Thoughts on a Wedding from outside

Source: Google Images

 I don't know what was I thinking, but I agreed to be a bride's maid for a friend. Yes, I know. A bride's maid, when I don't believe in the institution of marriage and I advocate for independence and freedom, and also the freedom in the relationships, open and free, where - if anything keeps you together then it should be waking up each day and each day deciding to stay or leave the person or persons you are with.

Anyway, this friend is getting married with her boyfriend from ten years, and she asked me. I did tell her, I can't be very involved, I have a lots of commitments with my job and my studies. so yes, I can't participate in a lot of things and she accepted it. So, so far so good. Things have been light and all, but then, bills started to build in. On one hand there was the bride's maid dress, which - fortunatelly - can actually be transformed, and not like the silver one I still have hanging in my closet.

The thing is that some things have changed for me, and I decided to start saving in earnest, so I'm looking closely at every penny I spend. This is how I started to pay closer attention to the money I was being expected to spend on someone else's wedding and all the partying and activities around it. The dress, the gift for the wedding, the gift for the bachelorette's party, the fee for the bridal's shower, the gift for the bridal's shower... The bill is quickly raising above $300 or even more, and that's in a country where the average incomes sits at about $400.

Honestly, being called and "invited" to the bridal's shower, after the bride had floated the idea of a bachelorette party in a hotel room where all the bride's maids and the bride would stay over (and pay $255 each... plus the gift), alreeady started to ring some alarm bells in my head.

I know she want's a grand wedding, and she lives in the kind of group where all her friends are getting married and they all compete for who makes the biggest production out of the wedding and the surrounding parties and... "cash/gift grabbing" occasions? As if there was no pandemic going on, and as if we were not in a country were death and infection statistics weren't going through the roof, with hospitals already collapsing, sending back sick people because there are no more beds. I know she was affected at first, at the idea of only having a religious ceremony, because she wanted her reception, but the way this is ballooning into - at least - five different events (all of them demanding gifts and at least two of them demanding a fee), it's beyond crazy for me.

Are they not concerned about the health of people? What makes them think people can't get sick by meeting so many times? Are they so easily swayed by the fake promise made from the renting locations that "they keep the protocols", when protocols must be kept on all sides?

And then, the money. Why the need to squeeze their guests for so much money? Sure, I keep the dress, but it's not a dress I actually need. I'm working from home, I don't need that dress, nor the transformed version I'll pay for it later in order to be closer to being able to use it more than once. And why the fees? People isn't swimming in money right now, so why can't they only do the activities they can pay for by themselves, and also consider which are actually sensible to organize given the current situation.

I have always considered activities that demand a fee from the guests as a distasteful thing. Your guests are not asking you to organize them, so if you decide to do them, do them within your budget. Don't make your guests pay for your ideas. And demanding a gift... how tacky is that?

Weddings always make me pity the couple: all this need for attention, this grand production only to receede later on into a life that's not a reflection of the grand production they put on, an aftermath only to be shadowed by the next big production. Why people who get married can't simply get married and be done with it? Why the production and the implicit lie?

Again on Journaling

Property of Stormberry

 It wasn't until moments ago that I found the old posts I have written here about journaling, and up until that moment I knew I had written about the subject - because duh! - but I didn't know what have I written and whether I would repeat myself. Well, I have the pictures and I have some ideas, so I might as well share them, right? Right.

This has been prompted because I have started watching videos about journaling again. Most of what you can find, though, either it's about art journaling or junk journaling, or doing a sort of journaling that's more like smashbooking or scrapbooking than the basic concept of journaling people get from reading or hearing about famous diaries, such as Anne Frank's, Anaïs Nin's, Benjamin Franklin's and so on and so forth. But then, there's also the journaling that functions also as a planner or a time/task organizer. So yes, it can become quite a confusing thing, though it doesn't need to be so.

So, when someone thinks "I would like to journal", or maybe someone who has been journaling wonder if they are doing it well, I believe the more voices with can give to guide and assure people on this subject, the better. In this post I'll mainly concentrate on the process of starting, so let's dive into that.

