Spread the Word and Sundance

I was tabling in Red Square a few Marches back as a student at Georgetown. Red Square was a safe place for students to converge and share their heartfelt views via flyers, sidewalk chalk, and demonstrations. It was conveniently located in the almost-center of campus, trafficked by droves of undergraduate and graduate students day in and out. A ripe place to spread the word.

Alongside other Best Buddies  participants, I was tabling to spread the word to end the derogatory use of the word "retard", a word that has become all too common, used to implying someone or something is less or flawed in our society. Joining other advocates of the Spread the Word to End the Word movement nationwide, we had a petition to be signed by passer-bys.

"I pledge and support the elimination of the derogatory use of the r-word from everyday speech and promote the acceptance and inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities."

While we were received rather positively overall and gathered many signatures, there is one encounter in particular that stands out in my memory. A man started to question us about his First Amendment Constitutional right to freedom of speech. He was outraged by this entreaty to end hateful language. I was a little younger then and likely more docile from what I can recall, but with the arrival of the R-Word's annual day of awareness (March 5, 2014), I am moved to offer my take on the matter yet again. 

To the abrasive man from Red Square, I say...

We must not misconstrue a right for an obligation. We are indeed protected by the Constitution of the United States to speak as we wish, and to use whatever language we have the opportunity to use. After all, words are nothing but letters strung together in sequence. What is conveyed and implied by these words, however, affects other people. Rights are sacred, but need not be abused. 

I have the rights to behave combatively,  to spew hurtful speech, berate, and break down others if I want to. I have the ability to behave like an imbecile, to lie, steal, and cheat. A perversion of our Constitution can protect these behaviors as well.  More important than rights is an obligation to  be a decent human being. The right to do something in no way requires that behavior. 

So yes, the man in Red Square can use the r-word if he lacks an alternative to use in it's place, but I would challenge him to consider the impact of his speech. To reflect on how the world will receive his words and challenge the ostracism of talented and vibrant individuals worldwide. I fell fervently that eliminating the use of the r-word will diminish the divide cast between populations of varying abilities. We will celebrate our differences rather than condemn them.

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A takeaway. This video speaks to the courage of a spirited young boy with Down Syndrome. Fueled by his family's love, acceptance, and encouragement, Beau made it all the way to the Sundance Film Festival for his role in LITTLE ACCIDENTS . I don't know of many people who have achieved the same; I see nothing but abilities here. Do you? 

On Social Sharing

This is in no way an attempt to debase behavior patterns or imply anything is wrong or right. The social sphere is all very organic and well uncontrollable. Like a wild fire. I am sincerely intrigued, that's all. Maybe Valentine's day and the abundant sharing got me pondering. 

Someone posted on Facebook, "Looks like everyone has the best boyfriend on Valentines day". I thought it was cheeky and clever and would be interested to know his marital status and profession. Maybe a comedy writer because it would make good stand up. Others may find the comments offensive or even bitter. Thus is life and we don't have to agree; it's small stuff anyway. 

Have you ever felt unsettled about learning deeply private and personal news via social media about a person you don't communicate with in the "real world". Like you're a creepy fly on the wall but you've done nothing wrong in fact. Is this just the social norm for our generation and we better start posting to keep up?  Or maybe we should only follow/friend people we would realistically communicate with outside of social media? This isn't it either. I like following Martha Stewart. I could be thinking too deeply about it but I am actually curious and might conduct a case study. If you have some insight, post it on Twitter @pensivefoodie. 

Are you supposed to like something on Facebook that is deeply or even partly sad? Twitter is effective in sharing and "affirming" content without the connotation that is it "likable", which may not be the case. For instance the death of a loved one or an egregious wrong. 

This video had me crying in the Best Buy parking lot, while my boyfriend ran in to buy a keyboard. He returned to the car to me a blubbering mess, keyboard in hand and confused. He took my phone away.  This is not the first time. 

This concept applies to trivial rants too: Something like this girl hates her mother-in-law, husband is a dud, and her little one peed the bed, again.  How about a Like with insert condition button. Or better, a Hug button. Here is a use case for your reference.

1. Read Sad Content 
2. Experience cognitive dissonance: Is it disrespectful if I like this? Will the source get the wrong idea about my intention? 
3.  Reflect: This person needs a Hug or Support. 
4. Click Hug Button and/or Like with a lump in my throat and a very heavy heart.

Facebook, get on it or Twitter will continue to outpace you. 

