evitae

I thought creativity would come back with writing, but in reality, reading is what’s been responsible for the little spark that’s been creeping into my consciousness every now and again. I’m not quite there yet, but it comes in waves. I’ll start looking at something at work, something inspiring, and I’ll get so excited about an idea that I am compelled to get up and walk around, as if to calm myself. It’s kind of annoying, like an incurable itch, a distraction, to get an idea when you can’t act on it right away, but it’s forced me to start archiving these ideas, and that has proven so much more valuable. Once I start writing (or more often, typing/Swyping), even more little ideas come tumbling out. I scribble everything I can down, and get right back to work.

A great deal of what’s influenced me to begin reading more often now is none other than my Kindle Touch. I was given an Amazon giftcard and thought immediately to blow it on videogames (shame on me; my hands are already full) but then it occurred to me to try a Kindle. After careful research, I decided on the Touch, and while I didn’t like it right away, I’m in love with it now. I have a short attention span at times, so being able to switch to another book at any time without worrying about the weight, papercuts, dogeared pages, or finding a bookmark, is just amazing. I can annotate and take notes without the anxiety of writing in my books. It just goes to show how much creativity is tethered to learning; if you’re brain dead, what could you possibly hope to create?

Now I’m studying everyday, keeping my RSS feeds up to date in Google Reader, and becoming the voracious reader I was as a child. And with that appetite rekindled, creativity will only follow. I should have remembered. Reading was the first thing to inspire me to begin with.

It is an emotional and intellectual imperative that I keep writing. I kept getting sidetracked by dates and numbers. I kicked myself when I didn’t follow through on Sunday, January 1st. I can’t explain my obsession with sequences, dates, and numbers. Maybe it was my way of feeling like I had control over the past. No use in pretending. I can only control now. Therefore, going forward, I will write and draw and design as it comes to me. Creativity is fleeting. There are so many ideas that I didn’t act on and have now lost. With tools like Evernote, my sketchbook, and my notebook, I will reclaim creativity. No excuses.

I felt the sting of being the (female) minority for the first time today, when someone uttered the sexist remark, “he runs like a girl.” My emotional response shocked me more than the comment. I sensed a small pause among the other gentlemen at the table before any amusement registered on their faces, but it didn’t change the fact that it made me feel belittled and irrelevant. My eyes burned a little. A positive, upbeat mood, fostered by a previous meeting about making an impact by volunteering was suddenly shattered by the smallest joke.

I just wanted to get out of there. I got up from the table, pretending to grab another cookie, scouting for a predominately female table to move to. Having come from a meeting that was curiously dominated by women, I thought I would feel better returning to such an environment. There were one or two such tables, but they were full (and boisterous), so I sat back down and cloaked myself in introversion, keeping up appearances that I was listening or part of the conversation with the occasional glance, smirk, or nod. What did I care anyway? I’m not a girl anymore after all. Sure, a grown man running like a little lass would be pretty funny… however it is a little girl runs anyway. But then why not say he runs like a little kid? Is that ageist?¹

Only now the the witty retorts come to me. I could have said, “Oh, so he runs like her?” a fellow employee and woman who is passionate about running and sits just a few seats behind me. I can just imagine the silence that might have been, or how they might have kept talking over me instead. Still, I wonder, how could I have enlightened him about the hurt his small words might cause? How could I make this a teachable moment instead of a venomous attack on his “manhood?” How could I make my point without it being attributed to my gender (or race for that matter)? Did it make any sense to spoil the mood to assert my presence, especially when I had joined them so late into the conversation? Instead, I chose silence.

I often feel an immense pressure to act as “one of the guys.” Most of the time, it makes me feel included and even empowered. I can just have fun, and for the most part, be myself. I don’t need to compete for their attention because I am one of them.² The inevitable, but typically mild sexist humor whizzes right over my head. Heck, sometimes I join in. Besides, it’s not my job to police humanity, is it?

Yet every once in a while, it makes me feel terrible. How much of this misogynistic behavior (mild or otherwise) have I internalized and accepted? It’s like I’m compromising that other side of me, my femininity, a side that is barely dominant in my personality, but is still important. I just wish I could have said something, anything, to help remind them that ours is a workplace that should promote diversity and conclusion, and should thusly be a place where exclusive language is avoided. Some might argue that my passiveness is feminine, but on the other hand, any aggression I might show to express a point, to assert myself, is either mannish (and therefore inappropriate) or negatively feminine, that is, bitchy.³

In other words, damned if you do, damned if you don’t. But I guess it’s better to always do anyway. The guys that will try to understand or do and stand up for you, those are your true friends. Unless of course, you don’t think guys and gals can be friends. That, however, is altogether a different story…

1. Does anyone care about ageism anyway? [↩]
2. There’s no better wing man than a woman. [↩]
3. Or just what they would expect from a woman. [↩]