The one change that started the rest

A good chunk of my opinions have changed over the last few years; I grew up in a very religious and conservative family and mirrored those viewpoints until the second half of high school. I'll focus on the one where it all started.

I had never felt a disgust for LGBTQ people as it is sometimes seen in religious folk in the media, but to me it always seemed simple: it's wrong so they should just stop doing it, the way you'd encourage someone to stop stealing or stop eating McDonald's every day.

Near the end of my junior year of high school my boyfriend, R, came out as being gay. This forced me to acknowledge that here was someone I cared about and knew to be a good and reasonable person that was saying that this was what he is, he can't help it, and it's simply part of him.

It had been pretty obvious for awhile that R wasn't happy being in a relationship with me and was upset about something, it just wasn't clear what was going on. Then I imagined him suffering like that for the rest of his life: finding a wife, having to pretend in front of her, and not having someone he could confide in and be honest about his sexuality with. It was at that point that I realized I couldn't look him in the eye and tell him to simply "choose" to be straight.

Just as life changing was the aftermath from those around us, particularly the people I'd looked up to in the church. Our youth pastor, who had always been friendly to our little gaggle that went to church together, didn't even want to hear about R or how he was doing. My dad calmly asked me how many men R had sex with (which is insulting on several levels). I saw what it is like to be turned on by a church, how a group that had been so welcoming and friendly flipped and became aggressive.

Then I started noticing other things too - why were all the women relegated to either working with children or music? Why did everyone talk, dress, and act exactly the same, and anyone that was an outlier either eventually caved to fit the mold or became essentially an outcast? Why were we supposed to support laws that imposed our religious beliefs on others that might not hold the same beliefs? And I couldn't quite articulate this until Stuff Christian Culture Likes pointed it out, but why was there an emphasis on doing things rather than relationship?

This didn't all directly lead me to the beliefs I hold now, but it started the ball rolling. About a year and a half later I stood out on a busy street corner with R in our small, conservative town holding "No on Proposition 8" signs (this wanted to outlaw gay marriage in California. It passed, with lots of funding from Utah, but if I remember correctly has now been overturned and is entering the appeals process) which outed me as a political liberal to my family. Another three years later in 2011, I came out as agnostic to my friends, and eventually my family.

Blogiversary!

Happy blog-birthday! We're one year old! That just seems so unreal. In some ways I still feel like we just started this, but at the same time it sort of feels like we've been doing it forever. Time is weird. But we've lasted a whole year! Huzzah!

Since we started this blog, I finished my honours thesis and graduated from university. I've moved twice, including living with my parents for the first time in three years. This time last year I was still trying to decide where to go to law school, and now I'm close to finishing my first year. Because of that I've met a ton of new people and learned so many new things. It seems almost unreal when I think about how many of the words that I use on a daily basis I had never even heard of a year ago. Learning is good!

In terms of the blog, having a weekly deadline is a nice push for me. I like writing, all kinds of writing, but I tend to let it fall to the wayside when I have other things to get done, so needing to put up a weekly post has been a good motivator (even if my posts always feel like they're super short. Oops.). It's also fun to get to explore different topics and things that I wouldn't necessarily write about or even think about on my own, and some weeks have been a real challenge to figure out what I wanted to say. I guess I've gotten to know myself and my own opinions a little bit better from doing this too.

And of course, you girls! It's so nice to have other Nerdfighters to talk to at all, and you all are so interesting and intelligent and nice that I just love reading your posts. And I find that the more I get to know you, the more I want to get to know you, so here's to many more happy years of blogging together!

Keladry

My feelings about my name are actually pretty similar to what Sarah said about hers yesterday.  My name is so darn common.  I know so many Katies it's just ridiculous.  I can remember wanting to change my name as far back as grade 6.  Oddly, though, most of the names I've wanted to change to over the years have been derivatives of my full name, Kathleen.

In grade 6 I secretly wished my name was Kitty, and at some point during junior high I remember thinking the name Leeny would be cool... in retrospect, that would have been a bad plan.  That's not even a name.  I guess that's probably why it appealed to me at the time, because I knew no one else would have the same name.

