Response: Venting is Bad for You

A friend posted this article entitled “Venting is Bad for You (and Others)”.

The gist of the article is that you should never speak openly about things that are hurtful, frustrating, or unjust.

Wait, what?

Yep. Did I mention that was God’s will, as well?

Direct quote time:

“God’s standard was that venting be non-existent” (“Venting is Bad for You”, Gosselin).

That incredible piece of rhetoric is based on Philipians 2:14-15, which reads

“Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world”

Please note, that the KJV version, which is an earlier translation, properly reads:

“Do all things without murmurings and disputings: That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world”

Even without the severe differences in translation, the intent of both of these verses is clear: don’t bitch about your responsibilities. Don’t protest that it’s “not your job” when asked to do something. Set an example in what you do, and how you carry yourself.

Not once in either of those statements do I see “never speak aloud about anything bad that happens to you except to Me”.

This is strengthened given the context of the verses. Philippians 2 is all about humbling yourself, being more Christ-like, and taking care of your soul and well-being through love and compassion.

Keeping all negativity inside and not expressing yourself is in direct opposition to all of those things.

The author of this article cites science! as confirmation that venting is bad for you.

However, when you link to the science! article that supposedly backs up her theory, you will see that the science! does not address venting at all. The subject of the article is complaining.

Here are the definition of the two words according to Merriam Webster:

Complain: to express dissatisfaction or annoyance about something

Vent: to give free expression to (a strong emotion)

Venting has nothing to do with negativity, which is what is actually bad for you. Venting is about expressing yourself freely, sharing your emotions, your passions, and sometimes your problems.

It isn’t droning on about how your life is terrible and your boss sucks. It isn’t shouting at your husband for no apparent reason (as the photo atop of Ms. Gosselin’s article suggests).

It is communication – open and free communication. In other words, healthy communication.

The article and research linked to actually addresses effective communication as a responsible alternative. I don’t see that mentioned in Ms. Gosselin’s article.

I agree 100% that negativity and complaining (otherwise known as whining, whinging, grinching, bellyaching, etc) is bad for you and the people around you.

However, I think that venting (aka talking, communicating, sharing, being intimate, etc) is very healthy, and can help prevent long-term problems.

Imagine you’re in a relationship, and they are saying or doing things that hurt you on a consistent basis? According to Ms. Gosselin’s theology, you would be in direct opposition to God were to you calmly say “Hey, you’ve been saying some things that have been upsetting me. Can we talk about it?”

Better to just tell God that your SO is hurting your feelings, and never give the poor sap boyfriend the chance to know he’s hurting you.

That will be great to discuss in two years time when you’ve finally had enough of it.

No. That is not how adults handle negative emotion. And it’s certainly not how God wants us to handle  negative emotion.

Does He want us to yell and scream and shout about it? No. Does he want us to live emotionally healthy and mature? Absolutely.

The thing about negativity is that it doesn’t just “go away”. Sooner or later, it gets out.

We can either choose to let it out in a healthy fashion, or keep it pent up, slowly poisoning ourselves and our relationships, to keep from “stinking up the room with our negativity”.

 

The Great Unknown Tour

DISCLAIMER: This is a very biased and partial opinion. There is a 20 year history between the author and the topic at hand (Rob Thomas music). Be advised there will be fangirling.

On February 22nd at 7:30 PM, I was privileged to attend the Canberra leg of Rob Thomas’s The Great Unknown Aussie 2016 tour.

Having been a hardcore listener to Rob’s music for the last twenty years, I must confess that was the highlight of my year thus far.

I was sitting on the ground floor 13 rows back from the stage. I was slightly off center, but I had a phenomenal view. Originally, I was going to go for the cheaper seats at the back, but on a “why not” impulse bought the floor ticket.

I’m so glad I did.

It was a non-stop party from start to finish. Even though it was a Monday night (a fact which Rob jokingly alluded to semi-regularly), it beat any Saturday night gig I’ve ever attended.

Rob has great music. That’s undeniable (see original disclaimer and don’t argue). However, part of the appeal of seeing him live is his charm.

I’m not downplaying his solid performance of such favorites as “Lonely No More”, and “This is How a Heart Breaks” as well as tracks from his new album; but the real show of the night as his personality. His expressions and mannerisms were just as entertaining as the songs themselves.

I’ve been to concerts where the artists were fairly sedate, and it seemed very routine. Honestly, it must get that way sometimes – they perform the exact same songs night after night. It must get a bit boring.

Rob is the exception – he makes each performance feel new. He acknowledges the fact that this is a brand new experience for us, so that makes it different for him. If it feels monotonous to him, he doesn’t let it show.

