Let's Have a Holi-gay Party!

The regional GSA meeting was super fun! There were a lot of groups there, fifteen or twenty, and a lot of them were newer, but they all had really cool representatives. There were a lot of great ideas thrown around, too- like having the titular holigay party or having a bake sale with rainbow cupcakes, etc. 

One thing that struck me is how lucky I am to be in such an accepting school. One of the groups who came to the meeting, from Lake Lure Classical Academy, have had a very vocal uproar against "the gay club" and all clubs have been suspended while the board "[seeks] legal counsel on club protocol'.(1) It is illegal, as far as I know, to specifically ban a GSA from meeting, so we'll see how that pans out for them. I just hope hatred doesn't come out on top.

One thing that the GSA is doing is assembling a list of MOGAI authors and books to put up on the English Honor Society's bulletin board, so that's awesome. A few that'll likely get up there are This Book Is Gay by James Dawson, an author who recently came out as transgender (2), and one of my personal favorites, Honor Girl, by Maggie Thrash, which is a memoir. We also have our own bulletin board, but what's going on that in the near future is as yet unclear to me. Still, it's something to think about, and I hope we get a wider sphere of acceptance from the school.

1) http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article45081705.html

2) http://www.autostraddle.com/award-winning-best-selling-ya-author-james-dawson-comes-out-as-a-trans-woman-313744/

New GSA Opportunities

This week has been pretty quiet again- things seem to cycle like that, with a prep week and then a big thing, and then another prep week for a big thing, etc. Next week's big thing is the regional GSA meeting at Time Out Youth, a safe space and help center for MOGAI youth. Last week's school GSA meeting had a lot of people, and I've approached some of them personally and made a post to the group page in order to invite them to go. Some people are busy, of course, but a few students and faculty and I are already sure we're going. 

The meeting's focus is a kind of 'show and tell' about what we're doing to further the GSA's mission in our community, so I'll talk about my project and the Day of Silence and the safe space kit and all of that. It'll be fun to see how many people are there, and maybe I can pick up some ideas for the project from what they're doing as well. Plus, of course, they're providing dinner, so that's always a plus.

If anyone who's reading this is interested in coming, just to see what it's like, join the Schoology group with the code on posters throughout the school, and here's the info for the regional meeting: 

    Where: Time Out Youth Center (2320 North Davidson Street, Charlotte, NC 28205)

    When: Wednesday, November 18 from 6:30 - 8:30pm

    Who: Gay-Straight Alliance club members and faculty advisors from Charlotte and the surrounding region

I hope I see a lot of people from LNC there!

Something Deep About Pitching Projects

Last night was the class's community pitch event, and let me just say, first off, big things like that should not be on Thursdays. That should just not be allowed. It's exhausting, and it make it feel like a Friday, which is just terrible. But I digress. 

There were so many people there, as it was the opening night of the play, and being able to talk about my project with all of them was so amazing. Some of them were parents, some came from other schools, and a few friends of mine came too. Giving the same pitch over and over and over again was a little weird- must be how teachers feel, giving the same lesson every day- but I kept it interesting and I feel like there was a lot of support for the project. There wasn't even one person who was negative, which suprised me, if I'll be honest. It's so encouraging, though, to hear over and over that people actually like what I'm doing. The gift bags that I made to go with my presentation (picture below) went over amazingly, too.

And on top of that, there were so many people who came to the GSA meeting! At least four teachers came, and maybe twenty kids, all of whom seemed to be enthusiastic about the idea of having a safe-space club. And on top of that, when I asked a couple administrators about having a PD day where teachers get safe space training, they thought it was an excellent idea!

This project is picking up momentum, and I couldn't be more excited.

Right Before the Fall

It honestly feels like I'm almost at the top of the roller coaster, and soon enough I'm going to fall. So much is ready to happen- the community pitch event is next week, I have the safe space kit I ordered a couple months ago, the first GSA interest meeting is next week, too. I have so much cautious optimism in the things that are happening at school. 

