Probably it’s because of the weather, it was raining so hard since last night.
That is when I realized how important the electricity is to me and how much I depend on it.
The answer is: I can barely live without it.
Hmmm… that’s weird, the electricity is not absolutely necessary for humans to live with, unlike water and oxygen. But why do we need it so bad just like we need water and oxygen?
I guess it is because we can do a lot of things with electricity, such as use the lights, the heater, and so on. The most important thing is it can make our electronic products work, and they are really “essentials” for us.
But right now,
I really want to print my papers out, but I can’t, and I can do nothing about it but wait.
That is why I am sitting here and writing this blog for this week.
A vegan Thanksgiving is more sustainable and animal cruelty free. Supporting semen being sucked out with a straw from 46 million male turkeys’ anuses each year is cruel. But having Thanksgiving at all is not necessarily cruelty free. The only ethical way to celebrate Thanksgiving is to spend it educating yourself on indigenous rights.
“Happy Thanksgiving” I am so thankful for the Native Americans who continue to fight for their rights, their lands, refuse to abide by the societal expectations of pretending nothing terrible happened to their ancestors on this holiday.
As we are having a beautiful Thanksgiving feast with our families and friends, remember that today is a national day of mourning for native Americans across the country. So while you’re thinking, “wow, this holiday is so incredible and based upon gratefulness and love between humans,” please don’t forget that thousands upon thousands of Native Americans have been brutally murdered in cold blood (partly) for their lands by white colonizers.
And this question shocks me… but how many people across the country will celebrate Thanksgiving today having never even engaged with or met a native person, can’t name five tribes, can’t name the tribe whose lands they occupy or even can’t name a living native person?
So… why not celebrate gratitude daily? It is one of the most important self-care practices a person can do. Daily practices rather than on just one day covered by blood which is just another white supremacist holiday. I’m not saying we should completely cut Thanksgiving from our yearly tradition but being less arrogant and realizing what this holiday truly represents. Being “woke” can be very emotionally taxing and difficult to talk about; but it’s worth doing the right thing rather than taking the easy way out and staying silent.
Ignorance is not bliss. Even though it would be much easier not to post about these topics and just pretend today is a wonderful day of giving thanks…like everyone else does… so I don’t hurt any proud Americans’ feelings. If you’re not speaking the truth, you’re part of the problem.
So bon appétit, but don’t forget! As we celebrate thanks, for Native Americans Thanksgiving is a reminder of the genocide of millions of their people, the theft of their lands, and the assault on their culture and history of colonial violence.
So many things I’ve felt, so many things I’m feeling: like
the lips, the teeth, my hands that go numb from time to time;
unwelcome visitors crawling across my arm, still not wanting to disturb them;
hoping to be an anarchist someday – not in a way so extreme as starting a revolution or in a way so dull as loving someone your family doesn’t approve of, but in a way that falls somewhere in between;
watching the words pour out of your mouth, pour out of your mouth and drip down the sides – they drip down the sides and spill all over me.
I could miss the blue days, the warm days, but I don’t. I could miss the excitement that came along with summer, the uncertainty, perhaps, but I don’t.
Suddenly, the reminiscence of me as a little kid playing an old game on the iPad bumped into my mind in the middle of the calculus class.
Can’t remember exactly when, it was around the time the first iPad just came out, the smart touch-screen tablet.
The game is about the players are able to control a ninja character, and the ninja is keep climbing up on the wall. Right, there are two walls, and the ninja is able to jump between these walls. The goal is to climb as high as possible while avoiding evil squirrels, dive-bombing birds, enemy ninjas, throwing stars, exploding bombs and more.
Can’t remember the name at all. Asked my friends, they knew and played this game also, but they don’t the name either.
Even did some research online, finally, found the name “NinJump.” And I entered this name into the search box in the app store on my phone, but it shows no results. Okay, I guess they probably took this game off, for whatever reason. Let me just keep it in my past memory.
Before I was proficient, understanding language, my dreams would be primarily in symbols (I wasn’t a very verbal child). Now I’ve never written this down or spent much time reflecting on it, but from around the time I was 3 to the time I was 9 or 10 I would have very odd, indescribable dreams; a single, short line, accompanied by a circle and a square I believe would race around the room I would sleep in while remaining totally silent. And at moments I would hear a deep buzzing that I could not describe, the racing became more intense and increasingly antagonizing while appearing exactly the same. An unnerving simplicity that I didn’t understand frightened me beyond my greatest beliefs and I couldn’t describe them to my family for the life of me, haunting me for years after I stopped having them.
