Giving thanks for... a table for one

When I was younger, I hated the idea of eating alone in public places. In college, if I couldn't find anyone to go with me to the dining hall, I would just get food and go back to my room to eat; when I graduated and was living on my own, I ordered a lot of take-out. I just assumed that if I sat at a table by myself, everyone else in the restaurant would be staring at me, either feeling sorry for me or wondering why I had no friends (um, yeah, self-absorbed much?). Since I didn't want to sit in my apartment alone ALL the time, I did start going to coffeehouses. I was still pretty uncomfortable but at least there, I could write in my journal or read a book (note: this was also back before there were Starbucks on every corner with everyone sitting for hours with their laptops using the wifi). After a while, I did start feeling a bit less conspicuous. I even remember specifically looking around at the other people who were by themselves and thinking, "Hmmm, they don't seem sad or pathetic - so maybe I don't either..." But I still couldn't imagine going into a sit-down restaurant and eating a meal at a table by myself.

At some point, I realized that the main person judging me for eating alone was me. Admittedly, I didn't acquire that attitude overnight. It took me a while to shake the feeling that if I ate by myself, it meant I was loser with no friends and everyone was staring at me. I started by eating out when I was traveling. In my mind, it didn't seem as sad if I knew I wasn't eating alone because I had no friends but just because I was from out of town. But doing that also helped me realize that no one else cared - no one ever seemed to look oddly at me and I saw plenty of other people dining alone. I also had a similar thought to when I was in coffeehouses, that I wasn't sitting there wondering why they were eating alone or thinking they were losers, so maybe they weren't thinking anything about me either.

Nowadays, I'm generally OK with eating out alone. Not that I'm going to five-star restaurants or anything, but I no longer have a problem telling the host "Table for one, please". Sometimes it helps to have something to read (yay for smarthphones!) but I also make a conscious effort to look around and, in particular, to savor my food. How often do we go to restaurants with other people and focus more on the conversation than the food? That can be great too, of course, but there's something sort of zen about not doing anything but really tasting your food.

I have no doubt there are plenty of people who still think it's "sad" to see any woman eating alone in a decent restaurant but since those would be strangers whose opinions don't mean anything to me, why should I let them stop me from having a nice meal out?

Giving thanks for... learning to tap dance

I did a lot of musical theater when I was a kid and loved it. But I never had formal dance lessons (well, I did take less than one year of ballet when I was maybe five but I don't think that really counts). Everything I needed to do, dance-wise, for shows, I just picked up from following the choreographers. But the one thing you can't really 'just pick up' is tap and I always wanted to take lessons. Then, when I was in college, there was a very popular anthropology professor on campus who was also an avid tap dancer and every few years, he would teach a tap class. He happened to offer one during my senior year and I jumped at the chance. It was a blast! I just love the precision, the sound of the taps.

After many years of my tap shoes collecting dust, I finally decided this fall to sign up for another class and I found one at a local community college. I thought I would feel weird taking a class there (after all, many of the students there end up transferring to the university where I teach) but once I put on my tap shoes, I just don't care. Like other dance styles, tap obviously requires a good amount of coordination and rhythm. But tap specifically requires a ton of control over parts of your body that most of us do not think a lot about: our feet. That requires a lot of mental focus, at least for me, at the level I'm at. You can't fake it in tap - the sound gives you away.

A lot of people who run, or otherwise exercise regularly, will talk about getting in a 'zone' and the high they feel from working out. I have never felt that way when I've tried to exercise in the past but when I'm tapping, I know exactly what they are talking about. Every part of me - mind, body and soul - is engaged and I leave every class completely energized and ready to take on the world. Sometimes I think I don't really have time for it (with the time it takes to drive back and forth and find parking, the class takes a good two hours out of the middle of my day, twice a week) but then I go and feel like it's the best part of my week.

Several weeks ago, my instructor gave us 'homework' to look up Evan Ruggiero on Youtube. What we found was amazing! Enjoy!

Giving thanks for... libraries

I love libraries. I love bookstores too - I guess I should really say I love any place I can be surrounded by books. But I particularly love libraries. Partly, it's all the good memories I associate with libraries. When I was a kid, our local library sponsored summer read-a-thons and I remember going around the library, collecting a huge stack of books that I could barely carry. One of the local libraries had a room with a sunken floor with big pillows and I could spend hours in there. In college, the library was the one place I could study and not have to worry about being distracted.

