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.

Times are hard…and I’m hella busy. So busy that I am spending all my free time writing papers before the semester ends next week (on Dec. 5).  So this week, my new twitter friend, d-paul, who also has his own blog, has so graciously offered to guest post here at Life in the Middle Lane, while I crank out a couple of papers on Inclusionary Zoning.

I think he’s quite awesome (and damn near as random as me), so even though he called me a weird bird (yeah, I know), I still think he’s cool enough to hang with us,

He’s whipped us up a little something, something to get us into the holiday spirit (or not).I, personally, am boycotting the holidays.  But YAY, Thanksgiving (and days out of work!)

Enjoy

-M-

Paul’s Holiday Truths

Some thoughts about the days to come…

(he had a really cute picture here, but I don’t know how to make it display…)

-          Thanksgiving should be moved to a Friday.  Well that or just make it a 2-dayer…

-          Turkey contains some sort of muscle relaxant…

-          Christmas letters are so corny that I actually have come to like reading them…

-          Speaking of corny, this is your window to wear that sweater you got last year…

-          No putting up trees before Thanksgiving – it’s just lame…

-          Yams are low in calories – right?

-          Red wine goes with everything – screw the pundits…

-          Pumpkin pie should be cut into quarters – this way we don’t need to feel bad about asking for more…

-          A gift available online is a good gift…

-          Who invented wrapping presents anyway?

-          Eggnog is yummy, but why not just drink the brandy?

-          Christmas music is sort of amusing, but never before December.  What’ up with that?

-          When in doubt, always ask for a book.  You just might learn something…

-          Window for wearing my red button down starts in 10 days…

-          Gratitude is good for you…