Becky Blitch - Plinky Answers

My favorite words

2009-06-04T15:38:41-06:00

Serendipity
"Serendipity" is just a lovely word, in sound and meaning.

It sounds almost made-up, like something a child would name their imaginary friend. Whenever I use it while speaking, I get this tiny thrill... as if I'm pulling something over on my listeners by using such a delightful, joyful word while pretending to be an adult.

As for the meaning, I love that it conjures both random coincidence and destiny (or fate). The whole idea of serendipity reminds me to keep my eyes (and heart) open, as a moment is only serendipitous if you recognize it as such.

Other serendipitous thoughts:
- It's a soft yellow word to me
- It's great fun to write, and (for some reason) one of the few words in which I use a cursive 'r'
- The movie is one of my favorites, too! /grin

How VH1 infiltrated my iPod

2009-02-22T11:31:25-06:00

Viva la Vida by Coldplay

I'm Yours by Jason Mraz

Waiting on the World to Change by John Mayer

My short-lived shoplifting career

2009-02-18T08:26:08-06:00

When I was 4 or 5 years old, I embarked on a very short-lived (and inadvertent) life of crime.

I used a tiny little manual wheelchair back then. When I'd go shopping with my mom, if there was some little treat I wanted, she'd let me carry it around the store and give it to the cashier myself. The problem, of course, is that when you're pushing yourself around in a wheelchair, you don't have any free hands, so the only place to put something is in your lap. And it can be easy to forget that you have something in your lap, particularly if you're always carrying around one thing or another and your legs are used to the sensation. You can see where this is going, can't you?

One day I went grocery shopping with my mom, and she let me pick out a pack of stickers to buy (Muppet Babies, of course). When we got to the checkout lane, though, it was quite chaotic, and I completely forgot to put the stickers on the counter. When we got outside and my mom saw that the stickers were still on my lap, she was mortified (and let me know that I should be mortified, too). She told me that she was taking the stickers back into the store and that I'd have to wait until the following week to buy them, both as punishment and because she didn't have any cash and wasn't going to write another check for $.49. That's when I really got upset, because I loved those stickers, darn it!

As it turned out, when my mom went back into the store to explain that I'd mistakenly shoplifted, the cashier and bag boy pooled their pocket change to buy the ill-gotten goods for me, and if I recall correctly, they even pitched in a sugar cookie from the bakery. So my run as a master criminal didn't turn out to be so bad, after all.

And man, were those stickers cool!

What I crave...

2009-02-17T18:42:27-06:00

steel cut oats

I actually tend to lose my appetite when I'm stressed/sad/anxious/generally unbalanced... I do tend to crave water in those times, and wind up drinking much more than my standard 7 or 8 glasses. But even though I don't crave food when I'm stressed doesn't mean I don't get some serious cravings from time to time

Prior to this this last summer, when I started eating a low-glycemic diet, my ultimate comfort food was a roll of sugar cookie dough (uncooked), followed closely by any kind of ice cream.

Now that I'm mostly off sweets, though, many of my craveable foods are high-protein. Right now it's enchiladas y refritos -- I've ordered out from Carmelita's three times (including today!) since that yummy quesadilla I scarfed at the Ferry Building got me craving Mexican constantly.

When it's cold outside (like tonight), my favorite comfort-food dinner is steel-cut oatmeal with a touch of raw wild honey from a family friend's North Carolina farm and pecans from my grandma's trees. I actually eat that three or four times a week for dinner, at least during the winter. There's nothing like filling your tummy with warm oatmeal when it's cold out.

Reading 'Ishmael' opened my mind

2009-02-16T11:38:43-06:00

My second year of college I was selected as a Ford Apprentice Scholar through a Ford Foundation grant that allows select institutions to pluck young minds out of the undergraduate morass and start molding them for academia. We were each sponsored by a professor in our field, and for two years our cohort met for three hours once a week in the President's conference room to discuss the life of the mind. At 19, of course, I had very little awareness of the world beyond Pinellas County, Florida, and neither did most of my cohort. So during the first year of the program, we read a book a week, starting with Boethius and going all the way through Hawking. We studied rhetoric and philosophy and many histories.

The book that had the greatest impact on me that year - indeed, the book that set me on my current path - was Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. It's difficult to give a synopsis of the book's "plot" without sounding silly, as it's really allegory. This book was the first crack in the positivist mold by mind had been formed (followed, later, by The Chalice and the Blade and other foundational texts in the canon of this new world we are creating).

I've read Ishmael a number of times in the decade since I first encountered it. It's not a perfect book, either in conception or execution. But I continue to give a copy to every person I know who is trying to break out of the cocoon of modernity. It is accessible at a level more scholarly works are not; it is engaging; and it invites the reader to see the world through a new lens, and then go out and do something about what they see.

