also phonecalls, texts, msn, facebook, skype. You name it, we've created a way for us to deal with the pain that is a boy refusing to talk to us. And keep in mind, they probably don't even realise they're causing you pain.

I will admit that I've stared at an online boy once or twice and just tried to mentally will him to talk to me (can't say it's worked yet) and I think I'm finally learning to just stop looking at it altogether. The solution isn't to change these men, but just to stop putting ourselves right on the line to getting let down or disappointed. So I turned off msn, I closed facebook and threw my phone facedown on my bed. These are only temporary solutions because I'm an addict to social networking so returned, shame-faced, quite soon after.

However, it did make me feel better. So I think that solution should be extended to the countless times women get together for the sole purpose of talking about men and whether they like us or not. Yes, we might think about these things all the time, but do we always need to voice them? I used to be a firm believer in the idea that we should always talk about what's bothering us, but after 20 years of following that method I'm starting to question whether or not it's helping at all.

After all, distraction is the best way to forget about pain - do something else and it's like you were never hurt in the first place.

This is not, without a doubt, a new concept. I am not the first person to say no to obsessing over men (hell I watched an old Sex and the City episode the other day where Miranda said exactly that), but I don't believe this concept has been hammered in enough. Smart women everywhere (well in the middle-class Western world, at least) spend far too much time talking about men. Who knows, we could have cured cancer if we hadn't been so distracted by the XYs in this world.

So women of the world, forget about men for one night. If they didn't call - they didn't want to. If they didn't flirt - they didn't want to. If they didn't break up with their girlfriend for you - chances are they didn't want to. There. I just saved you about 3 weeks of endless discussions and seemingly helpful platitudes from your friends (he was intimidated by how smart/pretty you are, he was scared of his own feelings for you).

You're welcome.

Mad Scientist

Is it supremely pretentious of me to start a blog with the intention to discuss issues raised in the New Yorker, even though I'm neither from nor live in the city of New York? Most likely, but however else would I procrastinate valuable hours of my day? 

I should open with a disclaimer that I do not have any fact checkers on retainer, nor am I dedicated enough to doing the fact checkin myself so most likely this blog will essentially be the vague ramblings of a crazy lady, so under no circumstances should you ever reference it if you want to sound smart. 

The intention of this blog is to discuss any intellectual subjects that catch my eye and given my tendency to read The New Yorker when I'm alone, most topics approached will probably be from there, which will give the blog a better structure than the first blog I attempted to write did (that's a story for another day though). 

Now, in case you are a curious cat,  I'll give you a bit of a background to what prompted me to start this blog, which can be narrowed down to three reasons: 

1. I'm currently (as of 2012) in my final year of my Bachelor's degree which means I should be mature and making adult decisions and planning for a future. 

That terrifies me.

So instead I procrastinate. And I figured, if I'm going to be procrastinating I should at least be doing something pseudo-intellectual so I don't feel too guilty. 

2. I'm also majoring in Anthropology which, despite what my friends think, means I'm interested in human nature, not plants. 

3. And finally, I have a subscription to The New Yorker, which I got because I thought it would make me look smart when I went for coffee by myself and also because it meant I'd become aware of issues that normally wouldn't cross my mind. 

The article that caught my attention this week was by Michael Specter titled "the Deadliest Virus" (you can read a brief overview of it here)

Basically it's about manipulation of viruses - the bird flu in particular and the way in which the medical and political worlds have responded. First things first, I know next to nothing about science (think Dr. Nick from The Simpsons) but Specter writes so well that it's possible to understand the issue at hand. Which means the way I've interpreted the article and the topic is from a humanities background rather than a scientific one, so anyone who has more knowledge of science feel free to comment below to further enlighten me. 

The article makes a remark about the similarities between this and Frankenstein's Monster, which I believe is apt (or us playing The Sims) as my first concern when reading the article was how much humans attempt to manipulate nature. While on a logical level I could understand why scientists such as Ron Fouchier would carry out these manipulations, there's always a sliver of fear that one day we will take it too far. 

The article makes a point that in order to create a "pandemic", the virus has to meet three conditions: it must be something humans hadn't encountered before, it has to be deadly and it has to be contagious. While bird flu had met the first two criterion, it was only through the work of Fouchier that it met the third. When those findings were presented it caused all sorts of backlash, calling for Fouchier to step down and causing quite a stir. The article shifts focus not onto the research, but the way in which the findings are handled, whether they should be open to the public or not. However, it's made clear that if a terrorist organisation wanted desperately to get their hands on the virus it wouldn't be all that difficult, even if the results were kept secret or not as scientists didn't work with encrypted emails or the like.

What I found interesting, was that the tone of the article wasn't criticising Fouchier's work, however risky it does benefit the medical world in creating and testing vaccines, but it felt as though it were a warning against taking the manipulations too far.  And, in the words of Anthony Fauci, there is a concern that there's no official governing body overlooking decisions of what to do with the research conducted. This could indicate that researchers are granted too much freedom or that the public as a whole is allowed too much freedom in having this sort of information easily accessible. 

Specter makes reference to a speech made by Hillary Clinton about the threat of biological terrorism, and while stating it's a cause for concern, it's not the biggest concern in the world of viruses. Ultimately, the article concludes that it's not man that we should worry about spreading viruses, but nature. Nature has already created viruses that have killed millions over time and so the experiments are carried out to try and fight the cruelties of nature, rather than the cruelties of mankind.

The depth and research in every article I've ever read in The New Yorker always astounds me, I could never be that dedicated even if I tried really, really hard (which is why I'm writing a blog for free rather than writing for the New Yorker). 

And this article in particular really made me think about whether scientists will ever take things just one step too far. At the moment I've taken an avid interest in young adult sci-fi. What I love most about these distopic novels (aside from the unresolved sexual tension of course) is each author gives their own insight into why the world in its current state will fail. So for some it will end with global warming, lack of water or lack of oil while others lay the blame on human frailty; usually caused by at least one of the seven deadly sins. But all of them do, in one way or another, refer to past mistakes made by humans: either in our history today or a fear of what we may do based on current situations today. 

I always wonder if sci-fi novels are used as modes of propaganda to make us think in various ways. Specter was careful to not be an alarmist in his article which made me question many of the novels I've read recently as they all condemn our current way of living and more often than not, biological warfare is a failed tactic used by cities in the past. Emphasis on the failed. But beyond the realm of biowarfare was the subtext of the article: human manipulation of nature, which is also a common theme in sci-fi.

One series I'm reading at the moment is called The Uglies by Scott Westerfeld which I won't go into detail right now as this post is already supremely long. But in it most humans are at least superficially altered. The female protagonist is altered again and again and each time she is changed, a little bit of me breaks as it's her identity continually being broken. And more often and not, the manipulations are accepted without question, even as her bones are replaced by virtually unbreakable ceramic. In their society, everything natural is considered to be abnormal and hideous.

This sort of manipulation, I would argue, is more of a threat to society than biological warfare as it's already happened. Recently, thousands of women have been thrown into panic with faulty breast implants. We are constantly bombarded with the horrors of plastic surgery gone wrong in any given magazine. So I leave you with this final question: how far is too far when we manipulate nature?