Making the choice to believe in people, or: Why I choose to be “naïve”
When someone cuts me off in traffic, I imagine that they’re in a terrible hurry and didn’t see me. When a young man asks to use my cell phone in a bad part of town, I hand it over and ask if he needs anything else. When I’m taking a Greyhound bus ride and the bus is half full of freshly released prisoners, I always happen to end up right in the middle of their group of seats. I am often called naïve. But I won’t let that change my world.
On being an aging weirdo
A aging nightlife colleague posted this online recently: “Really need to work on the whole “being fun” thing a little more. It’s too easy to just sit around being comfortable and old.”
I see these kinds of things a LOT from my peer group of aging freaks — right around 30. It seems like all of a sudden it’s staring you right there in the face: the stuff that we spent our 20s doing (in my specific case, dancing all night while intoxicated) suddenly doesn’t have quite the same pull, and there’s part of you that screams NOOOOOOO! I’m getting OOOOOOLD! And then there’s this reflex of MUST FIGHT IT MUST FIGHT IT.
How can we make a non-sucky adoption profile?
My husband and I are beginning the open adoption process, and it’s time to make a profile. We’re Offbeat Lite (yoga, geeky, vegan, non-Christian), and all of the samples I’ve seen online look like Pinterest threw up on them. I want expectant parents to get to know us — after all, they’ll be part of our family — but I’m dealing with pressure to conform to the script of “loving couple describes each other lovingly while lovingly waxing poetic about the loving love they have to give your lovely child.”
How my native language and Down syndrome shifted my perspectives on privilege
There’s a word in Korean “삐딱이”, or “bbiddaki.” I’ve heard it translated as “rebel,” but my mom says it is closer to “sarcastic.” I think a very literal translation would be “one who stands crookedly.” I’ve been chewing this over for a while, and I think my peeps are onto something…
Archaeology: How uncovering hidden layers as a job affected my thoughts on my outward appearance
The thing about archaeology — and a small survey of colleagues and friends confirms this — is that it’s not just a job. It defines you. This is reinforced all the time by all those people that tell you it’s their dream job. It’s my dream job, and it’s other people’s dream job, and I am so glad I have been able to make a career out if it. But in turning towards academia I find myself feeling like I might be compromising my identity, both as an offbeat individual and as an archaeologist.
7 people; 1 bathroom: Learning to love moving back in with my family
I love my family very much, but when I moved away in 2006 I wasn’t looking back. I loved the freedom and thrived on being independent. Then financial disaster struck. I realized that my whole life was about to be packed up in boxes, and my marriage was about to be squeezed into a 5-by-5 bedroom in my parents house.
One day I hope to be enough: my experience growing up with dual ethnicities
“Jew-Rican.” “Christmukkah.” “I’m Jew…ish.” These are just a few terms I created or adopted over the years to add levity to the confusion people would experience when they learned about my ethnicity. I grew up on Long Island, New York, where there was a very high population of Jews. It was common to see symbols of both Christianity and Judaism, especially in public schools. Seeing Stars of David alongside Christmas trees and crosses on school windows, the walls of department stores, and in newspaper advertisements was commonplace. This dual expression of spirituality perfectly reflected my own household.
The internet, the self, the furries, and you: we need to all watch this presentation so we can talk about it
In September, I went to a conference down in Portland called XOXO Festival. One speaker named Mike Rugnetta gave a talk called Disintermediation of Self. In it, Mike poked deep into the bowels of social psychology of both identity development, and community development on the internet. This talk was SO up my alley. Like, custom-catered to the things I like to think about. And with this talk, Mike’s basically stared deep into the deepest, weirdest parts of the Offbeat Empire readership’s minds. HE KNOWS, you guys. HE KNOWS. You need to watch this talk, and we need to talk about it.