I just need to keep my caution in check. I need to remember that I can do things, even when I'm so young. 

All things are now ready. They just need a catalyst to set them off- and that's me. I can do this. And anyone reading this can, too.

Let's make the world sit up and look.

Genius Time Update

I feel like I've done both a little and a lot this week. I recently looked back at my deliverables for the first quarter, and it genuinely surprised me how many of them I've gotten done. A lot of it was prep stuff that I want to follow up on this quarter, but it's nice to be able to think that I've done something, even if it feels like mostly talking to people and starting to arrange huge things that will pan out later. 

I want to especially work on scheduling dates with administration for later in the year. I really want to make the Day of Silence something big, and I want to nail down definitively a date for my fourth-quarter seminar. 

The fact that I haven't done that already is a faliure- a 'not yet'- on my part. I've been falling down on this class, prioritizing other things, and I need to refocus, at least enough to get a few things done. 

After I do that, maybe I can talk to my mentor a bit more easily, knowing I'm more secure in what I'm doing. He wants to help, as do other people at church and TOY and at school, and I need to step up and lead them.

We'll see how that goes.

On Vulnerability

We've been talking a lot this week about how we represent ourselves on social media, on how colleges will see us and how the rest of the world thinks of us through that.

My first instinct is to say that I'm not ashamed of anything that I've put out under my name. And I'm not. I feel like I've even been a lot more true to myself than a lot of people are, and though that's messy, isn't everyone? Should it matter what a college thinks if they see a few of the most personal things I've said, even if they find them, because I've been careful and don't put my last name on a lot of it?

I don't think so. I try to be kind to others. I have friends, I write, I participate in Girl Scouts and raise money for church and buy lollipops from the French club. I also have had a lot of minor breakdowns, venting through social media, and while I'm not comfortable with a stranger seeing that kind of thing I'll not hide that I did it.

I don't really know what to think. I know that I believe my personal blog should be a safe place for me to talk about how I feel. 

But I don't know how it'll affect my future, if at all. I don't know what to think when our teachers say that you need to be more careful, show only the good parts of yourself. Where's the truth in that? Where's the sincerity? If you lie about the worst parts of yourself, how are people supposed to know what you're really like in "real life"?

I don't know how to justify hiding things like that. I think that I'll continue trying to be as real as possible with whoever reads this, and I think that if I stop telling the truth someday that I'll have lost sight of who I am.

The Beginner's Guide

I just finished watching a Let's Play of a game that has had a profound impact on me. It's called The Beginner's Guide, and I see a lot of myself in it. I think that a lot of people could see themselves in it, but it really spoke to a lot of places in me that are dark and terrible and not nice to look at, but it spoke about them and to them and I think that anyone, anyone at all, who watched it would be moved.

So, please, sit down for the two hours that it is and watch. Let yourself watch, be engrossed in the story, allow yourself to feel what the narrator and the subject are feeling. And if you can't, that's fine. I don't think that we are meant to feel everything that someone else feels, because if we did, then I think we wouldn't be ourselves. And it's important to be ourselves.

This isn't really relevant to the project. This isn't really relevant to anything but the humanity in me, and that moves me to want or to need, even, to share it.

http://youtu.be/OPP9pdApRQE

I don't really care if you don't like the man who plays it. Perhaps you want to play it for yourself. But I think that watching allows you a connection, and that is so, so valuable, especially in the context of the game.

Do, or don't. But I think that this is important. To help, at least, with understanding.

A New Perspective on Failure

This week has been...difficult. I've been struggling with getting a handle on my mental health, and though I'm making baby steps towards getting better, my grades, my work ethic, and my mood are taking a serious dive. 

