society is crumbling

Last week one of my coworkers found a video on Fox News entitled "All-Male Fox Panel Laments Female Breadwinners." Somewhat shocked and horrified, we took it as our comedy for the day... But the clip stuck with me.

Let me summarize it for you, although the title is pretty self-explanatory:
The clip consists of four guys in suits talking about a new study stating that in 4 out of 10 families a woman is the primary breadwinner. Of course they find this "concerning and troubling," and spend about four minutes discussing the crumbling, the dissolution, the disintegration of American society and why it can be directly attributed to women being the primary breadwinner in less than half of American families.

"It's having an impact on our children," they say. "We as people in a smart society have lost the ability to have complementary relationships, and it's tearing our society apart."

"We're losing a generation. Bottom line, it could undermine our social order."

It's easy to dismiss everything they are saying as sexist and ignorant. Because it is. But there is something in this conversation that needs to be addressed.

I work for a registered minority- and female-owned company. This always casts political and social issues under a really interesting microscope. Especially political and social issues that deal with women or people of color.

When we sent the clip out to everyone in the office, the female partner said, "You know, it's unrealistic to think that we can balance having a fulfilling career, taking care of our kids, maintaining a successful marriage, keeping a clean house... I don't envy you young ladies. I don't envy your generation. You have some incredibly difficult choices to make."

The clip stuck with me, and that comment stuck with me. It's not as though this is something new to me. My female friends and I have been battling the question for most of our conscientious lives, and particularly since we graduated college: What sacrifices do I want to make to have my dream life? What sacrifices should I make to have my dream life?

Do we sacrifice our dreams or our callings for love? Or do we sacrifice love for our calling? Do I move to a new and faraway place, where I know no one, because my significant other got a good job there? Do I move to a new and faraway place, where I know no one, and leave my significant other behind because I got accepted to my dream grad school, or because I got offered my dream job?

The social environment in which I grew up taught me that I should not sacrifice my personal -- read, "professional" -- dreams for a romantic relationship. Because I will inevitably become resentful and that will take a toll on the romantic relationship I gave up everything for.

But I grew up in a family that prioritized the collective, the community, the relationships within a community, above all. Plus, that greater social environment planted this seed in my head that I can have it all. This is one of the main complaints of my peers: that we were led to believe something untrue, namely, that we can do anything; and it is one of the main complaints of older generations against our generation: that millennials have this sense of entitlement, this belief that we deserve to have everything we want. We want to have our cake and eat it too, and it turns out, suddenly, that we can't.

Damn.

So I, and a lot of other people in my peer group, feel a little confused.

there are 168 hours in a week. i need at least 250.

Many of our mothers, now that we're out of the house and figuring out our own lives, are having an opposite realization. My mom has said on multiple occasions that she made the conscious decision to do things she wasn't wild about sometimes because she would be with the people she loved. As a mother and wife she would have given up almost anything for us, and on many occasions she did.

I think that choosing a family or a relationship as #1 is a decision that is unfairly vilified for women in modern, forward-thinking society. But there is real emotional and psychological fallout for those women who do make that choice, and put love in the top spot in their lives.

And there is real emotional and psychological and social fallout for those women who make the choice to put their careers in the top spot. There is and always will be fallout, no matter what we decide to put first. Something will always fall behind.

Those Fox News guys were right when they said the rise of female breadwinners is "having an impact on our children." They were right when they said it's undermining our social order. They were right, honestly, when they said that we as "people in a smart society have lost the ability to have complementary relationships."

But it is ignorant, cowardly, to conclude that this means we should go back to "the way things were." It's ignorant, too, to say that the rise in female breadwinners caused all of this chaos. I would call it more of a symptom of an outdated model that was also flawed and that isn't really working anymore in the world as it is turning out to be.

We do need to learn how to have truly complementary relationships, where all involved parties are on equal ground. We need to figure out some way to raise our children to be functional human beings who can have functional relationships, while also making sure they don't go hungry and that they are comfortable with diversity and the change that is an inevitable part of our future.

We need a new model. I don't know what it is, and I dread the day I have to make an actual decision about my family, my relationships, my career, my lifestyle. I'm barely sustaining sanity as it is, between work, my love life, my friendships, my family, my workout schedule, and having time to eat. I know if something happened to make two of those things suddenly really conflict, it would be the hardest decision I have ever had to make. It already has been, on a smaller scale. And when my friends ask me what to do in x. y, or z situation, I have no idea what to say.

And this, I think, is the real reason "society is crumbling." The global population is getting bigger while the earth stays the same size. The amount of valuable resources really doesn't change, either -- money, time, energy. We're running out of options. The pressure on families is that much higher. The pressure on individuals is that much higher. We have to do a lot more to be seen, and our odds feel like they're always going down.

