Unexpected (Part II)

Today is the day when I write about something I wouldn't expect of myself, which is quite a task because everything I think of immediately seems like something about which I would write normally (go figure). My topic for today, which I don't think I usually talk about, is my guilt. As you may or may not know, for the past two summers, I went to El Salvador for three weeks to a village, Cacahuatal, for community service. I had the time of my life. I loved the people, the language, the manual labor (well, not really, but it was good for my spoiled brat attitude), and just had a fantastic time while also, you know, helping them. But even though I call El Salvador a "life-changing" trip...

I don't know if it was. I don't live my everyday life differently. I collect donations to send there instead of somewhere here, but is that really better? I tried to get people to contribute to a scholarship fund for two students there, but I haven't done a very good job this summer of organizing events (though to my credit, I am organizing a yard sale for August 14th or 15th, proceeds to the scholarship). Will I ever go back? I don't make an effort at all really to keep up with my host family because writing letters there is difficult, I tell myself, and even those I can email/facebook, I don't have very much to say. I'm not very outgoing in Spanish, less so than people who know less of the language than I do, and I just feel rotten when I think about it. I tried to purge my room for this yard sale, which is semi-successful, and I want to do something socially useful with my life. But when I get an email in Spanish that is too difficult for me to understand, or when it's been a while since I got incensed about the injustices going on there, I just...forget about it. It's always there, but I can't actually make myself DO anything. And I hate it. I despise myself. I despise the excuses I make for myself. I despise the fact that I let people comfort me into thinking it's okay, but I do. And I won't change. I've always been like this, about many issues, and I probably will always be like this. I don't have enough discipline to change the parts of me I don't like, but then I hate living with them. It's a vicious cycle and I don't know how to get out of it. I don't think I can.

I'm not usually that hopeless or dark. So... a blog I didn't expect to write. There you go.

Unexpected (part I)

I was at a loss yesterday for what to write. I was feeling busy and had a lack of inspiring/interesting quotes off the top of my head, so I broke down and asked a friend for assistance.

He said "Do something you wouldn't expect of yourself," in an unusual burst of helpfulness (just kidding, he's often helpful).

I said, "Write about that or do that in choosing my blog topic?"

"Both...either...mostly topic, I guess, because I guess you should write like you."

He actually brought up a third option--I could now write about this quote, write about something which I wouldn't usually write about, or write in a style that I don't usually use. Since this is my blog, and I can pretty much do whatever I want because my friends will probably read it anyway, my next three posts are going to explore all three of those options (this being the first in the series).

"Do something you wouldn't expect of yourself" is an interesting thing to do. In all this talk of being yourself, there is also some merit to pushing yourself, exploring your boundaries, and, at the risk of sounding cliche (like this entire blog isn't cliche), expanding your horizons. There are a million hackneyed metaphors out there for stepping out of your comfort zone (oh look, that's another one), but they all convey the same meaning. So at what point does one cross the line between trying new things and becoming someone else? It might be in the motivation. That darned peer pressure, for example...if you start trying new things for someone else, instead of for your personal satisfaction, that crosses the line. But it's not always that clear, and it's a hard balance to maintain.

Even in college, I thoroughly do not expect myself to go partying and get drunk. This is something that I have been pretty avidly against throughout my life, for whatever reason. If I suddenly decided to "try" it, it would be because of someone else, and that is not acceptable. It's not me. I also imagine that I will never try out for a musical. If I did this, however, I would be putting myself up for humiliation in front of many better singers than myself...voluntarily. Singing is always something that I have loved, and I feel like this would just be pushing myself rather than changing my fundamental makeup. If I then became a "theater person," however, the stereotype of the diva backstage, camera whore offstage, star onstage, is that changing who I am or just bringing out another side of me? I have no idea. But I think at some point I would realize that isn't who I am or want to be.

Matters of the heart

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder" is a curious expression, one that writers like to use when it conveniently applies and then ignore when they need to express the opposite sentiment. I suppose that it is impossible to have an expression that applies absolutely all the time, but in light of long distance relationships that fail, it seems to be awfully contradictory.

In any case, I have recently found it was true. Although it was not pleasant to be without one of my friends for five weeks while she was in Bangladesh, I found myself so excitedly awaiting her return that I was absolutely ecstatic when I got to talk to her face-to-face. Maybe I did not love her more than I did before, but I certainly expressed my love more intensely (and hugged her periodically while in her presence just because I finally could). I have also recently gotten kind of close to one of her friends who lives in PA. I have only seen this friend in person once in my life, for one day, but we continue to talk like best friends who see each other every day, and I will be so excited to see her in the flesh in August (hopefully) that it certainly seems that absence makes the heart grow fonder in that instance.

On the other hand, with the prospect of college looming, I am desperately afraid that absence + distance + trying to make new friends will be a lethal combination for the future of my current group of friends, but I hope I am very wrong. What do you think about all this?