Right or Wrong Way

First things first, to the question of "Is there a right way to journal?" the answer is "Yes and No". There's not really ANY particular way, format, aesthetic, periodicity or medium that makes it right or wrong. So, whatever format you pick or if you give it up or have no consistency, or switch from one way to another, it's all good.

The only way to do it wrong is doing it without liking it. If you don't enjoy it, stop. When you stop liking it, that's when it's wrong. But as long as you like it, it's absolutely right.

What to Write About

Property of Stormberry

Well, before looking for prompts and consuming five TB of Pinterest pictures, and invest 100 hours on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram researching the subject, be clear about why you would even want to journal. Maybe you saw some pics and felt like you want to try it, or you heard someone did it and you want to do it as well.Or you saw the aesthetics and liked them, and you want to create something like that.

Now, usually one would say, "well, there you go: copy that". And yes, you are right: it's not that easy, specially if you are inspired by artistic journals and you feel like you don't have the same talent. Or if you are inspired by travelling journals, but you can't really travel, and don't feel like writing a journal about where you would like to go.

In those cases, my advise would be to write about that, or if you want to create a more art-journal or collage-journal, then start by simply clipping and collecting pictures you like. You don't even have to paste them in, just collect them, stash them between the pages, let them accumulate there and try out a couple of ideas as you feel like.

If you felt inspired and are more into "words", it's much easier  - or at least for me because I am into words and writing - because instead of jumping right off into the thick of it, you can start by writing about your motivation or how did you get there.

Now, if it wasn't your idea but it's a assignment, or you were advised to write a journal for whatever reason, a couple of ideas until you warm up are:

1. Write about the news headlines. What catches your attention and what do you think about it.

2. Write about the gossip you have heard.

3. Write about what you have seen on social media lately, that catches your attention.

4. Pick a person, an animal, a plant, a thing... anything that catches your attention, and write about what you think of them or it.

5. Write about anything interesting (for you) that has happened or is about to happen.

Last year a lot of people found inspiration to journal in the events that have changed the world, deciding to record their experience with the pandemic. Those journals got to be known as the quarantine diaries. Whether they keep up or not, those people and those journals came from a moment of global life change and came to life to record a shift like no other. But then again, you don't need a global shift to journal. A personal shift is enough. And yes, you can still pick up a pen and paper and start right now writing your quarantine diaries or your climate change diaries or the "oh-hell-what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-people" diaries.

Entries can be short or long and don't even have to be dated. I date them because I have a bad memory and my journals actually help me remember, but if you don't care about the dates or what you decide to journal about isn't time sensitive, skip it. Hey, you may even date some entries and some others don't.

How to Start an Entry

Well, dating it is the easiest way, if you choose that way. For a while now I've been adding the location and also giving a sort of title to my entries, but you do anything you want. If you want to follow an epistolary style, with "Dear Diary,", that's a way to do it. If you feel blocked, and you want to write, but have no idea how to write that first sentence, make a title with the general topic you want to write about. 

For instance, let's say that you had a hard day at work because there was too much traffic and meetings got cancelled and pushed to other days and you wasted hours trying to reschedule them. So how to start? You could say:

1. Today was a very hard day. ... and go on explaining why.

2. Make a title: "Hard Day" or "Wasted Hours" or "Rescheduling". Here go with the first idea. Then go on explaining what happened.

3. Pretend you are talking to a friend. Start with "People need to be more reliable. I can't have another day like this. Today I had a busy day..." and go on.

Sometimes it happens that you are very tired but would like to journal because you want to keep a fresh memory of the events, but really, you are too tired. Well, you can either make a short entry in list format or with just a few words or sentences to jug your memory, and leave it for some other day. If you have the chance, record it on a voice note. Deal with it later.

I have a couple of entries I have written through many days in order to record the particular events of a given day. It not only works, but oftentimes, taking more time to record certain things becomes cathartic and also gives you a new perspective.