Just an observation. I have yet to read a post from a Wounded Warrior or a child with a terminal illness like this, "I am having a really hard time making it day to day." Or from a young woman with an intellectual disability, "Hey, the world is sometimes less than accommodating and marginalizes me."  Are these posts out there? I am sure they are. But they are not as frequent, as "I hate traffic".  Is this a lesson? Yes, I think so. No one cares you hate traffic.

Thanks to my big, brave sister, and her insight from a position as an Oncology Counselor for this invaluable reminder. 

On a lighter note. Have you experienced this moment? "Sh*t a Tyho. Argh *typo. Too late, already shared. What will the world think?",  says the sneaky grammar gremlin in your ear. 

Another observation.  I am grateful for the variety of beliefs, lifestyles, and cultures social media connects. Like this, a post on Instagram a while back, by Erica Domesek, the craft goddess behind P.S-I Made This. I've even found it to share. It was great. The woman has, well, serious balls and business chops.

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Nonetheless, she's neither better nor worse than a woman her age who has four children and posts a picture of her child's first day riding the school bus.  Seriously, to each his own. 

"Insert name surely can't always look that gorgeous and together, can she." Real Simple magazine launched a fun hash tag campaign #rsgetreal to disprove that very thought. People posted to Instagram their vulnerable and non-perfect moments.  Dirty dishes. Piles of laundry. Fast food for their kids. It was very refreshing and these were my favorites. I would totally eat the meal in the third shot.

Do you ever feel defeated when no one likes content you thought was wildly genius, share-worthy, or beautiful? I do sometimes.  Have you ever deleted it you felt so bad? Not yet. 

Do you follow someone back as a courtesy even if you're not sure you would be interested to hear/see their personal details? The jury is still out. 

How should you feel when you friend request someone and it remains pending for a super long time in internet terms?  Meaning: a day or heaven forbid twowholedays. Think Zuckerberg in the last scene from Social Network. They portrayed him as a bit of a weasel in that movie anyway but he likely has enough money not to give a crap. 

Do you ever feel you need someone to physically remove your phone from your possession and not give it back for a while so you stop checking emails and refreshing Instagram? Guilty. 

Is it ever awfully tempting to delete all your accounts? As if a burden would be lifted and you'd stop comparing yourself to people you may or may not even know.  It's all relative anyway.Apples are not oranges and never will be. Furthermore, if I truly believe what I have been raised to believe then all the excess is superfluous anyway.  

Some quick thoughts to finish it off.

1. How many pictures is too many pictures, in succession?  
2. Should professionals allow clients, students, colleagues to friend/ follow them?
3. Do we share to spark an emotional response from others, to inspire, to gloat a tad, or just because everyone else is?

Personally, I probably share too much about my pets. I don't have children so this is likely to be the case. I'm also not totally sure how I will share kid-related content if and God-willing when I have children. I post a lot about what I'm eating. I love to eat. Sue me. And I post a lot about family; they are post-worthy and a source of love and hope. 

End post, and tweet. 

Why Life is like the SAT's

I was chatting with a high school student recently. She is in her junior year, the tell-all year. She spoke of college visits, future plans, and of course the SAT's. While I am past my standardized testing high school days, I couldn't help but draw some parallels: why life is like the SAT's.

1. There are expectations. Lots and lots of expectations.
2. It is tempting to disregard the directions. 
3. It is important to read the entire question before blurting out an answer. An informed response will draw better results.
4. A majority of the questions have an exact answer, even if we disagree with it. And we can only pick one: the agony. 
5. The remaining questions are open-ended. Despite our sincerest wishes otherwise, there is no clear cut answer. Even worse, a stranger may judge our efforts. 
6. We are confined to the constraints of a demographic. Vibrant, multifaceted and unique people diminished to an age, race, and/or gender.
7. Not everyone performs well, relatively speaking.  Their talents will manifest in other ways regardless of pressure to conform.
8. It is time-bound. As a result there is an indescribable urgency to get it exactly right. 
9. There are instructions to color within the lines, but the temptation to break outside the boundaries is ever present.
10. It would be wonderful if it came with a handy sheet of formulas. A Pythagorean theorem to get through a breakup, or losing a loved one. A universal equation for picking the right job, the right spouse, the right path. 

As much as life might seem like the SAT's using cheeky little analogies, and I do love analogies, the bottom line is life is not a test. There are no answers, no clear cut directions. No score that dictates exactly where we belong. There will be pressure to do the best we can. To get the perfect score. (MTV even made a movie about this...)

Kyle (Chris Evans) is a high school senior with looming SAT exams on which he needs a high score in order to get into the architechture program he wants to attend. He is also desperate not to end up like his older brother Larry (Matthew Lillard) who is still living at home.

We may feel like we didn't perform well enough. But at the end of life, an SAT score won't make a smidge of a difference. The people we were, will.

