Being Geek Chic is a blog for stylish geeks, sophisticated nerds and people who enjoy the musings of a complete dork. Join us as we dream of driving the TARDIS, cuddle with our eBooks and test out an iPad sleeve. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi and a team of brilliant lady nerds. Meet the team.
A few months ago I was sitting in a bar in downtown Minneapolis with Being Geek Chic intern Emma Bauer, brainstorming questions to ask potential Lady Geeks of the Week. The question that stood out for me that evening:
Q: What would you tell your 13-year-old self?It’s widely acknowledged in education and psychology circles that 12 is the age that girls lives go to pot. Among the reasons:
1. Their self-esteem plummets
2. Hormones, periods, bodily fluids
3. Eating disorders begin to develop
4. Increased peer pressure
5. New academic challenges (ahem, junior high)
Some of this is applicable to both sexes, but for 12 year old girls, it’s different.
There’s undeniable, statistical proof that before puberty, girls and boys experience depression and other psychological issues at the same rates. Then puberty hits. Girls experience certain, distinct biological and hormonal changes that ultimately raise their risk or contribute to depression.
Twelve is hard.
And that’s why 13 is so important. By the time you’re 13, you’ve probably experienced a few awkward issues, whether it’s peer pressure or periods. RL Stine’s books start to collect dust and Poe becomes a literary form of acid. Everyone around you is transforming and you can’t even ignore it, because looking at all your friends just makes you realize that you too are getting tits and zits. Perhaps even more aggressively.
I never appreciated how important it was to go through that transition. The “It Gets Better" campaign was meant to help gay kids get through those awkward teenage years, but really, it’s like 3% of people who actually enjoy those years. Really, we all should have been told it would get better. That we’d find a bra that actually fits and someone to have sex with.
Those years of awkward change led me to writing. First, short stories and poetry and eventually journalism. By the time I got to college, I was making documentaries about aliens, but it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t turn inward and fight hard to maintain my sense of self when so many other influences were heckling my soul. Most baffling of all: I didn’t know I was discovering “me;" I just thought I was protecting myself. Turns out, they were the same thing.
Even though I know my junior high ass would have scoffed at the notion, I wish I could have told myself a few things…
Dear Elizabeth,
Everyone is still calling you that. And Dolly. A few years from now, you’ll lose the E and abeth and go by Liz. It’s hipper. And tougher.
You’re doing an incredible job. Really. You’re smart and you aren’t afraid of that intelligence. Soon, others are going to treat you poorly for that very reason, but hold onto that stubborn sense of right. It will be the thing that propels you forward even as you approach 30.
Keep writing. Someday someone is going to pay you for it and unlike athletics, which are of incredible importance right now, it will actually BE the ticket to your future.
Believe in yourself. If you won’t fight for you, who will?
And don’t worry, you’ll get better jeans in your 20s.
Love,
E
True story: I really like Pink.
Truly. It’s not a sarcastic statement and I’m not even trying to be funny. I genuinely think she kicks ass.
There’s nothing more judgy and shitty than when you’re sitting in the bar and a song comes on that you just love so you begin to hum, maybe even belt out the lyrics karaoke style, until, you realize that your social circle doesn’t approve of certain things, AKA pop music. Suddenly, you have to watch just how earnestly you sing lest you become the target of unkind chuckles.
We’re all drawn to different things for different reasons. With music, it may be a lyric or a guitar riff. It’s not necessarily something you can explain in a blog post. For me, that’s always what drew my heart to geek culture in the first place.
And this applies to a lot of shit. It isn’t just music.
I have been acting like a superior jerk about Fifty Shades of Grey. I will wholeheartedly admit that now. There’s really no good reason for it. In my mind, I’ve justified it because “there’s other great books to read," but just because it’s not my taste doesn’t mean it isn’t helping someone else. I call a great book, “literary therapy," and perhaps the Grey books are just a different variety. Whatever your prescription, right?
But let me bring this back to music. If you were to run through the tunes on my iPhone, you’d find a bizarre mix of people and taste. Beyonce next to Bob Dylan. Vince Guaraldi next to The White Stripes. One area of life where my obsessive mind has a wider starting point is music. My reading tastes, movie preferences and design leanings can be so narrow. It’s probably a positive sign that my mind is a bit broader in an area or two.
And come on, you have to admit when you’re driving home from work and you hear that refrain… "I’ve had a shit day…" it all feels better.
I have two stupid, irrational fears.
Most people reserve the part of their brain where illogical terror resides for spiders and snakes. I had to go and get creative in that quadrant.
One could argue that the obesity fear isn’t entirely illogical. With my whole "let’s tell the world my most embarrassing secret" thing - it’s really not that big of a surprise. But have you ever seen a news story about a 20-something year old woman who was carrying around an extra 20 pounds suddenly waking up with an extra 1,000? Yeah, illogical.