I also love that I can spend hours in a library looking through random books and I don't have to feel guilty that I'm not buying anything. I used to buy books all the time - I also have a weakness for used bookstores - but I've tried to stop because I realized that with most books, I only read them once and then they just collect dust. Every time I moved (and I used to move about once a year), I would go through my bookshelves and purge, donating to the library of course. Now the only books I actually own are either work-related or real favorites that I do read over and over again. If there's a book that I want to read, but am not sure whether it will be a 'read over and over' kind of book, I try to find it at the library first.

With the rise of electronic books, I've heard people say that libraries will soon become unnecessary or obsolete. But libraries are more than just collections of books, they are about providing people with access to knowledge. They encourage people (especially kids) to read but also provide public services like internet access, programs for English learners and summer or after-school activities for kids. Personally, I can't imagine that print books will be completely replaced by ebooks in my lifetime, but even if they are, libraries still have a vital role to play in the community. 

When was the last time you visited a library?

Giving thanks for... Football

This is probably the weirdest follow-up to yesterday's post about feminism that I could possibly come up with but like most Sundays from September to December (hopefully January), I've spent a lot of the day watching football so it's on my mind. I grew up watching the San Francisco 49ers, in the heyday of Bill Walsh, Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, but I don't remember really learning how the game actually works until I started dating a football player in high school. I still recall thinking that it was kind of sad that I was the only cheerleader on my squad who seemed to know what a first down actually was (yes, I was a cheerleader and I dated a football player - no one who meets me today can ever believe that...). I lost touch with football through college and graduate school but re-discovered it when I moved to San Diego in 2000 and now I'm a diehard Charger fan, which isn't always easy but I try to keep believing in them...

Over the years, being a football fan has been surprisingly handy. As a relatively introverted person, football gives me something to talk about with people (mostly men) that I otherwise have nothing in common with. Rooting for the local team makes me feel more tied to my community. Watching the Super Bowl is actually fun when the game is on, not just during the commercials. And instead of being a 'football widow', I can spend Sundays hanging out with J, who is an avid fantasy football player.

There are certainly a lot of things about the game that are not worthy of praise, and a lot of football players that I think are absolute idiots. I think it's obscene that football players (as well as other professional athletes) get paid so much money for something that doesn't really do much to improve society. But sometimes we all need mindless entertainment. And there is something awesome about being in a stadium with thousands of people all cheering for a common goal, even if that goal is really kind of silly. So today, I am thankful for Football and the many moments of excitement that it has brought into my life. What team do you root for?

Giving thanks for… Feminists

Rebecca Searles has a great flowchart showing ‘how to tell if you’re a feminist in two easy steps’:

Today, I am celebrating all the feminists who fought so hard for the rights that many of us now take for granted. It’s ironic (and sad) but the very fact that so many young women reject the label of feminist is a sign of how much change the earlier feminists were able to affect. Today, it is hard to imagine encountering the kind of overt discrimination that women faced in the 60’s; most girls are raised believing that they really can do anything their brothers can; and women outnumber men among college students.

And yet…

• Only 98 of the 535 seats (that’s 18.3%) in Congress are held by women (20= 20%, in the Senate and 78 =17.9% in the House);
• Only 21 (4.2%) of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are women; only 45 (4.5%) of the Fortune 1000 CEOs are women;
• Women continue to be vastly underrepresented in science and engineering, law, the higher ranks of academia, and even in television;  
• We don’t know as much about women’s health because of bias in medical research (where studies that only included men are treated as if they apply equally to women).
• I have, more than once, been told that I “don’t look like an economist” because I am not a white male.

I could go on but my point is simply that there’s still plenty of need for the kind of feminists who are willing to step up, call themselves feminists and not let people pretend everything’s honky dory.

Let me also be clear: Calling myself a feminist does NOT mean I judge any woman who chooses to stay home and raise her kids. It DOES mean I think we also shouldn’t judge any MAN who wants to stay home and raise his kids, nor should we judge any women who chooses NOT to stay home with her kids. To me, being a feminist means recognizing that these are all valid choices and we need to be working to make sure that governments and companies have policies that allow people to make the choices that work best for them.

Calling myself a feminist also does NOT mean I think all men are out to get women. Given the power differences in this country, we would never have gotten as far as we have if an awful lot of men had not been willing to stand up and be feminists too. I DO believe that there are some people in this country who will never ‘get it’ – and there are more men in that category than women – and being a feminist means calling out those people when they say stupid sh*t, not just letting it go and chalking it up to ‘it’s just a joke’ or ‘boys will be boys’.

