I should rename this blog to, "From Just Outside the Peanut Gallery: here are my rants"

I was kind of hesitant to bring up this topic in this blog, mostly because I still haven’t decided where I am going with this blog. I don’t know who reads it or if they care about my personal life tid bits, but I kind of thought that was what blogs are all about. In fact, I love reading blogs about personal life tid bits. I mean, they should incorporate real world stuff, or helpful things that readers will be able to use, but they should also have a personal edge.

Anyway, what I am getting at is I feel like I might be embarking on my quarter life crisis. Which is disheartening, because I aspire to live until I am at least 200 years old, (but I am going to make 200 years look good. Seriously.) So, if I am already hitting my quarter life crisis, that means I am only going to live until the age of 88. That is not long enough.

Ahem, correction: I feel like I might be embarking on my one-eighth life crisis. (Ahh. Much better.) What I mean by this is I am starting to doubt and wonder about everything I have done thus far in life. Am I on the right track? What is the right track? I mean, we are all sort of born into a life track, and then we hit college, and then we begin doubting everything we ever were taught or brought up to believe in, everything we always thought we were so god damn sure about. Which is really just scary, because it's like, well, if I feel this different now than I did when I was 15, what is stopping me from feeling completely different when I am 27 compared to now? Can we ever really believe in what we believe in? (Note to self: strike two with the woe-is-me existentialism.)

For example, I was raised in a conservative family. My parents were always and still are Republicans. So when I went to register to vote down in Florida when I was 18, I registered as a Republican (you can’t register Independent, or else I would have done so.) It just seemed…correct? Politically correct?

Now, every day it seems my political views begin to lean more and more left. I am fiscally conservative (but not exceptionally) and socially liberal (on most issues). But really, when it comes down to it, I don’t want to be either. I think partisan politics is a bunch of bullshit and I hate that we have to put ourselves in a box that isn’t even properly made. I think (some) politicians are corrupt. I want to live on Pandora and be a Navii.

I also have begun to question my religious beliefs as of late. I was raised Catholic, but stopped attending church with my parents in high school around the time when that Catholic Church sex abuse scandal blew up in the media. Now, my parents are still both quite religious, however they still don’t attend church regularly. The last time I attended church was in Brisbane. I will say that it was an eye-opening experience at the time, perhaps even life-changing in ways I can’t really articulate currently. And yet, I still play with the idea that I might actually be an atheist. I might actually believe that when you die, you just die—the world goes on without you in it just like when you weren’t born yet.

This leads to my most salient inner debate: Why should I bother caring about the world so much? Is there a purpose behind my attempts to understand the global food crisis and how we can make our food production more sustainable? Is the world really going to come to an end in my lifetime? Wouldn’t it be more enjoyable to live in ignorance? And especially if I didn’t believe in God or an after-life, why should I care about the planet that will remain after I am gone?

Yeah, these are some real questions. They dig pretty deep or whatever. But the more I learn and the more people I talk to and the more I live, the more the answers to the questions begin not to necessarily matter.

I’m definitely “in flux,” as a friend recently told me. But maybe we’re always in flux. Maybe that’s kind of the point.

Like, OK, here is one last example. I grew up HATING cats. HATING. Once, a cat attacked me and it traumatized me for the rest of my life (so I thought), and on top of this, I'm also pretty darn allergic to them.

Then a couple months ago, my friend/apartment building-mate Charlie decided to get a cat, so I put on a sour face for a few days. Then the little guy, named Tito, started trying to be all cute and cuddly and handsome and then next thing you know he became the first cat I ever loved. Just look at that face:



Once again, this blog post has somehow turned into a non-conclusive rant that ends with a heart-warming picture (yes, I just suggested that Dunkin Donuts cups are heartwarming).

Help me out here. Is it normal to be in this state of flux when you are a 20-something-year-old, getting ready to join society IRL? Or are we supposed to feel all conflicted like this forever--and should we want to?

My Yuppie Rant: Am I a yuppie-in-training?

I had a minor case of personality identity/stereotype crisis this morning. My roomie/bestie, Jen, told me I will one day make the great yuppie. This made me laugh, mostly because she said it in her typical “salty old man” voice. But then I got to thinking (not too hard, it’s still the first week of classes, mind you) and I thought, am I an aspiring yuppie? I mean, yeah, young, urban, professional—I qualify as two out of those three things. I shopped at Banana Republic the other day so maybe two and a half out of three on a good day. But otherwise, do I really fall into the soon-to-be-yuppie category?

Here’s me in a nutshell right now:
- I’m interning at Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group that helps to ensure clean water and safe food.
- I do yoga and shop at farmers markets.
- I am taking the following classes: Environment & Development, PR Portfolio (we are working with the Arlington Academy of Hope this semester), Theories & Methods of Nonviolence, and an independent study focusing on sustainable agriculture.

There is a definition that maybe comes sort of close to me, but is it yuppie?

Now, let’s take a look at my favorite Urban Dictionary definition of “yuppie”…

Acronym for Young Urban Professional. Group whose culture blends the hippie/counterculture values of the 60s and the materialistic monetary-based values of the 80s. Usually congregate in Starbuck's, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and a wide variety of vintage clothing boutiques. Includes both moderate Liberals (Majority of yuppies), and moderate Conservatives (smaller group of yuppies), although both the far left and the far right enjoy dissing them.

Far left dude: I hate these damn yuppies! They claim to be "artists" and "bohemians", yet their materialistic pursuits embody the very antithesis of the counterculture, and price real "artists" like me out of the neighborhoods they move to!

Far right dude: I hate these damn yuppies. I can't stand they flaunt their metrosexuality with their designer labels, lattes, luxury cars, and globally conscious health food stores. It's european-wannabe wimps like them that corrupt America!

In my marketing classes at AU, we learned heaps about how to how to define your audience. I once had an assignment where I had to “brand” myself. We learned how marketers segment their audience with Web sites like this, with 67 different ‘types’ of people. But even now, as I go through these market segments, I still can’t find quite the “yuppie” definition that I strive to find.

But bear with my existentialism for a moment, when I ask, can you ever really “define” a person? I mean, no, clearly, is the answer to that. Which is good. I mean, there are definitely people out there that fit the mold of a yuppie as defined above, but then you have to consider that not everyone agrees to this definition of a yuppie, or any other stereotype on Urban Dictionary for that matter. This one word alone has 45 definitions.

Jen asserted that perhaps what we have here is a case of regional yuppiedom. So, for example maybe a yuppie in Orange County is a 30-something, fashion-conscious, Whole Foods-shopping, Starbucks-addict. He “cares about the environment” (duh—he only buys organic!) and drives a Lexus HS250h, because he can afford it and wants to have a hybrid so he remains cutting-edge.

Or, maybe in D.C., the yuppie is a 30-something-year-old woman who shops at Whole Foods because she likes their selection of organic, healthy food, she still enjoys her Starbucks and her shopping, though she tries to not go overboard, because she’s sort of anti-capitolism. She drives a Prius, because it isn’t too flashy and is environmentally friendly.

I think you see what I am getting at here. I mean, in the grand scheme of the universe, these people are the same.

However, in conclusion, and because this yuppie rant has gone on far too long, I can happily say, I am not a yuppie, and do not aspire to be one, and in fact could never be one if I wanted to (despite the fact that I plan to eventually own a hybrid and yes I wear a Northface jacket and yes I do yoga and yes I own an Apple computer and yes I shop at Whole Foods.)

Despite all of this, my one saving grace is that I do not like Starbucks. At all. I was born and raised on Cape Cod, and I am a Dunkin' Donuts girl for life.

So there you have it, folks.