Millennial Mind
Monday, January 26, 2015
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Monday, July 7, 2014
Running vs. Going Running: Tips from a Novice Runner
Running is
striking the ground at your midfoot and making sure your arms don’t cross your
body and distance and times and marathons.
To go running is
going an unknown distance without a timer and just running. It’s finding old
music on your iPod you haven’t listened to since you got your first tattoo or
had your first child; it’s saying hello to all the dogs you run past; it’s time
to think or to not think at all.
I always hated running. I tried it so many times and just
couldn’t figure it out. My body would ache, my lungs would scream fire, and it
would take me so long to recover that it was a week before I felt like I could
run again and at that point, I was not having it. I ran cross country in middle
school, and played volleyball, soccer, and softball all through high school.
But I could not run.
I’ve read running books from scientists and professional
runners and tried to apply what they said but still I could not run. Four years
after college, I got on a treadmill and huffed my way to ¼ miles before I had
to stop.
But then two weeks ago, I started to go running. I ran about
a mile nonstop (to the end of my subdivision) on my second outing and felt
great afterwards. So great that the next day I went again and ran about two
miles (to the end of my subdivision and back) with a short break in between. It
was on my third outing that I figured out the difference between running and
going running.
All the books by professional runners talked about timing
yourself and increasing distance. They talked about schedules and foot strikes
per minute. I don’t do any of that. I run in a straight line until I can’t run
anymore. Then I turn around and walk back until I can run again. I take
different paths through my subdivision to keep it interesting but I don’t map
anything out or time myself. I keep proper form but I’m not concerned about increasing
my speed or distance because I can already tell my body is doing that on its
own.
I started running again because my sister took it up and I
got to hear about her journey from novice to half marathon runner in real time.
I got to see the joy she felt and how it became her religion. I got to see a
runner being made. The problem with reading books by professionals is they are
already runners and their advice doesn’t apply to people like me who started
out not being able to run ¼ mile without feeling like I was going to die.
There is plenty of advice out there but a lot of it is
preferential. I like carrying a small water bottle; my mom doesn’t. I like
listening to music; some people prefer the silence. But there are three pieces
of advice that are universal and will help you run more efficiently so going
running is more pleasurable.
1. THE KEY TO RUNNING IS BREATH. This is the most important
piece of advice and the one the professionals are absolutely right about: Keep
your mouth closed when you run.
You don’t need maps or timers because your lungs will tell you
everything you need to know. If breathing through your nose becomes difficult:
slow down. If breathing is easy: you can speed up. That is all you need to know
about running. In fact, by keeping your mouth closed and slowing down when
breathing gets harder, you could probably run forever.
Oftentimes, runners talk about “hitting a wall” and they
tell you to push through. To me, “the wall” feels vaguely like I’m coming down
with the flu. I feel wrong and off. I used to power though by speeding up as if
it was a physical wall I literally had to run past. But once I closed my mouth
I realized that breathing became very difficult when I hit the wall so I slowed
down to get through it. Like way down. Like babies could crawl past me. It is
kind of embarrassing. But after a minute, I’m past the wall and then I can resume
running.
2. Imagine there are strings at the end of your heels
pulling up. Don’t reach your foot forward. Just lift up the backs of your heels
and lean forward until that’s all you need to do to run. Running is just
controlled falling. Again, lean forward until all you have to do is lift up the
backs of your heels. You’ll be surprised at how fast you go. I’ll say it again
so I know you’ve got it: lean forward until all you have to do is pick up the
backs of your heels. Everything else will take care of itself.
3. Don’t cross your arms in front of your body. You want
your chest and lungs to be open. Goes back to the whole breathing thing. And
make sure you relax your shoulders. I have to remind myself to relax my
shoulders like 12 times while I’m going running.
So, hopefully the above advice will make running easier so
it is more fun to go running. Because let me tell you: I hate running but I love to go running. Because there is something
about feeling your limbs and your lungs and your heart. It’s the most alive
I’ve ever felt even though it feels like I’m dying.