He directly addressed the fans at the back of the auditorium, empathizing with their low-budget plight, and making sure they knew he was aware of their collective existence.

He intermittently told stories about his past, including an amusing anecdote of him and Lionel Richie comparing notes on how his (Richie’s) music had helped them with the ladies.

At various points throughout the night, every single section was made to feel like they were appreciated and a valued part of his experience.

I’m somewhat cynical by nature, but if he doesn’t genuinely love his shows and the audiences that attend them, I’ll gladly live with this delusion for the rest of my life.

What songs did we hear? If pressed, I’d say all of them. He pulled from “Something to Be” (2005), “Cradlesong” (2009)… he even harkened back to his Matchbox Twenty days with a stripped down, ballad-esque version of “Unwell”.

One of my favorite moments of the evening was the acoustic and melodic rendition of “Ever the Same”.

There was a moment – a brief one, but a moment regardless – where I thought he’d wound us down too far to recover. Having had two beautiful, yet slow, ballads in a row, I kept thinking “there’s no way he can get the energy back”.

I remember only shaking the feeling slightly when I heard the intro to “I am an Illusion” (from Something to Be) immediately thereafter. How could he bring back the frenzy after so artfully easing us into such a peaceful state with those last two songs?

However, I should have known better. Though roughly 65% of the audience had remained faithfully attached to their seats throughout the entire night, there was not a single occupied chair when the familiar guitar sounds of the classic Santana/Thomas duet “Smooth” pierced the auditorium.

This was clearly the capstone, as there was no topping that. The music faded, and we were left with a final bow and a cheeky kiss blown to the crowd. I was sad for it to end, but happy that it had come full circle.

Rob, thank you for your music, and thank you for a fantastic show. Easily the best Monday Saturday night I’ve ever had. Keep doing you.

 

Cheers,
Emi

 

Stop Travel Shaming

Good thoughts from a fellow traveller

The Guiri With Glasses

There’s shaming of all sorts now a days: fat shaming, skinny shaming, and slut shaming. One that I’ve seen recently is a sort of travel shaming. As the name suggests, it consists of shaming people who don’t travel. With articles like “Date a girl who travels” and sayings like “To travel is to live”, it gives the impression that somehow my decision to travel has made my life better than that of a woman who has never left her home state. It is simply not true.

To be clear, I am no better than the non-travelling person, nor are they better than me. It doesn’t even make me braver or more courageous than them. It makes me a person with different goals and desires in life. This doesn’t make me any less proud of my accomplishments of living, studying, and working abroad. It’s hard work and has required a lot of…

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The Joy of Traveling, and How to Defend It

Greetings, Travellers!

The title of this post may seem a little odd. Defending joy? Especially in such an expansive and invigorating world as travel? Sure there are road bumps (missed flights, overbooked hostels, hitting the sauce a little too hard and being arrested on the Italian Riviera). You certainly need to guard against the propensity to let these things get you down… but defend? That implies a foe, an active adversary intending to steal your joy. Surely there are no such creatures?

Well, dear travellers, there are. Amongst the whole vast world of travel stories, adventure tales, and wander yarns, there are countless stories of people helping each other on the road; the kindness of strangers is a big draw for travelers, we want to experience the goodness of people outside of our own realm. See how others live their lives and try to contribute to theirs, while only hoping to take away a fresh perspective on our own lives.

Very rarely do you hear the tales of the unkind nature that some people show to you. It’s not happy, and it’s kind of a downer. And unless there’s a lot of blood and gore, it probably doesn’t sell that well, either. People don’t want to think ill of each other, and I am no exception. However, I believe it is important that these stories be told, if for no other reason than awareness. Awareness that, yes, there are people out there who will try to steal your joy; awareness that no, not everyone you meet that honestly needs your help will be receptive to receiving it.

When you are aware that these things can and will happen, you are better prepared to meet it. If your guard is already up, they will be able to steal less joy from you. You will be better able to retain your faith in the good people, and just walk away from the bad.

Now, what prompted this? I recently joined a site who’s sole purpose is to match people abroad who truly need volunteers with travellers who can help them. For no pay. You donate your time to their project (whether it be they need extra help around the house, a warm body for a hostel night shift, or improving their language skills, etc), and in return you get to stay with them. Sometimes they give you food, sometimes not. It depends on the host.

My first venture into this world was a couple in the UK who’s house had burned down, and they were in desperate need (obviously) of repairs. My heart was instantly engaged. I’d had fires almost destroy my home, and before I was born a house of my parents burned down due to a neighbor’s carelessness with a cigarette.