Demoted to Dishes

My family was visiting our Navy Yard apartment in Washington DC. It was a little over a year ago that we sat down to a beautiful breakfast. James made a four course masterpiece, effortlessly. I started to cry at the table; just a quiet sob. My mom asked me what in the world was the matter. 

"James doesn't let me cook anymore".

My sister looked as if she wanted to leap over the poached eggs and smack me. Needless to say, she thought I was out of my mind. Mom and Nana just shook their heads. After twenty or so years of my typical reactions to stimuli (crying), they had seen it all. I realized I was being silly, and tucked in to another delightful meal. But I still felt a pang of unease. Along came this man, a whiz in the kitchen, and my position was threatened.

After two and a half years of sharing the load of meal preparation, oftentimes not cooking at all, I have grown quite accustomed to being fed. Assuming the role of sous chef. Being taught. Realizing how little I know about technique. While I'm still ever so fond of cooking, I'm equally fond of sitting in the passenger seat, admiring the driver as he hones his craft.

I have even learned to embrace dish duty. Pots and pans amount with an uncanny speed when the master is at work. Piles of plates and utensils are left for someone to wash. Being that we live in an older home, there is no dishwasher. When Mom eats over, she makes her way to the sink despite my repeated assurances that I will get to the dishes. All other times, it's me. Demoted to dishes.

Cooking is an act of love, of creating, of sharing. That is why I'll always find my way to the kitchen. The best memories of my childhood were had at the table. Rolling meatballs with my great grandmother or watching Nana prepare pizza piena at Easter. The smell of apple pies after a day of picking.

We continue to make memories at mealtimes, memories that amass regardless of who cooks. Laughs shared. Bread passed. The clang of glasses. While I am an average cook, I am an above average eater so my life has become richer having a chef around. I never dreamed a man would upstage me in the kitchen but I'm fine with doing the dishes. And there is always dessert.

Hello Trello

I love lists. Grocery lists especially, but really any kind of list will do. I enjoy the process of generating lists and crossing items off of them. When I complete something that was not on my list of to-do's, I scribble it in just so I can cross it off. It's not illegal in the list-making community. I have known others to do the same thing. 

List-making is integral to getting things done both personally and professionally for me. The research I have been doing at work on productivity supports this notion.  The main takeaway being I can only be as productive as my ability to identify, plan, and complete tasks. As anyone tackling a project ranging from planning a party to building a website can attest,  complex concepts can be broken down into digestible chunks that are more easily acted upon. We chip away, slowly but surely, until crossing off small tasks in succession equates to the completion of a greater whole. Where to maintain these lists, though, makes all the difference. 

While lists on scratch paper have never failed me, I needed something more robust to track to-do's and then complete them. My boss exposed me to Trello, a nifty application that allows you to manage projects in a space called a board. The boards are made of lists, and each list includes cards. Cards can move between lists by dragging.  They can be categorized, reordered, and assigned due dates. While Trello wasn't the perfect fit for organizing my work place, work spilled over into my personal life and it got me thinking about the list: a list of goals.

Writing goals down makes them real, and makes me accountable for achieving them. Not to forget before I can write them, I have to filter through the elaborate maze in my head and identify them...  I thought more realistically about it and came to the conclusion that if big changes are made of small tasks completed one after the other, I will just make a nice exhaustive list of the small stuff. The irony is one of my favorite reads of all time is "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff". A book of 100 useful tidbits for preventing small matters from taking over your life. But in this case, I want to be sweating the small stuff. Ah, the contradiction!! But as I said in this post, there is almost always a gray area. So, on to the small stuff.

I never really had concrete life goals. There were and are fundamental dreams I always hoped to come true, centered around family and contentment. Maslow's hierarchy with more embellishments. As for other spheres, I figured they would work themselves out. I took comfort in the notion that there was time in the abstract future to get it sorted. Having arrived at the great frontier that is young adulthood, I've had to take a new approach of making lists. 

I've taken to storing my lists in Trello. I have a list of Sentiments- little reminders about the things I believe and want to believe even when my perspective unravels. I have a Life list which will likely grow as I go, but at least the thoughts are stored somewhere. And I have Short term to-do's that will ideally help me complete the items on the life list. Some items on this list are just random but just as important like get an oil change, or as my mom would say, "get a haircut". I have a list called Doing, and my favorite list, Done. I move the cards throughout the lists as I am actively working on them, and then once they are finally completed. The cards in the Done list give me a sense of pride, and the cards yet to be done keep me focused on the journey ahead. 

While I will never abandon hand-written lists on dainty note paper, it's nice to know I have a backup.