Lydia's Encounter with Les Miserables

I met Lydia through the International Geek Girl Pen Pals Club, followed her on twitter, & quickly found things we have in common. My favorite of those things so far is that we both LOVE Les Miserables, & consider it to have had a part in shaping who we are today. I asked her if she'd write a bit about that for me to share her on this platform, & she did us all the honor of agreeing! Without further ado, here is her tale.

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It started with a challenge. When I was a kid, I listened to my mom’s Les Miserables cassettes and eventually CDs and sang my heart out to every song. I pretended to be Gavroche and then pretended to be Eponine. It was my favorite soundtrack ever. I was jealous when my parents went to the American tour as it came through our town. I begged my mom to let me go next time, so she offered me a challenge. Read the book and I could go. I’m not sure if she thought I would take her up on it, but I think she was curious. She knew my tenacious spirit.

I don’t think she was expecting me to pressure her into going to the bookstore ASAP. We went and I found the full version and the abridged, my 10-year-old mind logically came to the conclusion that I would have a better chance of finishing the abridged version in time if the play came back, and I was right. I promised my mom I would read the full version soon, but asked if the abridged would count for now. She, of course, said yes.

I read the book, I had my mom help me with words I didn’t know and relied on her to best explain the concepts of the book that I couldn’t quite grasp at such a young age. My mom found herself sitting on my bed telling me the struggles of the poor and how revolution can change the world. I don’t think she thought that one day she’d be explaining such deep topics with her little girl, maybe when I was older, but certainly not that young. But, she always said I was an old soul.

This started me on a passion for the impoverished and shunned, whether it be someone who was poor and homeless or someone who was deemed unimportant by society. I took it upon myself to rid the world of this, but slowly came to the realization that it was a big feat for such a small girl. When I was 18, I started feeling quite hopeless – it all started with going to NYC and seeing homelessness everywhere. Springfield, MO does a “great” job of hiding it. My heart and soul broke and I felt like nothing could change. I started thinking about Les Miserables again; thinking about how Hugo put everything on the line to write that book and things did improve for a time. I realized it took more that a few words and giving a coin here and there – it involved being a spokesperson in both political and social environments. I am not much of one for public speaking, so I have avoided going to rallies or speaking to political individuals about this, but I have been working to rid the negative viewpoints people have in my friend groups. Start small, they say. Small things change make the biggest change.

I work to make people look like, well, people and make others see them as human beings. That their pity doesn’t do much to help someone in a rough situation. It has been a long process and I am still working, but I have slowly noticed attitudes changing about those that society deems unworthy, stupid, undesirable, etc.

Les Miserables spoke to my little 10-year-old heart and started a passion no one could ever put out. This passion was doubled, nay tripled, when I actually walked the streets of Paris and talked about the history of the book. Chills, I say. Chills.

I know that it doesn’t seem like much, but I hope one day my words change the way people view the “lowest of society” and that one day we can all start working together to end the strife surrounding us and appreciating everyone for who they are.

This book is filled with self-sacrifice and caring about those in need – it taught me a lot about caring for people, no matter their circumstance and is very often the reminder I need to forgive someone who I have no desire to forgive.

This book has made me a better person and continually challenges me. I hope that, if you read it, this book challenges you, too. 

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THANK YOU LYDIA!
Lydia is a fantastic writer, as you can see, & also a fantastic person. I hope you've enjoyed this read as much as I have! Moreover, I hope that you will feel encouraged to learn more about the things that inspire the people around you, & share your own stories.

Friendship by Degrees

I don't know if other people do this or not, but it's been on my mind lately, so I'm going to type about it.

I think we've all met those people who act like you're immediately great friends. & with some people, they're right! I've had some of my best friendships that way. But some of them, you can tell that they're that way with everyone. & that's perfectly nice of them! I admire their courage, & see their attitude as their way of wanting to value people. But I myself am not that way, & I see my way as okay & valuing people too.