But in DigCit, we've been talking about having a sort of 'growth mindset' and the idea that if you fail, it's okay, you can try again. We discussed how that manifests itself, and we especially talked about how our education system- and a lot of the environment at our school- doesn't encourage the 'growth mindset'. I find myself too often these days in a more fixed sort of mindset. I don't know how to change that. I know that it's through a lot of factors that I believe it- but I know there needs to be a change, or kids who are still going through middle school will have these poisonous ideas as well.

It's partly me and my perfectionism. It's partly teachers who belittle and condescend to percieved 'less intelligent' students. It's partly America's standardized testing, that enforces the idea that you must have this one skill- test-taking- or you won't get anywhere in life.

I'm just a student, albeit one who has that test-taking skill. I don't know how to change our education system for the better. I look at other countries and see students at least happier, if going through no less challenging work than I am. 

I want to make a change. But my fixed mindset- the insidious idea that I am one among millions and billions, such a small part of the machine- that hampers me, even when I summon the will to fight it. 

It's a Herculean struggle every day to get up, go to school, do my work. Sometimes I fail at it, and punish myself for it, seeing the mess I've made of my life. There's still hope, though. Right now, I'm okay. I'm still here. And to anyone else who struggles the same way I do: you can do this too. You'll be okay. And I know how ineffectual and small and empty that sounds, but it's true. 

We can get through this together, and together we can make a change in history.

PD Reflection

Last week, DigCit was roped into doing professional development for teachers. And on a half day, no less! However, reflecting on the session and the feedback that we recieved afterwards, I feel quite positive about how the whole thing went. It was pretty fun while it was going on- even teachers act like kids when they get the chance- and being able to teach them was an interesting role reversal.

I along with Lena presented an app called Peardeck. I personally very much enjoy using it, and I hope that came through in the presentation we gave. I had a good time showing off all the tools that it has, and explaining its potential to encourage participation and engage students during an otherwise boring lecture. The teachers seemed to like it as well- one came to me afterwards saying that I'd 'converted' her, and another even mentioned me by name in their feedback! I have a feeling I know who that was, but I'm not entirely certain.

However, as seems to be a trend with me and presentations, I forgot to mention some of the things that I meant to say. There's just so much I had to say and afterwards with some of the questions I recieved I got a little flustered, to say the least. I'd like to work on that, and even perhaps do some more PD sessions in order to increase my comfort level with talking about really anything at all.

I would have liked to have taken a position on my own project, of course- I think we all would have- but not doing that was fine. In fact, it was nice to give myself a crash course in something and then turn around and throw it at teachers while trying to convince them to use it. There's been as yet no safe space kit arriving at my door, and I'm starting to think it might not happen, but who knows. Pope Francis's arrival in DC appears to have disrupted even the postal service.

I hope any teachers reading this will respond and tell me what they thought or what they heard from other departments. While it's nice to have the positive feeback from the survey, constructive criticism is important too, and it's essential to improving at anything. My presentation skills especially need some work- so feel free to be honest. And students who encounter Nearpod, Peardeck, or vertical learning through Schoology discussions soon, talk about it! Say what you do and don't like, to teachers as well as your peers. This whole PD was about us. Let's make sure the implementation continues to be.

Links to Tools:

 

Peardeck: https://www.peardeck.com

Nearpod: https://www.nearpod.com

A Week of MARK ZUCKERBERG!

I'll admit, I've been a bit falling-down this week on my passion project. I've been bogged down with other work and trying to juggle my emotional health, but this Sunday I've been more able to get around to and reflect on my work. Honestly, I've been wanting more and more to incorporate the idea of how prevalent mental health disorders are among MOGAI youth and adults, so I'll probably insert that into my project proposal revisions.

In fact, let's talk about mental illness. Let's talk about how when my brother told my parents about having depression- something it took immense courage to do- they were silent for long minutes, and he did not cry. After, however, when he shouted into the void, he said he'd been crying the hardest he had in months. 

