Re-Connecting

Sometimes I act and feel like a robot. My life becomes one long list of papers to write and appointments to make and e-mails to respond to and people to call and bills to pay. I worship the god called Productivity, and it gets me no farther than the Joneses. What it gets me is anxiety and joylessness and a lack of connection to the parts of me that are creative and funny and personal and life-giving.

Today I remembered that I like pop culture and funny people and writing. I've always loved to write. I remembered that I am human and an artist in my own way. With my words and my wit. And my love. I forget a lot--that I have my own things that make me...me. The robot spends far too much time modeling the success of others, trying to make it my own, when really it's not. The robot takes in and regurgitates and often short circuits from sensory overload.

I Google-stalked my new crush. He has articles and student reviews and fancy titles on the internet. I Google-stalked myself. I have a million other people with my same name. But we are not the same. It's easy to forget that we're not just a name in the sea of others. Not just one of many.

I am Jennifer Nicole Petersen. I was the best reader in my kindergarten class. I am a smart ass. I'd have a hard time labeling all the states on a U.S. map. Today I had to Wikipedia "Scandinavia" to make sure I was clear as to what countries aforementioned crush was referring to in our conversation the other night. I use names of internet search engines as verbs. I don't know shit about history, but I am smart. I know pretty much every word to The Lion King Soundtrack and my role models growing up were the members of The Babysitters Club. Yes, the book characters.

Take that, Robot.

Chick Lit Theory

I'm so freakin' tired. But alas, I have made a pact to write, so write I must.

The good thing about being ridiculously stressed out with school right now is that all of my classmates are in the same boat, and we all know that misery loves company. So today, for example, when I should have been reading about theories of substance abuse addiction, I actually had a 2 hour conversation in the library with some girls from my class about boys, of course. Because what topic could be more interesting than that? Let's see, we covered the basics of:

- Dating in NYC
- Marriage
- The Rules, which is apparently a life-changing book that I must read
- Learning that I already practice "The Rules" without even knowing it

Comeback

I keep reading blogs, websites and other such interfaces that friends or quasi friends have created and, to be perfectly honest, I am jealous. I think, "Well, I could do that" or "I've always wanted to do that" or "I'm definitely funnier than she is."

The deal is, these people are doing things. They are putting their prose out there and I, quite frankly, am not. Until now.

I'm going to stop freaking whining about wanting to write and just do it already. Also, I need to start making some room for myself to figure things out and keep it real. Like the guts-inside-out kind of real. I have about 1.5 more years of grad student-dom and I will be trying to resolve some things in myself and the world that simply won't be put to rest by a glass of wine and episode of Glee after a long day.

"Wherever you go, there you Are."

Sometimes I think I can run from things--from feelings and parts of myself I'd rather not acknowledge, much less confront. Things I thought I would outgrow but have, in fact, lingered as unwelcome visitors.

I seem to have a knack for turning potentially great experiences into burdensome ventures. Right now, I'm in an internship for school. It sounds great in theory. Work with parents in poor communities. Fight for education reform. Better our public schools. And, for some reason, I can't seem to connect with most of what I'm doing. Being hypercritical of everyone and everything certainly doesn't help matters.

Trust me, there is a lot to flesh out with this, but sleep calls loudly right now.

There's also a boy (there's always a boy). He dropped off the planet as of last week. Same song, different verse. What the hell is wrong with men? It's like they want to date a prop and not a real person. Heaven forbid we make them break a sweat to chase us.

Ok, I will stop now. I promise. But those were some good lines....

I'm back.

Mid-life 20's?

Starting new things is hard. I forgot about that. New school, new peers, new job, new co-workers. It's weird. It makes me realize how wonderful it is to have people who know and love me and who I can be totally free with.

Starting new also makes me remember how scared I am of a lot of things and how impatient I can be with adjustment periods. I recently finished reading The Time Traveler's Wife (which, by the way, was just ok). Clare and Henry are about to get married so Henry's just tried out a new drug to help him stay in the present for their wedding. It's overkill and he's high on life. He asks Clare to join him and she says, "no" to which Henry replies, "You are so good. I shouldn't be trying to corrupt you." And then Clare says to him:

"I'm not good. I'm afraid."

