Pots of Tea

So I have found that my new kick, as of being sick for the past week or so, has been tea. I have the feeling I am turning into a bit of a hipster as I sit here in a flannel shirt I bought at a thrift store, working on my laptop that is covered in, what one friend described as "hippie stickers," sipping on a pot of vanilla tea (which wasn't all the good truth be told) at espresso royale, while listening to part of the soundtrack of "Where the Wild Things Are", and updating my blog...oh yeah, the hipster is bleeding forth from my eyeballs. I think it is probably just another phase. I have realized that, that is kind of how people function; and my hypothesis, contrary to popular belief, would be that this is how people of all ages function and live.

I associate different phases of my life with music, clothing and people. Each phase has a different anthem, a different t-shirt, and different hang out, and when the phase is over I have all of these relics to look back on and jog memories. I think it is beautiful. There is nothing wrong with change, we are constantly changing and it would only make sense that our tastes and hobbies would do so along with us. Each phase of life requires something different from our surroundings and being the adaptable species that we are we take what we have around us and utilize what this "section" of life requires. Currently I have 11 piercings (oh yeah...I got another one) and am scheduled for a tattoo in December, but I hold no delusions that when the time comes I will let the holes in my head heal and move on (the tattoo gets to sick around forever but I am hoping that my old saggy self will be able to enjoy it, if not love it.) My theory on why I get things pierced (other than the really cute guy who works in the shop named Andy) would be that I require occasional change in my appearance that I can control. I also require some semblance of being unique and this is my way to express that. You might at this point be thinking that I am a "poser" and that I should go back to my Ann Arbor bubbble and write slam poetry; but "frankly my dear, I don't give a damn," it makes me happy, and if that makes me a poser let me only say that I will be posing for life!

Here is what I say...screw it, here is what I shout: do what makes you happy. If that means punching holes in your face, or rushing a sorority, or playing a sport, or singing in a glee club, do it. You don't have time to be unhappy, you don't have time to be sad, you don't have time to think about what you might have done had you not been too scared to do it. If your friends laugh, and ridicule you, find new friends, there are plenty to be had and people are so different that I have doubt in your ability to find others that, like you, who are seeking their happiness in some "lame" way that nobody understands. There are going to be enough parts of your life that are going to make you unhappy that you have no control over. You are going to have jobs you don't like, you are going to have to be around people that agitate the hell out of you, and there are a million other things that are just part of living that are going to put you down, depress you and make you want to curl into the fetal position and never wake up in the morning. You can't escape these things, you can't change them and they are going to put gray hairs on your head no matter what. No one is perfectly happy, so through the idea that you have to be out the window. But the things you DO have control over, don't make them the unhappy moments of your life.

Okay I am stepping off the soap box now, I know everything I say is easier said than done, but I hope it might give people food for thought.

Yours Always,
~The Singing Ginger

Hope (Not just an Obama Thing)

Hope is a dangerous, dangerous thing.

Hope can keep alive the spirits of millions but can also spur on a lag in life that will put you at a stand still because you are living in a hope that will never be realized. Hope has kept me after guys that I should have been over much more quickly, hope also got me through the cancer and eventual death of one of my best friends, hope keeps me going everyday when I find that my existence has amounted to very little and I don't think I am going anywhere with my life. Hope is a dangerous thing because, to be frank, we have to learn that giving it up is not always a bad thing. Sometimes giving up hope means moving on with life, means new beginnings, means being able to make room to hope for something else. Hope is a dangerous thing.

And what happens when your lack of hope has been a protection mechanism? When you have made the conscious decisions not to hope for something because you knew that there was no way it could be yours? That you were satisfied with just not hoping because it meant that you had more space in your head to think? That functioning was not depending on hope but the lack of it? And what happens when that thing becomes a far off distant possibility? How does one deal with that? Hope does one deal with the surprising presence of hope? Hmmmmmm...I will get back to you.

~The Singing Ginger