Updates on My Life & A Commitment to Better Blogging

I feel like it is necessary at this point to catch people up in the world of Erica Kriner. There have been a few major developments since I last posted and I think it’s time to dust off this old blog and continue on with my story on the sole narcissistic belief that someone out there actually cares. So let’s go through the basics:

•  My love life has changed a little bit since we last spoke. Previous Boyfriend who I wrote about and I broke up – it was a pretty uneventful thing. We’re still on good terms. Now, I’m with Current Love Interest who will probably be my boyfriend here soon, and who is wildly different from the former, but it’s really exciting and amazing and he makes me very happy.
• I am in Arkansas for the time being, and will not be back in Philly until spring semester. I’m a bit bored, but that has recently been made a little easier to bear with the aforementioned, as well as…
• My new writing endeavors! Not only did I start my own website where I do reviews and talk about social issues and politics (http://culturalettes.com), but I also was selected to become an actual contributor to an actual magazine! So if you ever want to read writing that I put a lot more time and effort into than my personal blog, check out one of my articles of The Odyssey Online, which I will begin posting here when they are published!

In other news, I turn 20 years old in a little over two days. This is a big deal for me, as I will officially be entering my third decade of life! So much happened in my second decade – I wonder if I can outdo myself this time around. I’ll need to write another novel – that’s for sure. I’ll need to accomplish some stuff on my bucket list. It’s so daunting! How different will my life be when I’m about to turn 30?

Tatiana seems to think turning 20 is a boring age, but to me, this is a huge development. I feel like 20 is the first year I will be taken seriously as an adult, which is super exciting. (I guess I should stop crying at Disney movies and maybe stop building pillow forts in my free time. Oops.)

Also, as one of my first Adult Goals on turning 20, I plan on being much more active in all my blogging spheres. That means more personal blogs, more writing on The Culturalettes, and of course – keeping up with The Odyssey.

Basically, my life is going pretty okay as of right now, and despite a lot of problems that I’ve faced this past year or so, a lot of good things have happened, too.  

Self-Portrait for Anthropology

Strictly for your enjoyment, dear reader. Everything you need to know is in the video description.

Dearest Love,

There's a lyric in an Owl City song that goes "And I'll look at my hands and feel sad, 'cause the spaces between my fingers are right where yours fit perfectly". How can those words reverberate in my soul so much when you're only a few steps away? How can you be the vehicle through which I find so much happiness, but also the one thing that makes me sad? 

I think I fear for what will be our future. I fear for a day when I might be alone, and I look back and regret the days I spent wishing your hand was in mine but not bothering to ask you. There might come a time when I can no longer kiss you and then I'll feel pain for every moment I could have felt your lips against mine but didn't.

Time is infinite, but we are finite. And at some point, one or both of us will feel that loss - that stinging pain of realizing that there will be no more hands held, no more kisses given. Some day, I'll wake up without your arm around my waist and without your sweet whispers in my ear. Whether we are torn apart by internal forces, the world, or Death himself, I will eventually find myself in the dark, without your light to guide me home.

And it's the pain I'm living now that echoes that future. It's this sinking feeling that you are not infinite, and you can not be my vessel to happiness for the rest of time. It's the pain of knowing that love always leads to heartache.

But why do I stay, you may ask?

Because in order to feel heartache, you must first feel bliss. And you, my dear, are pure bliss.

- Sunshine

A Tale of Two Kitties (Plot Twist: One of Them is a Rabbit)

If I were to give a State of the Union address during my Fall Break on Haverford Campus, I probably would have included my frustrations with my living situation. Here’s the thing: I was being completely spoiled by m wonderful mentor. She was letting me stay in her house, use her kitchen and her laundry machine (that was NOT coin operated), and generally exist in her personal area as opposed to my very empty hall in Barclay. The only catch? I was responsible for her two pets: a cat named Pip and a rabbit named Hector.

20 Songs That Shaped Me

Some songs come and go; does anyone actually remember Fountains of Wayne? (Yes – THAT’S the band who gave us “Stacy’s Mom”.) But some songs stay with us for a lifetime and a half. Those are the songs I’m focusing on. So I give you 20 songs that not only dominated some portion of my life and was stuck on repeat for a month, but also helped me through something. Maybe I even go back to these songs when I really need them (or when I miss hearing them).