I don't rush into friendships because:
-I just don't have the social energy. If I acted that excited about everyone all the time, I'd be dead.
-I know that it makes some people uncomfortable.
-I feel like it can set up unreasonable expectations-- you can't be best friends with everyone. There's not enough time in the world. We all need healthy boundaries.

So I'm very deliberate about my relationships. It's a challenge, because I value all people, & all people are different... so it's hard to tell how best to show them that I value them. But it's okay, I'm always trying to learn.

Here's a bit of how my process works.

Level 1:
These are familiar names/faces. I try to present myself as friendly & approachable. Smiles. Small talk. Short conversations, short sentences.
(Translated to internet friendships, this level would include people I follow on twitter but don't know much about & rarely engage.)

Level 2:
To reach this level, the person must have expressed a level of interest beyond small talk. I will venture to use longer sentences, trusting them to not interrupt, & ask more specific questions about them, also willing to reveal more about myself. Might also proffer invitations to share a meal or some such safe social event. Will also begin to relax from trying to appear all happy all the time. (I'm not very good at that anyway.)
(Translated to internet friendships, this level would include people I recognize easily on twitter, & engage deliberately.)

Level 3:
This is as far as most people get with me. If Level 2 goes well, I'd want to start doing things together more regularly. I'd try to remember birthdays, bake cookies, buy trinkets, do favors, all of that kind of stuff. Would also allow myself to be more transparent about when I'm having a bad day & so forth. This is where people fall solidly under the category of "Friend".
(Translated to internet friendships, this level would include even MORE deliberate engaging. Might ask about things one mentioned previously, click on more of one's links, eavesdrop on more conversations, visit profile to see if I missed anything, do plenty of retweeting, ask for (& follow through on) recommendations for things... nothing too creepy, I promise. *shifty eyes*)

Level 4:
These are special people! I even swear around them! ;-o But really, it is mostly a comfort level thing. It's hard to define how to reach this level, except to act truly respectful & interested & loving & willing to invest your time. Some people are allowed access to this level even just temporarily, under special circumstances. Then I will text you & cry to you & ask for your help in things & tell you about things that are deeply important to me & sing & dance & be really the truest deepest version of myself.
(Translated to internet friendships... it'd have to get past the internet. & the internet makes it harder for me to gauge how much someone cares. But I do have people who have gone from just internet friends to texting &/or writing letters &/or maybe even meeting up, all that sort of thing. I also have people who have gone from being around me in real life to only being accessible over the internet, but we're still close. It's almost more like somewhere between Level 3 & Level 4, but one does what one can!)

It probably sounds like I overthink this sort of thing way too much. But I only do so because I'm trying to find the best way to care for people. The more something matters to me, the more I consider all of the details & angles.

What are your thoughts? Are you deliberate like I am, or are your relationships more organic? Do you see the value in each system?

Bonus topic:
I was trying to think of which level would include "loaning my favorite books/movies/music/etc" as a demonstration of friendship, but I do that at all levels, as long as I feel like I'll ever see the person again. I have gaps on my shelves that remind me of friendships I'm trying to build. Loaning my precious things feels like an expression of trust + sharing a part of myself. & if nothing comes of it, I can find a new copy, no big deal.

Indy Pop Con - My Art Haul

I was going to do one post about Indy Pop Con, but oh, too many things. So I'm going to start by just talking about ART. My second favorite thing about the whole con was checking out the art, telling the artists how cool their stuff is, gathering business cards, & staring longingly for embarrassing lengths of time... So to start, let's show off what I took home. In really bad unaltered camera phone photos!

I got a large print from each of my two favorite artist booths. Lemme tell you where to find them + their stuffs on the web.

Left:
kreugan.com
@kreugan
http://kreugan.tumblr.com/
kreugan@gmail.com

Right:
gallery.dauntingfire.com
@dauntdraws
http://dauntingfire.tumblr.com/
http://society6.com/daunt

FANTASTIC, right? & they are sweeties. I got more.