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Millennial Manifesto
We are the Millennials.
Entitled, lazy, narcissistic, the Me Me Me Generation.
We are lazy because we see how hard our parents work to gain so little and refuse to be a cog in that machine. We put our energies into things that can't be contained between 9 and 5.
We are narcissistic and, therefore, won't have midlife crises or any of the Top Five Regrets of the Dying. We might be the first generation to live our lives how we want to live them.
We refuse to buy houses because we saw how they imprisoned our parents.
We are technology dependent because we understand relationships are no longer trapped by geography, but can be freed by mutual passions.
We live with our parents because we refuse to add to our years of indentured servitude to our school loans.
We are the Me Generation because we know what the "common good" has brought us: war, recession, NSA, Patriot Act, CAFOs, Comcast, and Monsanto.
We understand a We Generation is just a 1% Generation.
We are young. We will make mistakes. But we have time to figure it out. You're worried about the world you'll be giving us soon. What you don't realize is that world won't work for this generation. It is going to change because society is made up of people and this new group of young people can't live in your society.
Stop calling us the worst generation because we refuse to engage in your societal system. When the only options for new grads is an unpaid internship or competing with financially unstable retirees for retail jobs, can you blame us for trying to find a new way to, not only survive, but to live?
Entitled, lazy, narcissistic, the Me Me Me Generation.
We are lazy because we see how hard our parents work to gain so little and refuse to be a cog in that machine. We put our energies into things that can't be contained between 9 and 5.
We are entitled because we refuse to just be citizens and demand to be people.
We are narcissistic and, therefore, won't have midlife crises or any of the Top Five Regrets of the Dying. We might be the first generation to live our lives how we want to live them.
We refuse to buy houses because we saw how they imprisoned our parents.
We are technology dependent because we understand relationships are no longer trapped by geography, but can be freed by mutual passions.
We live with our parents because we refuse to add to our years of indentured servitude to our school loans.
We are the Me Generation because we know what the "common good" has brought us: war, recession, NSA, Patriot Act, CAFOs, Comcast, and Monsanto.
We understand a We Generation is just a 1% Generation.
We are young. We will make mistakes. But we have time to figure it out. You're worried about the world you'll be giving us soon. What you don't realize is that world won't work for this generation. It is going to change because society is made up of people and this new group of young people can't live in your society.
Stop calling us the worst generation because we refuse to engage in your societal system. When the only options for new grads is an unpaid internship or competing with financially unstable retirees for retail jobs, can you blame us for trying to find a new way to, not only survive, but to live?
Thank You Letter to 22 Jump Street Filmmakers
To the filmmakers of 22 Jump Street,
I felt completely safe sitting in the movie theater while watching 22 Jump Street and I want to thank you for that. In just about every R-rated, male-centric comedy a women ends up topless. It has always made me uncomfortable, not because I'm seeing a naked female form, but because that female form is being used in a joke.
If the joke was that the female form itself is funny, that'd be one thing, but in most cases the joke is not her naked body but that she is naked. That makes me uncomfortable. What makes me feel unsafe is listening to the laughter and having to sit there, unable to do anything because it was recorded months before.
The second the naked woman appears, it is like the filmmakers are telling me that I may enjoy the movie but it is not made for me. I can laugh, but only if I remember that I am also the joke. Suddenly, sitting in that theater, I am painfully aware that, not only do I not belong, but my body is nothing more than a joke to those laughing at the (usually unknown) actress on screen.
If I am sitting near a man, an involuntary wave of unease usually washes over me and lingers long after the naked woman has left the screen. In a darkened theater with sound-proof walls, I can't help but be a little on edge when I'm reminded my body can be forfeit for nothing more than a quick laugh.
So thank you, 22 Jump Street filmmakers, for making a comedy with male leads without forgetting the female audience. And thank you for keeping the real world and all its problems, especially rape culture, at bay and letting me actually escape for 2 hours. I finally felt like I belonged with all those boys and men and felt wonderfully, blissfully safe.
