Better learn to write quick...

Because -of course- I have a dissertation to write, but also because what I write might be read by other people...

Exhibit A:
http://www.uel.ac.uk/cnr/obama.htm

They asked for stories, and I wrote mine, sort of, because I was overwhelmed with emotion. Now if I had only read that e-mail twice before I sent it.... argh!

Language-jealous

I was racking my brain (raking? wracking?) trying to figure out what to write on our Christmas Card. Each year this chore is up to me, and I never feel that I am able to produce the card that I would like. It is never quite right, it is always tacky, but not in a cool way. Luckily our sons are beautiful and any excuse to see their image anywhere will do.
I looked for inspiration in my favorite books, thought about the year coming to an end, about all the things that I am grateful for this year (immigration, Obama, health) and then came up with two sentences that did not sound that great, but did encompass my feelings. So I went to ask my DH for help... He first said that "we" did not need to be so wordy... Ok, I have to admit that I am over sensitive to criticism, in general, and very specifically, I am sensitive to my DH's critics. So, I asked him to give me an alternative, give me something to work with. He took, I would say about 2 minutes. And then came back with what ended up in our Christmas cards (you will receive one in about 10 days). He is an artist, and I am so jealous that he is also good with words. He took some of my ideas, looked at the overall project and wrote something beautiful and simple. Ah! how I wish I could do the same. How I wish that what I wrote didn't sound like somebody's pen pal from Ecuador... I wish I could write with ease and also beautifully...

Let it be

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be... Ok, not really. Specially lately, when I find myself in times of trouble, I look around and one by one I dismiss all the people I know as possible sources of comfort. The things that trouble me, are of course, very personal. I cannot disclose these very personal things just to anybody. But in particular, I cannot disclose these things to people that are close to me and that love me. You see, these people are interested in me, are my friends or family, they know my past and what I want for my future. They will hold me accountable for the direction that my life takes, and that is a bit too much for me at times. I am very hard with myself as it is, I don't need any of you (reading this post, because if you are reading, you just might be one of the very people that I am talking about) telling me what to do or not to do. Sometimes I just want to be heard, and hugged. That is about it. There is no easy or final solution to any of my problems, some people might not even call them problems. But there they are blocking my way... or are they?
I sometimes wonder if it is myself who is impeding my own development. I need to learn new ways, reject old ways and move on to be the new me (for the XXI century?, for the 36th year of life?) I sometimes do find myself looking for instructions on how to be, what to do. And in this way, I also don't feel like taxing my loved ones with paternal/maternal duties that they do not deserve. And then again, I might be depriving both parts from a conversation that might enrich us. I know this last thing is true because that is how I felt when I learned (after the fact) about things that troubled my friends and they didn't tell me not to trouble me. There is something very edifying about giving someone else the chance to have input in our own lives. For now, I think I am just going to let it be...

Good girl vs. me

The good girl follows the rules and listens to the adults. She tries to fulfill all the expectations of her. Not only she "behaves" all the time, but she also tries to anticipate what is going to be required of her. The good girl does not show a lot of creativity. Her talent is to be efficient and accurate. The good girl feels good when she is pleasing other people. The good girl might sometimes politely disagree, but very quickly her mind can be convinced by other people's points of view. This good girls is not very certain about many things, she is always wavering between some inner feelings (noise) and other people's knowledge. She often chooses to believe in other peoples ideas and dismiss hers as problematic, unprepared or unimportant. The good girl speaks very low, sometimes people can't hear her. She does not want to be impolite, improper or bossy. She also really dislikes making mistakes, she rather not make them. And when she does, she feels like her true self is revealed. "Now everyone knows how clumsy/careless/lazy/ignorant I really am" she thinks and sighs. She would really like to be like someone else. She wants to be like the little girl in the playground that is confident but not arrogant. That is who the good girl is. The rest is me.