So I messaged the host:

I tried to be honest, open, and engaging. Since I am already in Europe and traveling in the area, I thought why not take time out of my vacation and help somebody. I’m currently in a position where I work less time than what they were asking and actually being paid. I received this in reply.

Should I have known from that simple response? Probably. I should have let it go. But my naive self read the email like this, “Hey, it all looks good except for one thing. We can’t really do that kind of flexible because of the distance we have to drive to the workplace. But you seem cool, to bad we can’t work together!”

So of course, always eager to clear up a misunderstanding, I responded:

First off, who am I kidding? I love being an au pair. Posh my behind. I get paid (I never realized you get paid for working in the real world… what witchcraft is this?) to do less work with more time free. However, it wasn’t about that for me. I want to connect with people and give to those who really need it. I simply wanted to get a feel for the vibe of the host.

I certainly received that with his next communication:

Well, alrighty then.

Let’s start with the obvious.

Crap, which is the most obvious??

OK, here goes again… first of all, he admits at the beginning that I misunderstood his communication. That immediately invalidates the supreme hostility contained in this email. If someone genuinely doesn’t understand you, the mature and adult way to deal with them is to gently say , “Hey, I think you misunderstood. It’s a no. Good luck!”

Secondly, renegotiation is offensive? Pardon my french, but like hell it is! People renegotiate terms when they are exchanging extremely hard labor for money. All I did was simply throw out an example, saying that I like being flexible and doing work whenever it was needed. The idea was that I didn’t mind being flexible as long as they were. I am barely brave enough to ask for a legit vacation day in a (paid) job!

Thirdly, hostile, much? Let’s assume that I am this horrible person that he is accusing me of being. That I shoved a “list of needs” (we’ll get to that gem in a minute) into his inbox saying “I want you to lessen the workload, bring me my breakfast every morning, and actually pay me for my time that I’m donating (!) to you”. Why on earth would you waste your time bantering with an idiot like that? What purpose does being hostile serve? If I really am that kind of a heartless, thoughtless bitch, I’d simply laugh at you. That doesn’t gain you anything. My brain can’t compute the pointlessness of hostility.

Fourthly – list of needs at a difficult time. At this point, he shows his motivations, and his reasons for his hostility.

Here, he is obviously, painfully showing the fact that he is self-conscious about asking for help on the internet. He tries to redirect his own discomfort by putting it off on somebody who (quite innocently) brought it to his attention that he is basically a charity case. His house burned down, and he can’t afford to rebuild it. Fair enough. But that doesn’t give you the right to thoughtlessly punish other people because of a simple misunderstanding on the internet.

He deliberately tried to offset his own shame for having to ask for help by stealing my joy. Too many people, when they are hurt, think it is unfair for others to be happy. Being in a position of need, where you are the one receiving, should make you the more open minded – instead, he looks to others to do that for him. I sorely wanted to engage him and point out this fact. However, because I do try to have compassion, and he is in a tough spot, I politely (I think he should look up the definition of this word) replied:

At this point, I sent the messages to my trash folder. Was I miffed? Yes, I was. I had extended a hand just to have it slapped away. Somebody had intentionally tried to steal a little of my joy, and I didn’t want to let them. So I let it go. I thought about how thankful I was that I had the knowledge and experience to recognize that it wasn’t me who was at fault. Then I started thinking about how other people may react to this same situation. I knew people in my immediate circle of friends who may have had their joy stolen.

That’s when I dug the messages out of the trash and began writing this post. Simply for the awareness. It’s fabulous to tell stories about the kindness of strangers, the giving of joy. But I think it’s equally, if not more, important to be aware of those who, without any joy of their own, want to lessen yours as well.

So go forth, travellers! Go into the world, and smile at everyone. Give of yourself. Accept from others.

But guard yourself. Guard your joy. That is for you, and nobody else.

Cheers,

Emi

About the Black Widow thing in Age of Ultron

A good friend of mine puts an interesting perspective on the “un-feminist” portrayal of Black Widow.

Amethyst Marie

Warning: This post contains SPOILERS for Avengers: Age of Ultron. Proceed at your own risk.

“Widow,” by deviantART user alicexz

So, there’s been some controversy about Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff’s backstory, specifically that her Brainwashed Soviet-Ish Killing Machine training was concluded with a routine sterilization and she feels un-good about this. As for the scene itself, I don’t see how it’s being framed as a gendered issue. Bruce Banner has already told Natasha about his own infertility, and they’re having the discussion in the first place because they’re seeing the family life that their male friend has deliberately created and likely gone through an insane amount of effort to keep.

However, other bloggers have already done a great job analyzing the scene and the overall movie, so I’m not going to spend much time on that. Instead, I’m going to talk about my experience as a medically sterilized woman.