PS. These definitely aren’t in any kind of order.

Aftermath of the Honeymoon Phase

They say that when you start a new relationship, there's a Honeymoon Phase. Basically, all relationships begin with this sort of courting mentality where both parties are attempting to be their better selves in order to impress the other. And for a few months, both parties are blissfully in love with the other because wow this new person is so great and I love this person so much.

And honestly, the Honeymoon Phase is one of the best parts of a relationship. It's fun and exciting, and getting to explore a new person is a whole new kind of adventure. But eventually, things settle down. You kind of understand the other person - you know their pressure points, their insecurities, you know about their favorite childhood pet and whether or not they like onions on their burgers. But one of the biggest changes that occur is that when people start to get comfortable with another person, they stop trying to impress them all the time. 

This is where the Honeymoon Phase can cause problems.

Lessons in Love from the Resident Hopeless Romantic

Hello there, beautiful readers that I've been imagining this entire time. Today, I'm going to talk about love. And I definitely mean the knock-your-socks-off, I-Wanna-Hold-Your-Hand ballad-worthy kind of love that begins with fireworks and ends with the rest of the universe.

Why Doctor Who Should Be Your Favorite TV Show

Doctor Who is easily my favorite television show. So many times, people have asked what it is about. But the problem with that question is that there is no good way to answer it.

You see, essentially Doctor Who is a kid’s show. It’s about an alien who travels time and space, fighting monsters for the purpose of protecting Earth and saving lives. And let’s be honest – that’s a pretty basic concept. It’s not new. It wasn’t new 50 years ago when Doctor Who first began – there’s absolutely nothing extraordinary about it. But why, then, has Doctor Who survived so long?

Bad Breakups with Old Friends and The Bad-Boy Replacement (AKA Arctic Monkeys)

Your first real, serious relationship is generally an important one in your lifetime. I remember the first relationship I had that felt like a relationship was with a boy named James. He was a couple of years older than me, and I remember singing love songs as he played piano. I remember falling madly in love with his family - so much so that I continued to love and visit with them long after we broke up.

James was that first, beautiful relationship for me. And the relationship ended messily, terribly even. It's a wonder that we still occasionally talk. And when he comes to town and I happen to see him, it takes a great deal of self-control to not bring up that relationship - to not go back to it. Because it WAS my first real relationship and it was one filled with happiness...when it was happy.

So what does that have to do with Arctic Monkeys?

Emotions + College

They're very strange - these feelings I've had in the past few months. It's this weird mix of just about everything you can come up with. Sadness, happiness, anger, confusion, fear, excitement, determination...the list could go on forever.

College Acceptances With a Dash of YES

So for those of you who don't know - these past few months have been filled to the brim with stress. My dream school is the #9 top liberal arts college in the nation. It has an acceptance rate of 25%. Nothing in the world meant more to me than getting into this college.

Christmas Problems: Why this is my favorite AND my least favorite holiday.

Christmas. Even if you aren't Christian, you probably celebrate it at least a little bit. It has become the secular symbol of consumerism, and unfortunately, I am played HARDEST by the corporations who want my money.

My issue is simple. I simply have NO sense of money management when Christmas rolls around. It's absolutely ridiculous. Any other time of the year, I am hard-pressed to buy ANYTHING because I am the most frugal, penny-saving freak you will ever meet.

The Two Most Important Lessons I Have Learned

This past August, my life changed. I don't remember exactly what made me sign up for the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen (GISHWHES), but I do remember being excited about it for months on end. I remember getting other people involved, and I remember going into the official GISHWHES chat room and making friends with every poor, unsuspecting soul in there. (And for the record; I made TONS of friends that way and it was possibly one of the coolest parts about GISHWHES.)

The big week finally rolled around, and it was insanity. Night after night, I slaved away. I did things I never expected to find myself doing (which is kind of the point). I cried tears of frustration over making a bikini out of tea bags. I build Big Ben out of the books in our library. I made a pad and tampon giraffe with Tatiana, and then we put the fabulous thing in many strange positions trying to get the perfect photo to send to Misha.