Monday, May 12, 2014
Rough excerpt from Population 5000, the novel I'm working on:
The only thing that kept him firmly on the earth was the smell of peppermint. Peppermint chapsticks were the most portable and he had bought dozens over the years. He carried one with him everywhere and he always had spares. Peppermint meant Christmas. The only time of year when his parents tried, truly tried, to make everything seem fine. His dad, a silent man who had long ago learned that talking will not fix his wife’s problems, decorated the house and filled it with the peppermint candy that his grandfather always had in his pocket. To
And every
Christmas, Gary ’s
mom got out of bed. A small miracle when she was depressed. She couldn’t muster
a smile but she could at least muster herself. They could never know how hard
it was for her to be with other people. Other people radiated life but she was
dead inside. She was not sad; she was nothing. Sadness has a cure. You can’t
fix nothing because there is nothing to fix. She was a wisp of a woman, never
bothering to eat until the pain of hunger got so bad it was able to cut through
her nerves long ago numbed from disuse. She couldn’t be bothered to eat until
she had to eat so she wouldn’t be bothered by hunger.
She resented her son. She wanted to kill herself but she couldn’t do that to her son and she resented him for it. She even told him periodically that she hated him hoping he would hate her back so she could then kill herself. But he never showed her anything but love. He thought he was being kind, loving her because she couldn’t love herself. But it was the most cruel thing of all; to be loved by someone who didn’t want it. His love kept her tethered to the earth; to him. What he didn’t understand was that all she wanted to do was to float over the clouds; to be free. He was afraid of the wind that threatened to carry his mother off; she was frightened that it never would.
She was not
meant to be bound in a human body. Her spirit echoed the ebb and flow of the
oceans; she felt the pull of the moon on her blood. The delicate hairs on her
arms latched onto the wind as it rushed by, hoping it would carry them away.
Her physical body was made from stars that had exploded eons ago. They had
exploded for a reason.
She killed
herself three days before Christmas. Her husband had left to pick up her son
and so she decided to leave while she had the chance. They came home to her
empty body. Gary
kept the smell of peppermint with him to help him imagine the Christmas he
never had. He had saved up stories to tell her and imagined her smiling at his
foibles and misadventures. He was going to show her his grades and she was
going to tell him she was proud of him. He was going to make her laugh; make
her realize why she must go on living. Which is, of course, why she had to kill
herself before she saw him. Her guards were off duty. Now was her chance to
escape.
He started
dating Hester, an ethereal girl who spent most of her time wishing she were in
a different one. She wanted to live in Shakespeare’s writings and spent most of
her time in the theater, indoor and park alike. Gary saw all her plays because that is what
boyfriends do. He liked Shakespeare but he liked Hester’s enjoyment of his
plays more. Hester was like his mother in that she floated above the ground;
but she was in no danger of drifting off because she loved the reality she had
created, which costumes and sets aided in making.
She liked Gary but he used her more
like a life preserver than a person. He clung to her, pulling her down. He did
everything he could to support her and lift her up but, as he couldn’t do that
for himself, his efforts were largely pointless. Hester told Gary she didn’t want to ever get married
because she didn’t want to be tied down. They broke up his junior year of
college and she married someone else two years later.
Students gathered in the classroom of the last class of
Those around him laughed at the thought. A girl looked at him from across the table in surprise. “That’s so sad,” she said. No one had ever responded to
Monday, May 5, 2014
Confessions From a Former Cumberbitch
My new blog: http://kellynorenedudzik.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/confessions-from-a-former-cumberbitch/
For two months, I became so obsessed with Benedict Cumberbatch, I didn’t dare proclaim it on Facebook. Not for fear of ridicule, but because I didn’t want him to find out after we started dating. I mean, I’m not trying to be a creeper here.
For two months, I became so obsessed with Benedict Cumberbatch, I didn’t dare proclaim it on Facebook. Not for fear of ridicule, but because I didn’t want him to find out after we started dating. I mean, I’m not trying to be a creeper here.