The bottom three are more Daunt. The DA2 is another Kreugan. &... the Canada sketch is by Andrew Carreiro! Who is a web designer. He was with the 1 More Castle booth. Not as an artist. Soooooo you might say I got an exclusive.

I also got a poster from Norm Breyfogle, & Guy Gilchrist added a doodle with his autograph in my Muppet comic book. They were both really cool guys.



Other things of interest:
http://www.ramonecologne.com/ (I will probably use this online shop, his prices are great & so is the art)
@crescentwench (cosplay lady)
Daydreams & Giggles
http://xypher316.deviantart.com/
http://stevepalenicastudios.com/
http://cmherndon.tumblr.com/ (no really, he drew Bill Nye, & has Doctor Who stuff that even non-Whovians can love)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/trois_lapins_studio/ (arts & jewelrys)
https://www.etsy.com/shop/dallasp92 (jewelry)

Love Languages, More or Less

You might be familiar with the concept of the five love languages. In his book The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate, Gary Chapman expresses that they are: physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, & gifts. Basically, his point is that different people value these different things to different extents, so in order to best love someone you need to find out which they value most & use those to demonstrate your affections.

Which is all well & good.

But the more I live life, the more I try to love & be loved, the more I crave love... the more I think it's both more & less complicated than that.

I really just like to know that someone thought of me. & I try to apply that to how I love others, more than any particular 'language'. Even within each language Gary Chapman lists, I find I have a whole range of feelings-- I adore hugs (from most people anyway), but I don't always like to be touched. Some gifts are super generic & don't make me feel much of anything, but sometimes the simplest tiny gift can express a lot. Some words of affirmation are just tossed about, & some are from the heart.

If you love someone, you'll pay attention to them. That's the root. You defer to their whims, you study their tastes, you listen when they talk. You learn to notice when they're stressed out, & how to help them relax. You see when they did something that was hard for them, & you encourage them. You figure out their sense of humor. You stand up for them. You let them go first. You give them the bigger slice.

To use a personal example... I've learned that my husband likes to be given opportunity to be spontaneous. So sometimes I try to analyze if he could use an evening out of the house, & just spring on him with "let's go out", & give him total control of where we go & what we do. I think it makes him feel trusted, & that his opinions are valued. On the other hand, I like to have things planned out in advance. That makes me feel like someone cared enough about me to think through all of the details. So my husband can show me love by thinking ahead, plotting out what I might like.

I'm not writing to totally discount the Love Languages concept, but I do want to encourage us all to not put love in a box. Use all of the languages, & learn new ones. Love people any way you can, & try to see the love in what people do for you.

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Bonus! Some of my 'other' love languages, off the top of my head:

-food
-80s references
-book recommendations
-compliments on my house
-questions about my life & my opinions
-involving me in your life by letting me help with something or just venting to me about a problem
-not interrupting me

Boy Meets Girl

This is the story of how I met the man I call my husband (& in fact up through how we started dating). I don't assume that anyone cares, but we do get asked a lot. (After all, we were both homeschooled. How do homeschooled people even ever meet other human beings?) & the plot twists are fun.



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Our story begins when I was thirteen (2001). I had a friend named Sarah. Sarah was special to me because she lived less than three miles away from me. That was less than half as far as my best guy friend, not to mention like seven times closer than my best girl friend. (I could go on about how it's weird that we were ever friends, but I'll just leave it at 'being a kid is hard'.) Sarah was in 4H. She invited me to go with her to a bonfire/pitch-in/games thing that was somehow related to 4H. I said yes. (I then found out that a band I'd been SUPER interested in for MONTHS was going to be playing a concert in town the SAME DAY, & I was SUPER SAD. Except then I noticed that the concert was ACTUALLY the night BEFORE, so I got to go to BOTH, & IT CHANGED MY LIFE FOREVER.) So we get to the thing, & literally as soon as we get out of the car she runs off to hang out with her 4H buddies & leaves me in the literal dust. BUT I ROCKED IT. GOOD JOB, THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD ME. Very proud. I talked with a couple of nice girls, but mostly ended up hanging out with a boy & his sister. This boy happened to be named Jamie, & that moment struck me as Oh Snap, This Could Be The End of a Friendship, because I knew that Jamie was the boy that Sarah (--& all of the other girls, from what I understood) totally had a crush on. Oops. (No way was I going to tell her that he called me attractive. [Tip: 15-year-old boys shouldn't be calling anyone attractive anyway.])

