Peer reviews

So after a few blog posts I've received a few positive comments. Mostly on Facebook but it is kinda fun to hear compliments from friends. In school I'd get praise for my writing from teachers but they were pretty much my only audience. You know the drill. Write a paper, turn it in, get a grade, and that's about it. I never really shared my writing with anyone else. Having friends appreciate my writing is even better than teachers and professors. I shared this story with Essex last night:
In high school I had a friend named Shawna. We had the same AP history teacher but were in different classes. Apparently the teacher would praise my writing to the other class. A mutual friend told me it really pissed Shawna off. You see, she was really smart and also very competitive. I remember hearing her say after a mutual friend out scored her on the SATs " every time one of my friends succeeds a little piece of me dies". Any way... That was my context for friends' attitudes towards eachother's work. It makes me all the more appreciative that friends "like" my posts.

Follow if you dare

Well, my new blog is up and running. It's called "Building the Dream". Don't judge if it sounds cheesy to to you. The web address is changingmydestiny2013.blogspot.com from time to time I may give you all a "shout-out" on the blog.

I talked with Liz the other night. She said that when she went to the page she thought she was in the wrong place because it didn't sound at all like me. That made me laugh. I guess after 12 years there are things we still don't know about eachother. Kinda like marriage. It's not just Essex that I plan to continue to get to know for the rest of my life... it's The Nation too. I hope you enjoy reading my blog and learning more about the Mary you never knew.

Love you guys!

2 years 25 weeks and 6 days later

I've decided to start blogging again. Not here, but I'm going to create a new blog. Part of my New Years resolution for 2013. It will include entires about my vision for my life, commitments I'm making to proactively make my dreams happen, progress on goals, and commentary on current events that are relevant to my goals and/or just make me think about life. I'll let you know when I've published the first entry. Maybe you'll be some of my first followers.
If no one else in the world reads it, at least some of the people who have been most important to me during a formative time in my life will have a better pulse on where I'm at in my journey. Hope to be blogging soon!

naomi, i wish i had been on this more when you were gone. we could have used it like we used to. :) i guess with the invention of facebook, our blog is slightly more obsolete. except for our anonymity, elitism about who can participate in discussion, and content. other than that, don't you miss this? mary has long made something else her homepage and i think rebekah even forgot this was on the internet. getting married and all...

so, i don't mean to be nostalgic or sentimental, because i was a lot of that in college and somehow i would have liked to leave that behind, in that era. but i think i get online when i'm sad and so it's hard not to tell the whole internet about my emotional world when i get to this blog. i'll resist the urge and not do it. and instead i'll just say, i liked it best when you were all just a doorway, or even a mattress away. i liked it when relationships seemed more simple and we mostly just laughed together. i hate that old is getting to me.

things I love about Germany

*Feiertage. They get the days off and there's always some kind of fair or something that most people in the city participate in. And usually it's a real holiday, like a Christian holiday. And the whole country gets the day off and they hang out on city squares, eating their horrible food and pretending like it makes a difference whether your hot dog comes from a cow or a pig, or if you slice it up or eat it whole. But they also drink, and so...
*Apfelwein! It's so tasty, and so cheap, and healthy. It's the best drink in the world. Seriously. For 1,60 Euro you get a good-sized glass of something that's a bit like cider and a bit like white wine. Mmmmmm...
*Mass. It's crazy, they use loads of incense and the dude plays the organ, I think on the loudest possible setting, and trying to press as many pedals and keys as possible, I think, all at once. Everyone kneels on the floor or on hardwood slabs. At first I would lay a scarf down or something, because it hurts, but no one else does that. And I think they think it's part of the point, kneeling is a sign of respect because it's uncomfortable. Anyway, so I leave mass and I can't feel my legs, my ears are ringing, I'm not quite sure I said the right words in the liturgy, and for an hour I can only smell the church incense, which must have seeped into my clothes somehow. Anyway, I leave with the feeling that something has been done to me, and I think we miss that sometimes in the US parishes, with the emphasis on comfort, catering to people's tastes and so on. And the feeling of not being catered to, while I am sure it is heightened by my not speaking the language so well, is sometimes a nice feeling. I'm taking part in something that's not just me, that's not just how I like it. And that makes it better.
*Free movies online! It's crazy!
*Apfelwein. Seriously, it's awesome.
*I'm learning to speak German! It's kinda cool, to speak another language.

