Dirty and Smiling

The problem with a blog - unbeknowst to me at the time of creating it - is that you can't REALLY personally vent.  You can only allude to the situation or the person in question and thats just passive aggressive and I can't stand that.  Even though I know my list of readers is relatively small, it's just one of those social things I should probably just avoid because I will regret it later.  I think if I removed the link from my Facebook page I would feel a little more free to write what I want.  But I also feel like thats cheating.  I don't know why.  

So as far as the title of the  blog goes, is derived from the Ani DiFranco song 'Not A Pretty Girl'  and the chunk of lyric it comes from is this - 

I am not an angry girl
but it seems like I've got everyone fooled
every time I say something they find hard to hear
they chalk it up to my anger
and never to their own fear
and imagine you're a girl
just trying to finally come clean
knowing full well they'd prefer you
were dirty and smiling

I would love to come clean.  Tell people I'm pissed but I am the universal peacemaker (read - Universal Pacifier....not like a binky but like in calming the situation).  Saying things like "No, really, I'm ok!", or "Thats great, that'll work too.", "sure, I didn't see it from that way."  Since when have I been afraid to say what I need.  And if I actually told people "Hey that hurt when you did that.", "It made me feel like crap when this happened." man, things would come undone.  "What happened to the 'Happy Mandy'?"  "When did you become such a bitch?"  I'm afraid my first act of coming clean will be painful.  A separation and distinction which has needed to happen for some time now but I was afraid of the pain. Now I am not sure which would cause more pain - maintaining this friendship or losing it. 

I was here - Written whilst sitting in the Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver, CO

I was here –

 A great song by Lady Antebellum and everytime I hear it I wonder “What mark have I made? Who will remember me? How will they remember me?”  This song is like a call to DO SOMETHING with my life!  Everytime I hear it I am inspired and defeated at the same time.  But I imagine those two emotions go hand in hand for many people.  On the one hand I am totally jazzed to get out there and do – What?!  And then the defeat kicks in.  How?  Who can I reach?  Who would listen to me?  What am I even trying to say?  I don’t have the literary background to write the ideas and questions that are in my brain.  Most of them aren’t of cultural importance anyway.  Just every thought every mid-twenties individual has – who am I?  How did I get here in life?  How do I move past here to a place personal peace and contentment?  What does actually make me tick? 

            I love doing massage.  I am happy I went to massage school.  The school and the state of Colorado changed my life.  How do I translate my transformation into something meaningful to others?  What if massage doesn’t always do it for me for the rest of my life?  I want to go back to school for History.  Then I get into the physical roadblocks to my happiness.  Namely – money.  But I digress J

 (If I haven’t said it before, I have a hard time staying focused and on topic.  One of the many reasons I will never be a writer J)

 I was inspired this year by a former teacher and currently close friend.  While I was in high school, she was my speech coach.  The woman has had more of an impact on me than all the other women in my life combined.  I am grateful for her continuous wisdom and knowledge, her amazing warped sense of humor, boundless charity, and so many other positive qualities – so many so that I am running out of words to describe the greatness I see in her.  So like I was saying, I was inspired by her this year.  I volunteered to help her coach speech.  I enjoyed competeing in speech in high school and thought “If I affect one student in even the smallest way like she made an impact on me, it was worth it.”  I don’t know if I did, but I got to work with some incredibly talented, passionate and thoughtful kids and it was so worth it.  They were my daily dose of laughter in a life that had been so drab.  

Moses and Psalms 23 - Written in March and finally posted

Things have been good.  Really good.  Really, really good.  Have I convinced you yet?  And as I am writing this, the commercial for the Star Wars Symphony is on….coincidence?  Definitely.  But it still makes me happy. 

And the reason for my recent happiness, you ask?  Well, I will be getting out of Eldora at least for the summer.  I will be working in the kitchen at Village Creek Bible Camp.  www.villagecreek.net For those of you who don’t know me well, I spent most of my growing up summers here as well as every summer in High School.  It saved me from the boredom and debauchery that is Eldora in the summer.  I met some of my best, lifelong friends here and made amazing, totally inexplicable memories here.  So needless to say, I am excited to return to VCBC.  I realize that being 5-10 years older than the last time I worked on staff at camp puts me in a different space and gives me a different perspective.  I was discussing this job with a friend and I said I was excited about the spiritual concentration I usually have at camp.  And she made the comment that camp always feels like Moses being called into the wilderness to tend is father in laws sheep before he was given the directive to go to back to Egypt.  This comment excited me for two reasons. 1) I am excited about the prospect of God calling me to camp to reveal something to me.  2) When I was at the Quaker church a few weeks ago, the sermon was on Moses and the burning bush – what is God telling you?  I am excited to hear what God has to tell me. Ok, so maybe that is basically the same thing but it was two different experiences.

 And yesterday I just bought my plane ticket to go out to Colorado to see friends.  Things are good!!

 And Psalms 23.  The camp theme this summer is my favorite Christian book of all time.  Traveling Light by Max Lucado.  When I read that book when I was 16, it totally changed my relationship with God.  I am excited by the ‘coincidence’ of this.