And then, I hugged so many people, helping to break a world record of hugs. I sent complements to people I'm not terribly close to over Twitter. I wrote a letter to a soldier. I did things that just made me happy. I got so many responses with the Twitter complements; people I never expected to have much to say about me came back and told me that I had inspired them in one way or another or even just retweeted it. And that was it. I didn't get revered as a saint, I didn't receive any kind of amazing kindness or miracle or anything like that. But I honestly brightened some days. Maybe not everyone cared, but at the very least, I was able to be honest with some people who I didn't get to talk to very much and I was able to make some people smile. That was the best feeling, and I was pumped all day because of it.

That's the lesson I learned. Well, one of two important lessons that kind of go together.

1) You create your own stories. So many times, we lead boring lives. We have dreams of changing the world, or doing the impossible, etc. These dreams come from an early age, possibly at a time before we understand how hard it is to be special in a world where everyone competes for it. But I learned something about being special: it doesn't just happen to you. You don't just wake up an extraordinary human being with all kinds of facets to your personality that make others envy you. The truth is; most of us are boring. But that's totally up to us. We have the power to try new things, to travel, to hone our talents into skills, to craft new things, to learn new things. We have the ability to be people we never thought we could be. With GISHWHES, I was told to throw myself out of my comfort zone and to try new things. In doing that, I learned to be brave and ultimately, to move the things you never thought yourself to be capable of to the TOP of your to-do list. It was the best lesson I could ever have learned, and months later, I'm still doing just that.

2) The best way to be happy is to make other people happy. I swear on my life, this is the only drug worth having. "Happiness" is such a fragile thing; it will often not come all at once and once it does, it's easy to lose. But it is infectious. It is lovely and wonderful. It's like having the essence of Christmas morning in you. And so many people don't understand how to make themselves feel that. But I found the way, or at least the way that works for me. Make other people happy. Practice radical hospitality. The best, most fulfilling moment of GISHWHES was easy for me to pick out: the Twitter complements. It was because with such a simple act, something that took hardly ten minutes, I brightened some days. I felt good about myself. I was totally happy. GISHWHES encourages you to do everything you can to help others and to be the person that people need around just to spread cheer and make things brighter. My personal quote that I constantly tell myself is to "be the sunshine in someone's life". And it's difficult. Sometimes the last thing I want to do is have a smile on my face, but doing that usually makes me feel better, and maybe it makes other people feel better, too. I don't know. I might never know if the things I do truly make a difference. But I know now, because of GISHWHES, that the only way to make a difference is to try.

As my personal hero, Andrew DuCote / (Speiling) Peter Pan would say: Keep Adventuring and Stay Not A Grown-Up!

- Erica Kriner

Book Coping: How Not To Die and Take Everyone With You

This has been a tough day. I fell asleep a little past 2:00 AM last night, and I feel like I need gallons of coffee before I will feel like a normal human being. All day, a fire has been licking across my eyelids and has threatened to spill over the threshold onto my skin, burning and ripping through it like acid.

This is not healthy book coping.

Readers, I want to let you in on a few things.

1. When I walked into my first period class, I dropped to the ground and bawled for a few minutes, much to the discomfort of my fellow classmates. This episode went on for a good while and has been lurking in the background, waiting for a good time to spring back at me. I got told "It's just a book" a good ten times before people decided to leave me alone.

2. Tatiana had an attack of the ants in her clothes and described the pain that was spreading throughout her body. Unsympathetically, I explained that her situation was a perfect analogy for what I'm feeling today.

3. My logic when I am in such deep despair over a book, turns to stupidity. What happens is this progression, where my heart is battered after trying to cling to [insert dead character here] and finally realizes that the effort must be placed elsewhere. You may think the logical thing is to focus that emotional energy into something productive, but me? Definitely not. That would be much too easy for my logic to agree with such a plan. No. I have to go get another book. Oh, that's not that bad, right? Just grab a trashy teen comedy and be done with it in a day or two! Unfortunately, my life is not that simple. What my body craves is more sadness. I am the biggest book masochist I've ever met in my life. In order to move on from one tragedy, I have to progress towards another. See, the trick lies in the journey. After reading Allegiant, I was hyper-focused on the deaths of major characters that will remain unnamed. So what my heart needed was an outlet to release that pain that wasn't so scarring. Therefore, I had to find a book that allowed for the possibility of tragedy, but it wasn't a certain, impending doom. The suspense is necessary; it offers me something equally enveloping to latch onto to distract from the first book. Hopefully, the book is long enough to allow for some healing before that possible tragedy does or does not occur.

