Time is hella relative

In middle school, my math teacher explained that time seems to move faster as you get older, because each year that passes is a smaller portion of your life. For example, a four year old who turns five just lived a quarter of her life over again. A ten year old who turns eleven just lived a tenth of her life over again. And a twenty year old who turns twenty-one lived just 5% of her life over again. And it’s so true: years move faster and faster. An hour seemed a wildly long time to wait when I was nine, but now I practically jump for joy when there’s only an hour left of work.

That math teacher changed the way I thought about time, but there was something else that really altered the way I experienced it. For two years, I dated a fellow named John. He was from Berkeley, like me, but he went to school in New York, and I went to school in Santa Cruz. He would come home during summer and winter breaks. I went to visit him during spring breaks (expensive!) In between those times, I would wait.

Each day I would wait until John would call me. I would wait until he had bought his plane tickets and I could draw hearts all over one date in my calendar. I would wait through three months of school. I would wait through finals week. I would wait for his plane to land. I would wait until he would rip me open again.

All time was divided into measurable amounts leading up to when I would see him again, graduation, and then into more nebulous regions of commitment. If a class was miserable, I just had to remind myself that after 45 minutes of class, I had just one more class to go, then I’d be home and could pass the evening how I pleased, and then I just had to do that two more times and it would be the weekend, and then I just had to do 4 more of those and he would be home. When I was far from seeing him, I would make just a few markers to seeing him, like counting weeks. When I was getting closer, I would keep many markers so that my excitement would be increased each time I passed one. Most of the time, even sitting around waiting was pleasant, because I had the ultimate reward waiting for me.

After a year of this, waiting became a science. I had just 11 weeks in a quarter, which was basically the maximum I would go between seeing him. I looked forward to midterms and finals, because those were just markers on my dash to spooning the shit outta him. Each Saturday night that I spent not doing anything because I was waiting for him to call-- and I didn’t want to do things without him anyway-- was just the end of one more week.

Time went by so fast. I made few friends sophomore and junior years. I didn’t talk to guys at all. I wouldn’t shave my legs between seeing him. I was just waiting. I didn’t do fun things or go out much. I didn’t care about anything but John. John John John. I just passed time.

Once our relationship ended, I was able to experience time as something which I could use, not merely something to finish. Having set myself free, I no longer waited. Instead, I enjoyed myself. I got control of my life and did the things that I felt like doing. Each day was no longer a barrier to some time in the future, but rather a chance to make myself happy in that moment. I stopped counting weeks and began to look at what each day had to offer.

Now I have a choice about how I feel towards time. When I’m at work, I just keep my eyes on the prize: winter break, then January, then I’m quitting. I savor the moments when I’m at a show or with my sister. I hold onto them, squeeze them, and let the feeling tumble around inside of me as long as I can. Time is hella relative, and is completely subjected to the way you view it. Time is a treadmill, but it’s up to you how fast you want to go.

Room 1

I worked at a school for emotionally and mentally disturbed children. The next few blogs will detail each classroom. I will start at the beginning.

The staff are trained to help students in crisis. Students at this school are less able to cope than typical students. They are at this school because of their behavior. Any event ranging from an incident at (group) home to a loud noise can trigger a crisis. The staff are trained to defuse situations by talking first. If the student begins to aggress, the staff are trained to evade attacks. Should evasions fail, the staff may manually restrain the student. (All staff undergo a 3-day training seminar to keep themselves and the students safe. Do not try this without training.) First, two staff grab the student by the arms. Should this fail, they may hold him up against a wall. If he is still combative, they may employ a floor-assisted restraint in which two to four staff hold the child on the floor. It sounds crazy, but you must keep in mind the population being served. There is one employee whose job it is to provide coverage during crises: classrooms call for assistance on the walkie-talkies or over the PA system, and he bravely confronts crisis situations throughout the day. He is one of the sweetest men I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, and he treats students with as much dignity as possible while they regain their composure.

Room 1 is empty. The plastic windows are locked. Twice I saw the small window at the door blocked with a paper showing a picture of a mariachi man with a sombrero and guitar. It’s not a photo, just an outline for coloring. Generally, I try not to look. From what I’ve seen, a staff accompanies the student in the room, and one or more staff wait outside the door, usually holding it closed. I don’t know what techniques they use to subdue these students, but I think they just talk to him until he’s ready to participate in class. Room 1 is for students who are really not safe.

How to make any girl the hottest girl in the world

Girls are always looking for ways to please guys. There is a billion-dollar market for magazines that cater to women, telling them how to dress, what to eat, and what sex moves to use. Somehow, the millions of women who read these magazines don’t seem happier, healthier, or sexier. Definitely not sexier.

Women often think that if they wear the right clothes, make up, or hairstyle, men will be interested in them. The truth is, men don’t give a fuck. Ugly girls get laid all the time. Slutty girls get turned down all the time. There is one thing- yes, ONE thing- which guys are into more than anything else: confidence.

A confident woman is sure of herself. She doesn’t have body issues. She isn’t shy. She knows how to dish it out, and she knows how to take it. She doesn’t have any hang-ups. This is supremely attractive to males.

