A beautiful sunset gives me faith in everything. I don’t even have to have lost faith in anything; sunsets just make me believe in beauty. I get such a perfect view of every sunset from my room, I feel spoiled. The sky pours into my window and captures my attention no matter what I’m preoccupied with. This evening it was the golden glow that attracted me. It seemed as though Midus had touched the sky. If I shut all the lights, my room would glow from the sky alone. Each night the sun says goodnight in the most gracious way it possibly can. Whether it be hues of pink, red, orange, or just a beautiful mix of all of the above, sunsets bring a sense of warmth, beauty, love, and faith inside me that nothing else has the power to do.
I Observe. I Wonder. I Express. I Write.
New York City gal writing about most anything she pleases.
Why You Should Stay Away From How-To Books
The woman next to me on the subway today was reading a book titled, How to Find A Husband After 35. Well it’s easy to see why you don’t have one–you’re reading a book on how to obtain one! If you are so gullible to believe that reading a book written by an average person about finding a husband will actually help you succeed in doing so, I believe it is safe to say you will not find one.
“How-to” books are a strange phenomenon in pop culture. They are never telling how to do something that is actually possible to accomplish with instructions. If people could choose between “How To Make Spaghetti” and “How To Read Your Husband’s Mind”, a majority would choose the latter. But why is that? Why are people so vulnerable to believe one person’s manual for finding love or finding answers to unknown questions?
There is no way you can find love by following instructions. Real love is found when you drift away from the border and color outside the lines. Spontaneity, not planning, being a daredevil, not timid, jumping in the deep end instead of wading in the three foot pool. Those so desperate to find love that they turn to text need to take some time out to stop searching for someone else and search for themselves. If you’re reading How to Find a Husband After 35, you have lost yourself in some way. You need to find yourself once more and when you rediscover the light in your life, you could find somebody without trying.
Yesterday, while on the plane coming back from a mini trip to Miami, I was reading SELF magazine. There was an article about Marie Tillman, whose husband, a former football player for the Arizona Cardinals, died in Iraq while serving his country after 9/11. She writes the following,
“One day, after roaming for hours, I came home and fell onto the bed. There were a few how-to-grieve books on the nightstand that people had sent to me. After reading one particularly unhelpful bit, I threw the book across the room. As I got up, my eye fell on another volume, wedged between the bed and the wall. It was Pat’s copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s collected writings; Pat had taken it with him to Iraq. As I eagerly scanned it, an underlined passage leaped out at me: “Be not the slave to your own past.” For the first time, I felt a glimmer of faith, not in something mystical but in myself.” (SELF Magazine, June 2012)
The moral of the story is that you will not find answers in a how-to book. Authors of these types of books may argue with me, but it is the truth. Many times, the faith comes from within a good book that isn’t attempting to teach something. A book that is just trying to explain something or is just a collection of writing that reaches out to an individual. One line in a text can make all the difference. For example, I am currently reading Hamlet in school and the line, “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all” really stuck out to me. I loved it. One can interpret it however they please and though from what I read, it is thought to not mean the actual conscience, I would like to take it in that way, meaning that our understanding of right and wrong is what makes us hold back from our true desires. It’s a beautiful line. To me, much greater than “to be or not to be.”
To leave off, please refrain from the “how-to” section in the library and bookstore. Read good literature. Find an author you really love and read all their work. Become engaged in the writing and the world the characters live in. When you find such connections within text, that is when you will begin to understand more about yourself. How can you learn about yourself while reading a book written by someone else telling you what to do?
The Struggle to Feel Comfortable In My Own Skin 365 Days a Year
I am 21 years old. I live in New York City. Celebrity news is my guilty pleasure. I love shopping and shoes and looking great in everything I wear. I observe everyone I see no matter where I am. So naturally, at times, I am not comfortable with my physique. When I was a senior in high school, I was 120 pounds, same height as I am now (somewhere between 5’4 and 5’5). Now, about four years later, I am not 120 pounds. I haven’t weighed myself in awhile but as of the last time I weighed in, I was like 130. Ok, I know, a lot of you reading this are like “Oh god, this girl needs to shut the f— up.” I apologize. But I am being 100% honest when I say I no longer feel as comfortable as I used to. Not necessarily saying I’d like to be 120 pounds again, but maybe 125.
It’s so difficult for me to maintain a workout regime. I’m impatient. I don’t see results, I don’t continue. It’s silly and childish, but it’s how I am. I also love food. I mean, I’m half Italian, I have to love food. It’s like a requirement for all people of that nationality. Ok so I’m third generation. So what? Still a good excuse, right? No. I have my good days and I have my bad. Somedays I’ll wake up feeling beautiful and awesome about my body and somedays I won’t even want to leave the house because every pair of pants and every shirt I put on shows off some insecurity I have.
