Everyone must know something about me that I am currently unaware of.  For the past year I’ve had co-workers, professors, counselors, friends, mentors, Jenny, new people that I’ve met and the GF all tell me the same thing. 

Monica, you’re awesome and successful. 

Every time someone tells me that I’m going to be fine and I should stop worrying about not finding a job, part of me doesn’t believe them (even thought I really want to believe them). I’ve worked crazy hard over the past year. I’ve been networking my ass, applying for lots and lots of jobs, going on informational interviews, going to professional conferences, tweaking my resume, building a new website all working towards getting a fucking job. 

Unfortunately, I’m one among 100’s (I know, I harass HR managers) of new graduates, and older experienced displaced workers going after the same very limited job pool.  So my goal has changed, and I’m piecing together a couple of entrepreneurial ventures with my friends and classmates.  And I’m really excited about them.  But I’m rather scared shitless. 

When I tell folks about the consulting and the promotions and the party planning, they tend to get really excited. And the more excited they get the more scared I get. 

What if I fuck it up?  What if I’m not as awesome as everyone thinks I am? 

Tonight I finally asked the GF why she keeps telling me that I’m going to be fine.  She said the proof is in the pudding. Over and over, she said, she’s seen me make something out of nothing.  She’s seen me hustle.  

She said, 

I would trust you to make a great cake because I’ve seen you make cakes and I’ve tasted your cake in the past so I don’t worry about your capacity to make good cake in the future. 

I make good cake, huh? 

I giggled at her metaphors (all food related, since we’re dieting), but I think she’s on the money. 

I am a diva (which is the female version of a hustler).  I’m seriously not going to be left penniless, homeless and hungry. I have always had a plan.  And I bought a domain name just in case. I go through my school notes, and they are filled with business plans, and funding sources, and potential partners. And I built a beautiful vision board with all my goals on it, and you can’t go wrong with a vision board.  I’m thinking about tumblring my vision board so you guys can see. It’s SO awesome, and I love it. 

I’m still scared shitless, but I’m not letting my fear stop me from moving forward.  In fact, I think my fear propels me forward.  

When my mama says she’s praying and my bosses tell me I’m great, and I interview with managers who tell me that they wish they had the money to hire me (but they don’t and they can’t), and the GF tells me that she’s not riding my anxiety train…… 

I’m going to take a deep breath.  I’m going to smile.  I’m going to nod and agree with them.  Then I’m going to double time it with my business ventures so that I don’t let all these wonderful people down. 

How do you deal with fear and insecurity?

Elysa at GenPink had a recent post titled “Do you call yourself a feminist?”.  In this post, Elysa summarized a discussion that happened on 20-something bloggers about what feminism means and whether 20-somethings still identify with feminism. 

Reading her post reminded me of an ongoing discussion I’ve been having with a group of my friends.  At least one of us REFUSES to call herself a feminist because she’s seen too many gung-ho feminists become uber career-minded until they find a man to take care of them, then all the feminist stuff is thrown out the window.  

While I do call myself a feminist, I often feel the same way.  In college at Salem, from day one as a freshman I was bombarded with the idea that women could do and be anything.  These girls were amazing. When I moved in as a freshman, my dad was prepared to move all my stuff into the dorm room, but little did he know that Salem girls move their own sh*t. He barely lifted a finger and my car was unpacked in no time. 

Over the years, I remember being jealous of (or maybe having crushes on???)some of the girls who seemed to have it all.  There were girls at Salem who were smart, pretty, and seemed to have amazingly bright futures. I couldn’t wait to see the greatness that they would accomplish. 

 One or two years after graduation, I would be excited to read Salem’s alumni magazine to see what the girls were up to. They didn’t disappoint me; United Nations, Capitol Hill, medical school, law school, PhD programs, and adventures is South America, Africa and Europe were often the updates I would read about my Salem sisters. I’ve even seen some of my Salem friends on TV and the NYT. How cool is that? 

Then those updates started to change. For the past few years, the updates I receive are more likely to be about who got married, who’s pregnant, who’s had kid number 1, 2 or 3. And even worse?  Those girls who dated girls all through college who are now married to men and being  f*cking housewives!  These updates piss me off. If the most important thing that is happening to you is your marriage or kids, I really don’t care to know. 

Hmmmm. That didn’t come out exactly how I meant. 