But it never came up, it was totally cool.

If all you wanted to know was the literal answer to how we literally met the literal first time, you can literally stop reading now.

I was supposed to go with Sarah to a 4H-related Skating Party a few months later (ooooh, ahhhhh, might see that boy again), but she got grounded. Which really was the more End of a Friendship moment, because I was recognizing the pattern of her getting grounded when we were supposed to do things, + only calling me as a back-up when her other friends were busy anyway, + not really having much in common with me. So, there went my chances of ever seeing that boy again. & his sister was so nice too. A real shame.

*nearly three-year intermission*

2004 was an intense year for me. Lots of stuff happened. Most relevant to the story, I got my first job with a real paycheck & paying taxes & everything! It was just a temporary gig, one of many helping out in one department of many in one building of many at the Indiana State Fair. It was a great job though. I cleaned a lot of glass, told a lot of people where to find the nearest restroom, went up & down a lot of stairs. My coworkers included not only my mom, but a couple of guys & their mom. Oh, one of those guys was Jamie. Turns out his entire family is pretty great! & they thought I was pretty great! Jamie was pretty cool to hang out with most of the time, but he acted a bit weird. I couldn't tell if he liked me or not, much less remembered me or not. But he rambled on to me about violins, various interpretations of Revelations, Kings Island, & other stuff. Oh, & this one time, I was posted at the front door when he walked up through the rain completely drenched & miserable. That isn't relevant to anything, but I'll never forget it. There was also this one part where I caught myself staring at how handsome he looked in the hat he was wearing at the time. (But it's not like I had a crush on him. That'd be illogical.)

I hung out with his family a couple of times in following year, but life & stuff made things busy... add to which I hate making phone calls... add to which even though his family liked me, none of them in particular was attached enough to me to call me to hang out...

*insert going about life, doing many things, learning many things*

In the autumn of 2006, a website called Facebook, which had previously required a college-affiliated e-mail address in order to register, no longer required a college-affiliated e-mail address in order to register! That was fun for me since I didn't go to college but made a bunch of friends who lived in other states (via working at summer camps + hanging around a couple of internet forums, aw yeah).

*insert more life & more things & more learning*

In the autumn of 2007, Jamie's mom found me on facebook. Then his brother did. & then he did. & he sent me a message in which he said that he MISSED ME. Exact words: "really missed". + "we need to hang out sometime". Thus commenced much messaging, including planning for me to go with him & his mom (+ one of his sisters, & one of his coworkers) to a haunted house. So, when I saw him for the first time in over two years, he was wearing these black pants with an extravagant amount of metal-- spikes & buckles & chains & stuff! He looked like a total punk. He was just trying to get into the Halloween-y spirit, but it was NOT what I was expecting. I was also not expecting to feel metaphorically struck by lightning. It was super weird. It was like I saw him & something inside me said "guess what? you're going to marry that guy", & it felt like electric shock, & I spent the rest of the evening reminding myself quite insistently that I don't believe in that sort of thing. I figured maybe like one couple in a thousand can have a genuine love-at-first-sight kind of thing. My mom's cousin's husband says it was like that for him. (His wife didn't feel it. ;-)) Besides, he looked like a punk, & not at ALL the type of guy with whom I ever thought I'd end up romantically entangled. I was researching internships at the time, internships in entire other states, which would more than likely lead to jobs in entire other states. I had planned to settle my career before getting attracted to some guy. But noooooooo. Over the next couple of months he quickly earned his way to being my best friend, & with a lot (a LOT) of prayer (+ one of the clearest times I've ever "heard" God "speak" to me), I decided to say yes when he inevitably (he was ridiculously hopelessly falling for me) asked me to be his girlfriend. Which he did at around 2:20am on January 1st, 2008.