I don't know why, but that resonated so much with me.
I remember at my interview for social work school they asked us about a regret that we had and I remember having a hard time coming up with an answer. And then it dawned on me that I regret not having more regrets aka not taking enough risks when I was younger and trying too hard to be perfect. Now I'm older and having to learn that, and it's hard. How do you set yourself up to mess up (and provide yourself grace when you do) when you've spent most of your life running from that very thing? I'm not so sure, but I did see a quote on my classmate's water bottle the other day that says, "Do 1 thing every day that makes you nervous." So I guess that's a start.

Staycation

I've been relishing my post-work, pre-grad school days of freedom. Here's what I've been up to:

Sunday
- Beach (Long Beach)

Monday
- Beach (Robert Moses)

Tuesday
- Organizing and decorating the apt.
- Running
- Drinking wine and watching Mad Men

Wednesday
- Lunch with Jessica from Hope for New York
- Shopping
- Chelsea Market for a cupcake at Amy's Bread
- First visit to the High Line
- Dinner w/ Heather in Meatpacking
- Soaking up the view at the pier

Such a hard life I lead :)

A Biographical Vomit of Sorts

I just read this article in Relavant magazine about how wonderful your 30's are because you start to be treated like a legit adult and how confusing your 20's are because you're trying to figure yourself out and so on and so forth. I think he was basically saying not to sweat your 20's though he did state that a lot of the choices we make in our 20's can take us in radically different directions.

I grew up in a Catholic family and went to more Christian summer camps than I can count when I was in middle school and high school. Something about those experiences spoke to me, and I wanted to be on the "right" path and be "on fire" for God, so I took to heart everything I learned at camp. I worshipped my counselors, my Christian coaches at school, my youth group leaders. I poured myself into church and mission trips and FCA and being a "leader for Christ". I joined a Christian sorority in college and a Christian organization that helps inner city kids and did Bible studies and devotions and listened to Christian music and wrote letters to family members encouraging them to walk on what I thought was the "straight and narrow."

And under all of that I always craved an adventure. I was drawn to bohemians and new places and intruiged by alternative lifestyles. A group of my very best friends in high school were lesbians. I love them to death and they still teach me a lot though we're not as in touch. They jokingly called me "Jesus with a vagina", which, crude as it is, still makes me laugh.

I spent a lot of my growing up trying so hard to be "good." Looking back, maybe some of that was an outlet for me because I always felt a bit insecure, about my height, my body, my acne. I was always friends with everyone in the cool group, but never felt quite cool enough myself to really own my place in their midst.

And then I moved to New York and realized drinking is not of the devil, everyone and their mom is having sex, and most people don't really "do"' the church thing. Granted, I still poured myself into the church scene, and, for better or worse, that's where a lot of my good friends seem to derive from...and, of course, Texas.

I have run the gamit of emotions about this change of pace and culture and lifestyle and ideology that I ebarked on almost 5 years ago. Sometimes grateful for my spiritual grounding, but a lot of times ashamed or embarrassd. Of what, I'm not so sure. Most of my spiritutal endeavors were self imposed, so it's not like I have an oppressive family to blame. I go in and out of wanting to do the church things. It constantly draws me back because there is something about radical grace and talk of Jesus that is alluring and some of the most counter cultural stuff I've ever heard. But then there is the church stuff that makes me want to run: the small groups, the lingo, the service. All of it makes me feel so freaking exhausted. And I think that's kind of what I used to feel like a lot, hopping from one do-gooder thing to the next, trying to live up to some kind of spirtual expectation I had of myself.

I think right now I just need to start over. If church and churchy things seem a little too exhausting, then maybe that's just not where I need to be right now. I think I'm just going to sit down with a pastor and be like, "Here's the deal..." I just want to start over and figure some stuff out and learn how to own my past a bit more without feeling like I spent all those years wrapped up in Christian activities because I couldn't face the real world. I want to learn how to reconcile some radical committments I made in years past (absitinence, pro-life, Jesus being the only way) with reality. I want to know how one determines what they can truly stand firm on and move forward in that.

More of the Same of the Winter and Such

Today was a day of much waiting on trains and waiting on trains some more. I'm in official mourning for the existence of winter, particularly this winter. My nails are painted dark, I push snooze at least 5 times every morning, come straight home after work and am refusing to exercise until it's warm enough to run outside. It's felt freeing to resign to the reality that very few things are redeeming at this point in the year.