The other is easier to forgive, because you can’t control your dreams. I blame Facebook. These exes and pseudo-exes show up on my damn newsfeed all the time and I can’t work up the guts to de-friend. I was only recently let free like a butterfly on a spring afternoon by one particularly destructive ex when he up and quit the site altogether.
It’s really the pseudo-ex-boyfriends that torture me though. What’s a pseudo-ex-boyfriend, you ask? Here’s a definition:
1. A boy who you go “out" with. They’re not dates, but it’s just you two single people, doing things couples do. And then he insists on paying.
2. A boy who texts you for advice. Career, family, furniture, otherwise. Never asks about, mentions or indicates he would need advice about women.
3. A boy who you have relations with. No, these are not one night stands. No, they are clearly not “Friends with Benefits" scenarios. Relations is up to your definition.
4. A boy who gets obscenely and zealously angered when another man actually asks you on a proper date.
5. A boy whose friends are so used to you being the only girl around said boy that they start to refer to you as his girlfriend by accident.
See also: Episode 130 of Seinfeld - The Calzone
Origin: Usually College
One can see why this would be a torturous scenario. You meet a guy. He asks you to “hang out" and then tries to kiss you. Then he asks you to “hang out" again. This time with his friends. Then he asks you to “hang out" a third time. With his parents?!
And when you finally just say, “what the hell are we?" he looks at you like a bewildered deer right before he runs back into the woods.
These dudes regularly visit me in my sleep. Sometimes they’re pleasant and I wake up and I think, “oh, that was nice." Other times it’s destructive and horrible like Godzilla just took hold of my self-esteem and toppled it like a poorly constructed Lincoln Log set. I wake up sweating and confused and in need of Prozac.
A few weeks ago these two fears converged in a nightmare that can only be described as my brain taking a vacation at Lucifer’s summer home. In the dream, one of my pseudo-ex-boyfriends had opened a pizza shop in my home town. It should be noted that the fellow doesn’t actually make pizza for a living either. But, in this particular version of my personal hell, he operated a hockey-themed pizza place. I became a regular patron of said establishment, visiting several times a day and gorging myself on his spicy pepperoni slices. The more I visited, the more obese I became. The more obese I became, the more attention he paid me.
When I finally stopped eating, I bundled up and watched him play hockey from a bench. I couldn’t skate, because my legs had become too fat to properly glide without causing me to topple over on the ice.
And that’s when I woke up.
My first thought? That *might* have hurt more than our original fallout. At least other pseudo-ex-boyfriends have the respect to leave my weight alone while taunting me in my sleep.
Tolkien once said:
I have to give Tolkien credit for tapping into my deepest issues so precisely. Whether it’s the dreams I’ve conceived for my career or the dreams I can’t control in slumber - they’re powerful because they are an amplified version of my life.
Dreams take our old realities and bring them back to the surface and reach into our future and show us possibility. Both force you to look at things differently and perhaps even admit that you have some things to let go.
In the meantime, I need to develop a normal fear or two. Like a bad credit score and semi-trucks. I mean, how could those two ever meet up in a dream?
I fall into patterns. The pattern around here: I write about my personal issues on Thursdays. It’s like you, dear readers, are part of an internet-based group therapy session which you didn’t sign up for, but hopefully we’re all benefiting from it. So, let’s talk about our issues.
Earlier this summer, I put my head in a Nora Ephron book and I’ve only recently discovered that there were other unread pages on my Kindle. Of all the brilliant things she ever wrote or said I’m going to have to take “Everything is copy," as my personal motto. It’s especially true when you start to think about the parts of life that become appropriate for a “Therapy Thursday" style post.
So let me say it another way: Our lives are stories.
There are good guys and bad guys. There are tired tropes and stereotypes. There are beautiful settings and action sequences and love triangles. There are moments when we say what we mean. And moments when we lie. The most accomplished actors aren’t acting at all. What does that mean about how we portray ourselves in our story lines?
Two and a half hours of quiet writing time and a great manicure are my personal Prozac. #feelinggood
— Elizabeth Giorgi (@lizgiorgi) September 11, 2012
When you live by the mantra, “Everything is Copy," your life becomes something you can own. It’s not just something you’re experiencing. It’s not a bus you didn’t mean to get on. You bought the ticket for this movie - so you may as well show up. It’s why I’m most prolific when I look at my own life and try to derive meaning in the form of sentences and paragraphs.
Pain becomes prose. Happiness becomes comedic dialogue. Challenges become triumphs.
When you sit down and finally hammer it out on the keyboard, how do you portray yourself? Are you the main character? Are you telling the truth? Or are you trying to hard? Or as Nora so perfectly put it:
“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”
The big question for Therapy Thursday is this: If everything is copy, are you living your life as the heroine?