And calling myself a feminist does NOT mean I think women are somehow better than men. I do think that the fact that some people equate saying “women are EQUAL” with “women are BETTER” is an indication of the imbalance that still exists in society – we’re so used to men being dominant that the idea of women being equal somehow seems odd and possibly unfair. But if the idea of having half of Congress be female seems like that would be “too many” women, then I have to wonder what your idea of equal representation would be…

Today, I am giving thanks that I was raised by a feminist mother. And I am grateful that there are still plenty of women who are proud to claim the Feminist label. What about you?

Commiting to Writing, and to Gratitude

In an attempt to jumpstart my creative juices, I decided to join Blogher's National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo), which means I'm declaring my intention to post something each day this month. I had been thinking about doing something like this but was pretty sure that I'd lose steam at some point because I wouldn't be able to think of things to write about. But then I saw a post from one blogger who is posting every day about things she is thankful for and that stuck me as something I could do, and it would be good for me to boot. So here I am...

I'm not sure if I'll follow all the prompts from Champagne to Crayons but the first one is "A blessing" and that seems like a very good place to start (I am now hearing Julie Andrews singing "Let's start at the very beginning..." in my head). The only issue is that I have so many blessings in my life that I am thankful for, I can't really choose just one. Of course there are the biggies: my relationship with J; close friends and family; relatively good health; a secure job that I enjoy. There are also the blessings that aren't quite so vital but certainly contribute greatly to my happiness, like living in San Diego where the weather is always perfect, in a hip neighborhood with lots of great food options; or having access to technology that allows me to see my sister and nephew even though they live on the other side of the world. These are things that I give thanks for on a pretty regular basis.

But today, I think I'll celebrate the 'blessings in disguise', those blessings that seem like anything but good at the time they are happening. For me, a huge 'blessing in disguise' is the fact that my previous relationships were with men who simply were not that into me. Totally sucked at the time - I "wasted" a good ten years of my life being miserable because I wanted more from those men than they were ever going to give me. But today, I thank god that neither of those guys was willing/able to commit to a real relationship because if they had, I think it's probably pretty unlikely that I would have gotten the personal help I needed to rebuild my self-esteem, and I certainly would never have met J.

Thinking about how things so often out in the end helps me keep life in perspective. Nowadays, when something does not go as I had hoped (like when I recently was rejected for an administrative position at my university that looked like it was 'perfect' for me), I find it much easier to truly believe that maybe this means something better is supposed to come along.

What blessings are you celebrating today?

I’m an aunt!

Aside from the change in my relationship status, the biggest change in my life over the last few years is that I became an aunt! My nephew, B, turns three this weekend and is pretty much the cutest kid ever (yeah, I’m biased but that doesn’t mean it’s not true!).

When my nephew was born, I went through a brief spell of thinking that maybe I did want a kid after all. It’s hard not to be seduced by an adorable baby who doesn’t do much except sleep, eat and poop – especially when I didn’t have to deal with the poop part! I made enough comments wondering if I wanted one that I think J started getting a little freaked out (he’s already a dad but with his daughter finally out of the house, he has zero interest in starting all over again). As usual with me, rationality eventually took over again, but I do love being an auntie. I get to love and spoil the little guy without any of the real responsibility. At the same time, unlike with other kids, if I feel like B is doing something he shouldn’t, it’s generally OK for me to say something to him (mostly without annoying my sister :-)).

One interesting thing about becoming an aunt is that it has given me a clearer understanding of why having kids is often such a huge divider of people (particularly women). As someone who does not have kids, and has no intention of ever having kids, I have never really understood why it is that when people have kids, they inevitably stop having a life of their own. It’s not just that their activities revolve around their kids but it seems like there are many women who can’t/don’t want to even talk about anything other than their kids. That used to be something I found really annoying. But now that B is in my life, I feel like I understand it a bit better. I still think women who really can’t talk about anything but their kids are fairly annoying, but I have a much better appreciation for why they do it, because I find that I have a similar desire to talk about B a lot. He’s just so damn cute and smart, how could people NOT want to hear about how cute and smart he is? I don’t actually talk about him that much (at least, I don't think I do...) but it sure is fun that when other people bust out with annoying stories about their kids, I can now match them with equally annoying stories about B!