Oh, and it's always ok to add stuff. Recipes, photos, clippings, notes. And no, it doesn't have to be artistic, just meaningful for you.

How to Start Journaling - the First Page Question

Property of Stormberry

Yes, it can be intimidating. The last two photos are actual pictures of the first pages of my journals. Sometimes I have added a printed out article I liked, and used it to write my first entry as a omment to it. Another first entry said something about my journaling habits, specifically how I choose to write the date and how that holds throughout the journal.

Other times that first entry reads as what it is: a continuation of the journaling process that comes from a long line of journals written through many years now.

This page doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't need a cover or a design or a grand opening. Just write. You don't even have to worry about reading it in the future, because unless you are like mee and have a bad memory, journaling is about recording, writing it down, recording, filming something for the very pleasure of doing so.

I don't really like it when people talk about "making a habit of journaling" or advise people to "keep doing it, even if you don't like it because it will eventually come naturally to you". You should make journaling anything you want it to be, and if it naturally becomes a habit, well, great. If not, if you write only once a year or every other month or god-knows-when, that's ok too. Write when you feel like it, and about what you feel like it.

The only person your journaling has to satisfy is you.

Now, something I would like to mention here is that journaling doesn't have to be strictly writing or writing by hand. You can type if you want, do it on a document on your computer, on your phone, or an app, or some online journal or even a blog. But it can also be audio recordings or videos, or any other way you find to express yourself in a way that satisfies you.

A New Story

 

Property of Stormberry

Another post with "that clump of trees". These are actually trees I can see from my office window, from home, and when it's not foggy you can see that they are in a simple plot of land, and there's a road and some small buildings behind. But when the rain and the fog come, it looks like some sort of spooky forest. I guess that's why I like it.

This time around, however, this picture has a particular meaning for me, as today I finally opened a new document and started typing the first line for a new novel. No, I have not published any novel, and no, I have not finished the one I was writing about that friend of mine. Not like that has ever stopped me in the past (I'm fairly capable of writing 100 + pages of a story and then leave the project behind), but this particular story has been rolling around in my head for a while.

I'm kind of "nervous" because I'm setting my story in a time and place I don't know very well, but I really feel called to. I guess I will have to research more about that topic - which is no hardship, as I love that time and place... in a way of speaking (it's little after the Salem witch trials and in that general area, though I make sure not to mention the place), and I plan on taking as many creative licenses as possible (I'll work with made up characters, not any real person from that time), but still. Why is it that people usually expect writers to write about their time and geographical location? No, really, think about it. You her stuff like "write about what you know" and stuff like that. Of course, nobody expects Sci-Fi writers or dystopian writers to do so, but there tends to be a reserve about a writer from X place to write a story located in Z place.

Or maybe I have been around the wrong kind of people.

Not like I would object to several research-trips to Salem, Massachusetts to fully investigate those times, and roam the streets until I know them by heart and locate the exact place of Gallows Hills (Was it Gallows Hills? See? Evidently I need to go to research), but I still have this nag in my head, that I should write about what's connected to me and pretty much evident to anyone. Like that novel about that friend which is so close to reality it will probably be terribly uncomfortable for him (and other people)... even though I make him look soo much better than what he is in real life (and the characters still comes off as a jerk, mind you).

Will I publish? I think the first question is "will I finish it?". And honestly, I don't know. Back when I wrote fanfics, we called these ideas "plotbunnies". They are like these fluffy-tailed, cute little ideas for a story that live in your head and jump around and you can't not think about them. So I write them out, park them somewhere. Then they stop jumping around and eventually fade into oblivion.

We shall see what will happen with this one.

As for the picture, it's the rain and the forest, the first two elements of this story that had ever come to my mind. So that's what I typed, that firts half scene. And so the picture, so I don't forget about this one.

Always make sure you can leave

Source: Amazon.com

 I want a set of scrabble. It's not so much that I want to have people over and play scrabble with them, but more like I want to have a set, use the tiles for pictures, or just to play all by myself. Truth to be told, I don't really like or particularly enjoy playing these sort of board games, though the ones I like all revolve around words and knowledge.