I'm officially going to South America for 2 weeks in May, and I am so freakin' excited. My main mission will entail: 1) getting tan on the beaches of Rio and 2) finding myself a Latin lover to bring back as a souvenir. What can I say, I'm an ambitious gal.

I've been trying to fight a disconnected feeling lately. Sometimes I feel like there is a deep, underlying resistance to my truly settling in this city. It's more the sense that I never feel completely "at home." I'll have these moments where I stop and think about how far away I am from where I grew up and my family and year-round warm weather and people who say "y'all" and people who care more about high school sports than politics. I worry that I hold back to0 much here and try so hard to exude a certain image that I've lost my own in the process. It's a legit fear, I think.

There's this word that comes to mind a lot every since reading about it last year. It's a Hebrew word called "T'shuva", and it means both repentance and returning home (as in to old customs and values). The author Rob Bell talks about it as a call to be who we were created to be, our "first self" so to speak. I like that. I want that. I need that.

Orange Cats and Physics Profs

This is my cat Rudy:


He is quite adorable. Maybe even the most adorable cat ever. But all that cuteness can be deceiving. Let's see, in the past day he has managed to de-thread my new rug, knock over my trash can and break the full length mirror in my bedroom. He is a little terrorist/con artist in the making. Who would expect such evil from a face like that? He was found in a dumpster in the Bronx (aww..can you believe that?), so I think the street cat Rudy has been comin' on full force..

In other news, tonight I went to hear the author of this book speak at the Tenement Museum:

The subtitle reads:

"How we got from the company man, family dinners and Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms, and Economic Anxiety."

So, being the Sociology major that I am, I naturally had to attend this event. That and the fact that my actual work very rarely requires that I think deeply about things I'm interested in...or really anything.

I met a nice old man there named Bernie. He's a retired NYU physics professor and apparently had never made it down to the Lower East Side after all these years. He treated me to a cup of coffee afterward (think grandfather figure, not dirty old man) and we talked about the book event and his family and he gave me some good wisdom about grad schools. It was really refreshing.

It is almost 1am, and I am going to hate myself in the morning. I pull this stunt pretty much every single night--promising that I'll make it to bed by 11, not following through and then wanting to kick mysel the next day at work. What's an inherent night owl to do?

Truth be told, I like staying up late because this is when I start to feel most alive. I've always had issues with anxiety, particularly in the mornings. It's kind of like that nervous/stressed feeling you get before taking a big test or going on an interview--except I feel that every day. I don't know if that's normal. Not that I care a whole lot about being "normal" (whatever that is), it just might be nice to know that someone else gets what I'm talking about. Usually a couple hours into my work day it starts to fade. And it's good knowing it will fade, but it can also get kind of exhausting going through the same emotional routine every morning.

I used to just pray that it would go away, and I wanted to just curl up in a ball until it did. But lately I've been trying to understand a bit more about what God has to say about weakness. Apparently, these sorts of things are actually strengths in His world. If only I could wrap my mind around that kind of truth. I'm trying...to learn how to look at my flaws, my burdens as gain, as acknowledgement that He is most strong when I am not. I look forward to keeping you posted on how that goes...

Singin' the Wintertime Blues

I'm in the middle of the cruelest winter since moving here 4 and a half years ago. It's dark and freezing and there's not even a place nearby to order takeout from. And did I mention I'm tired of my face hurting every time I walk to the subway? It's ridiculous feeling like a brisk 5 minute walk to the train requires full combat gear.

It's not like I haven't been through this season before, and if there's one thing I've learned it's that there's no changing things. You just gotta grit your teeth, pray that it will be over soon, and hold on for dear life to the things that comfort and feel like home: food, friends, favorite bars, Gossip Girl, red wine, and boyfriend if you're lucky enough to have one during these harsh arctic months.

At this point, I'd be ok with staying in my apartment by the heater (not that it actually works on regular basis) until the weather is at least a tolerable 53 degrees again. But alas, life must go on. It must be the weather that makes me so freakin' homesick this time of year. I remembered blogging about home a while back and, as irony would have it, I wrote that entry exactly 4 years ago to the date. Weird, right? I guess the winter funk is a legit thing: Home Field Advantage

Seriously though, this puffy down comforter is calling my name. If I'm lucky, it will be summer when I wake up.

