Tag: change

Scrolling for change

What is it about a Humans of New York photo and heart-wrenching story that makes us suddenly care? What is it about a tragic picture of a lifeless three-year-old’s body washed up on the beach that makes us all want to stand up and help? And why do these aching feelings seem to subside so quickly and disappear from the social consciousness?

Social media and the global immediacy of the news these days makes us simultaneously so aware of social justice issues, but the fact that it comes and goes from our news feeds, and minds, so quickly makes it so easy to move on and almost more difficult to really care or take purposeful action in the long term. I feel guilty just thinking that I scroll through past stories of struggle and hardship and loss around the world any time I am on my phone, sometimes stopping to look and investigate if it holds my interest long enough, or if it’s relatable. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m a genuinely crappy person or if it’s because it’s too overwhelming to me to learn about all of this pain in the world and not be able to feel like I’m exacting any change on it.

Reading these stories and educating myself about what’s going on in the world is so important, and I think that you can’t do responsible social justice work without making yourself fully aware of the situation. But where I’m at in my life right now, what kind of social justice work can I even do? I’m not the kind of person who’ll share an article on Facebook about something and mentally check off a box thinking that I’ve spread enough awareness for the day. Now that I’m not in college, where I could feel like I was making a difference in my little social activist circles, and now that I’m in a place where I don’t feel like I’m a part of any particular community, what can I do? At the same time, doing social justice things for the sake of making yourself feel better isn’t a great reason for motivation.

While I work on figuring this out, I’ll just keep reading and scrolling and watching and talking and learning. I think that’s the best I can do.

Thanks for reading! ~Margaret

A buttload of nostalgia

I know I’m really lucky to have so many places and experiences I can look back on and miss, but wow, does it suck sometimes.

Moving is hard. Relocating and attempting to start a “career” (whatever that is) and being newly married and trying to make friends are all kind of hard on their own, but throw on top of that a butt-load of nostalgia, and you’ve got yourself a fun mix of emotions!

This is the first September since I was 5 where I have not experienced the start of school. Being a student has been a gigantic part of my life for, well, most of my life, and finding myself missing that piece of my identity is more to grasp than I expected.

I miss the excitement of the first few weeks of school, where you’re beginning new classes and figuring out your workload for the year, getting to know your classmates, planning out your goals for the next months. Daresay I miss the homework and the readings??

I miss Wheaton – I miss the people. It was an amazing thing to be able to walk around campus at any given time of the day and run into at least two people who know who you are and who you can chat with. I miss feeling like a feminist. So much of my feminist identity over the past four to six years has been tied up with my involvement in clubs, with campus activism, with tabling, with event planning, with 2 am common room chats about feminist theory. I don’t totally know how to be a feminist outside of that context, especially in this new world of the military and midwest living.

I miss being able to travel all over New England any given weekend. Ben and I had so much fun exploring Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Maine, Newport, and lots of little towns right around us. There’s so much to see and do in Massachusetts and the surrounding states. I know there’s plenty to see and do in Ohio, but with new jobs and the move, we aren’t as able to get out there and find it all. We were so lucky to be able to travel as much as we did.

I miss feeling organized and put together and feeling like I have a plan. When I was in college, I felt like I knew what I was doing. I knew what my major was, when I would graduate, and by the time senior year rolled around, I knew that after graduation, I would get married and move. It all seemed so straight-forward and comfortably challenging. Now here I am in Ohio, so happy to be married and with Ben and in a new place to start post-grad life, but post-grad life is a little scarier than I thought it would be! I just started a new job, but it’s part-time and not in the career field I spent the last four years preparing for. I’m glad to be employed and to be meeting new people through it and to learn lots of new things, but I always had a picture in my mind that after college, I would easily find a non-profit or teaching job that I could settle into comfortably and feel successful in.

Heck, it’s only September, so all those things can still come. I’m sure in a few months I’ll feel more settled and happy with Ohio living. I’m also sure I’ll always miss the past, since I’m prone to getting hit by waves of nostalgia more often than I’d like. I am so so lucky to have this much to miss.

I’ve just got to learn to be patient and keep an eye towards the future but my mind in the present.

Thanks for reading! ~Margaret