So how, you ask, does this relate to my problem at hand?

I went to the library and happened to find a book I've wanted to read for a LONG time: The Book Thief. Those of you who have read this already probably know how I'm feeling. It's not even page 20 and I am deeply concerned for my emotional wellbeing. I think this falls under the category of certain, impending doom.

Dear readers, if you don't hear from me again soon, please come find me and make sure I'm okay.
-Erica Kriner

Journal Entry #001: Homecoming Week

So, my high school is having its Homecoming Week. As per the usual, we have our crazy days (Monday - Pajama Day, Tuesday -  Opposite Sex Day, Wednesday - Decade Day [Seniors have the 80s], Thursday - Homecoming T-shirt Day, && Friday - Black  and White and/or 'MURICA Day). It's day #2 and I've decided to go all out this year, which means I'm having TONS of fun.

Day #1: I wore pajamas, didn't mess with my hair, didn't put on makeup, and I brought a blanket and a teddy bear. (It was Howard's first day of school!) It was fun, but nothing terribly special. I wanted to wear a onesie, but there were none in sight. A shame, really.

Day #2: I'm wearing my new Panic! At The Disco suit-shirt, my Panic! hoodie, a bright orange cap turned sideways, jeans, and work boots. The boots are a new phenomenon. I feel like my feet are being eaten by warm monsters. Socks are terrible. I'm too girly to handle this day. Also, I put my eyebrow makeup on generously and also created a mustache and soul patch. It's pretty legitimate. Tatiana told me I look creepy. Wyatt, Jacob, and of course Liam all look great and I took pictures with them. Bethany is making me question my sexuality. I'm really confused today.

Tomorrow, I plan on going all out! It's 80s all the way; I'm super excited! I'm going to tease my hair; EVERYTHING. It's going to happen.

But yeah. Homecoming Week is fantastic so far. I usually don't dress up, but I decided that I needed to my senior year, and I have yet to regret it at all.

SUPER READY FOR LIFE BECAUSE I HAVE A BEARD.
-Erica  Kriner

High School Incompetence and the Troubles it Causes Motivated Students

In a perfect world, a driven student who wants challenging and rigorous course work and a high GPA could achieve just that, with the faculty and administration behind them every step of the way. Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world. And my future may suffer because of it.

5 Reasons I Hate Being A Feminist

So, today my mother and I had a long discussion about feminism and rape culture and all those nice things. And the longer we talked, the more I realize that being a feminist is HARD, and definitely puts you in a very small minority. And I started to realize that I face a lot of problems being a feminist, both from a mental perspective and stemming from society in general. So here are 5 reasons that I hate being a feminist.

*Disclaimer: None of these make me any less willing to call myself a feminist. And honestly, they should make you as a reader MORE upset and willing to help the feminist cause. These are just basic issues I face when I label myself as such.

The Youth Service Fund @ Spring Rally

So, if you haven't read my previous posts, then you might not know that I am heavily involved in my church. I have spent the past couple of years being the Youth Service Fund Chair over the Southeast District, and this past school year was when I finally got to plan this stuff out myself. And let me tell you - I had big goals.

Ideas and Activism

Imagine it: An organization that houses the homeless, puts them through a job-training course and finds them work. Or, in another universe, an organization geared towards helping kids find their passion - something to keep them away from alcohol and drugs and other things that they often do in fits of boredom or when they reach low points. These are my dreams; my causes that I am passionate about. And I have many others, but I feel like my organization could contribute much to these particular issues.

Musicals and Why I Love Them

So, everyone has something they absolutely love. And more often than not, this love is ridiculed by many of any one person's peers. My laughable love is for musicals.