Filling Up

My group joined another group for Bible study tonight, and it was good. It's been a while since I truly studied the Bible. It reminded me of college. And for all of the time I spent in studies and small groups and ministries while in college, one would think I'd have a pretty sound knowledge of the Bible. The reality is quite the opposite. For some reason, it never stuck. Maybe because I just took what I wanted from it, whatever fit my emotional needs at the time. Maybe because I was afraid to ask questions and was more concerned about playing the part of this spiritually wise person who knew what I was talking about. Yeah--it was probably more that than anything. Lately, it's because I spend so much energy trying to figure out whether God is real or not that I never quite get to the other stuff. My thoughts just chase themselves around in a vicious questioning of faith leading to not much of anywhere except more discontentment, frustration and hostility.

So tonight we read and studied a couple chapters of Ephesians. I've always liked the words of the Bible though I often don't grasp their meaning. Sometimes the verses are beautifully worded but seem to say a lot without saying anything at all. It's just difficult to put everything in context and get what the authors were trying to express. And it's also difficult to not just pick out parts that sound pretty and apply them to your life as feel-good phrases.

Well, my "feel-good phrase" for the evening was in Chapter 2, verse 14 where it says, "For he himself [Christ] is our peace..." It hit home for me. Peace, fulfillment, contentment...all things I've been reflecting on and challenged with lately. I tend to run to things to feel validated, to make anxiety go away, to feel whole and needed: guys, work, having a full social calendar, being around lots of people, running in the mornings. All good things but all things that I know will ultimately still leave me with empty parts and unfulfilled longings. In church and all the "Christiany" things I did growing up, we were always told that Jesus is the one who fills us, gives us our identity, the ultimate healer and fulfiller of our deepest desires. Of course I want that. Who wouldn't? But what does it mean? What does it mean to let Him be our peace and fill us and all of that? It seems so abstract. No one ever seemed to get to that part of the equation. They just stopped at Jesus saves.

I guess I should just ask Him and see....

Mud Hoppers

I just spent the last 3 hours working on social work school applications, and I still have this freak-out feeling in my chest. I'm overwhelmed, but at the same time there's some sort of peace buried beneath all of this anxiety and doubting and whatever other crap is jumbled together inside.

The guy I've been dating a couple months broke it off yesterday. Which is fine. It was more mutual. For all of our points of connection, spiritually we just weren't headed down the same road. And the thing is, it's no one's fault. It just is. And it's hard to understand why God is real to some people and not to others. And how individuals can be so connected in vision but not in heart. It's just hard. So I'm going to have my brief pity party and move on. Because that's what you gotta do.

For all the stress and emotion, I never imagined I'd actually get this far in the application process. I like to talk about and think about things a lot, and the panic of actually doing them is quite often paralyzing. Sometimes it makes no sense, but that is just my reality, and at some point I decided to pick one foot out of the mud and then the other and so on and so forth. And so I'm gonna keep truckin' on and writing about it and doing what I need to do to not stay stuck. Tomorrow is another day.

Keepin' it Light

I think my blog entries are kind of depressing. Yikes--who knew I was such a Debby Downer?
In other news, what I should really be doing right now is working on my grad school essays, but I'm not. I'm procrastinating just like I did last night and the night before and the week before and...

Who the hell wants to answer a questions like this:

"Discuss what makes a small group or team a successful community. Discuss a situation in which a small group or team you were a part of succeeded or failed and what significant learning you took away from the experience."
lame.
I think a successful team is full of sharing, caring, butterflies, roses, rainbows and cute puppies. One time this girl in my girl scout troupe beat me out as the top cookie seller. What I learned from this defeat is that kids should sell their own cookies and not mooch off their parents' professional connections.

"What are your short-term and long-term professional aspirations?"
My short term goal is to make it through the work day tomorrow without asking myself even once, "What am I doing here?"
Looking long-term, I would like to feel like I'm actually serving some sort of deeper purpose at least one day of the work week. I've also always been pretty proud of my stellar gift wrapping skills and have often dreamed of making it to the big time as a professional gift wrapper at Macy's, the mecca of retailers. As you can see, I am a pretty ambitious individual.

"What significant personal and/or professional factors have most informed your present outlook?"
Professionally, I have found the "real world" to be quite overrated which makes me the perfect candidate for grad school. On a more personal level, being introduced to mac & cheese at such a young age has proved to be a life changing event. It is probably the greatest food ever invented and my outlook on life indeed would not be as cheese-tastic without it.

...and who says I'm not productive?