Once I reached high school the number of Katies got diluted a bit, so I lost interest in changing my name, but at some point one of my friends decided to start an initiative to get everyone to call me Kathy.  He actually managed to keep it up for about a week, but it didn't catch on with anyone else, so he gave it up.

I guess so far this has mostly been "Things I used to want to change my name to" rather than "what I would change my name to if I had to," but oh well.  There are lots of names that I like, but most of them are things that I've thought about in the mindset of potential future baby names, so it would seem weird to pick on of those, even though I think Ayla and Kaya are some of the prettiest names ever.

I think if I had to change my name I'd want to choose something symbolically important to me; a name that I associate with something that I want to be.  I think I would choose Keladry, after the protagonist of  Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small series, because Kel is so strong and brave and everything I've always wished I was but have never been.

Wrapping up theme week and thoughts about the blog

It seems like we're starting to get somewhere with finding some purpose and inspiration here. Yay!

I made a page with all of our theme suggestions, as well as the theme for next week at the very top.* I also updated the sidebar because, seriously, I think we should call each other by our actual names at this point, it has been almost half a year :P** If you guys don't like anything about either of those, feel free to change them (directions are under the asterisks in case you have any trouble finding it).

At this point I'm pretty excited to get on with our "real" posts. The only other suggestion I really have to offer is that we make sure we pick our topics early every week, either in posts/comments here, or on Facebook. And now we have a great big list of ideas to choose from if none of us are struck with any particular inspiration.

That's about it from me. See you guys next week to talk about how we define nerds and geeks!

*If you want to change anything about it, under the posting tab, click "edit pages" and you'll find it there.

**This can be changed under the design tab, if you click on "edit" by the box that says text.

(Even) More about the blog

It's been really helpful to read the other posts this week to help me get some thoughts together about this. So here's my take on the blog right now:

When I'd mentioned a one person posting a week idea, I'd thought that it'd be one post for that week, so we'd each post once a month. But after reading your comments and thinking about it, I realize that could make each of us lazy - and then, if someone forgets their post, that means no post for that entire week! (also, it might be hard to keep track of which week we're blogging). So I'm pretty down for keeping the day schedule and finding someone to replace Kaity if she's no longer interested.

Sarah made a good point when she talked about us figuring out why there are problems with posting. For me, it's three-fold; I've abruptly started working many more hours at work so I have trouble keeping up with the posts throughout the week and/or writing mine ahead of time, I've been visiting my family and long-distance boyfriend on the weekends - which means leaving for work early, working all day, then going straight to somewhere else - and have trouble remembering to post in all of that, and, finally, as has been mentioned before, the themes lately haven't particularly sparked my interest and imagination.

Two of those things will start to get better as I adjust to my work schedule, and after this month with lots of birthday celebrations for me (turning 21, whooo!) my weekend trips will die down a lot. The theme issue seems to be big though, and it's been mentioned in all the posts so far.

Themes both need to be thought-provoking, as well as decided on far enough ahead of time that there's time to ponder what we're going to write and put out something deserving of the Nerdfighteria label.

One idea might be to spend an entire week brainstorming theme ideas, keep a running list in the sidebar, and each week at the end of our posts/in the comments decide on another theme so that we're always quite a way ahead (and if need be, can write posts ahead of time if we're going to be gone - this would be really helpful for me). This also helps spark some conversation in the comments to get us engaged.

What do you guys think?

To get the theme train rolling, I'm going to blurt out a few that come to mind as I reflect on my day and look around my room and read through these prompts:

How would you classify art? (and no fair using the famous porn quip of "I can't define it but I know it when I see it!)

What's your "happy place" - the place that makes you feel warm and comfortable inside, that you go to when you need to relax, and always look forward to visiting?

If you could have any mythical or made up creature, what would it be? What problems might arise? (training a minotaur, anyone?)

How do you differentiate between a nerd and a geek?

Choose a period of your life that was the hardest/most uncomfortable or awkward. If you could write a letter to yourself from then, what would you say?

What are you passionate about?

What single superpower would you choose?

What's the most meaningful media you've ever consumed? (book, video game, graphic novel, film, painting, video, etc)

Choose one opinion you hold that's unpopular and talk about why you came to that conclusion (this could be anything from "I hate the character Harry Potter" to critiques of politics and morality, as long as we're all civil)

Time to laugh at ourselves! Tell an embarrassing story.