The biggest issue? The tummy, of course. Where the heck did this come from? Here is where I think everything went downhill: the elimination of gym class in my daily routine after high school graduation. In gym class senior year, we did push ups, crunches, jogging, jumping jacks, etc before we even started playing! Every single day. I got super good at push ups then. I was toned, I felt great. After our mini workout session, we played either basketball or volleyball, whichever we preferred. Every day, I played volleyball. Five days a week for the entire school year. Volleyball is said to really do wonders on your body and oh, it did. I was so happy in my own skin. My body was phenomenal! Beach? No problem. I’m sexy! If I wasn’t so weary about what I post on the internet, I would post a photo of my body back then (2009). Well now, I do none of that. Somedays I wake up and use the stationary bike in the basement, but some days I don’t. Somedays I stretch and do some leg workouts, etc. but most days, I don’t.
I don’t know how to motivate myself. I need that mandatory class every single day to push me, but in my college (and most from what I know), there is no mandatory fitness class. Since I work and go to school, having a gym membership is a waste of money. I’ve tried it. The Lucille Roberts near my house is only open till 9, giving me barely any time to go to the gym during the week. So I quit that. The NYSC is not getting a penny from me. They’re outrageously priced! These aren’t excuses these are real life reasons for not having a membership to a gym. I’ll take the extra 5-10 lbs over shelling out over $100/month to a gym anyday.
But then comes vacation time. And summer time. In less than two days, I am getting on a plane and heading to South Beach, Miami, Florida. Help. I have a gut, flabby arms, untoned thighs. AHH!! I am going to be incredibly insecure. I may not show it but I certainly am going to feel it. Every time I sit down: rolls. Every time I stand up: thigh rubbing. Tell me, what is a girl to do!?
If anyone has any tips, suggestions, motivational speeches, please help me out here.
The Lack of Ethnic Diversity in HBO’s Girls (Warning: A Controversial Topic)
As I’ve read about Girls more and more since I have begun watching, I’ve come across criticism for the show’s cast. People complain that there are only Caucasians on the show. Now look, I am half white and half Asian, but my family is completely Americanized so I suppose I’d be thrown into the Caucasian category by many, but I am all for diversity. I live in Queens — arguably the most culturally diverse part of New York City. I experience diversity on a daily basis and love it. But in a show like Girls, forcing diversity would be silly. I don’t like when a show or movie gets criticized for their casting. I don’t understand why people seem to want a quota for how many races should be cast in a show just to satisfy everyone. I think people focus on the wrong aspect of diversity. The focus is on how it is portrayed in pop culture when the real issue is how it pans out in the real world. The four girls have personalities fit for a young Caucasian female in NYC. If you’re into labels, they’d be defined as “hipsters” or “yuppies”. I’m not saying that other races can’t dress or act like they do, but I highly doubt they purposely excluded other races from being cast. A lot of the show is based on events that actually occurred in their lives. I believe Lena Dunham had a specific idea for how the show would pan out and what each person in the show would look like. Sometimes a show’s dynamic can be thrown off when they try to force a bunch of culture into the mix for the wrong reasons. And that isn’t me, or the show’s producer, being racist, because I am far from that. It’s just how some things happen. It is how the cookie crumbled and nobody should take offense to such a thing.
Tagged caucasian, culture, diversity, ethnic, girls, hbo, lena, lena dunham, nyc, queens, race, racism, review My Love/Hate Relationship with the HBO Series: Girls
My boyfriend introduced me to this show and being that I do not have HBO at home, I only watch it with him. As a female, this show had a different effect on me as it did him. He loved it from the very first episode and laughed at pretty much every scene, whether degrading of a female or not. I, not so much.
It took me until a week ago to actually admit that I enjoyed the show. It was a process. I had to come to terms with the fact that everything that happened to these girls was realistic. All of their situations with boys and with sex and with insecurity and pure stupidity was all true, yet as I watched, I would cringe. I suppose I can compare it to being completely exposed. As if Judd Apatow and Lena Dunham had taken every young adult females most secretive journal and exposed it to the world. As a 21 year old female in New York City, I was very much in tune with the lives of these four girls. The relationship qualms that Hannah and Marnie go through are similar to what I, and many of my friends, have experienced in the past, yet don’t like to speak about. And just that, not speaking about it, is what made me so uncomfortable watching this show.
The way Adam treats Hannah up until last week’s episode was horribly degrading and I would yell at the television telling her how stupid she was as my boyfriend laughed away. When Marnie attempts to fix her relationship with Charlie, I was yelling at the screen once more because I knew it was hopeless. But the craziest (or maybe it isn’t so crazy) about this is that I too had a relationship with a guy like Adam. I acted just as Hannah did and was treated just like her and it wasn’t any fun. With me, it never turned into anything that lasted. But I have always found myself hoping and praying that no girl ever has to have a relationship like any of my failed ones. Aw sweet? I suppose, but it’s really just naive and unrealistic. Marnie’s relationship with Charlie was a direct parallel to my last long term relationship that lasted about a year and a half with little to no sex throughout. I was Marnie. Yet I still winced at everything that happened between her and Charlie because I didn’t want to see anyone deal with that pain and awkwardness like I did.