My Passion

One of the things that I was looking for when I decided to come to the US was what I called "my passion". I had hints of it because I loved my job at the Psychological Research Institute where I worked. But I wanted to go beyond that and really become one with my passion. Even though I had a rough childhood and adolescence in economic terms, I never wanted to settle down for a job that would give me "only" money. And by this I don't mean to diminish the value of money because I know exactly what is like not to have money available for food or other necessities. But I was always inspired by people that did wonderful things and did these things happily. When I see artists or scientists that manage to move people and interest people in their creations or discoveries without necessarily trying, that is when I see the passion that I am talking about. There is something very compelling about someone who is in love with what they do. And there are people like that in all walks of life.
When I taught psychology to freshmen in college, I knew that I had found my call. Not that I think that I am good at teaching, at least not yet. But I know that this is something that I want to spend my energy on. As it turns out, I haven't taught again, at least not formally. Raising my two sons is a continuous teaching process but it is not the same. There is little time for preparation and there are no textbooks whatsoever.
So, I slowly walk towards teaching again, walking the steps of the dissertation process which can sometimes be distracting and often makes me forget that this is really what I love to do.

Brain First

I have had plenty of distractions the last 11 years, some of them more relevant to my life than others, so I did not pay attention to the political campaigns in this country until now. Now that I have children, and I have invested my life and love in this country, now I feel free to care, and express my thoughts about politics.
See, I was raised in a country with no army, where education and health when I was growing up had the level that only industrialized countries had. Still, Costa Rica, where I was born, has better indicators of quality of life than many Latin American countries. The trend for people like me, educated yet underprivileged by many accounts, is to dislike the U.S.. Sympathy for Castro's Cuba and Che Guevara t-shirts abounded in the Social Sciences faculty where I got my undergraduate degree. But I had had early experiences in the U.S. that marked me for life. Part of my father's family migrated here during the 60s and raised their families here. I visited for the first time when I was 10 and I encountered a world that I can only summarize as "better". Of course, the city that I visited was New York, which is very different from the surroundings that I was used to.
Long story short, I was inspired to come to study to a place where standards where simply higher. Where things work in the way that they are supposed to, and if they don't then somebody is going to complain, and somebody is going to work to fix whatever is wrong.
I did not know the intricacies or the complexities that abound in American political life, just as they exist everywhere else.
But I have learned one thing. I have learned that in life an in politics ideas, skills, values, should come first. Not emotions. And I don't mean to understate the importance of emotions for everyone's life. What I believe is that emotions necessitate to be enclosed in a container forged with intelligence. That loose emotions, and particularly fear and anger, need to be processed in order to make a contribution to political life and to everyday life.
I have witnessed the most shameless display of hatred and fear mongering in the speech of Sarah Palin last night. I am not a religious person but I feel that I am very knowledgeable about Christian thought. Palin does not practice the doctrine of Jesus. Period.
I really don't want to get into the details of what upset me, and what is wrong, according to me and the civilized world, with Palin's speech. I cannot do that at this point. The reason being that brain should come first.
If emotionally I am at a state of anger, of fear, or any other emotion that can overcome me, I am probably not going to be as eloquent. I am probably not in control of the production of my thoughts. I need to settle down and calmly describe my ideas and why I feel they are important. Note that I write why I FEEL they are important. And there are rationales for why some things are important to me, and there are also some things that resonate with my feelings and therefore are important. But in any case, emotions should be aligned, contained, shaped and translated by our thoughts. Otherwise we become very manipulative and very manipulable.
Palin's speech last night was an attempt to appeal to emotions known to decide previous elections: fear of terrorism, fear of people that do things differently (or look or think differently), the fear that moms have of "not doing their job right", fear of community organizers (they might want to move the homeless to our gated communities), etc.
I have things to do so I cannot continue this rant for now. But let me just summarize, in a very visceral, not "brain first" way my impression of last night's speech, in the hope that I can later develop a more articulated posting.
Sarah Palin = Dolores Umbridge; RNC= Death Eaters ; DNC= Jedi Council