This thought came to me as I was thinking about a picture to put in here for this post, for this topic, and I looked around me and thought that there was nothing really of my own I could use, and then thought, "wouldn't it be handy to make a picture spelling out the word with scrabble tiles?". So yes, some thoughts just go on like that.

The topic that has prompted this post, though, goes a bit with the last one, and it's on relationships.

I was talking to someone yesterday, and the topic of complicated relationships came up. Toxic friends, toxic family members, toxic relationships and so on. This is something I've been processing as of late - well, all of my life, actually, but am more aware of it and working more consciously on as of late - so from this conversation, and my notes in my personal journal, and the thoughts coursing through my head, I've come to the conclusion that one should avoid the type of relationships that are like... the Amazon Prime Membership. Let me explain.

For many years I had Amazon Prime Membership, and though I didn't have all the perks, because I'm not in the US, but still, there were many good things that made the membership worthwhile for me. However, with time, the perks started to wane away, were reduced and the yearly membership's price went up. At one point, I was left without any perk that I could take advantage off, and the membership was becoming too expensive, in the light of this. So, the rational thing for me was to cancel the membership. However, this took me DAYS to do. There was no way for me to contact with anyone or find the button or the form or any way to cancel. I didn't give up though, and after several days looking for the way to leave until I finally found it.

Yay! Awesome! The way out! Except it had like a million gates trying to make me stay. So I had to click "No" over and over and over and over and find the way to say no until I was finally out of there. The experience was so horrible, that even though I thought I would leave only for a while, come back when the perks improve again or something, in the end I decided to leave for good. I mean, what if the next time I'm trapped in the Membership for ever and ever and all eterenity? I wouldn't want that!

Well, though a lot of people can see why this is an undesirable practice in commerce, they don't see this as a bad thing in relationships, or don't even question this, and perhaps this is because oftentimes people walk into a relationship not thinking that this will be a "temporal thing" but a permanent one. A lot of people who get in a relationship, are looking for their "forever after", so why would they look for the exit?

As it is, when you get a membership, usually you are not looking for it to end soon, but rather to enjoy the perks and hope for the new, exciting things that are to come in the future. Pretty much like in a relationship. However, as with memberships, things can change with time, and things might come to the point where it's best to cancel teh membership or dissolve the relationship, or part ways. Getting to this point can be hard as well, specially when you are still thinking of those remaining few good things, or you are thinking that maybe soon things will change and you don't want to miss the new good things to come, whether you are certain of them to come, or you only hope for them to come. So, in memberships and relationships, coming to the point where you decide that leaving is the best course of action can be hard in itself. So, why face more trouble? And I don't mean the natural pain of leaving or breaking up, or telling a boss you are resigning, or a family member that you won't be visiting them anymore and you wish them not to call you anymore. I mean of those cases where - like in those memberships - the people or the organization you are in this relationship with turn out to be toxic or so impossible you start feeling trapped, that you have no way out.

Those relationships (be it friends, family, romantic partners, or so) that refuse to let you go, guilty trip you, start spreading rumors about you in order to close doors for you, threaten your safety or that of others in order to force you to remain in the relationship, clearly against your will. In some cases it's complicated because you haven't chosen the relationship, and opting out isn't clear - such as in the case with family - or you may be in a very delicate situation where your livelihood depends on that relationship, such as a job, for instance. No, I won't tell you that there's always a way out, and sometimes you have to do work little by little and find ways to carve a little space where you can feel better, or build some kind of distance of some sort either to make the situation livable, or until a chance appears that allows you to leave.

Memberships might be easier to terminate, but when we get into a relationship, or about to, before we jump in, lets look for red flags, lets state clear our hard limits and stick to them firmly. Let's be watchful and be ready to leave. And when we can't leave, let's work hard to become stronger and build those barriers, those limits and reinforce them, have them respected over and over until we carve for ourselves the space to be happy and free.