Flo, my dear friend who was eaten by Texas recently, sent me one of those “post ten things about yourself and ask your friends to do the same” messages. As I’m waiting for my laundry to dry - and also, because I’ve already blown through every episode of How I Met Your Mother streaming on Netflix - I figured there were worse ways to spend my time. 

1. I’m a vegetarian. I started when I was 20, after watching a few too many documentaries. Lately, I’ve been eating vegan - mostly raw, unprocessed food. Only I don’t often talk about it, because I don’t like the “why don’t you eat _____?” conversation. 

2. All my favorite jobs so far have been teaching jobs. Today my SAT student wrote in her essay, “So lots of different people can change the world, whether it’s Superman or a simple black guy.” She’s from Brazil, and she meant to say “…or a regular human with strong oratory skills,” as in Martin Luther King, Jr. 

3. When I fold my laundry, I often imagine people I’ve loved folding their laundry. 

4. Celebrities who share my birthday: Edgar Allen Poe and Stephanie from Full House.

5. I surprised myself this year - now, if I go a few days without doing yoga, I feel like I’m missing something. 

6. No New Year’s resolutions, just two things I’ll remind myself when I need to: love yourself/be kind to yourself, and live in the moment. 

7. I love that everyone, similar as we are, has a unique story to tell. I think, though, that the Internet encourages people to tell too many stories. This led to a break from facebook, which has been going strong for a few months. If anyone asks why I’m not on there, I feel like I’m being too open by saying, “Because I don’t want to compare myself to other people, and that’s exactly what facebook encourages me to do,” so I say, “I’m so much more productive without it.” That is a lie, because there’s still Netflix.

8. If an idea for an ending of something I’m writing comes to me before I reach the end, I almost never use that ending. It’s almost superstitious the way I’ll throw it out as a possibility. But maybe it’s logical - the first thing that comes to mind is the easiest, and least surprising.

9. This week, my dog peed on both my roommate’s beds. I laughed. Yesterday, he peed on my bed.

10. Last semester, one student insisted she was uninteresting, bad at everything, and had no hobbies or talents. “I watch TV,” she said. ”Okay,” I said. “Me too. What do you like about it?” She told me her parents were never home, and when they were home, it was worse than when they weren’t, so she preferred the company of television shows. “And I guess I taught my dad to read,” she said. “I’d bring home my schoolwork and do it with him.”

She was angry, mean to the other kids in the class, so panicked she’d hide away in her room (it was a week-long retreat). You could see how inward she faced: her head down toward her feet, her chest in. She wanted to coil but our bodies can’t coil. 

In the end we got a one-act play out of her. I have no idea what she thought of the experience, whether she knew how much I saw myself in her.

1. qgifs liked this
2. itsjanna said: I love what you said about Facebook. I didn’t make resolutions, either, but recently I did write a general be-a-better-person list. One of the things on it is “be happy for other people,” which largely means don’t be jealous of their Facebook brags.
3. itsjanna liked this
4. actionjacksonlovesbbq said: isn’t it great when you find that form of exercise that’s fulfilling instead of a chore?
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6. olddanyeller posted this