i vant ta be a celebritayy

"Before you graduate please define success for yourself. If you don't you will get caught up with what success means for the rest of the world."

I keep her words near and dear to my heart…but I’ve never fully listened to them. When touching upon the impending sorrow most college grads feel upon being hung from a helicopter and dropped into an ice cold bucket of real life, I think my soror said it best.

I have recently become rather infatuated with celebrities, one in particular whom I will not name (Kim Kardashian), but only insofar as they are deemed superhuman. Now my most loyal readers already know that I consider myself irresistibly philosophical and given this there would be absolutely no reason why the eminence of seemingly normal people wouldn't be intriguing to me. I find it incredible that all it takes for un-famous people to second guess themselves is to see a celebrity who enjoys attention, accolades, neverending access to the world, and money. I realize that by implying that celebs aren’t the only ones that can be looked up to I am echoing the archaic ideal of teachers and doctors being recognized more (which really means being paid more).

Many may have realized this before but my epiphany is something which I really do pray helps me get over my obsession. We are the reason celebrities are the way they are. If there was no paparazzi, no cameras, no multi-million dollar salaries, no gossip sites/magazines/tabloids, and no envy...celebrities would cease to exist as the fuel to young aspiration that they are now. They are normal human beings in all ways. They get tired, they have bad hair days, they get pimples, they think about how they are getting old and must do something worthwhile. They overwork and underdeliver and sometimes the opposite. Although they seem to float carelessly thru life, they are forced to hide their humanness because somehow we've tagged 'impenetrable' onto the definition of 'celebrity'. If we weren’t in their faces all the time they wouldn’t feel it necessary to be on their A-game all the time. The only reason they are special and we compare ourselves to them is because they make drastically more money than a substantial part of the globe.

Celebrities look/are perfect because of money. If impoverished and middle-class people had enough money, they would look airbrushed all the time too. They would endorse products and lose weight at lightning speed and donate $1 million to Haiti Earthquake Relief. I never really thought of money as an enabler in this way and I know it sounds trite but money is really the only way to substantiate the label of celebrity. Well, duh. The substantiation of the celebrity label also shows in what types of work we think are deserving of mass sums of money. I do thought experiments on the regular (to determine level of possibility) and my current relish comes in the form of picturing how the world would be if we started ignoring celebs...also known as treating them and their human faults as human. Would Hollywood writher up and sink beneath the ocean?

When my soror elaborated her point she went on to say the once out of school you come into contact with a variety of people. She said she met people in their 40s who made less money/year than she did and they were struggling. She met people who hadn't even hit their 20s yet and they made millions a year, they were set for life. But what do we mean when we say "set for life"...you can buy whatever you want? or you can buy whatever you need? Both? Aren’t all people deserving of enough money to buy what they want/need? No, I am not communist.

So, given what my soror so brilliantly relayed to me it's quite unnatural for people to view their success outside of their financial standing and by what age they attain such financial standing. Money buys any and everything if you have enough of it. I don't know that I have a personalized answer for the question of whether money buys happiness. Is success seen as the attainment of a large sum of money in whatever one’s field/passion is? Some might say it’s the amount of change you can inflict with your passion but others might say money is needed in order to fully and freely pursue one’s passion. I have not figured out my definition of success yet.

I find myself wishing I had enough money to just be able to dabble in whatever I wished. I don’t really know what I’m good at or where my passions could lead me. It only makes sense that I would aspire to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible so that I could then use the money to try a whole bunch of shit and see what makes me happy!

do you know what an ACoA is?

You work with them. You go to school with them. You are friends with them. You ride the train with them. They are the Adult Children of Alcoholics.

Adult Children of Alcoholics is a book by Janet Geringer Woititz, Ed.D. It was a New York Times bestseller...in the 1980s. It is a book I was a little reluctant to read until about 3 weeks ago during my last days of residing at home with my mom. I say 'residing' because I was hardly living. All the bad things in the world only happen to my mom. I know that this is hardly the truth and I must remind her of how fortunate she is because I am her parent. I have never been a child and needless to say the role I took on in my family at 5 years old is the same role I will be viewed to have at 55 years old, barring any major changes in my parents habits.

There are 13 distinctive characteristics of an ACoA (and some of these are not limited to ACoAs and an ACoA may not show signs of all of these characteristics):

-ACoAs guess at what normal behavior is.

