A tale of shorts and the death of a terrorist (quite a range, huh?)

So, this is probably going to sound weird, but I haven't owned a pair of shorts in about seven years. I'll occasionally don capris or skirts in the summer, but more often than not I've worn jeans and kept these legs nice and covered.

The more I think about it, the stranger this is. Even when I was working out for 5 hours a week, the skinniest I've been since puberty, and felt relatively confident in my appearance, my legs stayed covered up to the best of my ability regardless of how hot it got.

Over the last year or so I've been working on being healthier - namely, getting more color in my diet and moving around more - and even though the weight has stopped dropping off, my body's continued to shift around as the proportions of muscle to fat change.

And slowly but surely, my perception of myself has changed too. I think I first noticed

it near the beginning of the year, when I realized that what I saw in the mirror wasn't what everyone around me saw. You know those images of people with eating disorders where they're super skinny but look in the mirror and see themselves as obese?

I've always thought that it's crazy that someone's perceptions can be so warped. And, while certainly not to the same extent, I realized that I'd been doing the exact same thing.

In the months since I've slowly started becoming more comfortable with my body - yes, even the chubby patches I've still got - and learning to be happy with where I'm at. I've still got further to go, both in terms of being healthy and in not being too hard on myself, but it's definitely improvement.

I'd had another post planned for this week's theme, but this week as I was doing goofy dance moves surrounded by mirrors in my gym class, as I watched myself I had a sudden realization:

I never thought I'd say this, but I like the way I look.

I just got my paycheck, and I see some shorts on the horizon...

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Oh! Almost forgot: we said we'd talk about the Osama Bin Laden death in our posts this week. I feel a little torn on the issue. The September 11th attacks had very little effect on me personally, since I'm across the country with no relatives in New York and was fairly young at the time. So on a personal level the whole thing feels kind of surreal, (this isn't meant to be tongue in cheek, but this is the best analogy I can make) like if you actually definitively killed off the Daleks in Doctor Who, a mainstay villain who always comes back and we've all gotten used to being around. What do you do with the big bad guy dead? Does this even change anything in the day-to-day, since there are so many other terrorists out there? Isn't it hypocritical of us to condemn a killer and then kill him with no trial or public tribunal (or even after that?)

But. At the same time, while I can't find it in me to condone the death of a human being, I also can't condemn those who have celebrated his death. Many, many people have had their lives taken from them or irrevocably damaged because of the terrorist attacks, and I think as humans we have a deep-seated thirst for "eye for an eye" justice. While I don't think revenge is a healthy method of dealing with grief, if the people effected by 9/11 feel more at peace now then I certainly can't tell them to stop feeling that way.

Bah, life is complicated. To quote Hank Green: truth resists simplicity.

I never thought I'd say,

I need to stop buying so many books. Don't get me wrong, I love to read, but right now I have an ever growing pile of books which I have yet to read. I've been really busy lately and haven't had time to read, which really sucks. Anytime I go into a bookshop (which I have to stop doing now) I actually have to stop myself from buying more. I guess I'll just have to wait until summer to get through them.

Anyway, part two, Osama Bin Laden. I think I feel very disconnected from the whole thing. I was 9 when 9/11 happened and I didn't really understand much about it. I think most of would have spent about half their life in a world full of fear of terrorism, but still I think the UK has slightly less of a threat. But I'm not sure how I feel about Bin Laden's death, I'm kind of indifferent to it, I'm not happy, I don't feel the need to celebrate it but I'm also not upset. I don't think his death will mean a better world, there will still be terrorist attacks and stuff like that. But what's done is done, he would of died at some point.

I'm sorry this is late, at least in my time zone and is poorly written because of this.

I never thought I'd say this, but:

I'm glad that the Conservatives won a majority government.  Sorry, but I'm going to go into Canadian politics here for a minute, because that's the most important thing that's been happening in my life recently.  As someone whose political leanings are somewhat left of centre, I don't support the Conservative party.  I disagree with quite a lot of the things they've done and the things they're planning to do in the near future.  I dislike Stephen Harper and his attitude about government and his abuses of power and his general sleaziness.  My dislike for the party was made even worse by a lot of the crap they pulled throughout their campaign.  So I'm not glad that they won.  But if they had to win, I'm glad they got a majority government rather than continuing to have a minority government like we've had for the last seven years.  At least now something will get done, and even if those somethings are not the things I want to have happen, hopefully either things will turn out alright anyway, or it will be bad enough for people to finally vote differently in the next election.

As for Osama Bin Laden, I just don't know.  I can't help but feel that in some way that it was basically an execution without trial.  I know that there's really no question of his guilt, and I know they tried to take him alive first, but at the same time, it just doesn't seem right.  I don't know.  Revenge is not justice.  Death is not something to celebrate.  I understand why this was done and all, but it just doesn't sit right with me.

Last night, the TV was on in the background, and it was on an American channel when the news came on and they were talking about Osama Bin Laden.  At the same time, I was watching the results of the election come in online.  There was this really strange moment of juxtaposition between watching the democratic process in action and people celebrating something that, frankly, feels really undemocratic.  That's not to say I think Canada is better or more democratic than the US - I'll be the first to tell you that Canada has done some really awful things - but I was just hit by the really stark contrast between the major events of the day.

I Never Thought I'd Say This, but...

I need to stop having a life. Really, life just gets in the way of all my school work. Everything just seems to get crammed into the months before summer. I have a bunch of IA's to do, some world lit papers and an extended essay on top of all my regular school work. (My worries must seem so trivial to all of you in the grown-up world, I feel so little compared to you guys). Now I've got a figure skating show to do and my grades are closing. The figure skating show is taking up a ton of time and leaving no moments for focus on work. I say that I need a life all the time, but the truth is that I need to lose it.

There isn't much that I never thought I'd say, I spend my time thinking of wacky and crazy situations and how to handle them, so a lot of things pop into my head.

But concerning recent events, I never thought I'd say that I'm not exactly rejoicing Osama Bin Laden's death. He's responsible for the 9/11 attack which killed thousands of people, he's also been apart of many other terrorist attacks, so shouldn't I be happy he's dead? My uncle is a survivor from the World Trade Center and I still don't know how he feels about this, I know I have mixed feelings. Part of me feels that Bin Laden deserved this for all the pain and damage he's caused in this world, another part doesn't feel like I have any right to judge anything regarding life and death. Finally, I just can't celebrate the death of another human, no matter how horrible they were, it makes me feel like I'm sinking down a level on the morality meter and killing him doesn't bring back anyone who died, then again it also prevents him from killing more. I feel a bit indifferent, leaning towards the happy/relieved, the world is now a little bit safer. I do view this as a success for the U.S. government, however. We didn't let him truly get away with the things he did, because in the end we found him after years of searching.

It boils down to this, I guess. Bin Laden is gone, the world is one terrorist less, and thus a little bit safer. Yet I realize now this isn't something I'm going to party over.

This is my post, sorry if it wasn't that great, this subject was a little difficult for me. I hope I didn't say anything too controversial, I feel like people expect me to be singing and bouncing off the walls like a lot of other people I've seen, but I'm just not.