I started watching BBC’s “Sherlock” because of the
critical and audience acclaim and by the very first episode, Cumberbatch had me
intrigued. This soon turned into obsession.
I spent about two months being completely
obsessed with him. I watched everything he’s ever been in, including
The Fifth Estate on opening night. I expected it to be packed and was genuinely
surprised it was only me and five other people. I even rewatched movies I’d
seen but didn’t realize he was in. To me, Cumberbatch was sophisticatedly
handsome and I attributed his great acting ability to the fact I had previously
thought he was ugly in Atonement the first time I had watched it. This
man could do no wrong. Even when he was slightly embarrassing during interviews
or kept mispronouncing “meme,” I would shake my head and think, “That’s just
Ben.”
I would like to point out again that I am not
crazy. I may have my moments but I am still relatively normal.
So what the hell happened?
A “Social Crisis”
When people hear about adolescent girls and their
obsessions with One Direction or the fanatic loyalty of Beliebers, people laugh
and shake their heads and chalk it up to stupid, young girls and their
hormones. I think there’s more to it than that. I became obsessed and I no
longer have the hormones of a teenager now that I’m in my mid-20s. So if hormones are not the reason, then it must be something else. I believe adolescent girls become obsessed
with celebrities due to a social crisis.
Adolescent and teenage girls spend the majority of
their time worrying about how others feel about them. They want to conform so
they don't get ridiculed, but they also want to stand out and be special. It's
an incredibly stressful time, trying to determine which aspects of themselves
they hide and which they should let shine. To help with this process, they use
the social clues and cues of their peers. Sure they are all individuals with
their own unique quirks, but the cool unique quirks are approved and encouraged
by their peers while the undesirable ones fade away. It's called socialization
and everyone goes through it during middle and high school.
So if hormones are no longer a problem for me, what
connected me with young girls must have been that feeling of figuring out where
we fit in the world. I had just quit what I thought was my dream job and moved
back in with my parents across the country. I was moving to a place where I had
no friends anymore – they had all moved away like I did but they were better at
living their lives than I was, apparently. I had no idea where I fit in anymore
and would have to figure it all out again.
People don’t question when “nerds” lose themselves
in comic books or an online fantasy world. They don’t fit in to this world so
they spend as much time as they can in another. Young girls do the same thing
when they lose themselves in a fantasy world of famous celebrities; the only
difference being the young girls want to fit into this world. And what
better role model than the celebrities their peers love. That’s key. I had seen
Cumberbatch in movies before but didn’t notice him. It was only after hearing
how everyone loved him that I miraculously came to the same conclusion. Yes, he
is a talented actor, but that’s not why I became obsessed with him. I became
obsessed because others loved him. Just as I wanted to be loved by others.
Loyalty and the Celebrity
When a celebrity falls out of favor with the public
and their fans not only defend them but attack back (I’m looking at you
Beliebers), it all starts to make more sense when you realize they aren’t
defending the celebrity; they’re defending the fantasy world they put so much
time and energy into. When you attack the object of their worship, you are
actually attacking the worshipers by saying they chose wrong. No one wants to
be wrong. Plus they chose this celebrity because he/she was loved by the world
(and by the world, I mean their peers). To realize he/she is no longer loved is
to realize the love they so crave never lasts. Their illusion of the celebrity
isn’t shattered; their wishful view of acceptance is. And so they dig in their
heels and stand their ground. If they still love the celebrity, then maybe they
can still be loved as well.
Why Young Women?
So why do celebrity obsessions overwhelmingly
affect young women? It has to do with the fact that boys have men to look up
to; to aspire to; to model themselves after. Young girls are told that behind
every great man is a woman. It’s said with a cocky smile, like the teller is
imparting some secret Ya-Ya Sisterhood knowledge that men don’t know about. It
is told to young girls to empower them, but it does the exact opposite. It
tells young girls their greatest power lies in being next to
someone with greater power.