I understand the importance of having a partner in life.  I write a lot about relationships, and my relationship in particular; it is a huge part of my life.  I understand that building a family is important so many people. And I love to rejoice in the joys of my friends. But come on. Did some of the smartest people I know quit their careers to stay home with the kids? I hate to see women give up their hopes, dreams and accomplishments for the husband and kids.  

One of my best friends, who has a really different fairytale than me about where she wants her life to go and also considers herself a feminist, once explained to me that her focus on being married and having kids wasn’t any less feminist than my ball-busting, take the world by storm dream.  She said that feminism isn’t about having a career at the expense of family and husband (or vice versa).  Feminism is about having the choice. I still hate that she’s going to forego her potential brilliance to give birth, but I can dig her argument. 

So I’m thankful to feminists, even those who have turned their backs on the cause. Your struggles make my life possible.   

What does feminism mean to you?  Can one be a house wife and still call herself a feminist?  Do you know women who have turned their back on feminism, and embraced the married with kids life?

How do you married, career ladies keep it all together?

Checking my email makes my heart race a little bit. 

I have constant headaches. 

I often feel like I’m going to throw up. 

I sleep A LOT, wake up feeling tired, I feel tired ALL the time. 

I force myself not to skip my classes (and sometimes I am unsuccessful) 

The only time I feel like myself is when I’m in the pool or when I’m drunk. 

I hate my life right now, and that makes me sad. 

I graduate in 10 weeks, and I really want to enjoy the last of graduate school career at UNC.  Some of my classmates are out RIGHT NOW and I’m ignoring their text messages because I wouldn’t be good company. 

Why do I feel like a pile of cold crap? 

Because I am coming up on thesis deadlines and all my committee can say is how bad my paper is. I send them a draft and they email me back my drafts covered in the 21^st century version of red ink. I dread opening my gmail because at any moment they could be emailing me to tell me what a horrid writer I am. 

The thing of it is, I am falling out of love with my thesis. And I agree with them, it sucks ass.  

Why? 

My paper has no voice.  It sounds like every other piece of academic drivel that I’ve read over the years. The more I sanitize my paper the more they like it, and the more I hate it. Writing for an academic audience sucks the life out of me and my writing.  Writing for an academic audience is like have a deflated sex doll.  Boring. Dry. Lame. 

And I am none of those things. 

Writing this paper is almost enough to turn me off from a PhD. (almost but not quite) 

Don’t use first person. Yuck. Use the passive voice. Yuck.  Look at the language and formating of these other 600 articles and copy that. YUCK!!!!

There is no room in academia for innovation. If you do anything that’s not like everyone else, you must be doing something wrong. It makes me sad.

Can’t I be an academic who blogs instead of writing articles for stinky old journals that no one reads? Blogs are fun, they are accessible, and they give you bits of knowledge in bite size pieces. 

I think that the only that makes me feel better about my thesis is the idea of cutting it up and blogging it.  (Btw, I will be blogging my paper soon) 

My committee thinks my paper lacks analysis. They want me to compare means, and do a billion cross tabs, and perhaps do some correlations. 

I think my paper lacks thought.  I want to report what’s happening in the world, say whether it is good or bad and help make the world a better place. I want to write about what I think.  

Apparently that is unacceptable in academia.  If you can’t prove your solution empirically then it doesn’t exist. 

Fine. 

I’ll just blog about it.  It’ll be more likely to get to the people who need to see it anyway. 

I don’t have all the answers, and regardless of what my committee thinks; the SPSS data output doesn’t have all the answers either. And honestly, my brain, while it can’t run a regression, it is capable of taking a problem and coming up with possible solutions. 

I’m afraid that academia has its head so far up its OWN ass that it can’t see that it’s irrelevant.  You heard me ACADEMIA IS IRREVALENT!! The real world doesn’t run on theories. The real world needs people who can SOLVE PROBLEMS.  

 My MPA has taught me how to solve problems, and I am complete at a loss at why I have to write this stupid paper, not like I’m writing for actual people who may be able to use my information to improve life, but for stupid academics. 

It is a useless exercise.  One day I will go back to school and I’ll get my PhD.  But I swear, I’ll never be the kind of academic that pumps out journal articles.  Oh, I’ll publish.  Every day. On my freaking blog. (or whatever medium we’ll be using then)

Check it: I looked into my crystal ball, and I saw that 2009 is going to be awesome (for all of us, but for me especially).