Dancing alone

2009-02-11T10:01:50-06:00

The most powerful advice I've ever received came from my therapist when I was an undergrad; her reminder to "just sit there and watch while the other person does their dance" still comes to mind almost daily.

Pirueta / Pirouette

It may take two to tango, but no one is forcing you to dance.

When I speak my truth in a compassionate way, and the person I'm in relationship with freaks out, their freaking out is not about me. It's about them, how they're choosing to receive what I've offered based on their experiences, beliefs, and expectations. I can't cause them to start dancing, I can't control it, and I can't stop it. It's their dance. And I don't have to get pulled in. Most of the time it's much better to quietly wait while they do their dance; when I do join in, I have to remember that I'm making a choice to engage. No one can "make" me feel, think, or do anything. Recognizing that I choose how I react (and other people's reactions are choices, too), I'm liberated to enter into relationships that are less about drama and more about authentic intimacy.

Watch "The World's Fastest Indian" next time you're home sick

2009-02-10T09:15:50-06:00

My dad absolutely loves this movie - he's watched it probably a dozen times, and somewhere around screening 5 or 6 I gave into his nagging and watched it with him.

It's a great home-sick-with-the-sniffles film. It's quite true to the real story of a really ancient biker (70? 80?) who set the land speed record at the Bonneville salt flats on a hand-tooled Indian - and his journey to even make it to the event from New Zealand. Anyway, you don't have to know a thing about motorcycles to totally get sucked into the movie. It's warm and fuzzy without being sappy, and funny (in a witty way) as all get-out... a classic hero's journey and underdog tale wrapped up into one.

A real-life Penelope Wilhem

2009-02-07T20:02:33-06:00

Penelope is a modern fairytale about a young woman born with a pig's snout for a nose due to a generations-old family curse. The curse can only be lifted by finding "the one who will love her forever," which, of course, turns out to be herself.

As fanciful and witty as this sweet little movie is, the broad strokes of Penelope's life (looking and feeling "different," the mother-daughter relationship, etc) really resonated with me. Penelope does find love in the end, but only after she learns to love and accept herself. The self-acceptance is the real prize; the boy is just an added bonus. I'm not fully there yet, myself, but Penelope's journey inspires anew me every time I watch it.

My favorite room

2009-02-06T19:05:23-06:00

I love my office.

It actually used to be my brother's bedroom, and then a spare room. When I moved home from college my parents did some remodeling to give me a little pseudo-apartment with my bedroom, a bathroom, and what is now my office.

I was really depressed at that time, and the colors I chose for the walls were just awful... I thought they were "earthy" and "natural," but as I got healthier and my seratonin levels improved, I realized that I had painted my room in varying shades of mud. I still idn't change it for a long time, though... I think I thought that if I made the room "mine," it would somehow mean that I was going to live here forever. Luckily, I finally realized what nonsense that was.

So, this summer I got real furniture custom-made (including a matching bed for Sydney); I turned the closet into a very trendy built-in bookshelf; and I painted the walls... wait for it... orange! I call it my Creamsicle Room, because that's the exact color of 3 of the walls; the fourth is a bit darker/deeper, hello-I'm-orange-and-I-don't-care-what-you-think.

The walls are still bare and the curtains haven't been hung, but it's still my favorite room. The colors are bright and energetic without causing anxiety, and I'm able to really focus on my work without being lulled into a nap 5 times a day.

Plus, Sydney really loves her bed. :)

Memories of a teenage geek

2009-02-05T10:12:13-06:00

My first exposure to the internet was in '92... I was 12, and some family friends had Prodigy. I remember them showing us how they could check the results of the Olympics in real time, and my mind being completely boggled.

My parents got our first connected computer in '94, my freshman year of high school. We had AOL 2.0 as our ISP. The first IM I ever received was from a Scientologist. No kidding.

I built my first web page not long after... the same day AOL introduced a browser into their software. I called it "The Realm of an Angel" and it had a bunch of those rainbow horizontal rules.

In '96 I got hooked on Monty Python's Flying Talker, and telnet'ed my way through the last two years of high school. It was through MPFT that I got my first mp3, which was a Nine Inch Nails song (compressed to death) that took about 3 hours to download.

I taught myself HTML very early on and had a succession of sites with lots of frames and animated gifs. I mastered PHP and built a CMS/blog before the word "blog" existed.

Suffice it to say, I'm an early adopter, and huge geek. And, ironically, I think the "Web 2.0" craze is about as revolutionary and useful as the old Dancing Hamsters site.

My fear of not being "enough"

2009-02-04T14:09:50-06:00

I'm starting to overcome this fear, but it has controlled my life for years. I set unattainably high standards for myself, then don't even attempt to reach them for fear of failing... which leaves me paralyzed, unable to do anything, which in turn confirms the belief/fear that I'm just not good enough.

I'm aware of it now, though, and that's definitely the first step to moving through it!