As a society we need to be creative and resilient and trash the conceptual limitations we have had for a long time. It's time for a change. Get on board, suits. You're going to get left behind. I hope.

a conversation about the weather

Conversations about the weather have a bad rap.

Related conversations with a bad rap include: "How 'bout them Yankees?" which I will never be able to replace in my mind no matter how irrelevant it is in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Delaware, Ohio, or any other place I've lived or -ites I've lived among. There will be no "How 'bout them Twins?" or "Go Packs!" or "Da Bears!" for me, no sirree. Not that any of these openers would really whip me into a verbal frenzy. I can't really carry a conversation about sports.

But I can talk about the weather for quite some time. When I was a hall receptionist back at St. Olaf, our collegiate habitat formed the basis for my conversations with most passersby: "Little cold?" "Is it nice out? I might go lay out in the Quad later."

Now, as a young adult (new adult?), it still provides fodder for conversation, even with people I see and talk to on a daily basis and people I have a deeper relationship with. And as it turns out, the weather is actually central to a lot of facets of my life as a young adult. Thus its rampant appearances in small talk, and its centrality in conversation in general. Observe.

***

For the past few days in Delaware we've had temperatures in the mid-80s. That's right. I remember last week leaving for work in 29-degree weather. To me this kind of weather turnaround is somewhat alarming, but according to my Maryland-native coworker this is normal in these parts.

When I ran those 4 miles on Saturday morning, it was probably around 40° when we started running and maybe had reached 50° by the end; yesterday, I did about 3.5 miles around the Newark Reservoir after work at 85° and I will tell you that I felt the difference. It worries me a little to think about the Spartan race in July... But as Jason constantly reminds me, "The mud will help!" I sure hope so! 5 miles in the heat of summer sounds pretty daunting right about now.

Meanwhile, while I'm stealing moments to slip out of my sweater at work, my friends and relatives in Minnesota are wading through several inches of snow. Typical. A friend of mine who now lives in D.C. posted on Facebook this morning: "My facebook feed is alternating pictures of snow in MN and cherry blossoms in DC. Glad I am on the warmer side of things." Hear, hear.

Still, I can't help wondering if these strange weather events have been happening throughout my lifetime or if they are happening more and more as I get older; and if it is the latter, I can't help but worry a little that climate change is happening a lot faster than they told me it would when I learned about it in science class back in fifth grade. I swear I remember having gorgeous spring days, weeks on end, in fact, in March, right in between winter and summer. Am I hallucinating? At this rate, I predict that by the time I have kids, hurricanes will be hitting the eastern seaboard, as far north as Nova Scotia, every fall; most of the U.S. won't get any snow until about March, when we will all get dumped on -- repeatedly; most waterfront towns (rivers and oceans, mostly, but potentially also lakes) will have been chased to higher ground; and Manhattan will be underwater. Not quite The Day After Tomorrow; maybe more like The Decade After This One. Or The Year After Next.

On a personal level, the greatest immediate effect of the sudden weather change is on my mood. I am much, much happier lately. I can attribute this state of mind to a few factors, but I know for a fact a lot of it has to do with the amount of sunshine I have seen in the past few weeks, and the amount of fresh air I breathe on our lunchtime walks at work. Seasonal affect disorder has been on my list of things to blog about for a few weeks now, and now that I feel more steady on my proverbial feet I would like to make a resolution, my readers as witness: next year I will find a way to keep the cold and the shortness of the days from affecting the people around me. I can get through the winter, because I am aware of what's happening throughout the dark months, and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel; but it upset me this year how much my cold, dark mood affected my interpersonal relationships. So my resolution for next winter is to raise my mood for the sake of the people I love.

So I am in a much better mood now, but I know the heat gets a lot less fun when summer really gets rolling. For a few reasons.

You remember that summer in St. Croix Falls and the naked days at Sunny V? Well, my house in Wilmington also isn't the most optimal as far as temperature goes. Lots of cracks and drafts. Poorly ventilated. Incredibly inefficient at holding or circulating any ideal temperature. (This also means that the weather has a pretty substantial impact on my utility bill. Now tell me the weather has no impact on our lives.) And, because of the cats, we keep all the doors closed in the house, which cuts off the air circulation even more. My room was already stifling this morning after 3 days of heat. I'm debating whether it would be worse to not be able to breathe when I'm sleeping because of the heat, or because my respiratory tract is full of cat hair. The answer still isn't clear.

And neither are my bronchioles.