-ACoAs have difficulty following a project thru to its completion.

-ACoAs lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth.

-ACoAs judge themselves without mercy.

-ACoAs have difficulty having fun.

-ACoAs take themselves very seriously.

-ACoAs have difficult with intimate relationships.

-ACoAs overreact to changes over which they have no control.

-ACoAs constantly seek approval or affirmation.

-ACoAs usually feel that they are different from other people.

-ACoAs are either super responsible or super irresponsible.

-ACoAs are extremely loyal, even in the face of evidence that their loyalty is undeserved.

-ACoAs are impulsive.

Although I am not finished with the book, reading it has shined a light on a very basic fact of our world today; the true effect that alcoholism has on families and children has still not been fully acknowledged, recognized, or researched. Growing up I spent an exorbitant amount of time trying to be opposite of the people who brought me into this world. I always remembered people that would say they grew up to be just like their mother or father without fail. Despite all of the time spent trying to change something that had not fully shaped yet, during my most crucial developmental years...I am finding that not all that much changed. I wake up and see my mother's face in the mirror almost everyday. I find myself resentful that I see normalcy around me and I can't attain it, grasp it, or become it. This book has opened my eyes a bit to my own issues and to the fact that the language of suffering is universal.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has ever had an alcoholic friend or family member...especially those who have come into contact with an ACoA. It has helped thousands understand the thinking that comes with this kind of traumatic upbringing, an upbringing that doesn't get the national attention it warrants.

2009, I bid you good riddance...

"There's nothing like the brilliance of me loving me." -- A. Lopez

I've washed my hands of 2009. What a horrible, complicated, and utterly annoying year with all of its lessons and booby traps. There are only 2 good things about this year in my book: I rang it in with one of my favorite people in life and I graduated from college.

Since I've last blogged I've been swimming in growing pains and change. I've had mixed feelings about my writing and what it does for me...healthy and unhealthy. There is nothing like my appreciation for the spoken word but sometimes I write passionately and hate what results, a blinding and catastrophic swirl of words that probably don't mean anything to my readers...or anyone else in the world for that matter. I am often blinded my own circumstances, my past traumas, and current struggles...I often forget to make sense. I feel like one in a room full of many "opposites" and "differents"...like there can be no one who understands my views because ultimately there's no one else in the world like me, yes? I knew I should have been made an action figure by now.

As entirely self-centered as I may seem, lately life has been similar to walking on a tripwire suspended in mid-air above the city of my dreams that is wholly unattainable unless I am to allow myself to fall. As an act of self-defense I've spent a lot of time engulfed in my own issues, a place that is not happy 63% of the time. I desperately want self-betterment and excellence, confidence and clarity, joy and calm, intuition and sanity. Recently, I have tried my hand at minor internalization, a way of dealing with personal things way more personally...sort of like me having a conversation with who I see in the mirror as opposed to chatting with my boyfriend who would probably like to be in a coma while I talk, or maybe just shoot me. I answer my own questions, play my own games, and find my own ways to see the light in life. So far it's been...different. I write only a little now and of course, I get trapped in my own mind at times but overall I hope to achieve balance.

As a little girl I used to pick themes for each new year, as in goals to concentrate on...and for 2010 I will be resurrecting my old habit. 2010 is the year for my...[wait for it]...Positivity Makeover. I may not be writing as often but I'll still be around. As trite as the phrase "trimming the fat" is, the elimination of negativity in all regards is in full effect. I don't have to be self-centered but if things I can eliminate are not in line with where I'm trying to go or what I'm trying to do I won't hesitate to let go. I never let go and I never get over anything but this will have to change.

I'm so used to chaos that negativity feels like a normal part of the cosmos but as I've taken years to find out, it doesn't have to be. My makeover has already been graced by Glee ringtones, saved money, and frequent usage of exclamation points in texts or emails. Anything that makes me smile is not out of the question.

I made a list of 4 people that I absolutely need to lose contact with or forget about because at the end of the day all they do is make me feel like shit or act as an accomplice to such. The people on this list are all ex-boyfriends (except for one) and my complications with them have stemmed from trying to carry on post-relationship friendships. They all know that I'm conscientious and they all take advantage of it. Being nice is so overrated. Per my exit from an extremely shaky time...I am very optimistic about what is to come. Farewell '09, we'll see how this goes.

Cheers two-thousand-TEN.