Do I dare even speak about Jessa? This will be a character I doubt I’ll ever like. I hate cheating more than anything in the world (ok no, I may hate war a little more) and the types of females that condone it really get under my skin. Jessa is the epitome of a carpe diem female. She doesn’t care whose life she ruins, so long as she gets her fun. She’s all about her pleasure and her happiness. She’ll easily have sex with a guy in a happy relationship simply because she wants to play with his mind. She gets off on this stuff. When she began talking to Jeff, the father of the two little girls she babysits, I was furious. Every time the scene would cut to their little situation,whatever it may be, I’d turn and look at my boyfriend and give him the nastiest look as if he was the creator of the show. I’m not going to say that men are easily susceptible to temptation because women are just as much (and my admitting this shows how I have grown with this show), but Jessa is the type of female you want to stay a continent away from your spouse or significant other. I mean c’mon girl, step away from the married man!
This has been a problem for me in other shows. In the NBC show, Smash, I got very angry with Debra Messing’s character when she cheated on her husband with the man she had an affair with years before. When her son saw them, it was revolting to me. I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that shortly after that scene, I stopped watching. But why? Why do I act as though this isn’t something that happens all the time? Temptation can make its way into some of the happiest relationships. I think I just fear that my future husband will be just like this. It happens so often in television, film, and the real world that I often times wonder if any union is truly faithful to one another for however many years. I hope so, but how could I know?
People keep so many secrets, some they take to the grave, and some are exposed in due time, but it’s the secrets that scare me. Girls exposes many secrets — those of degrading men, selfish women, sexless relationships, and many more. Although secrets never told are what scare me most, secrets exposed are almost just as frightening to me. I suppose it’s the fact that all these things happen to so many men and women that a show could be made out of it.
All in all, Girls has grown on me, and I’ve become very attached with the characters, even Jessa. I could see myself hanging out with them and having a grand old time. But I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable with the situations they go through, just because of my sensitive nature. Maybe I just need to grow up and realize that this is life. And life can throw some really shitty situations upon us that we just have to deal with.
Watch Girls on HBO, Sunday at 10:30 ET! (Tonight!!)
Why Don’t They Know My Name?
In my last post I mentioned that I had taken a hiatus from Starbucks but I am now back. Before my hiatus, I was there every single morning. The same staff was there for the most part. Despite this routine, they still ask me for my name. Why does this offend me? This is definitely some sort of first world problem but look, the average person wants to be recognized by those they see on a daily basis, am I right? Last semester my professor had a brain fart during class (last month of the semester, by the way) and asked me what my name was. WHOA! Would you believe me if I said it brought down my whole day? Well it did. I mean c’mon! It was one of my favorite courses and she, one of my favorite professors, yet here we were, three months in and she’s asking me my name.
Did I ever mention my name? My name is Anna. Very simple. Four letters, but really just two because once you’ve got “a” and “n” you’re there. It’s a palindrome so see my name through a mirror and it’s exactly the same.
Through writing it looks as if this bothers me way more than it actually does. Well, no that isn’t true. When my professor forgot my name it was a lot more offensive than Starbucks asking for my name, but i would like to believe I make some lasting impression on people in whatever way, so that I don’t have to repeat my name all the time.
Grande Iced Coffee Nonfat Unsweetened
I stopped getting my iced coffee for awhile because I was drinking iced green tea which I made at home. I don’t have a fresh batch and I started my summer class yesterday, it was raining, and I figured “why not”? Well that’s all it took to get me back into that routine. I left a little late today but this magnetic field forced me to go to Starbucks to get my signature drink.
Why is that? Why is coffee sometimes more important than being on time? Is that a city thing or are people like this in rural places as well?
Anyway, I’m wearing new sandals today and when I put them on I slid down my tile floor. I didn’t think that was a very good sign but I got to the train (and Starbucks) without falling! Sometimes enough confidence for the day comes from a pretty outfit. Today I’m quite simple: coral colored button down, skinny jeans, and my new tan sandals. I do need a pedicure though. Since I’m budgeting, I think I’ll do it myself today.
Does anyone care what I’m writing here? I’m sorry if I got totally boring. I’ve been so busy writing nonsense that I didn’t even look up to see those around me on this train….ok now I did. Nobody is worth writing about. But on the platform today I heard someone talking really loud so I turned to see and it was a guy on the phone wearing a Red Sox hat! Yuck! Sorry if you’re from Boston and reading this but I’m a die hard Yankees fan and never understood why people would wear a Red Sox hat in NYC except if it was at a game against them.
Actual Observations
So on the 2 train a guy was reading a book and just cracking up. I finally saw the title and now I forgot it! Can you believe that? I think the author was Bill Broyder, though.
There was a lady across from me who had her feet pointing inward and whenever I see that I think they are insecure. Is that judgmental of me? I think I read it somewhere when I was reading about body language. She also had her bag on her lap and was clutching it close to her.
Why is it that whenever I’m thinking about yummy, unhealthy food or lack of exercise, I see somebody super fit in workout clothes? I just passed some lady doing her stretches on the subway platform. Really?!
The ads in this train are for Luna Park Coney Island. I’ve lived in NYC my entire life and have never been to Coney Island! Is that weird?
Well, Eye of the Tiger just came on shuffle and I think I want to jam out in my head. Bye y’all!