Let's talk about how it took the life of two people I didn't know very well, and yet I could ache for them, and feel empty for them, and understand that all they wanted was to escape from a pain that seemed otherwise unbearable but their deaths sent shockwaves through thousands of people who would have loved to see them live.

Let's talk about how the only way I could pay tribute was to run to the arms of those thousands of people, and how still I'm not sure of my humanity because of the way I process grief.

Depression and anxiety are the two main problems in my life, but there are those struggling with more serious things- bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and more- who are still human, still trying to keep it together, still trying to fight the 'crazy' and 'insane' and 'weirdo' and worse that still stigmatize them.

Depression isn't something that you can just say 'I want to stop being sad!' and suddenly be happy. It's so painful for me, feeling the world's agony as well as an immensity of my own, that I'm often numb instead of sad, even. It wrecks my eating and sleeping habits, my relationships with people, my ability to do the things I love and are good for me- especially schoolwork and exercise.

Anxiety feeds off of and back into depression, exponentially increasing my fear of faliure at simple tasks. When I'm not perfect, then I must be worthless, I must be stupid, there must be no reason to value myself. It's as paralyzing as my depression.

And yet, there are people who are suffering so much more than me. I'm blessed to be able to say this at all. But I want to say this, to destigmatize we who fight every day a battle someone neurotypical can't quite imagine.

I just want people to understand. I can say this here, at the professional development session that I will be helping to orchestrate, in places where there are people I trust to believe and be gentle with us. Below I'll link several organizations that help fight mental illness and even try to find a good cure.

Please, at least open a discussion. Let students speak their minds, and you might be surprised at what you might find. Be patient when there aren't words to describe what we're going through, and when we simply can't speak for fear or for whatever else compels us to be nonverbal.

Try to find that within yourself, and try to treat us all like human beings. That's all anyone wants, I think.

Links & Resources:

Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance: http://www.dbsalliance.org/site/PageServer?pagename=home

Anxiety and Depression Association of America: http://www.adaa.org

National Alliance on Mental Illness: http://www.nami.org

List of helplines around the world: http://herestotheteenss.tumblr.com/post/129593832355

I Am Asexual

I wrote this in the game room at TOY during the poetry slam earlier tonight, inspired by the truth that so many others freely shared. I'm not sure if it's a poem or a monologue or prose- it's just a response to their truth with my own. Take it as you will.

I am asexual.

The world told me for so long that I wasn't quite right, that I should see others in the way I wanted to see flushed cheeks and clothes coming off, but I could not. So many of my friends' obsessions, and I looked at them and they looked like any other. I pretended men were hot, one after the other and so many names and faces that I just couldn't care about in the same way as they did.

I don't remember defining myself. I don't remember the day that I found a word that could be me.

The media sure as hell never told me. I cannot be defined with cold and cruel white men whose assurance in their superiority over their fellow man and woman make them so, so alone.

I am a creature born of love, and I love so strongly it breaks my heart. My friends and family, two groups that have always overlapped, have grown to know me for who I am. 

And who I am is love, laughter, child of light with the stars in her eyes and no need to have sex with someone to love them more deeply than the so many words in my head can say. I hold the sun in my hand and the moon dances down my veins and love without sex, that's the only thing I want.

I've never found that in someone who will hold my hand and kiss my forehead and wipe my tears when I cry and walk my path with my hand in hers, but I think that if I cound them I would be the happiest girl in my ever-expanding universe.

I am still learning to love myself for who I am. There are so many days and nights when the real world, damn you, crushes me beneath its weight, but ice cold and red lines on my skin and the warmth of a small body next to me can hold me up until I can truly be free.

I am asexual.

And I am me.

A Twitter Chat of My Own

Yesterday in class, our class along with some other teachers and interested parties participated in a twitter chat based around digital citizenship and what it means to us. It's really my first time using twitter, so I was a little off, but it was interesting and good to see so many ideas flowing. Yesterday's twitter chat happened on #lncdigcit, and my brand-shiny-new twitter is @LuathUidhe, for the interested.