Last year, when I was myspace blogging, I made a big deal about the New Year and setting goals, not resolutions, and blah blah blah. Even this past fall, when the semester started, I took some time to set some goals. (Some of which I have done NOTHING about)

As I’m looking down the barrel to 2009, my brain starts ticking off stuff for the upcoming semester and the year. (Get a job, get my portfolio together, finish my thesis, prepare for a change, spend time with my friends and classmates, start my business, learn to swim, self-host this blog).

But my heart says, Oh, f*ck it. Can’t I just chill out and see what happens?

I’m not saying that goals suck and we shouldn’t make them (maybe I am???) What I mean is – If we really look deep within ourselves we know what the hell we need to do. Do we need to take the next step in our career? Step out on our own? Lose weight? Exercise? Eat healthily? Finally get our teeth cleaned?  Do we need to slow down? Spend more time with our loved ones? Concentrate on self-care? Get a life?

Whatever it is I (and you) need to do, WE ALREADY KNOW WHAT IT IS!!!!!!!!! Duh, it’s probably staring us in the face.

My problem, and I’m sure I’m not the only one, isn’t knowing WHAT I need to do. It’s the doing of it that trips me up.  I get scared or anxious or doubtful or LAZY and I cop out.

And that is unacceptable.

So I’m not going to make a never ending list of new goals or resolutions or whatever you want to call them.

I’m just going to make one.

Do the things I know in my heart I need to do.

No matter how scared I get or how crazy it seems or what other people think.  Some things I just KNOW I’m supposed to do.

So this year, I’m just going to f*cking do what my scattered little brain wants and I’m not going to over think it.

And as I write these words my brain says, but wait, you need to plan, you need to think, you NEED to worry…. and I feel the old self-doubt and anxiety pitter pattering through my chest.

SO I take a deep breath and acknowledge that this sh!t ain’t gonna be easy. But it is necessary. Didn’t Tupac say, “I don’t want it if it’s that easy”?

Otherwise, what would be the point? I believe that is would almost be stupid to add “Complete MPA school” or “Get a job” to my 2009 goals.

Why?

Because those things are not OPTIONAL. They are GOING to happen. It’s a wrap.

But I haven’t always followed my heart (or exercised, for that matter). So I’m going to concentrate to those things that I have let fall by the way side. (ahem, me!!!)

(Aside: I heard somewhere that it takes a month to form a habit. So if I resolve to do the things I know I should, by February I should be good. )

So yeah, the crystal ball said it was going to be a super awesome year.  Can’t you feel it!!!?!?!?!?

Hello! Obama is going to be inaugurated, and W is headed back to Texas. That alone is a major achievement.

And

Recessions are hotbeds for innovation, so even though the economy is sh!t we need this time renew ourselves (like when the forest burns down, then it regrows as a more diverse ecosystem)

And

We get another year to grow and live up to our full potential; proving that we can be better than our former selves.

Yay for us!

Happy New Year, party people!

Tell me what your 2009 goals/resolutions are AND what are you most looking forward to in the OH NINE.

On December 13, 1981 a star was born.

That was real dramatic wasn’t it?  But it’s true. On that date, around 7 pm, according to my mama, a new (or fairly new) person entered this world.  I say fairly new because I’m not convinced that reincarnation isn’t real. I mean, how else to you explain deja vu or how some things (and some people) almost immediately feel like home? It’s because we’ve been here before and we’ve been sent back here to get things right this time (or just do a better job, at least).

What does it mean, to get things right? To me, it means fulfilling a purpose.  I’ve been thinking a lot about my purpose this week, partially because most days don’t go by without me thinking about what the hell I’m supposed to be doing. But it has been more heavily on my mind this week. And I’m blaming my mother for this too. (Most things are her fault, anyway, right?)

She says to me (on my birthday), “You are special. You have always been special. You have a calling on your life. I don’t know if you are supposed to preach (her wish for me) or if you are supposed to help people in some other way, but your life has a purpose, you have a mission.”

After I picked my damn mouth up off the floor, I stuttered my agreed. Yes, I said, I’m supposed to help people, and I went on to ask, “And since you are prophesying-why don’t you just tell me HOW I’m supposed to help people, I know the WHAT (sort of) but I’m stuck on the HOW.”