What's one thing you'd really like to accomplish in the next year?

It seems like in many people's stories there seem to be some sort of "hinge" times or events - things that may have seemed small or insignificant but steered that life in a different direction. Look back on the story in your life - do you see any "hinges"? If so, what are they?

How do you recharge after a long day (or week, or month...)?

What's an opinion you've changed over time? How and why did that happen?

Who's someone you don't see much (or at all) anymore? What's your favorite memory of them?

What are you most proud of about yourself? What one thing do you wish you could change?

Who is/are your role model(s)?

How would you describe yourself? How do you think the people closest to you would? How about an enemy? (maybe "enemy" is a strong word, but I hope you get what I mean)

You know that feeling of being speechless in the moment and figuring out a really good comeback later? Time to let the zingers out! What would you have said if you had the chance?

How's that for a start? :)

About the blog

So as Rachel pointed out on the Facebook group, the blog has been in sort of sad shape lately, so here are my main thoughts about the blog.

There have been a lot of missed posts lately and I think before we decide what we're going to do about it we need to figure out why it's happening.  Is it just because it's summer and everyone would rather be off having exciting summer adventures and enjoying the nice weather, rather than sitting inside writing blog posts?  Is it because we don't have enough time to write every week?  Is it because we're not hitting on themes that we find inspiring enough?  Is it something else entirely?

For me, I've only missed one post lately, and that was because I was sick.  Since I'm living at home for the summer and only two of my friends live near me right now, I just have no life and nothing better to do than write blog posts, haha, so that's my story.  I don't mind that the rest of you are missing posts, I'm just curious as to why, so that we can figure out a better system to meet our blogging needs!

I guess some suggestions on solutions are to move to a different posting system.  We could do one person each week, or we could move to a biweekly system, though it could be a little difficult to remember whether it's a blogging week or not.  Also I think if we end up sticking to any sort of 'days of the week' system, we should figure something out for Thursday; either get Kaity back on board, or if she's not interested, we can try to find someone new (it looks as though there are a few people in the YP thread that showed up late and didn't end up getting a group, so we could try to recruit one of them)

Even though I'm managing to keep up with posts, they're usually not up to the quality that I would like them to be.  I think the issue for me is that we always choose themes at the last minute - usually either Sunday or Monday, which gives me at most two days to think about it, figure out what I want to say, write a post, edit it, etc. and I find it's not really enough time to produce something that I'm happy with posting.  If we could figure out something where we know the theme maybe a week ahead of time, or even a few extra days, that would be really helpful.  I find the longer I can know the topic and have it mulling over in the back of my mind, the more time there is for ideas to pop into my head, haha.  Also, 'free' weeks are good sometimes, because it's nice to share what's going on in our lives and get to know each other a little better that way, and it gives an opportunity to talk about something you're passionate about/interested in/whatever that might not necessarily apply to everyone and therefore not be a good theme.  But again, it's good to have some notice on that so we can think about what to write, rather than saying on Sunday "well we haven't chosen a theme so let's just do a free week."  Maybe we could set up some sort of system where we take turns choosing a theme, and either do a free week after everyone's had a turn before we repeat, or in between each person, or something.  I don't know, just an idea.

Other than that, I think the only other thing I would say about the blog is that it would be nice if we interacted a little more, in terms of leaving to comments and responding to each other's posts and stuff.  Sometimes it feels like since we've been doing this for five months now (FIVE MONTHS, I can't even believe it's been that long, it feels like maybe two or three, haha), we should know each other a little better than we do.  I don't know, maybe that's just me.  And I know that even though this is a thing I would like to change, I don't make much of an effort at it, but now that I've written it down for the rest of you to see, maybe I will feel more motivated to actually do it.  There are definitely some weeks/posts where this happens and is great, but then there are other times when it doesn't (like now... it's been three weeks since anyone commented on anyone else!  And I know there have been fewer posts than usual in the past three weeks, but still!  Even the month before that, comments were pretty sparse).

Okay, those are all my thoughts, I am done now!  I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of you are thinking, and whether or not we're all on the same page.