If I could run one for myself, it'd probably be based around discussing how being MOGAI and mental health entwine. They are often closely related, especially down here in the Bible Belt, so speaking to others who deal with both on the daily would have some potential for learning and catharsis. 

Having a certain amount of people there would allow people to communicate with others both like and unlike them, connecting from places that they wouldn't perhaps have encountered otherwise. That's the power of social media in general. And as I stated before, being able to connect with other people would let them make friends and inform others about their own experiences. 

This would obviously relate to my passion project, allowing education through social media while simply catalyzing instead of directly doing it myself. I don't know how effective it would be, how many people would actually be interested, but the world's a big place, after all. Who knows?

Last week, I said I'd be searching for a mentor at TOY, and I got the email of a few people who might be willing to help. That can be further nailed down, of course, but it's a step in the right direction. Everyone I talked to was very positive and excited, especially at the prospect of starting a GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) at our school. I'll have to look more into that- I believe there's already a movement to do so, I'm just not involved in or informed about it- but there's places I can go.

Even when other duties and distractions are shoving me down hard, there's hope.

Clarifying Projects

Oh my god, my Shark Tank presentation was so bad. It was a little bitty baby step ahead of crashing and burning. I stammered through it, forgot what I was going to say at several points, and got quite a lot of blank stares, though that last one wasn't entirely unintentional.

But you know what? I'm better for it. Practice makes perfect, as they say, and though my public speaking skills right near are nowhere as good as I'd like them to be, I'd like to think I'm getting better. Slowly. Oh-so-slowly.

Besides that, I did more research on MOGAI-positive movements and found so many cool things. I'll be the first to admit I was leaning towards my bias when I googled 'ace(1) recognition movement', but I found the dates of this year's Ace Week (October 19th-25th, for the curious) and I also found a more generalized day that promotes awareness and the fight against the constant microaggressions levied against MOGAI people, especially in school.

GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, asks students to take part in the Day of Silence(2,3) every year. It is a day in which students stay silent for their whole school day, and even in their outside life, in order to represent the forced silence of the MOGAI community. I plan to bring this day to the school administration and encourage students to participate. Of course, this may be disruptive to classes, but it may also present opportunities for learning for the participant's peers, family, and teachers.

But that's in the future. Right now, I'm still searching for a mentor, trying to add detail to my written proposal, wondering about how exactly I'm going to sketch out a proper event at the end of the year.

That's why by next Friday, I plan to go to Time Out Youth, Charlotte's major MOGAI safe space, several times so that I can interact more with both adults and my peers there. I'm almost certain I can find a mentor there, and besides, video game night is always fun. They're also probably a good place to bounce ideas off of for my year-long project. 

In addition to all this, GLSEN is giving away 2,000 Safe Space equipment boxes for schools to ensure the comfort of MOGAI students going into their new school year. I've entered their contest (drawing? I believe it's along those lines, it wasn't too clear) and I hope to get one for our school as well as letting friends at other schools know about this initiative. I'll put the link to the giveaway/contest/drawing/whatever is as link 4 down with the others, if you're interested.

Keeping my fellow students informed and comfortable in their learning environment is a top priority for me, and that can happen- it's just going to take a little work. That's work I'm willing to put in, but I'd be grateful if some others- student or teacher- stepped forward to help me pitch my idea, or even to be a sounding board for what I'm going to say.

References & Resources:

1. http://www.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Asexual_slang#Ace

2. http://www.dayofsilence.org/resources/

3. https://twitter.com/dayofsilence

4. http://action.glsen.org/page/s/ssk-giveaway

Passion Projects

This week we've begun to sketch out ideas for our passion projects. There are so many different ideas about what to do in this classroom that could make a huge impact on our community- and I plan to make mine successful. Of course, that's the plan for all of us, but I truly do believe in the importance of my own that I'm willing to throw all the time I might have into it.