Speaking of naked days, I have already realized that my professional wardrobe is not hot weather-optimized. I have about two dresses that are appropriate for work, and one of them is black and has 3/4 sleeves. The other one requires me to wear a sweater, and I wore that yesterday. I'm now stretching my remaining sundresses to their professional limit, by covering them up with sweaters and blazers, and wearing camis underneath them, and wearing flats to make it look like there is less leg sticking out the bottom. This is not sustainable. There is also the dilemma presented by air conditioning, and the fact that I will no doubt contract hypothermia at some point this summer, since there is a vent right under my desk and certain decision makers like to keep the office at least 30 degrees in the opposite direction from the outside temperature. SO, do I dress for the weather outside and freeze to death during the day? Or do I die of heat stroke on my way to and from work and then achieve some semblance of comfort while I work.

There is no end to heat-related dilemmas in my life.

Arguably the most serious of heat-related dilemmas was brought up at a neighborhood association meeting I attended the other night: crime. A few of our local legislators spoke at the meeting and warned us of the correlation between poverty and crime; and I know there is also a strong direct correlation between ice cream sales and crime -- sorry, heat and crime. So if poverty is rising, and the mercury is rising, then crime is likely to rise as well. I'm expecting this to affect me on some level, since I live in the city, just a block off the "bad part of town."

***

Now that I've graced all of your web browsers with some solid weather-related conversation topics, I'd better go soak up what is left of this lovely warm day. For my readers in climes not yet in the throes of spring/summer, I'll enjoy it for you ;)

milestones

It occurred to me today that 2012 is a monumental year in a lot of ways. As we are all too aware, it is the last year ever (although National Geographic reports that we may have misinterpreted the Mayan calendar...go figure). And if the world fails to end in December, 2012 will be my first year filing an independent tax return. (Death and taxes both certain, but mutually exclusive? There's a brain-bender for you...)

But no, what really sparked this epiphany was my Facebook post in honor of my middle sister's 18th birthday this morning. I remembered recently posting for Asha's sweet 16, and realized that I have long launched the countdown to my brother's 21st (assuming the apocalypse slips by unnoticed). Maria will also be graduating in less than two weeks, and in a mere 4 days I will be four molars shy of wise, and no doubt in a considerable amount of pain. So among us, we mark a lot of rites of passage this year.

Speaking of rites of passage, it is OFFICIALLY Graduation Season! While I don't remember anything our speaker said at graduation last year, or even who our speaker was, I love watching commencement addresses by illustrious, intelligent folk at other colleges and universities thanks to youtube. And because I have an awesome job, I got to spend some time today watching commencement addresses and ferreting out nuggets of wisdom from them.

Without even neglecting my day's work.

I would like to share a few of the best I found today, in case you have a few hours to spare, or you have a few hours that would otherwise be spent languishing in an ambient lack of inspiration. I will leave my mined nuggets--inspirational ore, as it were--off the table so you can enter the fray tabula rasa. (Not sure I used that right, but it's so beautiful and you get the picture.) If you don't have hours, or would rather your time outside (no judgment, trust me) then watch the last 5 minutes or so of the first two. My keen research skills tell me that a lot of chill-inducing advice gets relegated to the last few minutes of speeches, and these top two are just great.

1. Neil Gaiman at Philadelphia's University of the Arts, and a really great roundup of this address by the Christian Science Monitor. For ye readers fighting the Economic Forces Against the Arts (EFAA), this might give you a little shot of hope. Also he's just dry and hilarious.
2. Aaron Sorkins at Syracuse University. What I like about this one is that he talks about struggles. It's a little dark at times, like when he talks about his cocaine addiction at around 9:43 or one of his roommates who later died of AIDS somewhere in the 10:00-11:00 minute range. But he pulls it up for the end.
3. Am I about to share something from Sports Illustrated? Yeah. I am. It's a Monday Morning QB of highlights from commencement addresses across the country. Definitely a few gems, even though Peter King, who compiled the list, offers the disclaimer that he pretty much just writes about football. Which I neither understand, nor care about.
4. An awesome blog post by my friend and St. Olaf classmate Liz Lampman, about where she is (meta)physically almost a year after graduation. Framed like a commencement address. I majorly dig this post.
5. Aaaaand back to the root: the speech I hoped would make me senior speaker, but instead became the first post of this blog, back on May 29, 2011. In retrospect, it's probably better that I didn't have to deliver this at graduation, because I was falling asleep through most of the ceremony. I really didn't think I would make it. I feel mildly sheepish admitting that fact, but I wouldn't reorganize my priorities at that time for the world. My speech was about celebration.