Michelle Obama, Betty Ford, Eleanor Roosevelt, and
Hilary Clinton all did/do great things, but they did so with their husbands’
last names. Hell, even Hermione got married, seemingly just to get married. I
think Rosa Parks, Oprah, and Queen Elizabeth I are the only three women in
history to be mentioned without a man’s name on either side of theirs. And
we’re taught that Queen Elizabeth I didn’t marry in order to protect her crown,
not because she, you know...didn’t want to get married.
I’m not bashing marriage. Plenty of married women
are “equal” or “greater” than their husbands (thank you Beyonce and Tina Fey).
But young girls are overwhelmingly told their power lies next to someone else.
So it’s no surprise many celebrity obsession fantasies are about marrying said
obsession. Even when the obsession is non-romantic, the young girl imagines
herself as a friend whose life is devoted to the celebrity, say, Taylor Swift.
In the fantasy, Taylor Swift thinks of the young girl as an equal; but the
world knows they’re not.
Why This Matters
The reason this matters is because if someone is obsessed with a celebrity
(again, remember the fact that you know the difference between ‘like/love’ and
‘obsession’), it doesn’t have anything to do with hormones (plenty of ‘older’
women get obsessed as well) or ‘silly girls’ or rolling your eyes. It
should be taken seriously because the obsessed person is a hurting person.
An obsessed person doesn’t value themselves so they
try to imagine themselves next to someone the world values and they end up
morphing themselves to that ideal. Some do so literally by getting plastic
surgery to look like the person they are obsessed with. But on a smaller but no
less harmful scale, they will alter their beliefs and dreams for their fantasy
of perfect acceptance. For instance, I dreamed of my future children with
Cumberbatch. The only problem is I don’t want children. I can’t even handle how
needy dogs are. I also panic at responsibility and get pretty pissy if someone
doesn’t appreciate how much effort I’ve put into something. I don’t like to
think of it as I’d make a terrible mom, but that being a mom would make me a
terrible person. And yet for two months I fantasized about having two or three
kids and spending my days at home with them while Ben worked. I’d have dinner
ready when he got home and we’d spend the evening listening to him recite
poetry. I had turned into a 50s housewife. I don’t actually want any of that in
my life (except for listening to Cumberbatch recite poetry – he could recite
the phone book with that voice). And I know that if my life did turn out like
that, I’d be pretty miserable.
An obsessed person is a hurting person. Instead of
making fun of their obsession, please try to realize they are only looking for
love and value (thankfully in the safer place of their mind as opposed to
teenage versions of orgies and drug dens (also known as basements)). Talk them
up. Make them want to be their own hero. These kids are only seeing the success
of these people, not the hard work. With 24 hour news, YouTube, and the rise of
the 15-minute celebrity, kids are more convinced than ever that all they need
is a one-shot Hail Mary to get famous and so they put all their energy into that
as opposed to putting it back into themselves. Show them people who dealt with
the same insecurities as they do on their way to being successful. Teach them
the value of hard work, perseverance, and grit.
Most girls will grow out of their celebrity obsession.
We can only hope they grow out of it because they’ve found their value within
themselves. Most won’t. They will continue on with their lives but still
fantasize about acceptance instead of realizing they only have to accept
themselves. These women will lead lives of quiet desperation; quiet only
because having a life-sized cutout of a celebrity is too loud, but lives
desperate nonetheless. Just because they are better at hiding their depression
and anxiety does not mean it is still not there. These can cripple a human. And
only morons laugh at cripples.
UPDATE: After reading a few comments in a few places I have posted this, many people want to know how I "got over" my obsession. I saw a picture of Benedict kissing a Russian model after she had stated in an interview that she was in a serious relationship with someone else. Suddenly I realized that Benedict Cumberbatch is just trying to figure it all out like the rest of us and I should start doing the same. I still admire the man; he is a great actor and loves his fans but he is no longer an object of worship, just admiration.
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