Of course, she didn’t have that answer. And yes, my mother is, like, crazy ya-ya spiritual. I just go with it; there is NO WAY to explain it. So when she starts telling me a dream that she had about me (that mirrored something that actually happened in my life) or when she says I’m “called” to do something, I take that sh*t seriously. She’s just that connected to whatever higher power is pulling the strings (or she’s crazy).

Either way, She’s right. I’m here on purpose. My birth was no accident. I have something to do that no one else could do. Now, if someone could just TELL MY WHAT MY PURPOSE IS!!!!!!!

Well, I’ve decided that 27 is a good enough age to figure that sh*t out. And it’s time for me to embrace whatever the hell I’m supposed to be.

I’m excited about being 27. Isn’t 27 the BEST age? It’s not like 24 where you are still too young, in most cases, to be taken seriously, or like 35 when you are too old to “drop it like it’s hot” or some other thing that 30+ people don’t do.

But at 27 I’m old enough to prove that I’ve been around the block and I know what the hell I’m talking about, but I’m still young enough to get a tattoo without having folks roll their eyes.

So I’m excited about 2009 and I’m looking forward to all that I will accomplish during my 27^th year!

I’m going to go ahead, letting the Universe know that I’m expecting this year to be moniceriffic (or monicalicious, or monicawesome (either will do).

Tomorrow is December 5th! You know what that means?!?!?!? The last day of the 3rd semester of MPA school! YAY!

SO today, I’m going to introduce someone who is super special to me. The GF is gracing us with her presence and has composed the last in this series of guest posts. (Yay for me getting lots of work done!)

Eysqueen is one half of the creative chaos that exists at Cubicle Crusaders, and is a cube captive by day, superhero by night (her words, not mine, lol).

Enjoy!

-M-

PS: I’ll be writing again next week. I hope you’ve missed me!

For some of us do-gooders out there, we learned the hard and dirty way that the corporate America that was fed to us in childhood isn’t a one size fits all.  We tried it, we did it, we may have even succeeded at it, and then we got over it.  We learned that “money, power, and respect” makes a catchy lyric in a hook, they even taste good in our cereal, but nothing can satisfy that void we have within ourselves that seems to grow every year that we aren’t doing what we are meant to do.

My void started the day I checked the box that said “Computer Science” on my college application.  It was a little void, something the size of a period.  No biggie.  I managed to patch up the void by my second semester when I filled out the form to change my major to “Art/Visual Communications”.  Yeah I was on track after that, void filled, right?

Not so much, as I pimped myself into concentrating in graphic design.  The void grew by leaps and bounds as the pimping turned into manufactured pimping by companies using my talent for their commercialism.  Okay I started to step on my soapbox about corporate America killing the artist.  I’m not ready to stand that tall yet, so I’m stepping back down.

So anyway, I ran from graphic design as fast as Marion Jones without the enhancements (I still believe she was set up and is still one of the fastest women in track and field).

I floated around and found myself in places, doing things that I didn’t know I was good at nor had any previous desire to do. I accidentally found my purpose while flipping the bird to “the man” and corporate America.  I did something that wasn’t glamorous, that didn’t pay well and was all around thankless from the outside looking in.

I taught computer technology to children with behavioral problems.  Talk about a challenge!  But the challenge wasn’t them, it was me.  I’m known for not liking kids, I’m known for shying away from teaching, I’m also known for rising to the occasion and flexing my skills when slept on.  Basically I did it, and I liked it.

Happy ending, right? So I got my teaching license and am living the dream? That would be the easy way, my fellow readers, and easy doesn’t make for a good blog.  No, I got lured back into corporate/ government by the big bucks I had the potential to make by teaching adults computer technology, instead of children.

I was going to be a superstar technology trainer. I was going to have the super big office, and the newest toys.  I worked my way to the top, but I didn’t have the strength to reach far enough because of the void.  The void sucked up my muscle tone. I’m all fat and hot air now.  I stopped exercising my talents; I opted for the easy way, which was not the best way for me.

However, I’m still young, and I have a lifetime of mistakes and oopsies left in me.  I’ve been saving up while doing my time in my “safe” profession.  I’m so ready to make more mistakes and just live.  Being in the wrong field has helped me to concentrate on what is important to me, what I value, and what happiness looks like.