Strangled thoughts

The way my postings read is not fluent. I manage to somewhat convey my thoughts but they feel strangled, like they need air and also an "airy" quality. I, also, use, too, many, commas. But back to the issue, I feel that whatever thoughts I am trying to convey are a little purple, not quite reflecting their livelihood. I don't always use the appropriate and more common words, I sometimes write the way I think, without a lot of editing (who has the time?). That is perhaps the reason why nobody (other than my trusty sister) has made any comments on my postings (feedback anybody?).
But perhaps (I love this word "perhaps" for some strange reason it sounds so intellectual to me...) it is just that I as a person am not at this time in the position to elaborate more on my thoughts and my writing. For those of you that know me or have read my previous postings, I am in a very tense situation right now, waiting to hear if me and my family can stay in this country or if have to leave for two years. Not that this is a life or death situation, not necessarily at least. But the quality of life of my family is on the line and that is nothing that I can take lightly. Not to mention the amount of stress that this has placed in my closest human relationships (read husband).
In any case, I hope that you bare with me for a while, I know that no matter what, when we figure out what we will be doing, I will be more likely to express myself clearly and to perhaps capture your input somehow .

The unbearable unlightness of being

So, I have been very tense. So much so, that I haven't been able to get my fingers to write anything. But today I managed to string a couple of thoughts together and here I am.

Throughout my life, I have had the blessing of having people around me that have been intelligent, thoughtful, creative, and spiritual. Therefore I have been able to experience conversations with them that usually contained somewhat deep analyses of things. Deeper than your everyday chatter, let's say. The pleasure of "meta-conversations" is something that I have had a hard time to part with. I guess it also comes with the "trade" of being in academia for so many years, and now not being there. The problem for me at this point in my life, is that I don't know how to have "light" conversations anymore . I am feeling a bit socially awkward because I am always bringing up all these issues that might make people feel uncomfortable. Not everyone is ready to talk about social problems, or the upbringing of human beings, or how to solve the planet's environmental issues or why are people involved or not involved with this or that political movement, etc.
And I am not trying to seem "morally superior" because "oh, I can't bother with trivial things", this is ultimately not a quality. I cannot be relaxed and comfortable enough to let life flow and just "be". My husband thinks that I need to drink more and more often. He might be on to something.

Thunderclap

thun·der·clap 1 : a clap of thunder 2 : something sharp, loud, or sudden like a clap of thunder.*

I recently became acquainted with the word 'thunderclap'. It is one of those things where you have never heard the word before, and now you hear it everywhere (children's books, Bruce Springsteen lyrics, etc). I remember that when I was young people used to say that the time between the lightning and the thunder indicated how far it was, and that the sound traveled about one kilometer per second. I never checked this fact to see if it is true. However, I remember counting the distance between the light and the sound in many rain storms. Trying to predict the thunderclap is your own little way of feeling "in control" of something that might scare you.
Nowadays, as I find myself waiting for the thunderclap that follows a strong scary lightning, (learning whether my life will improve, stay the same or it will go through rougher times), I find myself trying to predict when the loud sound will come. Waiting is not easy but at least, if you know how long you have to wait, you can tame your anxiety and make it through each day.
I am very anxious right now.

* Thunderclap/Thunder. (2008). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved June 9, 2008, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/thunderclap

Esperanza

No matter how much you tell yourself not to get your hopes high. Or how wounded your heart and soul are. When you catch a glimpse of possibility, a tiny ray of sun light filtered from an unexpected place, you can't help it and you hope again. Whenever a door opens, even if it is just a little bit, you approach cautiously, but you do approach. Hope is inevitable, hope is contagious, hope scares you but also makes you want to heal your wounds. Hope is all that we have when we have lost everything. But hope does not come only from within. One can bury hope under a ton of negative thoughts and fears. One can lose sight of hope when hiding, when hurt, when burnt. Hope is created in the interaction with the external, with nature, with people, with resources. But hope can be easy to revive because it is our nature to thrive. When our brain evolved into its current state, we separated from the survivalists. We create and we do things that remain longer than our bodies. We live and we believe even when it "makes no sense" or when "it is not necessary". And even though we mindlessly do things that might kill us, such as poisoning our bodies and our environment, we still hope that we are going to be alright, that everything is going to be alright. I hope.

