On the Cusp

When I say beliefs, I mean of course, my spiritual beliefs. You may have come to realize that over time, your personal beliefs on the divine have changed radically, as have mine. This post is an attempt to summarize just how much my personal spiritual beliefs have changed in the last decade or so. I'll preface by saying that I was not really raised with religion. My mom had my brother and I baptized Methodist when we were infants, but beyond that I never really had any particular belief structure forced upon me. We went to church, perhaps, twice a year and only if we felt like attending - my grandparents preferred that we attend church with them on Christmas and Easter, but this was not something my mother enforced. So I was largely reared without too much religious dogma, and as such was allowed to have free reign over how I interpreted things I experienced as a child. Faeries in the woods at grandma's house? You bet. Fish-tailed monsters in the lake? Sure thing. Openi

This week we have another gem from Jenn Granneman, and this one is all about the contradicting nature of being both shy AND an introvert. I figured, this'll be good.... 25 Contradicting Things About Being A Shy Introvert I was pretty disappointed. Read the article here and see for yourself how short and stilted it really is. 1.  Wanting to be left alone but not wanting to be lonely. ~ I think this is across the board for all introverts, not just shy ones. Nobody wants to feel lonely. If being alone makes you feel lonely, you might not really be an introvert. 2.  Wanting to be invited to social events but not always wanting to go. ~ It's always nice to be invited, it means someone is thinking of you. But wanting an invite doesn't make you shy. Not wanting to go doesn't make you shy either, unless the reason for not wanting to go is that you're nervous or afraid of going for some reason. 3.  Wishing other people would notice you but avoiding the sp

I did something remarkable over the weekend - I joined the 21st century and acquired a smartphone. You have to understand how radical this is for me. I've been using the same budget flip phone for the last four years and it's only NOW starting to break apart a bit. Still perfectly usable. I had a hard time adjusting to my Chromebook, which is also at least four years old, because the OS is app based and all functions are stored on the cloud. So I ordered a new phone on Virgin Mobile's website a few weeks back and had it shipped to my mom's place (debit card address complications - it's resolved now) and this weekend we drove through a damn blizzard to go pick it up. It's the same brand as my flip phone, so I felt comfortable at least staying in the same " family" and it's Android, so I'm familiar with a lot of the app functions. Let me introduce the Kyocera HYDRO Reach: It looks a little blue-hued on the stock photo, but it's prett

I would like to start a weekly segment where I find articles (usually in list form) about one thing or another that's relevant to me and then challenge them, bullet point by bullet point. And the point of this is to show that we can't all be painted with the same broad strokes and that all of our lived experiences can paint radically different pictures than might be generalized. So this week's article is: 17 Ways Being An Introvert Is Different In Your 30s Than in Your 20s Follow this link to read the article yourself!  It was posted on Thought Catalog recently by Jenn Granneman, author of the upcoming book The Secret Lives of Introverts: Inside Our Hidden World. Her assertion is that people's lives drastically change from 20 to 30 and that how our introversion manifests will change as well. Okay, sounds fair. Lets see how it stacks up against my personal experience now.

Recently, I started watching a Korean drama commonly called My Introvert Boss. A better translation is actually "My Introspective Boss" (based on   내성적 ) or My Shy Boss - because of this character's personality. Anyways....My Introvert Boss follows the story of a young singer (Chae Ro Woon) who's sister tragically jumped to her death while working at a large PR firm called Brain. Three years after the fact, Ro Woon is determined to find the cause of her sister's death and so she begins working as an assistant - intent on getting the scoop about her sister's former boss Hwan Gi. Hwan Gi is the featured "introvert" of the series. He has a private penthouse/office at Brain and is hardly ever seen or heard. Even his personal secretary doesn't know what he looks like - she's been instructed to never look at him directly. We, the audience, see him as a foreboding figure in all black, accompanied with an oversized black hoodie. To the uns