i haven't written for a while. i've been trying to figure out some things in life. some deal with school, some deal with being sober, and some deal with family. with the advice of a friend, i have begun simply to write short snippets here and there. with the advice of another friend, i have been trying to breathe life into ideas about what types of activities make me happy. she told me to make a list of four things. the list reads like a ridiculous bucket list, only i know there are more things than just these to do before i die. these are things that i can do that have nothing to do with academics or teaching. nothing to do with family. these are things that might bring joy to my life, to help me feel connected to my emotions, to help me find balance. i've been at a disadvantage financially, so the going is slow. but today i took a small step.
i went to fort washington state park, meandered down one of its hiking trails and took some pictures. nothing big. just enough to see what the trails were like and to get out of the house for a little while. i needed time to process some things. the same friend who suggested i just needed to write also instructed me to read A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf.
it's getting late, and i will write more later. but one thing jumped out at me as I read the first chapter: "One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well" (p. 19). i have struggled the past few months with money, filling out applications and wondering about how all of this adventure in education will turn out in the end. these hardships are not only about money, though. i have struggled to find my way, almost like a salmon swimming upstream to spawn. the road to self-discovery is an important one, i feel. however, the small catharses along the way are painful sometimes.
it is difficult - to say the least - to hold onto resentment about realizing myself as ill-equipped when I reflect upon what the legacy was. if poor, women's work involved telephone operator, waitress, or sales girl at a department store. maybe factory work. domestic help. if you showed promise or if you came from "good breeding", your prospects were only slightly better. and in the ambiguity of the role, the women in my family settled nicely into their expected roles. they did so often with disdain or acting out; yet they remained seated and quiet. so why am i to hate these decisions, when i lack so much of the context in which they were made? and why did so much confusion cloud their decisions about me, i can probably guess. has not the circle come round and am i not now positioned to become what i always wanted to be?
albert bandura theorizes that human beings learn in many different ways. and one of these ways involves vicarious learning. without expounding too much upon his ideas, i will simply leave you with this thought: what we know of the world often comes from watching how others behave in certain situations, contexts, and relationships. as a result, we can learn in situations in which a word is never uttered. the simple brevity of action leads us to understand all we need to know, for better or worse.
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