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So I’ve been busy…

Due to a long string of things I’ve done, I have not been posting lately.

Let me catch you up!

In the span of nine days, I was in five different countries – Spain, Singapore, Australia, Italy, Portugal.

Whew! That’s quite a list.

How did it happen?

Well, I random-hopped a plane to Australia in lieu of my “original” plan of Barcelona/Zaragoza for the trip.

It was a hellish commute.

31 hours in transit. Both ways.

Layovers in Singapore (both ways), and a layover in Milan (return trip).

Then, I went on a roadtrip with four fantastic amigas from Madrid to Portugal for a tirolina (zipline) that crosses the border between Spain and Portugal. There will be two or three separate blog posts for that adventure due to a TERRIBLE hotel experience, a FANTASTIC hotel experience, and then the roadtrip itself.

I’ve also recently begun two sets of Spanish lessons and had a sudden upsurge of online work. Good golly miss Molly!

So, while I may not have been blogging much, it’s not because I’m not doing anything. I have a ton of notes and half-finished posts that I just have to find the will-power and waking hours to complete.

That’s all for now. More to come soon!

(Oh, and I’m going to Segovia on Saturday, and then another road trip to the beach next week!)

Later, travellers!

The Trip

So, I didn’t go to Barcelona. Or Zaragoza. Or Dublin/London/Edinburgh.

Instead, I canceled all my reservations…

And went to Australia.

Also, I dyed my hair.

Fun times.

Kelly, my stylist, decided I’d look great with a bleach mohawk

Post bleach….

A touch of Draco Malfoy….

Scared, Potter?

Enter the color….

and the winner is….

Electric blue.

I was not nervous at all.

Okay, I was completely terrified. But it came out absolutely fierce.

My sister is a bad influence on me. Her hair is a subtle purple, and she said I should get my hair did too. Go big or go home, no?

Cheers, Travellers.

Adventure Bank

Everyone gets intimidated sometimes, right?

Right.

Especially during travel. After all, it’s a mighty big world out there.

However, once you’ve conquered the fear of getting out there, it will be a great, grand, non-stop adventure….

Right?

Well, that’s what I thought… until I conquered the great big wide world (I mean I went to Spain, but bear with me).

After I got here, I was absolutely ready to go out into the city, meet people, do things, and basically conquer the world. Then, after a few successes (and not a significant amount of failures), I began staying in more.

Honesty, I haven’t been “out” (meaning to a bar) since I’ve been here. No cosmopolitan interactions with fellow expats, pubcrawls into the wee hours of the morning, no posh coffee dates with like-minded souls on a sunny rooftop cafe in the city center.

I also have not traveled outside of Madrid since I arrived, and the Trip, once a grand 3-city European adventure, is now a simple, laid-back jaunt to the coast.

I began to panic.

What was I doing with my life? I’d already been here two months, and my sense of adventure was gone! I felt like I was wasting my time and too scared to go out. I looked around at other expats, both online and in real life. They seemed to have it all together, a vast circle of friends and travel buddies, and there I was, staying in on Friday nights, either writing or binge-watching Outlander (sidenote: my next destination will be Scotland, where I will find a sexy Highlander of my own. But that’s another post).

Basically, I felt like I was a phony. A fake. A mere facade of an intrepid traveller.

See, the type of intimidation I’m referring to is the pressure we feel to be the Real McCoy, as it were. If I wasn’t traveling and exploring at every turn (or at least every other turn… or every every other turn), then I wasn’t actually a “real” adventurer, and I would be ousted to the world as a fake and a source of ridicule for years to come (you know what I mean).

However, as hard as I tried, I simply couldn’t make myself feel bad about it – at least not enough to change anything. The most stunning realization kept me from making any alterations – I was happy.

That alone made me not want to change a damn thing. After a while, I realized that I didn’t have to. So what if I wouldn’t have crazy stories to tell when I returned home – I wasn’t doing it for anyone else’s benefit, I was doing this adventure for me.

When that realization hit me, I realized that I could do it any way I chose. If I wanted to be “up all night”, fine. If I wanted a quiet evening in (or a thousand quiet evenings in) either solo or with my Spanish family, that was OK too. Just as long as I was doing what I wanted.

Now, this is where the post diverges a bit. I considered ending with the paragraph above… perhaps finding a beautiful landscape meme about living your adventure or finding your inner voice. However, there is more to this story.

There is a vast difference between staying in because that’s what you want to do, and staying in because you’re afraid of going out. However, there’s not necessarily anything wrong with staying in because you’re afraid to go out.

Allow me to elaborate in terms that we all are acquainted with – money.