My project is the education of the world about what MOGAI is and what we stand for. I have a firm belief that statistics about how many of us there are are skewed by the simple misinformation and disinformation of so many, even in pro-MOGAI areas. In the Bible Belt where I live and so many other places- even whole countries- all around the world, you can find worst-case scenarios. That's a problem, as I've discussed before, and I aim to fix it, on however large a scale I can.

But Annika, you might say, the world's so big, and your little corner of the Internet can only reach so far.

That might be so, but I believe that the phenomenon that's proved itself effective for so many causes can prove itself again through me and my classmates. Information spreads like wildfire these days- projects, webcomics, blogs like mine, they've all exploded in the past ten years and become massively popular.

This project is something very close to my heart. I identify as under the asexual umbrella- and yes, I do know my specific orientation, but for privacy reasons I don't feel comfortable sharing it- and there are so many people who've been open to learning about what that means, but before I told them they had no idea.

Of course, these people are mostly last-generation adults. My generation of teenagers in America have the massive advantage of the internet. However, there are places that the safe spaces I've found don't reach, and America isn't the only place with MOGAI people- teenagers, children, and adults alike. I want to reach them, however I can, and show them that they aren't alone, that they're not broken, that they are valid as who they are, and no one should ever tell them otherwise.

If I can even change one person's life like that, then I count it as a victory for all the work I'm going to put into this project.

This blog is the beginning of that. I'm boosting its signal through my real-life community, people who I know will support my mission, and already I've begun to realize just how many connections we can make, and the more the better. If I'm to succeed, then I'm going to need a lot of people to help me along, but I've found some in my classroom, in my school, in my home and my church and my city. 

I'm going to pitch this project to my class last week, and I hope that I can sound convincing enough to have my proposal accepted. If that happens, then the real work can start. 

I'm going to love it.

Heartbreak Maps

What breaks my heart is that there are so many people in the world who struggle with acceptance- from family, friends, peers, even themselves. There's so much hatred in this world just because of who someone is. I believe that no matter who someone is, they are worthy of having someone who loves them for who they are, not for a facade they present to the world because they feel they have to.

When someone chooses to come out- whether it be about their romantic, sexual, or gender identity- they place a great amount of trust in whoever they are addressing, because it's almost impossible to know if they're safe. I've heard so many stories about physical, verbal, and sexual abuse, people with no way to support themselves being cut off from anything they know, and "corrective" rape (1). There's no excuse for the sheer amount of hate crimes that happen every day, everywhere.

Of course, in the society I live in, not everyone knows what the prefixes pan-, demi-, a-, akio-, gray-, mean. There's so many different ways for a human being to identify, but I believe in people's ability to learn about their fellow man. There are some who refuse to learn, I'm aware of that, but they're a whole other issue that I'm not sure I want to tackle right now. 

I know that there are people- adults, teens, even kids- who don't fit into the strict gender binary and heteronormativity that's so prevalent globally, but they don't know what they do feel, because they don't know the name for it. Labels can be restricting, but they can also be freeing, because if you don't know what you are or how you feel, then that can just lead to feelings of dissociation and brokenness. If I could tell each and every person in the world that what they feel about who they are is valid, then I would. 

That's what love means.

Love isn't just sex, love isn't just romance. Love is accepting people for who they are and where they come from, no matter what, even if you think their beliefs are wrong. 

There are so many names I've heard people like me call themselves. MOGAI (2), LGBT+, queer, even the word "gay" is becoming an umbrella term. However, when those words are turned to slurs, then there's something wrong. 

I want to change that, in the tiny community around me, in my city, in my country, in the world.

That's what I'm about. What about you?

Some informative links:

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrective_rape

2. http://thedailyqueer.com/2014/10/19/what-is-mogai/

General list of orientations/identities: 

http://safespacenetwork.tumblr.com/define