Nature & Nurture

The greatest forces that shape our lives. Nature, who we are at our deepest level, something we didn't choose. Nurture, what we do and what was done to ourselves from birth, something that we can partially control.
The job of being an adult, from my point of view, is to remove your "self" from the tight grip of your childhood. To be able to self determine. To choose who we are, and to be able to re-create this person over, and over, and over until satisfaction. Not that anything in our childhood or genetic inheritance is wrong. But we need to claim it as our own in order to be emotionally free.
I believe that one has to nurture what nature gives you. That is what parents are supposed to do, and that is what we have to learn to do for ourselves.

The layers of writing

First, one has to have something to say. Then you have to figure out how to say it according to the format that you are trying to fit. So it is not the same to write an e-mail, or a blog, or a poem, or a scientific article. But there is another level, wedged in within the previous two. Language. I am trying hard to perform the task of writing in a given format in a Language in which -it seems- I am not fully proficient. So I have to stop a thousand times (ok, hundred times) to check a word (why is it underlined???) an often times its meaning is not the one I want to use, sometimes it is just not colloquial (nobody uses it) and sometimes it just does not exist. I really feel deprived of language when I write in English. Boohoo you would say. Too bad, so sad. I dare you, who believes that it is "just not a big deal", to write in a language that is not your own. Many people don't even try it, and many people are just not as self conscious and don't really care if the words they use are not completely accurate to what they are trying to convey. And then there is the sentence length...Argh.

About Family

When you are of a certain age, you manage to partially understand and wholeheartedly accept your relatives. I do not talk about the family that you create, but about the family that you come from. Your family of origin. You figure out the comfort level at which you can operate and you try to stick to it.
But the part you easily forget, and specially when you live far from them, is how much they are like you and how strange a thing is to have blood relatives. In a distance is easy to forget how much you need and like these people that also need and like you. And of course there are the times when you are reminded of the reasons why you live far from them, but in essence, these people are like you. The shared psychologically deep experiences made you the way you are, and made you similar. That is not to say that we all understood things the same way, quite the opposite, it is amazing to see how many interpretations can exist of a single event. However, it is something to cherish and appreciate that there are people "like you" in the world. You should never take that for granted. I personally miss them.

Intro

Hello Cyberworld,
I wonder how many of you face the same question I have faced for a couple of months now: To blog or not to blog? Certainly, I don't have the time or the inspiration or the discipline to keep up a blog "the right way". Who does? My stereotyped and likely to be wrong answer to this question is: people who profit from it (in some kind of way) or people that have no life (outside of the computer). Since I do not intend to fit in either category, and I don't have a lot of time to devote to this activity, perhaps I shouldn't have started this blog. However, here I am, and I am actually recording a posting.
For me, there are two main goals for this blog. One, to be able to write without concern of being graded (I am still a student). I will also use this blog to practice my writing skills. As you, imaginary audience, may have guessed, English is not my first language. Spanish is. I rarely have the opportunity to write a non-scholar piece. So, this may be the venue.
The second goal for having a blog, is to be able to read my own thoughts. Cathartic and known to be related to health, writing your thoughts and feelings is just a good thing.
It is not really my intention to share my personal life, but it will obviously come through my writing. If the reader wants to know "what's up?" with me, please call me or e-mail me. Let's have a coffee.
I might share this blog with people that I deem dear and completely trustworthy. So, if you are reading this and I e-mailed you a link, that is you. If you just stumble upon this blog, I welcome you but I also acknowledge that not knowing who you are is stressful to me. Sorry about my deeply ingrained fear of strangers. It is my parents fault.
Ok, so this is me. I will come back and read what I posted. Let's see if I am still me then.