We all need money, right? Pay bills, buy food, book flights, put gas in the car… what have you. So what do we do? We work. We get full-time jobs, part time jobs, freelance work, monetize our blogs. Whatever form it takes, we have to earn money. Typically, after money is earned, it goes into a bank (or under the mattress, but for the purposes of this post, we’ll assume it’s a bank, k?). You’ve gotten your job, you’ve earned your check, and now you have money in the bank. ‘Gratz.

So now you have a set amount of cash. When we need to buy something, our money levels go down. Once we get to a certain point, we start having to be very careful to make sure we don’t overdraw. Or, in our very credit-driven world, we can enter into a vastly terrifying and slippery slope world of plastic. Because who doesn’t like owing more than they have?

Adventuring is much the same. We’ve pumped ourselves up, bought our tickets, and ventured forth into the world. But here’s the thing – we have a set amount of currency in our adventure bank that varies based on experience, personality type, etc. If you find yourself dreading going out, you’ve bottomed out your adventure juice.

When you reach that point, you have two options: you can either take out a loan on your adventure juice, or you can take a step back, a breath, and a break. Have a quiet night in. You don’t have to go out every night, or even every other night. If you want to go to the beach for a week and do nothing but sit on the beach for a week, that is perfectly fine, too.

That’s not to say don’t try again. Perhaps you want to go out, but you don’t have the reserves to stay out all night. Then just go for an hour. Flamenco show followed by a pub crawl? Go to the Flamenco show, and skip the pub crawl. Build up to what you want to do.

You don’t always have to jump in headfirst. If you spend all of your adventure currency up at once, you may get burnt out and not feel like doing anything at all. Pace yourself so that your money (courage!) lasts your whole trip.

Adventure at your own speed. Adventure in the manner which will be most enjoyable for you. Adventure in a way that will make you the most happy.

That is, after all, what it’s all about, no?

Cheers, Travellers.

What Happens When…

… you get four Americans (plus me!), two Canadians, and one girl each from France and Australia, and put them with a tour guide from Hungary in the middle of Madrid, Spain??

There is no punch line to this joke. This is an actual happening.

And it happened today.

Here’s the skinny – the route we took was almost step for step what I did on the Eat, Love, and Learn Spanish tour, except with muuuuuch less information and juicy tidbits.

We also got to eat less food, so that was a downside as well.

However, Sylvie, who was our Hungarian tour guide, was great. She was knowledgeable, friendly, and extremely awesome. She took us all out after the tour (even though she had only had three hours of sleep and had another tour in an hour!) and showed us all where to get cheap tapas. She even marked our tour maps with other cool places to visit in the future.

But, the real fun part of the story was our tour-mates.

So, first of all, the group of Americans were all friends before, three of them being school mates at a study abroad program in London (this week being their spring break).

This automatically made them a bit clique-y.

I DIDN’T REALIZE IT WAS PINK DAY!!

No worries, though. That’s natural, right?

Right. All’s fair

Well, the rest of the tour group tried talking to them, with very little success. One of them even walked away mid-conversation with me.

this is how i picture the level of success i would have should i attempt a z snap

Whatevs, bruh.

So things are rocking along fine, until this same group of four starts wandering off, ignoring the tour guide, and the rest of the group.

The clincher came at the end, when we were all out for lunch. They arbitrarily adopted several people not in their original group, became besties with them, and decided to go in together on paella to save some money.

That’s cool, right?

Well, here’s the problem.

The only people (very obviously) left out were myself, my friend, and our TOUR GUIDE.

*head meet desk*

Of course it was the Americans to do this.

arrogance may not be a uniquely American trait, but you do it better than anyone

‘Murica.

Thankfully, our tour guide (and I might say, myself and my friend) were professionals at shaking it off…..

Cuz the haters gonna hate hate hate…

and this is my actual dancing skill level.

All in all, it was a good day. We had a good time on our tour. What it lacked in information (it was free, after all), it more than made up for in the entertainment value of our guide and the invaluable knowledge of cheap food for future reference!

In other news, I’m finally getting my public transportation card tomorrow!

Yes, I’m a shameful excuse of a traveler for not doing this sooner. Sue me.

Just to clarify: almost everybody I’ve met in Spain has been delightful (yes, even the ‘Muricans), so this post is honestly just to poke a little fun at four peeps who missed out on a great afternoon with three fabulous ladies.

does this really need words?

Cheers, Travellers.

Tony Stark Has Some Explaining to Do in New ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ Trailer

This is one of the best trailers I’ve seen in a while. The possible ripple effect this movie will have on the entire Marvel Universe… I can’t wait.