things I hate about Germany

*The music. The only music people here listen to is bad american club music. Seriously, everywhere, 'I wanna make love in this club, in this club ...' like at all hours of the day. I have been to one cafe where the men in the cafe were listening to classic rock, which is cool! Plus for Germany! But they were also looking at semi-pornographic magazines, which brings me to ...
*Pseudo-porn everywhere. It's not just that people here don't mind showing nipples, or whatever, it's that every advertisement I see is sexual. And in every magazine there's pictures of women wearing just a thong, straddling some piece of equipment or something.
*"Oh, public transportation in Germany is so reliable and punctual! You can go anywhere on it!" Yeah, if you are a fucking millionaire. Seriously, one trip to the city center is about $3. And a monthly ticket (just inside Frankfurt) is 80 Euros! That's like, more than $80! So I walk everywhere. Which is exhausing, and uses up lots of calories, which brings me to...
*Food. Seriously, it's way worse than England. There is absolutely nothing here I like to eat. Everyone goes on about doner kabobs, but they, too, are bad here. It's like there's some invisible tastiness filter surrounding Germany and every thing you bring inside the borders immediately becomes bland and unsatisfying. I eat cheese and bread. And that, too, is expensive.
*Also, the food is terrible. I'm always hungry and I feel like I never eat. I eat a lot of bratwurst. Which is nasty. But it's only 3 euros and when I just want something to make me feel like I'm not going to faint, why pay 5 euros for a sandwich, which actually isn't a sandwich, it's just bread with a tiny bit of butter on it and the thinnest piece of meat you can possibly imagine.
*Coffee is bad, but cheap. Still, it's pretty bad.
*While I am sure there are some German movies, art, culture in general, it's fairly difficult to find. On the whole, people watch shitty American movies. Get your own damn shitty movies!
*The men. I hate them. They seriously have no respect for women. I have not met a single man here who I would be comfortable being alone in a room with, except perhaps this American guy. And I have several stories of unwanted touching (nothing horrible, but still unwanted), and the men seriously don't care if you glare at them, tell them to stop, it doesn't matter. I'm sick of just being made to feel like shit because I don't know how to deal with this kind of thing, I don't speak the language that well, it's scary, right, not knowing what to say. And I'm scared to be outside of my room after dark, because I feel like I'm not regarded as something valuable by half the people out there. And I like guys. Like 95% of the people I hang out with on a regular basis are guys. I know dudes well, and the ones here are the sleaziest, nastiest people I have ever come into contact with.
Seriously, Europe sucks. Sorry for the depressing post, but I feel like we're fed this lie about Europe, like ahhh Europe, how romantic. When really it's just a more expensive, more commercial and sex-crazed version of America. With horrible food.

how long has it been since you visited here? me--six months.
since then, what has happened to me?

went on a lovely bike ride with a boy in the rain. we kissed. lights from the heavens shone upon us until i was abducted by aliens. taken to the middle layers of the atmosphere, shot down by switzerland. landed in the netherlands. met lots of people and learned swedish. visited ikea there. hiked through snow, stayed at hostels, got my money stolen and hitchhiked to london. had a surly relationship with a sordid man. escaped from him and became part of the underground music scene (i am a famous lead for an underground band--so underground you can't even understand our name). became protected because i was mobbed by underground fans everytime i went out of my underground apartment. sneaked onto a boat, leaving black mud footprints behind me on the pier. close to america the boat was caught in a storm, capsized, and destroyed. caught a ride on the back of a whale named boris. albatross took me in his mouth and dropped me on a buoy near maine. i waited until the ocean water froze over and ice skated back to shore. i found myself returning to consciousness in a stranger's house, in a stranger's bed. warm home, warm food, warm people. but i need to get back to school, so i jumped a train to kansas, where turtles cross highways and never get hit, through the beautiful rocky mountains and past my home (as i slept), through salt flats of utah, and into grungy california. i found my room messy as i left it, and the nation empty as before.

i have gone out on a few dates with boys since and made myself a fool. i think i would prefer alien abduction.

i miss my friends i used to have here.