Beyond First Impressions

When you first see/meet someone, you are going to make judgements & assumptions, based on all kinds of things-- context, social norms, visual cues, clothing. This is a natural thing that your brain does, & it is an important function because your brain needs some idea of what to expect so it can prepare an appropriate response. You are then going to process these initial ideas through your own personal value system. That's also a good thing, because you need to know where you stand on things & not be a robot. (No offense to robots.)

The thing that becomes a problem is when your judgements & assumptions are wrong. How do you handle that? Do you even notice? Or do you continue your relationship with that person in a way that tries to fit them into an unsuitable mold?

You & the people around you will be happiest when each of you is allowed to pursue the best version of his/her own self. Just because you love being married doesn't mean everyone should get married. Just because you love to read doesn't mean that everyone should spend all of their spare time reading. Your high regard for people who are a certain way doesn't mean you should invalidate people who aren't.

You don't need to feel bad for people who are different than you... & you shouldn't feel bad for being different than others.

I spent years of my life struggling with whether or not I should be more "like the others". More girly? More outgoing? More outdoorsy? More smart? Less smart? Less outdoorsy? Less outgoing? (--nope, never had the problem of being too girly.) I've been too quiet, too overbearing, too picky, not assertive enough, not trendy enough, not social enough.

Some things always ring true-- you can't please everyone. Not because you aren't good enough, but because everyone is going to have different ideas. You know that in your head, let it sink in.

Don't set yourself up for failure by caving in to what you know isn't for you.

Set others free from the preconceptions into which you've locked them.

The Weakest Link

I am good at a lot of things. But most of them have nothing to do with successfully interacting with a group of people in a relaxed social setting. I love being surrounded by people whom I love... but it can feel like my roughest & weakest times. I can fall apart quickly. I get drained by the noise & the interaction. I can get hung up in a bad way if I get interrupted &/or misunderstood.

I tend to be the most introverted person in a group. Also the most literal, the least intuitive, the most detail-oriented, the least afraid of conflict. Oh, & I tend to look/sound like I'm having a bad time, even when I'm not. So when the purpose of a gathering is to just be with people, hang out, have fun... I can get nervous because I feel like the way I am isn't a lot of fun for other people to be around in that context, mostly just because my idea of hanging out & having fun tends to be inherently different from the general consensus.

& THAT'S OKAY. It's okay for groups of people to be okay with talking over each other, glossing over comments that don't actually make any sense, playing a game & arguing about the rules, making spontaneous decisions without thinking through the details, etc. I am by no means trying to say that that sort of thing is BAD. It'd be closer to the truth to say that I'm jealous.

I'd love to be part of that chaos. If I could just laugh & make small talk, I would in a heartbeat. The best I can do is wear a smile & try to just ride the wave.

So there they are, so many people I love, having a great time. & there I am, trying to be a part of that, working to fit in to what comes naturally for them. It is one of the most challenging things for me, but I see it as a way to show love. To show gratitude for someone wanting me to be a part of the group in the first place. To share experiences, to build a relationship, to be present in the lives of others. If I never go to events, will people know that I care about them? When possible, I will spend all the energy I can spare, to be a part of that moment for the ones I love. When it isn't possible, I'm learning to be okay with staying home, trying to trust that there will be other ways for me to engage with their lives.

The more I actually relax at this sort of gathering, the more likely I am to disturb the natural flow. If I relax, I'll try to talk to people beyond surface level, & I'll get frustrated when they interrupt or take what I say the wrong way. I'll try to help someone understand something that wasn't explained well, & everyone will look impatient & wonder why I bother. I'll ask a question to try to figure something out, & people will act like I'm worried about something stupid.
"It's okay", they say, & they try to calm me down (which feels weird, since I am calm). They change the subject, when all I really want is to resolve the issue, for us to understand each other. But that's not the point of the gathering for them.

& that's okay.