If you're still reading, or if you scrolled down in hopes of unearthing some profound wordbombs, I would like to leave you with a video I think is hilariously fitting to my (and my general peer group's) current stage of passage. Not sure being 22-24 can technically be considered a rite, but it's relevant. So enjoy. And please share your favorite commencement clips. I need them for work.

P.S. While I was finishing putting this post together, Maria walked in and asked for advice writing graduation advice for her creative writing class, a la Sunscreen (1998). Apt.

state of crisis

When I interviewed for my social media job, the team warned me that life at this firm is a constant state of crisis.  I laughed, because crisis runs in my blood.  Only two days earlier, in a conversation with my parents, my dad had said about some people we know, "She gets exhausted because she thinks he runs in constant crisis mode, and he thinks she's not taking things seriously."  And I said, "I say that about you actually, that you're in constant crisis mode."  And then I had to explain (probably unsuccessfully) how fond I am of that particular quality in my dad -- especially since I have almost definitely inherited at least some of it.  Mostly, I think it shows how much he really, really cares.

Speaking of crisis (how unusual, ha), the first thing I heard when I got into my car this morning (at 7am) was that there was an accident on some major highway.  I passed another one, L. passed one, and B. passed one on our way to meet up for the presentation.  We passed another accident on the way back from the ReStore and Lowe's this afternoon, and a car got totaled right outside the Den tonight while I was working.  The blue flashing lights of the police car sparkled through the rainy windows, just like in the movies.

That's a lot of accidents for one day.

When I turned into my street on my way home from work, early, I saw two cop cars parked in front of a house.  Immediately I said out loud, "That better not ******* be my house!"  Maybe if I was less selfish I would have just been sad for whoever's house it was -- and after my initial adrenaline rush, I was sad for that person; it was a neighbor of ours, about three houses down.  Apparently she decided randomly to come home for lunch today, found her door wide open, and ran into the guy inside her home.  Terrifying.  So she threw her keys at him, he ran, and she chased him up the street yelling for help.

Long story short, the guy was caught, along with an accomplice.  There is some likelihood that this is the same guy/team of guys who robbed our house.  I care less about "justice" than I do about the security of our neighborhood.  It's supposed to be a quiet neighborhood.  Neighbors recall two robberies in the past 15 years.  People grow up here, move back as adults, raise children here.  This is unusual.  Our district, of course, wants to keep it that way.

Delaware has not been doing the best job at convincing me that this state is not normally full of disasters -- that it is not a State of Constant Crisis.  Fortunately I am increasingly charmed by many aspects of the state, and meeting a lot of wonderful people.  But I can't help but wonder...

I have this semi-constant apocalyptic inkling these days -- or, I am acutely aware of The Economic Crisis, Climate Change, Unemployment, The Disintegration of the Family, Terrorism, The Problems With Oil and Gasoline, Cancer, The Rapture, 2012, and so on.  My question, at least since college graduation, has been: is it just me, or is the world falling apart?

Fortunate soul that I am, I spent my free afternoon driving around with people who have been alive twice as long or four times as long as I have -- i.e., they might have some perspective on the Current State of Crisis.

(For the record, I'm not just living at home right now because it's cheap and I can't handle independence.  It's also because my family is pretty cool in general, and I basically haven't lived at home for 6 years now, and during that time I have been making mental lists of things I still want to learn from them.  Case in point.)

Grampi mentioned that he watched his father fight in World War I, his family suffer through the Great Depression (both national and personal Great Depressions), and his brother fight in World War II.  I would say this is a pretty intense prolonged state of crisis.  He did concede, "I could see now, with how fast we can get the news, that it feels more present now than it did before when we had to wait for our headlines.  But these things were probably happening just as much before."

My dad commented that it was not unusual when he was growing up for kids to assume they would die in a nuclear war.  This is wild to me.  Now, he suggested, we worry that we'll die in a terrorist attack.  "We feed on disaster," he said grimly.  "That's why we have reality TV."

Yes, they said, environmental change does seem to be causing fluke natural disasters.  Everyone, even my bosses, readily admits that the economy is taking a toll on our society and our lifestyles.  But also, "your age right now does kind of feel like a major crisis," my dad pointed out.  "You're suddenly having to take all this responsibility, depend on yourself for some things you're not used to and then learning how to depend on other people for those things sometimes."  "It is a pretty big deal," my mom chimed in.

I've decided to give Delaware another chance to prove itself to me.  We may spar a bit, but I think we're learning to get along.  Despite the number of times I've said or thought something's gotta give in the past few years, I don't need to waste my time waiting for something to give.

I should really spell it out on my resume: Just because it's a State of Crisis doesn't mean it's not Business as Usual.  When it comes down to it, you still just have to push through and hope you break the surface for a moment long enough to fill your lungs with good, clean air.