For me, happiness is not corporate America.  Happiness is being in the trenches shaping the mind of a future adult.  Happiness is flowing creatively, and painting and writing.  Just for me, not for a corporate dream.

Happiness for me is living life everyday and doing something that means something.

I am an artist and I reject the cube life.

I want to be my own boss and work with kids and be a counselor and be 4 other different things all in one lifetime.  And anyone who has a problem with it can swivel their ergonomic computer chair to one of the 3 walls in their cube and take a time out to think about how wack they are.

And anyone who applauds, I’ll see you at the coffee shop with the rest of the idea makers, first round of lattes on me!

The semester from hell continues. But it will be over on December 5th! Yay! If I can make it through this week, I promise myself that I will never to this overloading sh*t again.

In the meantime, a cool chick whose blog I love has blessed me with a guest post which is awesome since otherwise I would have had to take time away from my studies to keep some semblance of a normal posting schedule, and there is a huge possibility that anything I write in this state of mind is going to be crap, anyway.

Nisha is preventing you from reading my crap. Thank her.

-M-

Recently I saw a post on one of my favorite blogs which demonstrated an unheard of level of transparency — she wrote about her relationship, which prompted a series of comments including one from her mom, her boyfriend’s mom, and her boyfriend’s brother.

I had to think about that for a second. My parents don’t read my blog. When I had a boyfriend, he definitely never read my blog. Most of my close friends in college don’t read my blog.

Why? Because I haven’t told a single one of them about it.

I’m still paralyzed by the fear of what they would say if they saw it. They don’t get it. A blog, I can hear them say. They would think it was lame, and strange to have conversations with people I haven’t met in real life. But they’d still read anyways. And then I’d be forever paralyzed by the fact that now, so-and-so is reading so I can’t really write what I really think. That is exactly the reason I ended the last two blogs I had: because too many people I knew in real life were reading them.

So all that begs the question: why is it so much easier for us to share ourselves with complete strangers on the internet than with our own loved ones?

Maybe it’s the anonymity of the internet, and the availability of support. Blog readers are a self-selecting group, so it’s easy to find readers who like what you have to say, and easier to disregard the haters because, after all, they’re just names on a screen, hiding somewhere in cyberspace. They’re not your best friend or your mom.

We all live our lives in neat, separate little compartments: there’s work me, and school me, and online me, and relationship me, and family me. It takes courage to break up the compartments and live one transparent life. I doubt any normal person has that kind of courage naturally.

It means your employers could google you and see your personal blog. It means admitting when you’ve messed up, and sharing your flaws and deepest insecurities with the world. It means admitting your goals to the world too, and dealing with it when they hold you accountable. It means your ex might know all your thoughts about your breakup.

It means you can’t control what people are going to think of you, so you have to let go of it. It means take-me-or-leave-me, and leaving it up to people to decide. And then comes the scary part: you might be yourself, and they might leave you. They might mock you. And it might suck. Part of me worries about that everyday.

But lately I’ve been thinking: so what? Maybe we’re better off without those people. Has any successful person ever made it to where they are without losing a friend or two on the way up? Recently I watched a speech by Loren Feldman, where he discussed blogging: “When you put your heart, and your intellectual thoughts, and your emotions out there for people, you’re gonna get beat up for it, and for a number of reasons. The first reason is, most people don’t have the balls to just say what they feel and say what they mean. That’s very scary to a lot of people. Just the fact that you do have the wherewithal to express yourself….a lot of people are going to be intimidated just based on that fact.”

If you find yourself being one person online and on your blog, a different person with your college buddies, a different person with your parents, and another person with your work friends, are you asking yourself why? That’s the question I’ve been asking lately, and it’s yield surprising results. It’s made me start to realize: who cares? It takes baby steps, but it’s easier than I thought to care less and less what people think of you and start living transparently. It doesn’t happen overnight. It won’t be easy. It will sometimes be a struggle, especially for those of us who are accustomed to caring what everyone thinks. But transparency means finally being free to be you no matter what, it means you finally get to quit hiding and casting off the chains of what other people think- and it makes you a whole lot stronger. That is worth a little struggle.

Nisha Chittal is a writer, blogger, and political junkie. She will be graduating with a B.A. in political science in May 2009 from the University of Illinois and plans to pursue a career in Washington. She’s not sure what yet, but it will include her being in the nation’s capital!

Her blog is Confessions of a New Junkie.