How can women attain this magic attribute? Truly confident women are hard to come by. There is no way I can tell women how to be confident, except that they need to get over their shit and love themselves. I’m not talking about cockiness or self-centeredness—I mean real confidence. One way of doing this is just to fake it until you believe it. That’s basically what I did, and it worked for my friend, too. Just pretend you like yourself—if you’re doing a good job, people will believe you. And then people think you are cool enough to be confident, and that’s a pretty good reason to be actually confident.

And men, how can you make women confident, so that they will be down to take off their clothes and get freaky without you having to coax them into everything? Compliments. Real ones. Be delighted. Be so into her. Probably the most important part: smile at her. But don’t be creepy about it. Pretend that the girl you just took home from the bar is the hottest thing you’ve ever seen, and you can’t help but marvel at each thing you discover about her. C-section scar? It’s cute. She didn’t shave her legs? You don’t give a fuck. Touch ‘em anyway. She’s covering up her boobs? Look at them, pause to admire, and say they’re beautiful. These types of things will make a woman think you really dig her, and she will be less nervous about "giving it up". If you’re admiring her and smiling at her, she will feel beautiful, which will make her act beautiful, and beautiful women aren’t shy and insecure, and then she will be all over your cock. It’s that simple!

Based on my own experience, boys pay way more attention to you when you're confident, even if you're dressed like a crackhead and skipping in circles around the mosh pit. Additionally, even with guys who didn't last long in my life, the best ones were the ones who seemed to really enjoy and appreciate me, even if later actions proved that they didn't care for me that much.

So what’s the point of this? Basically, confidence helps everything. It doesn’t matter if the guy is faking amazement or not. The fact is that when he acts amazed, it boosts your confidence through the roof and crushes whatever hang-ups you have about your body, or about fooling around in the backseat of you mom's station-wagon. Men: be amazed at the woman you’re with, but don't be creepy. If you’re doing a good job, she’ll believe you. Women: stop being such whiny babies. When you start loving yourself, the right kind of men will start loving you. More importantly, you won’t even need their love, because you are a confident, self-assured woman.

2014 EDIT: This is one of the worst things I've ever written, and I explain why here.

I blogged on your face.

My first blog must definitely be about blogging. I have a moral opposition to it. I don’t read any blogs, and I totally judge people who write them. In high school a few of my friends had LiveJournals, and they would write nasty things about each other, in an “anonymous” way. Let me paraphrase an example:

“I AM SO SICK OF BITCHES! SOME people who they know who they are are always TALKING SHIT about me and they better stop. Someone told me someone I thought was my friend said that I was a slut because I had sex with my boyfriend. Obv she is just jealous that I have a boyfriend and no guys ever like her.”

While I sympathize with teenage angst, and while I do think writing is a constructive way of dealing with one’s emotions or challenges, I do not support insulting the English language by publishing sloppily-constructed sentences on the Internet. Additionally, LiveJournal became a place of extreme passive-aggression, which is not healthy for young women.

After LiveJournal, people began making MySpace posts. A friend of mine made a MySpace for me, but I don’t check it or know how to use it, and it kind of embarrasses me. There was one MySpace blog that I read, and that was of someone I used to date. Yep. Blog #1: bring in the ex. Classy, I know. I used to read it when we were just starting to date. He posted all these emo blogs about his last girlfriend, mostly Alkaline Trio lyrics. At some point he wrote one about how he was interested in someone new (me), but he wasn’t sure if it would work out because I’m Jewish and he’s atheist, and we lived on opposite sides of the country during the school year. In retrospect, I should have taken that as a warning that he sometimes feels things that he doesn’t tell me. In fact, he never told me what he was feeling. I think the MySpace posts stopped after we started dating. Perhaps he wrote one about how great I was, but it’s possible I am making that up.

Finally, we have Facebook notes. Now, I love Facebook. Yeah, I said it. Don’t judge me. But Notes were one of the earlier applications that Facebook added—along with an application to upload lots of photos—and I thought it was an evil MySpacization which would lead to the fall of humanity. I still don’t use Facebook notes, but I often enjoy things that other people write.

All three of these forms of blogging are unacceptable to me. Besides that I think keeping a blog is pretentious, my main reason for not writing one is that I keep a diary. Yes, a diary. It’s made out of paper. I use a pen to write in it. I began writing one in January of 1994, when I was just about to turn 8. That first diary lasted 3 years. It’s mostly me cussing at my mom. I am now on my 23^rd diary. I don’t write every day, but I try to write about every day. Unfortunately, the more interesting things are for me, the busier I am, and the less time I have to write. And when I’m bored, I write a lot. It annoys me to read over them and go through pages and pages of me analyzing everything that happened in the day, and then find that I didn’t write for a week and come across a one-page entry that goes along the lines of: “Dear Diary, Sorry I haven’t written in so long! Things have been crazy! On Monday I cut school to drink with my friends. On Tuesday I had a math test that I didn’t study for but I got a copy from somewhere and memorized all the answers during lunch. Remember that guy I said I liked? Well on Thursday we ended up making out for like 3 hours in his car. Today my dad said I was grounded so we’ll see if I can go to the show on Saturday. It’s almost Shabbat I gotta go bye!”

So why, if I am against blogs and I already keep a diary, am I now starting a blog? Because I have a lot of words in my head. This is not going to be a document detailing boy drama or girl drama or my daily adventures or even feelings. I want this to be essays. My diary is largely stream-of-consciousness, and I want something where I can write coherently. Why not just write coherently in my Diary, you ask? Fuck you.