I used to live in a three-story house. To be fair it was a house divided down the middle with a wall so it could house two families, but regardless it felt large to the small child that I was. My house had an area where the stairs, which were all right above each other, and near the basement, there was an entrance to my dad’s office which was leveled slightly below the ground floor of the house but still sheltered slightly from the basement. And in the mornings or late afternoons when things were dark, but not enough to turn lights on, that area would have a shadowy appearance that terrified me. So sometimes, I dreamt that I was standing there, alone, in the early morning, when my parents were still in bed an eternity away on the third floor of my house, I would be frozen on that landing, surrounded by shadows and uncertainty, where I would hear a despaired howling, like one would hear on the Alaskan tundra on a cold winter night, but unnervingly human. And I would be unable to escape that desperate gale-forced cry, and then it would just end.
Many women who are convinced they’re in control, sticking to a dangerously low number of calories a day and severely suffering mentally and physically, most of the time have no idea about the seriousness of their situation.
Looking back, it’s hard to explain the level of daily obsession that I suffered over my physical appearance. As a child, I thought of sticking a needle in to my thighs and calves, to see if I could squeeze out the fat. I also had the best idea ever… to just cut my stomach off with scissors.
Suffering from eating disorders in the past I had no idea I was ill and most of the women I spoke to were in denial as well.
I thought eating an orange per day was healthy and that everyone around me wasn’t. I didn’t think I had anorexia: real anorexics, I erroneously believed, ate nothing at all. And I was still eating?
There’s no question that letting go of an eating disorder is one of the hardest things a person can do. It’s also important to note that each individual will follow their own unique path to recovery but here are some steps that may help:
Recognizing you have a problem: This step is crucial because if you don’t acknowledge that you have a problem there’s no point in changing. If you are not sure if you have an eating disorder the best thing to do is see a registered dietitian or therapist so that you can get a professional opinion. For me, I took an online quiz and then from there I started taking steps to change.
Decide that you are worthy of recovery and start to make small changes: start to research how you can make healthy changes to your diet and lifestyle. This might include introducing more balanced foods into your diet and exercise so that if you do eat more you won’t necessarily gain weight.
Instead of just focusing on your physical appearance and food intake incorporate various ways to practice self-care with your mind, body and spirit. If your body and brain are being deprived, you are less likely to reap the benefits of everything from therapy to mindfulness.
Recovering from an eating disorder is difficult but definitely possible. The most important thing is to accept help and seek support.
I’m a huge procrastinator. No matter how much work is on my plate, I’ll always deal with it the minute before deadline. Last summer, I did the whole summer holiday’s assignment in the last 5 days.
To procrastinate, you have to know your limits. There must be a point where you just know that you have to get started—or you won’t finish even if you pull an all-nighter. Like 5 days before school starts or every Sunday night.
Every Saturday night I tell myself to work, but I always end up working my butt off on Sunday night. Every Psychology project, I do it the night before it…
Being the huge procrastinator that I am, I don’t recommend stalling. Change is hard, for me and everyone else. Whenever things become habitual, they stick like super glue—and tearing them off would hurt a lot.
Why not start little, one day at a time? We have to fight fire with fire, strengthening a new, better habit while damning procrastination.
Change can be hard, but it’s possible. Even the huge procrastinator I am, I didn’t wait until Sunday to clear my plate of work. Sometimes it’s not just work, work, work if you manage your time rightly. I’m done being lazy.
I don’t know much about most things, but I do know that some things are just supposed to happen, and some are not –
I know that the moon is supposed to rise in the east and that dogs are supposed to bark at each other through chain link fences and that pomegranates are supposed to stain my shirt sleeves
and I know I would never want to be inside when they sky looks the way it did tonight.
But I’m not so sure that things are supposed to be like this;
I am not so sure that the pepper tree I stopped at today is the same type of pepper tree that I grew up with. It didn’t remind me of home in the same way they usually do. It should have been familiar to me, and it wasn’t.
I’m not at all sure of people like you, and I am not sure that the world should be melting and that we should all just be okay with it.
How should I be allowed to miss things before they’re gone? How can I possibly miss you when my hands are on your face and you’re standing directly in front of me? I’m not sure how that is even possible, and yet I do.
I must remind myself to look up every once in a while.
OVS Journalism Blog 
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